“I remember.”

Jamey jumped on his words. “But that’s just it. He’d never really done anything big because he’d never really done anything. I mean the guy is nonexistent, and then all of a sudden he pops up, gets a label for a few small-scale transactions that might interest local law but wouldn’t raise an eyebrow here, and then all of a sudden he’s doing this big deal and Jack goes and kills him.”

Tony did not see the mystery. “Lots of bad guys do lots of bad things that we don’t know about. They get a reputation with other bad guys even if we don’t have their whole résumé.”

Jamey made a skeptical noise into the phone. “That’s where I don’t buy this thing with Jack. There wasn’t any reason to kill this guy. How many people do you think Jack’s killed?”

“A freakin’ lot!”

“Right, but do you honestly think he’s ever killed anyone he didn’t have to?”

Tony paused. “Read his service record, Jamey. It’s not that hard to believe—”

“—for somebody who’s read the service record. That’s why this story stands up to a typical investiga

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tion. But I’m talking about us, people who know him. Do you believe it?”

There was another long pause while Tony considered. He put aside his snap judgments and disapproval of Jack’s actions. “No,” he said at last, “I don’t believe it.”

Jamey felt a thrill. She’d won a point. “I have a name. It’s Adrian Tintfass’s widow. Can we send someone to go check her out? No point in me asking Henderson about this, he’ll just say no.”

“Nina,” Tony said. “Get Nina to do it. Now where’s my analysis?”

“Got it.” Seth Ludonowski was standing at his shoulder, beaming.

Tony hung up. “Go.”

Seth didn’t bother with any impressive overview of the cryptographics programs, the analysis of semantics, allophones, or any other highly relevant but distracting methodologies used to parse through the intercepted e-mails. He just said, “Papa Rashad’s factory is pretty unimaginative encryption for the initials PRF. If you ask me, PRF can also stand for—”

“Pacific Rim Forum,” Tony said. “And it starts in about fifteen hours.”

2:44 A.M. PST Boyle Heights, Los Angeles

There ain’t nothing like a late night fuck and a late night joint, thought Smiley Lopez. The girl was in the other room, still sleeping off the tequila. She might not remember the ride, he flattered himself, but she’d be sore in the morning. The fatty was in his hand and he took another puff, put his feet up on the little table, and used the remote to flip on the television. HBO, Cinemax (he called it “Skinemax”), Showtime, and still there wasn’t a goddamn thing on at three o’clock in the morning. He flipped through channels until he came to ESPN-something-or-other. They were playing reruns of fights, but not boxing. It was that other shit, the fighting where you can hit with your knees and elbows and shit. Smiley liked that sort of fighting. It was more like the street.

His cell phone rang. He was expecting a call from some of his soldiers, but this was a different number. “Yo,” he said, knowing who it would be.

“What the fuck’s going on?” the angry voice on the line snapped.

Smiley checked the clock on the cable box. “They shoulda finished it right about now, homes. You can ease up.”

“No, I can’t,” the other man said. “Your little homies” —the word was foreign, clumsy, an insult on his lips, and meant to be so— “screwed it up. For the third time!”

Smiley felt a buzz kill coming on and it annoyed him. “Goddamn, ese, you the one who told us he’d be tough to pop.”

“Well figure out how!” the man demanded. “Or I’ll make sure your guys inside burn.” Smiley sat up, his buzz gone in an instant. “Listen to me, homes,” he said, overpronouncing the word as

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the other man had. “I ain’t Oscar. You get up in my face like that I shove your dick down your throat, I don’t care what kinda law you put on me. Got it?” He heard the other man choke back a response. “Besides, you fuckin’ want him popped, you do it yourself, fuckin’ maricon.”

“All right,” the other man said. “All right. I know he’s tough, but you keep after it, or you don’t get paid and I will make sure your boys go away.” He hung up.

Smiley took another puff.

2:53 A.M. PST Century Plaza Hotel, Century City, California

Old men don’t sleep much. Martin Webb remembered his father telling him that when Martin was a much younger man. Though he was now approaching seventy-three, Martin’s mind and memory were as sharp as ever, and he could see the old house in Silver Springs, when he’d bring his kids to visit the old man. He’d stay up late working on the financials for some company or other, long after his dad had gone to bed, only to find his dad waking up and coming down for a glass of warm milk. They’d talk then; those were some of the best talks they’d ever had.

Now Martin was the old man. Even his son Max was in his fifties, and when the family came to visit him in Georgetown and Martin got up for his own glass of warm milk, it was more often his grandson Jake he’d find up, though of course Jake wasn’t doing financials.

At the moment, though, he was alone, and instead of padding downstairs for milk he had called room service.

Old men don’t sleep much, he told himself again. But he knew that he had reason to be losing sleep.

The economy. The goddamned economy. It sat there like an engine that ought to start but wouldn’t. No, that wasn’t the right analogy. Better to say hung there like an airplane whose engine wouldn’t start. The plane was losing altitude, gliding on the last of its momentum, and any minute it would plunge.

“That’s about right,” Martin said out loud to his quiet hotel room.

He was the engineer, the man who was supposed to fix that engine. So far, he had tried every tool in his toolkit: interest rates, of course, which served as his hammer, screwdriver, and wrench. He’d employed the bully pulpit to shame the current administration into fiscal restraint. He’d hedged his bets against overseas markets. All to no good. The Dow looked like a downward staircase. Unemployment was up, and so was inflation, and those two things should not go together. According to last month’s index, consumer spending had dipped, and the real estate market was slowing. Consumer confidence—Martin privately called it consumer overconfidence—and the housing bubble were really all that stood between the country and an economic crisis it had not faced in seventy years.

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Martin Webb was being humble with himself. Others would say that a third barrier stood between the country and disaster: Martin Webb. Martin was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He was not just the grand old man of the economy; in the eyes of many, he was the economy. For twenty-seven years he had played nursemaid, steward, lord-protector of the United States economy, and always, always he had managed to make the markets pull themselves up by their bootstraps. He would do it again, at least that’s what the Wall Street Journal told him. And he was sure the pundits were right. He would do it again.

He just didn’t know how.

The warm milk came, and the room service attendant went. Martin sat down and sipped. Right about now was when he needed his son Max or his grandson Jake to stroll in and chat. Lacking Jake, he turned on the television, which bathed him in its hypnotic glow. He flipped channels until his eye was caught by a sports channel. He stopped, and watched two warriors pound each other with tiny gloves on their hands. As the commentator indicated, these were reruns of previous fights, all being broadcast as the prelude to the fights the following night. He’d seen this sort of fighting before—mixed martial arts, they called it—and he admired it. Not so different from the economy, really, with an interesting combination of subtlety and brute strength.

He drank his milk and watched.

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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 CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

The last fifteen minutes had been Christmas come early for Tony Almeida. Seth’s code cracking had been brilliant—and it had been followed by quick work from CTU field agents and techs who’d bugged Sungkar’s house. Thanks to their work, Tony was now sitting at his own desk listening to a conversation between Sungkar, on his home phone, and an unknown associate.

“. . . and you’re sure the other side can deliver?” Sungkar was asking.

“Their reputation is solid. They want the arms and

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in return they can deliver a computer program that

will do the job.”

“In each country?”

“Yes.”

“And the arms, we can get them?” Sungkar queried.

“I have a contact.” Bacharuddin Wahid. That was the name Seth slipped to Tony as he listened. “I have not worked with him, but I have heard he is reliable.”

