PROLOGUE

One month ago

It used to be easier, Claire told herself as she pushed the refreshment cart down the narrow aisle. The plane hit a pocket of turbulence and bucked like a horse. She didn’t like horses. She liked planes, or at least she had for the first thirty years of her career. In her twenties, it had been fun to be a stewardess (she was old enough to have been called that once upon a time). Her thirties had been good, too, even her forties. But now, in her fifties, the rides had grown too hard on her feet, and the aisles had shrunk too narrow for her hips. The men didn’t look at her anymore, either. They had stayed the same age, but she’d grown older. They liked her still—thirty years of dealing with grumpy travelers packed in like LEGOs had taught her how to survive on charm—but these days they smiled at her the way her grandson’s friends smiled at her, and where was the fun in that?

“Something to drink?” she said, snapping down the brake and smiling at the boy in 29A. The young man wore an REI jacket and a leather thong choker with a wooden Inuit-carved pendant dangling from it. Claire had seen the boy a hundred times. Not the same boy, of course, but annual versions of him, flying back home from Alaska after a season aboard a fishing boat. Sometimes they were rich people’s sons “toughing it out” for the experience. Sometimes they came from the underside of middle class, really needing the money. They all came back looking the same. She liked to guess as much as she could about them. Thirty years of practice had made her pretty good at it. 29A took a Coke. She poured the fizzy soda into the plastic cup and handed it over.

29B and 29C were together, a couple in their late twenties, no wedding rings, coming back from a trip up to the Alaskan wilderness. She was a redhead with a bright smile. Schoolteacher, Claire thought. He had a smile, too, but he was thinner, like a sword. She wondered if he was an athlete. The way he said, “Thanks” reminded Claire of Chicago.

On the other side of the aisle, a young man sat alone in 29D. He had short black hair and a clean-shaven face. He smiled at her warmly and said, “Tomato juice” in answer to her question. He spoke with a bit of a lilt in his voice that didn’t sound Hispanic, though he looked it. She poured tomato juice into a plastic cup. “Is L.A. home?” she asked pleasantly.

“For a while,” the young man replied.

“Everyone says that at first.” Claire laughed. She handed him the tomato juice.

Claire never heard him reply because the plane exploded.

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 6 P.M. AND 7 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

6:00 P.M. PST Panorama City, California

“I promise you, there will be no need for anything rough.”

Jack Bauer believed him and lowered his SigSauer. He motioned for Ed Burchanel to do the same. The FBI agent hesitated, not as sure as Jack. Finally, he lowered his Glock .40 but did not holster it.

The fat man on the wrong end of Burchanel’s gun chuckled nervously. “Your Agent Bauer knows when he’s won. I am not the type to give you trouble.”

Burchanel’s expression hadn’t changed since the moment they’d kicked in the door. “You gave us trouble back in ’93.”

Jack knew Burchanel was barking more than he planned to bite. Burchanel wasn’t even aware of the entire package. All he knew was that the fat man, Ramin, had been connected to terrorist activities. But Jack was CIA, and by law the CIA was not allowed to operate domestically. Burchanel’s presence made it legal.

“Not me, not me,” Ramin insisted. He lowered himself heavily into the armchair of his own living room, like a guest not sure the chair was permitted to him. There was already a deep indentation where he usually settled his wide ass. The chair creaked heavily and made a sound like one of the springs popping. He kept his hands on the armrests in plain view. He wore thick gold rings on most of his thick fingers. His nails appeared unnaturally neat and shiny. His mustached face smiled at them, a smile that was neither arrogant nor deceptive. It was the anxious smile of a man who had no desire except to please whoever might do him the most damage, and right now that honor belonged to Jack Bauer of the CIA and Ed Burchanel of the FBI. Ramin smiled again. “I wasn’t involved directly at all in the truck bombing.”

Jack motioned for Burchanel to stay with Ramin while he cleared the rest of the house. It was a small bungalow in Panorama City, in the dirty heart of the San Fernando Valley north of Los Angeles. Master bedroom, extra bedroom, bathroom, kitchen. He was done quickly and returned, nodding to Burchanel. Jack sat on the sofa that put his back to a wall and gave him full view of the front door and the hallway. Burchanel’s position blocked the door itself, although with Ramin’s size there was no way he could outrun them, even if he were the type.

The search had taken a few seconds, but Jack spoke as if no time had passed. “Not directly, but you used to go by the name of Mezriani, and you were friends with Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman.”

“Sheik Omar was the man behind the ’93 bombing,” Burchanel added. “You moved money around for him.”

Ramin sighed at Burchanel, then appealed to Jack. “Agent Bauer, look at me. I am an aging fat man of moderate resources. I am neither a patriot nor a zealot. I have one goal in life, and that is to make myself as comfortable as possible. I do not find interrogation or imprisonment comfortable, so I will tell you everything, everything I can.”

“Start by taking us through ’93,” Jack said. “Tell us what you know.”

Ramin obeyed. He talked freely, but ultimately he told Jack nothing the CIA agent didn’t already know. Seven years ago, Sheik Omar Abdel-Rahman, “the Blind Sheik,” had inspired several members of a Jersey City mosque to park a truck bomb in the parking structure of the World Trade Center. Most of those responsible had been caught, including the Sheik himself. One terrorist, Abdul Rahman Yasin, had been taken into custody and then mistakenly released. He’d slipped away to somewhere in the Middle East, probably Iraq. With most of the main culprits in jail, the media considered the case closed, but the World Trade Center bombing had been a wake-up call to a few entities inside the U.S. government, and they had started watching more carefully. Ramin hadn’t been missed in the first rounds of investigation. He’d been brought into custody and interrogated—something, he repeatedly told Jack, that he did not find comfortable at all—but his only real connection to the World Trade Center bombing was an association with some of the Blind Sheik’s zealous friends, and a knack for investing their money profitably. The FBI and Federal prosecutors had chosen not to pursue a case against him. Since 1993, Ramin had been interviewed several times by the Feds, and each time he insisted that 1993 had scared him into a much more cautious and upstanding circle of friends.

Jack had come to Ramin from the other end of operations. Jack was currently “on loan” to the CIA, although he couldn’t explain even to his wife what “on loan” meant. In the early days, in the military and with LAPD, it had been easy. You were assigned to a unit and you worked in that unit. You reported to a commanding officer, and that was that. But over the years Jack had risen (or fallen? he wasn’t sure which) into a murkier stratum of operations. It was as though the closer he got to the source of decision making, the more complex the network became. Communication channels crisscrossed. Organizational charts looked like Escher drawings. It was, to coin a phrase one of Jack’s CIA colleagues had used, the “fog of deniability.”

But one thing did remain clear, even in that fog: the bad guys. They were out there, and if Jack couldn’t pierce the heart of his own government’s workings, he sure as hell could pierce the heart of the other guy’s. So when the chance to be seconded to the CIA had come up, he’d taken it in a heartbeat. CIA meant overseas work, and that’s where the enemy lived. Ironically, Jack’s most recent task with the CIA had led him right back home.

“Farouk tells me you have been in bed with AlGama’a al-Islamiyya,” Jack said. Ramin winced at the term in bed and wiggled his bejeweled fingers.

“Farouk likes to sound more important than he is,” the fat man said. “Ask anyone in Cairo.”

“I did and you’re right,” Jack said. “If I believed everything Farouk said, Burchanel here would be asking the questions, not me.” Burchanel smiled unpleasantly. “But I do believe that you’ve gotten cozy with some unsavory types again, Ramin. And I also believe that somewhere in all of Farouk’s stories about terrorist attacks on U.S. soil, there’s a little bit of truth. You’re not the type to blow yourself up for the sake of Allah, and you’re not the type to go to jail for someone else’s sake. So tell me everything you know about Abdul Rahman Yasin trying to get back into this country.”

Ramin sighed. “If you know about Yasin, then you must know about tomorrow night.”

Jack reacted, startled, despite his training. Burchanel, too. “What’s tomorrow night?”

Ramin looked equally surprised. “I thought you knew. I don’t know what it is, but I know that it is tomorrow.”

Burchanel stood up and snarled. “Tell us what it is.”

The fat man leaned back in his chair. This time it didn’t creak or pop as before. Somewhere in his brain, that seemed wrong to Jack. “I don’t know what, I swear!” Ramin squealed. “I am not a terrorist.”

“You only handle their money,” the FBI agent snapped. He leaned down, gripping Ramin’s shirt in two clublike fists.

“But not their information!” Ramin clasped his sweaty, bejeweled hands over Burchanel’s. “I only know that Yasin will be leaving the next day, so it

must be tomorrow night! He would not stay longer.”

“What’s the target!” Burchanel demanded.

“Hold on . . .” Jack started to say.

Ramin squeaked again. “I don’t know! I only

know that with Yasin you must think in threes! I heard talk of three points of attack, three opportunities, three, three, three all the time!”

“This is bullshit,” Burchanel said. He braced with

his legs and heaved the fat man up and out of his seat.

Jack heard another pop. “Down!” he yelled.

The chair blew up, vanishing in a spray of light

and heat, wood and metal. Jack hit the floor while a thousand angry bees tore at his clothes, some at his skin, trying to pull him in pieces away from the center of the blast.

6:14 P.M. PST Westwood, California

“Dare,” Kim Bauer chose.

Her best friend, Janet York, grinned mischievously. “Kiss Dean. French!” Everyone oohed and giggled.

There were six of them, three girls and three boys, sitting in the den of Lindsay Needham’s house. The housekeeper was supposed to be watching them while Lindsay’s mother was at a meeting, but housekeepers were easily gotten rid of, and the six thirteenyear-olds had gotten down to a very intense game of Truth or Dare.

Kim Bauer looked at Luke, hoping she wasn’t blushing too badly. She was just glad Janet hadn’t chosen Aaron. Aaron was cute, but he was brother material. Luke was a hunk. He was most of the reason Kim had been willing to play Truth or Dare in the first place. Kim had kissed boys before—she was thirteen, after all!—but she’d never French kissed. She didn’t think Luke had, either. Their lips locked; something warm and wiggly, strange and uncomfortable, happened; and then it was over except for a lot of squealing and giggling.

“Okay, okay, my turn!” Kim said. Her heart was racing, but she felt no need to remain the center of all that attention. “Aaron!” she declared to a boy across the circle from her. “Truth or dare!”

Aaron had just recovered from laughing and applauding. “Truth,” he chose.

Kim knew that Aaron and Janet had been going steady, and that they’d been caught behind the gym once. Janet denied anything was happening, but Kim wasn’t so sure. “Has anyone ever touched you?” she asked.

Aaron’s laughter thinned. “Touched me? Well, sure . . .”

“Uh-uh.” Kim grinned. She glanced wickedly at Janet. “I mean, touched you. Down there.”

“Kim!” Janet shrieked. The others shrieked, too. All except for Aaron. Kim had expected him to blush, but instead he’d gone ghostly white.

“Well, spill!” Dean demanded, oblivious.

“Spill!” repeated the others.

Aaron was not playing along. He fidgeted, the color gone from his face, his lip trembling. He looked at Kim with wet eyes, then looked down. All the laughter died.

“Aaron?” Kim asked quietly.

The boy got to his feet and hurried from the room.

6:19 P.M. PST Panorama City

Jack stumbled out of a cloud of dark smoke and into a sea of red and blue flashing lights set against black and white. He was vaguely aware of the police cars and uniformed officers. He knew someone was trying to talk to him, but the words came through as a muffled buzz, distorted by the ringing in his ears.

Booby trap, he said. Or at least that’s what he meant to say. He couldn’t hear his own words. Bomb in the chair. Pressure release, like a land mine. The fat man sat down and that triggered it. They’re ahead of us.

The uniformed officers asked him a few more questions, but he couldn’t hear them yet. They’re ahead of us, he kept thinking and saying. They’re ahead of us. The uniforms didn’t know what that meant, so they left him sitting on the curb and went back inside to search.

Jack breathed in the cleaner air and worked his jaw as though that would open up channels and let the ringing sound leave his head. The muffled voices became a little more distinct as he watched figures in firemen’s jackets carry two people out of the house on stretchers—the fat man covered by a sheet, and Burchanel. Jack couldn’t see much of the FBI agent with the emergency personnel around him, but what little he saw looked bad.

They’re ahead of us, Jack told himself. They knew we’d talk to Ramin and they tried to put him out of service. They’re ahead of us. It occurred to him that he kept repeating that same phrase. It was not a good sign.

Someone knelt behind him, tearing the back of his shirt open. The someone—a paramedic—daubed his back with soft, wet gauze. The wetness felt cool at first, then it stung. Jack gritted his teeth but said nothing. This was easier to deal with than the ringing in his head. He could focus on pain. Sounds came into his head now as separate and distinct stimuli. Soon enough he was able to focus on two people standing in front of him. One was a paramedic— maybe the same one who had treated his back. The other was a tall man with steel-blue eyes. It occurred to Jack that he knew that man.

“. . . got to be a concussion,” the paramedic was saying. “And his back is torn up a little from chair fragments, but there’s nothing serious. Not like the other guys. I can’t believe he survived it, that close.”

“That’s Jack,” said Christopher Henderson. Henderson stooped in front of Jack to look him in the eye. “You okay, buddy?”

Jack was. Henderson’s voice came from farther away than it should have, but otherwise, Jack’s head was clearing. “I’m pissed,” he said. “How are they?”

