“That’s going to really enhance CTU’s reputation,” Chappelle continued in a voice thick with sarcasm. “Not to mention your own.”
Jack glared at him. “At least I spend my time out there fighting credible threats instead of arresting our own people.”
Chappelle sneered. “Credible threats? Is that what you call it when some mysterious group no one’s ever seen uses poetry to plan an attack on the President in a city where he’s not even going to be? No wonder we demoted you, Bauer.”
Jack let Chappelle have the last word, then leave the conference room. He couldn’t care less for Chappelle. He felt humiliated for stumbling in front of Walsh.
Jack felt a hand pat his shoulder. Kelly Sharpton had remained behind. “Happened to me once,” he said. “I had done a threat assessment for a visit from the President of China, right about the time the Fulon Gong was active. I gave this whole presentation on Fulon Gong members in San Francisco and how they were likely to try something here. It wasn’t till the end of my presentation that one of my own people mentioned that we’d already arrested the local Fulon Gong members.”
“Great,” Jack said, “so we’re both a couple of asses.” He sat down on the tabletop. “Look, I think you and I agree that something’s going on here. This cell pops up every few months and somehow gets swept aside. This Frank Newhouse is some kind of wild card out there doing who knows what. I don’t know about you, but I’ve got to keep looking into this.”
Kelly grinned. “Who says I was going to stop. Let me work on the Frank Newhouse angle.”
Jack raised an eyebrow. “You get a little lust in your eye when you mention him and the Attorney General. What was the story there?”
“Not sure it’s worth telling at this point,” Kelly said. “Let’s just say that the AG tried to strong-arm someone and I helped them out, and I’m not done with the payback yet.”
“Strong-arm . . .” Jack murmured. He generally avoided cluttering his mind with politics that did not involve his work, but some current events had a direct impact on him. “The New American Privacy thing?” he asked. “Was it about the Senate vote?”
Kelly nodded.
Jack scratched his head. There were too many pieces to this puzzle, and he was starting to worry that two different jigsaws had been mixed together. He made a mental list of the absolute connections: Greater Nation and Frank Newhouse; Frank New-house and the Attorney General; Attorney General and NAP Act; Greater Nation and terrorist clues; terrorist clues and threat to President. The stories seemed to spin off in two different directions.
“Okay,” he said, “do you have anything to chase down with Newhouse?”
Kelly nodded. “There’s an old address in the file. At least it’s somewhere to start.”
“That’s more than I’ve got with these terrorists,” Jack admitted.
“No it’s not . . .” Nina Myers stood in the doorway of the conference room with an enormous grin on her pixie face. “You are going to want to make out with me when I show you this.”
“I’m a married man, Nina,” Jack said.
“Married to your work.” She laughed. Jack felt a pang. He hadn’t called his wife since last night. He felt a second pang when he realized that he hadn’t even thought of his wife since last night. He sensed vaguely that his marriage was in rough water and heading for the rocks, but he had no time to steer that ship at the moment.
“What’ve you got?”
Nina strutted forward and handed him a printout.
On one side of the page was a photocopy of the driver’s license they’d picked up from the lease on the apartment building. On the other side was a mug shot and a rap sheet from LAPD. The name on the driver’s license was Richard Brighton. The name on the mug shot was Julio Juarez.
“Am I not the sexiest woman alive at the moment?” She grinned.
And the truth was, she was right.
12:29 P.M. PST Senator Drexler’s Office, San Francisco
Debrah Drexler closed her office door and gathered herself. She had a few minutes before her next appointment, and once her afternoon started it was a long slide down to a red-eye flight. On days like this, she found it advantageous to grab a minute or two of private time.
She was grateful that she’d been able to help Kelly. The man had stuck his neck out for her (again) and nearly gotten it chopped off this time. She made a mental note to find some way to repay Sela Gonzales, and another note to promote Juwan Burke. She hadn’t gotten all the details yet, but she understood that someone had smashed up his car and chased him onto Pennsylvania Avenue before giving up.
Worry still gnawed at her. She had stopped the AG from blackmailing her, it was true. But if he was using strong-arm tactics on her, who else was he after? What else was he planning? She and the Senate leadership had already made their rounds of calls, and everyone was still on board. Unless something drastic happened, the NAP Act would go down to defeat in the Senate, and the Congress would, at last, slow the erosion of civil liberties.
Debrah Drexler rubbed her hands together, mentally pushing the issue aside. She was worrying too much. There was nothing left he could do. He’d played his hand and lost.
She opened her door and went on to her next item of business.
12:35 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
The door to Ramin Rafizadeh’s room opened and two uniformed security guards stepped inside. “You’re free to go,” one of them said briskly. “We’ll escort you outside.”
He stood and walked unsteadily into the hallway, where his sister and father greeted him with hugs. “Is it...is it over?” he asked, clearly unconvinced.
“I think so,” his father said. “At least for us.”
The guards led them down the hallway and past the main room. Nazila caught a glimpse of Jack Bauer sitting at a computer. He was absorbed by some information on the screen, and she slowed her footsteps to study him. It was the first time, she realized, that she had been able to look at him when he was working on something other than her. She saw in the hunch of his shoulders, the intensity of his gaze, and the rapt look on his face, that he was consumed by his work; he had entered a state she could only call passion. She could never decide how she felt about him, not six months ago, and not six hours ago. He seemed truly worthy of both hatred and love, and she had not been able to choose between them. Now, from a distance, with his attention directed elsewhere, she made her choice. “God bless you,” she whispered.
12:46 P.M. PST Holmby Hills, Los Angeles
Kelly Sharpton insisted on visiting the address himself. Although he wasn’t a field agent anymore, he was field trained and certified. Before leaving CTU, he visited Jessi Bandison, who had remained at her desk long after her shift had expired.
“Kelly, I’m sorry—”
“Forget it,” he shut her off. “I pulled you into something that was way over your head. It’s my fault, not yours.” As he leaned against her workstation, he rested his hand on the countertop so that it touched hers. “I’m also sorry about snapping at you earlier. I was under a lot of time pressure and I didn’t explain myself well enough.”
“Okay,” she said, her face burning.
“I know you’re way past your shift and you’re probably exhausted, but could you stay a little longer. I need intel on an address and you’re the best.”
She smiled, but her face burned even hotter. He scribbled down the address of a condominium on Wilshire Boulevard. “Call me in my car,” he had said.
Now his cellular buzzed. He pressed the Bluetooth earpiece in his ear. “Sharpton,” he said.
“It’s Jessi. The condo is owned outright. There are no loan papers on it. According to the tax assessor’s office and the condominium’s community council, the place is owned by a Patrick Henry.”
A few minutes later he pulled into the condominium, one of several dozen that formed a “condo canyon” along Wilshire Boulevard just to the east of Westwood and UCLA. It was a posh building. The circular drive curved under the building structure and there a valet waited to take the SUV Kelly had signed out. The lobby was two stories high with a waterfall in the middle. The floor and walls were inlaid with travertine. A concierge stood behind a marble counter. Kelly crossed the lobby and flashed his badge. “I have a few questions about the condominium owned by Mr. Patrick Henry.”
The concierge was a slight young man in his twenties with perfectly messed hair. His skin was as smooth as a woman’s. His gold name tag read “Alexander.” “Yes, Agent Sharpton. I hope I can help you.”
“Me, too. Is Mr. Henry at home?”
“One moment.” Alexander lifted a phone to his ear and dialed. He smiled and nodded at Kelly, then put the phone down. “I’m sorry, there’s no answer.”
“I’m sure you don’t mind if I go up and knock.”
Alexander wrinkled his brow, something he clearly did not do often. “It’s against house policy, I’m afraid. No unannounced guests on the floors.”
“Oh, I’m the United States government,” Kelly said. “We’re very informal.”
He made for the elevator. He sensed Alexander behind him, distraught, trying to get his attention, but he ignored it. What was poor Alexander going to do, call the police?
It was a short elevator ride up to 12F, Patrick Henry’s condominium. The twelfth floor was as sumptuous as the lobby. By the design, Kelly guessed that there were only four to six condos on each floor, which meant they were huge and expensive.
The entrance to 12F was a set of beautiful teak doors ornately carved in chevrons, eagles, griffins, and other creatures that reminded Kelly vaguely of Europe. He lifted his foot and stomped on a griffin in the center of the door. The door rattled on its hinges, but held. The eagles and the griffins held on stubbornly for three more kicks, but eventually they surrendered and the fractured doors swung inward.
