Thirteen. Forty-eight. Fifty-seven. The numbers had no relation to one another that she could figure out, nor could the analysts at CTU find a connection. So their relationship had to be in connection with something else. An address. Most of a phone number? Something...

Mercy wandered the house, soaking in her impressions of Copeland. The house was meticulously kept, befitting a scientist and researcher. Copeland had planned his viral attack on the President with the utmost care. He had even created a contingency plan for dealing with investigators like Jack and Mercy. He was a planner, he was exacting. He was also careful. His operators were fragmented, few of them knowing the whole picture. So she guessed that the numbers were a combination to a safe or a code of some kind. Copeland would keep information (meticulous) but he would hide it (careful).

And he was corny.

There was a moment in Mercy’s investigations when her thinking fell into a groove, when her mind seemed to find the right element, and all of a sudden all extraneous items were redacted. Gone. Leaving only the answer before her, clear and distinct.

The book. It was that book with the stupid title. Mercy searched the bookshelf in the hallway but found nothing. She found a den with a television and two bookshelves packed with titles. Still nothing. She ran upstairs to Copeland’s bedroom, and she found it. An old, nearly faded copy of The Monkey Wrench Gang by Edward Abbey, sitting on his night-stand. The pages were permanently curled upward by a hundred rereadings. Mercy opened it and saw notes scribbled on the first page, and the second, and the third. Some of the scribblings were illegible, others seemed to be short phrases or incomplete thoughts that Copeland had set down and forgotten.

Mercy flipped to page thirteen, and smiled.

9:30 P.M. PST West Los Angeles

Al-Libbi’s phone rang. He opened the connection without saying a word.

“You should praise Allah, my friend. Only a moment ago you went from being on our death list to being our most desired ally.” It was the voice from the Iranian ministry.

“If it is the will of Allah,” Ayman said, not really caring if Allah had anything to do with it, as long as he had a home. “Now, to deliver the package to you, I will need some help...”

9:32 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Jessi tapped on the glass door of Christopher Henderson’s office. Henderson looked up unhappily; it had been a long

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day and he was looking forward to a moment’s rest. He’d just sat down for a few minutes, rubbing his eyes. NHS had all but taken over CTU to evaluate the threat of the virus. He’d just gotten word from Dr. Diebold that the station had tested negative, and that all personnel were cleared.

“Do you have a minute?” Jessi asked.

“Sure,” he said.

“I didn’t get a chance to talk to Jack Bauer,” she said. “And I haven’t seen any of the updates because the NHS wouldn’t let me near the computers—”

“It’s all clear now,” Henderson said.

“I was just wondering if Jack...if anyone’s heard from Kelly Sharpton.”

Henderson sat back. “Jack didn’t—? No one told you?”

“Jack sent me back here with the prisoner earlier. That’s the last thing I heard from either of them.”

Henderson stood up. “Jessi, I’m sorry. There was a fire-fight. Sharpton went with Jack. He was...Jessi, he was killed.”

Jessi felt all the life go out of her legs and she nearly fell. “Are you—are you sure?”

“Jack was with the body when he called in. He was— Jessi, I’m sorry. I heard you were close with him.”

Jessi felt the tears start coming. She turned and walked out of Henderson’s office.

9:35 P.M. PST Venice, California

His name was Todd Romond, and he was getting the hell out of Los Angeles.

“Gone too far, it’s gone too far,” he muttered to himself over and over again as he stuffed clothes haphazardly into a red wheeled suitcase. There was a redeye from LAX to JFK, and he planned to be on it. In New York he could take up with some friends and disappear for a while. His New York friends were old friends, from before his Earth First! days. No one could trace him there.

Someone knocked, and Todd nearly jumped out of his skin. He ran to the door as quietly as he could and peeked through the spy hole. It was only Mrs. Neidemeyer. He opened the door and looked down on her four-foot, ten-inch frame topped with wisps of white hair. She was wearing a pale blue dressing gown.

“Todd,” she said in her deceptively frail-sounding voice. Todd, a sometimes delinquent tenant, had heard how determined and persuasive that voice could be. “Your car is blocking the drive. The tenants will complain.”

“It’s only for a few minutes, Mrs. N,” he promised. “I’m almost out of here. Please excuse me.” He closed the door.

“Well, be sure it’s moved!” she called a little sharply.

He’d be sure. He had more incentive than she did. All she cared about was making sure Junior Merkle didn’t honk his horn and shout when he got home at three o’clock in the morning after playing drums in whatever band he was part of. Todd, on the other hand, was trying to stay alive.

Frankie had done it. She’d contacted terrorists, real terrorists, not people who spiked trees and chained themselves to bulldozers, not people like him. She’d always campaigned for their group to learn how real terrorists operated, but real terrorists blew up babies and old women. All Todd had ever wanted to do was see the rain forests survive his lifetime. He’d been willing to do a lot to make that happen, even shake the government to its own tangled roots.

Todd was an MIT graduate and had come this close to a Fulbright scholarship. He could certainly see the writing on this wall. Smith (Todd had thought of him as Smith rather

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than Copeland from the minute he adopted the nom de guerre) had dropped out of sight, and his house had looked like a crime scene until the big plastic tent was dropped over it. Frankie had called him less than three hours ago. All she had told him was that she was in charge now, she had backing from powerful friends, and she would get them all out of this. But Todd had listened carefully, and he guessed what she wasn’t telling him. She’d thrown her lot in with murderers and terrorists, and she had given them the vaccine. Todd was sure of it—why else would they work with her?

For Todd, it was only a small leap into the mind of the terrorists: now that they had the virus and the vaccine, they would begin to wonder who else knew how to make it, and conclude that that person should probably stop breathing very shortly.

Todd was one of three people who knew how to create more vaccine. He had no intention of waiting around until the police made a connection between him and Dr. Bernard Copeland, and he certainly was not going to wait for the terrorists to blow him up. He finished packing and rolled his suitcase into the small living room. He stopped to make two phone calls, dialing and speaking quickly.

There was another knock. “Todd?” Mrs. Neidemeyer called.

Todd sighed. He swung open the door. “Mrs. N, I told you it’d be a minute. I was just—” he stopped cold. Mrs. Neidemeyer was not alone.

9:45 P.M. PST West Los Angeles

It should have taken ten minutes on surface streets to run south from Santa Monica to Venice, but an accident on Wilshire Boulevard slowed their progress. Jack tapped the side of the car impatiently until at last they were past the accident and rolling. Mercy shook her head. “This has got to be the only city where you can find a traffic jam at ten o’clock at night.”

They turned down Lincoln Boulevard and crossed Colorado, then Pico, and soon they were in the beach community of Venice.

The first name on the list was Todd Romond, his information scribbled on page thirteen. An MIT graduate and an expert on the behavior of viruses, he had discontinued a lucrative grant with a dominant pharmaceutical company to become a tour guide organizing eco-vacations in Costa Rica. He was also one of three people who had helped Copeland mutate his virus and develop a vaccine.

This was going to work, Jack thought. They were going to find this Todd Romond and he was going to cure Kim.

Romond’s apartment was a small seventies model shaped like the letter “U.” The empty middle of the shape was a grass yard open to the sidewalk, with a driveway on one side that led to a carport that supported the upper-story apartment at the back. There was a car parked diagonally across the driveway.

“That Romond’s car?” Jack asked, already knowing the answer.

Mercy conferred with the stats she’d written down after calling in for Romond’s profile. “Yep. Looks like he’s coming or going in a hurry.”

“Guess which.”

Jack stopped in the middle of the street and jumped out, Mercy close behind. Jack nearly stumbled at the curb, reminding himself how hard he’d pushed it all day. Jack checked the car quickly, his weapon drawn but held low at his side. Sure the car was empty, he ran to the apartment

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number that matched Romond’s. There were lights on in the

living room.

Jack pounded on the door. “Romond! Federal agents!”

No answer. Jack didn’t want to wait for another warning. He stepped back and then kicked the door hard right where the bolt met the frame. The thick door held until the third try, when the wood shattered and the door swung open.

Mercy, who’d come up behind, now slipped around him as he recoiled his foot. She stepped into the room and faded left. Jack followed, his own weapon now chest-level. But it wasn’t necessary.

Todd Romond lay on his back on the living room floor. There was a small hole in his forehead, from which blood slowly trickled. Beside him was an old lady, facedown, as dead as he was.

Mercy checked the kitchen, the bathroom, and the bedroom, and that was the end of that small apartment. She came back to stand over Romond’s body.

“Al-Libbi,” Jack said hoarsely. “We’re in a race now.”

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 10 P.M. AND 11 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

10:00 P.M. CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Christopher Henderson watched technicians from National Health Services carefully wheel a hermetically sealed coffin out of the holding room. They had sprayed the room down with powerful chemical cleansers and collected the soiled chemicals into special vats. They had gathered up what was left of the girl’s body, which wasn’t much considering that she’d been alive and actually participated in a firefight not two hours earlier. That was the fate that awaited the President if they didn’t do their jobs right.

A call came through from Jack Bauer. Henderson took it at a spare computer station. “Tell me you found something.”

“We did,” Bauer said from the other end of the line. “We

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have the names of three people who worked with Copeland.

We think they know about the vaccine.”

“Good! Let’s round them up.”

“Agreed,” Bauer replied. “We have to move fast. The first one was just murdered. I’m standing over his body.”

“Al-Libbi,” Henderson surmised.

“The girl gave him the names. He’s ahead of us.”

“But he can’t have our manpower. Give me the other names. I’ll get teams to bring them in right now.”

Jack recited the two other names they’d gleaned from Copeland’s annotations: Sarah Kalmijn and Pico Santiago. “On it,” Henderson said. “I’ll call you back.”

10:06 P.M. PST Bauer Residence

Teri Bauer picked up the phone before the first ring had fin

ished.

“Honey, it’s me,” Jack said.

Her voice was cold and quiet. “Great, how nice of you to call.”

The tone of her voice stabbed Jack in the chest. “Teri, I’m sorry—”

“You’re not!” his wife replied, her voice rising slightly. But she wasn’t frantic or passionate. She was earnest. “Jack, you’re not, that’s the thing about it. You’re out there doing your job. I know that. But it doesn’t make it any easier to be the person sitting here. There was a riot today, Jack. Our daughter was in the middle of a riot. My husband was in the middle of a riot. I haven’t even been able to process that, and you’re probably already doing god knows what else.”

Trying to stop a virus from killing half the city, he thought. Trying to save the President of the United States

and our daughter. But of course he said neither of those

things.

“How’s Kim?”

“Sleeping,” Teri said, wiping a tear from the corner of her eye. “She has a little fever and went to bed early. I’m hoping it was just all the craziness today.”

The phone was silent for a minute. “Jack?”

“Sorry,” he said after a second. “The connection dropped out. Just a fever, though? Anything to worry about? One of the protestors they arrested today had some kind of rash. Nothing serious, but some FBI guys caught it and said it itched like crazy.”

“No, I didn’t see a rash.”

“Okay.”

“Jack, what time are you coming home?”

Another pause. “I don’t know, Teri. As soon as I can, I promise. I love you.”

“I love you, too,” she said, in the same voice she’d used to answer the phone.

10:12 P.M. PST Venice, California

Jack ended the call and put his head down for just a minute. It was a moment of indulgence he could hardly afford, but he took it anyway. Teri was upset with him, but she didn’t know the half of it. He would have to tell her the truth soon. By his watch he still had a few hours, even allowing for a margin of error...but in the end he’d have to get Kim quarantined. She would hate him then.

“You really do love her,” Mercy said. She’d watched the pain on his face when he made the call, and the nearly incomprehensible anguish in his thoughts afterward.

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Jack shrugged. “We’ve had a life, you know?”

“I guess,” she said, then added, “but not really.”

He had no response for that. He’d spent his savings of emotional currency on others already, including her. He had nothing to spare for a life and career that had kept her from a husband and family.

