by John Whitman
He forced his voice into a slower, more soothing tone, though his heart was still racing, his muscles still coiled for a fight. “That would have been better. There’s, there’s a lot going on right now.”
“Who’s this?” Ramirez asked. He had been surprised by Jack’s sprint across the intersection, and then had hesitated, not sure if he should follow or not. But he disliked being left alone.
Teri Bauer spotted the look of caution in Jack’s eyes. “A friend,” she said vaguely.
“Are we staying with her?” Ramirez said. “We need a place to—”
“No,” Jack snapped, before Teri could respond.
“We’re not that good of friends,” Teri followed up.
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Either she was pissed at him, or she was good at this. Jack decided it was probably both. He caught the dull roar of a car shifting gears as it came around the corner. The others seemed not to notice.
“Damn,” Ramirez said, kicking one of the planters with the toe of his stolen sneakers. “I’m exhausted. We need someplace to—”
“Down!” Jack commanded. He smothered Teri with his body and grabbed Ramirez by the back of his Lakers jersey, nearly strangling him as he pulled the other fugitive to the ground. At the same moment, the air around them exploded with sound: shotgun blasts and semi-automatic pistol reports, whining bullets, shattering glass. Shards of glass rained down on Jack’s head as he leveled his Sig at the car—a black Chrysler 300C that screeched to a halt. They couldn’t see Jack or the others in the shadows under the apse, and most of their shots went high. Jack’s did not. He put two rounds right through the front passenger window, and a silhouette there vanished. He swiveled a few degrees to the rear window, but Ramirez struggled underneath him and the shots went low, punching holes in the door frame. Someone inside the Chrysler screamed, and the big car roared away.
“Oh my god, oh my god,” Teri whispered over and over.
“Got to move now,” Jack stated. He jumped up and hauled her to her feet. “Get out of here,” he commanded. “You were home. If the phone rang or anyone knocked, you didn’t hear it because you were asleep. Go.” He shoved Teri toward the corner. Before she could protest, he grabbed Ramirez by the arm and half-dragged him across the street. Teri was going to hate him for that, but she’d be alive to hate him.
“Who the hell was that? And who the hell was that?” Ramirez asked, his brain still addled by gunfire, referring to both Teri and the shooters.
“She was no one in particular. They were more of the same from jail.” Jack didn’t know it for sure, but the guess was a good one. The hit was gang-style, the car was gang-style. MS–13 was still after him. This couldn’t be a gang vendetta, which meant he didn’t know why they were after him. And what was more, how had they found him?
Jack didn’t release Ramirez until they reached the car, and he didn’t say a word until they were driving away. Two blocks down the street he pulled over and parked at a meter, now dormant for the evening. He killed the engine and the lights. “Get low,” he said to his companion. They both slid low in their seats. A minute later sirens wailed and two squad cars hurried by, lights blazing. Jack calculated. If CTU cooperated, LAPD would run ballistics on the SigSauer and track it back to him. He had to stay ahead of the law, stay ahead of the pattern.
“What the hell did you do to MS–13 that they come after you?” Ramirez asked.
“Nothing,” Jack said truthfully. “Maybe it’s you.”
“I’ve got nothing to do with them!” the other man protested.
“Either way, we need cover. A hotel is out because neither one of us has ID,” which was a lie because the navy blue pouch had included some cash and a driver’s license and credit cards under the name of
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John Jimmo. “You said you might know some people. Now’s the time to go there.”
Ramirez hesitated. The pause itself was rewarding, as far as Jack was concerned. Whoever Ramirez was considering, he was important enough to cause fear and concern. That was just the kind of person Jack wanted to meet.
“All right,” Ramirez conceded. “Let’s go.”
