Target: Alex Cross

by James Patterson

  “It’s what they’re saying on the news,” he insisted. “Larkin, he did something against Russia, China, and, like, North Korea. They think it’s war and, like, going nuclear.”

  “What?” Bree said, shooting up.

  I was already out of bed. I snatched up Ali and carried him downstairs into the kitchen to find Nana Mama in her robe and Jannie in her University of Oregon sweats, both staring at the big screen in the outer room where some talking head was babbling about the entire world being on the verge of war.

  My grandmother looked at me, grayer than pale, and said, “It’s like the Cuban missile crisis all over again, Alex.”

  Bree hustled into the room. “Explain what happened.”

  Jannie said, “Larkin attacked Moscow and Beijing.”

  “No,” I said, horrified. “Missiles?”

  “No,” Ali said. “Cyberattacks, Dad.”

  Nana Mama said, “Larkin ordered CIA hackers to shut down electrical power for ten minutes in those cities and whatever the name of the capital of North Korea is.”

  “Pyongyang,” Ali said.

  “We can do that?” Bree asked. “Shut down all power?”

  “We’ve already done it,” Jannie said.

  Up on the screen, the feed cut to President Larkin aboard Air Force One.

  He stared into the camera with deep resolve and said, “To authorities in Russia, China, and North Korea, my message is simple. If you continue to hack us, we will be forced to counterattack on a larger scale than what you’ve already seen. If you send missiles, we will respond with quick and devastating force. Your move.”

  The screen went blank for a moment and then returned to a flustered morning-news anchor used to delivering fluff. She couldn’t speak at first, and then she broke down. “What’s the point? The nukes could be coming, and I’m sitting in Washington while the president’s off in a jet somewhere trying to start World War Three!”

  “See!” Ali said, and he started crying again. “We have to get out of here, Dad!”

  “We can’t,” I said. “They’ve still got the city cut off, trying to catch President Hobbs’s assassin.”

  Jannie started to cry. “No, Dad, they think he’s already dead.”

  “What?” Bree said, shaking her head in confusion.

  We’d both been asleep less than five hours, and the world felt like it had changed completely in that time.

  Nana Mama was watching the poor news anchor who was being led off camera; her co-anchor looked like he wanted to follow her. My grandmother muted the TV.

  She said, “He was in Rock Creek in a wet suit. Some homeless guys living under the Virginia bridge spotted him trying to swim to the Potomac. Multiple soldiers guarding the Thompson Boat Center opened fire on him with machine guns. They feel sure he’s dead. They’re dredging the … there.”

  She unmuted the TV. The feed had shifted to a camera on Virginia Avenue aimed at the Thompson Boat Center. Beyond it, police and Coast Guard boats were plying the Potomac, looking for a body.

  “Who cares?” Ali said, and he hugged me fiercely. “The Russians are going to nuke us, aren’t they? Or the Chinese?”

  Feeling how terrified he was, I kissed him and hugged him back. “No one wants a war like that. Not even our enemies.”

  “Then why did the president shut their lights off?”

  “Because they were attacking us in the wake of the assassinations. They were trying to see if we were weakened. President Larkin was showing them we aren’t.”

  “I’m scared, Dad,” Ali said.

  “We’re going to be okay. No one wants a war like that,” I repeated. “You just have to have faith in—”

  “But when we can leave, can we?”

  I turned to Bree. “Maybe it wouldn’t be a bad idea for Nana Mama and the kids to go see my dad in Florida until things settle down.”

  “What?” Jannie said. “No, Dad. My spring season’s coming up.”

  “How would we get there?” my grandmother asked. “No planes. No trains.”

  “We’ll cross these bridges when we—”

  My phone buzzed. Ned Mahoney.

  “You rested?” he said.

  “Barely. You see what’s going on?”

  “Yes, which is why they want us back at Andrews ASAP.”

  CHAPTER

  75

  THE RAIN HAD stopped at last, temperatures were rising, and the clouds were breaking up when a Gulfstream jet landed at Joint Base Andrews at 2:15 p.m. on Saturday, February 6.

