by John Whitman
From his vantage point, Jack could see the far west edge of the crowd folding back in on itself like a riptide. And he could see why they were running.
A line of mounted policemen was charging down Wilshire Boulevard to scatter the crowd. It was archaic, but no less terrifying for that fact: a line of horsemen twenty strong, the horses charging at a steady lope, their eyes rolling in their heads, the riders holding riot clubs, herding the crowd of people like so much cattle.
At that moment, Jack’s phone rang. “Jack, it’s Chris,” Henderson said quickly. “Are you still in the crowd?”
“Oh yeah.”
“Get out,” Henderson commanded. “Some protestors just beat two cops nearly to death. LAPD is calling in the cavalry. They’re using rubber bullets.”
Jack hung up and looked for some escape route, but he already knew it was too late.
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 2 P.M. AND 3 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
2:00 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jessi Bandison’s line buzzed. “Yes?” It was CTU’s call center. “You’ve got a call from the
Russian Embassy.” “I’ll take it,” Jessi said. “Jessi Bandison,” she said as the connection was made. “Miss Bandison,” said a female voice in smooth English,
with only a hint of accent around the edges. “I am Anastasia
Odolova. Anna, if you like.” “Jessi, then. What can I do for you?” “A mutual friend suggested I call you. I might be able to
help you with what you’re looking for.” Jessi found herself wondering what Odolova looked like.
Her accent was almost cartoonish, and Jessi couldn’t help imagining a lean vamp in a slinky black dress. She herself was round and chocolate-skinned, the opposite of a Russian seductress. “Okay, thank you. I was hoping—”
“You wish to know about Marcus Lee.”
“Right,” Jessi said. She rolled her eyes. Maybe it was the smooth, almost studied lilt of the Russian accent, but Jessi felt ridiculously like a 1950s espionage agent. She ought to be wearing a trench coat. “I’m running down information on him and I noted that there’s been an information exchange between us and the SVR,” she explained, referring to Russia’s foreign intelligence service. “I’m curious to know if you have any additional information I can use to corroborate my own.” That was standard operating procedure when talking with foreign entities: never admit how little you know. But Jessi wasn’t well versed in deception, and the words felt large and clumsy as she spoke them.
A smile spread itself across Odolova’s words, as though she understood exactly what Jessi was not saying. “I am happy to help you,” the Russian said with a slightly aspirated “H” in each word. “In fact, I believe I have what you need. We have a more extensive dossier on Marcus Lee, including”— Odolova paused for dramatic effect—“including his real name.”
Jessi’s heart skipped a bit. There were no aliases in her file, and no aliases according to the Chinese dossier she’d seen. To an analyst like her, a name was like the single thread that, when pulled, could undo the knot. “Yes?”
“I suggest you pursue the name Nurmamet Tuman. You will find that he is not from Shenzhen, but in fact he was born in Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.”
Jessi furrowed her brow. “Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous...?”
“I believe the separatists refer to it as East Turkistan.”
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2:04 P.M. PST Federal Building, West Los Angeles
Wilshire Boulevard had turned into a river of people, and Kasim Turkel was being carried east by the current. The mob surged en masse away from the charging horses. For a split second, Kasim considered resisting, but he nearly lost his footing. To fall meant being trampled to death by stomping feet and, afterward, galloping hooves. So he ran with the crowd, swimming his way toward its edge like a man struggling toward the banks of a river. But each person he tried to push past panicked and clawed at him. The protestors and their chants were gone, replaced by mid-brained primates fleeing a pack of predators. Screams and shouts of anger and fear filled Kasim’s ears, punctuated by the sharp report of gunfire.
Kasim had been in that place of terror before—in the streets of Urumchi when the Chinese soldiers charged the pro-independence demonstrators. Kasim had been a teenager then; that afternoon had become a jumbled memory of arms and legs and screams, smoke, and tear gas. In his panic, Kasim saw once more rifle butts raised up and brought down violently on the heads of wailing Uygur women, children screaming for their parents, and men being dragged into waiting trucks. Though the images had blurred into one long scene of terror, the emotions of that night were as sharply defined today as they were ten years ago. That was the night of Kasim’s metamorphosis. That was the night the independence-minded boy was transformed into a freedom fighter.
