by John Whitman
These were legitimate questions, but Jack knew the answers would not satisfy him. CTU was an infant, disorganized, with unclear lines of communication. When Jack had gone after Dog Smithies, it had been with the help of Harry Driscoll and the LAPD. The Dean thing had been done strictly through CTU, and CTU definitely did not have its act together yet.
But Jack was too tired to chew anyone out, so when he staggered in the door and saw Christopher Henderson, he just shook his head reproachfully and took a seat in the conference room. He didn’t know if there was going to be a debrief and he didn’t care. He hadn’t slept in a while, and since yesterday evening he had nearly been blown up twice and shot at twice. The phrase “third time’s a charm” drifted through his mind in a very unsettling way.
There was some activity around Jack while he sat. Someone put a bagel and some coffee in front of him. Jamey Farrell had taken charge of the stack of C–4 and was examining it. Christopher Henderson was on the phone with the Santa Clarita police and the
L.A. Sheriff, talking through the firefight and explosion that had left more than a half-dozen people dead near Castaic Dam.
Jack had lost his cell phone, so he dialed home from one of CTU’s landlines. Teri answered on the
first ring.
“Jack?” she asked worriedly.
“Hi, it’s me,” he said.
“Were you home at all last night?” Teri said. “Or did you leave early?”
“Not home. I’m sorry,” he said. Hearing Teri’s voice was like a tonic that relaxed his muscles. But the effect was not beneficent. As he relaxed, his guard dropped, and the fatigue seemed to sink into the marrow of his bones. “You wouldn’t believe the night I’ve had. It was like being in Delta again.”
“I thought that kind of night ended with Delta,” she replied. The reproach in her voice made Jack wince. “Is it over now?”
In his mind’s eye, Jack saw Dean engulfed in a fireball. “Should be.”
“Do you want to come home and have breakfast?”
Food, Jack thought. Food sounds good. How long’s it been since I’ve eaten anything? “I’ll be right there.”
7:29 A.M. PST Los Angeles Department of Coroner Forensic Sciences Lab
Driscoll listened to the woman on the phone talking. “. . . I’m not annoyed at the early hour, Detective Driscoll. I’m annoyed that you won’t listen to the facts.”
“I’ve listened to your facts, ma’am,” Driscoll argued into the receiver. “You won’t listen to mine.”
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“You don’t have any,” the woman said gently.
Driscoll had to admit that he was most annoyed at her calm and rationality. She—her name was Patricia Siegman—was clearly accustomed to dealing with anxious investigators eager to receive data on their cases. She was currently handling Harry with an aplomb he would have admired, if only she were using it on someone else.
“You have a witness who was shot. I understand that, but something like sixty percent of the criminal forensics we conduct are shootings. We have a backlog, and I have two coroners out.”
“But this is important—” “—and I’ll get to it today, Detective. I’ll get to it by noon. I can’t do any better than that.”
Driscoll checked his watch. She was doing him a favor, he knew. A five-hour turnaround was ridiculously efficient. But somehow it wasn’t enough for him. Get the body! The phrase haunted him, and maybe it was just his time around Jack Bauer, but he had a gut feeling that the explanation for that phrase was urgent.
7:33 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jamey Farrell hadn’t performed integral calculus since college, but she found herself dusting off her equations as she measured the bricks of C–4 that Jack Bauer had brought in. As soon as she’d measured the bricks, she took their average and scribbled it on a sheet of scratch paper.
Then she went down to the closet that currently passed as CTU’s evidence locker. The crate they’d confiscated from Sweetzer Avenue was easy to find— it was just about the only item in the closet. Huffing and griping to herself, Jamey loaded it onto a small mover’s cart and pushed it back up to the computer bay she’d commandeered as a work space. The crate still contained the C–4 they’d found. Looking at the real deal, Jamey was struck by how obvious it was that some of the plastic explosive had been missing. In real life the box looked much emptier than it had on video. Just eyeballing the crate told her that one could fit much more C–4 inside.