Henderson shook his head. “The fat guy’s dead. Your FBI man would be, too, but the fat guy shielded a lot of the blast. Still, they’re taking him to ICU.”

Jack nodded. Every passing moment brought him a little more clarity. Still, he’d had concussions before, and he knew that clarity came in layers—at each stage you felt fine, until the next layer came and you realized how groggy you’d still been a moment before.

“Was the fat guy Ramin Ahmadi?” Henderson asked.

Jack nodded again, and this time he smiled wryly. “This unit of yours is coming along, eh?”

Henderson managed to nod proudly and dismissively at the same time, the way a man takes a compliment on a golf swing he knows is good. “We’re on the distribution list, now. I still think you should come over. Speaking of which . . .” He spun on his heels and sat down on the curb next to Jack. “What’s a CIA agent doing operating domestically?”

Jack rubbed his eyes and pointed down the road, where an ambulance had just taken Ed Burchanel. “I was just along for the ride. It was Ed’s investigation.”

Henderson snorted. “If you joined the Counter Terrorist Unit, you wouldn’t have to tell tall tales.”

“Like I told Richard Walsh, you guys seem set up to deal with things on this side of the ocean. The real action is overseas.”

Henderson looked over his shoulder at the smoldering house. “Is that so?”

It occurred to Jack that the evidence was against him.

“Well, at least let me give you a ride,” Henderson said.

Jack shook his head. “Can’t. I’ve got to clean this mess up,” he said, referring to the informational debris, not the damage to the house.

“No, you don’t,” Henderson said. “It’s our mess now. CTU’s mess, I mean.”

Jack bristled, but then put his hackles down. He could see it. CIA recruits the FBI to pursue a domestic investigation. The shit hits the fan, and CTU, eager to make its bones, steps in as the new agency in charge of a terrorist case.

“It’s my case,” Jack said. “I want in.”

Henderson winked. “Like I said, let me give you a ride.”

6:28 P.M. PST Westwood

Kim found Aaron sitting on the curb outside the Needham house. She knew boys didn’t like to be caught crying, so she pretended not to notice as he wiped his eyes. When he was done, she sat down next to him.

“I didn’t mean to freak you out,” she said. “I mean, it was just a game—”

“It’s cool, it’s cool,” he said, still sniffling. “You didn’t freak me out. I kinda did that myself.”

“It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t because you and Janet—”

“No!”

“—because I was just joking—”

“No, it’s not.” His breath caught in his throat, making her stop, too. “It’s not Janet or anything. It’s . . .”

He adjusted himself in a way Kim couldn’t really explain. It wasn’t like he fidgeted or anything. But she could tell that some machinery in his body or his head, a cog or a wheel she couldn’t see, had shifted, like when you clicked a button on a computer and could sort of sense it gearing up to perform its appointed task.

“I’ve never told anyone before.”

She didn’t say, You can tell me. Thirteen though she was, she was old enough to understand that prompts of that kind were reserved for gossip and rumors in the girls’ room and e-mail. This was more important. She didn’t have to tell Aaron he could trust her. He would know, or he wouldn’t.

“It’s weird no matter what, but it’s especially weird because it’s, it’s the priest at my church.” She nodded, still not sure what he meant or what “it” was, just knowing that somehow all the air had been sucked away from both of them. “He’s been one of the priests there for my whole life, and when he asked me, I didn’t know what to say. I mean, I didn’t know how to say no or whatever.”

“No to what?”

Aaron shivered. “He . . . did that. What you asked about inside. He did it a lot.”

6:31 P.M. PST Los Angeles, California

Michael dialed the number and waited. The phone rang three times before it was picked up. No one spoke on the other end. “Hello?” Michael said in mock confusion. “Hello? Is Michael there?” When no one spoke, he hung up.

His cell phone rang a moment later. “Is this Mi

chael?” said a voice on the far end.

“Speaking,” Michael replied.

“This is Gabriel.” Gabriel, of course, was not his real

name, but that hardly mattered. “What happened?”

“Ramin is dead.”

“What a tragedy. Before the authorities got to

him, no doubt?”

“Well, no. During.”

The voice on the far end hissed, somehow sucking all the warmth out of Michael. “Did he pass on any information? Anything that could cause a problem?”

“I don’t see how,” Michael said. “He knew almost nothing. If he told them everything, it would be no more than they might have guessed on their own.”

“Probably you are right,” Gabriel said. “We should meet. We need to move forward. Write down this address.”

Michael wrote.

6:35 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

The Los Angeles headquarters of the Counter Terrorist Unit looked like a technological garden run amok. Phone lines and optical cables sprouted out of the ground. More cables draped themselves vinelike from the ceiling. A few desks sat, steady and alone, as certain and determined as rocks in a Zen garden.

There was a picnic going on in this garden—about a half-dozen staffers were camped out on the floor, sitting around a blanket of paper napkins, sharing cheddar cheese and Wheat Thins and sucking bottles of Sam Adams beer.

“This looks cozy,” Jack said as he and Henderson entered the room. “You guys make a great first impression.”

A muscle in Henderson’s jaw pulsed.

“Hey, sir, did you hear the good news!” one of the picnickers said. She stood up and walked toward Henderson with an unopened bottle in her hand. “We made our first bust!”

Henderson did not lighten up. “And it’s big enough so that you’re already drinking on the job?”

The young woman, in her late twenties, glanced at Jack and realized that she didn’t know him. She hesitated, then clearly decided that there was no backtracking. “Well, just to baptize the place, you know? None of us are on call anyway.”

Jack didn’t think she was an operator. None of them looked like operators to him. Even the most bythe-book operator toeing the line for a superior had a certain don’t-fuck-with-me quality about him, and would lean on you the way your dog leaned its weight against you, just to test you, even though it knew you were the alpha. None of these people had it.

“Tell me about the bust,” Henderson said.

The woman glanced at Jack. “He’s all right,” Henderson said, waving away any concern about classification. “Bauer, this is Jamey Farrell, one of our analysts. Jamey, Jack Bauer, CIA.”

She nodded, then said excitedly, “We’re pulling together field reports for the formal summary, but basically we nailed those three guys from the Hollywood mosque.”

“What three guys?” Jack asked.

Jamey said three names he didn’t recognize. “They were leads we were working out of here,” Jamey said, taking obvious pride in the half-assembled office. Or, rather, taking pride in her accomplishments despite her surroundings. “We caught them using Internet café computers and Skype technology to contact members of al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya . . . um, you know what—”

“I know who they are,” Jack said.

“Right. We couldn’t get anything definitive, and the conversations we recorded weren’t incriminating. It took us a while to convince the judge to let us go in.”

Henderson grunted. “Damned warrants. It’s a pain in the ass to get them. It oughta be easier.”

Jamey continued undeterred. “Finally, we got evidence that one of these three had tried to call the Blind Sheik’s number, and the judge decided we had probable cause.”

“Are they booked?” Henderson asked.

“Will be. We found plastic explosives in their house.”

“Who is this?”

The voice that spoke was thin and tight as a wire. All three of them turned to see a narrow-faced man with a balding head staring at them. He wasn’t particularly small, but, oddly, Jack got the impression that he thought of himself as small. His shoulders seemed to cave in, but his chest puffed out, as though he was at once collapsing under, and resisting, his own self-image.

“Jack Bauer, CIA,” Henderson said quickly. “Jack, this is Ryan Chappelle, Division Director of CTU.”

Jack reached out to shake Chappelle’s hand, but Chappelle only looked at it and raised an eyebrow. Jack realized what he was waiting for, withdrew the hand, and produced his identification. Chappelle read it like he was studying a driver’s test, then nodded. “Welcome,” he said finally. “Excuse me a moment.” Chappelle turned to berate the carpet picnickers.

Jack took that opportunity to turn to Henderson. “I thought George Mason was Division Director,” he whispered.

Henderson shook his head. “Mason is District Director.”

Jack rolled his eyes. Henderson shrugged. “We’re new. We’re a little confused about titles, but it all works out.”

“Yeah, I can see that.”

Under Chappelle’s scolding, the picnickers had vanished as if they’d never been. The room successfully cleared of any joy, Chappelle returned to Henderson and Bauer. “Bauer, Richard Walsh tells me you’re considering coming on board with us.”

Jack bit his lip to avoid scowling. “It’s a discussion we’ve had, but I’m not sure I’m right for it. I’m pretty happy over at the CIA. But I am interested in what you’re going to do with Ramin Ahmadi. I thought I—I mean, the CIA—had turned this over to the FBI.”

“It should have come to us,” Chappelle sniffed.

“That sort of case is our jurisdiction now.”

“I didn’t know.”

“Now you do.”

Jack smiled thinly. He was reminded suddenly of a

story of Abraham Lincoln, who was overheard talking about another guest at a reception. “I don’t much like that man,” Lincoln was heard to say. “I’ll have to get to know him better.” Jack suspected that such efforts would not pay off with Ryan Chappelle.

“I’d like to continue with the case,” Jack said. “It started with some of the work we did in Cairo.”

Chappelle tipped his chin. “My people will tell you it started with our work in Los Angeles, but whatever. You’re welcome to read the reports. But I can’t have CIA working a domestic case for obvious reasons.”

“The FBI didn’t have a problem.”

Chappelle’s laugh was derisive. “Oh, well, if the FBI didn’t have a problem!” He shook his head. “Aren’t they the ones who let Abdul Raman Yasin walk out the front door?”

Jack decided he’d had enough. “It’s easy to pick on the other guys when you don’t have any track record at all.”

“We’re one for one,” Chappelle replied.

“Impressive,” Jack sneered. “Three wannabe terrorists talking on the Internet. You saved the planet.”

“Jack,” Henderson soothed. “There’s coffee down that hall. Why don’t you get some.”

Jack glared at Chappelle a moment longer, then turned away. Chappelle watched him go. “That’s the guy you want to bring in here?”

“Richard Walsh says he’s the best,” Henderson said. “We need him.”

“I need him like a hole in the head,” Chappelle replied.

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

THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 7 P.M. AND 8 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

7:00 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Jack found the break room. There was a woman pouring herself a mug of coffee. She was thin, with sharp features and a wry look, but somehow it all came together in a nice-looking package.

“It’s barely worth drinking,” she said, stepping out of his way and leaning against a counter, sipping.

“That’s okay. I just had a conversation barely worth having. The coffee will go great.” He found a mug in the cabinet and poured it full.

“Nina Myers,” she said.

He lifted his cup at her. “Jack Bauer. You’re part of all this?”

She nodded. “Yep. Are you the new kid?”

Jack shook his head. “You guys are the new kids. And the teacher’s pets. You just pulled jurisdiction and took over my case.”

“Yep, there’s a new sheriff in town,” she said with mock pride. “Sorry you get stripped of the ball.” Her eyes lingered on Jack over the rim of her coffee mug. “Was it something to do with these three guys we’ve got in storage?”

“Maybe,” Jack said. “I was working a case that may lead to a terrorist attack in L.A. You guys seem to have found three Muslims with plastic explosives. I’m sure they’re connected.”

“You want to ask my three young Turks?”

“Your three—?”

“I collared them. I’m going down to interrogate them in a few.” She let her eyes rest on him again. “Come on, watch the tape with me first.”

She led him down the hall to a room that wanted to be a technical bay, but wasn’t yet. There was a large console, but only one screen, surrounded by empty cubbyholes with a few wires poking out like snakes. A computer had been set up. Nina woke it up and clicked a few times. The large inset monitor came to life. Jack began to watch the shaky, high-definition video footage of the backs of Federal agents wearing blue Windbreakers with “ATF” and “FBI” written across the back in yellow block letters. Jack watched with interest, but most of it was routine footage recording the interior of a house in the mid-Wilshire area. The house was totally unremarkable until the police videographer arrived at the detached garage at the back of the property. The garage was lit by only a single bare bulb sticking out of a cobwebbed socket high up on the wall. A very old, rickety, homemade workstation had been built along one wall. But next to it stood a brand-new white cabinet, the kind that could be purchased at a big box store and assembled at home. An agent opened the cabinet to reveal a crate, which two agents pulled out and placed on the floor. It was long and low—the voice narrating the description said it was four feet long by three wide by three feet high. The agents popped the lid off the top and removed it to reveal the contents.

The plastic explosives had been molded into gray-blue bricks, stacked five high and six across in the case. There were two gaps in the top layer.

“What do you think?” Nina asked. Jack had the impression she’d been watching him the whole time.

“I think there are more than two bricks missing,” Jack said. “Freeze it.”

She didn’t jump to it, so he reached for the mouse and stopped the video, running it back to a closer shot of the crate. He pointed. “There’s room for another layer. There’s discoloration—”

“Along the edge. I think so, too.” She waved her coffee mug at the screen. “Our boys denied it, of course. They say that’s all there is.”

“Oh, we should definitely ask them again,” Jack said. “You have them here?”

Nina shook her head. “We’re not set up for it yet. They’re over at the county jail. Want to go for a visit?”

Jack smiled.

7:11 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Diana Christie sat in her X-Terra, her fingers gripping the steering wheel. “I won’t take no for an answer,” she said out loud. “They are going to listen this time.”

She jerked on the door handle and pushed the door open. A moment later she marched determinedly toward the doors. The glass was dark, and she saw the reflection of a thin woman with dirty-blond hair, in a blue pantsuit, moving double-time. As she reached the glass doors, her image morphed into that of a tall blond man. He was on the far side of the door and he pushed it open, exiting just in front of a thin, short-haired woman with a determined look on her face. He held the door open long enough for Diana to pass through. She smiled and nodded her thanks, then she was inside.

