Target: Alex Cross (Alex Cross #26) - James Patterson Page 0,33
spot will do nicely.”
“Perfect line of sight.”
They sneaked out backward and didn’t stand until they were ten feet down the other side of the hill. Back at the arroyo, they took the paloverde boughs and used them to brush out their tracks going into the sandy bottom and all the way to the horses.
“Ready?” Potter asked when they were saddled.
Mary nodded. He set his watch to stopwatch mode, started it, and said, “Go!”
The Potters kicked up their horses and took off back the way they’d come, pushing their rides hard and taking chances where they could have slowed.
It had taken them sixty-nine minutes on the way in, but only twenty-eight minutes had passed when they reached the truck and trailer. Five minutes after that, they pulled out on the country road and headed north.
Ten miles farther on, Potter drove through another BLM gate, this one open, and again stopped out of sight of the road at the back of an escarpment overlooking a big dusty flat. He and Mary gave the horses water before walking down onto the flat carrying two milk jugs filled with a special punch.
Using range finders, they placed one jug at 512 meters and the second at 526.
Back at the truck, they took out the components of their ultralight rifles from their packs, put them together, and finished the process by attaching bipods and screwing in matte-black sound suppressors.
They walked to the edge of the escarpment, extended the bipod legs, and lay prone behind the rifles before finding their targets. Potter settled the crosshairs of his telescopic sight on the jug at 526 meters.
“Green?” he asked.
“Green. On five,” she said. “Four, three, two—”
Both rifles went off in unison, making thumping noises, and the bullets smashed into the jugs. They erupted into thin, billowing pillars of flame.
CHAPTER
34
INSIDE A LARGE storage unit in Fairfax, Virginia, the man calling himself Pablo Cruz smiled when a bell dinged. He reached into an Ultimaker 2+ desktop 3-D printer and retrieved an appliance made of translucent high-detail resin that looked like a spider’s web that was about nine inches long and six wide.
The long edges of the appliance were turned toward each other, forming a shape that failed to connect by two inches. The resin was warm to the touch, and as he flexed the web he found it strong but malleable in all directions.
When it had cooled more, he squeezed open the edges and slipped the entire web onto his right forearm. It extended from just below his elbow over and around his wrist and fit snug, as if it had been crafted specifically for him, which it had.
Cruz slipped it off and set it beside its twin on a workbench he’d brought in to the storage unit the week before. There were two small, translucent brackets on the bench that were made of Kevlar-reinforced nylon, a material stronger than block aluminum and neutral when scanned with a metal detector.
The underside of the brackets held swivel balls in sockets attached to tiny, T-shaped valves. The brackets fitted to the underside of the forearm appliances.
Cruz put on reading glasses to attach small hoses made of translucent carbon fiber to the T-valve. An inch long and three-eighths of an inch in diameter, the hose was designed to handle sudden and extreme pressure.
He picked up a piece of clear Kevlar-reinforced nylon the shape and size of a .25-caliber bullet. Cruz placed the projectile in the head chamber of a clear three-inch barrel, then screwed the barrel into the free end of the T-valve. To the other end of the hoses, he attached Kevlar-reinforced nylon canisters the size of small cigarette lighters that fit snugly in the webbed appliance as well.
His burn phone rang. He answered.
The man he knew as Piotr spoke Russian. “We are good, Gabriel?” he asked.
Cruz replied in Russian. “Actually, there is a problem with compensation.”
A cold silence followed. Cruz waited him out.
“We had a deal,” Piotr said at last.
“Until I knew the subject.”
“I thought you were the best.”
“I am the best. It’s why you came to me.”
There was another long pause.
“How much?”
“Thirty-five million. Ten now, twenty-five when the job’s done.”
“I can’t authorize that.”
“Then get it authorized. Now.”
Piotr, sounding furious, said, “Hold on.”
Cruz switched the phone to speaker and set it on the bench. While he waited for a reply, he squeezed the appliances onto his forearms and fitted the crowned ends of the barrels through loops on the webbing below his wrists.
Piotr came back on the line. “Deal,” he said. “Final