“We buy the arms, and then trade the arms for the virus,” Sungkar summed up. “Let’s proceed.”

Tony saw the pattern: Riduan Bashir provides the money, Sungkar uses the funds to purchase arms, which he then trades for this computer program, and Jemaah Islamiyah uses this virus to target the Pacific Rim Forum.

The man named Bacharuddin Wahid read an address, which Tony scribbled down. He reminded himself that neither of them had met this arms dealer, and a plan began to form.

3:06 A.M. PST Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles

Dan Pascal turned his Crown Vic onto Sweetzer just north of Wilshire Boulevard. His radio chattered with updates as LAPD units rolled into position. Two units were ahead of the target and two were behind. Pascal snatched up his radio mike. “Go,” he said.

He stepped on the accelerator and reached Wilshire in a second, just as the blue Maxima passed him. Two cruisers pulled onto the street behind the Maxima, their lights going bright. The other two cruisers pulled out in front of the Maxima, angling themselves to block the street. The blue car hit its brakes and pulled up short. Pascal and the two follow cars pulled up behind, blocking its retreat. Pascal switched his radio mike to PA, threw open his door, and dragged himself out, drawing his Smith & Wesson .45 at the same time. “Stick your hands out of the car window!” he ordered.

Patrol in all four cars had opened their doors and taken cover behind them, weapons leveled. The occupants of the car complied, a set of hands sticking out from each side.

“Open the doors slowly. Get out and lie down on the ground!”

Again the occupants complied, and a moment later two men had climbed out, lying down on the asphalt in the middle of Wilshire Boulevard. As one, the law enforcement officers hurried forward.

Pascal stalked forward, moving suddenly much faster than one might have expected from someone his size. Catching Captain America had been easier than he’d thought. He watched the LAPD officers handcuff the occupants and haul them to their feet. Pascal straightened up to his full height and stared down . . . at two terrified eighteen-year-old kids.

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3:11 A.M. PST InterContinental Hotel, Downtown Los Angeles

Jack and Ramirez parked the just-stolen Nissan pickup truck a block away from the InterContinental Hotel and left it there for someone else to find. They walked into the four-star hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The lobby was quiet except for the Latino man and woman running an industrial-sized scrubber across the tile floor. Ramirez walked over to the house phones mounted over an elegant marble ledge. Picking one up, he punched in 7 plus a room number and waited while it rang.

“No answer?” Jack wondered.

Ramirez shrugged. “He did sound pissed when I called before. Wait—” Now he was talking into the phone. “Yeah, we’re here. Okay, Van, we’re coming up.”

They found a bank of elevators and pressed the button for the twenty-third floor.

“So this was the guy you were working with, the one you murdered for?” Jack asked.

“Sort of. His name’s Vanowen. I worked for him, he worked for the guy in charge. I never met that guy. Not sure I want to.”

They reached twenty-three and walked down to 2346. It was a good hotel, with wide hallways and thick, soft carpet. Ramirez knocked and the door opened, then closed behind them. The man who’d admitted them was short and round with a thick walrus mustache and close-cropped reddish-brown hair. His arms weren’t cut, but they were big, bulging out of his blue polo shirt. He was holding a Glock .40 in his hand.

“It don’t figure,” he said by way of hello. He motioned for them to sit down on the couch. The hotel room was an L-shaped suite, with a sitting area and, beyond a door, a bedroom. A couch stood near the door, and beyond it was a small counter extending out into the room, creating a divide. Beyond that was the bed.

“It don’t figure why you’d break out to come see me.”

Jack didn’t say anything. He was sure in this case it was better to speak when spoken to.

“It does,” Ramirez replied. “We didn’t break out to see you. We broke out because someone was trying to kill us. We need a place to hide out.”

The man sat down in a chair across from them, the Glock resting casually across his leg. “Rami, you know I owe you and you know why. You need someplace to hide, I’m gonna do it. But I don’t know squat about you,” he said to Jack.

Jack didn’t like seeing the muzzle of the Glock, but at the moment he had no choice. He kept his hands on his knees. “Ask away.”

“Tell me a story.”

Jack told the story he’d used with Ramirez, the same story Ramirez knew. Like all good lies, it was as close to the truth as possible: he was a former agent for Homeland Security who’d murdered a scumbag and was awaiting trial and decided he didn’t want to wait once MS–13 decided to kill him. He told the

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story of killing Tintfass. The man called Van seemed amused.

“I could check your story,” Van said, rubbing his thick mustache. “I got people who could check.”

“Knock yourself out,” Jack said.

Van figured he would. “Uh-huh. Meantime, why the fuck should I help you?”

“I come in handy, if there’s any trouble.”

Vanowen waggled the gun. “Why’d there be trouble? I got a legitimate business, ask Rami. No reason for trouble.”

“If you say so. I just figured if Rami was going to kill someone, there was something worth killing for and you were okay with it.”

“I got people to answer to, people who don’t like new faces. I probably oughta kill you right now.”

Jack immediately relaxed. He had heard this kind of talk before. It almost always came from someone who had no intention of doing any killing. A man cold-blooded enough to kill him would have done so already, without compunction. Vanowen wanted to appear tough, and he wanted Jack to know that he was capable of killing if need be. But Jack would give him no need.

“I did Ramirez a favor getting him out. He’s doing me a favor by getting us a place to lay low. That’s all that’s going on here. You decide you want some extra help, I’ve got some skills you might use.”

Vanowen did not ease off, but his face shifted. He’d made some decision. “So tell me how you got out of jail.”

Jack started to tell the story.

3:28 A.M. PST Van Nuys, California

There was no such thing as a good way to knock on the door at three-thirty in the morning, so Nina Myers didn’t try. Bauer was a fugitive and they needed leads A.S.A.P. She found the little house off Kester Avenue, a square one-room stucco building on a flat square lot. She rang the bell and pounded on a metal door knocker in the likeness of William Shakespeare.

“Who . . . who is it?” called a sleepy, frightened voice on the other side of the door.

“Federal agent, ma’am.” Nina held up her ID to the peephole above William Shakespeare’s head. “Sorry for the late hour, but I have a couple of urgent questions.”

There was a long pause—so long that Nina started to decide whether to sprint around back or try to kick in the door—when the bolt turned and the door opened. The woman standing there was short, with thin black hair, a big nose, and a very unwelcome look on her pale face. She wore slippers and a frayed blue terry-cloth robe that she kept tucking and re-tucking around her body. She opened the door just enough to talk, but kept her body wedged into the open space.

“What questions?” the woman asked grumpily. She had clearly been sleeping.

“You’re Marcia Tintfass?” The woman nodded. “Nina Myers. I’m afraid I have a question or two about your husband.”

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“I figured,” the woman snapped. She was waking up, and her sleepiness was turning into indignation at being awakened at such a ridiculous hour. “What kind of question couldn’t wait a few more hours until people were awake?”

“The kind that have to do with your husband’s murderer, who just escaped from jail.”

Marcia Tintfass’s eyes popped open. She looked around, as though the killer might jump out from behind Nina. “Come in then.”

Nina entered and sat down on the couch in a living room lit only by one standing lamp. Many of the shelves were bare, and Nina noticed two moving boxes in the corner. “You probably know all this, but I gave a big statement to the police already. I really didn’t know much about my husband’s business.”

