Page 16 of Cross Down
This is Alex.
Rachel says, “I think he’s got a tension pneumothorax—shit, this isn’t good.”
A memory comes back of a similar circumstance, a young male riding home on his bicycle, shot by mistake by a gang member who thought he was somebody else. Like Alex, the boy had been shot in the chest. One lung had collapsed, and air entered the chest cavity from the wound outside and from a leak in the damaged lung inside. There was nowhere for that air to go, and it built up in the chest cavity and compressed the heart until it could no longer pump.
Trudy says, “BP is crashing, heart rate is up…we’re losing him.”
I get to my knees in prayer. “Alex,” I choke out. “Hang in there, hang in there.” Whatever happens in the next few seconds, I want him to know I’m here.
The monitor screams out a long flat tone.
“He’s coding,” Trudy says.
Chapter
18
Maynard, wearing boots,khaki slacks, a blue shirt, a lime-green safety vest, and a baseball cap bearing the logo of Dominion Energy, calmly walks behind a three-story home in McLean, Virginia, to the door leading into a two-car garage.
Inside, there’s a black GMC van. There’s also Franklin, the man who ran that morning’s op, and one of the shooters, a man called Pope. A third man, Clyde, is lying on a pile of blankets and sheets in a corner of the garage, moaning.
Maynard asks, “Leon?”
“Dead at the scene,” Franklin says, arms crossed, looking both pissed off and ashamed, which was appropriate, considering how much they had fucked up this morning.
“The target?”
“Still alive,” Pope says. “The fucker is good. Took out Leon, hit Clyde in his arm, and nearly took off my head.”
“The Amazon van?”
“In Chesapeake Bay.”
Maynard is about to ask another question when his burner phone vibrates. “Hold on, you idiots. Incoming call.”
He goes back outside and is pleased to see tall fencing around the rear yard; it’ll keep nosy neighbors away from this temporary safe house. He answers the phone with “Maynard,” and the click and burst of static tells him that the Boss is on the line.
The Boss says, “I’m seeing the news reports. But there’s confusion as to who got serviced. What happened?”
Although Maynard has been working on this project for months, he’s still not used to the Boss’s voice. He’s using some sort of high-tech voice synthesizer, disguising his real voice, sounding almost like that Brit physicist, the guy crumpled up in a wheelchair who could only talk via computer.
Maynard says, “It was a fuckup. Our crew took out the wrong guy. The target got free.”
“Do you know who got shot?”
Maynard says, “A consultant to the FBI and Metro Police, a guy named Alex Cross.”
A pause, and then the mechanical-sounding voice erupts in fury: “You goddamn fool! Alex Cross? The man who’s solved more serial-killer cases than anyone else in the FBI? The guy who works with the FBI, Secret Service, and Homeland Security and who’s written books on crime and psychology?”
Maynard feels the flush of embarrassment come over him. “I thought the name sounded familiar.”
“Is that all the thinking you did this morning? Can you imagine the heat that’ll be coming down on us in the hours ahead? Killing a DC police detective—that won’t even make the New York newspapers. But killing Alex Cross? You idiot. Why didn’t you kill the mayor or the president while you were at it?”
Maynard waits. Apologies are worthless at this time.
When the Boss speaks again, his voice is under control. “What else?”
“We lost one of our team at the scene. The other is wounded, and he’s with me and the other team member.”