The offices had improved since her last visit. The phones worked now. There was some furniture. There was still no receptionist or security, so she walked into the main room and looked around until she spotted the ferret-faced man in charge.

“Director Chappelle,” she said firmly. “Diana Christie, National Transportation Safety Board.”

Chappelle looked away from his conversation with a square-jawed man. “National Transpo— oh, right, Agent Christie. Was that today?”

She nodded and held up a manila folder. Chappelle shrugged and led her into the conference room. There was a table in it surrounded by chairs. The chairs themselves were covered in plastic. Chappelle tore the plastic off two of them and offered one to Diana. “Okay, Ms. Christie, I assume this is still about the Alaska flight?”

She opened the folder and spread out several reports and diagrams. “Yes. I’m still convinced it was bombed.”

Chappelle pointed at one of the reports in Diana’s folder. “The official FAA reports decided that it was a malfunction in the fuel tank. Some kind of faulty wiring. You were on the team that wrote the report.”

“I didn’t write it,” she reminded him. “I didn’t agree with it. The fuel tank explosion was secondary. The first blast was in the cabin. The rest of my team thought the tank blew first, and sent a fire line up into the cabin. One of the oxygen tanks then blew up. I think it went the opposite way. I think something inside the cabin blew up, igniting the tank, and sending a line down to the fuel supply.”

She handed a sheaf of papers to Chappelle, who tried to make sense of them. There were several columns of numbers—something about pounds of pressure per square centimeter, and comparisons of the expanding volume of several gases based on several temperatures. There was also a diagram of the Boeing 737 that had flown from Alaska on its way to Los Angeles, but had burst into flames over the Pacific.

“Isn’t this the same data as before?” Chappelle queried impatiently.

“No, no it’s not. Look at the schematic of the wiring system. It’s—”

“To be honest, it’s outside my field of expertise. I don’t know enough about avionics and airplane design to know—”

“I do. I do, and I’m telling you that plane was brought down by an explosion inside the cabin, and that means someone set off a bomb.”

“And the rest of the Federal Aviation Administration disagrees with you—”

“I’m with the NTSB, Director Chappelle. We have autonomy.”

“And the NTSB isn’t backing you,” he pointed out. “You’re off the reservation on this one. We’re the Counter Terrorist Unit, Ms. Christie. We’re professionals. We don’t act on the impulse of one maverick agent.”

7:17 P.M. PST Pacific Coast Highway, North of Los Angeles

Sheik Abdul al-Hassan stood at the wide restaurant window, watching the waves curl and crash on the shore. Light from the restaurant cast a huge rhomboid of light out onto the ocean. Beyond its borders, all was pitch-black.

“Beautiful,” said the man next to him.

Abdul glanced over at Father Collins. He hadn’t realized the priest was standing there. That was how much of an impression Collins made.

“I was just thinking,” Abdul said, more to himself than to the priest, “that this frame of light is a metaphor for our work.”

“How do you mean?”

“The tide keeps rolling, never changing, like generations and generations of people. We are the light, casting ourselves out over them, trying to illuminate.”

Father Collins smiled. He had a round, almost obese face under a shock of red hair that stood out starkly from his black shirt. “I have to say I always took you for kind of a cynic. I didn’t know you were a poet.”

Abdul shrugged. “I meant to be cynical. The light only reaches a tiny patch of the ocean. And the water never changes anyway.”

Father Collins frowned at this. Abdul was afraid he would say something, but instead the priest lifted his frown up to a weak smile and turned away. Abdul watched him waddle gingerly through the crowd of clerics, protecting his left arm, which was in a sling.

“There goes the face of the interfaith Unity Conference,” said a new arrival. Rabbi Dan Bender moved his considerable girth into the spot vacated by Father Collins. Bender was a big man, certainly overweight, and yet somehow able to move with a nimbleness that eluded thinner men. Abdul knew him to have run marathons.

“You are speaking metaphorically,” said Abdul, who was no Father Collins. “He is a gentle, harmless man without teeth. Without toughness. I suppose that is a good summation of the conference as a whole.”

Bender dabbed a kerchief on his cheek and neck, then dabbed around the rim of the yarmulke that somehow managed to keep its place on his bald head. “The conference will never have muscle as long as Collins is running it. I don’t care that it has the backing of the Pope. It is a local event, and that means Cardinal Mulrooney is in charge. He is no great fan of his Pope’s policy.”

Abdul raised an eyebrow. “You sound like you disapprove of Mulrooney. But isn’t he more like you and me?”

Bender looked offended. “You don’t believe that, Sheik. You and I are realists. We know that the problems that divide us aren’t just about making religions coexist. But we can respect one another. Mulrooney is cut from a different cloth. Pardon the pun.”

Abdul said wryly, “Well, I’m in a whimsical mood now, so I guess I’ll suggest that maybe it is the Pope’s way that is the best. In the face of our cynicism and Mulrooney’s isolationism, maybe hope and prayer are the best third option.”

Bender shook his head. “What’s the old Arab saying? Trust God, but tether your camel.”

A dark cloud settled over Abdul’s face. His cheeks seemed to sink under the line of his black beard.

“I said something?” Bender said, noting the change.

“No. No, it’s just . . . the last person to use that expression with me was my brother.”

“Oh, I didn’t know you had—”

“A twin, actually,” Abdul said. “He used that same phrase with me the last time I saw him.”

“I get the feeling you two are not close.”

“He’s a fundamentalist,” Abdul said.

Bender looked around the restaurant at the collection of clerics from so many faiths. “A fundamentalist? What would he think of this, then? What would he call it?”

Abdul considered. “An opportunity for martyrdom.”

7:24 P.M. PST

L.A. County “Twin Towers” Detention Center

A phone call and the words Federal anti-terrorist unit had oiled the machinery of the jail system, and Jack and Nina were inside in no time. Sheriff’s deputies brought the three suspects to three separate holding cells at the bottom level of the Twin Towers on Bauchet Street.

It also helped that Jack knew the watch commander, Mark Brodell, from his days with the LAPD.

“Hey, Mark,” he said, shaking the man’s hand as he entered the detention center. “Thanks for letting us in.”

Brodell rolled his eyes at Jack and Nina. “Are you kidding? You’re the Feds now, aren’t you? We roll out the red carpet for the Federal government.”

“That’s not what it was like in my day,” Jack replied.

Brodell winked. “Still isn’t. But your partner’s cute.” Nina did not return his smile with anything like a thank-you.

“We lined ’em up for you. Three holding cells right this way.”

Take away the existence of the plastic explosives, and the three suspects were completely unremarkable. They were Abu Mousa, a marketing coordinator at an advertising agency on Wilshire Boulevard; Omar Abu Risha, a small-time electronics wholesaler; and Sabah Fakhri, a clerk at Nordstrom’s. None had a criminal record in the United States. Mousa and Fakhri had been born in this country. Risha was a naturalized citizen, but had no flags or warnings in his file.

“It was grunt work, really,” Nina had explained on the way over. “We did what the FBI had done back in ’93 to get the Blind Sheik. We just looked at the names at the center of the web and started following strands outward. It was really supposed to be a practice run to test our procedures. We didn’t expect to find anything.”

“But you found—?”

“Abu Mousa’s brother was a member at the New Jersey mosque. He changed his name and someone missed it. Mousa wasn’t a recorded member, but he had lived with his brother in Jersey. We found him here in Los Angeles and knocked on his door. Lo and behold, he and his housemates are sitting on a crate full of plastic explosives.”

Jack nodded. “You mind if I—?”

“Go ahead and take the lead,” Nina allowed. “But just this once.”

Jack opened the door to the holding room. Holding room was a much more politically correct term than interrogation room, although the latter was more appropriate. The room was barely ten feet by ten feet, with a metal table and an uncomfortable chair for the subject to sit in. A single light hung down from the ceiling. The bulb wasn’t bare, but it might as well have been from the light greenish pall it cast over the room.

Abu Mousa sat in the chair, his wrists shackled together and attached to a chain that had been bolted into the floor. He looked short sitting in the chair, and although his face was young, his hair was already thinning. He wore a frail mustache and a short beard. His eyes were brown and muddy, staring out over huge black bags that, by the looks of them, were permanent.

Jack walked over to the chair on the far side of the metal table and sat down, staring at the prisoner. Nina stayed behind Mousa, not moving, but she was adept at emitting malice. Jack stared at Mousa for a while, silent, until the prisoner began to fidget.

“I would like to see my lawyer,” Mousa said finally.

“I haven’t even asked you anything,” Jack said. He continued to study the prisoner as though he were a zoo exhibit. Mousa caught on to his game and tried to return his gaze. It worked for a while, but Jack was patient, and it was easier to feel that you had the upper hand when you weren’t shackled to the floor. Finally, Mousa gave in. “Come on, man, what is it you want?”

Jack said, “We want to know what you were planning on doing with that plastic explosive. And we want to know who has the rest of it.”

Mousa clenched his shackled fists. “Man, I told you guys already, I wasn’t going to do anything with it. Guy I know asked me to hold on to the crate for him. He said it was modeling clay, but expensive so I shouldn’t mess with it. I didn’t even open the thing, so I don’t know if any of it is missing.”

“Who gave it to you?”

“A friend.”

Jack lunged across the table and grabbed Mousa by the front of his prison jumpsuit.

7:35 P.M. PST

L.A. County “Twin Towers” Detention Center

Mark Brodell watched the man in the suit approach, walking like he had a flagpole up his ass, flag and all. When Brodell said the word Fed, this was who he had in mind.

The man gave Brodell’s hand a perfunctory shake and showed his identification. It read: “Ryan Chappelle, Division Director, Counter Terrorist Unit.” “Is there a Jack Bauer here interrogating one of our prisoners?”

7:36 P.M. PST Holding Cell, L.A. County “Twin Towers” Detention Center

Jack had pulled Mousa up across the table. Because the shackles held his arms back, Mousa was bent over the table with his arms pinned painfully beneath him.

“You don’t have any friends,” Jack was saying. “All you have are the names you’re going to give me and the names I’m going to beat out of you. Understood?”

Mousa looked genuinely terrified, which was very informative. It told Jack that Mousa wasn’t a professional, and that he had no real training. To Jack’s way of thinking, that ruled out Syrian or Iranian intelligence, and probably Hezbollah as well. No trained intelligence officer would be afraid of a beat-ing—not because he could take the punishment, but because a beating rarely gathered any significant information. The real tools of interrogation were sleep deprivation, drugs, and psychological duress. Only an amateur afraid for his own skin balked at physical punishment.

“Please,” Mousa whimpered. “My arms . . .”

“Stop complaining, they’re still attached,” Jack said.

“What the hell is this!”

Ryan Chappelle walked into the room, flanked by

a couple of suits Jack didn’t know.

“Get your hands off that man. Now!” Chappelle barked.

Despite the order, Jack didn’t let go immediately. He kept his eyes on Mousa and thought he saw, as Chappelle shouted again, the faintest hint of a smile on the man’s face. Maybe he was wrong about Mousa’s training.

“Let him go!” Chappelle practically shrieked.

Jack released Mousa. The man slumped forward over the table edge with a yelp, then slid backward to the floor. He winced as he stood up and took his seat in the chair again. His wrists around the manacles were red and raw. The fact created in Jack no sense of pity.

“What the hell do you think you’re doing!” Chappelle was in his face. “This isn’t even your case. That is not your prisoner. And you are not allowed to use force in interrogations.”

Jack weathered Chappelle’s shrill storm with antipathy. When the Director paused for breath, Jack said calmly, “Someone is going to blow up something with a bunch of plastic explosives tomorrow night. We need to find out who they are and what they are planning, and we need to find out now.”

Chappelle flapped his hands in the air. “Not this way!”

Jack’s tone was like ice. “Then what way? Show me.” He looked at Mousa. “Should we just ask you where Abdul Rahman Yasin is hiding?”

He had asked facetiously, but he kept his eyes on Mousa, searching for any signs of recognition. He was disappointed. If Mousa knew the name of the World Trade Center bomber, he hid the fact like an expert.

“. . . drummed out of the CIA when the Director of Operations hears about this,” Chappelle was saying.

“Sir,” Jack said, bringing his attention back to Chappelle. “It probably isn’t good to be arguing in front of the prisoner.”

Chappelle’s neck turned purple, but he realized that Jack was right. He spun around and stormed out, gesturing for Bauer to follow. Jack did, casting a wry look at Nina Myers, who seemed to be enjoying herself.

Outside, in the hallway, Chappelle fumed. “You had no right to be here. You are not part of this unit, you are not authorized to perform operations on U.S. soil. You are not even on this case!”

Jack had no idea how much authority Chappelle really had. Even if he was the big dick in this Counter Terrorist Unit, the political influence of these agencies waxed and waned with their budgets and their successes. Unless CTU had some heavy hitters backing it in Congress, it was doubtful Chappelle could pull many strings. Domestic terrorism just wasn’t that big an issue, even after ’93.

“Take it up with the Director.” Jack shrugged.

“I’ll do better than that,” Chappelle said. “You, Brodell!”

Several sheriff’s deputies, including watch commander Brodell, had gathered around to watch the pissing contest. Chappelle had spotted the watch commander and called him out. “I want you to arrest this man. Jail him here, and call the Central Intelligence Agency.”

