“l’m probably going to get reamed for this,” Findlay radioed quietly. “Tell you what, though. That Ryan Townsend kid’s a little prick. Not that you heard it here.”
“Like father, like son,” Musgrove radioed back. “Kid got what he was asking for, and more. Zoe really clocked the little shithead.”
There was some low laughter on the line. Ryan Townsend’s daddy was the House minority whip and a rabid opponent of virtually every move President Coyle ever made or even thought about. Sometimes the Branaff School could feel like Little Washington. Which it kind of was.
Findlay checked his watch again. Two minutes exactly. End of recess for the Coyle kids. Now back to work for everybody.
“All right, ladies and gentlemen, we’re on the move,” he said into his mike. Then he knocked twice on the lecture hall door and pushed it open.
“Time’s up, guys. You ready to … goddamnit.”
The room was empty.
No. No. No. Not this. Goddamn those kids. Goddamn Zoe!
Findlay’s pulse spiked to a new high, at least for today. His eyes leapt to the multipaned windows along the back wall.
Even as he moved toward them, he was opening all channels on his transmitter to address the Joint Ops Center as well as his on-site team.
“Command, this is Apex One. Twilight and T. Rex are unaccounted for.” His voice was urgent but flat. There would be no panicking. “I repeat, both protectees are unaccounted for.”
When he reached the windows, they were all pulled down to the sill, but one of them had been left unlatched. A quick scan of the grounds outside showed nothing but plush green playing fields all the way to the south fence.
“Findlay? What’s going on?”
Musgrove was there now, standing in the doorway from the hall.
“They must have snuck outside,” Findlay said. “I’m going to kill her. I really am. Long overdue.” This thing had Zoe written all over it. It was probably her idea of a big game, or a joke on her keepers.
“Command, Apex One,” he radioed again. “Twilight and T. Rex are still unaccounted for. I need an immediate lockdown on all exits, inside and out —”
All at once, a commotion broke out on the line. Findlay heard shouting, and the grating sound of metal on metal. Then two gunshots.
“Command, this is Apex Five!” Another voice blared over the radio now. “We’ve got a gray panel van. Just evaded us at the east gate. It’s proceeding south on Wisconsin at high speed. Sixty, seventy miles an hour! Request immediate backup!”
MPD PATROL SERGEANT Bobby Hatfield had just spotted a gray van, doing at least sixty through downtown Georgetown, when the emergency call came from dispatch. “All units, patrol area two-oh-six. Possible armed kidnap in progress. Two kids. That’s two! We have a gray panel van, traveling at high speed, south on Wisconsin, Northwest. Secret Service is in pursuit. Requesting backup! Please turn to channel twenty-three.”
Hatfield fired up his siren and pulled a fast three-point turn just as a telltale black Yukon went racing by. As soon as he got onto the dedicated channel, he could hear Secret Service broadcasting the chase.
“We are proceeding south. Plates are DC, tag number DMS eight-two-three —”
“Secret Service, this is MPD unit two-oh-six,” Hatfield cut in. “I’m coming right up on your back.”
“Copy that, MPD.”
Hatfield accelerated as the Yukon fell back and let him take the lead. Already, the speedometer was pushing toward seventy, and his adrenaline was going off the charts. There was a whole lot more that could go wrong here than right.
At M Street, the van careened left, almost looked like it might tip.
It took the corner too wide and sideswiped two parked cars without stopping. Hatfield coasted into the turn — slow in, fast out, was the drill — and punched it as soon as he was pointed in the right direction. It gained him some ground on the van, but not enough.
“Suspect headed east on M,” he called in. “This guy’s flying. Where’s the damn backup? C’mon people!”
When they came to Pennsylvania Avenue just before Rock Creek, the van peeled off to the right. It was a wider street now, and whoever was doing the driving picked up even more speed, weaving dangerously across the bridge.