The mobile phone rang, saving him from his obligation to respond. “Bad news,” Henderson said. “Santiago and Kalmijn are both gone.”

“Al-Libbi?” Jack asked.

“There’s no knowing for sure, but there are no signs of struggle, and certainly no bodies,” the field operations chief replied. “And phone records show that each residence received a call from Todd Romond’s location not long ago.”

“He was already packed to go,” Jack guessed. “He warned them.”

“Which means they’re in hiding. Let’s work on friends and family and try to find them.”

Henderson said, “I’ll have Jamey Farrell run through video footage and electronic data. Maybe a traffic cam picked up their directions. Long shot, but we’ll try everything.”

“I’ve got an angle I can work,” Jack said.

He hung up and relayed the information to Mercy. “What’s your angle?” she asked.

“I’ll take you there,” he said. This was a moment he’d been dreading.

They drove in semi-silence, punctuated now and then by brief questions filling in bits and pieces of the day. Frankie must have been exposed to the virus at the same time Mercy was, but she’d received the weaponized version, the same one that had been used on the President. They made sure that NHS had tented that safe house as well. So far, they’d been lucky: the virus had been contained at several relatively controllable locations. Mercy herself had been lucky. It appeared she’d absorbed the slower-acting strain.

Mercy didn’t realize where they were going until they pulled up in front of 16150 West Washington. Jack got out and she followed suit, a look of confusion settling on her face. “This...you know what this address is? This is my informant inside the eco-terrorist movement.”

“I know,” Jack said. He climbed the exterior steps to the second floor with Mercy in tow and went straight to the apartment of Ted Ozersky, a.k.a. Willow. He knocked, and the door opened almost immediately. Willow shook hands with Jack and let them both in.

Mercy sat down gingerly, as though she thought the floor might suddenly disappear beneath her. “What’s going on?”

Jack took a deep breath. “Mercy, this is Ted Ozersky—”

“I know him, don’t be an idiot,” Mercy said, suddenly irritable.

“Ted Ozersky is a CTU agent.”

The sentence was such a non sequitur to Mercy that it barely registered. “I’m sorry, what?”

“I’m a CTU agent, Detective,” Ozersky said. The California drawl was gone. He spoke in crisp, efficient clips.

Jack had been waiting almost a month to tell Mercy the truth, and he’d known since the moment she showed up at the Federal Building that the day had arrived. But he hadn’t had time to consider how to tell her, and there was very little time to spare, so it came out now in a rush.

“Mercy, all the stuff you tried to tell me this morning, about radical eco-terrorists. I knew it was all true. CTU has had its eye on them for a while, but they were tough to get inside.”

Ozersky (she had stopped thinking of him as Willow the minute his voice changed) said, “I had managed to infiltrate Earth First!, but I could see that they weren’t a real target for

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CTU. It was their radical fringe that was the threat. Those guys are paranoid, and I couldn’t get any closer. But I passed along what I did hear.”

“Including, several months ago, that someone in a fringe group had contacted Ayman al-Libbi, trying to learn how he operated,” Jack jumped in. “That’s when Tony Almeida and I got seriously involved.”

“A couple of months ago...” Mercy said. She was in shock.

“One piece of information that Ted passed on was the rumor that the eco-terrorists had someone inside the security services, but we didn’t know who. It could have been FBI, even CTU. It could have been more than one person. At the time, I was nervous about giving our operation too high a profile.

“When Gordon Gleed was murdered, I knew the ecoterrorists were making a move. I needed someone to investigate, someone I knew was good, and that I could keep an eye on without the word getting out that CTU was involved.”

“That you could keep an eye on...” Mercy repeated dumbly. Jack sat ramrod-straight, ready to take the brunt of her anger as soon as the meaning of that phrase seeped in. But she passed it over for the moment. She said, “Are... Jack, are you telling me that you arranged for me to get on the Gordon Gleed case?”

Jack nodded. “And I made sure that Ted became one of your contacts. He was able to feed you information you could use, and it never appeared that the Federal government was involved. Copeland—I didn’t know his name until you found it out—Copeland was paranoid about the Federal government. One whiff of us and I was afraid he’d vanish.”

“Did you know about the virus?” she asked.

“All rumors,” Jack said. “But we knew that the ecoterrorists were trying to improve their game by learning from the big leaguers like al-Libbi.”

The shock was wearing off. Anger crept into her voice. “This morning, at the Federal Building, you made me feel like an idiot.”

“I’m sorry,” he said. “But at that point we’d narrowed our suspects down. Tony believed that the mole was in the FBI, and that he was part of the surveillance team. I couldn’t be sure if he was listening to our conversation. If he was, I wanted him thrown off the scent.”

“But—”

“Remember, I tried to talk you out of coming to the Federal Building at all, but there’s no stopping you.”

Mercy’s neck turned pink. “So I’ve just been in the fucking way...”

Jack smiled. “Hardly. You’ve done all the work. You found out about the Monkey Wrench Gang. We didn’t know anything about these people except that they, or at least some of them, wanted to work with al-Libbi, who I knew was inside the country. The only snafu was when you came to see me. It made Copeland panic because he thought I was investigating him. He got Kim involved, and he kidnapped you. That threw a wrench into the works. But everything we learned about who they are we learned from you.”

Mercy looked from Jack to Ted Ozersky and back to Jack. The emotions churning inside her were visible on her face. “You used me.”

“I’m sorry,” he said again. And he was; not sorry for doing whatever needed doing to complete the task. As far as he was concerned, that was the definition of his job. But he had an immense amount of respect for her, and he was genuinely sorry for any pain he caused her.

“The thing to do now,” Ozersky said, saving them both from the tense silence that followed, “is to compare notes. Two people have gone missing. I spent a lot of time on the

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fringes of the group. You’ve spent a lot of time investigating. Maybe together we can come up with something.”

The next moment was, perhaps, the moment Jack most admired Mercy Bennet. She’d just been humiliated personally and professionally by a man who, from her perspective, had nearly become her lover. But she rebounded almost immediately and plunged into a conversation with Ozersky. He talked about people he’d met on the fringes of Frankie’s circle. She whittled down his list from memory, discarding people she’d investigated and found to be inactive or unenthusiastic when it came to real action. It wasn’t long before they came up with a short list of contacts for both Santiago and Kalmijn that might know their whereabouts.

“Good,” Jack said. “The three of us will follow up on Santiago’s contacts. I’ll call from the car and have Tony Almeida and Nina go after the others.”

“Santiago worked at Earth Café over in Venice,” Ozersky said. “We should start there. It closes any minute.”

They stood up, and Ozersky ran to get his gun and badge. During the interlude, Mercy stared daggers at Jack, but said nothing. Jack already felt like he’d been through hell, and something told him it was only the beginning.

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 11 P.M. AND 12 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

11:00 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Of all the times Christopher Henderson had wanted to hit Ryan Chappelle, this was the hardest to resist.

“You authorized this whole goddamned thing without telling me!” Henderson yelled so loud that the thick glass of his office could not completely muffle it.

“Don’t yell at me,” Chappelle shot back. He was exhausted and frustrated from dealing with a frayed and angry presidential staff for the last hour, while at the same time overseeing the security lockdown that kept an entire nation from knowing its president had been exposed to a violent hemorrhagic fever. “I’ll have you working postal routes searching for stray anthrax.”

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“This is bullshit!” Henderson continued. “How can I do my job as Director of Field Operations when you have my people running clandestine missions behind my back.”

Chappelle had just informed Henderson of Jack’s operation linking the eco-terrorists to Ayman al-Libbi.

Chappelle sniffed arrogantly. “It was need-to-know. Besides, if you want to blame someone, blame Bauer. He bypassed you. Better yet, blame yourself. Aren’t you one of the reasons he’s here in the first place?”

“So Jack wants to run a secret operation and you give it your stamp of approval? Jack’s job is to think outside the lines. I thought yours was to stick to the rule book.”

Chappelle laughed; it was a thin, unpleasant sound. “You know what I notice? How everyone thinks it’s great to have a loose cannon like Jack Bauer around...right up until the loose cannon rolls over their toes. Sharpton liked Jack, too, and now he’s dead. Don’t be surprised if someday you find yourself regretting that Bauer’s around.”

11:07 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Jessi sat at her desk, staring at her computer screen. She was supposed to be analyzing downloads from security and traffic cameras within a five-mile radius of two addresses, and running the facial recognition systems to see if any cameras had picked up their movement. But she knew she wasn’t doing a good job. Her focus was gone. No, it wasn’t gone, but it wasn’t here, either. It was with Kelly Sharpton.

“Jessi, are you on it?” Jamey Farrell appeared at her side. “You look lost.”

“Um, no, yeah, I’m good,” she replied. “Sorry. I’m on it now.”

But she didn’t notice the picture sliding by her of the slim man with dark hair leaving his apartment. If she had, it might have saved more than one life.

11:10 P.M. PST Earth Café, Venice, California

A clerk was locking the front door of the Earth Café as Jack, Ozersky, and Mercy Bennet jogged up. Jack put his hand on the glass door just before it closed. “Hang on, it’s just after eleven,” he said, pointing at the sign that indicated closing time was eleven-thirty.

The clerk, a dark-haired twenty-something girl with a nose ring and a very flat stomach between her T-shirt and her low-slung men’s trousers, pushed on the door again, a look of panic in her eyes. “We’re closing early. Sorry!” She shoved at the door and Jack relented. He watched her lock the door and then hurry behind the counter and into the back room.

“Slackers?” Ozersky wondered aloud.

“She’s pretty anxious,” Mercy said.

“You guys walk back to the car,” Jack ordered. They all turned around and retreated to the sidewalk. Mercy and Ted continued, but as soon as they were out of sight of the doorway, Jack turned and sprinted toward the rear of the café. There was a small parking lot in back, but it wasn’t well lit. Jack stuck to the shadows and reached the back of the building in no time. He touched the back door gently, feeling it locked. There was a small window above and to the right of the door. Jack hopped up onto a blue Dumpster that stank of coffee grinds and rotting vegetables, balanced himself on the edge, and looked in the window.

The window offered a view of the café’s kitchen. Jack saw

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the nose-ringed clerk and another employee, a young man with short hair and a goatee, standing with their backs to the kitchen counter. In front of them were two men facing away from Jack. They were small, wiry men with dark skin. They both held guns. They appeared to be asking questions. The two clerks looked terrified.

Jack pulled out his phone and sent a text message to Mercy: “Distraction ASAP.” He jumped down, landing softly, and waited.

A moment later glass shattered at the front of the store. The girl inside screamed and one of the men shouted in Farsi. At that moment, Jack kicked in the door. His kick blew through the bolts, and the door swung open. The men inside were fast. They had turned toward the sound of breaking glass, but when they heard the door crash, they whirled around just as quickly, weapons ready. Jack dropped to one knee as bullets sped over his head. He double-tapped, and one of the men crumpled inward and fell on his face. Bullets from the other man’s pistol chipped the asphalt around Jack, who calmly shifted his muzzle over and double-tapped again. The second man was falling before the two clerks thought to scream again.

Jack jumped to his feet and ran forward, kicking the weapons away from the fallen assailants. Both men were dead.

“Are you all right?” Jack asked. The two clerks were pressed as far back against the counter as possible, terror and shock and relief all visible in their eyes. “I’m a Federal agent. Are you all right?”

They nodded. The girl said, “Who... who are those guys?”

Mercy and Ted rushed in, weapons drawn. “Clear,” Jack said. “Can you call CTU?” Ozersky nodded. Jack turned to the girl with the nose ring. “Did they ask you any questions?”

She nodded, almost unable to take her eyes off the two corpses. “Um, yeah. They were asking us about Pico. They said they’d kill us if we didn’t help them.”

“Pico Santiago. We want him, too,” Jack said. “Do you have any idea where he is? Do you know him well?”

