by John Whitman
Teri pulled her feet up and crossed her legs in the chair. This Peter Jiminez was very sincere, but she was confused. Did he want her to be his counselor? If so, he had another think coming. She had a daughter whose father was in jail for murder. “Agent Jiminez, is there something you need from me?”
“I just don’t think he did it, ma’am,” Peter insisted. “Not without a good reason. But there’s no one looking into it on his side. CTU has just written him off. I figured”— he fixed his eyes on her to let her know how serious his statement was—“I figured I’d see what I could do on my own to help out, and I thought I’d start by asking you if there’s any direction you might point me.”
So it was an investigation. Teri folded her arms across her chest. She wasn’t sure if Jiminez’s schoolboy demeanor was an act or his true persona, but she’d been around Jack long enough to recognize a good-cop interrogation when she saw one.
“Agent Jiminez,” she said, her voice hardening ever so slightly. “You have to know that there were lots of things about Jack’s work that he didn’t discuss at home.”
“Of course, ma’am. It’s just that . . . well, to be honest, a man will sometimes tell his wife things that he won’t tell anyone else.”
Teri laughed, but it was a small thing, with a bitter sound in it. “There are probably more things a man won’t tell his wife.”
Jiminez actually blushed. He really was a schoolboy. “Maybe you’re right, ma’am. But if you don’t mind me saying so, you seem like someone to trust. I’m wondering if there was something going on at the agency that Jack didn’t like. Something he might have confided in you. Maybe someone else was out to get him?”
“You think he was set up.”
Peter held his hands up, warding off the suggestion. “I’m not saying anything for sure, ma’am. I’m just wondering if he said anything to you about trouble with anyone else at the agency.”
Teri shook her head. “You may or may not know that my marriage with Jack has had some pretty rough patches, and pretty recently.”
Jiminez fidgeted in his seat, but nodded. “Ma’am.”
“There’ve been times when we’ve barely spoken and when we did, it wasn’t about his work. There are times when he’s gone for days at a time, and he comes home without a single word about where he’s been or what he’s done. For all I know, he’s saved the world from a nuclear bomb. Or maybe he’s just been in somebody else’s bed. I never know. So no, he’s never told me about any trouble at work. But I will tell you one thing I do know.” Now it was her turn to fix her eyes on him. Her gaze bored into him in a look she had long practiced. “The one thing I do know is that Jack is capable of anything.”
10:11 P.M. PST Federal Holding Facility, Los Angeles
Jack followed Ramirez back into their cell, escorted by Lafayette and two other guards. As soon as the door was locked, Jack turned to the officer. “I need to get in touch with someone on the outside. Can you make a call for me?”
“Call tomorrow,” Lafayette drawled lazily. The trouble was over for now, and he wanted to move on before this became something that required paperwork.
“I can’t wait,” Jack said. “This gang will keep coming at me. Look, all I’m asking is for you to make a one-minute phone call.”
Lafayette frowned at him. He was fit for a man in his early fifties, but he wore all those years in the lines of his face when he frowned. “You know what it’d be if I made a one-minute call for every bird in this cage?”
“They’re not all getting killed. Come on, thirty seconds.”
The lines on the guard’s face deepened. “Awright. I make this call, you forget all about this fight tonight. Then I don’t have to do paperwork.”
Jack agreed. He gave Lafayette the number to CTU. “Tell them you’re calling for Ryan Chappelle. Tell them it’s an emergency. When you get Chappelle, tell him you’re calling because things are going south. Say exactly that, okay?”
Lafayette had been reluctant at first, but he also didn’t like too many fights on his watch. A scuffle here and there between inmates was all right—hell, sometimes it was downright entertaining—but he didn’t like what was going on with these Salvatruchas and Bauer. There was some bad sauce on those ribs, like his mama always said. He locked Jack back in his cell and moseyed down to the guard’s office behind its Plexiglas walls.
Lafayette had returned a few minutes later. “You’re having a bad day,” he said to Jack. “Or maybe it’s everyone around you’s having a bad day.”
