by John Whitman
“It don’t figure why you’d break out to come see me.”
Jack didn’t say anything. He was sure in this case it was better to speak when spoken to.
“It does,” Ramirez replied. “We didn’t break out to see you. We broke out because someone was trying to kill us. We need a place to hide out.”
The man sat down in a chair across from them, the Glock resting casually across his leg. “Rami, you know I owe you and you know why. You need someplace to hide, I’m gonna do it. But I don’t know squat about you,” he said to Jack.
Jack didn’t like seeing the muzzle of the Glock, but at the moment he had no choice. He kept his hands on his knees. “Ask away.”
“Tell me a story.”
Jack told the story he’d used with Ramirez, the same story Ramirez knew. Like all good lies, it was as close to the truth as possible: he was a former agent for Homeland Security who’d murdered a scumbag and was awaiting trial and decided he didn’t want to wait once MS–13 decided to kill him. He told the
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story of killing Tintfass. The man called Van seemed amused.
“I could check your story,” Van said, rubbing his thick mustache. “I got people who could check.”
“Knock yourself out,” Jack said.
Van figured he would. “Uh-huh. Meantime, why the fuck should I help you?”
“I come in handy, if there’s any trouble.”
Vanowen waggled the gun. “Why’d there be trouble? I got a legitimate business, ask Rami. No reason for trouble.”
“If you say so. I just figured if Rami was going to kill someone, there was something worth killing for and you were okay with it.”
“I got people to answer to, people who don’t like new faces. I probably oughta kill you right now.”
Jack immediately relaxed. He had heard this kind of talk before. It almost always came from someone who had no intention of doing any killing. A man cold-blooded enough to kill him would have done so already, without compunction. Vanowen wanted to appear tough, and he wanted Jack to know that he was capable of killing if need be. But Jack would give him no need.
“I did Ramirez a favor getting him out. He’s doing me a favor by getting us a place to lay low. That’s all that’s going on here. You decide you want some extra help, I’ve got some skills you might use.”
Vanowen did not ease off, but his face shifted. He’d made some decision. “So tell me how you got out of jail.”
Jack started to tell the story.
3:28 A.M. PST Van Nuys, California
There was no such thing as a good way to knock on the door at three-thirty in the morning, so Nina Myers didn’t try. Bauer was a fugitive and they needed leads A.S.A.P. She found the little house off Kester Avenue, a square one-room stucco building on a flat square lot. She rang the bell and pounded on a metal door knocker in the likeness of William Shakespeare.
“Who . . . who is it?” called a sleepy, frightened voice on the other side of the door.
“Federal agent, ma’am.” Nina held up her ID to the peephole above William Shakespeare’s head. “Sorry for the late hour, but I have a couple of urgent questions.”
There was a long pause—so long that Nina started to decide whether to sprint around back or try to kick in the door—when the bolt turned and the door opened. The woman standing there was short, with thin black hair, a big nose, and a very unwelcome look on her pale face. She wore slippers and a frayed blue terry-cloth robe that she kept tucking and re-tucking around her body. She opened the door just enough to talk, but kept her body wedged into the open space.
“What questions?” the woman asked grumpily. She had clearly been sleeping.
“You’re Marcia Tintfass?” The woman nodded. “Nina Myers. I’m afraid I have a question or two about your husband.”
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“I figured,” the woman snapped. She was waking up, and her sleepiness was turning into indignation at being awakened at such a ridiculous hour. “What kind of question couldn’t wait a few more hours until people were awake?”
“The kind that have to do with your husband’s murderer, who just escaped from jail.”
Marcia Tintfass’s eyes popped open. She looked around, as though the killer might jump out from behind Nina. “Come in then.”
Nina entered and sat down on the couch in a living room lit only by one standing lamp. Many of the shelves were bare, and Nina noticed two moving boxes in the corner. “You probably know all this, but I gave a big statement to the police already. I really didn’t know much about my husband’s business.”
