by John Whitman
Then he threw the truck into first and gunned the engine, and they were gone.
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THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 5 A.M. AND 6 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
5:00 A.M. PST Playa del Rey
“Jesus, Jesus,” Ramirez whispered with both hands covering his face.
“Goddamn!” Vanowen rasped through clenched teeth, his right hand pressed tightly over his left shoulder.
“It went through,” Jack said calmly. There was no pursuit. They had to ditch this truck, though, before the helicopters were in the air. “If no arteries were hit, you might live, but your shoulder’s ruined.” His own right arm stung, but he’d been lucky. The round had taken off a layer of skin, but hadn’t done any real damage.
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He saw what he was looking for and made a hard left. There was a long tunnel on Sepulveda Boulevard just south of LAX. He reached it and stopped in the slow lane, then jumped out. The next few moments would be pure luck. He saw headlights approach up the lonely road and enter the tunnel. If it was a cruiser, they were done.
It wasn’t. Jack waved at the car, a red Chrysler SUV. The car slowed. Jack jumped in front of it and raised his weapon. “Out, now.”
The driver, a forty-ish man in a dress shirt and tie, looked shocked and took a moment to comply.
“The stuff,” Vanowen said. “Put as much in as you can.”
Jack didn’t question. He helped Vanowen into the SUV, then he and Ramirez spent a minute or two tossing the boxes from the truck into the SUV. The delivery was shrinking. They’d loaded only half the equipment into the truck, and only a portion of that would fit in the SUV.
Jack took the SUV driver’s wallet, glanced at the name and address, and said, “Okay, Mr. Mullins, I need you to listen.” The man was still in shock. Jack tapped him with the Sig to get his attention. “We’re stealing your car. You’re not going to report it for at least an hour, understand? Get out of here, away from this truck. Call a cab, I don’t care. If I learn that the police are looking for this SUV—”
“—if we see a friggin’ Amber Alert on the freeway with this license plate number,” Vanowen added angrily.
“—well, we know where you live.” Jack held up the driver’s license as a reminder, then stuck it in his pocket. He didn’t wait for a response, and a moment later they were driving away in the SUV.
5:07 A.M. PST Playa del Rey
Tony was facedown on the asphalt with some huge police officer kneeling on his back. He didn’t try to resist, trusting that the whole affair would get sorted out soon enough. The big man cuffed him and sat him up roughly, and Tony found himself looking into a big square face.
“Ya’ll want to tell me where Jack Bauer’s gone off to?” he drawled in a slow, demanding voice. Jack Bauer. Tony Almeida rolled his eyes.
5:08 A.M. PST Playa del Rey
Peter Jiminez rolled up on the scene at U-Pack Storage. He’d heard the radio signals going back and forth, and would have arrived sooner except that he hadn’t been aware the surveillance team was specifically hunting Bauer.
He’d gotten the call from Chris Henderson not long before, and Henderson’s orders had been crystal clear: Find Jack Bauer, before the police do, if possible.
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Jiminez had taken the trace Henderson supplied him and gone directly to the InterContinental Hotel, but he was a step behind. He’d actually intended to go back to Teri Bauer, to start over, when the U-Pack call came through.
The parking lot was clogged with emergency vehicles, and the street outside was blocked by three news vans. Peter parked on the street and slipped under the yellow police line, showing his badge to the uniform there. A moment later he laid eyes on Tony Almeida, sitting on the ground with his hands cuffed behind his back, and a bear of a man hunched over him.
“Excuse me,” he said politely, holding up his badge. “Can I help with something?”
The big man stood up, immediately looming over Peter, and studied the badge for a moment. The Counter Terrorist Unit ID seemed to carry some significance for him. “I’m just interviewing a suspect, son. Why don’t you wait—”
“That’s no suspect,” Peter replied. “He’s one of us.”
Pascal looked from one to the other skeptically. “He was apprehended while committing a felony, and he was seen abetting a wanted fugitive.”
