We hit a straight part of the highway, thank God. I stomped on the accelerator, picked up some speed. But I couldn't lose the other car.

He was in the right-hand lane now.

I was in the wrong lane, the one meant for oncoming traffic.

Sampson had gotten to his gun and returned fire. More shots struck our car.

The other sedan stayed right with us. I couldn't shake loose. I was doing over ninety on a twisty road built for fifty or sixty. On my right side was a shoulder and then the mountain wall; on my left, a sheer drop down toward the Hudson River and certain death.

I was going too fast to see faces in the other car. Who the hell was it?

Suddenly I stomped on the brakes and our car skidded badly. Then it fish tailed! We wound up facing in the opposite direction, south.

I took off that way. Back toward West Point.

I floored it again, got back up to ninety in an awful hurry.

I passed two cars heading north, both blaring their horns at me. I couldn't blame them. I was over the double line and racing at about forty miles an hour over the speed limit. They must have thought I was drunk, or mad, or both.

When I was sure no one was following, I slowed down.

“Handler? Colonel?” I called out.

He didn't answer. Sampson hung over the backseat to check on him. “He's been hit, Alex.”

I pulled to the side of the road and turned on the interior lights. “How bad? Is he alive?”

I saw that Handler had been shot twice. Once in the shoulder. And once in the side of the head.

“He's dead,”Sampson said. “He's gone.”

“You all right?” I asked.

“Yeah,” he said. “I wasn't the target, and that boy in the car could shoot. He was after Handler. We just lost our first real lead.”

I wondered if we had lost Foot Soldier as well.

Alex Cross 8 - Four Blind Mice

Chapter Seventy

There's nothing like an attempt on your life to get you properly focused and to get the blood boiling.

It was an exercise in futility, but Sampson and I rushed Owen Handler to the ERat West Point Hospital. He was pronounced dead at around nine. I'm certain he was dead when we brought him in. The shooter in the other car was a chillingly good marksman, a professional killer. Had three men actually been in the pursuing car? I didn't think so.

We were questioned by the local police and also CID officers from West Point. Captain Conte even came to see us, spouting off his concern for our safety, but also playing twenty questions with us, almost as if we were suspects. Conte informed me that the commanding officer at West Point, General Mark Hutchinson, was personally supervising the investigation now. Whatever that was supposed to mean.

Then General Hutchinson actually showed up at the hospital. I saw him speaking to Captain Conte, then a few other grim-faced officers gathered in the hallway. But