2:39 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Even when he wasn’t around, Jack Bauer dominated the activities at CTU Los Angeles. Tony was up to his elbows in his Jemaah Islamiyah investigation. With Henderson’s permission, he’d put two field agents out, wiretaps on every phone they could find for Sungkar’s alias and Riduan Bashir’s phones as well. Thanks to Seth, Sungkar’s e-mails and instant messages were already popping up on Tony’s computer as soon as they went out. Sungkar had just received an obscure e-mail, probably in code, but referenced an upcoming visit to Papa Rashad’s factory. The e-mail repeated “Papa Rashad’s factory” several times, and Tony was sure it was code. He was waiting for data analysis, and his patience was short.
“Jamey!” he yelled into the phone, though his voice carried straight to her. She buzzed him back and said more quietly, “We’re on it, Tony, but we’re also on this thing with Jack.”
“Bauer.” The word was not said with any kindness. Even as a fugitive from justice, Jack caused problems inside CTU. The man was a bull in a china shop. “What’s going on?”
“Took your advice and spent some time digging into the victim’s story. Adrian Tintfass.”
“Some kind of small-timer, right? A middleman.”
“Yeah, never really on our radar because he’d never done anything big.”
“I remember.”
Jamey jumped on his words. “But that’s just it. He’d never really done anything big because he’d never really done anything. I mean the guy is nonexistent, and then all of a sudden he pops up, gets a label for a few small-scale transactions that might interest local law but wouldn’t raise an eyebrow here, and then all of a sudden he’s doing this big deal and Jack goes and kills him.”
Tony did not see the mystery. “Lots of bad guys do lots of bad things that we don’t know about. They get a reputation with other bad guys even if we don’t have their whole résumé.”
Jamey made a skeptical noise into the phone. “That’s where I don’t buy this thing with Jack. There wasn’t any reason to kill this guy. How many people do you think Jack’s killed?”
“A freakin’ lot!”
“Right, but do you honestly think he’s ever killed anyone he didn’t have to?”
Tony paused. “Read his service record, Jamey. It’s not that hard to believe—”
“—for somebody who’s read the service record. That’s why this story stands up to a typical investiga
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tion. But I’m talking about us, people who know him. Do you believe it?”
There was another long pause while Tony considered. He put aside his snap judgments and disapproval of Jack’s actions. “No,” he said at last, “I don’t believe it.”
Jamey felt a thrill. She’d won a point. “I have a name. It’s Adrian Tintfass’s widow. Can we send someone to go check her out? No point in me asking Henderson about this, he’ll just say no.”
“Nina,” Tony said. “Get Nina to do it. Now where’s my analysis?”
“Got it.” Seth Ludonowski was standing at his shoulder, beaming.
Tony hung up. “Go.”
Seth didn’t bother with any impressive overview of the cryptographics programs, the analysis of semantics, allophones, or any other highly relevant but distracting methodologies used to parse through the intercepted e-mails. He just said, “Papa Rashad’s factory is pretty unimaginative encryption for the initials PRF. If you ask me, PRF can also stand for—”
“Pacific Rim Forum,” Tony said. “And it starts in about fifteen hours.”
2:44 A.M. PST Boyle Heights, Los Angeles
There ain’t nothing like a late night fuck and a late night joint, thought Smiley Lopez. The girl was in the other room, still sleeping off the tequila. She might not remember the ride, he flattered himself, but she’d be sore in the morning. The fatty
was in his hand and he took another puff, put his feet up on the little table, and used the remote to flip on the television. HBO, Cinemax (he called it “Skinemax”), Showtime, and still there wasn’t a goddamn thing on at three o’clock in the morning. He flipped through channels until he came to ESPN-something-or-other. They were playing reruns of fights, but not boxing. It was that other shit, the fighting where you can hit with your knees and elbows and shit. Smiley liked that sort of fighting. It was more like the street.
His cell phone rang. He was expecting a call from some of his soldiers, but this was a different number. “Yo,” he said, knowing who it would be.
“What the fuck’s going on?” the angry voice on the line snapped.
Smiley checked the clock on the cable box. “They shoulda finished it right about now, homes. You can ease up.”
“No, I can’t,” the other man said. “Your little homies” —the word was foreign, clumsy, an insult on his lips, and meant to be so— “screwed it up. For the third time!”