Hatfield blinked hard to keep his vision from tunneling. There were cars and pedestrians everywhere. The whole scene couldn’t possibly be more confusing.
This thing is not going to end well. He could feel it everywhere in his body.
At Twenty-eighth Street, a second marked unit finally fell in behind. Hatfield recognized James Walsh’s voice as he took over radio communication. Walsh was a pal of his on the force, but also a tormenter.
“How you doing, Robert?”
“Fuck you, how am I doing?”
“Continuing southeast on Pennsylvania,” Walsh went on. “Suspect’s driving is extremely erratic … seems to be a single occupant, but it’s hard to tell. We’re going to hit Washington Circle any second now and — oh, shit! Bobby, look out! Look out!”
As the van came into the rotary, it cut left instead of right, straight into oncoming traffic. Cars and cabs swerved to get out of the way.
It was like the parting of the Red Sea from where Hatfield was sitting — and there, on the other side of the gap, was a city bus, too big to avoid. The bus driver cut hard to the right, but it was no good.
All he did was give the van a solid wall to run into!
Hatfield slammed his brakes and sent his own car into a hard skid. Even then, his eyes never came off the van.
It crashed, head-on at full speed, right into the Neiman Marcus ad on the side of the bus. The front end crumpled like an accordion. Glass flew everywhere and the van’s back wheels lifted a good foot off the ground before the whole mess finally came to a sliding stop.
Hatfield was out of his car right away, with Walsh running up behind him. Miraculously, it looked like the bus had been out of service — nobody but the driver on board. But Washington Circle was a tangle of stopped cars and rear-end collisions.
Within seconds, another half-dozen marked units had converged on the spot.
Uniformed officers were suddenly everywhere, but Hatfield was the first to reach the back door of the van. Its gray metal panels were buckled inward and the chrome handle was smashed to shit.
His heart was still thudding from the chase and he could feel the blood pounding in his ears. This wasn’t over yet. What the hell were they about to find on the other side of that door? Armed gunmen? Dead men?
Even worse — dead kids?
AT THE TIME of the first incident in the chain of events, I didn’t know it was the president’s son and daughter who were missing. All I’d heard on my radio was “possible kidnap.” That’s all any of us knew at that point.
I’d been driving east on K Street at the time and I was off duty. The location given put me less than two blocks from the crash site and I got over to Washington Circle even before the EMTs. I had to help if I could.
I was there in less than sixty seconds. A uniformed cop scurried behind me, unspooling a roll of yellow tape as I headed toward the smashed-up van.
The first thing I noticed was the wide-open back door. Second, that there was no sign of any kidnap victim here at all.
And third — Secret Service were everywhere! Some of them in the usual dark suits, others in preppy blazers, knit ties, dress shirts, and khakis. They looked like schoolteachers, but the corkscrew wires behind their ears told another story.
I badged my way over to the van to see inside for myself. The driver was pinned to his seat where the engine block had come all the way through in the crash. He was covered in blood below some obvious trauma around his midsection. His right arm was sticking up and out in a way that arms weren’t meant to go.
The guy looked to be midthirties, curly black hair, a sketchy beard with soul patch that was as slight and pathetic as he was.
But where was the victim? Had this whole t
hing been a hoax? An intentional diversion? Already, I was starting to think so, and the possibility sent a rush of adrenaline through me. A diversion from what? What else had happened at that school?
“Is he cogent?” I asked the tweed-clad agent next to me.
“Hard to say,” he answered. “He’s out of it. Maybe shock. We don’t even know if he speaks English.”
“And no sign of the missing kid?” I said.
The agent just shook his head, then held up two fingers. “Two missing kids.”
This was turning into déjà vu for me — the worst kind. Some years back, I’d worked with Secret Service on another double kidnapping, perpetrated by a monster named Gary Soneji. Only one of the two children had survived. In fact, I’d barely made it myself. John Sampson had saved my life.
I flashed my badge some more, then leaned in through the shattered driver’s-side window.