Kelly walked in, not really expecting to find Frank Newhouse or anyone else in the apartment. But he was hoping for evidence, so he started to walk around. There wasn’t much to see. The carpet was expensive, and the crown molding gave the expansive rooms the look of luxury, but all the rooms were empty. He went to the kitchen and looked for dishes. The first two cabinets he searched were completely empty, and looked as if they’d never been used at all.
When he opened the third cabinet, he saw the bomb.
It was counting down to detonation, and if the digital readout was correct, he had about five minutes left.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 1 P.M. AND 2 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
1:00 P.M. PST Westwood
Kelly sprinted for the broken front doors and ran into the hallway, but he had no illusions about leaving. In a building this size, there was no way to evacuate everyone in time. In the hallway, Kelly found a fire alarm. He shattered the glass and pulled the lever. A whooping alarm filled the hallway instantly, and ceiling mounted lights began to flash.
He ran back to the apartment, pulling out his cellular and dialing CTU. The phone was ringing by the time he reached the bomb. “Get me Chappelle, and get me someone who can defuse a bomb. Right now!”
1:03 P.M. PST Westwood
“Agent Sharpton, this is Glenn Schneider, LAPD Bomb Squad.”
“Hey, Glenn,” Kelly said. He was sitting in front of the bomb, watching the digital timer tick down. “You better be a good conversationalist because you may be the last person I ever talk to. Hopefully, you can make small talk about bombs.”
“Describe it to me.”
Kelly had been rehearsing his speech for the last three minutes. “The timer is a digital stopwatch like they use at a track meet, but it’s hooked up to a battery. The battery wire runs off in one direction, I think back toward the front door. The timer itself is taped to several very large plastic containers of powder. The powder looks like sugar.”
“Solidox bomb,” Schneider said. “How many cartons are there?”
“I’m looking at six,” Kelly replied. “While I was waiting for your call I checked the other rooms. There are a couple wired to the heating system. There are wires running to the other rooms as well. The timer itself has at least fourteen wires leading from it to the C-4. I think it’s fourteen, but they’re all jumbled together so it’s hard to tell. And by the way, I have one minute and forty-three seconds left.”
“Most of the wires are dummies,” Schneider said.
“There’s also, believe it or not, a tennis ball sitting on top of the battery. It’s got a piece of tape over part of it.”
Schneider made a sound like someone had just poked him in the eye. “This guy took everything right out of the Anarchist Cookbook. Listen, that tennis ball is probably filled with matchheads and gasoline. If you pick the wrong wire, it’s probably going to heat up and pop all over you.”
“No problem,” Kelly said. “Just tell me which wire is the right one.”
“You need to find a wire that comes off the timer and into a heating source.”
Kelly looked around the timer. “I don’t see a heating source. Just the timer and the plastic tubs.”
“Look around. It’s probably the battery.”
Kelly looked again. “No, the timer’s connected to the battery, but the battery isn’t connected to the tubs.”
“Okay, it feeds back, then. The timer triggers the battery, but also keeps the circuit open. If you stop the timer, it automatically closes the circuit between the battery and the Solidox.”
“So I need to get rid of the battery.”
“Yes.”
Kelly jumped to his feet and looked around. There was nothing in the apartment he could use. And the timer read fifty-eight seconds. He thought about backing up and shooting the tennis ball off the battery. But he didn’t want to think about what would happen if he missed.
“Schneider, what exactly is this tennis ball thing supposed to do?”
There was a pause. “Well, it depends on what’s inside. Sometimes tennis ball bombs are just big firecrackers. They’re like a joke. But nasty ones have gasoline or napalm inside. They spread burning rubber that keeps burning whatever it lands on.”
Kelly looked at the tennis ball. It was an innocuous, ridiculous little thing to be afraid of. “Fuck it,” he said. He stepped forward and kicked the tennis ball and the battery.
The battery flew away from the timer, wires popping out of it. The tennis ball didn’t fly. It exploded with a sizzle and pop. Kelly had instinctively covered his face as he kicked, which was wise. Liquid fire splashed across his forearms, and he felt his palms start to burn.
“Son of a bitch!” he yelled, dropping to his knees and pressing his hands into the carpet. He didn’t see any flames, but his hands were still burning. It felt like someone was pressing fiery coals into his palms. He jumped to his feet again and ran to the sink. He pushed the faucet on with his forearms and stuck his hands under the running water. It didn’t help. His hands were burning on the insides now.
He ran to his cell phone, which he’d dropped on the floor. He couldn’t pick it up. Kelly lay down next to it and pressed his cheek to the device. He could hear Schneider on the other end calling his name. “Get someone up here!” He yelled. “This shit is burning my hands off!”
1:16 P.M. PST East Los Angeles
Jack Bauer had taken the 10 Freeway past the gathered skyscrapers of downtown Los Angeles and into East L.A. He turned north and entered Boyle Heights. The address matched a rundown duplex with dirt for a front yard, cracked plaster, and a car on cinder blocks settled in the driveway. As he drove, he noted the faces he passed were brown, and the style of dress tended toward baggy black pants and wife-beater T-shirts. The billboards and storefronts were exclusively in Spanish. In this neighborhood, blond Jack Bauer and his SUV stood out like white socks with black shoes, but there was nothing to be done now.
He parked half a block away from the house and walked back. Heavy drapes hid the inside from view, and heavier iron bars protected the windows from the outside. Julio Juarez did not keep a very welcoming home. The whole place was still, and gave the impression that it was deserted. But Jack knew Julio was home. At least, Julio’s cellular phone was home. The LAPD printout had given Jack access to all kinds of information about Julio, including his cell phone number. Jack had the mobile number’s signal traced—as long as the phone was on, CTU’s satellites could find it—and sure enough, the eyes in the sky had pinpointed Julio inside his own home.
Jack walked up the cracked blacktop driveway to a green door splattered with yellow paint and knocked.
“Hola?” someone yelled from behind the door.
Jack knocked again without saying anything. To the right of the door was a window, again with heavy curtains on the inside. Jack pressed himself against the door just as that curtain was drawn back. Someone was trying to see who was knocking. Jack was also careful to duck below the little peephole in the door front. But he knocked again.
The door opened to the length of the guard chain and someone whined, “Who’s fucking with me?”
Jack drove his shoulder into the door, his weight snapping the chain. The man inside stumbled backward. He slipped inside and closed the door behind him.
The room inside was the complete opposite of the building’s exterior. It was painted cool blue, and one whole wall was devoted to a graffiti-style painting of zoot suiters and tattooed esses in Ray-Bans and plaid flannel shirts. The carpet was plush gray and the furniture was leather. Ranchero music tripped out of unseen speakers and a fifty-inch plasma screen was broadcasting “Sports Center.”
“What the fuck—?” the man on the floor said.
He looked like the mug shot. He was small and wiry, somewhere between twenty and forty, with a pathetically thin mustache, pockmarked skin, and short, dark hair. He picked himself up and puffed out his chest, but he didn’t advance on Jack.
“What you doing?” he challenged. “You know who I am?”
Jack nodded. “You’re Julio Juarez. You’re a two-bit coyote who makes a living smuggling illegals over the border at San Diego and sometimes up through the desert in Arizona.”
Julio scowled at Jack. His face seemed set into a permanent glare, with one side of his mouth drooping lower than the other. The eye on that side also looked eternally tired. “Yeah, that’s me. I got friends in MS13, bitch, so unless you want you and your family to end up in someone’s trash can, get the fuck out.”
Jack recognized MS-13 from CTU’s daily threat assessments. It was a street gang that had started in El Salvador and quickly spread to the United States. They were active in California and Maryland and Virginia. The situation had gotten so bad that those three states had formed special task forces to deal with them. The fact that Julio was connected to MS-13, and MS-13 was active near the U.S. capital, bothered Jack somehow, but he couldn’t figure it out at the moment.
“Relax, Julio,” Jack said. “I’m just here to ask you a couple of questions. I’m a Federal agent, and I have a lot bigger problems to deal with than a chickenshit like you. You answer my questions, I leave, and you get to go about your business.”
Julio’s weak eye drooped even farther. “Okay, ask your question.”
