by John Whitman
But the silence from Constantine Noguera’s house, that was something he could deal with. Rickson rapped his knuckles on the rough-boarded door of Noguera’s house. “Constantine!” he called. “How drunk can you be?”
There was no answer, not even a groan from inside.
Rickson pounded on the door again. “Constantine, get up! No one has seen you all day. Come out. The sun will do your hangover some good!”
Again there was no answer. Once more Rickson pounded on the door. This was too much for the old door. The lock broke and the door creaked open. Rickson Aruna found himself staring into Noguera’s little shack, with its front room that served as a kitchen and living room and its one back room for sleeping. The stench of decaying flesh assaulted Rickson’s nostrils and he staggered back. Rickson braced himself and entered, pushing through the stink until he reached the bedroom. When he got there he gagged, choking back bile. His nose had already told him Noguera was dead, but he was not prepared for what he saw: Noguera’s body lay on his bed. The flesh looked as if it had turned to slag on the bones, and huge pustules had erupted all over the body.
Terrified, Rickson tried to hold his breath. He had seen these marks once before, when he was a child and the disease had swept through his village. This was in a time long before modern doctors and medicines. He did not know if the doctors had a name for this disease, or if they had even heard of it. But the old women of his childhood knew it. They called it uña de gato.
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 12 P.M. AND 1 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
12:00 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jack Bauer practically pulled the tubes out of his body himself.
“Hey, let that finish draining!” Dr. Viatour yelled. Thirty minutes after injecting the dialysis solution into his body, the doctors had drained it away, filling a clear plastic tube with a disgusting-looking, bile-colored liquid.
Dr. Viatour said, “This is the solution post-filtering. In theory, it’s filtered impurities out of your blood, including this chemical marker, whatever it is.”
“What do you mean, in theory?” Jack asked.
Viatour shrugged. “Well, peritoneal dialysis works. It’s performed all the time. But usually it’s done three or four times a day for patients with kidney dysfunction. I don’t know anything about this chemical marker, so I can’t tell you if one treatment has done the trick.”
“We’re going to find out,” Jack demanded. “Stitch me up.”
He lay back and let the doctors finish. The truth was, he felt nauseated. They’d filled his abdominal cavity with some kind of saline solution. As his blood passed through it, it had mixed with this solution and, in theory, had filtered impurities out of his body. With luck, that had included the chemical tracer that Ayman al-Libbi had inserted there. He had sat helpless and impatient during the procedure, but now that it was done, he felt spent. His stomach felt distended and awkward, and the large puncture wound in his stomach hurt like hell.
“Chris,” Jack said to Chris Henderson, “soon as I’m on my feet, I’ll leave CTU and see if they contact me again.”
“Suppose he doesn’t give you another warning, just packs up and leaves you and Kim?” Henderson pointed out.
Jack answered decisively. “Either way, I’m moving forward. If they’ve gotten hold of a virus, then it’s going to be part of the plan. He’s going to use it on the G8. I’m going to get Kim and make sure she’s safe. I’ll also get her blood so we can check it.”
“And if al-Libbi is watching like you think he is?”
“I’ve got a plan.”
12:05 P.M. PST UCLA Medical Center
Tony Almeida sat in a private room with an ice pack on the back of his neck. Across from him in the bed lay Agent Dyson, motionless and comatose. Two uniformed policemen were stationed outside, and FBI agents had been in and out of the room all day. They had all asked Tony the same questions and he’d given the same answers. They were at a loss to explain Dyson’s actions or to uncover his motivations. This was no great shock to Almeida—over the years the FBI had played host to any number of moles at various levels.
Unlike the FBI agents, who left when they learned Dyson was comatose, Almeida waited. This was partly because his head still felt like it had been split open with an axe, but also because he didn’t take kindly to having his head split open...and he planned on being there when Dyson opened his eyes.
Tony leaned his head back onto the ice pack. There was time still to rest. Eventually Dyson would snap out of it. Tony would ask him a few questions, and then put him into a whole different kind of coma.