Nina had reviewed the file on Adrian Tintfass’s murder, and learned everything there was to know about Marcia Tintfass, which wasn’t much. “I understand. We’re really interested in the killer himself—”

“I didn’t know him,” Marcia said hastily.

“I, yes, I know you didn’t know him. We’re just trying to figure out why he did it. The man who murdered your husband was an exemplary agent for the federal government.”

“Right up until he killed my husband, I guess.”

“Are you moving?” Nina asked.

The question caught Marcia off guard. “Oh, yes. You know, now that Adrian’s gone, it doesn’t, well, you know, it doesn’t feel right being here.”

Nina nodded but didn’t believe a word of it. One learned a lot from interrogating prisoners, and Nina had interrogated her fair share. Marcia Tintfass’s words were totally reasonable, of course, but her delivery had been off. Nina had the distinct impression that, in her sleepiness, the woman had forgotten a line and then picked it up, like an actor recovering in the middle of a scene.

“Are you staying in the city?”

“Well,” Marcia said, a little more naturally, “they’ve asked me to, for the trial and everything. But after that I’m moving to St. Louis.”

“Friends there?”

“A fresh start, I guess. It’s hard, losing someone. I didn’t know how hard it was.” Marcia Tintfass had gotten her rhythm now and sounded good.

Nina asked a few more perfunctory questions, questions that might explain the urgency in knocking on the door in the dead of night, but she left as soon as she could. In the car, she called in to CTU and talked with Jamey Farrell. “We need a tap on this phone, and her cell phone, and everything else right away. I guarantee you she’s calling someone somewhere right now and she’s nervous.”

3:42 A.M. PST Inglewood, California

The CTU strike team moved in with quiet efficiency. This was as close to a routine assault as the real world could provide. They had the layout of the two-story

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warehouse. Satellite and infrared imagery located the three occupants of the building. City business licenses, auto registrations, and telephone records told them exactly who would be inside.

By the time Tony Almeida got word from every unit in the assault and confirmed that the building was locked down, his people had three men in flex cuffs sitting in chairs in the middle of the warehouse. Two of them were little more than strong backs and mean looks. The man in the middle, according to their intelligence, was Arturo Menifee, although the name he was currently using was Richard Bonaventure. Arturo, born and raised in Florida, was a former procurement officer at Fort Hood, Texas, who decided to keep his skills sharp after his discharge from the Army. The military did a pretty good job of keeping track of its ordinance and weapons systems, but with such a massive operation, especially in wartime, it wasn’t all that difficult for a patient man to shave off a rocket-propelled grenade here, an M–60 there. Before you knew it, you could have your own little arsenal for sale.

Tony put his hands on his knees, taking himself down eye level with the seated arms dealer. He didn’t say a word, and the prisoner stared back at him, his face alternating nervously between fear and anger as Tony continued to stare. Menifee didn’t look much like Tony if they stood together, but a bystander would have described them about the same: medium height, dark curly hair, dark eyes. I’m better looking, of course, Tony thought wryly.

“Okay,” Tony said at last.

“I ain’t telling you shit,” Menifee spat.

Tony smiled. “I don’t need you to tell me anything. Just talk. I want to hear your accent.”

3:47 A.M. PST InterContinental Hotel

“That’s one hell of a story,” Vanowen said. He still held the gun, but it was no longer pointed at Jack. Vanowen seemed to have forgotten what it was, and waved it around like a lecturer’s pointer stick. “I never met anybody who broke outta prison before.”

A knock on the door interrupted them. Vanowen looked perplexed, then went and cracked the door open. A second later he opened it wide, but did not step out of the frame. Jack could not see the other man’s face silhouetted by the hallway lights, but whoever he was, he was huge, his bulk filling the entire doorway.

“Mark, you gotta be sleeping now. It’s the big day!” Vanowen said. “Can’t sleep,” said the big man. “Gotta talk. Let me in.”

“I got people.”

“Lemme in, Van, come on.”

Vanowen hesitated, but then relented. The man who pushed past him looked like a cartoon drawing of a super hero. He was at least six feet, three inches, with shoulders as wide as two men put together, a narrow

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waist, and muscles that rippled through his American Eagle T-shirt. His face was chiseled out of rock and the bridge of his nose was permanently swollen. Both his ears were grotesquely misshapen. Jack recognized that as “cauliflower ear.” Wrestlers get it from bumping their ears against their opponents over and over again.

“Guys, this is Mark Kendall. Mark ‘The Mountain’ Kendall, former heavyweight champ, and soon to be returning champ.”

Jack and Ramirez nodded. Kendall grunted, but clearly had no interest in them.

“That’s what I want to talk about,” Kendall said. “I gotta know something, Vanny. You’ve got to promise me that I’ll get other fights if I lose this one.”

Jack had seen Vanowen slip the gun into his pocket as he answered the door. Now he saw the man slide his hand casually back into that pocket. “Come on, Mark. No promises in this business. You knew the score when you started your comeback.” For a man who had just called Kendall the next heavyweight champ, he was suddenly very unsympathetic.

For a man as huge as Kendall, he looked pathetically vulnerable. “I’ve got fans out there. They want to see me fight.”

Vanowen shook his head. “They want to see you come back, Mountain. See if a thirty-six-year-old guy’s been out of the cage for four years can still dish it out. You lose, they’ll have their answer, and no one’s gonna be interested anymore.”

Kendall’s cauliflower ears turned beet red, but Jack couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment or anger. Not just anger, he decided. Kendall’s massive shoulders hung low. He was a beaten man. But Jack was sure the fights hadn’t done it. Something else weighed him down. Something he couldn’t take care of with muscles.

“Come here, let’s talk,” Vanowen said. “I got money riding on you today, and your head’s not on right. You guys sit tight.”

Vanowen led the huge man into the other room. Ramirez stretched himself out on the couch. “Jesus, I didn’t realize how tired I was. I’m not used to running around all night like this.”

Jack shrugged. He’d done it before. Ramirez turned the television on absentmindedly. Jack watched with him, but his mind was on his next move. His eyes flicked about the room until he spotted a cell phone, undoubtedly Vanowen’s, sitting on a chair atop a pile of clothes. Jack got up and stretched. He walked by the chair and palmed the cell phone, then went into the bathroom. Now his movements became much more urgent. He closed, locked the door, and dialed CTU.

3:53 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Henderson was half asleep at his desk. He wasn’t lazy, but it was late and he’d been waiting for updates on the Jack Bauer situation, on Tony Almeida’s leads,

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and on a few other lower-priority cases, and his eyes had started to droop. The ringing phone brought him to attention. The late night operator told him who was calling, and Henderson felt his heart thud against his ribs.

“Jack?” he said incredulously.

“I don’t have a lot of time,” Jack replied, his voice a hoarse whisper. “How’s Chappelle?”

“Turn yourself in, Jack,” Henderson said. “You look guilty now. You’ve got U.S. Marshals all over the city.”

“Chappelle?” Bauer asked again.

“No one knows. No explanation for his collapse.”

He heard Bauer swear under his breath. “Okay, Chris, I’ve got to tell you something, but I can’t give many details.”

“Come in here and tell me, Jack.”

“Listen!” Jack commanded, though his voice was still quiet. “None of this is what it seems. I’m working a case. Chappelle knows all about it. There’s an FBI unit that knows, too, but I don’t have their contact.”

Henderson frowned and gave an accompanying skeptical sigh. “Jack, come on. A jailbreak as part of a case?”

“Not that part. I had to do that, but it wasn’t part of the plan.”