Brodell’s brow furrowed deeply. “Arrest him? Him? For what?”

Chappelle waved dismissively. “Excessive force. Assault. Violation of the Executive Order 12036 banning domestic surveillance. Trespassing, for all I care. Just lock him up and let the CIA come find him.”

The watch commander looked perplexed, but then

said, “Uh, no, sir.”

Chappelle’s neck reddened again. “What!”

“Well, sir, we didn’t see any harm being done. We

can’t arrest him for nothing.”

“Arrest him because I’m telling you to. I have the authority to do it.”

Brodell nodded and scratched his head like a lazy farmer. “Well, sir, that may be true. If you could just get on the phone to my supervisor, and have him contact the sheriff, then I’ll know for sure.”

If Chappelle had been red-faced before, now he looked purple. But he wasn’t a stupid man. He knew when he’d been defeated. “Stay away from our prisoners,” he warned.

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 8 P.M. AND 9 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

8:00 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Christopher Henderson was scratching out work assignments on a pad of paper because his computer wasn’t booting up. Someday soon they’d have an entire tech department of their own, he told himself, but right now he’d settle for a guy from the Geek Squad.

He needed more staff. There was funding for it—in fact, he had to talk to Chappelle about spending more money, or someone in Washington would cut their budget for next year. But CTU was still having trouble recruiting, especially in field operations. Most of the top-quality operators saw the domestic agenda as the boondocks of counterterrorism work. Yes, the World Trade Center bombing had served notice that the bad guys could and would try attacks on U.S. soil, but the truck bomb hadn’t brought the building down, and memories faded.

That’s why Henderson wanted Bauer so badly. Jack had military experience, law enforcement experience, and hands-on intelligence work. Hell, the man had even studied literature at UCLA. He was a complete package. CTU could really use a man like Bauer.

“Jack Bauer will never work for CTU!” Ryan Chappelle howled. He’d managed to maintain his level of rancor all the way from the Twin Towers.

Henderson nearly jumped. “What? Why?”

Chappelle described the events at the holding cell. “He’s a loose cannon. Insubordinate. Dangerous to the completion of any case, unless we want to give the terrorists a get-out-of-jail-free card for civil rights violations!” He glared at Henderson as though the entire affair had been his fault.

Henderson rubbed a hand on his head. If Jack did come on board, he told himself, this would not be the last of such conversations. He sighed. “He’s a doer, sir. He gets the job done. If we’re facing the kind of people you and I both think we are, that’s going to be important.”

Chappelle shook his head furiously. “There is no way that man is working for CTU. Ever.”

8:08 P.M. PST West Los Angeles, California

“Hey,” Jack said, putting a hand on Teri’s shoulder and kissing her neck from behind.

Teri Bauer leaned back into the kiss, mewed with pleasure, then said, “Who is this?”

Jack laughed. “I’m the blond one.” He walked around her and the café table, and sat down in the lounge chair across from her. Knowing his habits, she had chosen the chair with its back to the room.

Teri put down her book and sipped her latte. “You want one?”

He shook his head. “No, I’m already pretty wired. I need to unwind so I can get some sleep.”

“Rough day?” she asked, reaching across and putting her hand over his. Her hands looked small compared to his; she had always liked how strong his were.

He nodded, but didn’t say more, and she didn’t ask. She understood that his work with the CIA was often sensitive, and she had long ago decided not to ask too many questions. But there was one area that was open for discussion.

“That man, Christopher Henderson, called again today. Did you speak with him?”

Jack laughed. “Yes. And I got to see the CTU offices. Our garage looks more organized.”

“Oh,” she said.

He leaned forward and connected his free hand to hers. “You want me to take this.”

She shrugged in a what-do-you-want-me-to-say? manner. “It might keep you in Los Angeles more often. That would be good. You’d still be doing work you like. And with Kim going into high school, it’ll be good for you to be around as often as you can.”

Jack nodded. “Where is she?”

“Home. Asleep, I think.”

“I still can’t get used to the fact that she’s old enough to be left home alone.”

“Still young enough to want her daddy around.”

“I’ve thought of that. I’m not married to the CIA—” They both balked at the expression. He regretted using it, but said nothing and moved on. “I like it, but I could leave if the right thing came along. But I’m just not sure what CTU is all about, what their mission is. I’m not even sure they know yet.”

“You like Christopher Henderson.”

“Who’s not really in charge. Some guy named Chappelle is. I met him today. He’s a tool.” Jack laughed. “I think if I work for that guy I’ll end up shooting him in the head.”

Jack’s cell phone buzzed, and a number he hadn’t

seen in years flashed on the screen. “Bauer,” he said.

“Jack, it’s Harry Driscoll, Robbery-Homicide—”

“Hey, Harry, long time.” He mouthed an apology

to Teri, who shrugged. “How’s business?”

On the other end of the line, Harry Driscoll chuckled. “Never slow, always plenty of customers. Listen, word gets around, and I know that you’ve got some interest in the Sweetzer Avenue thing.”

Jack hadn’t heard the term before, but he recognized Sweetzer Avenue as the street where the three suspected terrorists shared a house. “If you mean the Three Stooges and their box of goodies, yeah, I’m interested.”

“Well, we’ve got a kind of lead on it. Thought you might be interested in tagging along.”

Jack paused. “So now LAPD is involved? What’s Robbery-Homicide got to do with it.”

“Long story. Well, actually a pretty short story. It’s a turf war. Some new Federal unit is trying to throw its weight around. We think they’ve got their head up their ass, we want to get involved, especially when houses blow up in our backyard.”

“Yeah, houses with me in them,” Jack said. “Tell me where to go.” He snatched Teri’s napkin and a pen and scribbled down some directions. “On my way.

“I’ve got to go, honey,” he said, standing and kissing her. “I shouldn’t be too late. We can talk more about whether I should work for CTU.”

His back was already to her when she said softly, “Seems like you already are.”

8:14 P.M. PST Brentwood, California

Aaron Biehn kept tugging at the collar of his shirt. It was his favorite T-shirt, bright yellow with squiggly monsters drawn on it and the name of the band Lido Beach. It was his favorite, but it felt too small on him now. He was choking.

You have to tell someone, Kim Bauer had said. Tell your dad. He’s a police officer. He can do something.

What if no one believes me? What if I can’t prove it, or what if I have to tell . . . to describe what he did?

Aaron shuddered again thinking about that. He wanted to forget that it had ever happened, but it was there, the guilt in his mind, the horrible feeling in his body, every time he thought about the Mass or said his Hail Marys or went to confession, which his mother insisted they do each week.

He knew he couldn’t tell his mother. She wouldn’t believe him. She was a devout Catholic and very active at St. Monica’s. “The priests are the apple of God’s eye,” she always said, copying the phrase from her mother, Aaron’s grandmother, who lived in Dublin. And if she did believe him, she’d be crushed.

But Dad was different. He was a Catholic, too, but more because his parents had been and it pleased his wife. He was sure his father would believe him, but he was afraid he would be ashamed. Don Biehn was big on self-reliance. He had always made Aaron deal with elementary school bullies on his own, rather than telling his teachers.

But Aaron had to do something. The thing of it . . . he wasn’t sure what to call it; was it guilt, or a vile memory, or terror? Whatever it was, it lived in him like a snake wriggling inside his body. Its head lived in his chest, gnawing at the bottom of his heart. Its tail resided at the very bottom of his spine and wriggled there, sending shivers up his back and making his lower half feel somehow cold and wet.

Aaron tugged at his shirt again and walked into the den where his father was watching Survivor. Aaron sat down next to him on the couch. His father, tall and lanky like Aaron was clearly going to be, punched him in the shoulder absentmindedly and kept watching.

“Dad . . .” Aaron began.

“Yep,” his father said, eyes still on the television. There was a good-looking girl in a bikini walking along the beach.

“I . . . I need to talk to you about something.” He paused. His dad nodded. “It’s . . . about church.”

“You gotta go, pal,” Don Biehn said. “I’m sorry about that. You and I will both hear an earful from Mom if you—”

“Not about that. Dad, it’s about Father Frank. It’s about the priests.”

Don Biehn glanced sidelong at his son. “They’re not perfect, Aaron, no matter what they think. Don’t ever let them fool you. Forgive the expression, but don’t take everything they say or do as the gospel truth.”

Aaron blushed. “Um, yeah. Okay. Thanks, Dad.” He turned away.

8:23 P.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles

His Holiness Pope John Paul II, the Vicar of Rome, washed his hands after using the bathroom in the cloister of St. Monica’s Cathedral. Such acts had humbled him during the course of his many years as leader of the Catholic Church. Each year on Holy Thursday, he washed the feet of the poor, and that was supposed to remind him that Christ himself had practiced such humility. But, though he never would have admitted it aloud, the practice had taken on too much of the feeling of ceremony, of show. He did not feel humble on Holy Thursday, he felt like an actor.

But these human acts, these needs of the body that had not ended when he was made Pope, and indeed became more difficult as time passed, constantly reminded him of his frailty. There was a Zen saying he had always liked: “Before enlightenment, chop wood, carry water. After enlightenment, chop wood, carry water.” He liked that.

There were those among his cardinals who would have frowned at his use of the Zen maxim, but he was a pluralist, this Pope. Through all the years of his religious life, from altar boy to Pontiff, he had never forgotten the original meaning of that word catholic—of or concerning all humankind. All humankind, he thought, and he believed. His belief in the one true church was deep, of course, but he refused to turn his heart or his intellect away from the rest of the world. He had studied deeply of Islam and Judaism, but also of Buddhism, Hinduism, and other, less popular beliefs. Though he dwelt within the profound understanding that a man’s soul could be saved only through Christ, only through the church, he refused to exclude those who failed to accept this fact.

The Pope walked gingerly out into the small hallway and thence to the sitting room, each step a quick but careful feat of engineering for his ancient body. His once-straight spine had long ago curled like the pages of a well-read paperback. His knees hurt. His hands were gnarled as the bark of pines back in his childhood home of Krakow.

It is only the body, he said to himself in several of the languages he spoke. It is only the body.

Cardinal Mulrooney was waiting for him in the sitting room. As the Pope entered, Mulrooney stood. The Cardinal towered over the shrunken Pope.

“Your Holiness,” Mulrooney drawled.

“Your Eminence,” the Pope said in his distinctly accented English. “Was the reception well attended?”

“A full house, Holy Father,” Mulrooney said. He placed strong emphasis on the titles, like a man uncomfortable with them, grasping them firmly to maintain control. “The papers will carry a good story about the event.”

The Pope tottered over to a chair and sat down, and Mulrooney swept toward a seat opposite. “That is quite an achievement,” the Holy Father said, his tiny eyes glittering, “despite your disapproval. And your attempts to undermine the Unity Conference.”

The tiniest quiver ran along Mulrooney’s thin lips. He cursed himself inwardly. This was the Holy Father’s latest weapon, and he should have been better prepared. John Paul gave the appearance of a doddering old fool. He often used this facade to lay traps for those he mistrusted.

“You are mistaken, Holy Father,” Mulrooney said at last. “I am as much a supporter of your peace efforts as any—”

“I am old, Your Eminence,” the Pope said impatiently. “I don’t have time for games. Nor do I have the interest I once had.” His face had collapsed in on itself, a caved-in melon. But his eyes gleamed out of the wreckage like two bright wet seeds. “You disdain my efforts. You disdain me.”

Mulrooney smoothed the hem of his black shirt. “Your Holiness, it was you who chose to hold the Unity Conference here, in my diocese. You insisted.”

“The United States is the logical place to begin,” John Paul said wearily. “And either New York or Los Angeles was the logical city.” The Pope sighed. “War is coming, Your Eminence. War of a kind we have not seen before. Someone must defuse it, and I intend to put the full power of the church behind the efforts of peace.”

Mulrooney felt the Pope’s words resound in his chest. Even in his failing years, John Paul was a powerful orator. A man did not become Pope without mastering the tools that bent others to his will. “But some of those you want to make friends with are the enemies of the church. I don’t know how we can make peace with enemies.”

“There is no point in making peace with friends, Your Eminence.”

Mulrooney scratched his nose to hide his sneer. There was no use debating with this old man. The truth was, as unsupportive as the Holy Father thought he was, Mulrooney’s true animosity went much, much further.

John Paul seemed to read his thoughts. “I wonder, Your Eminence, if this is the extent of your rebelliousness, or if we are only scratching the surface?”

Something clutched at Mulrooney’s stomach. He

ignored it. “Your Holiness?”

John Paul’s eyes bored into him. “There are rumors.”

Mulrooney brushed them aside. “You know better than any of us that the church is a political animal. There are always rumors.” When John Paul continued to stare, Mulrooney added, “I swear, Your Holiness, that I am loyal to the church, and to its Pope.”

John Paul nodded. “That will be all. For now.”

8:37 P.M. PST Brentwood

Aaron Biehn sat in the tub of warm water. The snake slithered inside his body. He could feel it in his heart, wriggling through his guts, its tail dampening and violating the base of his spine. He shuddered.

He had hoped that telling his father would give him some relief. He wanted to be held, to be told it wasn’t his fault. He wanted something . . . something he hadn’t gotten, because he couldn’t bring himself to say it. He wanted a hug that would squeeze the snake out of him.

