by John Whitman
“We’ll see. Go.”
4:01 P.M. PST Chapel at St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
They came in behind their gunfire, keeping Jack’s head low. The cathedral echoed with loud, angry cracks of firearms. Driscoll tried to return fire, but Jack guessed what they were up to. He whirled around to the far side just in time to see the other man burst through the door. Jack squeezed three times, and the attacker stumbled as though he’d tripped over something. He did not get up again.
John Paul, terrified out of all sense, started to stand up. Jack tackled him, fearful that he might crush the old man but short on choices. Driscoll tried to cover them. Out of the corner of his eye, Jack saw the detective fire and then fall like a rag doll. The two security men fell back again.
Jack felt John Paul tremble beneath him and heard the man whispering something in Latin.
“Stay still,” Jack whispered. “They’re not gone. With this much gunfire, I promise you someone is on the way.”
4:03 P.M. PST Cardinal’s Residence at St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
Cardinal Mulrooney sat on his bed with his hands over his ears, rocking back and forth slightly. He was terrified. He’d had no idea of this. None. It wasn’t his fault.
Those phrases kept repeating themselves in his mind.
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4:04 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Nina Myers slammed down the phone, then clipped her pancake holster to her belt as she ran for the door, with Henderson right behind her.
4:05 P.M. PST Courtyard at St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
Michael was out of time and he knew it. He could already hear sirens wailing. Bauer didn’t have to defeat them, just hold them off until help arrived. The elaborate plan had failed. All three of their suicide bombers had failed. Michael thought now only of escape.
“You’re right, Gelson,” he said. “Time to go.”
4:06 P.M. PST Chapel at St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
Jack knew they were retreating and he wanted to give chase. He knew instinctively that Michael was the man he’d been looking for: the man behind the plot, and the man who could lead him to Yasin.
He scrambled over to Driscoll. “Harry, you with me?” The detective answered weakly, “Unfortunately, yeah.” His eyes lost focus, then returned to Jack.
“All in all, can’t say I’m happy I called you, Jack.”
“Can’t blame you.” Jack examined Driscoll’s wounds. They were not good. His right arm might never work again, and the second wound had punched a hole through his lower left abdomen. “You hear those sirens?” They were loud now.
“Like music.”
“Help is on the way. But the bad guys are leaving. I’m not letting them go.”
Driscoll managed a thin smile. “That’s Jack Bauer, all right.” He lifted his gun. “Go.”
Jack launched himself toward the door and burst into the courtyard just in time to see three figures slipping over the wall. Jack fired, the rounds tearing holes in the adobe, but he was certain none of them found their mark.
Jack sprinted after them and was over the wall in a second, carried by pure adrenaline. By the time he got to the street, they had disappeared.
4:08 P.M. PST Main Street, Los Angeles
Michael and Pembrook guided Gelson into the car Michael had waiting on the street. It was a blind, totally legal and registered to one of the two false IDs that Michael had worked so hard to create for himself.
As soon as they were inside, Michael eased into traffic. Sirens wailed around them, but they were just one of many cars trying to get through the congested downtown area.
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None of them spoke. Michael was astounded at how suddenly and completely his carefully laid plan had turned into a failure. Not just a failure. An utter disaster. He had to get to a safe place and reassess, figure out how to recover from this debacle. And he thought he knew just the person to help him.
4:11 P.M. PST Chapel at St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
Jack returned to the chapel as the adrenaline dump wore off, making him feel suddenly old and heavy. Uniformed officers were swarming the area, along with the LAPD SWAT unit he’d once belonged to. The Pope was gone, whisked away by whatever remained of his Swiss Guards.
Jack showed the cops his ID and gave them what description he could. Gelson was easy, but in the middle of the gunfire he’d never gotten a great look at Michael or the other man; their faces were accompanied by flashes of light and gunfire. He had a feeling that he should recognize one of them. Paramedics rushed in, and he directed them toward Harry Driscoll and Dan Bender. Three of them started working on Harry Driscoll immediately. Their urgent voices told Jack that the situation was dire.
He had just sat down, nearly collapsing under the weight of his day, when Christopher Henderson and Nina Myers rushed in. Henderson went immediately to the officer in charge while Nina checked on Jack.
“You’re not hit?” she confirmed.
“Nah,” he said, sitting in one of the church pews. “I figured the five-story fall and the concussion were enough.”
“Glad you didn’t overdo it.” She paused, looking for something to say, and settled on, “Is this what working with you is going to be like? Because if it is, I’m going to have to bring my A game every day.”
Jack shook his head. “Not funny. People are dead, and an old friend just got shot up.”
“And you saved the Pope,” she replied sharply. “More people would have died if you hadn’t pushed this case, and you know it.”
“We didn’t get them,” Jack said.
“We know who they are. Gelson at least won’t get very far, not with a face that recognizable.”
“We didn’t get the planner, and we didn’t get Yasin.”
“Jack, you saved the Pope. Not everyone gets to do that.”
Ryan Chappelle walked onto the scene. Jack saw him before he saw Jack, because Chappelle’s eyes were drawn first to the carnage. He shook his head and talked with Christopher Henderson. With each passing word from Henderson, Chappelle looked more and more unhappy. Finally, Henderson pointed Jack’s way, and Chappelle walked over to him.