“Police. Where are the kids?” I asked the guy, straight up. By default, I had to assume he knew something. This was no time to equivocate.
He was panting in quick shallow breaths, and his face was blank — like his body knew how much pain he was in, but his brain didn’t exactly get it.
His pupils were huge, too. He had some of the signs of PCP, but this guy had just navigated a high-speed chase through the city. I’d never seen anyone on angel dust who could do that.
When he didn’t answer — not a word or a nod or a grunt — I tried again.
“You hearing me?” I shouted. “Tell me where the two kids are! If you want us to help you out of there.”
The ambulance was here now and two EMTs were at my shoulder, trying to push me out of the way. I wasn’t moving anywhere.
I heard a hydraulic motor fire up somewhere behind me, too. That was for the spreader tool — the Jaws of Life — and this guy was definitely going to need it. But not until I got my answer.
“What do you know?” I said. “Are you working for someone? Just tell me where the kids are!”
Something in the driver’s face changed then. His breath was still shallow, but the corners of his mouth turned up and his eyes crinkled, like someone had told him a joke no one else could hear or maybe understand. When he finally spit out an answer, a spray of blood came with it, all over the mangled steering wheel and column.
“What kids, man?” he said.
THE RESCUE TEAM used a hurst tool to cut the posts flanking the van’s windshield and door, then a halogen bar to peel the roof back like a can of sardines. It’s amazing to watch, but usually you’re rooting for the person trapped inside. Not so much this time. Actually, not at all.
While they lowered in a chain to pull back the engine and get our empty-eyed friend out of there, I tried to get a quick lowdown from the Secret Service agent I’d been speaking with, Clay Findlay.
“So, who are these missing kids?” I asked him, but he just shook his head. He wasn’t going to tell me, was he? What was that about? “Listen,” I said. “I’ve had experience on this kind of thing —”
“I know who you are,” he said, cutting me off again. “You’re Alex Cross. You’re MPD.”
My reputation precedes me more and more these days, but that can cut both ways. It didn’t seem to be helping right now.
“We’ve already got all MPD units on alert,” Findlay said, “so why don’t you go check in with your lieutenant. See where he could use you? Obviously, I’ve got my hands full here. I’ve had some experience in these quarters, too, Detective.”
I didn’t like the brush-off. It was a mistake for somebody who claimed to have experience. Every passing minute meant those kids were a little farther out of our reach. Findlay should have known that. Even worse, maybe he did.
“You see that guy?” I said. I pointed over at the driver. They had a protective collar around his neck and were finally making some headway getting him out. “That’s an MPD arrest. You understand me? I’m going to talk to him as soon as I can, with or without your involvement. If you want to wait your turn, fine, but just so you know — once they get him to the ER, he’s going to be sedated and tubed up for God knows how long. So it might be a while before you get your interview.”
Findlay stared hard at me. I watched his jaw work back and forth, heard a cracking noise. He knew I had jurisdiction here, that I had him if I wanted to go that way.
“It’s Zoe and Ethan Coyle,” he said finally. “You’ll hear about it soon enough. They disappeared from the Branaff School about twenty minutes ago.”
I was stunned into silence. Knocked back on my heels. The enormity of this — the implications — started to fall on me at once. “What else is happening on your end?” I asked in a lowered voice.
“The school’s locked down,” Findlay said. “Every available Secret Service agent is either there or on the way.”
“Could they still turn up over there?” I asked.
He shook his head. “We’d have found them by now. No way they’re still on the campus.”
“Any idea how someone could have gotten them out of there?”
Again, he paused. I got the impression he was editing himself as he went forward. The other thing I didn’t know yet was that Findlay was lead agent on Ethan and Zoe’s protective detail. This was all on his head. The president’s children.
“Not really. It just happened,” he answered. “There’s an underground passage. Used to connect the main house with some of the service buildings. Way back when it was the Branaff Estate. We keep it all closed off now, but kids still break in there sometimes. Smoke a cigarette, grope each other. Believe me, if Ethan and Zoe were in that tunnel before, they aren’t anymore.”
