Cross the Line (Alex Cross #24)(35)

We eventually caught the two troubled men with a Bush-master AR-15 rifle, but before it was over, seventeen people died. Another ten were wounded but survived.

“Malvo and Muhammad did it for sport,” Sampson said. “It could be what we’re looking at here.”

“Possibly,” I said. “A challenge to the motorcyclist, chasing the fast car down and getting off a lethal shot at the driver.”

“And escaping unharmed?”

I nodded, thinking how bad this could get. The country had been caught up in twenty-three days of fear when the Beltway Snipers were shooting and killing. Those twenty-three days had been some of the most stressful of my life.

“You going to tell Bree? She’s got a lot on her shoulders already.”

Before I could answer, my wife appeared at the door to my office, breathless.

“O’Donnell, Lincoln, and two patrolmen came under automatic-weapon fire in Northeast five minutes ago,” she said. “Lincoln was hit. So was a patrolman. O’Donnell says Thao Le was one of the shooters.”





CHAPTER


39


WE RACED THROUGH the city, blues flashing and sirens wailing. I drove. Sampson struggled into body armor in the seat beside me. Bree was in the back, fielding calls, fighting to get a full understanding of the situation, and coordinating with the other chiefs to send the right personnel to the scene.

Evidently, Detectives Lincoln and O’Donnell had been tracking Thao Le through his girlfriend Michele Bui. She had texted O’Donnell that Le was moving a load of drugs through a row house in Northeast that afternoon.

The detectives had gone to check it out and called for backup. One patrol car drove into the alley behind the house. Another patrol car came onto the block at one end, and Lincoln and O’Donnell came from the other. They saw Le and three of his men chilling on the front porch.

O’Donnell had stopped his vehicle just shy of the house. The other patrol car did the same. All four officers jumped out, guns drawn, and ordered the men on the porch to lie down. Le came up with an AK-47 and opened fire.

Lincoln and a patrolman were hit; Lincoln took a bullet through his thigh and another through his hand. O’Donnell had been able to pull him behind a car across the street. The injured patrolman, Josh Parks, had been shot through the pelvis, but he’d dragged himself up against the base of the porch, where he could not be seen or shot at from inside.

“How are you, Parks?” Bree asked over the radio.

“Feel like I got a drill bit through my groin to my spine, but otherwise peachy,” the officer said.

“O’Donnell?”

“We need to get Lincoln and Parks to the hospital without getting shot.”

“I hear you,” she said. “Cavalry’s on its way. ETA four minutes.”

“I heard a lot of screaming inside. I’m thinking he’s got hostages.”

We heard shouting and automatic gunfire, and then the connection died.

“Shit!” Bree shouted.

She tried to redial, but her phone rang before she could.

“O’Donnell?” Bree said, and listened. “Where are you?”

Bree punched the speaker button, and out came the terrified voice of Michele Bui.

“I’m hiding inside a closet upstairs,” Thao Le’s girlfriend said, clearly on the verge of tears. “Thao and his friends have been snorting coke and meth for days, and they’re out of their minds and paranoid. He’s got them convinced they’re next.”

“Next for what?”

“Next to be killed,” she said. “They were so whacked, they thought the cops were those vigilantes killing meth cookers.”

“Who else is in the house with you?” Bree asked.

“I don’t know exactly,” she said. “I was upstairs sleeping, but I heard a few of the cutters and packagers come in and work through the night. After the shots, I heard screams and—”

“What?”

“Thao’s yelling for me,” she said. “I gotta go.”

The line went dead.





CHAPTER


40


METRO PATROL CARS were parked in V formations blocking the street at both ends of the road. Other officers were moving through the alleys to evacuate residents closest to the row house Le was in.

A pair of ambulances had already arrived. We left our squad car down the street and got our first look at the situation through binoculars.

Halfway down the block on the east side, Officer Joshua Parks was on his side by the stoop to the row house, contorted in agony.

“We’re here, Parks, with more on the way,” Bree said over her radio.

“Good,” he said. “I’m getting one hell of a leg cramp lying on the cement like this.”

Bree couldn’t help but smile. “We’ll have that cramp looked into. Talk to me, O’Donnell.”

Detective O’Donnell was across the street from Parks on the sidewalk behind a white Ford Explorer. He was holding Lincoln, who looked weak.

“O’Donnell, talk to me,” Bree said again.

“Lincoln’s conscious, but hurting bad. What’s the plan?”

“Working on it,” Bree said.

She looked at me, said quietly, “I’ve never handled anything remotely like this, Alex. You have, so I’m all ears.”