Kasim had no idea where he was going. He knew the policemen on horses were behind him, but ahead he saw black smoke, like the smoke of burning tires, mixed with the white smoke of tear gas. Tear gas meant the police were close by, and he feared the American police were boxing them in to kill them all. Somewhere in his skull, a tiny piece of his mind told him that the Americans did not operate this way, but that tiny fragment was overwhelmed by the seething reptile of his mid-brain that understood only fear and anger. Terror had gripped him as it had gripped all those around him.
In the midst of all that confusion, Kasim looked around for an escape route, and his eyes fell on the face of an American man. The man had blond hair and wore a green shirt, but it was his eyes that caught Kasim’s attention. Those eyes were locked on Kasim with fierce intent. And in that moment, the same reptilian brain that drove Kasim along with the terrorized crowd told him that this man was a predator, and he was the prey.
Forgetting the crowd, risking the loss of his footing, Kasim turned at an angle to the human current and swam toward the far side of the street, scratching and clawing his way through anyone and everyone in his path. Someone shrieked at him and scratched at his face, but he pushed him down, stepped over him, and surged forward. He reached the sidewalk. The crowd was thinner here. He was facing a wall and knew that on the other side was a wide open space—a graveyard of soldiers, the Veteran’s Memorial. Kasim slithered along the wall, buffeted by people running past him. He reached the corner, the Federal Building still looming on the south side of the street; here on the north side, he was standing before a huge engraving built into the wall of the memorial. There were three figures carved in alabaster, three men with soldier’s uniforms from different time periods. Beside the memorial was a side street, far less crowded. Kasim started to run.
Instantly he felt something hard and heavy slam into his back. He flew forward and hit the ground hard, cutting
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open his chin and shoving all the air out of his body in one agonizing punch. He gasped for breath. Before he could regain his senses he felt strong hands grab his shoulder and spin him over. Kasim blinked up into the blue sky and sunlight. He was looking up into the face of the blond-haired predator.
“Don’t move,” the man snarled in a voice that sounded like smashing gravel. “Federal—”
But his words were cut off. In the same instant that he had spoken, dark shadows appeared behind him, blotting out the sun. More hands grabbed the blond man and pulled him off Kasim, slamming him to the ground. Kasim started to rise, but someone’s knee planted itself firmly on his chest. “LAPD, stay down!” someone ordered, and Kasim had no strength left to argue.
At the edge of his vision he saw the struggle as uniformed policemen restrained the blond man, who was yelling something. One of the policemen jabbed a small canister into the blond man’s face. There was a hissing sound, and the blond man gagged and coughed.
2:08 P.M. PST Federal Building, West Los Angeles
Chaos and hell.
Those two words kept repeating
in Mercy’s head like a violent mantra. The general vicinity of the Federal Building had exploded into a full-scale riot. Packs of protestors ran this way or that, some of them fleeing the scene. Others seemed to have produced bandanas and masks from nowhere. She saw a Latino man in a “Save the Rain Forest” T-shirt light a Molotov cocktail and throw it at a police car. A man and a woman staggered past her, supporting each other as they walked. Both were bleeding from the head.
It had taken Mercy twenty minutes to travel the three blocks from the street she’d been on—somewhere east of the Federal Building—to Veteran, following the furtive movements of Smith. They were both moving against the current, which several times threatened to carry Mercy backward.
“Don’t go that way!” a well-meaning protestor said, wrapping one arm around Mercy’s shoulder. “They’ve got horses! They’re clubbing people!”
Mercy shoved him off. “I’m a cop!”
“Then fuck you!” he yelled, and was carried off by the stream of bodies.