The van driver was out on a gurney now, hooked up to a nasogastric tube and IV. As they wheeled him to the back of the ambulance and loaded him up, Findlay and I fell in behind the procession.
My badge was out again. So were his creds.
“Hey!” one of the medics yelled at us as we climbed in. “You can’t —”
“We’re coming with him,” I said, and closed the ambulance doors. No further discussion. “Let’s go.”
MY MIND WAS working even faster now, probably too fast. So was my pulse. And I couldn’t catch my breath either.
The president’s kids.
George Washington University Hospital was only a few blocks from the crash site so this was going to have to be quick. While the EMTs worked over our suspect and radioed in his vitals, I leaned in as close as I could to get his attention.
“What’s your name?” I said.
I had to ask a couple of times before he finally responded.
“Ray?” He said it like a question.
“Okay, Ray. I’m Alex. You with me here?”
He was flat on his back and staring at the ceiling. I ran a finger back and forth in front of his eyes to get him to look at me.
“What are you on, Ray? You know what you took?”
His expression was as distant as ever. “Just a drink of water,” he said finally.
“Don’t give him anything!” one of the medics barked at me.
“I’m not,” I said. “‘Drink of water’ is PCP. That’s what he thinks he took.”
“Thinks?” Agent Findlay asked.
“Something heavily anesthetic, anyway. Probably some kind of nose cocktail.” And I was guessing he didn’t mix it himself.
“Who got you the van, Ray?” I said. “Who put you up to this? There’s somebody else, right?”
“Anyone, anyone,” he said. “Five hundred bucks and a little drink of water.”
“Five hundred bucks?” Findlay looked like he was ready to tear the guy’s face off. “Do you have any idea what kind of shit storm you just landed in — for five hundred dollars?”
Ray wasn’t listening to the Secret Service agent, though. He was looking around now, like he’d just figured out where he was. When he got down to his own midsection, and the blood soaking through the heavy gauze dressing, he just grinned. “This is some good shit,” he s
aid.
“Ray?” I tried again. “Ray? You said something about ‘anyone.’ What did you mean by that?”
“No,” he said, twitching away. “Anyone, anyone.” The fingers on his left hand started moving rapidly; it looked like he was playing scales on a piano.
Findlay and I looked at each other. Whoever had put Ray up to this knew what they were doing. Now, while the trail to the kids was warmest, the one person we had in custody was virtually useless. We were wasting precious time on this guy. That was exactly what the kidnapper wanted, wasn’t it?
“We’re here!” the ambulance driver yelled back. “Interview’s over.” The other two stood up and started getting Ray ready to go.
“Who’s anyone?” I tried one more time. “What do you mean by that, Ray?”
“An-y-one. An-y-one,” he said again, tapping a different finger on each syllable — and I realized it wasn’t like he was playing a piano. It was like he was hitting keys on a keyboard. Then I had another idea.
N-E-1-N-E-1.
“Is that a screen name?” I asked. “Did somebody find you online, Ray?”
“Watch out, guys!”
The back of the ambulance opened from the outside. Findlay and I had to jump out first to get out of the way.
An emergency medical team was already waiting, along with an incongruous crowd of gray suits off to one side.
It wasn’t just any crowd, either. Findlay stopped short on the pavement, and I almost knocked into him.
“Sir?” he said to one of the suits.
Right there in front of us was the secretary of Homeland Security himself, Phil Ribillini.
“Detective Cross,” Ribillini said with a curt nod. We’d met once before, back when I was with the FBI and he was with Defense. There were no pleasantries today. “We’ll need a statement from you right away,” he said. “But my people will take it from there. Has to be that way.”
In other words, I wasn’t going any farther with the prisoner. All I could do was watch as they wheeled Ray inside through the automatic sliders and out of sight.