“I’ll bet.”

“You don’t believe me.”

“Would you believe it?”

Jack didn’t reply, and Henderson heard the low hum of cellular static in the background. Finally Bauer said, “How much of this is about the Internal Affairs investigation?”

Henderson snorted. He wasn’t surprised that Jack had brought up the investigation. Rumors of the inappropriate use of funds had floated around CTU Los Angeles for several months, and the word embezzlement had been used. Most of the field agents had been called in, and the word was that Jack had mentioned Henderson’s name. “First of all, you and I know that any charge against me is bullshit. Second, I’d never let something like that compromise my integrity.”

“I don’t care either way, Chris,” Jack said. “I’m just on a case and I want—”

“I’m the goddamn Director of Field Operations, Jack,” Chris said, “and I have no knowledge of you being on a case. I want you to come in. Or I’ll send someone you trust out to get you. How’s that?” But the line was dead.

Henderson buzzed his intercom. “Okay, new guy. Did you get that traced?” “’Course,” said Seth Ludonowski. “We aim to please.” Henderson dialed Peter Jiminez.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

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

4:00 A.M. PST Biltmore Hotel

At nineteen, he was still Jorge Rafael Marquez, but no longer the peasant’s son from Chiapas or the adolescent gangster from Boyle Heights. He went by Rafael more than Jorge in those days because it sounded less rural. Rafael, to him sounded cosmopolitan, a world traveler or, as he fancied himself, an artist of the new frontier. The new frontier, he had recognized years earlier, was the Internet. The Internet thrilled him with its offer of freedom: freedom of information, freedom of discussion, freedom of purpose.

“I can’t let you do it,” Amistad Medved had told him, using the phrase Rafael least liked to hear. Rafael had just insisted that they open their operating system to the public.

Medved was his partner, but also his boss. Only twenty-three himself, he was still considered a veteran of the burgeoning world of connectivity. He’d made a small fortune in software design and had used it to began writing his own Web browser. Medved had recognized Rafael’s genius immediately and brought him on board, given him a huge number of options, and let him run rampant in the fields of cyberspace. With his gift for patterns, Rafael had written algorithms that shortened the lag time of search engines to nanoseconds. His work had trebled Medved’s fortunes and made Rafael himself a rich man.

Then the rumors first started to fly about Internet service providers offering tiered delivery: slower connections for lower-paying customers, faster speed for more money. Rafael blanched. It sounded like the sharecropper scams he’d witnessed back in Chiapas. It reminded him of extortion rackets run by MS–13 back in Boyle Heights. Only this time it was sanctioned by the government.

Rafael had wanted to respond by publishing an algorithm that latched on to high-speed connections regardless of the pay rate. Medved, who had invested heavily in several different ISPs, refused to allow it.

Rafael had walked away, leaving his career behind. He abandoned his name as well, but he was not yet Zapata. He became Zapata a year or two later,

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when the Mexican government raided Chiapas and killed his father and his cousin, and he realized once and for all that the Rubik’s Cube was a trick, created by leaders to occupy the time and minds of the people. The cube did not need to be solved. It had to be broken.

Zapata listened carefully as Aguillar told him about the upcoming buy. “I am sending Alliance to meet with the arms dealer. They are providing transportation.”

Aguillar saw the flicker of concern cross Zapata’s face like a shadow. He waited.

“We used Alliance the last time we were in the United States.”

“To transport the Cubans, yes. But you were already using him for his other business, so I assumed—”

“The fight game is different,” Zapata said dismissively. “An entirely different sphere. I do not like using the same people too often because it creates a pattern. Patterns can be followed.”

“I know, but there was no one else available. Farrigian has disappeared, and the others we have worked with more.”

“Okay,” Zapata said. “But kill him afterward.”

Aguillar nodded. He was done, and should have gone to his own room to get some sleep, but he hesitated. “I’m sorry, Zapata, but I have to ask—”

Zapata smiled. Aguillar had sounded apologetic, but he knew (as did Zapata himself) that Zapata’s ego relished these opportunities to play the mentor.

“Why this deal? We could get the equipment we need from other sources, without trading with the Indonesians.”

Zapata nodded. “Two reasons. The first is obvious. These people we trade with will cause their own stir, and that will attract some attention. It’s a distraction. But my reason is more . . . aesthetic. I am simply trying to drop the biggest rock I can into the pond.”

“I will call Alliance to confirm.”

4:09 A.M. PST InterContinental Hotel

Jack leaned back against the sofa cushions, his feet up on the coffee table and his eyes closed. He wanted to sleep, but would not allow himself the luxury.

Vanowen’s phone rang. He popped out of the other room, saying, “You okay now, Mark? Head on straight?”

Mark “The Mountain” Kendall looked far from okay, but he grunted an affirmative, barely looked at Jack and Ramirez, and left. Vanowen talked into his phone a little, mostly listened, and then said, “I’ll be there.” He snapped the phone shut.

“Okay. Hey, wake up!” Vanowen kicked the feet of Ramirez, who was snoring. Ramirez jumped as if he’d been bitten.

“I have a job this morning,” Vanowen said. “Some of the kind of work you were getting involved in, before you went and killed someone, you moron. You want to come?”

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Ramirez rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, okay.”

“Me, too,” Jack said.

Vanowen grinned at him, a big, toothy grin out of his round face. “You I did some checking on while I was in the other room. You fucked somebody up, huh? You’re really on the run now.”

“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Jack said.

Vanowen chewed his lip. He seemed to be weighing his innate suspicion against some need. Finally, he said, “Yeah, come. I can use the extra muscle. Besides, ain’t nothing you’re gonna see Ramirez couldn’t have burned me for by now anyway.”

4:14 A.M. PST Inglewood

Tony Almeida had changed out of his old clothes— which looked like clothes that had been worn for days—into a clean shirt and jeans, as though he’d gotten up early instead of staying up all night. Two members of the CTU strike force had changed into civvies as well to pose as his muscle.

They knew Encep Sungkar was coming. When he was still twenty miles away they knew which streets he took, his average speed, and they could have determined his mileage per gallon if they’d wanted to. Tony’s team spent the intervening minutes rifling through Menifee’s records and the stack of crates under canvas in his warehouse. It wasn’t the most impressive stockpile Tony had seen, but it would do some damage. There were four launchers and twelve rocket-propelled grenades, a .50-caliber machine gun that could put rounds right through a brick building, a baker’s dozen of M–60s and MP–5s, and other assorted goodies.

Tony’s earpiece buzzed as Sungkar’s vehicle, followed by a truck, pulled up to his warehouse. He opened the regular-sized door, which was cut into the wall near the huge sliding cargo entrance, as his target approached. He recognized Sungkar from the table in Little Java. Sungkar was small and bespectacled, with a mild manner and a slight smile. But his eyes were intense, and though he walked softly, Tony had the distinct impression of a mongoose ready to spring.

“You Perkasa?” Tony hailed in his best imitation of Menifee’s voice, using the alias they’d discovered Sungkar to be using.

“Of course,” the Indonesian said, moving past Tony and into the warehouse. His glasses flashed as he looked around. “There is not much here.”

“I know how to pack,” Tony grunted, following him inside. He borrowed the observation from one of the strike team members, who had noted how efficient Menifee had been at stacking his ordnance. He held out his hand. “Menifee. I like to shake hands with the people I do business with.”

