by John Whitman
Jack glanced at Biehn. He was lying facedown on
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the floor over a widening pool of blood. “Stop!” Jack shouted. “I’m a Federal agent!” Pfft-thunk! Pfft-thunk! Silenced rounds sought him out, finding the floor and walls around him. “Federal—!” but he lost his voice as he rolled to the far corner to avoid a dangerous angle as one of the attackers moved down the hall, “slicing the pie” to cover more of the space with his muzzle.
Jack realized that these gun-happy security men were going to kill him first and ask questions later. He was sure Biehn was already dead. Jack fired several rounds into the hallway, then fired two more into a window behind him. He leaped up and hurled himself through the shattered glass. He hit the ground hard on the other side, making an awkwardly timed roll through some kind of wet ground cover. He couldn’t be sure over the noise he was making, but he thought he heard more silenced rounds discharge behind him. As he stood and bolted for the cover of a nearby tree, he heard a definitive cough, a sound he recognized as the report of a weapon whose silencer has worn out its usefulness. They were still shooting at him. They weren’t protecting the Cardinal. They were trying to kill him.
Jack’s mind transitioned smoothly from the problem-solving, fact-finding mode of an investigator to the hunter-killer instincts that had served him well during his time in Delta Force. He swung around to the other side of the bole of the tree and leveled his weapon. The first man who tried to climb through the window after him fell back. Jack hesitated for only a moment to see if anyone was foolish enough to try that way again. No one appeared. Jack moved backward, dropped to one knee, then rose and retreated farther. He heard sounds in the darkness and knew that he was being hunted.
2:31 A.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
Michael checked to make sure Don Biehn was dead, then checked his fallen operative, also dead, before moving out onto the grounds where his team was hunting the Federal agent. They had only a few moments left—not to let him escape, but to kill him and claim that they did not know who he was. The opportunity had been ripe when the man first entered: an armed intruder, a man wanted for the murder of a priest. Michael had been hoping they would show. He’d put his least experienced man on the Cardinal’s door and pulled back the additional security put in place after Giggs’s murder. He had been hoping to lure Biehn in. The appearance of the Federal agent had been unwelcome but not unexpected.
“Station One, this is Station Four,” someone whispered into his earpiece.
“Station One here. Go,” Michael said softly into his collar mic.
“He’s over the wall,” his man said. “Station Five is down.”
“Roger,” Michael replied. “Maintain a perimeter. I’m going back to the residence.”
Michael hurried back across the lawn. He had to admit he was enjoying himself. He liked this upfront tactical work much more than the idea of assassination, which he found necessary but repugnant. He jogged into the house, where two of his men stood,
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weapons drawn, with Mulrooney crouched down below them. It was hardly a fitting position for a Cardinal of the church, but it kept him safe. Michael motioned for them to be at ease, and they allowed Mulrooney to stand. “Check upstairs,” he said to them, and the two men nodded and left the room.
Michael pulled a ring of keys from his belt and unwrapped a Velcro strip that kept them from jangling. He sorted through them until he found a handcuff key, then used that to free the hands of Biehn’s corpse. Then he pulled a second handgun out of his ankle holster, wiped it down carefully, and then put it in the detective’s cold hand for a moment, moving it around slightly. Then he tossed it forward where it clattered on the floor.
“Easier for us to explain if he came in with a drawn weapon,” Michael said in answer to Mulrooney’s bewildered look. He went on to describe to Mulrooney their version of events: how the insane-looking man had burst into the house brandishing the gun, with the other man right behind him, and how the security team had come in, shooting him down while his accomplice escaped.
“But . . . won’t the other man tell a different story?”
Michael shrugged. ‘Let the investigators sort it out. The more confusion, the better. Besides, this story will be hard to disprove, since this one already killed one priest. And the other man, whoever he is, was helping a suspected murderer. His position will not be very solid.”
2:37 A.M. PST Downtown Los Angeles
Jack stumbled back to his car, dirty, exhausted, and thoroughly pissed off. He wanted to go back into St. Monica’s with a SWAT team at his back and burn the place down. That security team was a bunch of cowboys who needed to get their asses kicked. But it occurred to Jack that he could not call for backup. He had been the intruder, in the company of a man wanted for murder. He was beginning to realize how far behind the eight ball he’d put himself.
He jumped into his car and drove off, trying to figure out what to do next. His prisoner had been shot and, he was sure, killed. The Cardinal might or might not be able to identify Jack himself, but that hardly mattered. Everyone knew Jack and Biehn had been together. Besides, Jack’s own sense of morality wouldn’t allow him to just walk away from what happened. He had to tell someone.
Jack dialed a number in Langley, Virginia. Someone picked up on the first ring. “Bauer,” he said simply. “Sixteen-twenty-two. Out in the open.”
He heard several clicks as his call was routed through scrambled lines to a caseworker. He’d had to use this line only once before, and that had been in Ankara. He wasn’t sure what would happen when he called from Los Angeles.
“Bauer,” said an unfamiliar voice. “You were in
L.A. Is this now a domestic issue?”
