by John Whitman
“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!”
<
br /> 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.