Sungkar looked down at Tony’s offered hand as though it might contain some disease. Finally he touched it weakly and removed his hand at once. “I have another meeting. Let’s proceed.”

The buy itself was straightforward: two hundred

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and fifty thousand dollars for everything explosive, plus all the assault rifles. Keeping in character, Tony tried to sell them the fifty cal, but Sungkar wasn’t buying.

“I’ll open the cargo door and your guys can drive in.” Tony went over to the huge door, almost the size of the wall, and pressed a button. Hydraulics groaned, and the door rattled up into the ceiling.

There were two men with Sungkar, one of whom had driven the truck. He climbed back in and tried to start it up, but the engine wouldn’t turn over. He looked up at Sungkar through the windshield apologetically and tried again. He had no luck, even after fifteen minutes of effort.

While they’d been talking, CTU agents had disabled the vehicle. It wasn’t going anywhere.

“I got a truck I can sell you,” Tony offered with a friendly grin. Sungkar wasn’t amused. While the Indonesians popped the hood and tinkered around, muttering in Malay, Tony said, “Seriously, you need transport to someplace, I can drive you there. No charge. I just want this shit outta my warehouse.”

Sungkar considered Tony had seen him check his watch several times, and knew that he had a schedule to keep.

“Just you. Not your men,” Sungkar said. “My business associates would not like that.”

“No prob,” Tony said, although he would have liked to have had a couple of good guns guarding his back. “Let’s load her onto my truck.”

4:32 A.M. PST Downtown Los Angeles

Dan Pascal was thinking that Officer Lafayette was a prophet. He really would have preferred to do a manhunt in the bayous.

He was standing with a half dozen other marshals and investigators on the curb of a street in downtown Los Angeles, next to a Nissan Maxima. The same Maxima, in fact, that Jack Bauer had stolen. He was happy to have found the car, but as far as he knew, Bauer had just jacked another one. Or maybe he’d just left the car and gone into one of these fine buildings. Far as Pascal knew, he could be looking down on them right now.

This city was immense. They’d simply vanished into the wilderness of civilization.

Pascal was just thinking how he liked that: “wilderness of civilization.” He ought to write that down. But his phone rang and he checked the number flashing. “Pascal. Go ahead, Emerson.”

His assistant deputy said, “Marshal, we got a break, looks like.”

“Don’t hold it in, it ain’t healthy.”

“A surveillance team downtown picked up some images that might be our man.” “What team? Ours?” “LAPD. They were on some other case. Some kind of fence named Vanowen.”

“I got a link in the car. Send me over the image.”

Pascal ambled over to his Crown Vic and punched

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up the mini-computer. The image downloaded quickly: a typically grainy black-and-white of a blond-haired man. Pascal always wondered why, in an age when a cop could drive around with a computer in his car and have pictures sent through the ether, security cameras still shot video that looked like the Zapruder footage. But even so, it did look like photos of Bauer. He was with a smaller guy, maybe Latino, and a round guy built like a fireplug.

“That’s our guy. Know where he’s going?”

“As a matter of fact, we do.”

4:38 A.M. PST Playa del Rey, California

Leave it to Los Angeles to take swampland next to an airport and build million-dollar McMansions over it. Playa del Rey, which had once been little more than the soaking ground for branches of the Los Angeles river during the rainy season, now consisted of long fields of beige and ecru archways and columns, cream-colored walls, and acre upon acre of Spanish tile in burnt umber and sienna.

Of course, all those people in all those mini-mansions gathered all sorts of possessions, and those possessions inevitably outgrew their houses, which meant they had to rent storage. The U-Pack Storage Rental facility did a better-than-break-even business renting storage space to the upper middle class. But the owner made his real money as a depot for the lesssavory members of the community who often helped relieve the suburbanites of their excess property.

The U-Pack people also let some of their illegal storage clients use his facility as a meeting ground. It was safe: you needed a pass code to get in, and the upstanding customers almost never visited.

Twenty minutes earlier Jack Bauer had driven with Vanowen and Ramirez to an overnight parking lot near the hotel, dropped off Vanowen’s Audi, and climbed into a mid-sized truck with circular logo and the words “Alliance Moving” in blue letters. Two men were waiting, and hopped in the back of the truck.

“You have a lot of businesses,” Jack observed. “Important to diversify.” Vanowen nodded, and started the truck’s engine.

Downtown to Playa del Rey was an easy drive at that hour, although one could already see early morning commuters easing sleepily onto the 110 Freeway. A police cruiser pulled up alongside for a moment, and Jack, at the passenger window, stared down at it. He wondered what Tony Almeida and Nina Myers were saying about him at CTU. He hoped Henderson had bought his story. If not, Jack wouldn’t be safe in Los Angeles much longer. So far he’d managed to stay ahead of the law by remaining unpredictable, but not untraceable. His pursuers would have found the truck, and then the Maxima. His face had undoubtedly been picked up by security cameras at the hotel, but CTU would have to access the data banks in that particular hotel to find him.

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The Alliance truck pulled into the driveway of a place called the U-Pack Storage facility. Vanowen hopped out and entered a code into a button panel, and a big iron gate that had blocked the driveway rattled out of the way.

Vanowen hopped back in and put the truck in gear. “Okay, I took from these guys before. I’m just doing pick up for the guy I do work with” —he threw a knowledgeable look at Ramirez— “and he says there shouldn’t be any trouble. Case there is, you’re on your own.” This was said to Jack.

Vanowen steered the truck up to the largest of three buildings on the lot, next to a big hangar door, then checked his watch with an air of satisfaction. “Quarter till. My dad always said, if you’re not ten minutes early, you’re late.”

“Looks like they’re right on time, too,” Jack said.

Another truck had rolled in through the iron gate. Vanowen watched it through the truck’s big rectangular side view mirror. This truck rumbled past the Alliance vehicle and pulled to a stop in the middle of the driveway. Jack followed Vanowen and Ramirez out of the cab, and one of the two men who’d gotten in back of the truck appeared. The other was nowhere in sight.

The occupants of the other truck appeared as well. There were four of them: three were Indonesian, and Jack’s eyes were drawn straight to the smallest—a little man with scholarly glasses and a look of fierce intensity. He was flanked by two more Indonesians, bigger, sporting tough looks, and undoubtedly carrying weapons. Finally, Jack glanced at the fourth man, and found himself looking straight into the eyes of Tony Almeida.

4:46 A.M. PST Playa del Rey

It took every ounce of self-discipline Tony possessed not to react. That was Jack Bauer. Goddamned-sonof-a-bitch Jack Bauer! What was he doing selling arms to Jemaah Islamiyah? Almeida was one of CTU’s best and brightest, and the connection formed in his mind almost immediately. Tintfass had been an arms dealer moving up in the world. Bauer had launched an investigation against him. CTU had decided not to pursue it. Bauer had killed him. What if Bauer was running a little side business of his own? He wouldn’t be the first law enforcement agent to take his knowledge over to the dark side. Maybe he’d wanted to take over Tintfass’s operation, first using Federal powers to try to destroy him, then taking the more direct approach. Rumors were flying around CTU of misappropriated funds . . . was Bauer at the center of it? Had he been financing his own sales operation?

All these thoughts raced through Tony’s mind, but none of them showed on his face. No outside observer would have gotten even a hint that Bauer and Almeida knew each other.

“We have your equipment,” Sungkar said. “You have our package, of course.”