Bauer! “Well, I’m sure it’s part of a case, Officer—?”
“Deputy Marshal,” the big man corrected. “Deputy Marshal Dan Pascal.”
Tony looked up at them both. “My name is Tony Almeida. The Indonesians you’ve arrested, at least one of them is a member of a terrorist organization.” He told his story quickly.
Pascal was no stooge. He got on his radio and relayed all their information, and even waited several minutes until he could speak with George Mason, the one CTU agent he’d met before. Finally he was satisfied. He uncuffed Tony and helped him to his feet.
“You CTU people seem to have a talent for getting into trouble,” he observed.
“You’re leading the Bauer manhunt?” Peter asked.
“That’s the job,” Pascal replied. “Came pretty damned close, too, but they put up a serious fight. We got wounded, and some of them got away. Woulda been worse, but someone nailed their sharpshooter.”
“Sharpshooter?” Tony asked.
“You didn’t see? Guy on the roof. Nearly put one through my skull, and he got some of the others. But someone shot him right through the neck. Pretty shot, whoever it was. My guys brought him down a minute ago.” He chewed the inside of his cheek for a minute. “So you boys must know him. What’s Captain America doing working with these felons when he should be on the run?”
Almeida almost smiled at the Captain America reference. “I don’t know. I was on my case and nearly choked when I saw him standing there.” But when Pascal turned away to talk to another Deputy Marshal, Almeida pulled Jiminez aside. “I have an idea, though.” He repeated his theory about Tintfass.
Jiminez couldn’t, or wouldn’t, believe it. “I just don’t buy it, Tony. Jack’s been hunting terrorists since before 9/11. Why would he jump over to the dark side?”
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“Money. Or maybe he’s tired of it. Or maybe he’s running from home.” Tony knew that Jack’s marriage was a roller coaster.
Jiminez clung to his naïveté. “I still don’t think that’s Jack.”
5:20 A.M. PST Biltmore Hotel
It really couldn’t have worked out better, Jack thought as they pulled into the guest parking area of the Biltmore Hotel.
They’d managed to stop Vanowen’s bleeding and put a new shirt on him. Vanowen had said they could not go to the meet—they hadn’t picked up a third of the package. He had to go straight to his employer and explain what had happened. Jack, who’d also borrowed a shirt to cover his own bloodstained arm, hid his excitement, but he was eager to meet the man in charge. He followed Vanowen’s directions to the Biltmore, which, ironically, was only a few blocks from the InterContinental.
They’d put a jacket over Vanowen to hide the bloodstained shirt, but his face was pale and he needed help to walk. Fortunately there were very few people up and about at five o’clock, and when one of the few, a bellman, looked at them quizzically, Jack just said, “Fun night,” and that was it.
They rode the elevator to the eleventh floor and Vanowen guided them to room 1103. The door opened slightly and a face, hidden by the door and the shadows, stared out at them. “What?” the occupant demanded.
“It got fucked up,” Vanowen said weakly. “I gotta explain. And get help.”
The occupant’s eyes studied Vanowen, and then Ramirez, and then lingered for a while on Jack. “Vanowen, Ramirez. Come in. You stay out.”
The door opened ever so slightly more, and Ramirez helped Vanowen slip into the room. The door shut firmly.
Jack waited, but not patiently. He’d been
through a rough night, as rough as any he’d experienced, but so far the plan was working. Just a few more minutes and it would be over.
Jack pressed his ear against the door. He heard muffled sounds of conversation. The words were lost but the rhythm was calm, typical. Then he heard two muted gunshots, followed by two thuds.
Shit! Jack stepped back, raised his leg, and kicked. The door swelled inward, but the frame held. He kicked again, and the door broke free of its bolt. Jack was inside instantly, SigSauer ready.
