RUSH HOUR! Eight-twenty A.M. Jesus God Almighty, no! A madman was on the loose inside Union Station.

Sampson and I raced alongside the double lanes of stalled traffic that covered Massachusetts Avenue as far as the eye could see. When in doubt, gallop. The maxim of the old Foreign Legion.

Car and truck drivers honked their horns in frustration. Pedestrians were screaming, walking fast, or running away from the train station. Police squad cars were on the scene everywhere.

Up ahead on North Capitol I could see the massive, all-granite Union Station terminal with its many additions and renovations. Everything was somber and gray around the terminal except the grass, which seemed especially green.

Sampson and I flew past the new Thurgood Marshall Justice Building. We heard gunshots coming from the station. They sounded distant, muffled by the thick stone walls.

“It’s for goddamn real,” Sampson said as he ran at my side. “He’s here. No doubt about it now.”

I knew he would be. An urgent call had come to my desk less than ten minutes earlier. I had picked up the phone, distracted by another message, a fax from Kyle Craig of the FBI. I was scanning Kyle’s fax. He desperately needed help on his huge Mr. Smith case. He wanted me to meet an agent, Thomas Pierce. I couldn’t help Kyle this time. I was thinking of getting the hell out of the murder business, not taking on more cases, especially a serious bummer like Mr. Smith.

I recognized the voice on the phone. “It’s Gary Soneji, Dr. Cross. It really is me. I’m calling from Union Station. I’m just passing through D.C., and I hoped against hope that you’d like to see me again. Hurry, though. You’d better scoot if you don’t want to miss me.”

Then the phone went dead. Soneji had hung up. He loved to be in control.

Now, Sampson and I were sprinting along Massachusetts Avenue. We were moving a whole lot faster than the traffic. I had abandoned my car at the corner of Third Street.

We both wore protective vests over our sport shirts. We were “scooting,” as Soneji had advised me over the phone.

“What the hell is he doing in there?” Sampson said through tightly gritted teeth. “That son of a bitch has always been crazy.”

We were less than fifty yards from the terminal’s glass-and-wood front doors. People continued to stream outside.

“He used to shoot guns as a boy,” I told Sampson. “Used to kill pets in his neighborhood outside Princeton. He’d do sniper kills from the woods. Nobody ever solved it at the time. He told me about the sniping when I interviewed him at Lorton Prison. Called himself the pet assassin.”

“Sounds like he graduated to people,” Sampson muttered.

We raced up the long driveway, heading toward the front entrance of the ninety-year-old terminal. Sampson and I were moving, burning up shoe leather, and it seemed like an eternity since Soneji’s phone call.

There was a pause in the shooting-then it began again. Weird as hell. It definitely sounded like rifle reports coming from inside.

Cars and taxis in the train terminal’s driveway were backing out, trying to get away from the scene of gunfire and madness. Commuters and day travelers were still pushing their way out of the building’s front doors. I’d never been involved with a sniper situation before.

In the course of my life in Washington, I’d been inside Union Station several hundred times. Nothing like this, though. Nothing even close to this morning.

“He’s got himself trapped in there. Purposely trapped! Why the hell would he do that?” Sampson asked as we came up to the front doors.

“Worries me, too,” I said. Why had Gary Soneji called me? Why would he effectively trap himself in Union Station?

Sampson and I slipped into the lobby of Union Station. The shooting from the balcony-from up high somewhere-suddenly started up again. We both went down flat on the floor.

Had Soneji already seen us?

I KEPT my head low as my eyes scanned the huge and portentous train-station lobby. I was desperately looking for Soneji. Could he see me? One of Nana’s sayings was stuck in my head: Death is nature’s way of saying “howdy.”

Statues of Roman legionnaires stood guard all around the imposing main hall of Union Station. At one time, politically correct Pennsylvania Railroad execs had wanted the warriors fully clothed. The sculptor, Louis Saint-Gaudens, had managed to sneak by every third statue in its accurate historical condition.

I saw three people already down, probably dead, on the lobby floor. My stomach dropped. My heart beat even faster. One of the victims was a teenage boy in cutoff shorts and a Redskins practice jersey. A second victim appeared to be a young father. Neither of them was moving.

Hundreds of travelers and terminal employees were trapped inside arcade shops and restaurants. Dozens of frightened people were squashed into a small Godiva Chocolates store and an open cafi called America.

The firing had stopped again. What was Soneji doing? And where was he? The temporary silence was maddening and spooky. There was supposed to be lots of noise here in the train terminal. Someone scraped a chair against the marble floor and the screeching sound echoed loudly.

I palmed my detective’s badge at a uniformed patrolman who had barricaded himself behind an overturned cafi table. Sweat was pouring down the uniformed cop’s face to the rolls of fat at his neck. He was only a few feet inside one of the doorways to the front lobby. He was breathing hard.

“You all right?” I asked as Sampson and I slid down behind the table. He nodded, grunted something, but I didn’t believe him. His eyes were open wide with fear. I suspected he’d never been involved with a sniper either.

“Where’s he firing from?” I asked the uniform. “You seen him?”

“Hard to tell. But he’s up in there somewhere, that general area.” He pointed to the south balcony that ran above the long line of doorways at the front of Union Station. Nobody was using the doors now. Soneji was in full control.

“Can’t see him from down here.” Sampson snorted at my side. “He might be moving around, changing position. That’s how a good sniper would work it.”

“Has he said anything? Made any announcements? Any demands?” I asked the patrolman.

“Nothing. He just started shooting people like he was having target practice. Four vics so far. Sucker can shoot.”

I couldn’t see the fourth body. Maybe somebody, a father, mother, or friend, had pulled one of the victims in off the floor. I thought of my own family. Soneji had come to our house once. And he had called me here-invited me to his coming-out party at Union Station.

Suddenly, from up on the balcony above us, a rifle barked! The flat crack of the weapon echoed off the train station’s thick walls. This was a shooting gallery with human targets.

A woman screamed inside the America restaurant. I saw her go down hard as if she’d slipped on ice. Then there were lots of moans from inside the cafi

The firing stopped again. What the hell was he doing up there?

“Let’s take him out before he goes off again,” I whispered to Sampson. “Let’s do it.”