Kill Alex Cross Read Online Free PDF Page B

was plain and fat, by just about any standard one used. His wife had even come to love him, in time, and had given him two beautiful children, Fahd and Aamina.
    Will we ever see our children again? Tariq wondered. It wasn’t a question he allowed himself too often, but all this waiting around was driving him crazy. It felt good to get up and leave their stuffy hotel room for a little while.
    Outside, the streets were almost empty. On Twelfth Street they had trouble finding anything acceptable to eat. They passed McDonald’s, Pizza Hut, Dunkin’ Donuts, and then Taco Bell, whatever it was they sold there. What would bells taste like?
    “Junk food and nothing else,” Hala said with derision. “Welcome to America.”
    They were standing beneath an overhang to an office building, when a man suddenly stepped out from the shadows. He had a pistol in his hand and waved it at them. “Give me the pocketbook. Wallet. Loose change, watches,” he growled.
    Hala put her arms across her chest and spoke in a high-pitched voice. “Please, don’t hurt us. We’ll give you our money — of course. No problem there. Just don’t hurt us!”
    “Shoot you both dead, motherfuckers!” said the thief.
    In their country, there were few men as desperate as this, Hala thought. A criminal like him would have his hand cut off if he were caught.
    “No problem, no problem,” she answered, nodding. She offered up her knockoff Coach handbag with one hand, and then with the other — pepper spray! She doused the young fiend’s eyes with it.
    He screeched and raised both hands to his face, trying to scrub away the burning poison. But his pain was only just starting. Hala dropped the spray and easily grabbed his gun.
    She was so angry now. She sent a sharp kick to the boy’s kneecap, buckling it in the wrong direction. He went down screaming, and she kicked at his chest, fracturing a few ribs while she was at it.
    Hala’s movements were fast and instinctual and athletic. She never seemed to be more than a foot or two away from the boy. He moaned on the ground — until her foot snapped into his throat. She kicked him in the forehead. The jaw. She broke bone there, too.
    “Don’t kill him!” Tariq said, placing a hand on her arm.
    “I’m not going to,” she said, and she stepped back. “A dead body would raise too many questions. We mustn’t draw attention. Not yet.” She leaned down to speak directly to the boy on the ground. “But I could have killed you — easily! Remember that the next time you put a gun in somebody’s face.”
    They left the moaning boy in the shadows and crossed the street, then hurried back to the Wayfarer. There was nothing decent to eat out there anyway. This country was like the desert — just an arid wasteland that ought to be destroyed.
    Without a doubt, it would be soon.

THE FBI’S STRATEGIC information operations center was overflowing with somber, stressed-out police personnel that Sunday afternoon. This was a full-court press if there ever was one. The main briefing theater on the fifth floor of the Hoover Building was standing room only.
    Ned Mahoney rocked back on the heels of his black boots and tried to take the situation in. He could feel exhaustion taking over his body, but his mind was running full tilt. Odds were good that everyone in the room felt the same way. Ethan and Zoe Coyle had been missing for fifty-two hours and twenty-nine minutes , according to the red-digit count clock on the wall.
    The Bureau director himself, Ron Burns, had insisted it go up and stay up, front and center, until they got the kids back. One way or the other .
    There were live camera feeds from the Branaff School playing on several of the big screens, and area maps of a fifty-mile radius of Washington. Some of those had blinking red flags on them, though Mahoney wasn’t sure what they meant. The Bureau was operating like the well-oiled octopus it could be, with everyone on a strictly need-to-know basis.
    The