24 Declassified: 04 - Cat's Claw

by John Whitman

  “The thing to do now,” Ozersky said, saving them both from the tense silence that followed, “is to compare notes. Two people have gone missing. I spent a lot of time on the

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  fringes of the group. You’ve spent a lot of time investigating. Maybe together we can come up with something.”

  The next moment was, perhaps, the moment Jack most admired Mercy Bennet. She’d just been humiliated personally and professionally by a man who, from her perspective, had nearly become her lover. But she rebounded almost immediately and plunged into a conversation with Ozersky. He talked about people he’d met on the fringes of Frankie’s circle. She whittled down his list from memory, discarding people she’d investigated and found to be inactive or unenthusiastic when it came to real action. It wasn’t long before they came up with a short list of contacts for both Santiago and Kalmijn that might know their whereabouts.

  “Good,” Jack said. “The three of us will follow up on Santiago’s contacts. I’ll call from the car and have Tony Almeida and Nina go after the others.”

  “Santiago worked at Earth Café over in Venice,” Ozersky said. “We should start there. It closes any minute.”

  They stood up, and Ozersky ran to get his gun and badge. During the interlude, Mercy stared daggers at Jack, but said nothing. Jack already felt like he’d been through hell, and something told him it was only the beginning.

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  THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 11 P.M. AND 12 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

  11:00 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  Of all the times Christopher Henderson had wanted to hit Ryan Chappelle, this was the hardest to resist.

  “You authorized this whole goddamned thing without telling me!” Henderson yelled so loud that the thick glass of his office could not completely muffle it.

  “Don’t yell at me,” Chappelle shot back. He was exhausted and frustrated from dealing with a frayed and angry presidential staff for the last hour, while at the same time overseeing the security lockdown that kept an entire nation from knowing its president had been exposed to a violent hemorrhagic fever. “I’ll have you working postal routes searching for stray anthrax.”

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  “This is bullshit!” Henderson continued. “How can I do my job as Director of Field Operations when you have my people running clandestine missions behind my back.”

  Chappelle had just informed Henderson of Jack’s operation linking the eco-terrorists to Ayman al-Libbi.

  Chappelle sniffed arrogantly. “It was need-to-know. Besides, if you want to blame someone, blame Bauer. He bypassed you. Better yet, blame yourself. Aren’t you one of the reasons he’s here in the first place?”

  “So Jack wants to run a secret operation and you give it your stamp of approval? Jack’s job is to think outside the lines. I thought yours was to stick to the rule book.”

  Chappelle laughed; it was a thin, unpleasant sound. “You know what I notice? How everyone thinks it’s great to have a loose cannon like Jack Bauer around...right up until the loose cannon rolls over their toes. Sharpton liked Jack, too, and now he’s dead. Don’t be surprised if someday you find yourself regretting that Bauer’s around.”

  11:07 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  Jessi sat at her desk, staring at her computer screen. She was supposed to be analyzing downloads from security and traffic cameras within a five-mile radius of two addresses, and running the facial recognition systems to see if any cameras had picked up their movement. But she knew she wasn’t doing a good job. Her focus was gone. No, it wasn’t gone, but it wasn’t here, either. It was with Kelly Sharpton.

  “Jessi, are you on it?” Jamey Farrell appeared at her side. “You look lost.”

  “Um, no, yeah, I’m good,” she replied. “Sorry. I’m on it now.”

  But she didn’t notice the picture sliding by her of the slim man with dark hair leaving his apartment. If she had, it might have saved more than one life.

  11:10 P.M. PST Earth Café, Venice, California

  A clerk was locking the front door of the Earth Café as Jack, Ozersky, and Mercy Bennet jogged up. Jack put his hand on the glass door just before it closed. “Hang on, it’s just after eleven,” he said, pointing at the sign that indicated closing time was eleven-thirty.

  The clerk, a dark-haired twenty-something girl with a nose ring and a very flat stomach between her T-shirt and her low-slung men’s trousers, pushed on the door again, a look of panic in her eyes. “We’re closing early. Sorry!” She shoved at the door and Jack relented. He watched her lock the door and then hurry behind the counter and into the back room.

  “Slackers?” Ozersky wondered aloud.

  “She’s pretty anxious,” Mercy said.