One of the men with Jack, a short bulldog of a

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man with a mustache as thick as a shoe brush, nodded. “Right here.” He held up two CD jewel cases wrapped in rubber bands. He unwrapped the rubber bands and handed one to Sungkar. “This is most of it. We put the equipment on my truck, and I give you the rest.”

Sungkar nodded, having expected this. “Let’s get this done.” He motioned to his men, one of whom stood off to one side, the cover man, while the other unstrapped a dolly from the back of Tony’s truck and began to cart boxes over to the Alliance truck.

Tony didn’t know any of the men with Jack. The bulldog was completely unfamiliar. There was another guy with salt-and-pepper hair, but he looked to be no more than hired muscle. The last one wore a thin black mustache. Tony thought he’d seen a picture of him. Was he the other fugitive from jail?

4:50 A.M. PST Playa del Rey

Jack’s heart was pounding, but no one would have known he was nervous. What the hell was Almeida doing here? But Almeida couldn’t rat him out. He was obviously on a case of some kind and wouldn’t want to blow his cover.

Jack saw Vanowen ease up on Almeida, and his hand went casually to his hip where his Sig was stashed.

“You don’t belong here,” Vanowen said to Tony.

“Huh?” Tony replied, a little startled, but the bulldog’s expression was amused.

“You ain’t Chinese or whatever,” Vanowen said. “You the token white guy?” Almeida grinned as if he were amused. “I’m the token whatever, long as I get paid.” The conversation gave Jack the opening he needed. “Amen to that.” Almeida looked at him with those sad-sack eyes. “This’ll be a good payday, huh?”

Jack knew that Almeida was fishing. He was about to respond, but his words were cut off by a voice blaring over a loudspeaker. “This is the police. Put your hands up!”

Instead everyone went for his gun. Vanowen pulled

a .45 from somewhere, as did his bodyguard. Sungkar’s two men dropped their packages and did the same. Tony crouched down. Ramirez hit the deck with a shriek. Jack dropped to his knee, his hand going instinctively for his weapon, but he did not draw. The movement cost him. Gunshots sounded, and something fast and hot bit him on the right arm.

Two squad cars had blocked the iron gate, and another one had rolled in from some back entrance, along with a white unmarked car, probably a Crown Victoria. They were surrounded, but neither Vanowen nor the Indonesians were inclined to surrender. Vanown and his henchmen poured fire into the two police cars at the gate, and the cops there ducked for cover. The Indonesians attacked the other way. Someone from the Crown Vic fired a big weapon—.10mm Desert Eagle, had to be—that boomed like a shotgun, and one of the Indonesians went down immediately.

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But the others put rounds into the cars, and those officers, too, went for cover.

“What the fuck!” Vanowen said, dropping back near his own truck. He glared at Jack, his most likely suspect.

“You kidding?” Jack yelled back, pointing at his arm now running red with blood.

4:57 A.M. PST Playa del Rey

Dan Pascal hadn’t been in a real firefight since ’91. He heard the combined ping-thud of rounds puncturing the door of his car and he smirked. If it hits me, he thought, Lord just let it kill me. I just don’t wanna be maimed.

He raised himself up, just barely over the top of his car, and surveyed the terrain. LAPD was after the arms-selling crew, but Pascal was worried about Jack Bauer. He’d spotted his blond fugitive as they rolled up, but now he’d disappeared. Someone chose his car as a target, and his windshield shattered. He fired a few more rounds from his Desert Eagle, the sound like thunder compared to the little 9-millimeters plinking all around. This wasn’t going to last long. They had the bad guys in a cross-fire. He was just reaching for his mic to give more orders through the loudspeaker, when one of the officers in the squad car next to him went down without a word. Then the other one fell, too, and Pascal had a flashback of a little town in southern Iraq, watching three grunts in his platoon drop before someone yelled . . .

“Sniper!” he roared. They were standing next to a friggin’ three-story building, which meant that to someone looking down on them they’d be like fish in a barrel. He discharged a few rounds up-angle and slid back into his car as a round chipped at the asphalt he’d just vacated.

4:58 A.M. PST Playa del Rey

Jack saw Vanowen spin around as a high-caliber round hit him, and something small and shiny flew out of his hand. He needed Vanowen and couldn’t let him die. Jack sprinted the short distance between them and caught the other man before he fell, pinning him against the side of the truck.

“We’re leaving,” he said. He opened the cab and shoved Vanowen inside, following behind. He knew Vanowen’s other man, the one who’d disappeared, was on the roof, but he had no problem leaving the sniper behind for the cops to pick up. Jack gunned the engine. Ramirez appeared at the passenger door, threw it open, and scrambled inside.

Jack didn’t bother turning around. He jammed the truck’s long stick shift into reverse and hit the accelerator. The truck roared and lurched backward, heading straight for the two black-and-whites at the gate. He got a quick image of Tony Almeida glaring at him as he fled.

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He knew the cops at the gate were firing at the back of the truck, and he hoped none of them hit the ordinance that had already been stowed. The cop cars came up fast in the side view mirror. Jack gritted his teeth, and a second later he felt his head nearly rattle off his shoulders and the truck plowed into the cars, nearly stopped, then shoved its way between them.

Then he was through. There was no more fir-ing—the cops at the cars were either injured or had taken cover. Jack spared a second to survey the fire-fight. The Indonesians were firing at the other police cars, and Jack saw flashes of fire from the roof of the storage building. Someone was firing down on the cops. Vanowen’s second man. He glanced over at his two companions, both cowering in pain and fear. He switched his SigSauer to his left hand and leaned out the driver’s window. It was a ridiculous shot to try—way over fifty meters, with a handgun, firing left-handed. But he saw no reason for cops to get killed. He steadied his left arm and aimed, relaxing. There was a psychological tendency for shooters, aiming at distant targets, to muscle their way into the shot, as though their bodies needed to help the bullet travel. But the opposite was true, of course. The bullet would travel a certain distance, period, and no push from the shooter would help—it would only spoil the aim. Jack relaxed, made his best guess as to windage and the force of gravity, and squeezed.

Then he threw the truck into first and gunned the engine, and they were gone.

1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

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

5:00 A.M. PST Playa del Rey

“Jesus, Jesus,” Ramirez whispered with both hands covering his face.

“Goddamn!” Vanowen rasped through clenched teeth, his right hand pressed tightly over his left shoulder.

“It went through,” Jack said calmly. There was no pursuit. They had to ditch this truck, though, before the helicopters were in the air. “If no arteries were hit, you might live, but your shoulder’s ruined.” His own right arm stung, but he’d been lucky. The round had taken off a layer of skin, but hadn’t done any real damage.

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He saw what he was looking for and made a hard left. There was a long tunnel on Sepulveda Boulevard just south of LAX. He reached it and stopped in the slow lane, then jumped out. The next few moments would be pure luck. He saw headlights approach up the lonely road and enter the tunnel. If it was a cruiser, they were done.

It wasn’t. Jack waved at the car, a red Chrysler SUV. The car slowed. Jack jumped in front of it and raised his weapon. “Out, now.”

The driver, a forty-ish man in a dress shirt and tie, looked shocked and took a moment to comply.

“The stuff,” Vanowen said. “Put as much in as you can.”

Jack didn’t question. He helped Vanowen into the SUV, then he and Ramirez spent a minute or two tossing the boxes from the truck into the SUV. The delivery was shrinking. They’d loaded only half the equipment into the truck, and only a portion of that would fit in the SUV.