But then his father would tell people. And he, Aaron, would have to talk about it to strangers. And friends. And confront Father Frank. And others. He would be asked what had been done to him. He would have to use words he did not want to use. Say things he did not want to say. He would be asked if he had wanted it. Someone would say that he had wanted it. He shivered.

The snake squirmed joyfully, horribly, inside him. The snake would love the attention. Feed on his despair. Like a snake eating a cat that ate the rat, it would swallow his humiliation whole and digest it slowly, growing fatter as it did, so that even when the public humiliation passed, the snake would still be there, consuming him from inside.

He could not bear that. He had to get the snake out of his body now. He could not stand to be violated any longer. Aaron sat up in the tub and fumbled with his father’s shaving kit.

8:41 P.M. PST Parker Center, Los Angeles

“Remember to check for the Adam’s apple,” Jack Bauer said, leaning into Harry Driscoll’s office.

Driscoll looked up from his desk, which was crammed face-to-face with another empty desk in the tiny office. He grinned. “Like I said, it wasn’t the Adam’s apple that bothered me, it was the rest of the equipment.”

Jack laughed. It was an old joke, inspired by an old story from when Driscoll was a detective in Hollywood Division and Bauer was LAPD SWAT. The two men shook hands. Driscoll was shorter than Jack, but nearly twice as wide, a black fireplug with a cheesy mustache. He clasped Harry’s outstretched hand.

“You been good?” Driscoll said, standing up.

“Not bad.”

“How’s the dark side treating you?” the detective asked as he reached for a jacket that covered his shoulder rig.

Jack shrugged. There was no point in hiding his CIA status from those who knew of it, but he still couldn’t discuss much. “I’m still hoping to get promoted to Robbery-Homicide someday. How’d you know I was on this case?”

Driscoll laughed. “You were in a house that blew up, Jack. That doesn’t happen every day, even in L.A. Word gets around, you know?”

8:45 P.M. PST Brentwood

“Aaron? You okay in there?” Don banged on the door. “You’ve been in there awhile.” He waited. He pounded again when no answer came back. “Aaron?”

“Is something wrong?” Carianne, his wife, asked, coming up behind him.

“Aaron!” Don yelled. “Answer me! I’m going to break down the door.” That was the cop in him, and the father, talking at once.

His wife pointed upward. Resting atop the door frame was a little key, just a loop of wire with a straight tail. He nodded and pulled it down, then jiggled it into the bathroom doorknob. It popped open, and he shoved the door inward.

Carianne screamed. Don thought he screamed, too, but he was only aware of himself rushing forward, slamming his knees against the side of the bathtub and plunging his hands into the pink water and dragging Aaron out onto the floor.

8:47 P.M. PST 110 West

“It’s a screwed-up case, really,” Driscoll said. Jack hunkered down in the passenger seat of Driscoll’s Acura as the detective drove up the 110 Freeway and hurtled toward the 101. “Carney’s okay with you?”

“Fine,” Jack said. “Go on.”

“The case really started with LAPD. We got a whiff that these guys had something to do with illegal importing, so we were watching them. Then along comes this Federal group. Counter Terrorist Unit? Who the fuck are they?”

Jack laughed. “Doesn’t matter.”

“Maybe not to you, but they stole our case away. They were kind enough to keep us updated—”

“I’ve heard that before,” Jack interjected.

“We were there when CTU collared them. You saw the box, right?”

“Yeah.”

“Looked to me like some of that stuff was missing.”

“I thought so, too. They’re working on the three suspects.”

Driscoll nodded as he exited the 101 and dropped down to Sunset, heading for Carney’s hot dogs. “I hear they’re acting tough now. They’ll break down.”

“I’ll be honest, Harry, I don’t have the time. I had an informant who gave me the idea that something’s happening tomorrow night.”

Driscoll’s mental wheels spun. “Informant . . . the guy who blew up?”

“Yes. I need leads. Did you guys have anything else?”

“We came in behind CTU and dusted for prints. There was lots of them and not much else. They had a cleaning lady, but she’s fifty-eight and from El Salvador. The other was the mailman. We had his prints on file. He was arrested in Pakistan for some violent protests against the prime minister. Came here a few years ago, but hasn’t caused a problem since. He’s a person of interest, but we don’t consider him a suspect at this time . . .’course, technically none of them are our suspects.”

“None of them are my suspects, either. Mind if I question him anyway?”

“Right after a chili dog.”

8:50 P.M. PST Playa del Rey, California

Yasin sat in the lobby of the Windows Hotel in Playa del Rey. He rubbed a hand along his smooth jawline. It felt wrong to be clean-shaven. A true Muslim wore a beard, of course. But this couldn’t be helped. He was known now in this country. It had been a risk just to return.

The man he’d been waiting for entered the front doors. Clean-shaven, including a shaven scalp, dressed in jeans, blue T-shirt, and court shoes, he looked like any one of the thousands of fit, middle-aged, multicultural Angelenos that formed the image of the city. As the other man approached, Yasin smiled to himself, satisfied in the knowledge that it was America’s pluralism that would help defeat it. The United States had too many open doors, too many faces, too many acceptable modes of behavior, to keep them out. They could blend in so easily. Because Allah was great, Yasin probably could have stood in the middle of the lobby dressed as a Bedouin and no one would have given it a thought. The Americans were so arrogant, so ignorant, that they were not even aware of the masses who hated them halfway around the world.

The bald, fit man arrived at his seat. He said to Yasin, “Good to see you, Gabriel,” using Yasin’s code name.

“And you, Michael,” he replied tersely. “You seem unhappy, Michael. Is something wrong.”

A look of disdain crawled across Michael’s face. “We’re in this together, but I don’t have to pretend to like you.”

“It will be over soon. Tomorrow. Let’s talk about the C–4. I assume that what the authorities found was the extra?” Yasin asked.

Michael nodded. “And the ones in custody don’t know anything. That, plus the fact that the police are inept, means we’re both safe.”

Yasin was not comfortable with this. “Don’t underestimate them.”

Michael laughed. “The FBI let you walk out their front door.”

“They were idiots then,” Yasin agreed. “The events of 1993 took them by surprise. That was the idea, of course. But we can’t let success cloud our judgment. Look how quickly they recovered. My blind friend is in jail. So are several of the others. I was caught, and it was only the will of”—he almost said Allah aloud—“it was only good luck that I was set free. If we make mistakes, they will take advantage of them.” Yasin sat back for a minute, rubbing his bare chin again. Michael sensed a lecture. “My blind friend’s mistake,” Yasin began, “was that he put all his trust in hiding his trail. The trail cannot be entirely hidden. You cannot hide water from a Bedouin. They will find a trail. We should have left false leads. The word for it is subterfuge. You Americans call it a red herring, though I don’t know where the expression comes from.”

Michael raised an eyebrow. “You seem to have more than one.”

Yasin grinned. “I have been lately interested in the number three.”

8:57 P.M. PST Brentwood

The sirens had stopped, but Carianne was still wailing. The paramedics had shoved Don out of the room as they tried desperately to resuscitate their son. Don and Carianne had clutched at each other for a few minutes. Don, horrified, in shock, could only wonder morbidly how the bathroom had looked so clean. All the blood had spilled into the big tub of water, clouding it pink.

Mandi had come from next door, responding to the commotion, and wrapped herself around Carianne’s grief. Don had peeled himself away. It was the man in him, or the cop, he wasn’t sure which, but he felt the need to act. And he had a horrible feeling that Aaron had been trying to tell him something earlier.

Don walked away from the urgent calls and commands passing back and forth between the paramedics, and away from the ululations of his wife and neighbor. He went into Aaron’s room. There was a journal on Aaron’s desk. Don Biehn the police officer picked up the journal and began to read.

A few pages later, it was Don Biehn the father who knew that he was going to kill someone.

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

9:00 P.M. PST Mid-Wilshire Area, Los Angeles

Jack pulled up in front of the bungalow on Edinburgh Avenue just north of Melrose. Like all the houses on the street, this one was well-tended. The front yard was small, but the porch light revealed a well-cut lawn and a flower-lined walkway that serpentined through the grass up to the porch. The door itself was a massive slab of well-varnished oak. Jack rapped on it with his knuckles.

Lights were already on inside, shining through the curtained windows to the left of the door. Jack saw one of the curtains draw back for a moment, then fall into place. Beyond the thick door something rattled, then the door opened a bit, and a tall, thin man stared out at him uncertainly.

“Yes?”

Jack held up his identification. “Mr. Ghulam Meraj Khalid? My name is Jack Bauer. I’m with the State Department. Can I have a word with you?”

Khalid managed to look frightened, annoyed, and accommodating all at once. He stepped back and pulled the door open wide. “Um, State Department, of course, come in, come in.”

Jack smiled and entered onto hardwood floors as well-maintained as the yard out front. There was not much in the way of furniture—a simple couch, a chair, a wooden dining table with a clean-lined credenza beside it. A flat-screen television hung on the wall across from the couch and the chair. It was on, broadcasting a rerun of CSI.

“Please, sit,” Khalid said, indicating the couch. “Would you like something to drink?”

“No, thanks,” Jack said, though he did sit down. He looked at Ghulam Meraj Khalid as the other man lowered himself into the chair. Khalid was lean, the kind of lean that was always genetic. His nose was hooked, and his hair was thinning. He reminded Jack vaguely of the Goon from an old Popeye cartoon. But he had a friendly smile and an animated expression.

“This is about Abu Mousa,” Khalid said.

“What makes you say that?” Jack asked.

Khalid laughed. “I hope it’s about that! What else have I done?”

“You tell me,” Jack said casually.

Khalid laughed again, nervously. “Nothing. It’s just you’re the third or fourth police officer or whatever to talk to me about this. At least this time I get to answer questions here. Or . . . ?” Khalid looked toward the door as though other men might appear to escort him out.

“Here’s fine,” Jack said. His demeanor was casual, almost bored, but he was assessing the other man carefully. Khalid was appropriately nervous, but no more than one could expect from a man being questioned by the Federal government. “So first, your full name is Ghulam Meraj Khalid, yes?”

The man nodded. “You can call me Gary.”

“And how are you involved with Abu Mousa?”

Gary said, “I’m not. Involved with him, I mean. I know all three of those guys a little, but only through

my job.”

“You work with them?” Jack asked.

Gary looked confused. “No. I’m a mailman. I

mean, mail carrier, that’s what they tell us to say these days. A U.S. postal worker. I figured you’d know that already.”

Jack did. He’d read Khalid’s file. But the simplest way to trip someone up was to play dumb and ask every question under the sun.

“They are on my route,” Gary continued. “I pretty much know them as much as I know anyone on my route.”

Jack smiled charmingly. “So we’ll find your fingerprints in everyone’s house?”

Khalid blushed. Jack wondered if he might find Khalid’s prints in the homes of a housewife or two. “Well, I don’t really know them that well. But they’re Muslims, too, you know? I pray five times a day, and sometimes they invited me in to pray in their house. It’s a little more convenient than the back of the truck.”

“How often did you pray with them?”

Khalid shrugged. “I couldn’t say. Once or twice a month, I guess. You know, if they’re home, if they see me, if they invite me in, I say yes. It didn’t happen all that much.”

“But they were home sometimes during the day. What do they do for a living?”

Gary the mailman shrugged. “I don’t know. I heard one of them, not Mousa, one of the other guys, talking about computers once, but mostly we just prayed, talked a little, then I went on my route.”

“You knew Mousa the best,” Jack said.

Gary tilted his chin. “I don’t . . . I guess. Why?”

“You just said, ‘not Mousa, one of the others.’ You sound familiar with him.”

Gary nodded. “I guess so. He was the most talkative. The friendliest.”

“How long have you been a mailman?”

“Seven years. I’ve been in the U.S. for almost twelve,” he added with a smile. “Like I said, I’ve had this conversation three or four times already. I figured that was your next question.”

“You’re like an expert,” Jack agreed. “What are your politics?”

Gary looked confused. “My politics? I . . . hmm, what do you mean? Are you asking me how I vote? Does that matter here?”

Jack reassured him. “No, not really. I don’t mean your politics here. I mean your politics back home. Pakistan.”

Gary calmed noticeably. “Oh, that. Yeah, I left because of politics. Look, I don’t know if this gets me into trouble or not, but I came here because I didn’t like what was happening in Pakistan back then. Benazir Bhutto got elected. They made her Prime Minister! I didn’t want to be in that country.”

“Was it Bhutto herself? Or the fact that she was a woman? You don’t like women?”

Gary grinned. He did have an infectious smile. “Oh, I like women well enough, you know? But there’s a place for everything. I’m not sure a woman’s place is in charge.”

Jack laughed. “So you came here? Women here have more freedom than—”

Gary interrupted. “No, yeah, that’s what they say here. I mean, that’s part of the propaganda, right? But no one here’s dumb enough to elect a woman.”

Jack’s mobile phone rang, and he saw Driscoll’s number appear on the screen. “Sorry,” he said, and answered.

“Bauer, it’s Harry,” Driscoll said. “This case is getting stranger all the time. I got a lead on the plastic explosives. Coming?”

“Yes,” Jack said. He stood up and shook Gary Khalid’s hand. “Thanks. We’ll be in touch.”

9:09 P.M. PST Brentwood

The sirens had faded. Carianne had gone in the ambulance as it rushed Aaron to the hospital. They were going to try to save him. Don had said he would follow behind in the car. But first, he had a quick chore to do.

