Final Crossing: A Novel of Suspense (37 page)

On three, he told himself.

One...two....

Then, from the corner of his right eye, he saw Agent

Difranco. She was running toward his car.

“WHERE? WHERE
did he say?
Exactly.
”

“He said she was on the fourth level. Like I said.”

“Where on the fourth level?”

“
I don’t know.
”

Jonas and Difranco led an ad hoc team of four other officers on a footrace through the parking garage. Throngs of people had surrounded the evacuated hotel, most of them law enforcement or firemen, and the press were clearly not going anywhere, even if the building collapsed around them. Red lights flashed through the area like tracer fire. Radios spat out bursts of commands. Debris from the small explosion at the hotel littered the street.

The Mog flashed through Jonas’s brain. That had been completely different, yet the feeling was the same. The sweat. The urgency. The uncertainty of what the next second would bring.

Difranco opened a path through the emergency personnel, flashed her badge and a spewed a few choice words to the cop in charge of maintaining that section of the security perimeter.

Seconds later they were running down the concrete stairwell of the parking garage. Difranco first, then Jonas, and the four cops in the rear.

Burly Cop was among them, and now he was Jonas’s best friend. As they descended the stairwell to the fourth floor, Jonas heard someone radioing for a medical team and a group of rescue workers with any tools possible. Anne could be in a locked gun safe, for all they knew.

They reached level four. Difranco yanked open the metal door with such force it slammed against the wall behind her. The six of them spilled into the parking garage and looked in every direction.

The garage was full. Jonas forced himself to take his time, knowing he could easily overlook the van.

“He said it was the same as the one I just was in. U-Haul. Ten footer.”

“Nothing,” a cop said. “Nothing up this way either.”

Chatter over the radio. A medical response team was on the way.

Jonas took off running up the parking ramp, scanning the cars as he went. He looked back and saw the others do the same, fanning out. The garage seemed massive, infinitely large. As he ran, and as he saw nothing, he couldn’t escape the thought that Rudiger had lied. That Anne was already dead in some location they would never find.

No van. There seemed to be every other type of vehicle ever manufactured, but there was no goddamn ten-foot U-Haul.

“Over here!”

From below. Difranco.

THE U-HAUL
was parked between an Xterra and a F-150. A thin coat of grime covered it, making the white paint a dusty gray. Fingerprints were clearly visible in the dirt near the base of the back gate, and Jonas wasn’t surprised.

Rudiger no longer cared about covering his tracks. Rudiger wanted to be known.

Was this even the right van? Had to be, Jonas thought. Had to be.

He stared at the padlock securing the back gate.

“How do we get this off?” he asked, turning to Difranco. “A fire crew is on the way,” she said. “They’ll have something.”

“There’s no time,” Jonas said. “Goddamnit,
there’s no time
.” He raced to the passenger and driver’s doors, each of which were locked. Didn’t matter—there was no access from the cab to the back of the van anyway.

“Shoot the lock. Or something. Just...can’t we shoot it?” Burly Cop shook his head. “Too risky. Bullet could ricochet. Or go inside and hurt her.”

“Damnit, we can’t just
wait
.” He slammed his palm into the side of the U-Haul cargo area. “Anne! Anne! Can you hear me?”

Silence.

He hit the side of the van three more times. “Anne! Are you in there?”

Difranco touched his arm. “Jonas, calm down. We’ll get her out.”

Jonas turned to her and tried to control the panic he felt washing over him. “I saw her picture. She’s in some kind of container in there. Tight space. Rudiger...he said she was running out of air. We have to get her out.
Now
.”

“Jonas, they will be here any—”

“We don’t have time. Why won’t anyone listen to me? Please, just shoot the fucking lock, will you? Give me your gun. I’ll do it.” He stepped toward Burly Cop.

Burley Cop put a hand on the butt of his gun. “You need to calm down and step back. You shouldn’t even be here.”

“I’m begging you.”

A hundred feet away, the stairwell door opened. Jonas turned and saw three firemen emerge. One carried an axe.

Goddamn.
Yes
.

“Over here!” he shouted. “Here! Hurry!”

They turned to Jonas and ran the best they could in their gear.

As they approached, Jonas pointed at the padlock. “Please, get that thing off. Please hurry.”

The fireman holding the axe said nothing as he studied the lock and steadied his footing.

Everyone else reflexively took a step back.

The fireman lightly tapped the lock three times with the edge of the blade, like an executioner confirming his reach. Then he lifted the axe above him and brought it down with a smash of metal against the lock. A small flurry of sparks lived for half a second before dying. The neck of the lock split open.

Jonas lunged for the back of the truck. He grabbed the handle of the gate and yanked. The gate rattled like a thousand dried-out bones as it lifted.

There was only one thing inside the back of the scratchedmetal cargo container.

A silver coffin, wrapped in nylon cords.

JONAS LEAPT
in the cargo area and tried to yank the cords looped around the casket, but they were on so tight he couldn’t even get his fingers beneath them. He rapped against the metal cover.

“We’re here, Anne. We’re getting you out.” Silence from within. Sweat fell from his forehead and slid down the smooth casket lid.

He turned to all the faces staring from outside within. “A knife. Hurry. I need a knife.”

Rather than handing him a knife, a fireman jumped into the back of the truck and motioned for Jonas to move out of the way.

Jonas watched as the fireman pulled a folded rescue knife from his utility belt and unlocked the blade. He wasted no time in sawing the serrated teeth of the blade against the nylon cords of rope.