“As domestic as it gets,” Jack said, turning onto the 110 Freeway North. As quickly as he could, Jack relayed the pertinent information. The person on the other end didn’t complain or quote the rule book.
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That wasn’t his job. His only job was extraction, as neatly and cleanly as possible. Not because Jack was important, but because the secrecy and reputation of the Agency were.
“Stand by.” There was a click followed by an emotionless hum that lasted from the Sixth Street on-ramp to the 101 Freeway. The voice came back on. “Stand by. We’re gathering information. It sounds like your problem is being solved for you.” This time the dull hum lasted from the 101/110 juncture all the way to Gower. Finally the caseworker returned. “Problem solved.”
“How—”
“The church is reporting that a madman, probably the same one who killed a priest earlier, broke into the Cardinal’s residence, but was killed by security. They are reporting that a second assailant escaped, but there is no description.”
“I’m working with an agency here, Counter Terrorist Unit,” Jack said. “They know I had Biehn in custody.”
Another pause. “We’ll make a call on that. Go to ground and let us take care of that. It’s going to be messy, but we’ll try to make it a quiet mess. There will be follow-up.” Click.
There will be follow-up. That meant trouble, though Jack couldn’t blame them. Although the Agency went to great lengths to protect itself, that didn’t mean its agents got a free pass every time they colored outside the lines.
After a few more minutes of driving, Jack heard his phone ring and he saw Christopher Henderson’s number, but when he answered, it wasn’t Henderson’s voice.
“You are in so fucking deep!” Ryan Chappelle shrieked into the phone. “Do you know the phone call I just got!” Jack held the phone away from his ear until Chappelle had exhausted his rant. In the silence after the mini-storm, he wasn’t sure if he was supposed to reply or not, until Chappelle said, “What do you have to say for yourself?”
“I assume that you’ve heard about St. Monica’s?” he asked.
“Everybody’s heard about it!” Chappelle snapped. “And I’ve got string pullers at Langley calling in chits, te
lling me to go easy on you. You know I don’t work for them. I don’t have to do any goddamned favors.”
“Listen, there is something odd,” Jack said. He told the story of his visit, and how he’d tried to identify himself as a Federal agent. “Those guys were determined to kill us no matter who we were.”
He could practically hear the veins in Chappelle’s forehead popping through the telephone. “That’s not my case. Maybe that detective was on to something and they wanted him quiet. We don’t investigate murders here, we stop terrorists.”
“That’s what I’m trying to do,” Jack said. “Biehn had information—”
“And instead of extracting it, you chauffeured him around town. And got him killed.”
“No one except us knows it was me. There’s containment here,” Jack said, trying to control his own temper. He didn’t mind getting chewed out once in a while, but this pencil neck who wasn’t even his commanding officer was starting to get under his skin. “I did what I thought necessary to get the information I needed as soon as possible. There have been no major consequences—”
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“No major—!” Chappelle sputtered. “A priest in the hospital and three dead men!”
“A pedophile and two trigger-happy security men who were trying to kill me,” Jack retorted. “Biehn, they murdered.”
“Get into this office now. I’m going to decide whether you need to be put into custody or not. If you don’t show up here in the next fifteen minutes, I’m putting out a warrant for your arrest.”
2:44 A.M. PST Parker Center, Los Angeles
Harry Driscoll could not work, but he could not go home, either. After leaving CTU, he had returned to his desk at Robbery-Homicide. But the work he had to do was unpleasant: to write a report on his transfer of Don Biehn’s custody to Jack Bauer of the CIA, and to accuse Bauer of endangering the case and, further, currently unaccused citizens, in pursuit of an unrelated investigation.
The office lights at Parker Center were all dark. Only the fluorescent lights in the hallway were awake, casting their pale greenish glow down on the beige, speckled tiles on the floor. When it was quiet like this, you could hear the fluorescent tubes buzzing like bees in a glowing hive. The sound made Driscoll feel even more alone.
He had heard about Biehn’s death a few minutes before. By morning, he’d have his captain breathing down his neck for an explanation. He’d be under water and he would have no choice but to describe how he’d turned custody over to Bauer. What would
Bauer say? What was Jack possibly thinking?
As if to answer his question, Jack Bauer called him.
“Jack,” Harry said sadly.
“You heard?”
“Yeah, one of the responding uniforms called me. It’s a mess over at St. Monica’s.”
Jack defended himself with an explanation of how gun-happy the security men were. No wonder, Driscoll thought, with a murderer on the premises.
“But something was wrong with the Cardinal. And the security team. They were way more interested in killing us than protecting their man.”
‘So?”
“So they succeeded in doing one thing. I never learned the connection between Biehn’s vendetta and the terrorists.”
“Was there one?”
“You heard him talk about Yasin, the terrorist. And someone did all that to him. I need you to help me.”
Without hesitation, Harry said, “I’m not helping you, Jack, except to talk you into settling down before there’s any more trouble.”
“Can you look into Cardinal Mulrooney for me?” Jack asked as though Harry hadn’t spoken. “I want to know his background, who works for him. Any skeletons in his closet.”
“He’s a Cardinal in the Catholic Church,” Driscoll said, as though that concluded the matter.