Smiley felt a buzz kill coming on and it annoyed him. “Goddamn, ese, you the one who told us he’d be tough to pop.”
“Well figure out how!” the man demanded. “Or I’ll make sure your guys inside burn.” Smiley sat up, his buzz gone in an instant. “Listen to me, homes,” he said, overpronouncing the word as
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the other man had. “I ain’t Oscar. You get up in my face like that I shove your dick down your throat, I don’t care what kinda law you put on me. Got it?” He heard the other man choke back a response. “Besides, you fuckin’ want him popped, you do it yourself, fuckin’ maricon.”
“All right,” the other man said. “All right. I know he’s tough, but you keep after it, or you don’t get paid and I will make sure your boys go away.” He hung up.
Smiley took another puff.
2:53 A.M. PST Century Plaza Hotel, Century City, California
Old men don’t sleep much. Martin Webb remembered his father telling him that when Martin was a much younger man. Though he was now approaching seventy-three, Martin’s mind and memory were as sharp as ever, and he could see the old house in Silver Springs, when he’d bring his kids to visit the old man. He’d stay up late working on the financials for some company or other, long after his dad had gone to bed, only to find his dad waking up and coming down for a glass of warm milk. They’d talk then; those were some of the best talks they’d ever had.
Now Martin was the old man. Even his son Max was in his fifties, and when the family came to visit him in Georgetown and Martin got up for his own glass of warm milk, it was more often his grandson Jake he’d find up, though of course Jake wasn’t doing financials.
At the moment, though, he was alone, and instead of padding downstairs for milk he had called room service.
Old men don’t sleep much, he told himself again. But he knew that he had reason to be losing sleep.
The economy. The goddamned economy. It sat there like an engine that ought to start but wouldn’t. No, that wasn’t the right analogy. Better to say hung there like an airplane whose engine wouldn’t start. The plane was losing altitude, gliding on the last of its momentum, and any minute it would plunge.
“That’s about right,” Martin said out loud to his quiet hotel room.
He was the engineer, the man who was supposed to fix that engine. So far, he had tried every tool in his toolkit: interest rates, of course, which served as his hammer, screwdriver, and wrench. He’d employed the bully pulpit to shame the current administration into fiscal restraint. He’d hedged his bets against overseas markets. All to no good. The Dow looked like a downward staircase. Unemployment was up, and so was inflation, and those two things should not go together. According to last month’s index, consumer spending had dipped, and the real estate market was slowing. Consumer confidence—Martin privately called it consumer overconfidence—and the housing bubble were really all that stood between the country and an economic crisis it had not faced in seventy years.
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Martin Webb was being humble with himself. Others would say that a third barrier stood between the country and disaster: Martin Webb. Martin was the Chairman of the Federal Reserve. He was not just the grand old man of the economy; in the eyes of many, he was the economy. For twenty-seven years he had played nursemaid, steward, lord-protector of the United States economy, and always, always he had managed to make the markets pull themselves up by their bootstraps. He would do it again, at least that’s what the Wall Street Journal told him. And he was sure the pundits were right. He would do it again.
He just didn’t know how.
The warm milk came, and the room service attendant went. Martin sat down and sipped. Right about now was when he needed his son Max or his grandson Jake to stroll in and chat. Lacking Jake, he turned on the television, which bathed him in its hypnotic glow. He flipped channels until his eye was caught by a sports channel. He stopped, and watched two warriors pound each other with tiny gloves on their hands. As the commentator indicated, these were reruns of previous fights, all being broadcast as the prelude to the fights the following night. He’d seen this sort of fighting before—mixed martial arts, they called it—and he admired it. Not so different from the economy, really, with an interesting combination of subtlety and brute strength.
He drank his milk and watched.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 89 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 3 A.M. AND 4 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
3:00 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
The last fifteen minutes had been Christmas come early for Tony Almeida. Seth’s code cracking had been brilliant—and it had been followed by quick work from CTU field agents and techs who’d bugged Sungkar’s house. Thanks to their work, Tony was now sitting at his own desk listening to a conversation between Sungkar, on his home phone, and an unknown associate.