Don Biehn, police officer and caretaker of his household, owned several guns but kept them secured in a gun safe. Only he knew the combination. If he’d opened it, he would have found inside a Heckler & Koch .40 caliber semi-automatic, a Kimber Custom

II .45 caliber, and a Smith & Wesson .38 caliber six-shot revolver. All of them were fine weapons that had seen a lot of use in his practice shooting.

But Don didn’t go to that safe. Instead, he went to the garage and got his ladder. Dragging it over to the tall, do-it-yourself white cabinets he had built, he climbed the ladder so that he could reach the top of the shelves. There was dust everywhere, on and around old boxes they had never opened from their last move, laid thickly over two antique-looking blue lamps that Carianne insisted on keeping, and a box containing a fondue set they had received as a wedding gift nineteen years ago, but never opened.

Don pushed these useless artifacts aside until he found a small box with the words “Old Lecture Notes” scribbled in black marker. He pulled it out, sneezing at the dust, and rested it on the flat top of the ladder. The box top slid off easily enough. Don dug through the piles of bent and yellowed paper from his days at Cal State University Northridge. Beneath them lay a rolled-up piece of canvas—right where he’d stashed it seven or eight years earlier. Dan unrolled the canvas, and a Taurus 92F semiautomatic fell into his hand.

It had been his first year as a homicide detective. He and his partner had been working a bank robbery case involving a couple of career criminals. Don managed to arrest one of them in his home. He’d found several weapons, including the Taurus, and discovered that the Taurus was unregistered. Untraceable. Don had stashed it away, and no one had noticed. As a cop who had tracked suspects through their guns and watched prosecutors nail them with ballistics, Don figured that it might be useful to have a weapon that was completely unconnected to himself.

He had been right.

9:16 P.M. PST Pacific Coast Highway

At quarter after nine on a weeknight, the Interstate 10 Freeway worked the way it had been designed to work: it got you from the middle of Los Angeles to the beach in just a few minutes. A tunnel marked the end of the I–10. When you emerged on the far side, the world opened up onto a gigantic postcard of Los Angeles: the beach, the ocean, and the Pacific Coast Highway.

Jack was moving up the coast highway—also easily navigated this time of night—with his speakerphone on as Driscoll recited the nature of the lead they were going to investigate.

“. . . telling you, it’s the weirdest lead I’ve ever followed. But it’s very L.A.”

“So tell me,” Jack called out to the cell phone rest

ing on the console of his SUV.

“You ever heard of Mark Gelson?”

Jack considered that. “I know Mark Gelson the

actor. The Future Fighter guy.”

“That’s him. You don’t see him much anymore, but he used to be on the A-list back in the eighties. Anyway, the story is that he got pulled over on the way home to Malibu for drunk driving. He was raving, talking about how he was going to set things straight, blow some people to pieces, just like in his movies.”

“So what?” Jack said skeptically. “Some has-been actor gets sauced and—”

“He mentioned plastic explosives.”

Jack nodded at the cell phone. “Ah.”

“Yeah. It could be nothing.”

“No, it’s something,” Jack said wryly. “It’s an over-the-hill actor who misses being in the headlines, and we’re helping him. He have a movie coming out?”

“Thought of that,” Driscoll replied through the phone. “He’s got zilch. A new version of the complete set of Future Fighter movies came out on DVD, but that was two years ago. I don’t see this as a publicity stunt. If it’s anything, it’s just a drunk old guy trying to sound as tough as he used to look. But I’ll catch hell if we don’t check it out. You want to leave this one to me?”

Jack shrugged, mostly to himself. “I’m almost there anyway. See you in the driveway.” He hung up.

Mark Gelson. Jack had been a fan of the Future Fighter movies when they came out. He was the target market, of course. The Future Fighter lived in a post-apocalyptic world. He was a hero, but an amoral one willing to do whatever it took to defeat evil. He was a maverick who literally lived outside the law. Jack recalled that Gelson had made the headlines a few times for erratic and scandalous behavior. Back then the media weren’t quite as ruthless as they were these days, so the news didn’t stay in the papers long, but Gelson had been in his share of barroom fights and nightclub scuffles. Most people figured he was just trying to live up to the heroic, tough-guy image he portrayed on screen.

Jack reached the exclusive beach colony of Malibu and drove down along Malibu Colony Road until he reached the address for Mark Gelson’s beach house. Driscoll was waiting for him outside on the street, smoking a cigarette. Jack watched the cigarette tip glow momentarily brighter in the darkness beyond the light atop Gelson’s gate and stared at Driscoll quizzically.

“Took it back up,” the detective said unapologetically. “Otherwise I’d be perfect and no one could stand to be around me.” He dropped the cigarette and crushed it with his heel.

Gelson’s house was screened by a tall, ivy-grown wall with an iron gate. There was an intercom set next to the gate. Driscoll buzzed it and heard a female voice say in a Hispanic accent, “Yes, who is it?”

“Los Angeles Police Department, ma’am,” Harry Driscoll said. “Mr. Gelson is expecting us.”

The intercom buzzed irritably. The gate rattled and chugged, swinging back and away from them. Jack and Driscoll walked up the wide circular drive to a white, very modern house that looked like several large white cubes stacked irregularly together. Something about the way the giant cubes were stacked triggered a sense of recognition in Jack. It was nothing definitive, but he had the sense that the cubist architecture had meaning.

They could hear the ocean murmuring in the darkness beyond the house.

“Those residuals must be nice,” Driscoll said enviously.

The door opened as they approached, and a sturdy Latina nodded at them. She motioned for them to enter and guided them toward the living room. The walls of the hallway were white, like the exterior of the house, and entirely bare except for a single, ornate crucifix fixed at eye level. The view was stark. The living room matched. It was huge, and the entire west wall was glass. Light from the room spilled out onto the sand and the waves beyond. There was a painting over the couch that appeared as white as the wall on which it hung. But as Jack studied it for a moment, he began to see faint discolorations that pulled his vision out of focus, or rather into a new focus in which he saw the faint image of a man’s face painted white within white.

“That’s a Stretch.”

Jack turned, mildly surprised that he’d let someone enter a room without his knowledge. “Excuse me?”

“The painting. It’s a Stretch. Ronnie Stretch, the artist. You know his work?”

“I didn’t even know it was a painting at first,” Jack admitted. “But it’s interesting how things come into focus if you give them time.”

He turned fully to face Mark Gelson. Somehow, Jack always expected actors to be taller than they really were. Gelson was about five feet, seven inches. He looked younger than his fifty-plus years, and still carried the square jaw and bright blue eyes Jack remembered from the movies, even though there was more salt than pepper in his hair. He was wearing blue jeans and an American Eagle T-shirt, the kind of clothes you might see on twenty-somethings at Chia Venice.

Gelson approached and shook Jack’s hand firmly. “Detective Driscoll?”

Jack pointed over at Harry. “My name is Bauer. That’s Driscoll.”

“Detective Bauer, then,” Gelson said before turning to Harry. “Can I get you guys something to drink?”

“No, but thanks for seeing us so late in the evening,” the detective took over. “We have some questions about—”

“Last night.” Gelson sat down. He shook his head gravely. “Look, I’m not sure why detectives are involved, but I don’t make a habit of driving drunk. It was stupid. I know I’m going to take a hit in the papers tomorrow.”

“It’s not the drunk driving part we’re here about, Mr. Gelson,” Harry interrupted. “It’s about what you said. You talked about—” Harry flipped a page in his notepad. “You said, ‘I hope my guys blow your fat asses up with the rest of them.’ ”

Gelson blushed. “Doesn’t sound like me, does it. Jesus, I hope not, anyway. I’m sorry, I was drunk . . .”

“And then you said, ‘I’m so fucking glad I bought them the plastic explosives.’ ”

Mark Gelson froze like a DVD on pause. “What do you mean?

Harry Driscoll folded his notebook and said simply, “The question, Mr. Gelson, is what did you mean? When did you get the plastic explosives? Who are your friends?”

“I don’t . . .” The actor’s face had gone from red to white in a split second. “I’m not . . . Do you mean explosives?”

Abu Mousa had been a better actor. Driscoll’s disdain showed clearly on his face as he said, “We can just as easily do this downtown. In fact, I’d rather do it down there. We’ve got video cameras, tape recorders, it’s more convenient; isn’t it, Jack?”

Bauer nodded.

“Yeah, so let’s go down there—” He reached for Gelson’s arm. The actor squirmed away and sank back into the couch.

“No, look, okay. Okay.” Some of Gelson’s good looks seemed to have faded away, the reverse action of the picture on the wall. “Look, can I tell you the truth?”

“That is the general idea,” Jack said.

Gelson put his head in his hands. He didn’t cry, but he was close to it. Jack was just about to step forward and shake him when the actor rubbed his face and looked up. “I’ve got some friends. They’re guys I hang out with sometimes. It’s stupid, maybe just something I do to relive the old days, you know? There was a time when I used this whole town like a cheap whore, and all anyone did was scream for more. I rode bikes with gangs, I did coke like it was vitamin C. I used to fire directors off the set. I—”

“The plastic explosives,” Jack demanded.

Gelson jumped a little. “Okay. Um, I didn’t really buy it. I just gave money. I was hanging out with some guys I knew from back then. They said they could buy some stuff to raise some real hell. I gave them the money.”

“Who were these guys?” Jack asked. “Were any of them from another country?”

Gelson looked bewildered. “Another . . . ? No. They’re from here. They’re bikers.”

“Where were they buying the plastic explosives from?”

“They didn’t tell me. Look, I’m sorry. I didn’t know they were serious. I don’t want anyone getting hurt. I swear. I just . . . I just wanted to raise a little

hell, you know?”

“Nice job,” Jack grunted.

Gelson looked “Is this . . . will this get into the

papers?”

Driscoll rolled his eyes. “Why don’t you just tell us where to find your biker friends.”

9:27 P.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles

Cardinal Mulrooney swooped down the hallway of St. Monica’s cloister. The walls looked shabby to him. The decor was old and worn; Mulrooney could see ruts worn into the tiles before his feet. St. Monica’s was old and rickety. The Cardinal feared the next earthquake.

He was embarrassed at the look of his cathedral in the eyes of the Pope, and angry at himself for being embarrassed. As if he should worry about the opinion of that sanctimonious old man. A person able to hear Mulrooney’s thoughts at that moment would be surprised to learn that he did, indeed, believe in the infallibility of the Pope. Just not this Pope.

9:28 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

Christopher Henderson was finishing his review of an early forensics report from the Panorama City explosion. Someone had used plastic explosives to rig a homemade land mine into Ramin’s chair. The fat man’s enormous weight had activated it, and the minute he stood up, it had gone off. Ramin had been killed instantly, and Burchanel was in critical condition. CTU was coordinating with the CIA and foreign agencies—mostly the Israelis, who’d had plenty of experience with this sort of thing—to compare this bombing strategy to the methods of any known terrorists.

What bothered Henderson most was the wide-ranging nature of the operation. Bauer’s investigation had started in Cairo. CTU’s had started in West Los Angeles. Ramin’s original connections were in New York, and if Abdul Rahman Yasin was involved, the most recent reports put him in Iraq. This suggested a fairly extensive network.

Henderson looked at the notes he’d put together from his brief conversation with Bauer. The only pertinent piece of information was the timing. Ramin seemed certain that whatever Yasin and his people were planning, they were going to do it tomorrow night. Ramin’s murder lent credence to that belief. That gave CTU twenty-four hours, maybe less, to disrupt the plot.

Henderson’s cell phone rang. “Henderson.”

“Christopher, it’s Jack Bauer.”

“I was just thinking about you,” Henderson said. “I know you’re declining the offer, but I could really use help on this, Jack.”

“I’m already helping,” Bauer replied. “I’ve got a lead on the source of the plastic explosives.” He explained his call from Driscoll and the interrogation of Mark Gelson. “You know how some of the explosive seemed to be missing? I’m thinking whoever sold it to the Sweetzer Avenue group also sold some to Gelson’s people. If we find them, we may be able to track it back to the source.”

“How do you know it’s even the same batch of plastic explosives?” Henderson asked.

“I don’t,” Jack replied over the phone. “But how much plastic explosive is there floating around the city?”

“Jesus, I hope not much.”

“Exactly. There’s a chance that Abu Mousa and the other guys in custody don’t know much. Maybe if I track the plastic explosive back to its source, I can get a stronger lead.” Jack paused. “Christopher, you know the clock is ticking on this, right?”

“Yeah.”

“So, listen, if I get my hands on someone who knows something, I’m going to ask them a few questions before I turn them over to Chappelle.”

Henderson wasn’t sure whether to wince or smile. “I didn’t hear that.”

“Good, just as long as you didn’t hear it loud and clear. In the meantime, I was hoping your new CTU group could lend a hand on something. We have to assume that Ramin was right and the target is going to get hit tomorrow night. I’d like your CTU people to run an analysis of Yasin’s profile, and the Blind Sheik’s profile, and come up with a list of likely targets in Los Angeles. You can probably coordinate with LAPD. I would cross-reference with Beverly Hills PD, too, because a lot of dignitaries stay in Beverly Hills when they visit L.A. Also, there’s a large Persian population there, and the target may be an Iranian immigrant trying to influence politics back home. You can probably coordinate that with the State Department. If you guys have any facial recognition equipment up and running, I’d download as much video from the Los Angeles airport as you can get and start running it. We may get lucky. Bauer out.”