“Did you tell him? Jack had asked eagerly.
“Nope,” the corrections officer said. “Couldn’t. He’s in the hospital, too.”
Lafayette had walked away, his job done. But Jack clutched the bars of his cage, squeezing until his knuckles turned white.
But it wasn’t in him to panic. He let go of the bars and watched the color flow back into his fingers. Observe. Assess. Act. That was how battles were won. He had suddenly become a target of MS–13, and since MS–13 was a major force in Los Angeles, and ran a crime syndicate that violated dozens of Federal laws, this Federal jail was crowded with Salvatruchas. They’d keep coming at him from different angles until they put him down. Adam Cox, who was more valuable to Jack than anyone in here knew, was dead. The warden, whom Jack could have turned to, was out of commission, maybe dead, too, for all Jack knew. And now Chappelle. It was certainly no coincidence that the three people he could turn to had all been neutralized.
He was in trouble. What kind of trouble, he didn’t yet know, and he would certainly never find out by waiting around inside for MS–13 to kill him.
By 10:16 Jack had made his decision, and by 10:18, he had a plan.
10:18 P.M. PST Bauer Residence
The truth of it was that Peter’s schoolboy style wasn’t an act. He’d been raised in Glendale, Arizona by his maternal grandparents, and they’d trained him up to be polite with a combination of what his grandma called “beatings and sweets,” rewarding good behavior and smacking the sass out of him when necessary. Sir and ma’am came naturally to him, and so while his aw-shucks habits weren’t an act, he was conscious of their usefulness during interrogations. He was an instinctive good cop.
He walked out of Jack Bauer’s house sure that Teri Bauer knew more than she was saying, but equally sure that she had no information about any personnel conflicts inside CTU. He’d watched her closely while they talked. When she’d mentioned that Jack never talked to her about what he’d been doing, her eyes had moved up and left, an indication that she was accessing the creative side of her brain. When she claimed that he never mentioned personnel conflicts her eyes flicked down and right, usually suggesting use of the brain’s factual side.
Peter got into his car and drove away in the fading twilight. He hadn’t gone more than two blocks when a Crown Victoria pulled up beside him. The window slid down, and a man in sunglasses flashed a badge and motioned for him to pull over. Peter complied, rolling to the curb. He was tempted to get out of the car, but he knew that if he was on the job and pulled someone over, even another Federal agent, he’d want them to stay put. Common courtesy.
Two men got out of the Crown Vic, both wearing half-decent blue suits and inexpensive, comfortable dress shoes. They split off, one to each side of Peter’s car. The one on the driver’s side, who looked Japanese, showed his badge again. FBI.
“Agent Jiminez, I’m Jason Fujimora, FBI, and that’s
Special Agent Holmquist.”
“You want to see my ID?” Peter asked.
“We know who you are, Agent Jiminez,” Holmquist
said, making Peter turn his head to look the other way. “We just wanted to pass on a quick word.”
“Lay off the Bauer case,” Fujimora said.
Peter swiveled his head again. “That’s five. Words, I mean.”
Fujimora ignored that. “There’s nothing for you to find there.”
Peter smiled a friendly smile. “Well, fellas, if there’s nothin
g to find there, there’s no harm in looking. Nothing wasted but my time.”
“Wouldn’t want you to waste the taxpayers’ money,” said Holmquist. This time Peter didn’t bother to look. “Bauer’s in jail for good reason, and he’ll stay put. Understood?”
“Not really,” Peter replied. “Why you guys? Was Tintfass involved with the FBI? Informing for you, maybe? You guys pissed that Bauer offed him?”
“Bauer’s in the zoo where he belongs,” Fujimora leaned in a little, resting his hands on Peter’s window frame. “Just don’t disturb the animals too much. No one wants to get bitten. Good talking to you.”