The young man, who’d yet to speak, nodded. “I do. We’ve worked here for a couple years. Is he in trouble?”

“Not if I can help it. How well do you know him?” Jack’s own body was still adrenalized from the gunfight, but he forced his voice to remain calm and firm. “We need to find him. He’s not at home. We think he’s afraid of these guys and he ran off somewhere. Do you know where he’d go?”

Jack saw the kid hesitate, his eyes settling on Jack’s gun. He had that same look on his face Jack had seen on some of the protestors that morning, though it seemed a lifetime ago. He spoke irritably, “Yeah, I’m the government and I want him, too. But here’s the difference between us and them. They want him dead, and I want to keep him alive. So tell me.”

The young man straightened up. “He was working here tonight, but he just took off. Said something had come up and he had to get out of town for a while.”

“Did he say where out of town?” Mercy queried. “Would he take a plane somewhere?”

The kid shook his head. “No, dude, that’s not what he means. Pico’s into outdoor stuff, like me. He went up into the mountains to hike.”

“Give me his cell number.”

“He doesn’t use one,” the kid said. “He says the microwaves fry your brain.”

“Up in the mountains where?” Jack asked.

“Dude, it could be any—”

“Somewhere he knows,” Jack said, growing impatient. “Somewhere he’d feel comfortable and safe.”

The kid snapped his fingers. “Temescal Canyon. That’s

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his favorite spot, and you hike back there past the waterfall,

you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere.”

“Do any of his other friends know about that place?”

“Lots of people know about it. Yeah, Pico’s got some other friends he hangs with up there. Gina’s been up”—he pointed to the nose-ringed girl, who nodded—“and I’ve been up there with Pico and that freak girl he used to date.”

“Freaky girl?” Mercy asked.

The man nodded. “Yeah, Frankie something or other.”

“Thanks,” Jack said. To Mercy and Ted, “Let’s go.”

They left the kitchen for the dining area. Behind them, the girl shouted, “Hey, what about these guys!”

Jack ignored her. If those were the last bodies he left behind tonight, he’d be lucky.

11:37 P.M. PST Miracle Mile, Los Angeles

If the decision were Eshmail Nouri’s to make, he would have strangled Ayman al-Libbi, left his body in a Dumpster, and gone back to the 213 Lounge he owned and managed just off Wilshire Boulevard. He was tempted to disobey orders and do it anyway, but that was just his independence talking. Eight years living in the United States, living and playing as an American, had given him a veneer of rebellion. But it was thin and did not seep into his heart, which had been with the Ayatollah Khomeini and was with the ayatollahs still. He would do as he was ordered, even if he thought it was stupid.

And it was stupid, in his professional opinion. The ayatollahs had seen fit to plant Nouri and his compatriots in the United States long before the Americans had increased their watchfulness. Of course, after 9/11, Nouri himself and each of his companions had been questioned, but he had already been in the country for years; he was careful to communicate infrequently with the rest of his cell, and often only through handwritten letters that could not be traced. He was indistinguishable from the thousands of Iranians who had emigrated over the years.

Which was his point. Nouri understood that he was a valuable asset. His entire cell was a precious weapon kept hidden by the ayatollahs and, if Allah willed it, they would someday come forth to strike a blow against the Americans. He knew the ayatollahs had tried to build other cells in recent years, but almost all had failed, thanks to American intelligence. To risk one of the few well-placed groups at the whim of Ay-man al-Libbi, who had by all accounts become a useless infidel, seemed reckless.

Not seemed reckless, was reckless, based on the evidence. Mahmoud and Ali should have called in by now, whether they had obtained additional information from the target’s friends or not.

Eshmail did not yet know about the virus or CTU. All he knew was that at long last his cell had been activated. They were to kill three people, one of whom was already dead, and another who would soon be eliminated.

Still, he wished he could kill Ayman al-Libbi when all was said and done.

10:54 P.M. PST Temescal Canyon Road

Jack stopped the car in the dirt lot where the paved road ended. There was one car, a silver Volvo, already parked there.

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“Could they be ahead of us again?” Mercy said as they got out.

Jack drew his gun and walked over to the car. “It’s still warm and ticking.” There was a moon out, but it had been a long time since Jack had hunted anyone by moonlight alone. “We should take flashlights. Have either of you been up this trail before?”

“I have,” Ted said. “It’s hiking, not mountain climbing, but parts of the trail are tough. The waterfall is about two miles up.”

“We could call the sheriff ’s mountain rescue unit,” Mercy suggested.

“Do it,” Jack said. Mercy got on her phone and went through 911.

“Their ETA is more than twenty minutes for the helicopter,” she said after a moment. “No one’s going to get here any sooner.”

“Let’s see what we can do until they get here,” Jack said, stopping to reload the magazines for his SigSauer. He popped one magazine into the handle and racked the slide. “Let’s 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 12 A.M. AND 1 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

12:00 A.M. PST Vanderbilt Complex

“Moving at last,” President Barnes said.

Dr. Diebold, still wearing the biohazard suit, nodded. “Yes, sir. The containment tube is complete. It will take you straight down to the hazmat vehicle. You and the others will ride to National Health Services. We have a bio containment unit there.”

Carter nodded. “Advance teams have already cleared the facility, sir.”

Barnes turned to Xu Boxiong. “Sir, after you.”

Xu bowed and smiled. There was nothing like a crisis, Barnes thought, to turn acquaintances into friends or enemies. If either country’s security had botched this up, the

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other leader would have been at his counterpart’s throat. But both countries had screwed this pooch. They were in it together in every way.

“I trust the United States will not offer too much of a complaint if the People’s Republic takes stronger steps to break the separatist movement in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region?” Xu observed casually.

“Probably not,” Barnes replied. “And I trust that China will offer the G8 some movement that allows us to save face on humanitarian issues.”

Xu nodded. “I believe some steps can be taken.”

They stepped out through the airlock and into a long, clear plastic tunnel. Mitch Rasher was there, his round body hidden behind the bulk of the environmental suit. “Everything’s been handled, sir,” he said. “And it’s been done in coordination with the Chinese staff,” he added with a bow to President Xu. “Both offices issued statements that you both came down with minor cases of food poisoning—”

“You didn’t say poisoning?” Barnes interrupted.

“Of course not, sir,” Rasher said. “But that was the underlying message.”

“Isn’t it a bit too obvious if we two made the same claim?” Barnes asked. It seemed to him a lot like asking for three cards in a game of five-card stud.

“We got lucky there, Mr. President,” Rasher said, sounding pleased even through the muffled effects of his headgear and microphone. “Mr. Novartov of Russia actually did come down with food poisoning. So it all works out.”

“So this containment is good,” Barnes said as they reached the end of the plastic tunnel, which was attached to a huge yellow hazardous materials vehicle. “How’s our other containment?”

“One hundred percent so far, Mr. President,” his top aide replied. “Of course, this meeting was top secret anyway, so very few people knew you were here in the first place. The virus story itself is bound to get out—too many police and NHS personnel know about it. But your infection is known to very few.”

“Until I keel over,” Barnes said grimly. “Doctor, are you any closer to understanding this virus?”

Diebold shook his head inside his suit. “No, sir. I have Celia Alexis, one of my top people, working on it. But, sir, we’ve been studying Marburg and Ebola for years and we don’t have cures for them. I understand that the terrorist who did this claims to have a vaccine. Are we trying to locate that person?”

Barnes nodded. “We have people working on it.”

12:11 A.M. PST Temescal Canyon

Jack put one foot in front of the other carefully, settling his foot into the ground gently, then putting his weight down in order to avoid making too much noise. He hadn’t turned on his flashlight yet—it would do more to warn the driver of the car they’d seen at the start of the trail than it would do to illuminate his path.

This is a terrible way to stalk someone, he thought. His shoes and clothes were all inadequate for the terrain and the darkness. His SigSauer was a fine weapon, but he would have traded the pistol and all three magazines for an M40 sniper rifle with half a dozen rounds, and he might give that away for a decent pair of night vision goggles.

The Temescal Canyon trail rose steadily from its entrance off Sunset Boulevard and up into the mountains, running parallel to a thin ribbon of water that traveled a tortuous path from the mountains down to the Pacific Ocean. With the ex

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ception of a small Park Services ranger station at the entrance, the canyon was completely rustic, a gateway into the Santa Monica Mountains Preserve, a wide tract of wild land that ran along the backbone of the mountains that divided the Los Angeles basin from the inland area of the San Fernando Valley. The preserve was home to deer, rabbits, hawks, and a multitude of other wildlife. Hikers had been known to encounter mountain lions padding along the trails that wound in and out of the hills. Most Los Angelenos spent their days oblivious to the fact that this wilderness lay just outside their doorstep.

Ozersky and Mercy followed behind Jack, doing their best to be quiet. Ozersky was field trained, but he’d never been an operator as Jack had been, so his movements were a bit clumsy. What Mercy lacked in training she made up for in common sense. Even so, Jack wished he were working alone. He’d have moved faster.

The moon, nearly full, reflected enough light for Jack to see the path, except when they dipped down under thick groves of trees. Even then Jack didn’t use the flashlight. Somewhere ahead were men like the men he’d encountered at the Earth Café. Those men had reacted fast to his entry. He didn’t want to give their companions any more warning than he had to.

He’d been giving a lot of thought to those men at the café. Ayman al-Libbi had clearly gotten assistance from somewhere, but where? He was sure these men weren’t ETIM. The two who had attacked him at the Cat & Fiddle probably were, undoubtedly muscle given to al-Libbi by Marcus Lee or the man Jack had questioned at the Federal Building. But the shooters at the Earth Café were more Middle Eastern than Chinese.

Al-Libbi might be using this whole attack as a means of getting back into the good graces of terrorist sponsors. And if he’d already found muscle to do his bidding, his plan might already have succeeded. Which also meant that Jack had no idea the size of the force he was dealing with.

There was nothing for it. He had to save Kim’s life. He had to save the President. He was going to find someone who could deal with this virus, and God help whoever got in his way.

12:22 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

A cell phone sitting on a counter kept ringing. It rang every ten minutes or so. For more than an hour everyone had ignored it—there was far too much going on for anyone to pay attention to a phone not his own. But now, after midnight, the situation with the President had stabilized and the atmosphere at CTU, although tense, was steady.

So when the phone rang again, Jamey Farrell saw that the ring was coming from a phone inside a plastic bag sitting at Jack Bauer’s station. She picked it up without answering it and carried it up to the security desk. “Where’d this come from?” she asked.

The night guard had no idea personally, but he checked his log. “It was brought over from someone at the Federal Building. Bauer got himself arrested earlier and they took his cell phone.”

Jamey nodded and brought the phone to Christopher Henderson. “Figures,” Henderson muttered. “He loses his gun, his ID, and his cell phone, and only the phone comes back.”

As if on cue, the phone rang. “Bauer’s line,” Henderson said.

“At last,” said the smooth voice at the other end of the

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line. “Am I speaking to Agent Bauer or some other agent of

the Counter Terrorist Unit?”

“How can I help you?” Henderson said.

“This is Ayman al-Libbi.”

12:31 A.M. PST Temescal Canyon

Jack and the others trudged up a steep rise where the path rose up out of a gorge and onto a hilltop. Up ahead he could hear the murmur of falling water. Then, over that, he heard someone shout in alarm. He started to run.

12:34 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Three minutes after the phone call, Henderson had a recording of it put into a digital player. He and Ryan Chappelle played it back with Jamey Farrell listening.

“This is Ayman al-Libbi. I was given this number by a certain young woman who was also kind enough to give me a very deadly virus. As you may know already, I have both the virus and the antiviral medicine that cures it. This puts me at a distinct advantage since I also know that your President and the Premier of China have both been infected. They will both die within a few hours unless they are given this medication. I will be in touch with you soon.”

Chappelle swore a long, thin stream of expletives. “According to that waiter, how much time do they have?”

Henderson checked his watch. “Less than eight hours.”