  As the jet taxied toward me and the hangar, I kept looking over my shoulder, back inside, to see hundreds of people trying to do their jobs as best they could. But the strain and worry showed.

  Ever since President Larkin’s act of brinkmanship, the media had been going crazy, declaring the country on the verge of all-out war with two superpowers and a rogue regime. Protests were breaking out. People were panicking, and there were reports of widespread food shortages, violence, and looting. We were hearing of clogged highways as people fled the country’s larger cities.

  But the threat of the entire Eastern Seaboard being leveled as mushroom clouds rose above it was what hung over everyone at Andrews, including me.

  All morning I had tried to stay focused on what I could do: review all the new evidence coming in and look for something that would help us get a break. But then up on the screens, there would be some update on the secretary of defense’s status or a piece on CNN about the proper use of gas masks, and I’d be thrown into a loop of what-if questions that destroyed my concentration.

  I could see the same happening to many others working the investigation. On the whole, it felt like we were making little if any progress.

  Despite hours of searching, dredging, and diving near the confluence of Rock Creek and the Potomac River, there’d been no sign of the guy in the dry suit that the Virginia National Guardsmen had shot at in the early-morning hours.

  Had “the Frogman,” as the media was calling him, been the president’s assassin? Why else would someone be in Rock Creek when the city was in total lockdown, the air temperature was in the thirties, and the water temperature was in the forties at best? Plus, he hadn’t been all that far from where Bree had had him almost cornered inside GW University Hospital.

  In my gut, the Frogman was the blond minister who killed the president, shot the defense secretary, killed the pathologist, and skinned a corpse. And we’d lost him.

  Mahoney tried to convince me that the cold river water could have sunk the corpse, that the body would surface downriver sooner or later. But I wasn’t so sure.

  As the Gulfstream rolled to a stop and was surrounded by armed airmen, an alarm started whooping long and slow somewhere in the distance.

  Time seemed to stand still.

  Many of the airmen had taken their eyes off the jet and were searching the sky. You could see the fear in their faces. I could feel it in mine.

  Was there a missile coming?

  The alarms were sounding, but would that make a difference? I tried not to think about my family, but it was impossible not to.

  I had an image of all of us at Sunday dinner, kidding one another, laughing, and debating the chances of Damon’s team surging enough to make the NCAA championships in March.

  But in the next moment, as the Gulfstream’s hatch opened and the ramp unfolded, I was imagining a nuclear blast, fire, and devastating scorching gusts of wind that would leave everything in my life in smoke and ruin.

  Had President Larkin made the right decision as a show of power? Or had he provoked our rivals and enemies to take unthinkable actions?

  I kept wondering if Larkin was too rash to be leader of the free world. I kept asking myself if he would ever have come remotely close to occupying the Oval Office if President Hobbs, the Speaker of the House, and three members of Hobbs’s cabinet had not been shot down in cold blood.

  Agents in SWAT gear exited the Gulfstream, leading a grizzled-looking, sunburned man in den
im and handcuffs. Morris Franks, the father of the treasury secretary’s killer, was in his sixties with gray hair and an untamed silver beard. Despite the show of force all around him, Franks didn’t seem frightened as they led him past me. He didn’t seem angry either.

  Indeed, when our eyes met for the first time, his affect was so flat, I thought I was looking at a man who had no real emotional center, a man who was dead inside.

  Mahoney tapped me on the shoulder. “Let’s go, Alex. The director wants us to interrogate him.”

  As I turned to follow him, I felt my phone buzz, alerting me to a text.

  I didn’t recognize the phone number, but I understood the text.

  Dr. Cross, please, I need to talk to you. It’s Nina Davis.

  I texted her back immediately, telling her that I was part of the investigation into the assassinations and unavailable for the moment.

  After hitting Send, I hurried after Ned.

  CHAPTER

  76

  AFTER ATTENDING A short briefing with the FBI agents who’d raided Morris Franks’s compound in Arizona and reviewing the list of initial evidence gathered there, Mahoney and I entered a makeshift interrogation room off the main hangar floor.