Ramirez and Vanowen lay on the floor, each with a small bullet hole in his head. There was an open door leading to the next hotel room—they’d been connected. Jack rushed through in time to see that door swing closed. He burst out into the hallway again and saw a figure running down the hall. “Freeze!” he yelled, planning to shoot anyway. The man turned and fired, missing. Jack dropped to one knee and dis
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charged three rounds at the moving target. His quarry stumbled, but kept running. Jack sprinted forward, the long night forgotten, his heart pounding with the excitement of the hunt.
The man he chased was shorter than he, with dark hair and a Latino look. His quarry ran into the stairwell. Jack followed, with the runner a full flight below him by the time he was through the door. Jack ran down two flights in pursuit, then paused. He leveled the SigSauer and waited. As the man came around the next turn, he fired center mass, and his target dropped.
Jack ran down. The bullet had passed through the hollow of his shoulder and diagonally through his heart. Checking the wound, Jack saw a tattoo on his neck, below the collar line, that read “Emese” in gothic lettering. He hadn’t known about the tattoo. It was the same tattoo worn by one of the MS–13 soldiers. Jack was surprised, but he didn’t have to worry about it at the moment. He’d brought down Zapata.
Jack heard sirens approaching. He sat down on the stairs next to the body and waited. They could arrest him now.
5:37 A.M. PST Chatsworth, California
Nina Myers hunched down over the steering wheel, trying to see the street sign. Chatsworth lay on the edge of Los Angeles county, in the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley. It wasn’t the middle of nowhere, but it was rural enough to be zoned for horses. The streetlights were fewer and farther between, and the street signs were hard to read. It was also far enough out that her GPS map didn’t show any roads.
The place she looked for was on a street called Baden, somewhere below the rocky hills that marked the border between Los Angeles and Ventura counties. She was interested in the address because it was associated with a phone number, a number that Marcia Tintfass had called three times immediately after Nina’s visit. She was going to find that house and talk to whoever had received those phone calls.
5:40 A.M. PST Biltmore Hotel
Hotel security had no interest in dealing with a gunman, but Jack heard them moving around up on the floor. They’d surely found the bodies of Ramirez and Vanowen by now. He heard the fire door to the stairwell open twice, then close quickly after a pause. They’d be startled to see Zapata’s body lying there, with Jack sitting calmly beside it—startled, and none too interested in dealing with it.
Jack felt his eyelids droop. It had been a long night, and the truth was, he hadn’t gotten much sleep in prison for the three previous weeks. He could use a real rest.
When the police finally arrived, they came from
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above and below, guns drawn. They proned him out and he didn’t resist, letting them cuff him. They led him upstairs to the hallway, now full of emergency personnel, police officers, and one very large man in plain clothes.
“Well, there’s Captain America,” the big man crowed. “You’ve had a busy night.”
Jack looked at the badge on the man’s belt. He was a U.S. Marshal. “I want to talk to Chris Henderson at the Counter Terrorist Unit,” Jack said, “or Ryan Chappelle, if he’s out of the hospital.”
“You can talk all you want once we get you back into jail,” the man said.
Jack nodded. There was no need to put up a fight. Even if it took another day, this whole mess would straighten itself out. In jail, they’d put him in isolation, where he’d be safe from MS–13 and their strange vendetta. The biggest mystery for him now was why Zapata had worn an MS–13 tattoo. He’d had no idea of that connection. It was impossible that Zapata had sent MS–13 after him—absolutely impossible. What was the connection?
Jack mulled this over as the big man—Jack heard someone refer to him as Pascal—and another marshal led him downstairs. Pascal didn’t engage him in conversation, and when Jack asked two more times to talk to someone at CTU, the big marshal repeated his previous statement. On Jack’s third try, Pascal shook his head. “Son, you don’t get me. My job ain’t to accommodate you in any way. My job is to put you back in your hole.”
