Page 10 of Cross Down
8
Pope, wearing anAmazon driver’s uniform, quickly and efficiently navigates the van through the streets of the District of Columbia; they’re heading southeast along Connecticut Avenue NW, moving toward their target site, Motorola radios on their belts, earbuds in their ears, and small microphones attached to their shirt collars. Clyde and Leon, hidden behind a rigid pile of cardboard, are prepped.
Ever since they left the storage facility in Maryland, all have kept radio silence.
So far, so good.
At the intersection with Davenport SW, the traffic light turns yellow, and Pope slows and brings the van to a complete halt.
This is not the time to draw a cop’s attention.
He waits.
Waits.
A shadow appears to the left, and he swivels in his seat, right hand on his Glock 17. There’s a man out there in some sort of uniform.
He raps on the window and says, “Open up, please. Now.”
Chapter
9
I’m driving toMetro Police headquarters when my iPhone chimes with an incoming text.
I break the local regulation that prohibits driving while using an electronic device and check the screen. What I see makes me gasp in surprise.
A good guy from my complicated past, reaching out.
Big John, Mel Carr. Still at Ft. Bragg. Desperate to talk to you. Plz?
I look ahead at the heavy traffic. The only open space to pull over and park in is under a largeNO PARKINGsign. But if there ever comes a time when a traffic sign—or anything else—prevents me from returning a call from a fellow grunt, just find a way to put me out of my misery, because I’ll be too far gone to care.
I pull my black Jeep Grand Cherokee over and scroll through my contact list as the morning rush-hour traffic grinds by on the eastbound lane of Pennsylvania Avenue.
There. I push the button to call and put the iPhone up to my ear.
It rings and rings and eventually goes to voice mail: “This is Mel Carr,” the familiar voice says. “You know what to do.”
I say, “Hey, sport, got an urgent text from you about a minute ago. You drop your phone in a storm drain or something? Call me back.”
I hang up and I’m about to get back into traffic when my phone rings. The screen readsUnknown Caller.
Which usually means someone wanting to talk to me about my car’s extended warranty, but a call coming in so soon after I tried to reach Mel? I answer the phone with “Sampson,” and the voice I hear is filled with relief.
“John, thank God you picked up.”
“What’s up, Mel? What’s with the blocked number?”
He says, “I’m using a burner phone. Glad you still answered.”
“A burner? What’s up? You transfer over to Army Intelligence?”
“I wish,” he says. “That’d mean I could stop jumping out of perfectly good airplanes. No, I’m still with the Eighty-Second, but something big is going on. The base is on lockdown, and certain soldiers are being called up and sent out on secret TDYs. I didn’t know who to trust, so I went with you.”
“Thanks for the vote of confidence,” I say, seeing a female parking enforcement officer coming down the sidewalk toward me. “What’s going on, Mel?”
“Remember when you got called back on active duty? And you and me and the others, we did that little classified visit into the ’Stan two years back, right after Kabul fell?”