  His handcuffs had been removed, but the professed anarchist was in a restraint belt and ankle irons. Chains ran from both to a steel desk freshly bolted into the concrete floor. Franks was drinking a Dr Pepper and smoking a filterless cigarette.

  In my pocket, my phone buzzed.

  I pulled it out, saw it was Nina Davis again.

  This is important! An emergency!

  Can’t. Sorry. Emergencies here as well, I messaged back. I sighed, pushed aside the guilt I felt putting a client off, and forced myself to stay focused on Franks.

  “You good, Mr. Franks?” I said after Mahoney introduced us.

  Franks took a drag on his cigarette and then a swig of his Dr Pepper, blew out cigarette smoke, burped, and said, “Been better. Been worse. I could use something to eat. Oh, and a Miranda warning if you don’t want the ACLU crawling up your shorts. And an attorney ASAP.”

  Mahoney said, “Haven’t you heard, Mr. Franks? Martial law’s been declared. Things like Miranda warnings, habeas corpus, and the right to an attorney have been suspended along with all other rules of a free civilization.”

  Franks blinked and looked at me.

  I nodded to him, said, “Kind of ironic, isn’t it?”

  “What’s that?”

  “The tyranny and government oppression you’ve always predicted—they’re happening, and you know what? You’re one of the first victims.”

  I saw a slight tic in the corner of his mouth, but that was all he gave me.

  “What’s this about?” Franks demanded. “No one will tell me a damned thing.”

  Mahoney slid a picture across the table to him. “That’s Abigail Bowman, the U.S. treasury secretary, lying dead in the rain there.”

  He studied her, shrugged. “Yeah? So what’s that got to do with me?”

  “Your son, Martin, killed her. Shot her down in cold blood.”

  He looked at me and then Mahoney before saying, “That’s bull.”

  I pushed a second photo across the table at him. “Nope. He killed Bowman and a Treasury agent and wounded a second one, but not before that agent got a slug in your son. Martin tried to flee Manhattan, but a rookie cop gunned him down.”

  Franks stared at the image of his son sprawled on the rain-soaked sidewalk. His lower lip quivered, and then he appeared disgusted.

  Oozing contempt, he said, “You looked for a scapegoat, and you found my boy.”

  “Your son was an assassin,” Mahoney said. “He was wearing fake Treasury identification and a badge when he was killed.”

  “Planted.”

  “We didn’t even have to do that,” Mahoney said.

  I switched topics. “Tell us about Martin. Where had he been living?”

  “I’m not saying anything. And take that picture away. I don’t want to see it.”

  I left it where it was, said, “Your son’s dead, Mr. Franks. Unless you want us to believe you were part of the assassinations, I suggest you start talking.”

  “I got nothing to say. I haven’t seen Martin or been in contact with him in … gotta be two years now.”

  “Not a peep?”

  “Nada.”

  Mahoney said, “That’s funny. The agents who arrested you said your place was full of new solar technology, appliances, sat dish, and stacks of cash.”

  “So? I don’t trust banks, and I got an inheritance at the same time as a guy who owed me money paid up.”

  I sighed. “The cash was in mailers with fake return addresses, and three of them had notes signed by your son. One said he’d see you again soon.”

  “Turn of phrase,” Franks said. “And the cash? He was just helping his old man. Other than that, like I said, we hadn’t been in touch.”

  “Where’d he get the money?”

  “Can’t say. But last time I saw him—couple years back, after he left the Marines—he said he was getting into contract security work overseas. He said there’s real money in that these days.”

  “You declare that cash to the IRS?” Mahoney asked.

  Franks chuckled and picked up another cigarette. “What do you think?”

  I lit the cigarette for him, waited until he’d had a few puffs.

  “Was Martin political?”

  “Hell no.” He snorted. “I swear to you, I never heard him once talk about politics unless I was baiting him. Even then, he’d change the subject.”

  “To what?” Mahoney asked.