The tone in his voice alerted Jack. “Harry . . . I never knew you were Catholic.”
“Why would you?” the detective asked. “I don’t need to wear a sign on my back.”
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“No, I guess it’s not my business,” Jack replied simply. He wondered if Driscoll’s faith had affected his view of Biehn. No wonder, at least, that it had been hard for Harry to turn the man over to Jack. “You’re still the only guy I can turn to right now. This group I’m working with, it’s a new unit, and they are stretched thin. I don’t know what the CIA will have on Mulrooney. I need someone local. I just want to know the Cardinal’s background.”
Driscoll pinched the bridge of his nose with his fingers. Damn it. All he’d wanted to do was stay involved in the potential terrorist case the Feds had taken away from his unit. How had that morphed into this debacle?
“If I help you, then you need to help me,” the detective said at last. “I’m just shy of twenty years on, Jack. This thing could kill my career when my captain hears about it in the morning. Shit, forget the Captain, I’ll probably hear from the Chief himself, and you know I don’t want to get the call.”
“What do you want me to do?” Jack offered sincerely.
“I want off the hook on this. I want it clear that I turned custody of Biehn over to you at your insistence, and you made all the decisions from there.”
Jack smiled unhappily. He remembered what he’d said to Biehn: Someone has to care more about saving the world than saving his job. “Don’t worry, Harry. All the heat is headed at me anyway, I guarantee it.”
“Okay. I’ll do it.” “Thanks. Listen, if you need help, there’s someone I want you to call. Name’s Maddie Marianno.”
He recited an unusually long number. “Give her my name.”
“Okay,” Harry said. “I’ll see what I can dig up.”
2:47 A.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
The regular police were still milling about the crime scene, and Michael could only give thanks that the Unity Conference would be held elsewhere. He was sure they would cancel the event rather than let civilians trample over any potential evidence. He had already given an immediate interview, and had been told to wait around until more detectives arrived so that he could answer the same questions again. At the moment, though, he was alone, and decided to make a call.
Abdul Rahman Yasin, still using the name Gabriel, answered after two rings. He listened quietly while Michael updated him. “It would all be easier,” Michael said, not for the first time, “if I just did the job myself, quickly. I could probably do it right now.”
And, not for the first time, Yasin replied, “But that is just murder. Assassination, nothing more. The tool we are using is terrorism. It must be a spectacle. It must be public.”
Michael had known the answer before he heard it. He shrugged off the rejection. He had worked for enough men to be accustomed to following orders. Yasin was the man in charge at the moment, and Michael would do as he was told.
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“But,” Yasin said cautiously, “there is no danger of canceling the conference?”
“There is talk of it,” Michael replied, “but I know this Pope, and he will push forward if he can. He doesn’t get sidetracked easily.”
“Good,” Yasin said. “And how are our delivery-men? All in good condition?”
“Yes,” Michael replied.
“Then all this trouble will come to nothing. Well done, Michael. We are going to have a very interesting day.”
2:50 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jack walked into CTU’s headquarters, which seemed almost morguelike at this late hour. Overhead lights had been turned off, except in the conference room, whose doorway appeared like some extra-dimensional portal in the darkness. Jack walked toward it but was met halfway by Ryan Chappelle, wearing khaki pants, a sweatshirt, and a more than usually pinched look.
“You are fucked,” Chappelle said to him.
“Right,” Jack replied, following him into the conference room. Christopher Henderson was there, as was Diana Christie. Her left arm was heavily bandaged from her wrist all the way to her shou
lder.
“What happened to you?” he asked. “Later,” Chappelle snapped dismissively. “Tell him the important part.” Diana looked chagrined. She was clearly embarrassed to relay her information—not embarrassed
for herself, but for Jack. “I think . . .” she started, then winced a bit as she moved her injured arm. “I think you’re headed in the wrong direction, Jack. Based on my meeting with Farrigian.”
Jack felt a cold weight settle into his stomach. “What do you mean? Did he get you more plastic explosives? Can we trace his other customers?”
“Yes,” Diana said. “But it’s not Islamic terrorists.”
“Or the Catholic church, which you just terrorized,” Chappelle pointed out. Henderson dipped his head.
The weight in Jack’s stomach grew heavier. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Diana Christie began, and no one interrupted her. “I met with Farrigian. He didn’t suspect anything about me. You saw how he was before. We checked out, as far as he was concerned. He told me who the buyers were—they were more people like that Smithies character. Some biker gang coming down from the San Joaquin Valley. He gave me names. As far as I can tell, he has no connection to the plastic explosives found on Sweetzer Avenue.”
Jack tried to process that, but couldn’t. “That’s ridiculous. Two different groups, both suddenly appearing on the scene with plastic explosives? It’s pretty unlikely.” That was obvious to him, and he hoped it was obvious to them, too. Henderson met his gaze just long enough to shrug, but he remained silent. “What’s the point here?”
“The point,” Chappelle said condescendingly, “is that you’re on a wild-goose chase. You and the detective you helped get killed.”
“Not possible,” Jack argued. He listed the evidence for them: the assassination of the informant