10:21 P.M. PST Intensive Care Unit, UCLA Medical Center, Los Angeles
Kris Czikowlis plucked a blue pen out of the pocket of her white medical coat and began scribbling on a notepad. It was standard stuff, but she always felt better when she made notes: Get medical history. Seizures? Family history. Strokes? She used layman’s terminology because it prompted her to use the same words with the family.
The patient lying on the bed in front of her was a male, mid-forties, Mr. Ryan Chappelle. Some sort of government employee or cop. Not overweight, although of course that didn’t rule out some sort of heart condition. No prior signs of distress, until he’d collapsed less than an hour earlier. By the time he arrived at UCLA Med he was comatose.
History of drug use?
He wouldn’t be the first government employee, even police officer, to use drugs, and the right drugs in the wrong hands could turn the brain off like a light switch.
A man in a gray suit walked into the ICU, tugging at his tie. He saw the patient and then Kris. His eyes slid down her body and then back up to her eyes. But he did it quickly, and that passed for politeness these days.
“You’re his doctor?” the man said, offering his hand. “Chris Henderson.”
Kris replaced her pen and shook his hand. “I’m Dr. Czikowlis. Are you family?”
“No, colleagues. I was there when he collapsed. Do you know what happened?”
“Not yet,” she said. “He’s stable now, but comatose. Did you give a history to the paramedics?”
Henderson looked at Chappelle. On his best days the Regional Director looked thin. Lying in the ICU he was practically skeletal. “As much as I could. We’re not that close, really. But he always seemed to be pretty healthy.”
“We’ll find out what’s going on,” Dr. Czikowlis promised. “I’m ordering blood work and a few other
tests.”
“What will the blood work show?”
“Anything in his system, drugs, like that.”
Henderson handed her a card that listed him with the Department of Homeland Security. It was official enough to look important, without giving away any classified information about CTU. “It’s fairly important that we get him well as soon as possible,” he said. “Also, it’s standard procedure for us to keep track of any information that goes out. Please let me know where the blood work is being sent.” She wrote it down for him.
“Thanks,” he said. “Will you call me the minute you know anything?”
“Of course,” the doctor said. “Is he . . . Look, I don’t know what you guys do, but is this related to his work? Was he doing something . . . Is he a spy?”
Henderson chuckled. “No, he’s a bureaucrat. But he’s an important bureaucrat, so please try to get him better.”
10:30 P.M. PST Union Station, Los Angeles
He came up from San Diego on the Pacific Surfliner and sighed as the train rolled into L.A.’s Union Station. He loved trains or, more specifically, he had a love-hate relationship with them. When the trains ran on time, their precision was a thing of beauty and, as Keats had said, A thing of beauty is a joy forever. But the trains often did not run on time, and the result was discord. Disharmony. Chaos.
He liked train stations and subways more than airports because they usually displayed maps of the tracks, concise representations of the elaborate systems of paths, cars moving on paths, people getting on cars moving on paths.
The web of our lives is of a mingled yarn. Shakespeare, which play?
He stepped off the Surfliner and into the crowd of travelers. A family composed of a man, a woman, and two twin girls of about nine years passed. The girls were pulling matching pieces of Coach luggage on wheels, and he noticed instantly that the woman constantly looked back to the girls while the man looked to the train schedule. Fulfilling their roles: father-leader, mother-protector. Those were their roles in this situation, but change the situation, he thought, and see how quickly their roles change. Grab one of the girls, smash her head with his fist, and then suddenly the father becomes the protector and the mother becomes the guide, leading them away from danger. Comfortably predictable.
A man in a respectable black suit saw him standing still in the middle of the crowd and mistook him for someone lost. Mistook him for a sheep. The man approached and held out a pamphlet called The Watchtower. “Have you heard the word, my friend?”
He smiled. “I have heard seven from you, and will probably hear more.”
“If you’re looking for guidance, you’ll find it here.” He indicated the pamphlet.
He was enjoying this. He had learned long ago to find pleasure in minor distractions, rather than being annoyed by them. “Will it show me how to get to the Staples Center?”