12:07 P.M. PST West Los Angeles
Mercy Bennet had drifted in and out of consciousness for God knew how long. Every time she drifted toward wakefulness, she felt her face throb and her skin stretched tight over what must be scabs on her face. Darkness was all around her. A hood had been thrown over her head. She would sink back down into forgetfulness.
Eventually, though, her conscious mind would not be denied, and she came to. She was lying on her side, hooded, with her hands bound behind her back. Her ankles were tied as well. She was lying on a hard floor. Voices from another room drifted toward her.
“. . . ill her. Jesus, we’re in it this far. What difference does it make,” someone was saying.
“A great deal of difference,” said another voice, a very calm voice. “There is a distinction between killing for the cause and outright murder. You know that.”
“I know that makes you comfortable to say it,” replied the first speaker. “All I know is that I’m going to jail if they catch me, and so I don’t want to be caught.”
Mercy shifted her arms a little, trying to get some blood back into them. As she did, she felt something jab into her hand. It was a nail of some kind, sticking up from the floorboard. She rubbed her wrist on it and felt the cords catch. She listened again—the voices came through a wall. There was no other sound. If someone was in the room with her, he was quiet as a ghost. She rubbed the cord against the nail again...
12:10 A.M. PST Federal Plaza, West Los Angeles
Driving a borrowed SUV with a siren, Jack made good time from CTU to Federal Plaza. No call came during the drive, which meant that either the dialysis had worked or the terrorist wasn’t bothering to issue another warning. Jack didn’t care either way. He’d spent enough time lying down and leaving his daughter out in the cold. He was going to bring her in.
This whole day had turned to hell. He had planned it perfectly, but like all plans it had gone awry, starting with Mercy Bennet’s appearance at the Federal Building. Jack hadn’t counted on that. Their meeting had triggered a series of events that had spun the whole day out of control, and drawn his daughter into danger she did not deserve. But he was determined to take care of that.
As he drove, Jack sorted his list of worries. He had to get Kim out of harm’s way. He had to find al-Libbi and this virus. And he had to make sure al-Libbi’s plot against the G8 was neutralized.
And then there was Mercy. She’d been taken by the terrorists. She might be dead, she might be under torture. And he was doing nothing about it. He recalled his own words to her: you’ll always have someone who’s on your side. Those words sounded empty to him now. Jack had broken promises before. He’d lied and misled before. But only to complete the mission. Only to corner the enemy. That was part of his job. But Mercy was an ally and he’d made her a promise. He kept promises to his friends.
Jack turned onto Westwood Boulevard, which marked the eastern edge of the protest perimeter, and drove south past Wilshire Boulevard until he reached Olympic Boulevard, then swung west until he came to Veteran. He turned right back up Veteran until he reached the same parking area Mercy had discovered. Jack parked and looked around for the nearest set of available uniformed cops.
“Hey, gentlemen, can you help me?” he asked, showing them his badge
as he approached.
One of the cops turned toward him, and Jack recognized the face and the bandaged wrist at the same time. “Oh, it’s you,” the cop said. “You back for the other one?”
Jack hesitated for a fraction of a second. Then he thought of basic infantry training: in an ambush, attack the attack. “Special Agent Jack Bauer, Counter Terrorist Unit,” he said in his command voice. “I need help from a few of you guys. Come with me, please.”
12:20 P.M. PST Brentwood, California
Ayman al-Libbi parked a dark blue Toyota Sentra close to the curb on a residential street in Brentwood, California. Brentwood was the next enclave over from Westwood, separated by the wide 405 Freeway. Not quite as large or wealthy as Beverly Hills, it was still drenched in money. The neighborhood was wealthy enough that his cheap auto would eventually draw attention, but for the rest of the day it would be mistaken for a car driven by a maid. By nightfall, it would no longer matter.