12:38 A.M. PST Temescal Canyon

Anything can happen in four minutes. The terrorists, whoever they were, could have killed Santiago a dozen times over. Or it might not even be Santiago. The people from the Volvo might not even be terrorists.

But Jack Bauer ran as if his daughter’s life depended on it. More shouts drifted down from above. He didn’t wait for Ozersky or Mercy. He plunged down into another dell, then sprinted up out of it into moonlight again. The path leveled out and the sound of rushing water grew louder.

Voices called to each other in Farsi and a moment later several shots rang out. Jack guessed that the terrorists had tried to dispatch their victim quietly, but had failed. Now they were resorting to gunfire. He saw several muzzle flashes in the distance.

Jack stopped, took a deep breath, raised his weapon, and waited. A moment later there was another muzzle flash. Jack leveled his sights behind the flash and pulled the trigger twice. He heard one cry of pain and several shouts of alarm. He’d given his position away, but now the terrorists had to divide their attention between their victim and him.

Jack moved to the inward side of the path. Trees lined the path from here to the waterfall he could hear ahead, but they were scraggly trees with thin trunks. They offered more concealment than cover, but he would take what he could get. Jack moved from tree to tree, silent now because his quarry had gone silent.

The victim, however, was making a lot of noise. “Help! Help!” he shouted. “Whoever’s out there, they’re trying to kill me! Help!”

Keep yelling, Jack thought. Cover the sound of my movement.

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He moved up to the next tree and stopped, listening. He could see nothing, nor hear any threat, but some sixth sense told him he’d covered enough ground. The ambush would be somewhere in this range. That’s where he’d have put it.

Someone sobbed in the darkness, and Jack’s muzzle swung there like a magnet to a steel plate, but he didn’t fire. It was the man he’d put down. Don’t reveal your position to kill a man who’s already dead.

Footsteps behind him. Ozersky and Mercy were coming. They would draw fire. Jack prepared himself.

He heard Ozersky’s heavy footsteps and Mercy’s labored breathing. They’d get shot in the dark if the terrorists were any good.

Thunder and lightning erupted under the trees as the two gunmen opened fire. The minute their rounds went off, Jack found them. Jack emptied his magazine at them, and then all firing ceased. Smoothly he ejected the magazine and slid another one into place. As the snap of the slide gave his position away, he moved forward and crouched low.

“Help!” someone yelled from near the water. “Help me!”

Moans and whimpers rose up from the ground. He could hear something shuffling or rolling back and forth in the dirt. Jack moved forward quietly. Shreds of moonlight turned the area deep gray, and in the gloom he saw two figures lying on the ground, one motionless and the other twitching and sobbing. “Search them,” he whispered into the darkness behind him, and moved on. He passed the third body, the one he’d shot from long range, and kicked the gun from the corpse’s hand.

“Help me!” The waterfall was just ahead.

He couldn’t see it well in the moonlight, but from what he could tell, the falls consisted of one short cascade from the ridge above into a wide pool, then another much higher fall into the gorge below.

“I can’t hold on!”

The voice came from the darkness of the gorge. Jack pulled out his flashlight and shined it downward.

“Pico Santiago!” Jack yelled, his voice nearly blending with the rush of falling water.

“Help!”

Santiago was there, halfway down the gorge, clinging to a ledge by his hands. Jack guessed what must have happened. The terrorists had caught up with Santiago and tried to kill him quietly. He struggled and broke free. When they pursued him, he had tried to escape by climbing down the gorge. It had been a brave and stupid thing to do. There was no way to climb down that cliff at night. Santiago had fallen or slid, but had been lucky enough to catch himself on an outcropping of rocks and bushes.

“Hold on!” Jack shouted. “I’m coming down for you!”

He didn’t know what else to do. Besides, he could be as brave and stupid as the next guy.

“Jack!” Mercy called out, following the beam of his flashlight. “Wait for the helicopter. They’ll be here soon.”

“He’s not going to last,” Jack said, half to himself. The flashlight had a cord, which Jack looped around his neck. Then he held the light between his teeth and started to climb down. He chose a path above and just on the waterfall side of Santiago, so that he would land on the man if he fell. Unfortunately, that put him closer to the water, so the rocks and plants he grabbed for handholds were slippery.

“I can’t hold on!” the man yelled.

“You hold on, you son of a bitch!” Jack yelled.

“My hands...” the man moaned.

“It’s not about you!” Jack yelled down at him, dropping the light from his mouth and letting it swing. He was still twenty feet above, and the going was slow. “You hold on because people are going to die if you don’t!”

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“Agh!” one of Santiago’s hands slipped away from its hold. He was clinging by one hand.

“Hold on!” Jack inched downward, foot by foot. He willed Santiago to be stronger, to hold tighter. But in the end it was not Jack’s will but Santiago’s that was most important, and Santiago’s broke. His other hand slipped, and Jack watched him fall away from the beam of the flashlight with a short cry.

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 A.M. AND 2 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

1:00 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Christopher Henderson was convinced his headache was permanent. He’d started the day worried about nothing more than crowd control at the Federal Building and what he’d thought of as Jack Bauer’s overeager attempt to find a terrorist needle in a haystack. Now he was co-managing a crisis of global proportions with Ryan Chappelle while Jack Bauer left a trail of bodies from one end of the city to the other.

No sooner did they have forensics teams at one location than Bauer was calling from another, asking for more cleanup.

Jamey Farrell was in his office giving him a summary of

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the most recent information they had gathered. Her voice was hoarse from talking, but otherwise she was fresh. “The two shooters who attacked Jack on Sunset Boulevard this afternoon were definitely ETIM. We had them on a watch list, but they were never identified near any hot spots until the shooting, and they were too low a priority for surveillance. The one who survived the fight with Jack has been cooperative, but he doesn’t know much more than we know.”

Henderson nodded. “With Marcus Lee dead and Kasim Turkel out of commission, I’d say ETIM is back to low-priority status. What about the others?”

“Frankie Michaelmas is dead, Bernard Copeland is dead. Jack met up with two shooters at the Earth Café. Both of them are dead, but we do have information on them.”

“Go,” Henderson said, focusing in.

“They have nothing to do with ETIM as far as we can tell. They’re both Iranians who immigrated here in ’92 and ’94, respectively. We have files on them, shared with the FBI, but they’re scant. One was interviewed after the truck bomb at the World Trade Center in ’93, and both were interviewed after 9/11, but in both cases the evidence pointed toward Saudis rather than Iranians, so they weren’t pressed. Their files were kept active because they were known to attend a mosque run by a fairly vocal cleric named Ahmad Moussavi Ardebili, but they’ve never made a peep otherwise.”

“Sleeper cell?” Henderson thought aloud.

“It looks that way. And a really patient one.”

“Okay, I’ll put a team together. Let’s revisit our database for this cleric and round up everyone we think is a possible suspect.”

1:09 A.M. PST Silverlake Area of Los Angeles

“Last one,” Tony Almeida said.

“Too bad,” Nina replied. “I’m getting to like waking people up.”

While Jack had gone to track down Pico Santiago, Nina and Tony had been given a list of three names—people who might know where Sarah Kalmijn was hiding. The first two had been dead ends, the individuals clearly having little or no idea what Sarah did in her spare time. This was the last address, a small house in the bohemian Silverlake area that looked down on Hollywood and central Los Angeles.

Nina walked up to the door of the little Craftsman bungalow while Tony stood farther back by one of the wooden pillars that marked a Craftsman. But before she reached for the bell, Nina drew her pistol. Tony mimicked her movement and stepped forward where he could see what Nina had noticed: the door was closed but the jamb was shattered. Someone had broken into the house.

Using hand signals, Tony indicated that he was going around the back. Nina nodded and counted to five silently, giving Tony time to get around. Then she eased the door open slowly. The house was dark. She listened, but heard no sound until a barely audible creak came from the back of the house. Tony was inside. Nina pulled a tiny Surefire flashlight from her belt and fired it up. The beam swept the living room and came to rest almost instantly on a figure lying on the floor. She swept her hand along the nearest wall and flipped up a light switch, illuminating the room.

A woman lay on the floor, a piece of electrical cord wrapped around her neck. Nina knelt beside the body without touching it. The woman’s tongue was enlarged and

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her eyes bulged slightly. She’d been strangled to death.

Tony entered. “Damn it. I’ll the call the PD. Let’s get a forensics team out here.”

“These guys are a step ahead of us,” Nina said.

A door creaked behind them and both CTU agents whirled around, weapons ready. “Don’t shoot!” someone yelled from the closet.

“Come out slowly!” Tony ordered. “Hands first, hands where I can see them!”

A pair of thin female hands appeared in the half-open doorway, followed by two graceful arms and then the complete figure of a young woman in her thirties with short black hair. She looked terrified.

“Don’t shoot me!” she pleaded. “I heard you say to call someone. Are you...are you the police?”

“Federal agents, ma’am,” Tony said. “What happened?”

“Thank god, thank god,” she said, shuddering as though releasing hours of pent-up tension. She broke down in tears for a minute, falling beside the body of the other woman as tears poured down her cheeks. “I just left her there. I was so afraid, I thought they might still be here.”

“Who was it?” Nina asked. “Who did this?”

“Two men,” the woman said. “They broke in. I was in there.” She pointed to the closet. “They attacked Susan. They hit her until she told them what they wanted, and then they— they...” She started to cry again.

Tony checked the closet and realized why the terrorists had missed the woman. In the back of the closet, half-hidden by a couple of coats, was the door to a tiny darkroom.

Nina put a hand on the woman’s shoulder. “I’m sorry, ma’am, but it’s important that we know what she told them. What were they asking?”

The woman wiped her eyes. “Th-they were asking about Sarah. Sarah Kalmijn is a friend of ours. They wanted to know where to find her. Susan told them, she did, and they

killed her anyway.”

“Where did they tell her to go?”

“What do you want with Sarah?”

Tony curled his lip unhappily. “Right now we just want to save her life. Where would she be if she’s not home?”

The woman had started crying again, but between sobs she gave them the answer Susan had given her tormentors. Sarah blew off steam at underground parties—raves. She was a lawyer now but she hated her job and forgot her troubles by attending the raves thrown by a college friend who ran a DJ company called Goodnight’s. That was all she knew.

1:27 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

“Jamey, I need to leave,” Jessi said.

Jamey Farrell looked up from her work, bleary-eyed and brain-fried. She’d been through some long days at CTU, and this one matched them all. “Can you stay a little longer? I’m just getting a call from Tony Almeida and I’m going to need some research.”

“No,” Jessi said. “I mean I need to leave CTU.”

Jamey put down her pen. “You mean for good.”

Jessi nodded. “I lost someone today—”

“I know, I heard. I’m sorry. It comes with the territory here sometimes—”

Jessi shook her head. “That’s everybody’s attitude. No one’s even stopped to think about it. Kelly worked here. Okay, not as long as Jack Bauer or some of the others, but he had friends here. But everyone goes on like nothing happened.”

Jamey set her jaw. If Jessi had been hoping for sympathy,

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she was going to be disappointed. “Listen, ’cause I’m only going to tell you this once. No one here pretends like nothing happened. But if you want to work in this unit, then you have to get tougher than this. In this line of work, people die. And do you know what happens if we stop to mourn them right away? More people die. Those agents out in the field can’t stop to bury every body because they’re busy stopping the bad guys from killing more people. Same goes for us in here.”

“I—I know . . . that’s why I think I need to leave.” Jessi crossed her arms like a shield. “Jamey, I missed something earlier. I was going over security footage that I’d downloaded and I saw one of those people they’re looking for, Pico Santiago. I could have tracked him, I could have led Jack straight to him, but I missed it because I was upset.”

“Then you screwed up. Now fix it.”

“He’s dead! I can’t make him alive again—”

“No, but you can do your job so the agents in the field do their job and keep more people alive.” She crossed her own arms. “You want to mourn the guy you had a crush on, then do it by getting the guys who killed him.”