Henderson laughed helplessly to himself as Bauer hung up. He stood and went to his office door, looking out on the big empty space hanging with data lines, phone wires, and a few desks. It was approaching ten o’clock. Everyone had gone home for the evening, and Jack was asking for a multijursidictional, multiagency data search. “Yeah, right.” Henderson sighed. “We’ll get right on that.”

9:33 P.M. PST Downtown Los Angeles

For years the Cathedral of St. Monica, more often referred to simply as St. Monica’s, stood like a proud matron brooding over the poverty and squalor around her. She’d been completed in 1876 at a time when downtown had been the beating heart of the city. That heart had grown frail and sickly over the decades. So, too, had Monica. The matron no longer stood quite so proudly, as though beaten down by more than a century of misery creeping toward her from nearby Skid Row. Earthquakes had played their part, too, especially the Northridge earthquake in 1994 that had torn holes throughout the city. Neglect also played a role. The diocese, led by Cardinal Mulrooney, had long ago wanted to tear the old girl down and replace her with a gleaming modern cathedral. Mulrooney’s efforts had been stymied by preservationists who protested the destruction of one of the city’s few remaining works of nineteenth-century architecture. Still, even in decline, St. Monica’s was an admirable old lady compared to the soulless steel and glass spires around her. Her Italianate bell tower rose elegantly into the sky.

Don Biehn never could memorize the directions to St. Monica’s. He just drove downtown and looked up for the bell tower, then followed it to the corner of Main and Second Street.

He parked his car at a parking meter on Second, a block away. During the day and on the weekend, street parking was impossible to find, but at night the city center was a ghost town and Biehn had no trouble. As he got out of the car, he touched the journal in his coat pocket to make sure it was still there. He did not check for the Taurus. He knew exactly where it was.

Biehn turned onto Main Street and walked past the front of the cathedral, then around the corner. He knew the rectory was behind the main chapel. He didn’t know how many priests lived there, but he believed there were only one or two besides Father Frank. He didn’t really care about them. They would either be in his way or not. If not, all the better for them.

He found a whitewashed wall and jumped it easily, landing in a flowering border on the inner side. Beyond it was a manicured grass lawn and a fountain, now silent for the evening. He listened for a minute, but heard no sound. To his right stood the cathedral proper; to his left, the rectory. He turned left and stalked up to the rectory door. It was unlocked. He opened it calmly and stepped inside as though he belonged there. This was, he knew from long experience, the very best way to walk into any building.

The rectory parlor was dark. There was an open door to a large room off to the right and a long hallway leading straight ahead. Stairs rose to his left. Biehn recalled that there had been a school on the site at one time. The thought of it made him shudder, and added to his anger like gasoline tossed onto a fire.

Biehn climbed the stairs and found himself looking down another long hallway. Several of the doors were open and led into bare rooms. Two or three were closed. Biehn took a deep breath to calm his pounding heart. He knocked on the first door.

No answer.

He moved down and knocked on the second closed door. It opened, and a startled man appeared. He was wearing a T-shirt and sweatpants, holding a book the title of which Biehn could not see.

“Yes, who—?” the man said gently. “You know, the rectory is off-limits.”

Biehn nodded apologetically. “I’m sorry. I’m looking for Father Frank. He’s expecting me.”

The man looked down the hall at the last closed door. “Are you sure he didn’t say to meet him in the chapel? This is the priests’ private residence.”

The detective stepped back as though shocked. “Oh, I’m sorry. I’m really sorry,” he feigned. “I just thought it would be here. I’ll go back and wait there.”

The priest nodded, said good evening, and closed his door. Biehn walked back toward the stairs for a few steps in case the priest was listening. After a few minutes, he padded quietly back up the hall toward the door the priest had glanced at. He knocked very

gently.

No answer.

He knocked a little louder. The door opened, and

Father Frank appeared. Biehn didn’t know him well, but he’d picked his son up from church functions often enough to recognize the priest.

Father Frank looked as puzzled as the other priest had. “Yes, what is it?” he asked.

Biehn punched him in the throat.

9:37 P.M. PST Rectory of St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles

Father Frank didn’t know what had happened. One minute he was staring at a stranger on the rectory floor; the next he had smashed into the back wall of his cell, having tripped backward over his narrow bed. His throat throbbed, and he was coughing and gagging uncontrollably. Something hit him in the nose, and his eyes began to water.

By the time he had blinked his vision clear, he was lying facedown on the floor. A hand was in his hair, pushing his face into the tile floor, and there was a heavy, sharp pressure on his back. He didn’t know where his own hands were.

“Listen,” said a voice that might have belonged to the devil himself. “Listen and don’t make a sound. You are not to make a single sound or I’ll kill you. Painfully. Nod if you understand.”

To nod, Frank had to drag his face up and down on the tiles, but he did it.

“I’m going to sit you up. You are going to keep your mouth shut or I’ll ram your own dick down your throat. Nod again.”

Frank did so. He was utterly terrified.

Strong hands grabbed his shoulders and pulled him up to a sitting position, his back resting against his bed. He realized that his hands were fettered behind his back with something metal. Handcuffs.

The man who had done this to him crouched in front of him, sitting on Frank’s straightened legs. He studied Frank for a minute calmly. It was almost as though he was giving Frank a moment to calm down himself.

The terror didn’t go away. He knew, in the way of all predators, when a bigger and stronger predator had caught him in its grip. But his fear slid into the background for a moment as other survival instincts kicked in: cunning, acquiescence, obedience. Anything that might remove him from the grip of this obviously ruthless man.

As his higher functions took over from his reptile brain, Frank realized that he recognized this man. He wasn’t sure from where, but he’d seen the face before. He was a parishioner. A parent. A father.

And the minute he realized that his captor was a father, Father Frank’s terror rushed back to the forefront of his brain, and all the pleasures he had enjoyed, all the moments of thrilling power and sexual release and sweet, sweet fulfillment of desire—all of them seemed ephemeral compared to the cost that was surely about to be rendered.

The intruder read his face and nodded as though Frank had said something. “I’m Aaron Biehn’s father.”

And there it was, like a shirt ripped off his body, revealing the ugly, naked body beneath; like a story told so often it seems true suddenly revealed to be a lie by the simplest honest statement. Like an object of beauty suddenly, obviously discovered to be a cheap and ugly bauble.

The truth of himself flowed into Frank’s veins like a poison finding its home.

Then the man, the father of Aaron Biehn, was standing on his ankle. The pain turned him back to the world outside.

“Aaron tried to kill himself tonight,” the father

said.

Frank started to speak, but remembered his vow.

“Do it quietly,” the father said. He could read

Frank’s thoughts through his body language.

Frank spoke. “Tried to kill himself?”

“Don’t you dare ask why,” Don Biehn hissed.

“You know why. Because of what you did to him. Because you . . . violated him.” He slapped Frank. Hard. For no purpose other than because the rage in him needed some expression more than words.

9:39 P.M. PST Rectory of St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles

Don watched the priest’s eyes roll back in his head. If he were an iota less enraged, he’d have enjoyed it. But he was too far gone, too bound inside his anger, to feel anything. However, he waited until the rapist’s head cleared.

“He tried to tell me about it. I didn’t know what he was talking about. He gave up.” Don spoke in simple declarative sentences. He did not feel able to do more. He felt focused. Lucid. His thoughts demanded declaratives the way a knife required a sharp edge.

“I read his journal afterward. It told me everything.” He pressed his foot down on Frank’s ankle again. The priest sobbed.

“Father Frank,” Don said in a voice dripping with irony. “I am the father here, Frank.” He crouched down and grabbed Frank’s hair, forcing him to look directly into Don’s eyes. They burned too brightly for Frank to bear them.

“You can’t have any idea what that word really means,” Don said, his voice half a whisper, half a sob. “Father. Father is a job, Frank. Father is a duty. Do you know what that duty is?”

“Please,” Frank pleaded quietly.

“It was my job to protect that boy, Frank. To. Keep. Him. From. Harm.” He jerked Frank’s head up and down with each syllable. “But I didn’t do that, did I? I guess I drove him right up to harm’s front door. And you. You fucking raped him.”

Frank felt hands clasp his throat. All his air went away as his windpipe closed. He struggled, but the man was straddling him, pinning him. Terrifying urgency built up in his chest; he needed to breathe, breathe, but he couldn’t. He thrashed, but didn’t really thrash because he couldn’t. He was going to die.

Then the man let go of his throat and he could breathe again. He gasped, coughed, and sucked in oxygen. Again, Don waited until the priest could focus.

“That’s what he said it was like,” he explained.

“He said it was like suffocating. Like being choked. Strangled. Every time you—” He couldn’t say it this time.

Frank was crying now. “I’m sor—”

Biehn slapped him again, hard enough to draw blood from his lip. “Don’t apologize. There’s no meaning in it. There’s no value in it. There are two things you’re going to do that have value, though.”

Biehn reached into his pocket and pulled out a notepad and a pen. “You’re going to give me the names of other children you’ve destroyed. And you’re going to tell me what other monsters there are in this place so I can kill them, too.”

Kill them, too. Frank noticed it. He didn’t want to die. “I’ll tell you. But you have to promise to let me go—”

Pain. Pain in his testicles. He tried to scream but Biehn was covering his mouth, muffling the sound of agony. Don had stabbed the pen into his groin as hard as he could.

“We aren’t negotiating,” Biehn said firmly. He pulled the pen out of the priest’s groin and wiped it on the man’s pant leg. He kept his hand firmly over the rapist’s mouth until his sobs subsided. “So listen to me, you sick little piece of shit. You tell me who else did this to little children. That geek down the hall?”

Frank whimpered but shook his head.

“Then who?”

“I don’t know!” Frank sobbed again. “It wasn’t a club!”

Don raised the pen again.

Frank pressed himself back against the bed. “Col

lins!” he squealed. “Father Collins! I heard him . . .”

He hesitated, terrified of angering Biehn further. “He said something once to me. About Aaron. Kind of . . . of a joke.”

Biehn’s face softened into agony. “A joke. Is he here?”

“He doesn’t live here, I swear.” Frank gave him a mid-Wilshire address for Father Collins.

“Who else?”

“Dortmund. That’s it. That’s all I know about. And Mulrooney. I know he had heard about them from other parishes. That’s all I know. You have to believe me.”

Biehn heard the terrified sincerity in his voice. “I do,” he said. He reached past Frank and grabbed the pillow off the bed. He stuffed the pillow over the priest’s face, jammed the weapon into the pillow, and fired.

9:47 P.M. PST El Segundo, California

Nina Myers shook hands with Millad Yasdani at his front door and said, “Thanks for your time, Mr. Yasdani. I’m sorry to bother you so late.”

“I suppose,” the man said wearily, “you have to do your job. I’m sure you can understand that it’s hard not to take it personally.”

Nina adopted a remorseful, world-weary pose that usually appeased the offended in these cases. “I guess so. But I hope you know that we don’t mean anything personal by it.”

“We’re not all terrorists,” Yasdani stated. He pointed back over his own shoulder at his comfortable, middle-class house in El Segundo, south of Los Angeles. His wife was still in the living room, thoughtfully sipping some of the tea she’d made for Nina. “Do we look like terrorists?”

What do terrorists look like? Nina wanted to snap back. But that was poor public relations.

Yasdani moved his head so that he caught her eye again. “You know that ninety-nine percent of the Muslim world is peaceful, don’t you?”

“Mr. Yasdani, I am not out to stop Muslims. My job is to stop bad guys. The bad guys I’m trying to stop happen to be Muslim. That’s the end of the story.”

“But you come to my house at night,” he pointed out, his voice straining just a little. “To interview me. Because I’m a Muslim.”

“Because you attend the same mosque as some of the people we’re looking for. You’re not a suspect, I told you that already. You and . . .” She checked her notes again. “You and Abdul Ali. You’re sure you don’t know him?”

Yasdani shook his head. “It’s a big mosque. And he sounds Arabic, maybe Iraqi. Most of my friends are Persian.”

“Is it common for Persians and Arabs to attend the same mosque?” Nina asked. She had a degree in Middle East studies, so she already had a fairly clear idea of the answer, but Yasdani seemed to be a thoughtful man, and she was curious about his perspective.

Yasdani’s nose twitched, a sign Nina had recognized during the interview as an indication of annoyance. “If his name is Ali, he is probably Shi’a, like me. So yes, we would go to the same mosque. But that doesn’t mean we are best friends. You do under

stand that we are not all alike, don’t you?”

“Yes, sir,” Nina said amiably. “Thank you again.”

Nina turned and walked back to her car, disappointed and frustrated. She’d known this would be a dead end. Millad Yasdani was exactly what he appeared to be: chief information officer for a small insurance company, who lived in El Segundo with his wife and three children, and happened to be a Muslim. The only reason he’d shown up on her radar at all was that he drove a long way to go to a mosque in Los Angeles. It was a pathetic lead, but with the Three Stooges in jail not talking, she was reduced to chasing pathetic leads until they’d stewed for a while.

Her other lead, Abdul Ali, was no better. No criminal record, no suspicious activities, no political affiliations. He was hardly even an active member of the mosque where the Three Stooges belonged. But he traveled a lot, and according to the State Department, he’d visited several Muslim countries in the past few years. Again, a pathetic lead.