Nina had reviewed the file on Adrian Tintfass’s murder, and learned everything there was to know about Marcia Tintfass, which wasn’t much. “I understand. We’re really interested in the killer himself—”
“I didn’t know him,” Marcia said hastily.
“I, yes, I know you didn’t know him. We’re just trying to figure out why he did it. The man who murdered your husband was an exemplary agent for the federal government.”
“Right up until he killed my husband, I guess.”
“Are you moving?” Nina asked.
The question caught Marcia off guard. “Oh, yes. You know, now that Adrian’s gone, it doesn’t, well, you know, it doesn’t feel right being here.”
Nina nodded but didn’t believe a word of it. One learned a lot from interrogating prisoners, and Nina had interrogated her fair share. Marcia Tintfass’s words were totally reasonable, of course, but her delivery had been off. Nina had the distinct impression that, in her sleepiness, the woman had forgotten a line and then picked it up, like an actor recovering in the middle of a scene.
“Are you staying in the city?”
“Well,” Marcia said, a little more naturally, “they’ve asked me to, for the trial and everything. But after that I’m moving to St. Louis.”
“Friends there?”
“A fresh start, I guess. It’s hard, losing someone. I didn’t know how hard it was.” Marcia Tintfass had gotten her rhythm now and sounded good.
Nina asked a few more perfunctory questions, questions that might explain the urgency in knocking on the door in the dead of night, but she left as soon as she could. In the car, she called in to CTU and talked with Jamey Farrell. “We need a tap on this phone, and her cell phone, and everything else right away. I guarantee you she’s calling someone somewhere right now and she’s nervous.”
3:42 A.M. PST Inglewood, California
The CTU strike team moved in with quiet efficiency. This was as close to a routine assault as the real world could provide. They had the layout of the two-story
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warehouse. Satellite and infrared imagery located the three occupants of the building. City business licenses, auto registrations, and telephone records told them exactly who would be inside.
By the time Tony Almeida got word from every unit in the assault and confirmed that the building was locked down, his people had three men in flex cuffs sitting in chairs in the middle of the warehouse. Two of them were little more than strong backs and mean looks. The man in the middle, according to their intelligence, was Arturo Menifee, although the name he was currently using was Richard Bonaventure. Arturo, born and raised in Florida, was a former procurement officer at Fort Hood, Texas, who decided to keep his skills sharp after his discharge from the Army. The military did a pretty good job of keeping track of its ordinance and weapons systems, but with such a massive operation, especially in wartime, it wasn’t all that difficult for a patient man to shave off a rocket-propelled grenade here, an M–60 there. Before you knew it, you could have your own little arsenal for sale.
Tony put his hands on his knees, taking himself down eye level with the seated arms dealer. He didn’t say a word, and the prisoner stared back at him, his face alternating nervously between fear and anger as Tony continued to stare. Menifee didn’t look much like Tony if they stood together, but a bystander would have described them about the same: medium height, d
ark curly hair, dark eyes. I’m better looking, of course, Tony thought wryly.
“Okay,” Tony said at last.
“I ain’t telling you shit,” Menifee spat.
Tony smiled. “I don’t need you to tell me anything. Just talk. I want to hear your accent.”
3:47 A.M. PST InterContinental Hotel
“That’s one hell of a story,” Vanowen said. He still held the gun, but it was no longer pointed at Jack. Vanowen seemed to have forgotten what it was, and waved it around like a lecturer’s pointer stick. “I never met anybody who broke outta prison before.”
A knock on the door interrupted them. Vanowen looked perplexed, then went and cracked the door open. A second later he opened it wide, but did not step out of the frame. Jack could not see the other man’s face silhouetted by the hallway lights, but whoever he was, he was huge, his bulk filling the entire doorway.
“Mark, you gotta be sleeping now. It’s the big day!” Vanowen said. “Can’t sleep,” said the big man. “Gotta talk. Let me in.”