Jack nodded. “First, I want to know if you’ve ever smuggled anyone—”
He didn’t finish the question, because Julio Juarez kicked him hard in the groin. He moved fast for a man with a droopy eye, and the kick caught Jack almost square. He felt his midsection explode and the air went out of him. The edges of the room turned black for a moment, and Jack barely saw Julio bolt down the hallway. Ignoring the pain, Jack sprinted after him.
1:40 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Ryan Chappelle sat in Kelly Sharpton’s office, thinking of ways to distance himself from Jack Bauer’s blundering activities. He had a promising career ahead of him, but unfortunately he’d been linked with that heavy-handed ex-soldier who thought the only way to deal with a wall was to knock it down. Chappelle preferred to build a door.
His phone rang. “Chappelle,” he said.
“Chappelle, this is Walsh,” said Walsh from Washington, D.C. “What the fuck is going on?”
“I’m sorry?” Ryan looked around as though the problem might be right there in the room with him. “What?”
“It’s all over the news! Who leaked it?”
“I’m sorry, I don’t—”
“Turn on your news, then figure out who leaked this story!” Walsh slammed the phone down.
There was a television in Sharpton’s office. Ryan searched for the remote, found it on top of the television itself, and fired it up. He flipped on CNN. The main story was something about an earthquake in Tunisia, but the running banner told Chappelle what he needed to know: “Intelligence officials acknowledge credible threat to President Barnes. Sources suggest foreign terrorists on U.S. soil.”
Chappelle felt the blood rise up into his cheeks. It hadn’t been an hour, and the story was already in the press.
1:45 P.M. PST Boyle Heights
Julio Juarez had gone out the back door and over the fence. Jack followed, nearly vomiting as his gut and groin bumped against the fence top. He made it over and sprinted down a dusty alley after the coyote.
His quarry turned left at the street, and Jack rounded the corner twenty feet behind him. He slammed into an old lady and spun around her without apologizing, trying not to lose sight of Julio. The wiry little smuggler ran two blocks down, dodging the cars. Jack gained on him slowly—Julio might have been quick with a kick, but he wasn’t all that fast. Jack gained enough ground to see Julio duck into a yellow adobe building with faded writing across the top.
Jack entered the doorway right behind him, racing out of the sunlight into a cool, dark room, very wide and scattered with small tables and benches. There was a stage at the far end of the room, over which hung a banner that read “Viva Ranchero!”
Julio was right in front of him. Jack dived, catching the coyote by the backs of the knees and bringing him down in a tumble of chairs. Julio squealed and struggled. Jack caught him by the waist and rolled him backward, slamming Julio’s head into the tiled floor. Some of the life went out of him then. Jack grabbed him by the hair and lifted his head off the tile, drawing his gun and putting it to the coyote’s temple.
At the same time, he heard four or five hammers click back. Jack looked up. Five gang-bangers stood around him, their faces turned down in angry frowns and their weapons all pointed at him.
“What the fuck, esse?” one of them, a heavyset man with a thick black mustache said.
“Cesar, shoot this puta!” Julio squealed. “He’s a cop!”
Jack rolled onto his back, pulling Julio on top of him and keeping the muzzle of his Sig pressed against the little man’s temple. He didn’t have to say anything. The big man, Cesar, was smart enough to understand.
“You got nowhere to go, white boy,” he said.
“They kill you!” Julio said, trembling.
“But I’ll kill you first, Julio,” Jack replied.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 2 P.M. AND 3 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
2:00 P.M. PST Boyle Heights
“Listen, I don’t want to arrest him. I don’t care about any of you. All I want is to ask Julio a couple of questions and I’m gone.”
“We don’t give a shit what you want,” one of the other gang-bangers said.
“I bet Julio wants to live, though,” Jack said. His heart was racing, but he kept his voice calm.
The second gang-banger said, “I don’t give a fuck about Julio. This white boy comes into our place with a gun? He’s dead, esse!”
But Cesar shook his head. “No, tio, we like Julio.
He brings my people up when I need him to. I don’t want to lose him.”
Jack slid out from under Julio, careful to keep his finger on the trigger and the muzzle on Julio. He stood slowly. Some of the gang-bangers clearly wanted to fire, but Cesar waved them off.
“Listen, Julio, this is all I want from you,” Jack said, moving to keep the little man between him and the other guns. “I saw your picture on a driver’s license by the name of Richard Brighton.”
“Never heard of no Brighton,” Julio said, his eyes straining to their corners to see him. “But if he looks like me he must be a handsome bitch.”
“I’m thinking you helped some people cross the border a while ago. Maybe about six months ago, maybe a little longer. Maybe you helped some men cross over, guys who weren’t Latino. Jog your memory?”
Julio hesitated. “Yeah, I did that. But it wasn’t no six months ago. Maybe two.”
“How many guys? What’d they look like?” Jack was inching backward toward the door. The gangbangers sauntered after him.
Julio said, “Eight, I think.” Jack pushed the muzzle into his cheek. “Eight, eight! They were Arabs or something like that.”
Jack stifled a desire to blow Julio’s head off right there. The U.S. spent billions of dollars to protect itself from enemies that wanted to tear it apart, rooting out terrorist training camps in Pakistan, buying off weapons-grade uranium in the former Soviet bloc, and spending countless man-hours snatching cell phone calls and radio signals out of the airwaves using the most complex technology on the planet. And here was Julio from Boyle Heights, tearing their carefully constructed fences into shreds with a beat-up van and a path through the mountains.
“Where’d you take them?”
“Shit, I don’t rem—okay! I dropped them off downtown. At a building on Flower. One of those new renovations with the apartments on top. I don’t remember which one. But the guy who paid me was named Farrah.”
“Thanks, Julio,” Jack said, reaching the door. “You’re a real patriot.”
He shoved Julio back toward the gang-bangers and bolted out into the street.
2:13 P.M. PST Westwood
Kelly kept sobbing until the Demorol kicked in. The paramedics had arrived fifteen minutes after his plea for help, along with Nina Myers and several other CTU agents. By the time they treated him the pain had made him delirious, and all he could imagine was hot, burning coals entering his bloodstream and coursing through his body.
The medics poured some kind of powder on his hands to snuff out the burning material. Then they washed his hands with some kind of antiseptic that stung like hell, and finally they wrapped his burned hands and shot him full of Demorol.
Glenn Schneider had arrived with the CTU team. He was bald, with wide shoulders and a wide belly, too. Spaced out on pain and painkillers, Kelly imagined him to be a human shield against bombs.
The bomb squad leader looked at Kelly’s bandaged hands and said, “Whoever did this is a real bastard. That’s homemade napalm they used. I guess they didn’t want anyone messing with their bomb. You know, if you’d tried to pick it up instead of kicking it, it would have burned your hands and your face right off. It’s also lucky it didn’t hit the Solidox.”
“Oh, I feel lucky,” Kelly said dryly.
Nina Myers sat down beside him. “Nice work,” she said. “You know they found more of this Solidox planted in the heating system in the hallway. This bomb would have taken out this whole floor, and probably started a fire that would have killed more people.”
“We find anything here?” Kelly asked. He didn’t mind saving lives, but he was hoping his burned hands had helped to advance their case.
“One thing,” Nina said. “Bits of wire. Looks like someone tried to clean it all up, but they were in a hurry—”
“Yeah, well, they needed time to leave me that present.”
“Right. Anyway, they missed some. The wire is just wire, same as you’d use in a computer or stereo. But the insulation is weird, and there are a couple of connectors that are also weird. We’re taking it back to study.”
“Bits of wire,” Kelly said grimly, staring at his bandaged hands. “Well, I guess it’s better than bits of me.”
2:29 P.M. PST Westin St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco
President Barnes never got angry in public, and he rarely lost his temper even in private. His self-control had nothing to do with temperament and everything to do with self-preservation; when Harry Barnes lost it, he lost it completely. The Presidential Suite at the Westin bore witness to that fact.
Barnes began with the telephone on his desk and progressed to the wooden guest chair. Those two objects and several others struck the desk with force, courtesy of Harry Barnes’s temper.
“What the goddamned hell does that asshole think he’s doing!” Barnes raged.
Mitch Rasher weathered the storm better than the shattered chair (it helped that he was neither the object nor its target). He stood to one side, serene as a stone, letting the storm blow over him.
“Who leaked the fucking story!” Barnes demanded.
“Well, offhand, I’d say it was him,” Rasher said.
