Cross the Line (Alex Cross #24)(40)

“Copy,” said a male voice.

Brown clicked on a link that opened a private video feed from a camera carried by one of Hobbes’s men. The scene was an interchange on Interstate 95 near the town of Ladysmith, Virginia, roughly one hundred and fifteen miles south of Washington, DC.

I-95 below the interchange was under repair. Crews were down there laboring under bright lights, and a detour forced all northbound traffic off the Ladysmith exit ramp. Another of Hobbes’s men stood at the top of the ramp.

He was dressed in a workman’s jumpsuit, a yellow reflective vest, and a hard hat, and he held a flashlight with an orange cover that he was using to direct the sparse traffic west, toward Ladysmith and the Jefferson Davis Highway.

The blue Mustang came into view, followed by the first of three eighteen-wheel refrigerated semis bearing the logo of the Littlefield Produce Company of Freehold Township, New Jersey. The black Dodge Viper brought up the rear as Hobbes’s flagman waved them east, to State Route 639.

When the flagman had done the same to Cass, who was driving a white Ford Taurus, Brown changed the feed to a camera held by one of Fender’s men, who was standing in the road directing traffic a mile west of the interstate. He waved the little convoy north on Virginia Route 633.

When Cass’s taillights disappeared, Brown said, “Stick to the plan. Execute the plan. Surgical precision in every move.”

Brown did not bother to watch the feed of the flagmen turning the convoy off Route 633 onto a little-used, unpaved county road that cut through woodlots and agricultural fields. He could already see the headlights of the Mustang turning off the county road, following the detour signs.

“Come to Papa,” Fender said.

Hearing guns being loaded all around him, Brown watched the semis make the turn onto the farm road and saw the Viper coming behind them. He knew he was going to suffer, but he knelt and gritted his teeth at the agony in his knee. The headlights came closer, revealing Brown on the corrugated steel roof of an old tobacco-drying shed.

There were six such long, low sheds in all, three set back on either side of the road that passed between them. The Mustang slowed at the blinking red light next to the sign they’d put up beyond the southernmost shed; it read tight spot, 15 mph.

Brown watched through the sheer black mask he wore as the Mustang kept coming. He could see the driver and the passenger now, both wearing T-shirts and looking around as if to say Where the hell is this detour taking us?

“Patience,” Brown said as the Mustang passed below him and beyond the northernmost shed.

He glanced at the semis but then focused on the Mustang as it followed a curve in the road and stopped at a high berm and dead end.

The trailer of the first semi was almost beyond the sheds when it stopped. The second one was completely between the sheds, and the third had its cab and half of the trailer between them.

Brown waited until he heard shouting from the men in the Mustang before he said, “Take them.”

He saw it all unfold in headlight glare and shadows.

Before the driver of the Viper behind the semis could even get out of his car, Cass came up fast behind him and head-shot him with a .223 AR rifle mounted with a suppressor. From the roof of the southern shed, one of Hobbes’s men armed with an identical weapon shot the passenger through the windshield.

Others positioned on the roofs of the sheds took out the drivers and passengers in all three semis. The six men died in their seats even as the Mustang’s driver and passenger realized what was happening. They came out of the Mustang fast and low, carrying automatic weapons.

Fender rose up from behind the berm in front of the Mustang and shot both men before they got twenty yards from their vehicle.

“Clear,” Fender said.

“Clear,” said Hobbes.

Brown said, “Leave the trucks and cars running. Police your brass, sweep your way out; we’ll meet on the road.”

Cass said, “Are you sure we shouldn’t check the produce?”

Brown grimaced as he fought his way up out of the crouch. They’d been over this before and she was still challenging him on it.

“Negative,” Brown said emphatically. “Nobody gets anywhere near that cargo.”





CHAPTER


47


MIDMORNING, AN FBI helicopter picked up Sampson and me on the roof of DC Metro headquarters. Special Agent Ned Mahoney, grim and quiet, sat up front.

Ninety minutes earlier, a Caroline County sheriff’s deputy had been driving by a tobacco-drying facility northeast of Ladysmith, Virginia. A heavy chain usually blocked the entrance, but he noticed that today the chain lay in the mud next to the tracks of many large vehicles.

The deputy thought it odd because the harvest was still weeks off, and he drove in. He saw enough to call the state police and the FBI.

“Who’s been through the scene other than the deputy?” I asked.

“No one,” Mahoney said. “As soon as I heard, I was on the horn to Virginia State Police to seal off the area. We should be looking at it fairly clean.”

Forty-five minutes later we were dropping altitude over mixed farmland and woods, rolling terrain, mostly, with some creek beds and rivers. After the chopper soared over a last stand of towering oaks, the forest opened up and we flew in an oval pattern around the scene.

The grille of a blue Mustang was nosed up against an earthen barrier, the vehicle’s doors open. Two bodies, both male, were sprawled nearby in the grass. Between the long drying sheds, three gray, refrigerated semitrailers were lined nose to tail like elephants on parade. The truck windows and windshields were shot through and spiderwebbed. Behind the last semi was a black Dodge Viper with two dead men in the front seat.