The man in the black suit laughed. “No, but it’ll show you the word of God.”
“Ah,” he said, pretending only just now to understand. “To die for a religion is easier than to live it absolutely.” That was Borges.
It suddenly dawned on the Jehovah’s Witness missionary that he was being toyed with. “Huh?”
“I’m going to make things easier on you. Enjoy the rest of your day.”
He walked away, feeling the eyes of the Jehovah’s Witness on his back for a few seconds. Then the man turned away, passing out more of his pamphlets. His stack contained roughly forty pamphlets, and the traveler estimated quickly that it would take him another fifteen minutes to pass out those pamphlets.
The train exploded ten minutes later. The traveler had just gotten into a taxicab and was driving away when the sound of the explosion roared out of the entrance to Union Station.
It was not a big explosion, and did not cause extensive damage. A truly large explosion would have brought attention that the traveler did not want, so this one was made to look like an explosion of diesel fuel, which was combustible at 105 degrees Fahrenheit. It was not, as the traveler had already reminded himself, big enough to cause extensive damage. But it was big enough to stop the train service at Union Station which, at that particular time of day, would cause a ripple affect, disrupting the service of Los Angeles’s Metro transit system, as well as train service in Santa Barbara and San Diego, and, to a lesser extent, delaying train service as far away as Santa Fe, New Mexico, and Chicago, Illinois. The family with the Coach luggage would not be injured but, in some small way, their lives would be changed forever by the ripple effect of his actions. He smiled happily.
“Where you headed?” the taxi driver asked.
“Staples Center,” he said.
“Got it. I don’t wanna lose a fare, but you know you coulda taken the Metro right from Union Station. Drops you off right at Staples.”
The traveler glanced back. Wisps of smoke drifted up out of the Union Station building, barely visible in the streetlights, and he could already hear sirens. “I think they’re having trouble with the trains.”
The drive was a short one, directly across the downtown area of Los Angeles, the only place in the suburban sprawl that simulated the “downtown” feel of New York or Chicago, with concrete canyons formed by skyscrapers looming over streets. Oddly enough, these streets were cast almost completely in shadow during the day. At night they were bright with light pouring out from the buildings. A quick run down one of these canyons and the taxi emerged on the south side of downtown, where the Los Angeles Convention Center and Stapl
es Center together covered whole acres of land.
The taxi pulled to a stop in front of the Staples Center and the traveler got out, paid, and walked toward the north side of the building. There were small crowds moving in and around the center for some event or concert that was of no consequence to the traveler.
He spotted Francis Aguillar before Aguillar saw him. This was to be expected, because the traveler changed his appearance quite often. Aguillar, too, had changed his appearance, but the traveler looked past the new van dyke and the longer hair. Aguillar’s posture was the same, his habit of standing with the weight on his left leg was still obvious, and the tilt of his chin was the same.
“Francis,” he said.
“Oh!” Aguillar said. “You shaved your head. Bald suits you. Are you wearing contacts?”
Zapata nodded. “I have always envied the green eyes of others. And in public, I am Charles Ossipon. Remember that technology has made the dreams of the ancients come true.”
Aguillar nodded, though Zapata could see from his face that he did not understand. To Zapata, the comment was quite clear. Ancient shamans and wizards believed that names held power: to know the name of a thing gave one power over the thing itself. Modern technology turned the shaman’s fantasy into the police officer’s reality. A single name, entered into the right database, laid a man naked before the powers that be.
“Everything you asked for is ready,” Aguillar said.
“Good. We have a little time. Let’s get something to eat.”
But instead of walking, he stopped as he had done in the train station, and looked around. In his mind’s eye he saw this spot, then suddenly his vision pulled back from it, expanding to encompass this whole city, and then the state, and then the United States. Every point within the scope of his vision was connected like the stops on a train station map. All interconnected, all interdependent. Choose the right spot, identify the nexus at just the right place, well, then one bomb, even a small bomb, could affect the lives of millions. By this time tomorrow, he would have done just that.