  “Anything. When he was in it, you know, combat. He liked to talk about that.”

  That last bit did not jibe with my own experience, which was that people who’d been in combat rarely talked about it. Then again, Martin Franks was given the soft boot out of the Marines because his superiors thought he had psychopathic tendencies.

  My cell buzzed, alerting me to a text. I chewed my lip in frustration, figuring it was Nina Davis again. But I slipped the phone from my pocket, glanced at the screen, and saw a text from Bree:

  Scotland Yard coughed up Carl Thomas’s file! Call me ASAP!

  Mahoney said, “Your son ever mention going to Russia? China? North Korea?”

  Franks screwed up his face as he took a drag off the cigarette, then said, “Never. But you know? More I think about it, it sounds to me like my boy maybe came around to his pop’s way of seeing things. In my mind, Martin died to free us from tyranny. He sacrificed himself for the ideals of his country, and I salute him for his bravery. I predict Martin will go down in history as being as much of a patriot as one of them minutemen.”

  I stood up to leave the room. “I hate to break this to you, Mr. Franks, but I am absolutely certain your son will go down in history as a coward and a traitor to his country. I have the distinct feeling you will too.”

  CHAPTER

  77

  WHEN MAKING ANY long road trip, Dana and Mary Potter liked to travel around the clock. One would sleep while the other drove. Switching off every two hours and gassing up every four, they could cover close to eighteen hundred miles in a single day.

  Indeed, they’d left Texas as fast as they dared, crossing on back roads into New Mexico in a stolen truck with stolen plates before any word of the assassinations surfaced in New York, Washington, or El Paso County.

  But by the time they’d made the Colorado line, around five that afternoon, the news was full of the killings, with new, shocking developments almost every minute, very little of it coming out of the Lone Star State, which was exactly how they wanted it to stay.

  The roads were dry. They made good time. Wyoming had come and gone before midnight. But the weather had turned sour south of Billings, Montana. Wind, snow, and bitter temperatures had plagued them in the long hours before dawn.

  Shortly after daylight on Saturday morning, the storm intensified to near whiteout conditio
ns. A prudent couple would have pulled off the road in Lewistown or Malta and waited it out.

  But Mary wanted to be home, and her husband wanted as swift an escape as possible. And the storm wasn’t a bad thing when it came right down to it.

  No one would be looking for assassins in a blizzard on Montana’s desolate Hi-Line highway. A killer could drive right by you, and you’d never know it because you’d be keeping your eyes on the white-knuckle road.

  So the Potters had driven on toward Glasgow in northeast Montana, listening to the news coverage on the satellite radio. Word of President Larkin’s retaliatory cyberattack on the other nations had shocked them both.

  “I want to get home, Dana,” Mary said in a fretful voice. “Before the world goes all to hell on us. My God, what have we done?”

  He got angry. “We did a job to save our son’s life. That’s what we did.”

  She got angrier. “They’re saying we may have helped start World War Three!”

  “I’m a professional. You’re a professional. I did a job, and so did you. And we did it for a noble purpose.”

  Mary said nothing, just stabbed off the radio. “I want to call home.”

  “No sat phone,” he said firmly. “Radio silence until we’re in the …”

  On the GPS navigation screen in the truck’s central console, he saw what he was looking for and slowed, feeling the trailer slide a little behind him before he came to a full stop and turned north onto Frenchman’s Creek Road.

  The gravel road had not been plowed. They spun and almost jackknifed the trailer in nine inches of snow. But before they could go in the ditch, Potter wrestled the pickup and trailer back to the middle of the road.

  When he was a full mile north of the Hi-Line, he stopped in a spot out of the wind, and they donned wool hats, quilted Carhartt parkas, and heavy leather mitts lined with sheep fleece. Both of them had already changed into insulated bib overalls and boots at the last gas stop.

  While Mary saddled and fed the horses grain, he chained up all four tires and changed the stolen Wyoming plates for Montana tags. Despite their heavy clothes, they were cold to the bone when they climbed back in the pickup and started north again.