Jack took the SUV driver’s wallet, glanced at the name and address, and said, “Okay, Mr. Mullins, I need you to listen.” The man was still in shock. Jack tapped him with the Sig to get his attention. “We’re stealing your car. You’re not going to report it for at least an hour, understand? Get out of here, away from this truck. Call a cab, I don’t care. If I learn that the police are looking for this SUV—”

“—if we see a friggin’ Amber Alert on the freeway with this license plate number,” Vanowen added angrily.

“—well, we know where you live.” Jack held up the driver’s license as a reminder, then stuck it in his pocket. He didn’t wait for a response, and a moment later they were driving away in the SUV.

5:07 A.M. PST Playa del Rey

Tony was facedown on the asphalt with some huge police officer kneeling on his back. He didn’t try to resist, trusting that the whole affair would get sorted out soon enough. The big man cuffed him and sat him up roughly, and Tony found himself looking into a big square face.

“Ya’ll want to tell me where Jack Bauer’s gone off to?” he drawled in a slow, demanding voice. Jack Bauer. Tony Almeida rolled his eyes.

5:08 A.M. PST Playa del Rey

Peter Jiminez rolled up on the scene at U-Pack Storage. He’d heard the radio signals going back and forth, and would have arrived sooner except that he hadn’t been aware the surveillance team was specifically hunting Bauer.

He’d gotten the call from Chris Henderson not long before, and Henderson’s orders had been crystal clear: Find Jack Bauer, before the police do, if possible.

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Jiminez had taken the trace Henderson supplied him and gone directly to the InterContinental Hotel, but he was a step behind. He’d actually intended to go back to Teri Bauer, to start over, when the U-Pack call came through.

The parking lot was clogged with emergency vehicles, and the street outside was blocked by three news vans. Peter parked on the street and slipped under the yellow police line, showing his badge to the uniform there. A moment later he laid eyes on Tony Almeida, sitting on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back, and a bear of a man hunched over him.

“Excuse me,” he said politely, holding up his badge. “Can I help with something?”

The big man stood up, immediately looming over Peter, and studied the badge for a moment. The Counter Terrorist Unit ID seemed to carry some significance for him. “I’m just interviewing a suspect, son. Why don’t you wait—”

“That’s no suspect,” Peter replied. “He’s one of us.”

Pascal looked from one to the other skeptically. “He was apprehended while committing a felony, and he was seen abetting a wanted fugitive.”

Bauer! “Well, I’m sure it’s part of a case, Officer—?”

“Deputy Marshal,” the big man corrected. “Deputy Marshal Dan Pascal.”

Tony looked up at them both. “My name is Tony Almeida. The Indonesians you’ve arrested, at least one of them is a member of a terrorist organization.” He told his story quickly.

Pascal was no stooge. He got on his radio and relayed all their information, and even waited several minutes until he could speak with George Mason, the one CTU agent he’d met before. Finally he was satisfied. He uncuffed Tony and helped him to his feet.

“You CTU people seem to have a talent for getting into trouble,” he observed.

“You’re leading the Bauer manhunt?” Peter asked.

“That’s the job,” Pascal replied. “Came pretty damned close, too, but they put up a serious fight. We got wounded, and some of them got away. Woulda been worse, but someone nailed their sharpshooter.”

“Sharpshooter?” Tony asked.

“You didn’t see? Guy on the roof. Nearly put one through my skull, and he got some of the others. But someone shot him right through the neck. Pretty shot, whoever it was. My guys brought him down a minute ago.” He chewed the inside of his cheek for a minute. “So you boys must know him. What’s Captain America doing working with these felons when he should be on the run?”

Almeida almost smiled at the Captain America reference. “I don’t know. I was on my case and nearly choked when I saw him standing there.” But when Pascal turned away to talk to another Deputy Marshal, Almeida pulled Jiminez aside. “I have an idea, though.” He repeated his theory about Tintfass.

Jiminez couldn’t, or wouldn’t, believe it. “I just don’t buy it, Tony. Jack’s been hunting terrorists since before 9/11. Why would he jump over to the dark side?”

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“Money. Or maybe he’s tired of it. Or maybe he’s running from home.” Tony knew that Jack’s marriage was a roller coaster.

Jiminez clung to his naïveté. “I still don’t think that’s Jack.”

5:20 A.M. PST Biltmore Hotel

It really couldn’t have worked out better, Jack thought as they pulled into the guest parking area of the Biltmore Hotel.

They’d managed to stop Vanowen’s bleeding and put a new shirt on him. Vanowen had said they could not go to the meet—they hadn’t picked up a third of the package. He had to go straight to his employer and explain what had happened. Jack, who’d also borrowed a shirt to cover his own bloodstained arm, hid his excitement, but he was eager to meet the man in charge. He followed Vanowen’s directions to the Biltmore, which, ironically, was only a few blocks from the InterContinental.

They’d put a jacket over Vanowen to hide the bloodstained shirt, but his face was pale and he needed help to walk. Fortunately there were very few people up and about at five o’clock, and when one of the few, a bellman, looked at them quizzically, Jack just said, “Fun night,” and that was it.

They rode the elevator to the eleventh floor and Vanowen guided them to room 1103. The door opened slightly and a face, hidden by the door and the shadows, stared out at them. “What?” the occupant demanded.

“It got fucked up,” Vanowen said weakly. “I gotta explain. And get help.”

The occupant’s eyes studied Vanowen, and then Ramirez, and then lingered for a while on Jack. “Vanowen, Ramirez. Come in. You stay out.”

The door opened ever so slightly more, and Ramirez helped Vanowen slip into the room. The door shut firmly.

Jack waited, but not patiently. He’d been through a rough night, as rough as any he’d experienced, but so far the plan was working. Just a few more minutes and it would be over.

Jack pressed his ear against the door. He heard muffled sounds of conversation. The words were lost but the rhythm was calm, typical. Then he heard two muted gunshots, followed by two thuds.

Shit! Jack stepped back, raised his leg, and kicked. The door swelled inward, but the frame held. He kicked again, and the door broke free of its bolt. Jack was inside instantly, SigSauer ready.

Ramirez and Vanowen lay on the floor, each with a small bullet hole in his head. There was an open door leading to the next hotel room—they’d been connected. Jack rushed through in time to see that door swing closed. He burst out into the hallway again and saw a figure running down the hall. “Freeze!” he yelled, planning to shoot anyway. The man turned and fired, missing. Jack dropped to one knee and dis

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charged three rounds at the moving target. His quarry stumbled, but kept running. Jack sprinted forward, the long night forgotten, his heart pounding with the excitement of the hunt.

The man he chased was shorter than he, with dark hair and a Latino look. His quarry ran into the stairwell. Jack followed, with the runner a full flight below him by the time he was through the door. Jack ran down two flights in pursuit, then paused. He leveled the SigSauer and waited. As the man came around the next turn, he fired center mass, and his target dropped.

Jack ran down. The bullet had passed through the hollow of his shoulder and diagonally through his heart. Checking the wound, Jack saw a tattoo on his neck, below the collar line, that read “Emese” in gothic lettering. He hadn’t known about the tattoo. It was the same tattoo worn by one of the MS–13 soldiers. Jack was surprised, but he didn’t have to worry about it at the moment. He’d brought down Zapata.

Jack heard sirens approaching. He sat down on the stairs next to the body and waited. They could arrest him now.