She frowned but continued working. Her next job would be to measure the volume of the C–4 Bauer had brought in, and then estimate how much (if any) was missing. She had a sinking feeling that no one was going to like the answer she came up with.
7:46 A.M. PST Bauer Residence
Jack pulled into his own driveway and parked his car. He flipped down the vanity mirror and took a good look at himself. He’d splashed water on his face at CTU, but he still looked dirty, sweaty, and bruised. There were circles under his eyes the size of gym bags.
I should have taken more time, he thought. Cleaned up more. Borrowed a shirt. This will be a conversation.
Jack didn’t relish the idea of keeping secrets from Teri. Given free rein, he’d have explained to her every cut and bruise. But much of the information
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about his job was classified, and though he told her everything he could, the result still left holes, and those holes became gaps in their relationship. Better to come home clean and happy, and avoid the need for stories altogether.
He walked in the door and entered a world entirely disconnected from the last few hours. In this world, bacon sizzled on a frying pan, channel four was broadcasting local news and traffic alerts, and Teri Bauer was trying to get Kim out of the bathroom.
“It’s not that bad, Kimmy. Just come on!” She smiled at Jack as she saw him, then rolled her eyes, pointed to her chin, and mouthed the word pimple.
“It’s huge!” Kim Bauer wailed from behind the bathroom door. “It’s a volcano.”
“It’s stress,” Teri said. “Last night was tough on everyone because of Aaron. Let me put some cover-up on it.”
There was a pause, followed by a soft click as Kim unlocked the bathroom door. Teri threw her arms around Jack, kissed him, and said, “Eggs on the table. Teen crisis in the bathroom.” She paused. “Did you know about Aaron Biehn?”
Jack nodded. “I heard.” “I want to know about it. After she’s gone.” Teri vanished behind the door.
Jack went into the kitchen and sat down at the small table there. The scrambled eggs were a little cold, but he didn’t care. He felt as though he hadn’t been home in weeks. While he ate, he listened to the news, simply because it sounded so wonderfully mundane: traffic on the I–10, a fight between the mayor and the city council. These were the crises most people faced. And they seemed to Jack as trivial as a pimple on the chin. But he wouldn’t have it any other way.
He finished the eggs and decided that he would take a nap for a few minutes.
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 A.M. AND 9 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
8:00. A.M. PST Bauer Residence
Jack stretched out on the couch in his living room and pushed the cushion under his head. And then his cell phone rang.
“Bauer,” he said unhappily.
“This is Jamey Farrell over at CTU.”
“If this is about paperwork or reports, I’ll come in and answer questions in a couple of hours,” he grumbled, his eyes still closed.
“Nothing like that,” she replied. “It’s about the plastic explosive you brought in.”
“Uh-huh.”
“Do we care if some is still missing?”
Jack opened his eyes. “What makes you think it’s missing?”
“I just analyzed the crate, and the volume of each brick of C–4. Even accounting for the bricks you dealt with, I think there still could have been sev
eral bricks left, maybe up to ten pounds of it.”
Now Jack sat up, rubbing his eyes and trying to shake the sleep off his brain. “But you don’t know that, right? That crate must have been a lot more full with the stuff I brought in.”
“Oh, yeah,” Jamey said. “But you know how a room looks bigger sometimes after you put furniture in it? Same with this box. I put the C–4 back in it, and no matter how I stuffed it, there are obvious spaces left. I did the math, too. Maybe ten pounds.”
Jack didn’t want to hear it. “The stuff Smithies had? The stuff that blew up Ramin?”
“Factored in.”
“That is not what I want to hear,” Jack admitted.
“Don’t shoot the messenger. What do you want to do about it?”
Jack laughed. “Who says it’s my decision?”
“I didn’t ask anyone,” Jamey said. “You just seemed like the guy who wants to know.”