“He wouldn’t dare!” the President said. His initial rage was passing. He felt it drain away, emptied into the sacrificial pieces of furniture. Everyone thought Mitch Rasher’s greatest contribution to his presidency was his political strategy. It wasn’t; it was this—this ability to manage Barnes as he passed through these infrequent but dangerous rages.
Barnes straightened his tie and smoothed his dress shirt. He picked up the remote and rewound, replaying comments from Attorney General Quincy at a press conference. “I assure you that the FBI and other agencies are investigating these threats and taking them quite seriously. I would like to point out that I have spoken directly with agents in charge of this investigation and I was told in no uncertain terms that these potential terrorists were under surveillance six months ago. However, the case was dropped due to an inability to gather evidence. If the NAP Act had been enacted back then, I’m sure these terrorists would have been apprehended long before they became a threat.”
Barnes took one more deep breath. Drained, calm, he returned to the stone-faced deal maker everyone outside that room believed him to be. “He’s using a terrorist threat against me to scoop up a little more power.”
Rasher nodded. “But a little more power for him is a little more power for you.”
Barnes waved that off. “If I don’t have enough power now then I’m a sick man, and so are you. This privacy act is either good for the country or it’s not.”
Rasher smiled. He put his fingers together in front of him, adopting that strange angelic pose so out of sync with his schemes. “Jim seems to believe in it enough to use this so-called threat against you as a soapbox.”
Barnes leaned against his desk. “There is no threat, right? That’s confirmed.”
“None,” Rasher said. “The source itself is questionable, and they don’t even have the right city.”
“You know, he’s forcing our hand. If I don’t get out in front of this thing, I won’t get any of the credit if it passes. I’ll look like I sat on the sidelines while important legislation was enacted by him.”
Rasher walked over to the coffee table and began to pick up pieces of broken chair. “Mr. President, do you recall who wrote the much ballyhooed campaign finance reform bill that proved useless?”
“McCain-Feingold.”
“Exactly. And, by any chance, do you recall who wrote the Personal Responsibility and Work Reconciliation Act, commonly called the Welfare Reform Act,
that was so popular a few years ago?”
Barnes searched his memory. “No.”
“Exactly. When it comes to issues like this, people don’t remember successes, they remember failures. Let Quincy be the pioneer, sir. Either he’ll get shot full of arrows or he’ll found a city. Then you’ll come in and run it. Or if the people don’t like it, you can veto the whole thing and be the people’s champion.”
Barnes frowned. He was too competitive to enjoy that advice, but he couldn’t deny its logic. He decided to make a short list of replacements for the office of Attorney General.
2:40 P.M. PST Downtown Los Angeles
The last half hour had been a frantic one for Jack Bauer and the support staff at CTU. Two minutes after reaching his SUV, Jack was driving on surface streets into the downtown area and receiving a detailed description of Babak Farrah. Farrah was a legal emigre from Iran, working in the import/export business, and information from Customs suggested that while most of his business was legal, Farrah had a taste for the illegal, from exotic antiquities to Prada knockoffs to drugs. He didn’t seem to need the money. He enjoyed being a gangster.
Jack ordered CTU’s clandestine operations team to build him an identity. He needed to be someone Farrah might want to work with—no one large enough to be a rival, but not so small that he was beneath notice. By the time Jack pulled to the public parking lot at Pershing Square, he knew who he was: Jack Knudson, low-level businessman who’d made some money trading weapons for cash. It wasn’t a great cover, but it was the best they could do in fifteen minutes. Dummy phone lines were set up, and calls were made to several dealers who worked both sides of the fence, cooperating with CTU when the cash or the circumstance was right. They would back Jack’s story.
Jack left his car and crossed the street, walking up toward Flower.
2:42 P.M. PST Farrah’s Loft
Babak Farrah was cutting the ring finger off a thief’s
hand when the intercom buzzed.
“What?” he barked.
“There’s a guy here to see you. Says he knows Tamar Farrigian and that you should do business with him.”
“Get his name.”
“Jack Knudson.”
“Tell him to wait.”
Farrah turned back to his victim. The thief’s hand was bleeding, but not too badly. Farrah had tied a rubber hose around his wrist. One of Farrah’s two thugs—a big Armenian who could have been the twin of the other—had lain his substantial body weight over the victim, while the other one held his right arm extended.
“You understand now that it is not in your best interest to steal from me,” Farrah said calmly.
The man, immobilized under the guard’s weight, could only sob, “Yes, yes!”
“Wait a moment and we’ll discuss this further.” He walked around the pool of blood spreading across the plastic sheet they had carefully laid down. He didn’t want blood in this apartment. The developers were charging an arm and two legs for these new lofts they were renovating downtown. He didn’t want his ruined by some idiot’s blood.
Farrah reached his desk, dialed a number, and waited to be patched through by a secretary. “Tamar, it is Babak. Yes, good, how are you?” He did not know Tamar well, but they moved in similar circles and had done some business together, and Babak trusted Tamar as far as he trusted anyone.
“Listen, do you know someone named Knudson? Yeah, Jack Knudson. He’s okay? Okay, thanks. Keep your head down.” He hung up. He walked calmly past the sobbing man, buzzed his intercom, and said, “Okay, let him come up.”
He had put his knife down gently on a glass coffee table nearby. He picked it up now and signaled his men to hold firm. They bore down on the thief’s arm and body. Farrah gripped another finger and laid the knife edge against it. The blade sank through the first millimeter like it was butter. After that, he had to work, just like with the last one. He was still sawing away when the elevator doors opened.
Jack walked into Babak Farrah’s loft just as the second finger came off. One of the bodyguards stood up quickly and intercepted Jack, searching him. He pulled Jack’s SigSauer off and tucked it into his pants. Then he nodded to Farrah and resumed his position over the victim. “So you take from my inventory and think I won’t notice,” Babak said. “You think because I have money now I don’t count what I have. You did not grow up where I did. A man who has nothing counts everything, my friend. You, I think, will count fingers for the rest of your life.” He reached down and patted the victim on the head. “Keep him there,” he said to his bodyguards.
Farrah raised himself up to his full height, which was not impressive. He was five and a half feet tall and nearly as wide, with a thick, short mustache and a head of hair that nature never intended him to have. His eyes were dark and wet—disturbingly, they reminded Jack of Nazila’s—and his mouth was small. He was wearing an expensive Ermenegildo Zegna suit. He nodded at Jack. “So, why do I want to meet with you?”
Jack said, “Tamar Farrigian said—”
“Yeah, yeah, I know you know Tamar, so what? Why are we talking, you and me?”
Farrah’s loft was beautiful. One entire wall was a window that looked out on the city. By day, the view was ugly—the browns and grays of the city set beneath smog-shrouded mountains—but at night it must be breathtaking. The loft was one gigantic room divided by Japanese screens. A set of gleaming mahogany stairs rose up to the loft itself, which served as Farrah’s bedroom.
Jack sat down on the couch as though he belonged there. “I’m here because I’m new in town and I want to work with the best. You’re listening because I’m the best.”
“Best what, my friend?” Farrah said. He looked amused, which told Jack he’d struck the right tone.
“Jack of all trades, master of none,” Jack said. “But I’m good at putting people who buy weapons together with people who sell them without my name getting on anybody’s lips, and I know how to use a little muscle when I need to. You can ask Tamar about that.”
“Well, it just so happens I could have an opening.” Farrah laughed. “Stumpy there was one of my guys, but I caught him stealing. Didn’t I catch you stealing?” he said, raising his voice. He tapped the man’s head with the toe of his shoe.
“Y-yes,” the man sobbed. The stumps of his fingers were still seeping blood onto the plastic sheet all around them.
“You’re not a thief, are you?” Farrah asked Jack. “Tell me you’re not a thief.”
“If I do a good job for you and you pay me well, there’s no need for stealing.”
“Ah,” Farrah said, still amused. “You are a closer. That is worse than a thief!” He laughed. “Okay, okay, look, maybe I hire you, maybe I don’t. I have to check with some people. But for today, stay with me. A friend of Tamar’s is a friend of mine, at least for this afternoon. Okay?”
“Okay,” Jack said.
“Good. Just one thing. Let him up.” He motioned to his two big bodyguards. The guards obeyed and got off the man, pulling him to his feet. He was bigger than Farrah, smaller than the two Armenian giants. His face was pale and contorted with pain. Farrah went to a desk half-hidden by one of the Japanese screens. He opened a desk drawer and took out a handgun, a very nice Kimber 1911, Jack noted, and walked back. He offered the Kimber to Jack. “Shoot him. Then we go.”