Nina got into her car and pulled away from the curb, thinking about the weak trail she was following. Jack Bauer popped into her thoughts. She wasn’t sure what to make of him, yet, but she always appreciated the direct approach, so she could only applaud what he’d tried with Abu Mousa. Unlike Chappelle, who missed the subtlety and simply assumed that Bauer was a mindless thug, Nina had understood Bauer’s tactic immediately. Mousa had been comfortable. It seemed clear to her that everything they’d done to him had been worked into the equation. Bauer had tried to shake him up a little. She wasn’t sure it had worked, but at least Jack had tried. On the way to Yasdani’s house, Nina had made some calls and dug up a little more information on Jack Bauer. He was, indeed, an interesting one. She hoped he stayed around CTU. She knew some people who might be very interested in getting close to him.

9:53 P.M. PST Lancaster, California

Jack turned the borrowed Ducati motorcycle into the Killabrew, a bar on Carter Street in Lancaster. He’d had to hustle to make it on time. He hoped the RHD detective they’d borrowed the bike from didn’t mind the wear and tear he’d just put on the engine.

Mark Gelson had given them one name—a biker mechanic named Earl “Dog” Smithies. Dog was definitely the kind of character a wannabe like Gelson would hang around. That is, Dog’s rap sheet full of misdemeanors, and his one four-year stint for mayhem was significant enough to impress Gelson but not hard-core enough to scare him away. The fact that Dog lived out in Lancaster added to his mystique. To a Malibu celebrity like Gelson, Lancaster— a former boondock turned suburban sprawl perched in the desert flatlands north of Los Angeles—was far enough away to seem dangerous and exotic, but still close enough for him to get home by bedtime.

Jack walked into the Killabrew just before ten o’clock, which was perfect. They’d managed to scare up Dog’s parole officer, who told Driscoll that Dog usually shut his garage up and was in the bar by ten. Jack wanted to be there before him. Jack had already been wearing jeans, and his plain black work shoes passed for boots in the dim bar light. Driscoll had an old NASCAR T-shirt in his trunk. It was musty and wrinkled, which didn’t please Jack but added to the effect. In moments he’d transformed himself from a CIA field agent to a scruffy barfly.

He sat at the bar and ordered a beer. There was some kind of electronic keno game at one end of the bar and a television at the other. The bartender was a thick, heavy woman with a wide face that accounted for every year of her life in blemishes and wrinkles. But she smiled jovially under thin wisps of blondish hair, and she handed Jack his Bass Ale with a friendly nod.

Dog Smithies showed up a minute later. He was big everywhere. Big hair tumbling down from under an oily Harley-Davidson baseball cap. Big beard exploding from the bottom and sides of his face. Big chest, big arms, and a very big gut spilling over the top of his jeans. Big voice, too.

“Aaaaaggh,” he sighed loudly as he eased himself onto a bar stool. “Thanks, Gabs,” he added as the bartender brought him a glass full of beer. He drank. “Shit, that’s good.” Dog behaved like a man in his own home. He eyed the two or three customers in the Killabrew, including Jack, before calling out, “Which one o’ you guys rides the Ducati?”

Jack waited just long enough to seem surprised at the question, then said, “Who’s asking?”

“Me. Didn’t you just see my mouth movin’?” Dog rose without an invitation and moved down to the stool next to Jack, resettling himself noisily. “That’s a nice bike,” he said. “Who you gotta blow to get a bike like that?”

Jack thanked Driscoll silently. He’d have thought of some way to strike up a conversation with Dog, but the RHD detective had formed this plan the minute they’d learned Dog’s occupation. One of his fellow detectives was an avid motorcycle rider, and Ducati was considered one of the best bike makers in the world.

“It’s who you know, man,” Jack answered. “You know the right people, they just give you stuff. Really, you take it from them. They just don’t know it.”

“You take that bike?”

“Why do you like the bike so much?”

“I work on ’em. Ducati makes a nice bike. I’m just makin’ conversation is all. You don’t like talkin’?”

“My experience, strangers who start talkin’ aren’t what they seem to be,” Jack said. Perfect. The trick to any good setup was to make the mark think he was steering the conversation. As far as Dog was concerned, he had initiated this conversation and he was pursuing it. Jack was the reluctant follower.

“What, you got somethin’ to hide?” Dog laughed. “You don’t strike me as the kind to make trouble.”

Jack nodded. “That’s my point. Trouble is what I’m trying to avoid.” Jack downed his beer and ordered another. “So if you’re another one of them trying to set me up, forget it. I’m clean.”

Dog blinked at this, the conversation having moved a little too fast for him. “One of them? Them who?”

Jack eyed him now, as though appraising the big, hairy man for the first time. “You’re a cop.”

Gabs the bartender shrieked with laughter as she dropped off his beer.

“Bullshit,” Dog laughed. “Bullshit.” He laughed awhile longer, loud just like he talked. When he settled down a bit, he said, “So why are cops looking for you? What’d you do?”

Jack smirked. When he spoke, his voice was conspiratorial. “Nothing. I was just interested in something and I made too much noise about it.”

Dog grinned mischievously. “What was it?”

Jack hesitated, then shrugged. “You know that bombing thing in Oklahoma City a few years back. I was just curious how they blow things up. How to make bombs and shit like that.”

Dog’s eyes lit up when Jack said bomb. “You shitting me? Why you want to know about bombs?”

Jack laughed. “What the hell, you never wanted to blow something up?”

“The thought has crossed my mind,” Dog said, raising his glass in a toast. He took a sip. “Listen, you really want to know how to make a bomb, I can show you the real shit.”

“What do you mean?” Jack asked, lowering his voice.

“Come on outside. My truck.”

Jack followed the hairy giant out of the Killabrew. There was a dirty white Dodge Ram 1500 parked off to the side of the parking lot, a tarp thrown over the bed. “I got cool shit back here,” Dog said, his voice growing more animated. “I think you’re gonna like it. Help me with that cover.”

Jack put his hands on the heavy tarp to lift it, but his fingers lost all strength as something cold and heavy struck him on the back of the head.

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. PST National Transportation Safety Board, Los Angeles Field Office

Diana tried to blink the sleep from her eyes. She’d been up since last night, trying to find the clue that would help everyone else see what she, bleary-eyed though she was, saw so clearly. Alaska Airlines Flight 442 had been deliberately bombed.

Diana Christie was not prone to hysterics. One did not become an investigator for the NTSB without a large supply of objectivity, not to mention patience and meticulousness. NTSB investigators had access to the finest investigative forces in the world, but they often worked alone, working their way through tiny scraps of evidence, minuscule warps in the fabric of shattered aircraft, minute scars on the wheels of locomotives, and usually under the watchful eye of the media. The pressure was enormous, and only the coolest and calmest were chosen for the job.

Diana was one of them. She’d worked on the go team that investigated TWA 800. She’d headed the investigation of the American flight that went down over Chicago, and the Amtrak derailment in Denver. She was an expert.

Which made her current investigation all the more frustrating. She had no vested interest in this particular disaster, no emotional attachments. She certainly had no agenda beyond the truth, and no reason to bang her head against the brick wall of other people’s incompetence . . . except that her job was to find the cause of a particular effect. That was her raison d’etre, and she took it seriously.

Diana was investigative by nature, but the mystery she currently attempted to pierce led her into unknown territory. She examined equipment and shards of blasted metal, not people. Her work led her to the conclusion that the blast had originated in seat 29D. The airline manifest told her that the seat had been occupied by one Ali Abdul. Now, Diana wasn’t a police detective, but she could pick up the phone as easily as the next person, so she’d made telephone calls. The address Ali Abdul had listed was out of date. To make things more frustrating, it appeared that every Ali Abdul residing in the city of Los Angeles was alive, which was very inconvenient considering that her theory was Ali Abdul had blown himself up.

There was, undoubtedly, an answer to this mystery. However, to resolve it she needed someone with the right sort of investigative skills. She decided to try the jerks at CTU one more time.

10:06 P.M. PST Shoemacher Avenue, Los Angeles

Shoemacher was one of those streets you rarely see on television programs about Los Angeles: a beautiful, well-landscaped street lined with elegant mid-sized houses and set in the heart of the city. The television usually showed the nice houses only on the west side or in the suburbs, but the truth was a vibrant community existed south of Hollywood and east of downtown. There were vibrant communities in south central and east L.A., too, but the television rarely hinted of that.

Don Biehn knew all this. A cop of twenty-two years, of course he did. But he didn’t know why he was thinking of it at that moment. Self-distraction, maybe. Compartmentalization of emotions. Sheer madness, for all he knew.

Whatever it was, it allowed him to get from St. Monica’s to Shoemacher Avenue without eating his own gun. He parked his car at a metered spot near the corner of San Vicente and Olympic, then crossed Olympic and went up Shoemacher, a diagonal street cutting a swath through a mid-Wilshire neighborhood. It was a short walk from there down the darkened sidewalk to the pretty brick house occupied by a monster.

Aaron hadn’t known his name. In his journal, he’d simply called him “the other father.” Father Frank had brought him in for “special visits.” Don now planned to pay a special visit of his own.

The first time down the street, he walked right by the house, taking in as much information as he could without pausing. Lights were on, and the flicker of colors against the thin rice-paper panel blocking the large front window told Don that the priest was watching television. He went halfway up the block, paused and looked around as though lost, then turned back. This time, he favored the shadows, and when he reached the brick house, he glanced around to see if anyone was looking, then turned in a quick and businesslike way up the side lawn to the gate. It was unlocked. He opened it slowly, keeping the creaking to a minimum, then closed it himself so the self-closing spring didn’t slam it shut. He had to negotiate some trash and recycling bins, but in a moment he was around the side of the house and into the backyard. There was a set of French doors between the backyard and the kitchen. It was locked.

Undiscouraged, Don hurried back around to the front of the house. There were several cars parked on the street right in front of the priest’s house. Don wasn’t sure which of them was owned by Collins. It didn’t really matter. Once again glancing around to see if any neighbors were out, and finding no one, the detective slapped first one and then the other car hard.

Car alarms wailed. One of them was the annoying kind that changed its pitch and tempo every few seconds, and both were loud. Don hurried back around the house to the French doors. Even from here, the alarms sounded shrill and loud on the quiet street. Inhaling deeply, Don wrapped his fist in his jacket and wound up to punch out one of the glass squares.

But before he could, something covered his mouth and nose. He inhaled sharp, eye-watering fumes, and everything went black.

10:14 P.M. PST Desert Outside Lancaster

Jack’s head shook clear when he hit the ground. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been totally out. He’d been groggy for the last few minutes, lying in the back of Dog’s truck with his hands and feet bound with what felt like duct tape and a tarp thrown over his head. He was going to have a massive headache and a good-sized lump on his head, assuming he survived this.

Jack was vaguely aware that the truck had pulled off the road somewhere and was bumping along the pathless high desert. Eventually, the truck had stopped. The tarp disappeared, and Jack had felt himself lifted and then dropped. That’s when the impact shook his head clear.

It was pitch-black. They were far from Lancaster’s faint glow of lights, somewhere out in the desert off the Pearblossom Highway that ran south and east. There wasn’t enough starlight or moonlight for Jack to make out Dog’s face clearly, but he could see the hulking shape crouched down in front of him.

“So we don’t misunderstand each other,” Dog said out of the gloom, “you wouldn’t be the first cop I killed.”

Jack didn’t say anything. Dog grunted and continued. “It was a good one, the bike thing. I do like Ducati. But I’m not dumb, just country dumb, and don’t nobody start talkin’ about blowing things up in a bar.”

Jack allowed himself some silent absolution. He hadn’t had much time to lay out and execute a longer, slower, less obvious sting. This was still a failure, but the risks had been unavoidable.

“I figure it’s Farrigian sold me out,” Dog said. He grabbed Jack by the throat. “Was it Farrigian? You tell me who it was and I’ll end you quick.”

Jack fought the natural panic of suffocation and stared into the shadows where Dog’s eyes would be. He wasn’t going to give this two-bit scum the satisfaction of seeing him struggle. After a second, the big man let go. Jack willed himself to breathe in slowly, easily. He didn’t gasp.

“Tough sumbitch.” Dog laughed.

“You should just let me go now,” Jack said when his lungs stopped burning.

Dog laughed. “What, you think I’m a moron?”

Jack heard the faint whup-whup of the helicopter first. “Yes,” he said, “I think you’re a moron.”

Spotlights ignited like a half-dozen suns leaping into the sky all around them. A voice blared over an unseen bullhorn. “This is the police! You are under arrest! This is the police!”

Dog whirled, blinded by the light and stunned by the noise. “Get down, get down, get down!” a voice shouted, and footsteps thudded toward them out of the darkness.

The hairy giant threw a hand up to shield his eyes from the blinding light as he reached under his shirt. His arm swung up, holding a huge revolver.

Jack never heard the shots, but he saw Dog’s body shudder three times as three red flowers blossomed across his back. One of the sniper rounds hit the ground near Jack’s leg with a soft puffing sound, like someone punching a pillow, and grains of dirt sprayed into Jack’s face. Dog’s body hit the ground before the SWAT team could reach him.

The next moment or two were controlled chaos as the SWAT team swarmed Jack to protect him and secured the area. Some of the spotlights were dimmed and cars were rolled up. The police helicopter continued to circle overhead for a few minutes, its powerful beam sliding around the scene. Finally someone spoke into a microphone, and the chopper dropped away loudly.

“You good?” Harry Driscoll said as Jack was freed

and hauled to his feet.