“Yeah,” Jack agreed. “All right. I’m coming in.”
8:05 A.M. PST Crescent Heights Avenue, Los Angeles
Rabbi Dan Bender rarely used e-mail. He didn’t trust it. Words sent electronically were as permanent as if they’d been etched in stone. He would certainly send nothing confidential over the Internet, and Rabbi Bender was in possession of many, many secrets.
He had written the first draft of the letter to his
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brother on stationery, but in the end he decided against it. He needed to be sure his brother received this message, and the post between Los Angeles and Jerusalem had never been one hundred percent reliable. But, as he had already told himself, e-mail was like graven stone. His brother would see it eventually.
This is what he typed into his computer:
Dear Sam, I hope Miriam is feeling better. You’re both in my thoughts and I pray for her remission.
In the meantime, I want to send you a note of apology, and possibly a goodbye. I can’t tell you why I am apologizing. You may or may not hear about it. But there is a distinct possibility that you won’t hear from me after today, so I wanted to express my feelings.
You were always a better Jew than I. Even Dad thought so, although of course he was too much of a mensch to say it. You were a better rabbi, too. But there are reasons for that, some of which may become apparent to you. But among the unsaid reasons is this: you are a righteous man. In the end, I find that I am not. If I were righteous, I would not be doing what I’m going to do today.
I hope you’ll forgive me. With all my love, from your brother, Dan
He reread the short message several times, wishing he could write more. His finger hovered over the send button for a moment. Then he clicked it, and the deed was done.
8:10 A.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
“I hope you’ll forgive the cautions,” said the Pope to Amy Weiss. “There was a disturbance here last night.”
“No problem,” Amy said, although in fact the whole affair had disturbed her. Her interview had been scheduled for two weeks; she’d passed through the background check the Vatican had required. One would have thought the metal detector and the bag search would have been enough. But the thin, soft-spoken man had come along with a nun in tow and had insisted on a complete search of her clothing and person. If all Amy had been after was the puff piece, she would have walked out. But she was now on the trail of a legitimate page one story. “In fact, I’d like to ask about that.”
The Pope’s eyes twinkled charmingly as he replied in his softly accented English, “I find the Unity Conference to be a much more pleasant topic, don’t you?”
Amy felt the force of his charm and his authority, and tried to resist it. “Well, the two are related, aren’t they? Do you consider the attacks here last night to be a threat? Are they related?”
“That is a question for a policeman, not a priest,” John Paul said dismissively. “In any case, the confer
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ence will not be stopped. It is, I believe, the most important thing in the world.”
“This conference?” she asked.
“Its purpose,” John Paul said, putting a hand on her arm gently, almost pleadingly. “East and West; Christian, Muslim, and Jew. They are at war, or they soon will be. It is a war that may cover the world in flame. It must be averted.”
Amy wanted to talk about the murders; she had been told to talk about the murders. But this old man, so small and yet so infused with power, charmed her with his sincere and plaintive voice. “But the Catholic Church has been the cause of strife, hasn’t it? Are you the appropriate party to end it?”
John Paul smiled. “Who better?”
8:14 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jamey Farrell spent several minutes updating Christopher Henderson on her recent findings. Henderson looked terrible, but then she probably didn’t look fresh as a daisy herself. She’d seen Henderson dozing on the couch in his office, but she knew from experience that that sort of sleep had little lasting effect.
“This is the case that won’t die,” Henderson grumbled as she finished. “Why couldn’t it have just ended when we arrested the Sweetzer Three?”
Jamey shrugged. “I’m not a field operator, but if you ask me, I think someone’s been expecting us to come along. I think we’re chasing lots of decoys.”
Henderson shook his head. “Those bikers weren’t a red herring. They were really going to blow up the city’s water reserves.”
“I didn’t say red herrings. I said decoys. We chased that threat because it was real, but it’s got nothing to do with some other plot. Something we haven’t found yet.”
“Your missing C–4.”