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 3 P.M. AND 4 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
3:01 P.M. PST Farrah’s Loft
Farrah pushed the Kimber into Jack’s hand. “The head or the chest, I don’t care. But try to keep the blood on the plastic.”
Jack hesitated for a fraction of a second. This was a test, of course. No law enforcement agent would commit murder to maintain his cover. Jack Bauer, however, was not a police officer.
He raised the gun and fired. The round blew off the victim’s pinky finger before lodging itself in the desk. The victim screamed and crumpled to his knees, grabbing his mutilated hand.
“Hey!” Farrah shouted angrily. “That desk cost money!”
Jack handed the gun back to him. “If you want me to do more than that, you have to pay for it. I’m a businessman, just like you.”
Farrah grabbed the gun away, but his anger was already turning into amusement. “Okay, okay, my friend, I understand your point. You’re a good man, I’m liking you already. Come with me on a little errand I have to run. You two, let’s go.”
The two Armenian giants followed Jack and Farrah to the door, leaving the mutilated victim behind. Farrah pressed a button and the elevator doors opened with a whoosh. “Oh, wait,” Farrah said. He raised the Kimber and fired twice, both rounds puncturing the victim’s chest. He fell over onto the plastic. “Okay,” Farrah said. The elevator doors closed.
3:10 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
“Where the hell is Jack Bauer!” Ryan Chappelle demanded. “He’s got a prisoner gathering dust in a holding cell and he’s nowhere to be found. And where’s Kelly Sharpton!”
He zeroed in on Jessi Bandison, who was the only analyst not cowering under his tirade.
“Jack Bauer is following leads from the terrorist threat,” she stated. “He tracked down a man who may have smuggled the terrorists into the country, and he is now checking into the man they were dropped off with. Kelly Sharpton went to investigate an address for a militia member who has not been accounted for. He discovered a bomb there. He managed to defuse it, but nearly got his hands burned off. He’s being checked out at the UCLA emergency room before being okayed to return here.”
Chappelle was caught mid-rant. The analysts in the room, and Chappelle himself, experienced a shared vision of Bauer and Sharpton, two rugged field agents, out in the world doing their jobs, while Chappelle, pale-faced and blue-blooded, raged inside the sunless CTU office. As his ears turned red, Chappelle merely grunted and turned away.
3:36 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Kelly walked back into CTU under his own steam, with both hands still wrapped in bandages. The prognosis was good. He’d have scars, but no permanent damage.
Jessi met him halfway through the door, resisting the urge to hug him. “Chappelle wants to see you.”
Kelly nodded. A meeting with Ryan Chappelle was the perfect homecoming after a date being sprayed with napalm.
Chappelle had camped out in Kelly’s office anyway, so Kelly went up there and sat down in the guest chair.
“Do you want—?” Chappelle offered him the desk chair.
Kelly held him off. “No, I’m fine here. You wanted to see me.”
“Yes.” Chappelle took a deep breath, trying to excise the pedantry from his voice. “I’d like it if you could tell me what’s going on. What’s really going on.”
“Why do you ask like that?”
Chappelle chuckled. “Look, I may not be a field agent like you and mighty Jack Bauer, but I’m not an idiot. You’re caught hacking the Attorney General’s computer and the next thing I know the AG himself is calling to exonerate you. Jack Bauer’s running all over Los Angeles looking for terrorists no one else believes exists. You try to blow yourself up. Tell me everything.” He made his voice as gentle as possible. “Maybe I can help.”
Kelly was impressed by the monumental effort it must have taken for Chappelle to sound like a human being. He proceeded to summarize every piece of information that he and Jack had gathered. He even— against his better judgment—included the Attorney General’s attempt to blackmail Senator Drexler.
He expected Chappelle to reject his story about blackmail. Instead the District Director touched his fingers to his thin lips, then said, “But you don’t have any proof of this blackmail?”
“I erased everything from Quincy’s computer. Drexler is a witness, of course, but she won’t testify. If she does, she’ll drag her staff in and it will hurt them. She’s also got some contact with the CIA that she’s protecting.”
Chappelle nodded. “It’d be impossible to prove anyway. A politician that high up doesn’t make a play of that nature without having an out.” He switched gears mentally. “So Bauer’s sure these terrorists exist? He’s got eight of them being smuggled into the country?”
“The only piece that doesn’t fit,” Kelly said, repeating information Jessi had gathered from Jack, “is that his informant told him they were brought in a couple of months ago. If these guys are attached to the same rumor Jack first heard, they’d have to have been here for at least six months.”
“A lot of loose ends,” Chappelle said. For once, he was not being critical, he was simply analyzing the situation. “How does this damned militia fit in. Do they?”
“Well, I don’t think the Greater Nation does,” Kelly suggested. “I think their part of the story ends once they learn about terrorists and we stop them. All the rest has been Jack. The only part of the Nation that doesn’t figure is Frank Newhouse. If he’s under cover for the AG why not identify himself? If his job was to spy on the Greater Nation, then it’s over. If his job was to track down the terrorists, why not join forces with us?”
“And why blow up an entire building?” Chappelle added. “It was him, wasn’t it?”
Kelly held up his damaged hands. “I would so love to ask him that question in person.” Chappelle nodded in understanding. The two men shared a moment of silence, awkward and self-conscious. Kelly, not ready or willing to share an extended human moment with Chappelle, looked away. He was relieved when the intercom buzzed.
“Kelly, I know you’re meeting, but can I come up?” Jessi Bandison asked.
“Come,” he said.
She was there in a few minutes. “We got our initial analysis of the wiring they found in the apartment. The data is available off the server, but I can give you the rundown. The wire bits we brought back were heavily insulated. The connectors that we found were also insulated. They were specifically designed to protect wiring at points of contact with machines or other wires. It’s almost like some kind of shield.”
“Do we have any idea what that means?” Kelly asked.
“Not yet, but we think we’ll have a working theory by the end of the day.”
3:44 P.M. PST Peppermint Club
Farrah’s car pulled up to the Peppermint, a strip club southeast of downtown in an industrial area nestled between the downtown businesses and the beach communities. The place had just opened for business and the parking lot was nearly deserted. There were plenty of spaces in front, but one of the Armenian giants, acting as the driver of Farrah’s limousine, pulled around to the back anyway.
The sun was bright in the parking lot as they got out. Jack looked around. There was nothing like going to a strip club on a sunny afternoon, he thought, to make you feel like a total loser.
One of the giants opened the back door to the club and Farrah walked in, followed by Jack. The two giants brought up the rear.
Farrah walked through the club’s little kitchen, saying hello to the two men working there. He passed into the main room, which was as dark as midnight. No effort had been spared to shield the Peppermint’s clientele from the world outside. Darkness ruled here, despite the fact that two stages were awash in multicolored stage lights. Music blasted enthusiastically, and a silky-voiced DJ introduced the next dancer as though the club was totally packed instead of almost completely empty, which it was.
A dancer was on stage, going through the motions. A man in a Von Dutch T-shirt sat at the edge of the stage drinking an O’Doul’s nonalcoholic beer. Jack saw one or two other men sitting at tables in the shadows. There were clearly not enough prospects here to give the dancer much enthusiasm. She was naked; she had the body and the moves, but there was no oomph in her performance. She’d gotten stuck with the early shift, and there was nothing to do but get through it as painlessly as possible.
Farrah walked through the Peppermint like he owned the place, clapping for the girl on the stage and whistling. Jack noticed that the twin giants had disappeared. “Ah, Tina, you can shake your ass better than that, I know this from personal experience! Hey, Mikey!” He turned to the DJ tucked away in a corner. “Get one of the other girls on the stage, I’ve got a guest here and Tina is my treat for him!”
The DJ shooed Tina off the stage in his radio voice, and another dancer appeared to take her place.
“Sit, sit, Jack Knudson who needs to get paid to kill.” Farrah laughed. “You are in for a treat, my friend.”
The girl, Tina, came over. She had put her clothes back on, such as they were. Her dark hair was in pigtails.Her blouse wasrolledupand tiedinaknotunder her breasts. She wore a schoolgirl skirt specifically engineered not to cover her ass, and thigh high stockings.
