Page 14 of Cross Down
Reloaded.
With all the gunfire from my fellow officers whistling overhead, I crawl to the street side of the Jersey barriers, and through a smaller gap I spot the van’s driver dragging the second shooter into the van through the side door. After he dumps the guy in, he opens the front door, and I snap off another half a dozen rounds. But the driver’s protected by the open door; my rounds sink into the door and thud against its window.
Bullet-resistant.
Serious professionals.
The driver gets into the Amazon van, and the vehicle screeches out.
I see cops run to a couple of parked cruisers.
Good.
Let them do the chase.
I turn around, and there are more shouts, sounds of car engines starting up, sirens being tripped on, and I realize it’s too quiet in my little Jersey barrier fort.
“Alex!” I yell.
I holster my pistol and run over to Alex, who’s lying on his back, mouth open, gasping. A puddle of blood is slowly oozing across the dirty concrete.
I kneel down, open up his dark blue suit coat, spot the bullet wound. Mid-left chest area, blood spreading across his white shirt.
His eyes are open. He whispers, “Oh, John…”
I pull out an oversize handkerchief, press it against the bloody wound, and turn and yell, “Officer down! Officer down! We need help over here!” I turn back, say, “Alex, hold on, hold on, we got an ambulance coming.”
His lips move again:
“Oh, Bree…”
Chapter
16
Thirty seconds earlier,DC firefighter/paramedic Rachel Gonzalez was complaining to her partner, DC firefighter/paramedic Trudy Waxman, that her twelve-year-old son was still phoning her at the station house with homework questions—“I keep telling him, ‘Your father’s equally capable of answering the damn phone at work’”—when the call came in for a shooting outside Metro Police Headquarters, one man seriously wounded and an officer down.
Now she’s racing south on Fifth Street NW, lights flashing and siren wailing, in the department’s International DuraStar 4300 diesel ambulance—also known as an advanced life system—only two blocks away from the shooting scene, disposable gloves on her hands. Her partner, Trudy, is working the communications system and watching for idiots not stopping at the cross streets, and she says, “Another terrorist attack, I’ll bet.”
Rachel says, “About time somebody did something to stop this shit.”
She makes a tight left turn onto Indiana Avenue NW, and unlike nighttime shooting scenes, when bystanders run away and you have to use a spotlight to find the crumpled victim on the sidewalk, the cops frantically waving her in show her exactly where to go.
The cops move aside and keep waving her in, and Rachel brakes the ALS unit to a halt. Trudy gets on the radio mic and says, “Medic Two arrived.”
Trudy opens her door, and Rachel switches off the siren and makes sure they have a clear path out of here once they have the vic secured for transport. She gets out and meets Trudy at the rear to gear up with a first-responder bag, a backboard, a cardiac monitor, and a portable oxygen tank.
Lights flashing, Engine Company 2’s fire truck and a heavy rescue vehicle, the EMS 6 supervisor’s, stop in the middle of the street. Cops are lined up and shouting and waving the two paramedics up onto the sidewalk and then to a U-shaped Jersey barrier structure patrolled by officers wearing tactical gear and helmets and carrying automatic rifles. There’s a well-dressed man on his back, legs and arms spread out. Crouched over him is a large man pressing a cloth to the victim’s chest, blood soaking through.
Rachel and Trudy drop their gear and get to work. Firefighters from Engine Company 2 follow them in, rolling the ambulance’s collapsible gurney.
Rachel says, “What do we have? What’s his name?”
The kneeling man, who’s wearing a detective shield on a chain around his thick neck, says, “Alex. Alex Cross. He got shot a few minutes ago, chest wound, middle left side. I saw the shooting. Gunmen used MP5s, which carry nine-mil rounds.”
There’s blood on the ground, and Trudy quickly puts a nasal cannula under the man’s nose, cranks up the dial on the small green oxygen tank, and checks his pulse and blood pressure. Two firefighters help Trudy fasten a C-collar around his neck, and then they slide the backboard under Alex and strap him on. Rachel puts gauze on top of the soaked cloth that the detective has been pressing down with his large hands.
She holds Alex’s hand and says, “Alex? Can you hear me? My name is Rachel. We’re taking you to the hospital. Can you squeeze my hand or blink your eyes?”