1:38 A.M. PST Temescal Canyon

With no fear of an ambush, Jack and the others made better time down the hill. They had waited for the mountain rescue helicopter and lost a few precious minutes while Jack explained what had happened to the stricken pilots surveying the carnage, and then double-timed back down the trail.

As Jack, Mercy, and Ted Ozersky climbed back into the car, Jack’s phone rang. It was Jamey Farrell. She briefed Jack on the events Almeida had reported. “Thirty more seconds and I’ll have an address for you. You’re taking one and Tony and Nina are taking the other. They’re the two most probable locations for Sarah Kalmijn.”

“Where’s Henderson? Why isn’t he briefing me?”

“He’s out. The guys you killed may be part of an Iranian sleeper cell. Henderson is leading a raid.”

“Okay,” Jack said. “We keep swinging and missing. We have to hit a home run this time.”

“You don’t know the half of it,” Jamey said. She told Jack about the call on his cell phone from al-Libbi.

“Has he made any demands?” Jack asked.

“Not yet, but Henderson and Chappelle are sure he will.”

“We’ll get him first.”

“Here’s the address.” She read off a location.

1:54 A.M. PST Rancho Park Neighborhood, Los Angeles

Christopher Henderson sat in the back of a CTU van studying a hastily generated blueprint of the house owned by Ah-mad Moussavi Ardebili. The easiest way to botch a raid was failure to plan, and Henderson’s five-minute pep talk with his squad hardly counted as planning. But it couldn’t be helped. They were running out of time.

“It looks like there are two rear entrances,” Henderson said to A. J. Patterson, his squad leader. “Send half your men around the—”

“We won’t need it,” someone said from the front of the van. “Look!”

Henderson pushed forward and looked out the window. They were in a well-lit neighborhood of short but well-kept lawns and fairly large houses, many of them rebuilt “Persian palaces” that were popular in the area. In front of one of

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these, four or five men were hurriedly running out of the houses carrying boxes, which they stowed in the back of a Dodge pickup truck.

“Moving day,” Patterson said, hefting his MP–5. “Let’s see if we can help.”

The CTU van stopped and the agents poured out, shouting at the men to freeze. Three of them did, but two of them ran into the house, with Henderson, Patterson, and two other agents in pursuit.

Henderson was second in the door behind Patterson. There was a loud bang and Patterson fell out of sight. Henderson nearly tripped over him, but managed to keep his feet and squeeze off a burst of automatic fire in the direction of the blast. He barely had time to register that he was in a living room with a fire burning in the fireplace before someone slammed into him, pinning his MP–5 to the wall. But Patterson was suddenly on his feet again. A short burst from his submachine gun made Henderson’s assailant vanish.

The entry team flowed forward, and now Henderson saw a short, squat man with a long salt-and-pepper beard kneeling at the fireplace, squealing at the sight of the CTU team as he lifted a box and dumped documents into the fire. Henderson grabbed the bearded man and hauled him away. Without regard for his own safety, Patterson stuck his hands into the fire and scooped the papers, some of them ablaze, into his arms and hauled them out. He fell on the stack, rolling back and forth with his body to stifle the flames.

“Ahmad Moussavi Ardebili, you are under arrest for conspiracy to commit terrorist acts against the United States,” Henderson said, panting. He glanced at the papers. “Start going through these immediately.”

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THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 2 A.M. AND 3 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

2:00 A.M. PST Fairfax District

The club was called Plush, and it was anything but. It was, essentially, a giant warehouse space with a long wooden plank that served as a bar. Only two things recommended it: the bar was fully stocked and the DJ was fantastic. Since most people went to raves to drink and dance, the setup was perfect and the club was an enormous underground success.

The ride over had been silent. Jack was completely focused on finding this last person who could stop the virus. Mercy had not had time to recover from the shock of Jack’s revelation, and sat lost in her own thoughts. Ozersky guessed at the tension between them and decided to stay out of it as much as possible.

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It wasn’t until they reached the warehouse just off Fairfax Avenue that Jack spoke. “I’ll go in alone. Mercy, you and Ted go in together. We’re looking for the DJ named Good-night. He’s friends with Sarah Kalmijn.”

Ozersky started forward, but Mercy grabbed Jack’s arm and held him back a few steps. “I was thinking in the car. When you were telling me about your marriage, you said you and your wife had gone to Catalina for the weekend, and that it was a great weekend.”

“Yeah,” Jack said noncommittally.

“That’s where you saw al-Libbi, isn’t it? When you got back?”

“Yes,” he affirmed again.

She shook her head in disbelief. “You’re a piece of work, Jack. You used the vacation with your wife as a setup for staking out the docks. You’re the best operator I’ve ever met, but you’re a real son of a bitch.”

2:08 A.M. PST Melrose Avenue, Los Angeles

Tony and Nina arrived at their assignment. This club was on Melrose a mile east of Plush, designed into the shell of an old forties movie theater. The big bouncer at the door, standing six feet, five inches and built like a comic book superhero, tried to stop them, but Tony held up his badge. “Where do we find Goodnight?”

The bouncer waved them inside. “He’s spinning the records, man.”

Tony and Nina walked inside and were immediately assaulted by pulsing red and blue lights, strobe lights, and music with a bass line that throbbed in their chests and a melody, if that’s what it was, that was repetitive and hypnotic.

“I swear,” Tony said, “you could use this music to brainwash people.”

Nina looked at the crowd of twenty-somethings writhing to the music. “It’s working,” she said.

They pushed their way through the grinding crowd until they reached a dais at the far side. Their badges got them past that bouncer, too, and they climbed up to stand beside the sound equipment being run by a round-bodied, chubby-faced black man wearing small, squarish, black-framed glasses, who sweated profusely under his earphones.

“Hey!” Tony said, holding up his badge.

The DJ nodded at them, then did a double-take when he saw the badge. A look of disgust crossed his face, as he slid the headphones down around his neck.

“Man, what’d we do? I’ve got permits for everything.”

Tony shook his head. “Are you Goodnight?”

“That’s right.”

“We’re looking for Sarah Kalmijn.”

“What?”

Tony put his face close to Goodnight’s ear and said it again.

“She in trouble?” the DJ shouted back.

“Not with us. We want to protect her. She here?”

Goodnight shook his head. “Try the other club, she goes there, too. But if there’s really a problem, I don’t think she’s gonna be there.”

“Where’d she be?” Tony asked over the music.

“Her family’s got a boat down in Marina del Rey. That’s where she goes when things get bad.”

“You know the name of the boat?”

“No, man, I don’t remember. It’s Marina del Rey, though.”

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2:20 A.M. PST Plush

Jack accomplished his mission quickly. The DJ at Plush didn’t know Sarah at all and told them to check the other club, where Goodnight was spinning that night. Frustrated, Jack turned to go, motioning for the others to follow. They pushed through the noise and the crowds toward the door.

Ted saw them first. He produced his pistol as if by magic, shouting something that Jack could not hear over the music. Ozersky shouted again and pointed. Now Jack saw the door. There were three of them, dark-haired men with guns firing at the bouncers, who fell to the ground. One of the men reached in and grabbed the doors to the warehouse and pulled them shut. Just before they closed, another man tossed something inside—a large can with a rag sticking out of it.

“Down!” Jack yelled. Ozersky grabbed the dancers nearest him and dragged them downward. Jack and Mercy dived for the floor. A moment later the can exploded, spraying flame and liquid everywhere. Burning liquid splashed on the ravers, setting their clothes on fire, and hit the walls, burning wood and posters. The alcohol-sprinkled floor caught fire. People screamed and rushed for the door. Jack barely had time to pull himself and Mercy up before the crowd surged forward.

Someone pulled at the doors, which opened inward. “It’s chained!” Jack heard. “It’s chained from the outside.”

The liquid fire was homemade napalm, which not only ignited combustible material but also burned into the skin. The fire was already spreading. Smoke began to blur Jack’s vision. He looked up and saw a window at second-story height to the left of the locked doors. “Help me!” he yelled. He shoved his way to the wall, Ted and Mercy following in his wake.

“Stand there,” he ordered Ted, and the other CTU agent braced himself against the wall. Jack planted a foot on his slightly bent leg and boosted himself up, his other foot reaching the height of Ozersky’s head, and soon he was standing on the other man’s shoulders. Jack reached up but the window was too high. Maybe if he jumped...

The room was in chaos. The fire spread with unbelievable quickness. It was almost impossible to think over the heat and the terrified screams.

“Pull me.” Mercy was below him, reaching up.

Jack reached his hand down to Mercy. Without hesitation, she climbed up Ozersky’s back, caught Jack’s hand, and mountain climbed up both CTU agents until she was on Jack’s back. She reached the window. Mercy drew her gun and used its muzzle to smash the glass, then knocked out the jagged teeth of shattered glass to avoid being cut.

Mercy stuck her head out the window to assess the far side. She didn’t hear the gunshot over the noise inside, but she felt it brush through her hair, nearly scalping her. She was so startled she nearly threw herself backward into the crowd.

“Gun!” she yelled, ducking her head down.

“Go!” Jack yelled. “Go!”

“Are you fucking crazy!” she yelled.

“Look!” he said. The fire raged. If Plush had a sprinkler system, it was malfunctioning. The walls were in flames. Panicked ravers pounded against the door as those behind pushed forward, crushing those in front.

This virus isn’t going to kill me, Mercy thought. Knowing Jack Bauer is going to kill me. She gathered herself, adjusted her grip on her pistol, and launched herself upward. She vaulted over the window frame and fell almost a story to the

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ground below. Gunshots sounded almost in her ear. Mercy rolled on the ground and came up, weapon in hand.

It was the most lucid moment in Mercy Bennet’s life. She was aware of moving quickly, but she did not feel hurried. She experienced a groove, the steady calm of a snowboarder hurtling downhill, but completely under control. She acquired the first man and put one bullet into him, then swiveled to the next. Bullets ricocheted off the ground around her. She felt one pass through the cloth of her shirt between her arm and her ribs. She laid her muzzle over the chest of the second man and squeezed. She was about to shoot the third when Jack landed on him heavily. The man crumpled under Jack’s weight. Bauer smashed him in the face three times with the muzzle of his SigSauer. Jack turned toward the doors. A short, thick chain had been looped through the handles, locking the doors in place. Jack pointed his own gun at the lock and fired four times, shielding his eyes from the blast and hoping no ricochets killed him. When he was done, smoke rose up from his gun as the chain fell down.

“Help them!” Jack commanded. Mercy helped Ted shove the doors inward, against the pressing crowd.

Ozersky appeared in the crowd, yelling “Move, move, goddamn it!” The crowd inside managed to make enough space, and the next moment they were streaming out of the building.

Jack ignored it all. He knelt down beside the man he’d struck. Finally, he had one of them alive. “What’s al-Libbi’s plan?”

The man grinned at him with broken teeth. “Who’s al-Libbi?”

Jack lifted the man’s left hand, placed the muzzle of his gun against the palm, and fired. The man screamed.

“Jesus!” Mercy screamed at him. Jack ignored her.

“What’s his plan?” Jack said. He didn’t know if he’d gone mad or if he was thinking with perfect clarity. But he did know that time was running out, he was low on leads, and important people would die if he didn’t find a solution.

“I...I don’t know,” the man said, his voice suddenly pleading and desperate.

“Tell me something,” Jack threatened. “Tell me something worth knowing right now or I’ll get some of that napalm you made and pour it down your throat.”

The man started to speak. What he said brought Jack no closer to finding Sarah Kalmijn, but it was valuable nonetheless.

2:45 A.M. PST Rancho Park Neighborhood, Los Angeles

Henderson and his squad divided the rescued papers into five charred piles and began to sort through them. Many of the pages were in Arabic and would need to be translated later.