“Hey, big tipper,” she said to Farrah. “I’d ask what brings you in here so early, but I know it’s me.”
“Oh, it’s you, it’s you,” Farrah said. He was like a kid in a candy store. “But it’s also a little business. I want you to keep my friend entertained while I go talk to someone. The dance is on me, okay, okay?”
She smiled at Jack. “Well, as a matter of fact, the dance is on you, but he’s paying for it.” To make her point, she fell onto him and slid her body down his until she was kneeling in front of him.
Jack tried to look as though his attention was on the girl while at the same time trying to track Farrah and his bodyguards through the darkened nightclub. Unfortunately, the table Farrah had chosen left half the club behind Jack, and turning his back on the girl would have been way too obvious. The girl lowered her head and brushed her thick black hair between his legs, then lifted her chin up to look at him and smiled as she pressed her body against him. “You’re awfully good-looking to be one of his friends,” she said with a well-practiced squeak.
“And you’re way too good to be working the dead times,” he said. “You new?”
She shook her head. “Part of the deal. Every girl’s gotta work one afternoon a month. Otherwise, no one would do it.” She jumped to her feet and turned around, arching her back and shifting her hips in a way that reached past all of Jack’s training and grabbed him in that deep place where all his primal urges lay.
A fast movement to his right caught Jack’s eye. A man ran by, followed by a big shadow. The smaller figure headed for the front exit and looked like he’d get there, but a second shadow detached itself from the wall and swallowed the little man. Jack heard a squeal. Then he heard Farrah’s voice say, “Come on, Farid, okay, okay. Come outside and talk with us. That’s all.”
The two giants turned around and started toward the back. In a flash of light from the dance floor, Jack saw a smaller man, looking like he’d just been sentenced to death, walk between them. He looked Middle Eastern.
“What’s all that?” he asked.
Tina looked over her shoulder seductively and shrugged. “Shit goes on here sometimes” was all she said.
“You know that guy with them?”
She looked, as though paying attention for the first time. “The little one. No. I mean, he’s come in once or twice but he doesn’t go for me. He’s an Arab, and they all go for the blonds.”
“An Arab,” Jack wondered, taking a long shot. “First time you saw him was maybe a few months ago? With Farrah?”
The girl shrugged. “I guess, maybe.”
“Excuse me,” he said, standing up. If Farrah’s actions in the loft were any indication, they were going to kill this man, and it occurred to Jack that this victim might be one that he needed alive.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 4 P.M. AND 5 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
4:00 P.M. PST Peppermint Club
Jack walked across the dark club, leaving the hot-bodied girl in the schoolgirl outfit behind and chasing after the Armenian thugs and their prisoner, thinking, not for the last time, that the twists and turns of his job were sometimes ridiculous.
He reached the back door as it swung closed, and caught the handle with a sliver of light still visible. Farrah was close enough to the door that he could hear the man talking. Not wanting to reveal himself, Jack kept the door ajar and listened.
“Farrah, please, please,” the other man was pleading. “I didn’t know Rasheed would steal from you. He never stole from me.”
“Okay, okay,” Farrah said angrily. “I believe that. I believe he was stealing with you, how’s that!”
“No, please—”
“No, please,” Farrah mocked. “What I know is that you recommended that cocksucker and he stole from me. That makes me think he stole from me and maybe moved some of the merchandise through you, eh?”
“No, I swear!” the other man, Farid, pleaded.
Farrah laughed. “And do you know what else he did? What you did? You used my place as a dropoff. My place. I’m not the bus station, Farid, okay? You drop off people like that, it brings attention that I don’t want, okay?”
“Don’t kill me!”
“Why not? I thought your type was always ready to die for your cause. Isn’t that what you do, give your lives to Allah?”
“I’m not one of those!” the other man said.
“No? Your friends were, weren’t they? The ones you and Rasheed brought in. They were supposed to work for me, weren’t they, but they went off with my guns and some of my money and now where are they? Where is my money?”
“I-I don’t know. I swear I don’t know!” Just as he had with Ramin, Jack could tell that this Farid was telling the truth. He could also tell that Farrah didn’t particularly care and planned to kill him anyway. He couldn’t let that happen.
Jack pulled the door wide open and sauntered out into the bright sunlight. He blinked a little till his eyes adjusted, making all his movements big and careless.
“What the fuck—” he said casually, seeing the two big Armenians and Farrah looming over Farid, who was on his knees. Farrah, with his back to Jack, held a gun, his hand hanging low along his side.
“Just a little more business,” Farrah said.
Jack walked up to them, eyeing Farid. He was Persian, not Arab, which fit the profile Jack was looking for. He was also clearly terrified.
“Like I said, I’m looking for business,” Jack said. “You want to pay me a little something, I’ll kill him for you.”
Farrah laughed. “What, you think I catch the fish and then I need someone to carry him for me?”
“Suit yourself,” Jack said. He stepped back.
Farrah raised his gun. When he did, Jack lunged forward, covering the distance between them in a single burst, his arms extending as far as possible. One hand caught the gun and the other hand clutched Farrah’s wrist. Jack twisted his body and snapped the gun from Farrah’s hand. In nearly the same motion he smashed the muzzle into Farrah’s face and shoved him backward. He jumped away from the clutches of the two startled giants and turned the weapon on them.
Farrah spat blood out of his chubby mouth. “Okay, okay, I got to kill some people for this.”
“I’ve had one of those days, too,” Jack said. “You, Farid, I need you to stand up and come over here. You two, Dumb and Dumber, you stay where you are.”
The Peppermint’s back door flew open and Tina walked out. “Hey, someone’s got to pay me!”
The sound of the door flying open seemed to break a spell that bound them all. The two giants lumbered into action. Farid bolted like a frightened rabbit. Farrah reached down to his ankle for what was undoubtedly a backup weapon.
Jack fired, but Farrah’s gun jammed. The first giant put a huge hand on him and Jack, still holding the weapon by its grip, punched the muzzle into his teeth. He snatched his own weapon from the Armenian’s belt and, at the same time, kicked the other one in the groin. Both giants sagged down to their knees. Jack took off after Farid, who had nearly reached the corner of the building.
4:31 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jessi Bandison buzzed Kelly Sharpton in his office.
“Kelly, we have results.”
“I’ll come down. Call Chappelle.”
Kelly descended the stairs and headed for the conference room. Chappelle was there before him, along with Nina Myers and half of CTU. Nina Myers said specifically to Kelly and Chappelle, “Let me introduce Amy Brant. She’s on loan to us from the NSA, because we didn’t have anyone who recognized the wiring we found. Ms. Brant.”
A heavyset woman with the face of a farmer’s daughter stood up. She held a tiny piece of blue rubber in her hand. When she pressed a button on the conference display, an image of the same piece of blue rubber appeared on the screen, greatly magnified.
“This is a sample of what your forensics team found in the condo,” Ms. Brant said in a Minnesota accent. “This, plus some interesting plastic connectors, like this.” She clicked a mouse, and a new image popped up. This piece looked like an orange plastic cap. “This is a connector, the kind you use when you have two wires you want to put together.”
“Like if you’re installing a lamp in the ceiling,” Kelly offered.
“Right there,” Brant said. “So the functions the wire and the connector serve aren’t anything special. But the rubber coating on the wire, and the shape and content of the plastic connector, these were things we hadn’t seen before.”
“Do you know where they come from?” Chappelle asked.
“We do now,” Brant said. “They come from us. We make them.”
“What do they do?”
Brant said. “This rubber coating and these connectors are designed to insulate electronic devices against attacks from electromagnetic pulse weapons. EMPs.”
The room filled with the low buzz of questions. Chappelle leaned over to Kelly. “Another loose end,” he whispered.
Kelly tapped his knuckles on the table for attention. “Wait, wait. I understand what electromagnetic pulses are. Those are the things that knock out electronic devices, right?”
“A nuclear blast might cause one,” Nina Myers said.
“A number of people have been working on devices that cause EMP bursts without wiping out the territory with a nuclear blast,” Amy Brant said. “EMP burst weapons would neutralize unshielded enemy electronics, everything from night vision goggles to fighter bombers. Some of the research is going on at Cal Tech over in Pasadena.”
“Working on,” Chappelle repeated. “Do functioning devices like these actually exist.”
“Oh, yes,” Brant said. “But only as prototypes. That is, the functionality is certain. Field application such as proper transportation, field repair and diagnostics, all of that is in its infancy.”