They reached the hotel’s parking lot, and Pascal guided Jack, still handcuffed, over to a beige Crown Victoria. Jack saw bullet holes in the door and guessed it was the same Crown Vic he’d seen at U-Pack. Pascal tucked Jack in the backseat—although unmarked, the car was all cop, with the plastic shield and no door handles on the backseat interior. Then Pascal maneuvered himself into the driver’s seat with the other marshal riding shotgun. They drove out of the hotel and turned onto the early morning downtown streets.
The other marshal got on his cell phone for a minute, then turned to Pascal. “The victim was DOA.”
Pascal grunted. “Guess you got another one,” he called back to Jack. “You keep busy, that’s for damned sure. Out less than twelve hours and you steal two automobiles and commit a murder. I don’t suppose you’re going to tell us what you had against Mister . . . What was his name again?”
“Aguillar,” the other marshal said. “Francis Aguillar.” Jack felt the blood freeze in his veins.
5:53 A.M. PST Biltmore Hotel
Zapata stood in the crowd in the lobby watching the police and paramedics parade in and out. He looked no more or less a part of the crowd than any of the others—an average-sized man with a shaved head,
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wearing track pants and a zip-up jacket, he passed easily for a guest out for an early morning jog. If anyone asked for his ID, he would have a problem—the Ossipon identity was connected to one of the two rooms. The police would want to know why three men had been killed in or near those rooms, and Zapata had no interest in long conversations with the authorities.
So the Ossipon cover was blown, but Zapata could deal with that. What disturbed him most was how close the authorities had come to him. They had been, literally, within a step or two of catching him. He had not seen the undercover agent himself, but he had known it the minute Vanowen showed up at his door, bloody, with Ramirez, of all people, and saying they had a stranger with them. How obvious. It was a pattern almost too easy to recognize. Did they have so little respect for him that they thought he would not see this pattern? A new element thrown into the middle of his carefully laid plans. Zapata clicked his tongue reproachfully. Would Leonardo fail to notice bird droppings fall on the Mona Lisa?
This had been a clumsy effort on the part of the government, he thought, a big blunt instrument. Yes, he had to admit it had almost worked. If Aguillar had not been there to delay the agent . . . Well, the fault was his, in the end. He had fallen into a pattern himself. He should never have allowed Aguillar to use Vanowen again. It had not been enough to cut off Ramirez. He should have removed Vanowen from his list for good.
Well, Zapata thought, slipping on a pair of sunglasses against the rising sun, lesson learned. He slipped out of the hotel and went for a jog.
5:59 A.M. PST Downtown Los Angeles
Francis Aguillar. The name bounced around in Jack’s head obsessively. Francis Aguillar. Not Jorge Rafael Marquez? Maybe it was a mistake, or an alias for Zapata. No, not an alias, Jack thought. Aguillar was a known associate of Zapata’s who had vanished years earlier. Zapata would never take the alias of an associate.
I got the wrong man, Jack thought. Jesus, I got the wrong man, and now I’m stuck in here.
Jack felt the claustrophobic sense he’d experienced in jail when he’d learned that the warden, the corrections officer, and Chappelle had all been disabled. The walls that had seemed so unreal suddenly seemed concrete and dangerous. Now, in the backseat of the cruiser, which a moment ago had seemed such a temporary thing, he felt hemmed in, trapped.
He was in the middle of that thought when Peter Jiminez rammed the Crown Victoria.
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THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 6 A.M. AND 7 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
6:00 A.M. PST Downtown Los Angeles
Peter’s car hit the unmarked police cruiser on the driver’s side trunk, spinning it around in the middle of Flower Street, which was still empty at this hour. The force of the crash hurled Jack against the window, where he hit his head with a thud. By the time his vision cleared, someone was opening the driver’s door, and Jack had a blurry vision of someone blasting Pascal in the face with pepper spray. The noxious gas only seemed to make the big man angry. He struggled to get himself out of his seat when the assailant punched him in the jaw.
Jack’s vision had cleared now, although the scene felt unreal. He saw Peter Jiminez handcuff the marshal’s hands to the steering wheel, then rip out the car’s radio.