He checked the address. The house he was looking for was several doors down, a two-story house with a wide grass lawn, red-tiled roof, and a wall that hid a patio before the door. It reminded Ayman of the architecture of Spain. A green pickup truck was parked in front of the house, and he could hear the high-pitched whine of a leaf blower.
A leaf blower, he thought. The sound of the leaf blower made him angry in an irrational way. It seemed to represent everything he despised about the West—countries full of people too lazy to rake their own leaves, who used gasoline imported from the Middle East to power machines to move the leaves around for them. And then, of course, they would bomb those Middle Eastern countries to keep the price of gasoline low. It was the height of decadence.
By the time Ayman reached the Spanish house, the leaf blower had stopped. A pot-bellied Mexican man in green pants and a green shirt walked down to the sidewalk and put the leaf blower in the back of the white truck. He removed some kind of small shovel and then turned back toward the house. As Ayman approached, the gardener knelt down along a stone walkway that led up to the wall. Long-leafed agapanthus plants lined the walkway, resting in freshly dug soil.
“Those look good,” Ayman said pleasantly.
The gardener turned, his round face covered in a sheen of sweat. “Eh? Oh, thank you,” he said, saluting with his little shovel. He had a gentle Mexican accent. Ayman, who spoke four languages, understood how hard it could be to rid the tongue of the rhythms of home.
“Is this a good time to plant agapanthus?” Ayman asked.
The gardener had already turned back to his planting. Now he turned fully toward Ayman and smiled. “No. But...” He pointed the shovel toward the house and rolled his eyes.
Ayman nodded. “Well, we all work for someone.”
The gardener stood up and wiped his brow. “That’s the truth. Even though I like to think that I work for myself.” He walked past Ayman toward his truck, which had the words “Sanchez Landscaping” on the side.
Ayman followed him to the truck. “If we are lucky, we serve our own ends. But we work for others. Have you owned your own business for long?”
The gardener, Sanchez, opened the passenger door of his truck and reached inside for a card. “Nine or ten years, I think. Here.”
He turned to give Ayman the card and was surprised to find him standing so close. Ayman pushed the gardener almost gently back onto the passenger seat. As Sanchez lost balance, Ayman lifted a silenced .22-caliber semi-automatic handgun and shot him in the head.
12:34 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jessi Bandison was potshot-ing. At least that was her word for it. Chris and Jamey had assigned her to track down any connections between the terrorist Ayman al-Libbi and any groups that might want to cause trouble at the G8. The problem, of course, was that there were a thousand groups that might want to cause trouble at the G8. Almost none of them had the resources to try. So Jessi had spent her first few hours analyzing those that did have resources: al-Qaeda, Falun Gong in China, Jemaah Islamiya (although they operated only in Southeast Asia), and a few others. But connecting al-Libbi and Falun Gong was like fitting a square peg in a round hole, and as far as al-Qaeda was concerned, al-Libbi didn’t practice their kind of radical Islamism.
After that, Jessi had transferred from a resource-oriented search to a motive-oriented. Falun Gong came up again and was discarded. The East Turkistan Independence Movement, or ETIM, was the most likely candidate simply because they had an office in Los Angeles, which proved they were politically savvy and had some resources. But the “office” turned out to be a Mongolian barbecue restaurant in a strip mall, and every source Jessi dug up on ETIM in eastern China was roadblocked. Beijing was very tight-lipped about political activism, especially when it involved violence. As far as the Communist Party was concerned, ETIM didn’t even exist because there was no East Turkistan at all.
“Any luck?” Chris Henderson asked.
“Nada,” she said, stiffening a bit. Henderson had never been anything but cordial to her, but somehow he gave her the creeps.
Bits of data shining out of the computer screen reflected on her light chocolate-colored skin and round cheeks. “We don’t have much data on activity inside China. I’m just potshot-ing now.”
Chris read the screen, conscious of how close his hand was to her shoulder. “You’re back on ETIM. I thought that was a dead end.”