Nina Myers gave voice to a concern they all felt. “We spend a lot of time worrying about nuclear, chemical, and bio threats. Why not this? What would happen if someone set one of these things off in a city like Los Angeles?”
“Of course, it depends on the size of the pulse. There are other factors, too. The ground acts as a natural, well, ground, so the closer the device is to the Earth, the less effect it has. But if it were big enough and high enough, it would knock out everything.
“There’s another kind of EMP device being developed. It’s called HERF gun. That’s high energy radio frequency gun to you laymen. It’s exactly what it sounds like—a directed weapon that can be aimed at a specific vehicle or machine. It’s obviously much less dangerous to the population at large, but it can totally shut down whatever it’s aimed at.”
“The military applications must be staggering,” Kelly said.
Ms. Brant nodded. “Yes, I think so, but I’m not sure. The downside to an EMP device is that you can shield against it. That brings us back to these wires. You can shield a device in two ways: by putting it in a Farraday Cage, or by wiring it with insulation like this.”
“Farraday Cage?” Nina asked.
“Basically it’s a big metal tube that deflects electromagnetic pulses. It works really well, but you have to have one big enough to cover whatever you want to protect. So the wiring option is usually better. You could wire an entire airplane if you had to, but it would be a huge project.”
Chappelle groaned. “Okay, so now we know what an EMP device does. And we know that someone in that condo had wiring specially designed to resist one. Do we know who was in the condo?”
Kelly answered. “Best guess is Frank Newhouse, undercover for the Department of Justice, pretending to work with the Greater Nation militia. But why he continues to go undercover, I don’t know. And I don’t know why he’d plant a bomb in his condo.”
“Maybe the militia got him,” Nina suggested. “Maybe they planted the bomb.”
“Forensics?” Chappelle inquired.
Another CTU agent, Janet Takuyama from the forensics department, spoke up. “We pulled up thirteen separate sets of fingerprints, including Frank Newhouse, a set we matched to a maid, and two sets we matched to maintenance workers. The others don’t show up in our database, which could just mean they don’t have records yet.”
“It also means they’re not military or law enforcement,” Chappelle noted.
Takuyama continued, “We also pulled a bad partial off of one of the buckets. We’re running it against possible matches, but that list is going to be long. We’ll try to whittle it down.”
4:39 P.M. PST Peppermint Club
Farid rounded the front of the Peppermint Club and ran back into the building. This was either a brilliant strategy because it was unexpected, or it would deliver him right back into the hands of his enemies if they cut through the building.
Jack burst inside, shoving his way past the startled doorman who clearly had already been knocked off his stool by Farid. The man grabbed Jack’s shoulder. Jack spun and punched him in the throat and the man dropped with a gasp. Jack pushed through the thick velvet curtains into the club again.
“Ah!”
His eyes hadn’t adjusted to the dark, but he heard the sound and he could just make out Farid struggling with one of the Armenians.
“Freeze!” Jack yelled. He put a warning shot into the ceiling. The girls in the room screamed and a few male voices shouted in alarm. Shadowy figures scattered in several directions. Jack leveled his Sig, but in the dark, with two struggling figures, he had no shot. He raced forward and threw himself at the bigger of the two figures. It was like hitting a tree. He bounced off, but managed to keep his feet. The giant shoved Farid aside and punched Jack in the face. The room spun. Jack felt the giant grab his hair and punch him again. Jack shoved his gun into the Armenian’s stomach and fired three times. The giant crashed to the floor.
Jack staggered backward, his head swimming. He shook the cobwebs out and spun in time to see Farrah and the other bodyguard burst into the room. He raised his weapon and fired, but his vision was blurred, ruining his aim. Dazed though he was, he had the sense to duck as four or five gunshots answered his own. He rolled to his left, bumping into a chair. He crawled along the floor. He felt blood pour down his nose, but he didn’t care about the bleeding. He needed time for his head to clear.
He nearly forgot about Farid. He caught a glimpse of the man running for the back door again. Jack rolled to his back and aimed for the exit, squeezing off a few more rounds. Farid yelped and hit the deck again. “Don’t move again!” Jack ordered.
A bullet punctured the lounge chair next to him. Jack rolled back to his stomach, searching for targets. Somewhere in the room a girl kept screaming. A shadow moved across his field of vision. Jack aimed low, firing four times. He was rewarded with an angry bellow and the other Armenian collapsed, his ankles blown away. Jack felt his head clearing at last and he rose to a crouched position, keeping his head below the level of the tables.
Someone somewhere turned on the lights. Jack spotted Farrah in the corner at the same time Farrah spotted him. He was holding the dancer, Tina, by the neck. When he saw Jack he spun in that direction, putting the girl between himself and Jack’s line of fire.
“I don’t know what you want, okay!” Farrah yelled. “But I want Farid. You get him for me or I will kill this girl.”
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 5 P.M. AND 6 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
5:00 P.M. PST Peppermint Club
Jack’s ears were still ringing from the big Armenian’s punches. He took a deep breath and focused. He wasn’t giving up Farid. That was his primary goal. He was tempted to just back away, taking Farid out the back door. But Farrah was a cold-blooded killer and in the one hour he’d known the man Jack had developed an intense dislike for him.
He aimed his weapon.
“Get away!” Farrah yelled, seeing him. “I’ll kill her!”
That was everyone’s mistake, Jack thought. Thinking of him as a police officer. Thinking of him as someone who had to play by the rules all the time.
He fired.
The bullet whistled past the stripper’s cheek and entered Farrah’s face, exiting the back of his skull and lodging itself in the plasterboard and taking a significant amount of Farrah’s brain with it. The dancer fainted.
Jack glanced behind him, seeing Farid cowering on the floor. “Don’t go anywhere,” he warned.
Jack hurried to each of the two Armenians. One was dead, but Jack took his weapon anyway. The other was in shock, both his feet dangling from strips of flesh where his ankles had been. Jack kicked his gun away.
From somewhere in the depths of the building, someone yelled. “Get out of here. I called the police!”
“Good,” Jack said, suddenly feeling exhausted. “That’s very good.”
He checked Farrah, too, although there wasn’t much left of him. He tossed the gun aside. The girl, Tina, was out cold, but her breathing was regular and her heart beat was strong.
Jack staggered back over to Farid, who was looking up from the floor in astonishment. “Who the hell are you?”
Jack sat down in a lounge chair next to him. “I’m the guy asking you the questions,” he said. “And before I start asking I’m going to tell you this one time. I have no patience left, so unless you want to end up looking like Farrah over there, you answer me right away. Understand?”
Farid nodded.
Jack asked questions, and this was the story he heard:
Farid Koshbin had been a runner for a few Iranian fences, front men who took stolen and knockoff merchandise and put it into their stores as the real deal. About a year ago he had discovered that he knew enough people to be a valuable contact himself, especially for Persians and Arabs coming over to the United States. He had worked for Farrah several times. Babak Farrah liked to bring over Iranians to work for him, because they relied on him and he could pay them low wages for a year or two before they got wise and quit. Since 9/11, of course, that was harder to do. Farid Koshbin made a little money on the side finding employees for Farrah. He’d learned about eight Persians coming into the country illegally who would need work, so he arranged to help them.
“How’d you hear about them in the first place?” Jack asked.
“Phone call. A guy said he had friends coming over the border who could use some help.”
“Was there a name?” Jack demanded.
“No. The guy told me how to reach the coyote who was smuggling them in, so I called him. I got them jobs working for Farrah, but I guess they fucked up. They took off or something and they caused all this.”
“When did they arrive?”
“A month ago. Maybe six weeks.”
That stumped Jack for a minute. “Weeks ago? Not months? Not six months?”
Farid looked at Jack’s gun. “I’ll say six months if you want me to, but it was a month.”
Something didn’t add up, but Jack let Farid finish his story: when the eight Iranians went missing, some guns and money went missing, too. Farrah was mad enough that his hired help was gone, but never let a theft go unpunished. Since he couldn’t find the Iranians, he tracked down Farid and was going to punish him.
“So there are eight Iranians in the country. You’ve seen them with your own eyes,” Jack confirmed.
“Yeah, sure.”
Weird as it was, this was a relief to Jack. Finally, confirmation of what he’d been saying all along.