“Jesus, I hope you’re wrong,” said Jack Bauer, walking into the room. “I’ve been shot at enough for one day.”
“You got here fast,” Henderson noted.
Jack shrugged. “It’s easy if you ignore all the traffic laws.” He sat down on the couch where Henderson had earlier slept. “Look, how sure are we about this? Aren’t you guys the ones who said the Ramin and Muslim connection was a different plot that had already been stopped?”
“Director Chappelle, not me,” Jamey said. “And all I’m really saying is that there is still C–4 missing. And that there was a Muslim connection at the start.”
“But no suspects left,” Jack said. “And no target.”
Nina Myers walked into the middle of the conversation. “I have a new suspect for you.” She described her surveillance of Diana Christie.
When she was done, Jack tried to rub away his headache. “None of it makes sense. What the hell would an NTSB investigator be doing with a small-time arms dealer? And what does it mean for us? The lead she gave us from that conversation was real! It put us in Dean’s way.”
“Jamey thinks decoys,” Henderson said.
Jack considered this. “Yasin. He knows we know
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he’s in the country. That’s why Ramin’s dead. Maybe he expected it, and planned this. But it’s pretty elaborate.”
“Not so much,” Nina said. “All it really took was giving away some of the C–4 to someone who wanted to do something with it. And maybe asking them to plan their event for today. Yasin’s attack may be on a different day entirely.”
Jack shook his head. “Ramin thought today, and he was on that side of the equation. Okay.” He gathered himself with a breath. “Are we back at square one again?”
His answer came in the form of his ringing cell phone. He gestured an apology when he saw the number, then answered. “Hey, Harry.”
“Jack, you heard what happened to me?” Driscoll said quickly. When Jack replied in the negative, Harry filled him in, and Jack felt the aching pulse in his forehead increase. Biehn. Jack hadn’t thought of Biehn in a couple of hours. There was a connection between Biehn and Yasin that he hadn’t resolved yet. Biehn claimed he’d been kidnapped when he got close to Collins. Now Driscoll had been ambushed when he arrested Collins, and the priest had been killed. �
��You searched the body, right?”
“Of course. Nothing there. I did get one thing, though. I have a partial plate on the Chrysler that attacked me. I want to run it down, and I want your help.”
“Okay, but why do you want help from me? You can do that on your own.”
“Hmm-mmm,” Driscoll refused. “I gotta tell you, Jack. The minute that guy yelled, ‘Get the body,’ I freaked. There’s something going on here that’s a lot bigger than some guy in Robbery-Homicide. There’s
spook stuff happening, and you’re a spook.”
“Okay, give me the partial.”
Jack wrote it down, and handed it to Jamey. “Can you run this right away?”
Jamey blinked. “This Chrysler. You know how popular it is? There are going to be a lot of them.”
“So far, you’ve been brilliant. You’ll do it.”
Jamey Farrell’s glare indicated that the flattery hadn’t worked. But she took the scrap of paper and left the office.
“I don’t get paid enough for this,” Henderson said.
“But think of all the nice people you get to spend time with.” Jack laughed. He left Henderson moping at his desk and followed behind Jamey. She’d gone to one of CTU’s working computers. He stood behind her as her fingers flew over the keyboard.
She knew he was there without looking. “We’re authorized to tap into all kinds of databases. If it’s a California plate—oh, damn.”
She’d just finished, and a long list of license plates appeared. There were more than two hundred black Chrysler 300Cs. “Maybe we could get LAPD to help us track them down.”
“Yeah,” Jack said. “But let’s play a hunch. How many of those are rental cars?”
Jamey’s finger clicked again. “Five.”
“Okay, let’s get on the phone and find out if any of them are leased in Los Angeles right now.”
They worked together, and it was done in a few minutes. There were two. One had been rented to a Sharon Mishler. They ran her information and found her to be a resident of New York, having recently arrived on a flight from JFK to LAX. They recorded