“Do we know what we’re looking for?” Patterson asked in a low voice. He had gone down earlier when a bullet had punched him through the vest he wore. The Kevlar had stopped the round, but the force had bruised his sternum.

“No,” Henderson conceded. “But anything with American names on it. Santiago, Romond, Kalmijn...”

“Kalmij-n?” one of the operators said, holding up a burned scrap and mispronouncing the name.

“Kal-mane,” Henderson corrected. “Give me that, please.”

It was a sheet of notepaper written in English, the words hastily scribbled. Under Sarah Kalmijn’s name Henderson saw the addresses of two clubs or bars, and also the phrase “Marina del Rey At Last.” He guessed it was another bar.

“Call Jack Bauer,” Henderson said.

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2:53 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Bauer’s recovered cell phone rang again, and this time Ryan Chappelle answered.

“To whom am I speaking now?” Ayman al-Libbi asked. Chappelle signaled for the trace to begin.

“This is Regional Division Director Ryan Chappelle.”

“That sounds important,” al-Libbi said patronizingly. “That’s good, because my message is also important. Tell the President of the United States that he is holding five men prisoner in a secret holding facility just outside Los Angeles. You know who they are. These five men are to be allowed to go free. If this is not done within one hour, I will destroy the antiviral medicine. If it is done, I will give you the antidote. I will call again in forty-five minutes.”

He hung up. Chappelle looked at Jamey Farrell, who shook her head and slapped the table in frustration. “He had some kind of router. We can beat it, but he needs to be on the phone longer.”

Chappelle ran a hand over his balding head. He knew of the men al-Libbi wanted. They were Iranians the CIA and CTU were sure belonged to Iran’s terrorist network; all three had history with Hezbollah. They’d been plucked out of various European countries using methods some would call illegal. They’d been bounced around from secret bases in Europe to Guantanamo Bay, but as those facilities came under scrutiny they’d been moved, so they ended up in a secret holding facility CTU maintained out in the high desert region above Los Angeles along the Pear Blossom Highway.

“I have to take this to the President,” he said.

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THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 3 A.M. AND 4 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

3:00 A.M. PST West Los Angeles

Jack hurtled down the 405 Freeway chasing the last lead they had. Tony had called him with the news about a boat in Marina del Rey. He had no more information, so Jack had jumped in the car, barely giving Mercy and Ted time to climb in, before he peeled off.

“Call Jamey and have her search the harbormaster’s records. Sarah’s name is bound to be there somewhere.” He hung up and drove.

There was silence in the car again, but this time Mercy broke it. “You shot that man through the hand,” she said at last.

Jack nodded. “That man knows how to keep you from dying sometime in the next few hours.”

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“I don’t have any sympathy for him,” Mercy said. “But . . . but do you ever wonder if what you’re doing is okay? What if sometimes they’re right and you’re wrong?”

Jack looked at her, his eyes steady and his face like stone. “Sometimes I’m wrong,” he said. “But they are never right.”

His phone rang again. “Bauer.”

“Jamey,” said the analyst. “Jack, Tony relayed your request. There’s nothing in the harbormaster’s database for any Sarah Kalmijn, or anyone else with that surname. If she really does have a boat, the slip and the boat are registered to someone else.”

“Keep digging,” he said, speaking shorthand. “There’s got to be something.” He hung up, but the phone rang yet again.

“Jack, it’s me,” said Christopher Henderson. “I’ve got something random here. It’s one of those things that sticks out, but I don’t know where to put it.”

“Go.”

“We raided the cleric’s house and pulled some notes. By the way, if nothing else goes right, unearthing this sleeper cell itself was a huge security coup. Anyway, there are notes here on one of your targets, Sarah Kalmijn. I know you’ve already been to the clubs, but another note says ‘Marina del Rey At Last.’ That mean anything to you?”

Jack felt fear and dread settle side by side in his stomach. “Yes, it does,” he said. “Thanks, Chris. You have no idea how much you just helped.”

At the end of the day, it was that sort of teamwork that made field operations possible. One agent relaying information to another, the analysts at headquarters sifting data and digging for information. In less than two minutes Jack’s headlong, purposeless race to Marina del Rey had a purpose, because one phone call to Jamey Farrell, and a few strokes of her keyboard, told him that the thirty-foot sailing yacht At Last was docked in slip 268, H Basin, in Marina del Rey.

It also told Jack that al-Libbi’s people knew about it and would be there, too.

At three o’clock in the morning, the Los Angeles freeways worked the way they were supposed to. Jack swung onto the 90 Freeway from the 405 and arrived in Marina del Rey in less than ten minutes.

“I don’t want to be surprised by these guys again,” Jack said. “Ted, stay at the near end of the dock in case they come after us. Mercy, follow me down to the finger where slip 268 is, but then do some reconnaissance past that. Okay with you?”

They both nodded.

The harbor at Marina del Rey was huge, a manmade project that involved digging four separate basins that were subsequently flooded with sea water. H Basin lay just off Admiralty Way. Jack parked the car in a small lot near a blue shack that advertised sailing lessons. All three got out and hurried toward the docks. The docks were lit, and they saw row after row of slips holding boats of all shapes and sizes. The main dock, running perpendicular to the slips, was accessible, but a fence ran the length of that dock and a gate at each row required a key to get down to the boats themselves.

As they set foot on the long dock, Ted took up a position in the shadows and waited. Mercy and Jack hurried down the ramp and along the dock until they came to the row containing number 268. Just then a boat engine powered up.

“No,” Jack said calmly. He vaulted the fence and ran down the row of moored boats. Number 268 was near the end, and by the time he reached it, the boat—a white thirty-foot single-masted yacht—was sliding out of its space. Jack gathered steam as he ran and launched himself onto the boat. He

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landed with his feet on the deck but nearly bounced back from the lifelines that ran the perimeter like a wire fence. Catching his balance, he hopped over the lifelines.

“Get the hell away from me!” yelled a woman’s voice, and a metal pole jabbed Jack in the face, tearing into his cheek. “Get off my boat!”

“Wait!” Jack yelled, staggered back from the blow, and nearly fell off the boat. She hit him again with the pole. Jack grabbed it to keep it from moving. “I’m a Federal agent!” he snapped. “I’m here to help you.”

That did not seem to make her any happier. “Get the fuck off my boat! I didn’t do anything!”

The pole jabbed him in the stomach this time. He’d had enough. Pivoting, he wrenched the pole from her hands, dropped it, and lunged forward. He jumped onto the molded bench near the wheel and caught the woman’s wrists.

She was pretty and blond with short hair. Her eyes were lovely, but currently filled with panic. “Shut up and listen,” he said. “I’m a Federal agent. I know all about the Monkey Wrench Gang and Bernard Copeland or Smith or whatever you want to call him. I know about the virus.” At this, her panic increased, but he stifled her movements with his grip on her wrists. “I’m not here to arrest you. We need you.”

She stopped struggling. “You... need...?”

“You’re Sarah Kalmijn, right?”

“Yes.”

“Listen carefully because I don’t have a lot of time. Part of Copeland’s plan worked. The President did get the virus. In fact, several people have contracted it. But Frankie Michael-mas sold you all out. She gave the virus and the antiviral medicine to terrorists, real terrorists. We need to know how to create a new antiviral medicine or people will start dying.”

Sarah looked terrified. “Do they have the weaponized version or the natural—?”

“Both. Stop asking questions,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know when there’s time. Right now assassins have killed Pico Santiago and Todd Romond, and you’re next. Do you know how to make more vaccine?”

“It’s not exactly a vaccine. It’s an antiviral—”

“Whatever. Can you make it?”

“No,” Sarah said. Jack’s heart sank until she added, “But I know where Copeland kept his notes stored.”

“We searched his house—”

“Not there. It’s at Santa Monica Airport. I can show you.”

“Good.”

The boat had drifted out into the main channel as they spoke. Sarah grabbed the wheel and straightened the boat out, the chugging engine barely giving them any momentum. She started to turn the boat around as she said, “Did you— did you say that the President has the virus? Is he okay?”

“Last update I got,” Jack said. “But not for much longer.”

Sarah hesitated, then said, “I have something you’ll want. Hold her steady.” She put his hands on the wheel and reached down into her bag. She removed a leather camera case that had been stuffed with strips of rags. Tossing the rags aside, she removed a thin vial of clear liquid and handed it to Jack.

“Is this what I—?”

“The antiviral,” Sarah said. “When Bernard really started messing with the virus, I stole a dose for myself. I’m terrified of that virus.”

Jack took the vial from her and put it into the pocket of his jacket. “I’ve seen what it does to—” He stopped. A powerful engine roared nearby, and Jack heard the hiss and splash of rapidly displaced water. A searchlight fired up, shining brightly on Sarah’s boat.

“Get down!” Jack yelled, slamming Sarah Kalmijn onto the deck. Guns blazed on board the speedboat, and bullets riddled

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the side of the boat, splintering the fiberglass. The speedboat came closer, intending to board. Jack fired his SigSauer, and the boat veered away as someone cursed in Farsi.

Jack got off a few more rounds, but the assassins had fire superiority. There must have been four or five of them in the speedboat because they laid down a constant rate of fire, forcing Jack to stay low, covering Sarah as she murmured, “Oh god, don’t let them hurt me,” over and over.

The speedboat came closer. Jack stuck his gun over the edge of the cockpit and fired, but they were blind and wild shots that wouldn’t slow these assassins down. Mercy was on the dock and Ozersky was undoubtedly running to some sort of position, but it would be tough for them to acquire targets from where they were. The gunfight must have awakened the entire harbor, but it would take minutes for anyone to respond effectively, and Jack was sure he had only seconds.

Jack cast about desperately for an idea. Spying the stern of the boat, he saw a silver pan attached to the railing. He knew from his trip to Catalina Island that the silver pan was a barbecue.

Gunfire slapped against the fiberglass. They’d be able to board soon. “Does this boat use a propane tank? Do you have a stove down below?”

“What? Yes!” Sarah said, holding her arms over her head and pressing her head to the deck.

“Stay here,” he ordered. Jack slid along the cockpit floor, scraping knees as he did, and dropped down into the cabin. He fumbled in the dark until he found a flashlight in a cubbyhole above the stove. By its light he spun open the gas valves on each of the four burners. Gas hissed out into the cabin.

Jack crawled back onto the deck. The speedboat was ten meters away. Jack emptied his magazine at them, and they ducked low.

Now, he thought. Jack grabbed Sarah Kalmijn and dragged her over the side of the boat away from the assassins. They both fell into the freezing water of the harbor. Jack held his breath and clamped a hand over Sarah’s mouth and nose. He refused to let her drown. Kicking away from the boat, he swam under water as long and as far as he could.

3:40 A.M. PST H Basin, Aboard At Last

Eshmail Nouri was the first aboard the sailboat, a fresh magazine in his Glock pistol. Two of his three men boarded with him while the third stayed in the speedboat.

It had been a bad night for Eshmail. As far as he was concerned, their cell had been wasted. Years of patience and tolerance had been abandoned in the blink of an eye. Eshmail had lost good friends and excellent operatives at every step. Even when his people succeeded they ended up dead! He hated the American government more than ever.

It had been a bad night, but he would make the Americans pay. Nouri stuck the muzzle of his pistol down into the cabin and opened fire. Too late did he hear the hiss and smell the gas. A ball of fire engulfed him, his colleagues, the sailboat, and the motorboat, and his bad night was over.

3:42 A.M. PST H Basin

Jack came to the surface and gasped for breath as the fireball dissipated and the boom rolled out over the waters of the harbor.

“Jack!” Mercy called. “Jack!”

“I’m okay!” he called out. “I’ve got her.”

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Jack swam to the sound of Mercy’s voice. By the time he and Sarah reached the dock, Ozersky was there, too. Sirens wailed in the distance and people, mostly live-aboards, were gathering.

“This is Sarah Kalmijn,” Jack said as Mercy pulled him out of the water. “She’s going to take us to Copeland’s notes so we can re-create the antiviral medicine.”