There were sirens outside, loud enough and close enough to penetrate the Peppermint’s thick walls. Police poured into the room, shouting. Jack held up his badge.
5:37 P.M. PST Santa Monica, California
Frank Newhouse woke up, instantly alert. This was more out of habit than necessity. The apartment was quiet, as he expected. This address was so far removed from the life and name of Frank Newhouse that no one, not CTU and not even the Attorney General, would connect it with his current activities. His girl, lying next to him, was still asleep. His eyes followed the shape of her body, outlined by the sheets. He appreciated the fact that she stayed in good shape for him. She was a good woman, patient with him during his long stays away from home, and welcoming (very welcoming, he thought, remembering the sex they’d had a short time ago) when he returned.
Newhouse stood up and stretched his body, still lean and muscled after forty-eight years of use. Slipping on jeans and a t-shirt, he walked around the apartment to limber up, then sat down at the kitchen table, where two separate cell phones sat charging. He spent a few minutes running over the plan in his mind. It hadn’t all worked out entirely as he’d hoped. He’d never expected his deep cover file to get out of Langley. Jack Bauer never would have requested it, and if he had, well, Bauer had dropped so low on the food chain, the request probably would have been ignored. Newhouse hadn’t expected the information to slip out from a different source. He’d underestimated the Senator and her resources. He made a mental note to find whoever had slipped the files out of the CIA and deal with them personally.
That had been the one slip. The files had led to the condo, which he had had to abandon, because unlike this apartment, the condo was connected to Frank Newhouse.
Still, it would be nearly impossible for CTU to put two and two together, and if they did, by that time it would be too late. The CTU agent had dismantled his bomb and that worried him a little, although he didn’t see how it could affect his plans. It didn’t really matter if CTU knew about the EMP device. In fact, in some ways it wasbetteriftheydid.But if Jack Bauer and his team focused on that building, they might learn more than he wanted them to, and that would lead them to places where Frank didn’t want them poking their noses. He’d have to tie up a few loose ends.
It also worried Frank that Farrah was taking so long to kill Farid. Farrah should have called in by now. Frank checked one cell phone, but no one had called. Where was Farrah? He had a perfect excuse to get rid of Farid, and plenty of muscle to do it. New-house knew how persistent Jack Bauer was, and how vital it was to seal off certain avenues of investigation.
Two cell phones sat in their cradles on the bar near the kitchen. Frank picked one up, dialed a number and waited while it rang.
“It’s about time,” said Attorney General James Quincy. “What the hell is going on?”
Frank said, “You sound unhappy, sir. Isn’t it all happening the way you wanted? You did great on CNN.”
“Yes, I got my forum,” Quincy said. “But I need the end game now. I’m catching a lot of heat here, Frank.” The Attorney General paused. Frank could hear the anxiety in his voice, and he relished it. “You’re sure you’ve got these guys under control. There’s no real threat, right?”
Frank did a convincing job of inserting surprise into his voice. “You didn’t want a real threat, Mr. Attorney General. You wanted the threat of a terrorist cell to boost your chances for your bill to pass. And you’ve got it.”
“I heard a CTU agent nearly got killed trying to dismantle some kind of bomb. If it had gone off, people would have died.”
“The bomb wouldn’t have gone off,” Frank assured him. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. Politicians were all alike. They talked a tough game, but when it came to doing the heavy lifting, they turned into girls. “As for him getting hurt, I had to do something to make it look dangerous.”
“I didn’t know anything like that was part of the plan.”
“It’s better if you don’t know some of it,” Frank said.
“Just tell me that it will all be over tonight.”
“I guarantee it,” Frank said. He hung up.
He would have felt sorry for Quincy if he’d had even an ounce of respect for him.
“Hey, baby.” His woman stood in the doorway, stretching her lean body and smiling at him. “Mmmm, there’s nothing like afternoon sex.”
“Nothing like sex with you,” he said. She walked forward, sleepy-faced, and he pulled her into his lap. “So I’m going to be busy tonight, but tomorrow I should have plenty of time. We should go up to Santa Barbara.”
“Okay, I’ll finish my painting.” She yawned. “Oh, hey, that reminds me, do you still have those white buckets?”
Frank cocked his head. “White buckets?”
“Yeah, you had a bunch here the other day. I used one as a rinse bucket for my brushes. Mind if I use it again?”
“Sorry, they’re gone,” he said with a smile. But inside, his heart was breaking. One more loose end to clean up.
5:51 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jack pulled in to CTU headquarters. There would be a truckload of paperwork to fill out in the Peppermint shooting, but for the moment he ignored it. He had his phone to his ear, talking with Kelly and the other CTU staff on the crisis even as he entered the building. He was on speakerphone in the conference room, so he kept talking as he entered the building.
“. . . so someone hires Farid to organize their transition into Los Angeles, and also hires the smuggler that gets them over the border,” Jack was saying. He reached the conference room and saw Sharpton, Chappelle, Nina Myers, CTU chief analyst Jamey Farrell, and Jessi Bandison. He heard his voice coming out of the squawk box on the conference table and hung up his phone. “They get into the country. But it wasn’t six months ago, it was just a few weeks ago. That doesn’t jibe with our warnings about Ramin Rafizadeh. It also gets him off the hook officially.” He took a seat. “It doesn’t make sense that the rumors come first, and then the terrorist cell appears. That’s bugging me.” He had a list of items that bothered him, including the coyote’s connection with MS-13 and Farrah’s obsession with killing Farid. Farrah could just as easily have escaped the building. Instead he’d taken a hostage.
Kelly added, “There’s more that doesn’t make sense. Why did these guys have a cheap apartment in Westwood and an expensive condominium a mile away? Why did they try to blow up the fancy condo but leave the apartment intact, when the apartment had the clues to their plans?”
They looked at one another, searching for answers but finding only bewildered looks, until Nina bobbed her head in the direction of an idea. “It’s a head fake.”
The entire group looked her way. “Go on,” Chappelle encouraged.
“They want the apartment found. They don’t want the condo found, because the condo has real evidence. So they rig the condo to get rid of the evidence.”
“But the condo is connected to Frank Newhouse, not the Iranians,” Jessi Bandison observed. “Frank Newhouse is connected to the Greater Nation and the Attorney General.”
“Frank Newhouse is the key to all this,” said Ryan Chappelle. He spoke definitively, using that voice that Bauer hated. However, Jack had to admit that the director was right. “The unanswered questions all revolve around him.”
“Agreed,” Jack said. “Jessi, are you up for staying on?”
“She’s way overtime,” Chappelle said, falling back into character.
“I’m good to go,” she said. “I’m getting kind of annoyed with that guy. I’ve got records I can check.”
Jack nodded. “Good. Go. Nina, I think we need to go with your head fake idea. Until we know more about Newhouse, let’s assume this EMP lead is the real one and the Islamic poetry clues are a false lead. Get on the phone. Call UCLA and Cal Tech. Tell them to check on everything they have related to EMPs. Do that now.”
Nina understood that “now” meant “right now” and she left the table while Jack was still talking.
“Then get going. Kelly, Jamey,” Jack said. “We need to learn more about this Babak Farrah, may he rest in peace. You should . . .” He paused. Kelly was grinning at him so brightly that Jack almost blushed. The two of them were left at the table with Ryan Chappelle. “Damn, Kelly, I’m sorry. I’m not the SAC here anymore. You should be divvying these assignments.”
“No problem, sir!” Kelly said, but he was laughing. “You can’t help yourself, Jack. I’d be the same in your shoes. This is your ship. You ought to be running it. No offense,” he added for Chappelle’s benefit.
The Director wasn’t quite as amused. “I’m surprised you’d let Bauer undermine your authority, Kelly,” he said critically.
Kelly patted his two bandaged hands together. “You serve in the military and you see some interesting things,” he said. “Everyone salutes the officers, but when the excrement hits the fan, everyone turns to the real leaders. Usually it’s some NCO from Bumfuck, Alabama. Doesn’t matter. He’s the guy in the foxhole that everybody listens to.”
Chappelle couldn’t help the disdain that crept into his voice. “Are you saying you’re not that man?”
“Oh, I am,” Kelly said, with a wink to Jack. “This just isn’t my foxhole.”
Jack and Kelly stood up from the table as Nina Myers entered the room. Her face was grave. “We’ve got a problem,” she said. “I talked to Cal Tech. Someone stole their EMP devices. Yesterday.”
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