“I got people.”
“Lemme in, Van, come on.”
Vanowen hesitated, but then relented. The man who pushed past him looked like a cartoon drawing of a super hero. He was at least six feet, three inches, with shoulders as wide as two men put together, a narrow
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waist, and muscles that rippled through his American Eagle T-shirt. His face was chiseled out of rock and the bridge of his nose was permanently swollen. Both his ears were grotesquely misshapen. Jack recognized that as “cauliflower ear.” Wrestlers get it from bumping their ears against their opponents over and over again.
“Guys, this is Mark Kendall. Mark ‘The Mountain’ Kendall, former heavyweight champ, and soon to be returning champ.”
Jack and Ramirez nodded. Kendall grunted, but clearly had no interest in them.
“That’s what I want to talk about,” Kendall said. “I gotta know something, Vanny. You’ve got to promise me that I’ll get other fights if I lose this one.”
Jack had seen Vanowen slip the gun into his pocket as he answered the door. Now he saw the man slide his hand casually back into that pocket. “Come on, Mark. No promises in this business. You knew the score when you started your comeback.” For a man who had just called Kendall the next heavyweight champ, he was suddenly very unsympathetic.
For a man as huge as Kendall, he looked pathetically vulnerable. “I’ve got fans out there. They want to see me fight.”
Vanowen shook his head. “They want to see you come back, Mountain. See if a thirty-six-year-old guy’s been out of the cage for four years can still dish it out. You lose, they’ll have their answer, and no one’s gonna be interested anymore.”
Kendall’s cauliflower ears turned beet red, but Jack couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment or anger. Not just anger, he decided. Kendall’s massive shoulders hung low. He was a beaten man. But Jack was sure the fights hadn’t done it. Something else weighed him down. Something he couldn’t take care of with muscles.
“Come here, let’s talk,” Vanowen said. “I got money riding on you today, and your head’s not on right. You guys sit tight.”
Vanowen led the huge man into the other room. Ramirez stretched himself out on the couch. “Jesus, I didn’t realize how tired I was. I’m not used to running around all night like this.”
Jack shrugged. He’d done it before. Ramirez turned the television on absentmindedly. Jack watched with him, but his mind was on his next move. His eyes flicked about the room until he spotted a cell phone, undoubtedly Vanowen’s, sitting on a chair atop a pile of clothes. Jack got up and stretched. He walked by the chair and palmed the cell phone, then went into the bathroom. Now his movements became much more urgent. He closed, locked the door, and dialed CTU.
3:53 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Henderson was half asleep at his desk. He wasn’t lazy, but it was late and he’d been waiting for updates on the Jack Bauer situation, on Tony Almeida’s leads,
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and on a few other lower-priority cases, and his eyes had started to droop. The ringing phone brought him to attention. The late night operator told him who was calling, and Henderson felt his heart thud against his ribs.
“Jack?” he said incredulously.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” Jack replied, his voice a hoarse whisper. “How’s Chappelle?”
“Turn yourself in, Jack,” Henderson said. “You look guilty now. You’ve got U.S. Marshals all over the city.”
“Chappelle?” Bauer asked again.
“No one knows. No explanation for his collapse.”
He heard Bauer swear under his breath. “Okay, Chris, I’ve got to tell you something, but I can’t give many details.”
“Come in here and tell me, Jack.”
“Listen!” Jack commanded, though his voice was still quiet. “None of this is what it seems. I’m working a case. Chappelle knows all about it. There’s an FBI unit that knows, too, but I don’t have their contact.”
Henderson frowned and gave an accompanying skeptical sigh. “Jack, come on. A jailbreak as part of a case?”
“Not that part. I had to do that, but it wasn’t part of the plan.”
“I’ll bet.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Would you believe it?”
Jack didn’t reply, and Henderson heard the low hum of cellular static in the background. Finally Bauer said, “How much of this is about the Internal Affairs investigation?”