Mercy held up a towel she’d pulled off someone’s boat. Jack took off his coat and wrapped himself in the towel. He was soaked, freezing, exhausted. But he was not going to give up now.

“Come on, we have to hurry.”

3:45 A.M. PST National Health Services, Los Angeles

The phone in Chappelle’s hand rang and he answered. He’d driven over to Health Services to be with the President when the call came in. The phone had been attached to a speakerphone so Barnes could hear from inside the bio containment unit.

“I’m here,” Chappelle said.

“As are others, I’m sure,” al-Libbi said smugly, “so I’ll be quick. What have you decided?”

Chappelle looked at Barnes for final confirmation. The President nodded. “We agree,” Chappelle said. “The five will be released immediately.”

“Perfect,” al-Libbi replied. “Go to the corner of Olympic Boulevard and Colby. Assuming the five are actually released in the next few minutes, and assuming I get confirmation, you will find a package there.” The terrorist hung up.

Chappelle picked up a different phone. “Henderson, send Almeida and Myers. Olympic and Colby. Go, now!”

Barnes, on his side of the plastic shielding, squeezed his hands together so hard the knuckles turned white. He looked at Mitch Rasher, and then at Chappelle. “Once this is over, we’re going to use every means at our disposal to kill that man.”

3:52 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

CTU was as quiet as it would ever get, with most of its field agents out on assignment and half the analysts sleeping in their chairs from sheer exhaustion.

One person was still up. Jamey Farrell sat in her seat, analyzing data signals from Ayman al-Libbi’s phone. His trick was simple, as the best tricks usually are. His cell phone bounced around various satellites, being rerouted so that its point of origin, if it could be tracked at all, took time to find. And of course he never stayed on the phone that long.

But each time he’d called, Jamey had narrowed her field of search. She knew he was in Los Angeles somewhere, so the signal had to bounce off a local cell station first. On his first call, she’d figured out that he was not in West Los Angeles anymore. On his second call, she knew he was calling from somewhere south of downtown.

He had just called a third time, and she had him. He was at the Los Angeles International Airport. Smiling to herself, Jamey called Jack Bauer.

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THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 4 A.M. AND 5 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

4:00 A.M. PST H Basin

Jack listened to Jamey Farrell speak, and then he knew what he had to do.

“Mercy,” he said. “You and Ted take Sarah to Santa Monica Airport. Get the documents to National Health Services. I’m going to get Ayman al-Libbi. He’s at LAX. Sarah, do you have a car?”

She nodded. “But the keys were on the boat.”

“I’ll hotwire it. Just tell me where it is.”

She pointed out a Toyota Prius. Jack got in and drove away.

Mercy was feeling light-headed. “Ted, you should drive if you don’t mind.”

“Sure,” he said. They got in the car and drove off before the police arrived. There’s going to be a hell of a lot of paperwork, Mercy thought.

“You okay?” Ozersky asked.

“No,” she admitted. “I don’t know how much time I have left. It was, what was it? One o’clock in the afternoon.”

Sarah, in the backseat, sat back and pulled her arms in and away from Mercy. “Are you saying what I think you are?”

Mercy nodded. “When your guy kidnapped me. I escaped, but I got exposed to the virus. So did your lovely Frankie Michaelmas. I spilled all kinds of the stuff, I guess. She got the faster one. I’ve still got... oh, what, nine hours left to live.”

“I want to go home,” Sarah said, her voice trembling. “I don’t want to be any part of it. I don’t want to be around you when you become contagious.”

Mercy wrapped her arms around her body, feeling her joints ache. “Thank you for your sympathy.” She looked at the CTU agent. “Ted, you okay with this?”

Ozersky shrugged. “I like your style, Mercy. Always did, even when I was undercover. How can I say no?”

Ozersky hadn’t looked at her when he spoke. Maybe it was just because he was driving, but she didn’t think so. She had the distinct impression that he hadn’t wanted to reveal too much. And it suddenly occurred to her that maybe she’d fallen in love with the wrong CTU agent.

Ted Ozersky’s thoughts were on Mercy. Probably too much on Mercy, he decided. And he was right. If he’d been paying more attention, he might have noticed the black Mazda that followed them out of the marina and onto the freeway.

In the early hours, the drive from Marina del Rey to Santa Monica Airport was ten minutes. Santa Monica Airport serviced small planes, mostly private planes and a few charters.

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The airport made extra income by renting out some of its spare hangars and mechanics sheds to other businesses. One Hollywood screenwriter actually used a spare shed as his office, swearing that he got more work done because no one thought to come bother him down there.

Now just after four o’clock in the morning, the LAPD detective, the CTU agent, and the eco-terrorist drove down the main lane, past a pub called the Spitfire Grill, and pulled up in front of one of those sheds. Without ceremony they exited and hurried over to the shed.

“I don’t have a key,” Sarah warned. “Copeland actually owns a plane here somewhere, but I never got very involved in this stuff.”

“I have a key,” said Mercy. She drew her gun and fired rounds into the door until the bolt shattered. She kicked open the door.

The room inside was tiny, but it reminded her of Cope-land: neat stacks of paper, file cabinets with labels on them, maps rolled into orderly scrolls.

“Hurry, please,” Mercy said.

Sarah went to the file cabinet, pulled out a folder, and held it up. “That’s it?” Mercy said. “That’s it,” she repeated, this time answering her question. They’d been running all night, killed people, watched people die, and now all of a sudden here it was, plain as day.

But then her knees lost all their strength and she fell to the ground. Ozersky rushed forward but Sarah stepped back, gasping, “Don’t touch her! Don’t! Look!”

She was pointing to the football-shaped bruise that had appeared on Mercy’s neck. Ozersky did not back away, but he stopped moving forward, his hand hovering near her.

Mercy felt her skin until her fingers found the bump. “Oh,” she said. “I thought...I thought twenty-four hours...”

Sarah shook her head. “It depends on the person. Maybe you had the weaponized virus, and it just took longer to replicate.” She backed away further. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I can’t stay here. You’re becoming contagious...”

Mercy felt like all her joints had suddenly become flaked with rust. They didn’t want to move. And her head was on fire. She smiled weakly at Ted Ozersky. “Willow. What a stupid name.”

“It worked,” he said without much conviction.

“Go,” she pushed her hand through the air. “Get that file back to your people.”

The CTU agent said, “I’m not just going to leave you here.”

“You’re not going to get sick,” she said. “Get that stuff where it can do some good. But do me one favor.”

“What?”

“Send Jack Bauer. I need to see him.”

If she’d been any stronger, she’d have noticed the look of pain on Ozersky’s face. But he nodded and hurried out of the shed.

4:20 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

“I know he’s in there,” Jamey Farrell said to Jack over the

phone. “But I can’t put you belly to belly.”

“I can.”

Jessi Bandison was standing beside her. The girl’s face was drawn and sad, but otherwise she looked ready to work. “I thought you were leaving,” Jamey said.

“There’s work to do, right?” Jessi said. She sat down at the terminal next to Jamey and called up a window she’d already prepared. “I tapped into the LAX security cameras. Let’s see if we can’t find him sitting somewhere.”

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4:21 P.M. PST LAX

“I haven’t heard back from your people,” Ayman al-Libbi said. He was sitting in his car on the third floor of the LAX parking structure, talking on his cell phone. He had the window rolled down to keep the car from getting too stuffy. “I know two of them are dead, but I don’t know about the other.”

“We just had contact from one of our people,” the Iranian voice said. “They’ve been released.”

“Good. I hope now that you see my worth.”

“You did not really deliver the antivirus to the Americans, did you?”

The terrorist rolled his eyes. “Of course not! The package they have is a surprise. They’ll probably defuse it, but one can always hope.”

“Hi there.” Ayman al-Libbi looked up to see the blond man standing beside his car. He didn’t have time to react as the fist smashed into his face and everything turned black.

Jack hit al-Libbi four or five more times, though he knew the bastard was unconscious and unable to feel it. Still, it made him feel better, and that’s all he could ask. Opening the door, Jack dragged the terrorist’s limp body from the car and searched him, removing a Springfield .45. He also found exactly what he was hoping for: two glass vials in the terrorist’s breast pocket. He hoped they were what he thought they were. He used al-Libbi’s shoelaces to tie his hands, then dragged the unconscious man over to his own car. It would have been easier to drive the car around the corner to that spot, but the thought of al-Libbi’s face and knees getting scraped along the concrete did not displease him. As soon as he had the terrorist stuffed in the trunk, he called CTU.

4:27 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

“Jack got him!” Jamey Farrell yelled.

CTU staffers erupted in cheers. Even Henderson, exhausted as he was, joined in.

“And he thinks he’s got the antivirus for the President, for both of them.”

More cheers.

Henderson said, “Call Chappelle over at National Health Services. Tell them what’s going on. I want a whole team of squad cars to meet Jack wherever he is and escort that virus at high speed.”

4:29 A.M. PST National Health Services, Los Angeles

Ryan Chappelle was so happy when he heard the news, he forgot for a moment how much he hated Jack Bauer. When the information was relayed to the President, the entire NHS laboratory burst into cheers of gratitude. Even Premier Xu smiled and clapped his hands.

Chappelle was so happy, in fact, that when Jack Bauer’s old telephone rang, he didn’t think what it might mean as he answered.

4:31 A.M. PST 405 Freeway Northbound

When the line of police cars pulled Jack over he was expecting them. He pulled over on the side of the freeway, which was all but deserted at that ungodly hour. One of the uni

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formed cops said, “Sir, we’ve been told you have an item that we need to pick up and take to National Health Services.”

Jack nodded. He carefully removed the two vials from his pocket and handed them to the officer. “Did they tell you what those are?” He knew that the administration and Chappelle had worked hard to keep the crisis a secret.

“No, sir,” the officer said.

“Then let me just tell you that those two little glass bottles are probably the most important things in the world right now. Take good care of them and get them to NHS as fast as you can.”

The cop took them gingerly. “Oh,” Jack said, “and I have a prisoner in the trunk. I didn’t have anywhere else to put him. Can you spare a cruiser to get me to CTU with my prisoner?”

Jack’s phone rang. “Bauer.”

“It’s Chappelle,” the Division Director said morosely. Leave it to him, Jack thought, to spoil a happy moment. “Listen to this.”

Before Jack could reply, Chappelle activated a recording.

“This is Muhammad Abbas. I know that you have captured Ayman al-Libbi. You must know something. I have been inside the airport with vials of the virus. I have actively spread the virus among three groups traveling on three airplanes. If you release Ayman al-Libbi, then I will tell you which three airplanes and you can stop them. If you do not, you will find this disease spreading across your country. This is my leverage. I do not care if you trace my call.” He even left his cell phone number.

No. No, no, no. Not after everything he’d done to catch this son of a bitch. “He could be bluffing,” Jack said of the recording.

“He could be. How would we know? They did have the virus. He could have done it.”

“Goddamn it!” Bauer roared. The cops looked at him anxiously, but he waved them off. “You want me to let him go? There’s no guarantee that he’ll tell us afterward.”

“You have a better idea?” Chappelle asked.

“No,” Jack thought. “Wait. Yes! I have one more idea. But I can’t pull it off until al-Libbi and Abbas are together. I’ll call you back.”

Jack opened the trunk. Ayman al-Libbi was conscious. His face was bruised and his lip was swollen, but otherwise he seemed whole. He even seemed a little smug. “Has Muhammad Abbas called you yet?” he asked as Bauer helped his bound prisoner out of the car.

“He just did,” Jack said grimly. “I think you’re bluffing.”

“It’s always possible,” the terrorist said with a twinkle in his eye. “You strike me as one to gamble. Hold me and find out.”

“Unfortunately,” Jack said with just a hint of threat in his voice, “it’s not my decision. If we release you, where do you want us to take you?”

“Santa Monica Airport,” Ayman al-Libbi said in his best American accent. “And make it snappy.”