5:37 A.M. PST Chatsworth, California

Nina Myers hunched down over the steering wheel, trying to see the street sign. Chatsworth lay on the edge of Los Angeles county, in the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley. It wasn’t the middle of nowhere, but it was rural enough to be zoned for horses. The streetlights were fewer and farther between, and the street signs were hard to read. It was also far enough out that her GPS map didn’t show any roads.

The place she looked for was on a street called Baden, somewhere below the rocky hills that marked the border between Los Angeles and Ventura counties. She was interested in the address because it was associated with a phone number, a number that Marcia Tintfass had called three times immediately after Nina’s visit. She was going to find that house and talk to whoever had received those phone calls.

5:40 A.M. PST Biltmore Hotel

Hotel security had no interest in dealing with a gunman, but Jack heard them moving around up on the floor. They’d surely found the bodies of Ramirez and Vanowen by now. He heard the fire door to the stairwell open twice, then close quickly after a pause. They’d be startled to see Zapata’s body lying there, with Jack sitting calmly beside it—startled, and none too interested in dealing with it.

Jack felt his eyelids droop. It had been a long night, and the truth was, he hadn’t gotten much sleep in prison for the three previous weeks. He could use a real rest.

When the police finally arrived, they came from

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above and below, guns drawn. They proned him out and he didn’t resist, letting them cuff him. They led him upstairs to the hallway, now full of emergency personnel, police officers, and one very large man in plain clothes.

“Well, there’s Captain America,” the big man crowed. “You’ve had a busy night.”

Jack looked at the badge on the man’s belt. He was a U.S. Marshal. “I want to talk to Chris Henderson at the Counter Terrorist Unit,” Jack said, “or Ryan Chappelle, if he’s out of the hospital.”

“You can talk all you want once we get you back into jail,” the man said.

Jack nodded. There was no need to put up a fight. Even if it took another day, this whole mess would straighten itself out. In jail, they’d put him in isolation, where he’d be safe from MS–13 and their strange vendetta. The biggest mystery for him now was why Zapata had worn an MS–13 tattoo. He’d had no idea of that connection. It was impossible that Zapata had sent MS–13 after him—absolutely impossible. What was the connection?

Jack mulled this over as the big man—Jack heard someone refer to him as Pascal—and another marshal led him downstairs. Pascal didn’t engage him in conversation, and when Jack asked two more times to talk to someone at CTU, the big marshal repeated his previous statement. On Jack’s third try, Pascal shook his head. “Son, you don’t get me. My job ain’t to accommodate you in any way. My job is to put you back in your hole.”

They reached the hotel’s parking lot, and Pascal guided Jack, still handcuffed, over to a beige Crown Victoria. Jack saw bullet holes in the door and guessed it was the same Crown Vic he’d seen at U-Pack. Pascal tucked Jack in the backseat—although unmarked, the car was all cop, with the plastic shield and no door handles on the backseat interior. Then Pascal maneuvered himself into the driver’s seat with the other marshal riding shotgun. They drove out of the hotel and turned onto the early morning downtown streets.

The other marshal got on his cell phone for a minute, then turned to Pascal. “The victim was DOA.”

Pascal grunted. “Guess you got another one,” he called back to Jack. “You keep busy, that’s for damned sure. Out less than twelve hours and you steal two automobiles and commit a murder. I don’t suppose you’re going to tell us what you had against Mister . . . What was his name again?”

“Aguillar,” the other marshal said. “Francis Aguillar.” Jack felt the blood freeze in his veins.

5:53 A.M. PST Biltmore Hotel

Zapata stood in the crowd in the lobby watching the police and paramedics parade in and out. He looked no more or less a part of the crowd than any of the others—an average-sized man with a shaved head,

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wearing track pants and a zip-up jacket, he passed easily for a guest out for an early morning jog. If anyone asked for his ID, he would have a problem—the Ossipon identity was connected to one of the two rooms. The police would want to know why three men had been killed in or near those rooms, and Zapata had no interest in long conversations with the authorities.

So the Ossipon cover was blown, but Zapata could deal with that. What disturbed him most was how close the authorities had come to him. They had been, literally, within a step or two of catching him. He had not seen the undercover agent himself, but he had known it the minute Vanowen showed up at his door, bloody, with Ramirez, of all people, and saying they had a stranger with them. How obvious. It was a pattern almost too easy to recognize. Did they have so little respect for him that they thought he would not see this pattern? A new element thrown into the middle of his carefully laid plans. Zapata clicked his tongue reproachfully. Would Leonardo fail to notice bird droppings fall on the Mona Lisa?

This had been a clumsy effort on the part of the government, he thought, a big blunt instrument. Yes, he had to admit it had almost worked. If Aguillar had not been there to delay the agent . . . Well, the fault was his, in the end. He had fallen into a pattern himself. He should never have allowed Aguillar to use Vanowen again. It had not been enough to cut off Ramirez. He should have removed Vanowen from his list for good.

Well, Zapata thought, slipping on a pair of sunglasses against the rising sun, lesson learned. He slipped out of the hotel and went for a jog.

5:59 A.M. PST Downtown Los Angeles

Francis Aguillar. The name bounced around in Jack’s head obsessively. Francis Aguillar. Not Jorge Rafael Marquez? Maybe it was a mistake, or an alias for Zapata. No, not an alias, Jack thought. Aguillar was a known associate of Zapata’s who had vanished years earlier. Zapata would never take the alias of an associate.

I got the wrong man, Jack thought. Jesus, I got the wrong man, and now I’m stuck in here.

Jack felt the claustrophobic sense he’d experienced in jail when he’d learned that the warden, the corrections officer, and Chappelle had all been disabled. The walls that had seemed so unreal suddenly seemed concrete and dangerous. Now, in the backseat of the cruiser, which a moment ago had seemed such a temporary thing, he felt hemmed in, trapped.

He was in the middle of that thought when Peter Jiminez rammed the Crown Victoria.

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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 Downtown Los Angeles

Peter’s car hit the unmarked police cruiser on the driver’s side trunk, spinning it around in the middle of Flower Street, which was still empty at this hour. The force of the crash hurled Jack against the window, where he hit his head with a thud. By the time his vision cleared, someone was opening the driver’s door, and Jack had a blurry vision of someone blasting Pascal in the face with pepper spray. The noxious gas only seemed to make the big man angry. He struggled to get himself out of his seat when the assailant punched him in the jaw.

Jack’s vision had cleared now, although the scene felt unreal. He saw Peter Jiminez handcuff the marshal’s hands to the steering wheel, then rip out the car’s radio.

A moment later the back door flew open and Peter was pulling him out, holding up a handcuff key. A moment later his cuffs were off.

Jack didn’t bother asking Peter where he’d come from. It didn’t matter. He was free, and he still had a job to do. “I need your car,” Jack said. “There are police about three blocks from here. We have to clear this scene.”

“I’m going with you,” Jiminez said.

“Okay,” Jack said, and chopped Peter across the jaw with an elbow. Jiminez sagged like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Jack took the handcuffs and locked Peter to the door of the Crown Victoria, took Peter’s Para Ordinance .45 and his magazines, his car keys, and his telephone, and jumped into his car.

6:03 A.M. PST Chatsworth

It turned out Baden was an unmarked street that led up into the rocky hills. This was an alien world, a forest of boulders jutting up from the chaparral. One boulder—Stony Point—was so huge and steep that mountain climbers came up here to practice on weekends. The whole area looked like a movie set dropped into the area by Hollywood producers.

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