Henderson snorted. He wasn’t surprised that Jack had brought up the investigation. Rumors of the inappropriate use of funds had floated around CTU Los Angeles for several months, and the word embezzlement had been used. Most of the field agents had been called in, and the word was that Jack had mentioned Henderson’s name. “First of all, you and I know that any charge against me is bullshit. Second, I’d never let something like that compromise my integrity.”
“I don’t care either way, Chris,” Jack said. “I’m just on a case and I want—”
“I’m the goddamn Director of Field Operations, Jack,” Chris said, “and I have no knowledge of you being on a case. I want you to come in. Or I’ll send someone you trust out to get you. How’s that?” But the line was dead.
Henderson buzzed his intercom. “Okay, new guy. Did you get that traced?” “’Course,” said Seth Ludonowski. “We aim to please.” Henderson dialed Peter Jiminez.
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 4 A.M. AND 5 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
4:00 A.M. PST Biltmore Hotel
At nineteen, he was still Jorge Rafael Marquez, but no longer the peasant’s son from Chiapas or the adolescent gangster from Boyle Heights. He went by Rafael more than Jorge in those days because it sounded less rural. Rafael, to him sounded cosmopolitan, a world traveler or, as he fancied himself, an artist of the new frontier. The new frontier, he had recognized years earlier, was the Internet. The Internet thrilled him with its offer of freedom: freedom of information, freedom of discussion, freedom of purpose.
“I can’t let you do it,” Amistad Medved had told him, using the phrase Rafael least liked to hear. Rafael had just insisted that they open their operating system to the public.
Medved was his partner, but also his boss. Only twenty-three himself, he was still considered a veteran of the burgeoning world of connectivity. He’d made a small fortune in software design and had used it to began writing his own Web browser. Medved had recognized Rafael’s genius immediately and brought him on board, given him a huge number of options, and let him run rampant in the fields of cyberspace. With his gift for patterns, Rafael had written algorithms that shortened the lag time of search engines to nanoseconds. His work had trebled Medved’s fortunes and made Rafael himself a rich man.
Then the rumors first started to fly about Internet service providers offering tiered delivery: slower connections for lower-
paying customers, faster speed for more money. Rafael blanched. It sounded like the sharecropper scams he’d witnessed back in Chiapas. It reminded him of extortion rackets run by MS–13 back in Boyle Heights. Only this time it was sanctioned by the government.
Rafael had wanted to respond by publishing an algorithm that latched on to high-speed connections regardless of the pay rate. Medved, who had invested heavily in several different ISPs, refused to allow it.
Rafael had walked away, leaving his career behind. He abandoned his name as well, but he was not yet Zapata. He became Zapata a year or two later,
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when the Mexican government raided Chiapas and killed his father and his cousin, and he realized once and for all that the Rubik’s Cube was a trick, created by leaders to occupy the time and minds of the people. The cube did not need to be solved. It had to be broken.
Zapata listened carefully as Aguillar told him about the upcoming buy. “I am sending Alliance to meet with the arms dealer. They are providing transportation.”
Aguillar saw the flicker of concern cross Zapata’s face like a shadow. He waited.
“We used Alliance the last time we were in the United States.”
“To transport the Cubans, yes. But you were already using him for his other business, so I assumed—”
“The fight game is different,” Zapata said dismissively. “An entirely different sphere. I do not like using the same people too often because it creates a pattern. Patterns can be followed.”
“I know, but there was no one else available. Farrigian has disappeared, and the others we have worked with more.”
“Okay,” Zapata said. “But kill him afterward.”
Aguillar nodded. He was done, and should have gone to his own room to get some sleep, but he hesitated. “I’m sorry, Zapata, but I have to ask—”
Zapata smiled. Aguillar had sounded apologetic, but he knew (as did Zapata himself) that Zapata’s ego relished these opportunities to play the mentor.