He stared reproachfully at Bauer. Clearly there was a lot he wanted to say, but for once he seemed to have the presence of mind not to speak. In fact, he was reviewing the teleconference he’d had with the joint subcommittee and wondered what they would say about the unknown agent who got things done,
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if only they were standing in the middle of all this bloodshed. At last, he said simply, “I’ll need a full report on this.”
Nina’s phone rang. She answered, listened, and said, “No shit. I’ve got Bauer here,” and handed him the phone.
“Agent Bauer? This is Dr. Siegman over at the coroner’s office. I hear that a whole lot went down and you’re going to keep us busy down here.” Jack had no response to that, so Siegman continued. “Listen, I guess it may be too late for this, but some of our techs down here were playing with this receiver embedded in the deceased.”
“Okay,” he said.
“Well, you know it’s not a purely passive receiver. It’s more like a cell phone receiver. It sends out a locator signal every fifteen seconds or so. I guess so that you can detonate it from far away.”
Jack thought of the one Barny had strapped to his back. “I’m familiar with them.” “Well, if it’s like a cell phone, my guys figure that it can be traced.”
Jack thought of Mark Gelson riding in a car somewhere with Michael. “Dr. Siegman, that is the very best thing I’ve heard all day.”
“Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood morgue.”
4:38 P.M. PST 405 Freeway
It had always been the ace up Michael’s sleeve, that he knew where Yasin was staying. The information had come to him by accident, and he had only intended to use it as a bartering chip if he was caught by the authorities. But he knew that he would only ha
ve been able to strike a bargain if he was caught before the attempt on the Pope. Now that so many had died, and with not one but two attempts against the Pontiff, he knew the Vatican would scuttle any deal he tried to make.
It had not been as hard to track Yasin as the Arab liked to think. Yasin had visited the United States several times to strike the bargain with Michael and Gelson, and each time he had met them at a different location, but always within an hour’s time of the phone call. Michael had simply triangulated the area, which was somewhere near the airport. On subsequent occasions, and with some trial and error, he had staked out various arteries into the area and was able to follow Yasin to Playa del Rey.
Michael drove there now in the silent car, with Pembrook lost in thought and Gelson rubbing his left arm, which had suddenly become an alien object attached to his body. He wanted it off.
“We need to get to your doctor,” Gelson said for the tenth time. “He needs to get this thing out of me.”
“Khalid is either dead or in prison,” Michael said. “But we can ask Yasin. He is the contact.”
They exited the 405 and drove on surface streets down into the suburb of Playa del Rey, between the airport and the ocean.
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4:43 P.M. PST Cardinal’s Residence
at St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
“Yeah, I got ’em,” Jamey Farrell said to Jack Bauer on the phone. “At least I think I do. We’re making some assumptions here. Specifically, what I have here is a cellular signature very similar to the one emitted by the one the coroner dug out of the body. If that’s them, then they are headed down by the airport.”
“Trying to get on a plane,” Jack said from St. Monica’s. “No, more like going to ground. They’re in Playa del Rey, it looks like.” “Got it. Let me know when you have a definite location.”
Jack hung up and turned his attention back to the questioning of Cardinal Mulrooney. He’d been too exhausted to handle it himself, so he’d turned it over to Nina.
“. . . as I’ve said, I had no idea, none, that this was going to happen. It’s horrific,” the Cardinal was saying, now indignant after being asked for the fourth time.
“But it looks like the guy in charge was your security chief, Mr. Mulrooney—”
“Cardinal Mulrooney. Or Your Eminence.”
“Okay, Mr. Mulrooney. You hired him. He worked directly for you.” “Many people work directly for me. I can’t be held responsible for all their actions, too.” Nina added, “And he was a schismatic. You also are a schismatic, is that true.”
“No!” Mulrooney said. “Not when you ask like that. I have expressed my unhappiness over some of Rome’s changes. But that doesn’t mean I joined a cult.”
“Mr. Mulrooney,” Nina said confidentially, “frankly, it’s not going to look good for you. The leader of your church, a man with whom you have had strong political disagreements, is attacked while in your care, by your security guards. That’s a lot of circumstantial evidence.”
Mulrooney stiffened. “I am in God’s hands. And I want my lawyer.”
4:47 P.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
Harry Driscoll could hear the paramedics working around him. He had the vaguest sensation of some kind of mask over his face, and he could hear watery breathing that must have been his own.
But he didn’t feel pain, and something told him he would never feel pain again. He thought back to the beginning of his troubles, standing at the door of Don Biehn’s home. He hadn’t wanted to open that door. Part of him still wished he hadn’t, but that was water under the bridge, now. Doors open; we move through them. That was how life worked.
Though his eyes were closed, Driscoll saw a new door appear before him. When it first appeared, Harry was filled with dread. He did not want to approach it. But the door came inexorably closer, and the nearer it came, the less Harry feared it. It was, after all, only a door; and Harry was a detective. Opening doors was his job.
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The door opened, and Harry Driscoll stepped through.