“. . . and you’re sure the other side can deliver?” Sungkar was asking.
“Their reputation is solid. They want the arms and
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in return they can deliver a computer program that
will do the job.”
“In each country?”
“Yes.”
“And the arms, we can get them?” Sungkar queried.
“I have a contact.” Bacharuddin Wahid. That was the name Seth slipped to Tony as he listened. “I have not worked with him, but I have heard he is reliable.”
“We buy the arms, and then trade the arms for the virus,” Sungkar summed up. “Let’s proceed.”
Tony saw the pattern: Riduan Bashir provides the money, Sungkar uses the funds to purchase arms, which he then trades for this computer program, and Jemaah Islamiyah uses this virus to target the Pacific Rim Forum.
The man named Bacharuddin Wahid read an address, which Tony scribbled down. He reminded himself that neither of them had met this arms dealer, and a plan began to form.
3:06 A.M. PST Mid-Wilshire, Los Angeles
Dan Pascal turned his Crown Vic onto Sweetzer just north of Wilshire Boulevard. His radio chattered with updates as LAPD units rolled into position. Two units were ahead of the target and two were behind. Pascal snatched up his radio mike. “Go,” he said.
He stepped on the accelerator and reached Wilshire in a second, just as the blue Maxima passed him. Two cruisers pulled onto the street behind the Maxima, their lights going bright. The other two cruisers pulled out in front of the Maxima, angling themselves to block the street. The blue car hit its brakes and pulled up short. Pascal and the two follow cars pulled up behind, blocking its retreat. Pascal switched his radio mike to PA, threw open his door, and dragged himself out, drawing his Smith & Wesson .45 at the same time. “Stick your hands out of the car window!” he ordered.
Patrol in all four cars had opened their doors and taken cover behind them, weapons leveled. The occupants of the car complied, a set of hands sticking out from each side.
“Open
the doors slowly. Get out and lie down on the ground!”
Again the occupants complied, and a moment later two men had climbed out, lying down on the asphalt in the middle of Wilshire Boulevard. As one, the law enforcement officers hurried forward.
Pascal stalked forward, moving suddenly much faster than one might have expected from someone his size. Catching Captain America had been easier than he’d thought. He watched the LAPD officers handcuff the occupants and haul them to their feet. Pascal straightened up to his full height and stared down . . . at two terrified eighteen-year-old kids.
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3:11 A.M. PST InterContinental Hotel, Downtown Los Angeles
Jack and Ramirez parked the just-stolen Nissan pickup truck a block away from the InterContinental Hotel and left it there for someone else to find. They walked into the four-star hotel in downtown Los Angeles. The lobby was quiet except for the Latino man and woman running an industrial-sized scrubber across the tile floor. Ramirez walked over to the house phones mounted over an elegant marble ledge. Picking one up, he punched in 7 plus a room number and waited while it rang.
“No answer?” Jack wondered.
Ramirez shrugged. “He did sound pissed when I called before. Wait—” Now he was talking into the phone. “Yeah, we’re here. Okay, Van, we’re coming up.”
They found a bank of elevators and pressed the button for the twenty-third floor.
“So this was the guy you were working with, the one you murdered for?” Jack asked.
“Sort of. His name’s Vanowen. I worked for him, he worked for the guy in charge. I never met that guy. Not sure I want to.”
They reached twenty-three and walked down to 2346. It was a good hotel, with wide hallways and thick, soft carpet. Ramirez knocked and the door opened, then closed behind them. The man who’d admitted them was short and round with a thick walrus mustache and close-cropped reddish-brown hair. His arms weren’t cut, but they were big, bulging out of his blue polo shirt. He was holding a Glock .40 in his hand.
“It don’t figure,” he said by way of hello. He motioned for them to sit down on the couch. The hotel room was an L-shaped suite, with a sitting area and, beyond a door, a bedroom. A couch stood near the door, and beyond it was a small counter extending out into the room, creating a divide. Beyond that was the bed.