Her twenty minutes of working against the crowd had paid off. She was exhausted, but as she reached the western edge of the riot she saw Smith again. He was cagey, sometimes sprinting ahead, sometimes slowing down to the pace of the crowd, often changing directions. But though he was sneaky, Mercy was tenacious. She had him in her sights, and she simply refused to lose him.
Mercy’s eyes stung from the tear gas. Though she hadn’t been in proximity to any shells, there was enough of the stuff in the air now that everyone was feeling some effects— runny noses, teary eyes, labored breathing. She wished that was all that was slowing her down. She’d done more running in the last hour than she had in the last year. She swore that if she got through this case, she’d get back on the treadmill.
Though she couldn’t see well, she knew she was near the veterans’ cemetery because she could see the alabaster statue. Smith had just passed it. Mercy hurried that way as well, when she saw several uniforms hauling protestors into a paddy wagon.
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2:10 P.M. PST Federal Building, West Los Angeles
Jack Bauer sputtered and coughed, spitting mucus out of his mouth, trying to gather enough air in his lungs to speak. The goddamned cops had blasted him with enough oleoresin capsicum, or OC spray, to drop an entire cell block. He was blind and he could feel snot running down his nose. His mouth frothed. His hands were secured with flex cuffs behind his back, and angry hands were hauling him to his feet.
“I’m a...” He coughed. “I’m a Fed—”
“Shut up and move!” a cop yelled, softening him with a punch to the stomach.
2:11 P.M. PST Federal Building, West Los Angeles
Mercy saw two cops half dragging one protestor toward the black police wagon. One of the officers punched the protestor in the stomach and he doubled over, his wispy blond hair quivering atop his head.
That’s Jack! Mercy thought.
She took one step toward the officers, but hesitated. She would lose Smith. She would lose him, and the Monkey Wrench Gang would fade away, and she had no idea if she had disrupted their plans or not. Jack would have to take care of himself. Eventually the cops would figure out that he was a Federal agent and release him. She had lives to save and a terrorist to capture.
2:12 P.M. PST Federal Building, West Los Angeles
Smith looked back to see if he was still being followed. His eyes, too, had been attracted to the cops on the corner. He saw the police officer punch his captive, and his eyes flew wide.
Agent Bauer! The man was indeed resourceful. Smith’s last GPS reading had shown Bauer still sitting inside CTU headquarters, doing nothing. How had he evaded the chemical markers?
In that moment Smith felt all the energy sucked out of his plans like the sap draining from a tree. Mercy Bennet had broken open the vials of his virus. Jack Bauer had evaded his tracking device. This was more than he had bargained for. He’d gone up against the full forces of the Federal government for the first time and found himself lacking. But he still had his anonymity. The riot had given him the cover he needed, and Mercy Bennet had not yet been able to call in support. If he could get away from her with his anonymity intact, he would have time to regroup and leave the country. He could go back to the Amazon, where he felt most at home, and fade into the forest for as long as the forest still stood.
He ran.
2:15 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jessi presented her findings to a room full of people that included Chris Henderson, Nina Myers, Jamey Farrell, District Director George Mason, and even Regional Division Director Ryan Chappelle. Both had been called in from
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other appointments as the protests at the Federal Building heated up.
“The entire investigation began with a lead from Jack Bauer,” Jessi began. Immediately Ryan Chappelle shifted in his seat. The Regional Division Director had no patience for a man he considered a troublemaker. “Agent Bauer was certain he spotted the known terrorist Ayman al-Libbi slipping past border security aboard a flotilla of ships sailing up from Central America to protest the G8 summit.
“These suspicions were strengthened when Bauer was kidnapped briefly, then released, by subjects unknown but assumed to be al-Libbi. We began to search for connections between al-Libbi and the G8.”
“Al-Libbi’s a gun for hire these days,” Chappelle said in a high voice that, along with his narrow face, contributed to his reputation as a weasel. He did, however, do his homework.