4:45 A.M. PST National Health Services, Los Angeles

Ted Ozersky hurried through the glass doors and flashed his badge three times to Secret Service agents before finding Dr. Diebold. “This is it,” he panted. “The documents from the man who caused all this.”

Dr. Diebold grabbed the files and began thumbing through them. “Page Celia,” he called out, and someone paged Celia Alexis. “Interesting, interesting,” he said, reading the notes. “We never would have found this out in time.”

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Celia appeared in the hallway and Diebold handed her the file. “Look at this. There’s a resin in a tree down there that contains a linking molecule. It creates adhesion between the virus and whatever antivirus we want to use. We’d never have discovered it.”

Celia was both excited and concerned. “We can replicate this, but not in time. It will take hours to get samples of this resin up from Brazil. The source is Croton lecheri. The resin is Sangre de Drago.”

“Dragon’s Blood,” Diebold translated. “Well, the sooner we start, the sooner it’ll be done.”

4:55 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Henderson saw the text message come through and jumped on the phone immediately. “Tony, it’s Henderson. Don’t pick up that package.”

“Already done,” Almeida replied. “I thought this was for the President—”

“We found the antivirus. Get rid of whatever that is before it explodes. And I need you to do something for Jack right away.”

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THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 5 A.M. AND 6 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

5:00 A.M. PST National Health Services, Los Angeles

President Barnes watched as Dr. Diebold hurried into the bio containment unit, followed by another doctor. Each held a syringe in his hand. “If you would please, sir, and quickly,” Diebold said, indicating that Barnes should roll up his sleeve.

As soon as he did, Diebold jabbed the syringe into his arm and squeezed the liquid into his body gently and evenly. He withdrew the syringe, daubed the blood from the needle prick, and sighed with relief.

Barnes waited, but Diebold said nothing. “What, that’s it?” the President said. “No fanfare? No trumpets? No choirs of angels?”

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Diebold shook his head. “In this business the cure is as silent as the disease, sir. But we checked it out. You’ve just been injected with an antivirus specifically engineered to go after this virus, bond with it, and render it inert.”

Barnes rolled down his sleeve and turned to Xu Boxiong, who had also just been injected. He held out his hand and Xu shook it. “Whatever we may say about each other and our countries in the time ahead,” Barnes said, “I want you to know personally that I thought you handled this like a man.”

The Chinese leader nodded. “It is these times that show us our character, isn’t it true?”

5:12 A.M. PST En Route to Santa Monica Airport

Jack’s phone rang for what must have been the fifteenth time

in the last few minutes. It was an extension at CTU. “Bauer.”

“Bauer, it’s Ted Ozersky.”

“Did you deliver the package?”

“Yes, and they say they can work with it, which is good news. But that’s not why I’m calling. Mercy is still at the Santa Monica Airport.”

“I’m headed there now,” Jack said, “but for a totally different reason.”

“Jack, she’s dying.”

“The virus? But you just said they could create the antivirus...”

“Not in time. She made me leave her. She’s contagious now. I’ve asked NHS to send in a bio containment unit, but they’re cordoning off the airport for some reason.”

“I’m the reason,” Jack said. “I mean, al-Libbi is the reason, but I’m taking him. Damn it!” Jack smashed his fist down on the steering wheel, breaking a section off. “I’ll get to her, Ted.” He hung up. And though he should have spent the last few minutes of his drive focused on the last shreds of a plan, he did not. He thought about Mercy Bennet, and what he had done to her, and what she had done for him, and he knew that the scales were not balanced there.

CTU had given him the location of the meet. It was a private hangar that had, apparently, belonged to Bernard Copeland. Jack pulled up next to the hangar, got out, and opened the trunk. Al-Libbi looked more put off by being placed in the trunk, but he’d get over it. Jack hauled him to his feet. He looked the terrorist in the eye and found nothing staring back at him. Jack didn’t often wonder what made men like Ayman al-Libbi tick. They were evil and needed to be squashed.

“I’m going to kill you,” he promised.

Al-Libbi laughed. “But not today, I guess.”

“We’ll see.” Jack looked across the tarmac to a distant building. Mercy was over here somewhere. She was dying. And he was here, doing his job. That should make him feel good, that he was doing his job, but somehow al-Libbi ruined even that small reward.

Finally another car drove up, a black Mazda. Abbas got out. He waved to them, then hurried over to the hangar and pressed a button to open its huge door. As the door rolled aside, Jack saw a small Learjet. Abbas motioned them over.

Jack grabbed the terrorist by the arm and escorted him across the tarmac and stopped just outside the hangar.

“Cut him loose,” Abbas ordered. Jack complied, using a small folding knife to slice through the shoelaces that had bound the terrorist.

“This is what will happen,” Abbas said. “I will tell you the name of one of the compromised flights now, and you will let Ayman go. I will tell you the second flight as we taxi

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down the runway. I will radio the third to you as we leave American air space. These terms are not negotiable.”

“You know, it’s a shame you came all this way and didn’t get what you wanted,” Jack said to al-Libbi.

“Agree to the terms!” Abbas called.

Jack continued to address al-Libbi. “You didn’t kill the President. You didn’t do much for your friends in ETIM. Hell, all you did for your Iranian friends is give us a chance to wipe out a cell they had here.” He smiled. “You don’t even have the virus.”

Al-Libbi glared at him, a little uncertain as to Jack’s purpose.

“Let him go,” Abbas demanded.

“Name the flight,” Jack said, suddenly focusing.

Abbas named a Chicago-bound flight. Jack snapped open his cell phone and relayed the information. He shoved al-Libbi forward and followed a few steps. He continued, “I mean, you can’t tell me these Iranian friends you’ve made, that they want you back just because you got us in an uproar. There had to be something tangible to give them. I would have thought the virus was a good start.”

“Don’t speak to him,” the terrorist told Abbas.

“Oh,” Jack said ironically, “but then you do still have a sample of the virus, don’t you?”

“Let’s get to the plane, Muhammad!” al-Libbi said, spinning Abbas around.

“You have it because you infected your friend there!”

Muhammad Abbas stumbled. “Wh-what?” he gasped.

“It’s true,” Jack said, inching forward. There was still a wide gap between him and them, but he did not want them getting too close to the airplane. “One of the Iranians told me before he died. He said Ayman was bragging about it, and that you were too blind to realize it.”

Abbas stared at his companion. “Is this true?”

Al-Libbi rolled his eyes. “Look at him. He is American. They lie. To us, to themselves, to everyone! You are an idiot if you believe his lies.”

“And you are an idiot if you think the Iranians would take him back if he didn’t have something to offer.”

Muhammad Abbas stared at Ayman, his eyes examining his entire body. Ayman al-Libbi, who for years had felt only rage and, in later years, felt nothing at all, now felt suddenly naked. Abbas, who had known his every quirk, his every habit, now sized him up.

“You did it, Ayman,” Abbas said with a sense of heavy, sad recognition. “You gave them my death so that they could...could harvest this virus inside me.” The look of pain that molded itself to Abbas’s face was staggering in its depth. “You meant what you said. It really is only about the money.”

Ayman al-Libbi held out his arms wide. “Muhammad,” he said. Then he lunged at his colleague and pulled Abbas’s gun from his belt. He fired three rounds into the man, then turned on Jack. But Jack had already rolled away. Al-Libbi ran for the Learjet.

Jack ran forward and knelt beside Abbas. The terrorist’s eyes were wide open, his breath coming in gasps like a fish out of water. “Tell me the flights,” Jack said. “Tell me the flights and he doesn’t win.” Jack patted Abbas’s cheek. “Tell me the flights and you die together, the way it should be.”

Abbas blinked and whispered six words. Three airlines and three cities. It was enough. CTU could figure out the rest.

The Learjet’s engines whined as it taxied out of the hangar. Jack watched the jet make the turn and head toward one of the small runways. At the same time, Jack saw Tony Almeida appear out of the hangar, carrying a long tube in his arms. Jack knew what it was, and as Tony approached, he saw it more clearly: the RPG–29 that al-Libbi himself had

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bought in the United States. As he reached Jack, Tony took a

new rocket and primed it.

“Thanks for getting it,” Jack said.

“Just shoot him,” Tony replied.

The Learjet was still taxiing, but hurrying away. Jack hefted the RPG up to his shoulder and took aim. “Clear behind,” he said calmly. He pulled the trigger. The armor-piercing RPG hurtled through the space between them and ripped through the jet’s hide. The jet exploded, fire bursting out of every window and seam in the plane.

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THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 6 A.M. AND 7 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

6:00 A.M. PST Santa Monica Airport

Jack didn’t wait to see what happened next to the plane. He jumped in his borrowed car and raced to the shed number Ted had told him. He burst inside and found Mercy lying on the floor. Two lesions had appeared on her face. She looked weak, and a trickle of blood came down from her nose.

“There’s a bio containment team on its way,” Jack said. “They’ll get you out of here.”

“I think...,” she said, “I think it’s too late.”

“We’ve got to try.”

She shrugged. “Please do. I’d like to live. I just don’t think it’s what’s going to happen.” She pushed herself to a seated position, and Jack saw more lesions on her chest. “You

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know, that word Copeland was trying to tell me. It wasn’t Uma ghetto. I read his files. It’s uña de gato. Cat’s Claw. I was close, anyway.”

“You were amazing. For the entire day,” Jack said. He leaned toward her, but he did not approach too closely.

“Nah, I’ve been braver since then,” she said. “Look over there.” She was pointing at a desk across the small room, closer to him than to her, where his jacket lay. “That’s my jacket.”

She nodded. “I took it at the harbor. It’s still wet. But look in the pocket.”

Slowly, already knowing, Jack slid his hand into the pocket and pulled out the vial of antivirus. “I didn’t want you to think I’d lost it. I know how important it is.”

He was holding the vial that could save her. But it could also save someone else. And somehow Jack was not surprised that Mercy had lain there dying, all the time holding on to the very substance that could have saved her.

“Mercy, I’m sorry. I was saving it for—”

“For your daughter. I know.”

“Mercy.”

“It’s okay, Jack,” Mercy Bennet said. “Really. Really, it’s okay. You said earlier that you’re sometimes wrong, but they are never right. You are not wrong now. You are doing the right thing.”

She slumped back down and coughed. When her hand came away from her mouth, it was covered in blood. “Jack, go now. I don’t want you to see me looking like that.”

“I can’t leave you.”

“If you do me one favor, do this one. Let me do this the way I want to. Take that to your daughter. It’s the right thing to do.”

Despite her request, Jack waited a few more minutes. The bio containment team arrived, and although there was little they could do for her, at least she wasn’t going to die alone.

Jack turned and ran out of the shed. He jumped into the borrowed Prius and raced home. Traffic was getting heavier, but he managed to get there in record time. If Copeland’s timetables were correct, he might have a little time to spare. But he would never know.

Jack parked the car in front of his house, dug the spare key out of its current hiding spot, and opened the door. The house was quiet. Jack hurried to the bathroom and took a first aid kit out of the closet. There was a small syringe there. He filled it with the antivirus and walked over to Kim’s room. He sat down at her bedside gently and felt her forehead. She was feverish, but he could see no lesions yet.

He had exposed her to danger. He hoped never to do that again.

While she slept, he injected her with the antivirus. She would live now. He kissed her on the forehead.

He walked out of Kim’s room and stumbled down the hall. At last he allowed the exhaustion to take hold of him. As he did, Teri came out of their bedroom, yawning. She looked at him, at his exhausted face. For a moment she looked on the verge of being angry at him for being out all night. At the last second she changed her mind and reached out, bringing him toward her with a hug. She would never know exactly what he did, or what might have been had he not done his job, but she could do this for him.

He softened into her hug. He thought of his bed, and sleep.

His phone rang. Teri did not release him. He eased himself gently out of her arms and did not look at her as he lifted the phone.

“Bauer.”