“Oh, I’m not, really,” she said. “It’s all the shotgun approach at this point. I’ve got the computers doing a random match on any names that appear to be of eastern Chinese origin with any other unusual activity, such as plane flights, fund transfers, that stuff. I think I’m using half the RAM in the entire network. I’m surprised Jamey hasn’t—”
The screen flickered. Jessi stared at the screen as an enormous list of transactions appeared. “See, I knew there’d be too many to make the list usable—” She stopped speaking again. Her logarithm had ranked the listing in order of probability. The one at the top caught her attention: it had been ranked in the ninety-ninth percentile. She drilled down into the line and read the following:
TRSP $US2,000,000.00 FROM 343934425 TO 904900201* CAYMAN ISLDS *ACCOUNT NO. ACTIVITY MATCH: EASTERN TURKISTAN INDEPENDENCE MOVEMENT
“Hmm,” Jessi said, astounded.
Henderson patted her on the shoulder. “I’m taking you to Vegas.”
“Yeah,” she agreed. If the computer match was correct, it appeared that someone had transferred two million dollars to an account in the Cayman Islands—an account that had been connected to ETIM. So much for ETIM not having resources. “Let’s find out who,” Jessi said.
Henderson watched her work. He’d liked her from the moment he took over as Director of Field Operations. She was certainly a wizard on the computer, but every analyst at CTU could make that claim. Bandison had a level head and a detective’s mind. One of his predecessors, Kelly Sharpton, had written her glowing reports.
“There,” she said. He tore his eyes away from her to study the computer.
“Marcus Lee,” he read. “Chinese American, living in Los Angeles. Now why would Mr. Lee want to give two million dollars to ETIM?”
CAT’S CLAW 101
12:40 P.M. PST Federal Plaza, West Los Angeles
Kim stomped her foot impatiently. “I don’t care what my dad says, I need to get out of here.”
Her face was flushed, and she was starting to perspire so much, she was sure her makeup would run.
“We should just go,” Janet said, lifting her hair up from her shoulders to cool her neck. “There’s like nothing happening here anyway.”
Even as she said that, Brad Gilmore and another guy from Teen Green shoved into them, hitting Janet on the back and nearly knocking Kim off her feet.
“Hey, cut it out!” Kim yelled.
“It wasn’t us!” Brad complained. “It’s them!”
On the other side of Brad, two or three people Kim didn’t know had started to push and shove each other—a middle-aged granola with
shoulder-length gray hair, and a cute guy who looked like he was in college. They were yelling over each other, and Kim could barely understand the words. The college guy shoved the granola, who shoved back. The people around them simultaneously whooped encouragement and yelled at them to stop causing trouble.
In moments, four or five policemen were on the scene, pushing past the spectators and grabbing hold of the two men.
“Excuse me, miss.”
Kim Bauer turned away from her conversation with Janet to find three policemen standing around her. They had serious looks on their faces.
“Yeah?” she replied.
“You’ll have to come with us, please.”
Kim looked around as if trying to discover something she’d done wrong. The fight was already breaking up, and she hadn’t even been involved. “What do you mean?”
“Is there a problem, officer?” Marshall Cooper, the advisor, pushed past several gawking members of Teen Green. “Is something wrong here?”
One of the policemen with a bandage around his wrist said, “Step back, sir. We’re going to have to take this girl inside for some questions.”
Kim didn’t like the sound of that. “What’d I do?” she asked fearfully.
The cop paused. “Disorderly conduct.”
“That’s ridiculous!” said a high-pitched voice. Andi Parks practically rolled over Cooper as she set herself between Kim and the policemen. “That’s completely and totally ridiculous, I’ve been here the whole time and that girl hasn’t done a thing, in fact she’s not feeling very well, are you, Kimmy?”
Her onslaught was enough to make all three cops step back, but they recovered quickly. The injured cop puffed his chest out again. “Back off, ma’am. We’re just doing our job. Now come along, miss.” He took Kim by the arm gently but firmly.
Kim looked from Janet to Andi Parks to Mr. Cooper, who looked confused, outraged, and helpless, respectively.