“Yes, sir,” Jessi said. “Since China is at the top of the G8 agenda, we searched for groups with motivations in that area. A random search for anomalies uncovered a transfer of two million dollars to an account associated with the East Turkistan Independence Movement, or ETIM. Two million dollars is a huge sum of money for a movement that small. The money was then immediately withdrawn from that account, destination unknown. We traced backwards. The transfer came from a Cayman Islands account associated with one Marcus Lee, a Chinese national.”
“Would a Chinese-born person want to help a separatist group?” Mason asked.
“We almost hit a dead end there,” Jessi continued. “But I discovered that our information on Marcus Lee and the Cayman Islands account had actually come from a data exchange with the Russian SVR. I had a contact there, and through them I learned that Marcus Lee has an alias that the Chinese withheld from us. In fact, Marcus Lee is pretty much an invented person. Marcus Lee’s real name is Nurmamet Tuman. He was born in Urumchi, in what the Chinese refer to as the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region.”
“East Turkistan,” Chappelle murmured. “So the money trail leads from this Nurmamet whatever to ETIM and then possibly to al-Libbi. To do what? Do we have ID on al-Libbi except for Bauer seeing someone who looks like him in a crowd?”
Henderson hid a grimace. That was Chappelle summed up in two sentences: a mind sharp enough to put the details together in a snap, and a tongue sharp enough to insult everyone who’d done the work before him.
“Nurmamet Tuman”—Jessi emphasized the name—“is one of our leads. Under the alias Marcus Lee he lives in Los Angeles.”
“I plan to bring him in,” Chris said. He looked to George Mason for approval, and Mason nodded.
“You said one of our leads,” Chappelle noted. “What’s the other?”
Jessi continued. “Earlier in the day surveillance spotted someone who looked very much like Muhammad Abbas, alLibbi’s aide-de-camp, meeting with an unknown subject. A short time ago, Bauer, who is still at the Federal Building, spotted the same man.”
Jessi looked to Jamey Farrell, who took over the narrative. “Bauer sent us a photo of the man, which we ran through computer enhancement and facial recognition. We have a nearly one hundred percent match for a man named Kasim Turkel, another Chinese national. His record was a little more transparent than Tuman’s. No criminal record we could find, but he’s from Urumchi as well.”
Henderson summed things up. “Turkel meets Ab
bas. Ab
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bas means al-Libbi is around somewhere. Money goes from Nurmamet Tuman to ETIM, and then disappears. We’re guessing it went to al-Libbi as payment for whatever he’s planning. He’s in L.A. now, so it’s got to be the G8.”
“What’s on the agenda?” Mason asked. “Likely targets?”
Chris replied, “That’s our next problem. Each is as likely as the next. Security is tight everywhere. Hitting a target this hard isn’t al-Libbi’s usual style.”
“There was the Russia-Israel détente meetings back in ’94,” Chappelle reminded him.
“He missed and was nearly caught,” Mason observed. “He never tried anything like that again.”
“He’s desperate for money,” Chappelle said. “Anyway, so we bring this Marcus Lee or whatever his real name is in for interrogation.”
Chris hesitated. “There’s a complication. The Chinese are insisting that this Marcus Lee has nothing to do with ETIM, that he’s not Nurmamet Tuman. They say we’ve got the wrong guy.”
He saw the look on Chappelle’s face change, watched what little color there was drain out of it. Henderson wanted more than anything for Chappelle to say, Bring him in anyway. But knew that wouldn’t happen. The Regional Division Director was a political animal, and at that moment he was connecting an entirely different set of facts: the United States wants China in the G8, the United States plays host to China for the summit; U.S. Federal agents arrest a Chinese national whom the Chinese have already cleared...
“Let’s use kid gloves,” Chappelle said at last. “Send someone to check this Chinese national out. If there’s something suspicious, I’ll clear it higher up.”
Henderson had known this was coming. He looked at Nina. “Go pay him a visit. And be nice.”