4:55 P.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
Jack was watching Mulrooney walk away of his own free will. If Jack had had his way, the Cardinal would have been wearing handcuffs. Not for the assassination attempt—Jack thought he was lying, but who knew?—but for the children who had been molested. He was sure Mulrooney had been complicit there. If it were true, Jack thought he ought to be destroyed.
One of the paramedics stepped into his field of vision. “Sir, I’m sorry. Your partner, Detective Driscoll. He just died. I’m sorry. We tried.”
Jack grimaced. Losing Driscoll was a blow, not just to him, but to decency in general. There was no way that Harry Driscoll should die and Mulrooney should walk away. Then he suddenly thought of something he could do to point justice in the Cardinal’s direction. As he did it, Nina’s cell phone, which he was holding, rang.
“Playa del Rey,” Jamey said. “1622 Reina Avenue.”
“Good.” All the fatigue fell away as Jack jumped to his feet. He was going to end this once and for all.
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 5 P.M. AND 6 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
5:00 P.M. PST Playa del Rey
Yasin heard the knock on the door and reached for his gun. He was in the upstairs room of the house, in the back; the room that made for the quickest getaway. He was inclined to simply bolt—no one in the entire world had reason to knock on this door—but something about the gentility of the knock kept him from fleeing. He figured it was a salesman of some sort, and he would ignore it. But to make sure, he walked as quiet as a cat to the front part of the house and peeked through the curtained window at the top of the stairs, which gave him a view of the porch below.
“Oh, shit,” he growled. He always liked swearing
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in English better than Arabic. This knock he could not ignore.
Yasin hurried downstairs and opened the door. They stood at his threshold like the three wise men of the Christian tale, or maybe like the three parts of the Catholic god that Yasin found so blasphemous. How could Allah be divided into three parts?
“Get inside,” he said, and closed the door behind them. When they were inside, he pointed his gun at them. “What are you doing here? I won’t even ask how you found this place. What are you doing here?”
Michael ignored the gun and sat down on the couch. The house was sparsely furnished, but there were a few pieces of furniture and some pictures to avoid curious questions. “It all went sideways,” he said. “The Pope is still alive. Your man, al-Hassan, got blown up but no one else did. We tried to kill the Pope back at St. Monica’s but some government agent stopped us.”
Yasin closed his eyes deliberately, then opened them after a moment. “I told you not to underestimate the Federal agents. They are not always brilliant, but some are tenacious.”
Michael didn’t need to be reminded of that. “We need a way out, and you are our best chance.”
Yasin scoffed. “I can’t help you. If you’ve ruined things this badly, I may have trouble myself getting out.” There were ways. The border with Mexico was porous. That was how he had reentered the United States several times after 1993. But he did not relish these alternate routes. “You must have set up your own exit plan.”
“I did,” Michael said. “But it involved confusion and misdirection because of al-Hassan and Collins and Gelson.”
“And I want this out now,” Gelson demanded, holding up his left arm and revealing, for the first time, the wicked scar from his operation. “I was willing to trade my life for the heretic’s, but that chance is gone. I want this out.”
Yasin ignored Gelson. Gelson, though he was in his fifties, reminded him of the young suicide bombers from Gaza, so eager to prove their religious faith, so willing to give their lives. They were useful fools.
Superfici
ally, Yasin was calm and collected. He offered them water and some leftover Chinese food. He suggested they sit down. But the wheels in his head were spinning. How could he get rid of them? How could he escape? He was sure his window of opportunity was growing narrower by the second.
“Tell me what they know,” Yasin said.
5:13 P.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
Amy Weiss was not allowed inside the cathedral, though she’d tried several times to sneak around, over, and under the crime scene tape. Finally she’d given up, and stood outside the tape at the entrance to the cathedral, making note of who came in and out.
To her surprise, she saw a uniformed officer walk out the front door carrying a plastic bag. He scanned the crowd until his eyes fell on her, and he hurried forward.
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“Ms. Weiss, this is for you. Jack Bauer left it.”
Amy took the parcel, plastic bag and all. It appeared to be a journal of some kind. She just barely made out the name scribbled childishly along the spine. It read “Aaron Biehn.”
5:18 P.M. PST Playa del Rey
Jack should have waited for a backup team. That was just common sense. But he had been chasing this killer for twenty-three hours without stopping, and he felt that if he stopped now he would simply fall apart.
So he jumped out of the car before Nina had a chance to stop completely and charged the house on Reina Avenue. He just had time to glimpse Nina run around to the back before he kicked open the door with a violent crash.
Yasin moved faster than Jack expected. Before the door hit the wall, Yasin was rolling over the back of his couch while Jack fired rounds that vanished into the pillows and couch frame. Gelson practically screamed. Michael, too, rolled out of Jack’s line of fire. The last man rose to a squat and aimed, but by that time Jack had pumped three rounds into his chest and face, and he crumpled.
Jack dove to his right, into a hallway, as both Michael and Yasin fired back, shattering the door’s small plate-glass window. No more shots came, and Jack knew that both men were on the move. He heard footsteps thump upward. Yasin, or Michael? Jack decided he didn’t care, and gave chase.