One cord broke and fell from the casket. The teeth sawed.

Jonas watched, feeling the blood within him pulsing. The tips of his fingers felt on fire.

A second cord fell.

A brief thought went though his mind. Rudiger had already proven he knew how to use explosives. Could the coffin be rigged? Maybe Anne wasn’t even in there. Maybe all that was inside was a pressure-mounted wad of C4, set to detonate once the lid was removed.

The fireman kept sawing, the ropy veins in his forearm bulging.

Jonas then decided he didn’t care if they all blew up. Whatever was to happen, was to happen. There would be no more wasting time.

Jonas remained silent until the third and final cord fell to the floor of the truck.

Seeing that the coffin opened from the other side, Jonas circled around the fireman.

Jonas opened the lid. There was no explosion. There was only Anne.

HER EYES
were open. Halfway. Glazed, the look of dreamy death.

Three seconds.

It took three seconds before she blinked, and in those seconds Jonas realized nothing else mattered. Nothing mattered but the woman in the box beneath him.

But she did blink, and when she did, Jonas immediately put his palm to her cheek, as if he could transfer any of his life to hers.

Her hair—matted with sweat and struggle—was spilled over a royal purple satin pillow. Her arms were at her side. She blinked again, and then she looked at him.

Her eyes widened. Just a bit.

Jonas turned. “She’s alive. Get her oxygen.
Something
.”

Anne reached up. He could see blood on her fingertips. From trying to claw her way out.

She touched his arm. “I’m okay, Jonas.” Her voice was barely more than a raspy wheeze. “I’m okay.”

Jonas placed a hand on her forehead. “Thank God. Thank God.”

“You came for me.”

“Don’t talk, Anne.”

“Jonas, you came for me.”

“Of course I did.”

“What...what happened? Where is he?”

Jonas lifted a strand of hair from her face. Commotion erupted behind him, and he turned and saw a paramedic team rushing toward the U-Haul. He looked back at Anne.

“It’s over,” he said. “No need to worry about him anymore.”

At that moment, a paramedic leapt into the back of the truck and told Jonas and the fireman to get out and give him room.

As Jonas left Anne, he looked up at the coffin lid, held up by its hinge. He noticed two things that he hadn’t before. One was the small camera mounted on the inside. The camera that had transmitted the video of Anne to Rudiger’s phone.

The second thing he noticed was the hole in the lid. Neatly drilled, the diameter of a pencil.

An air hole, Jonas realized.

Rudiger wasn’t going to let her die, after all. He didn’t need to. Rudiger only killed when he thought he had to, Jonas realized. He only had to
convince
everyone Anne was dying.

Jonas stepped out of the van. Difranco walked up to him.

“She’ll be fine,” she said. Jonas knew she had no clue if Anne would be fine or not, but he believed it anyway, so he nodded.

“We need to go back,” he said. “The Senator?”

Jonas nodded. “He might still be alive. I don’t think Stages is.”

“Where are they?”

“About fifteen, twenty minutes from here. I remember how to get there.”

“What happened to Rudiger?”

Jonas was aware of the blood on this hands and clothes. “I’ll tell you on the way. But we need to go now.”

He turned back toward Anne. The medic had an oxygen mask over her face and was asking her questions. She was nodding.

“I’ll be back, Anne,” Jonas said. “The Senator needs help, and I’m the only one who knows where he is.”

She lifted a hand in acknowledgement.

Difranco led the way back up the stairs and outside the hotel, her pace brisk.

Outside, the sun hit them full force. Jonas squinted as they ran along the crowded downtown streets to her car. Along the way, she radioed in for back up assistance from the police and paramedics, instructing them to follow her.

Jonas and Difranco reached her car and slid in next to each other. He stared straight ahead, through the dirty windshield, and spoke through quickened breath.

“Tell them we’re going to need more than one ambulance for what’s waiting for us.”

THE MOMENT
they arrived at the farmhouse, every fiber inside Jonas begged him to stay out in the car. He could do nothing for anyone inside. He knew he should just let the professionals do their job. But he couldn’t stay out. What was in there was part of him, just like the small apartment back in the Mog was a part of him. He could not stay out. As Difranco stopped the car and the dirt from the unpaved road willowed around them, Jonas told her very clearly that he was going inside.

Difranco said nothing.

They got out as the four squad cars, two ambulances, and one fire rescue vehicle screamed behind them. One by one they stopped at the farmhouse, sirens blaring at the nothingness of the Colorado plains. One by one they went silent, leaving only their flashing lights on, lighting up the decaying house in pulsing waves of red.

Jonas pointed to the hangar, telling Difranco that was where they had to go. The hangar looked nothing more than an empty shell against a marble-blue sky. But Jonas knew it wasn’t empty.

“Let me go in first,” Difranco said. Jonas nodded.

He closed his eyes and said a prayer, which to his secular mind was just a wish. He wished for his friend to still be alive.

Suddenly there was a swarm, and Jonas’s mind focused. Narrowed. He heard the emergency crews running from behind. The dirt from the road swirled around him, settling on his lips and face. He heard the shouting of one man to another, and then back again. There was confusion and there was order, and it all coexisted in a perfect slowing of time.

Jonas thought of the Mog.

At least a half-dozen men and Difranco entered the hangar before Jonas did, but in he went, following the rushing masses, sucked in as if his body was helpless to stop itself.

In through the door. Into the darkness.

Jonas thought of the boy he shot in Mogadishu. In the hallway of the rotting building. He thought of the taunting.