  “You guys walk back to the car,” Jack ordered. They all turned around and retreated to the sidewalk. Mercy and Ted continued, but as soon as they were out of sight of the doorway, Jack turned and sprinted toward the rear of the café. There was a small parking lot in back, but it wasn’t well lit. Jack stuck to the shadows and reached the back of the building in no time. He touched the back door gently, feeling it locked. There was a small window above and to the right of the door. Jack hopped up onto a blue Dumpster that stank of coffee grinds and rotting vegetables, balanced himself on the edge, and looked in the window.

  The window offered a view of the café’s kitchen. Jack saw

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  the nose-ringed clerk and another employee, a young man with short hair and a goatee, standing with their backs to the kitchen counter. In front of them were two men facing away from Jack. They were small, wiry men with dark skin. They both held guns. They appeared to be asking questions. The two clerks looked terrified.

  Jack pulled out his phone and sent a text message to Mercy: “Distraction ASAP.” He jumped down, landing softly, and waited.

  A moment later glass shattered at the front of the store. The girl inside screamed and one of the men shouted in Farsi. At that moment, Jack kicked in the door. His kick blew through the bolts, and the door swung open. The men inside were fast. They had turned toward the sound of breaking glass, but when they heard the door crash, they whirled around just as quickly, weapons ready. Jack dropped to one knee as bullets sped over his head. He double-tapped, and one of the men crumpled inward and fell on his face. Bullets from the other man’s pistol chipped the asphalt around Jack, who calmly shifted his muzzle over and double-tapped again. The second man was falling before the two clerks thought to scream again.

  Jack jumped to his feet and ran forward, kicking the weapons away from the fallen assailants. Both men were dead.

  “Are you all right?” Jack asked. The two clerks were pressed as far back against the counter as possible, terror and shock and relief all visible in their eyes. “I’m a Federal agent. Are you all right?”

  They nodded. The girl said, “Who... who are those guys?”

  Mercy and Ted rushed in, weapons drawn. “Clear,” Jack said. “Can you call CTU?” Ozersky nodded. Jack turned to the girl with the nose ring. “Did they ask you any questions?”

  She nodded, almost unable to take her eyes off the two corpses. “Um, yeah. They were asking us about Pico. They said they’d kill us if we didn’t help them.”

  “Pico Santiago. We want him, too,” Jack said. “Do you have any idea where he is? Do you know him well?”

  The young man, who’d yet to speak, nodded. “I do. We’ve worked here for a couple years. Is he in trouble?”

  “Not if I can help it. How well do you know him?” Jack’s own body was still adrenalized from the gunfight, but he forced his voice to remain calm and firm. “We need to find him. He’s not at home. We think he’s afraid of these guys and he ran off somewhere. Do you know where he’d go?”

  Jack saw the kid hesitate, his eyes settling on Jack’s gun. He had that same look on his face Jack had seen on some of th
e protestors that morning, though it seemed a lifetime ago. He spoke irritably, “Yeah, I’m the government and I want him, too. But here’s the difference between us and them. They want him dead, and I want to keep him alive. So tell me.”

  The young man straightened up. “He was working here tonight, but he just took off. Said something had come up and he had to get out of town for a while.”

  “Did he say where out of town?” Mercy queried. “Would he take a plane somewhere?”

  The kid shook his head. “No, dude, that’s not what he means. Pico’s into outdoor stuff, like me. He went up into the mountains to hike.”

  “Give me his cell number.”

  “He doesn’t use one,” the kid said. “He says the microwaves fry your brain.”

  “Up in the mountains where?” Jack asked.

  “Dude, it could be any—”

  “Somewhere he knows,” Jack said, growing impatient. “Somewhere he’d feel comfortable and safe.”

  The kid snapped his fingers. “Temescal Canyon. That’s

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  his favorite spot, and you hike back there past the waterfall,

  you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Do any of his other friends know about that place?”

  “Lots of people know about it. Yeah, Pico’s got some other friends he hangs with up there. Gina’s been up”—he pointed to the nose-ringed girl, who nodded—“and I’ve been up there with Pico and that freak girl he used to date.”

  “Freaky girl?” Mercy asked.

  The man nodded. “Yeah, Frankie something or other.”

  “Thanks,” Jack said. To Mercy and Ted, “Let’s go.”

  They left the kitchen for the dining area. Behind them, the girl shouted, “Hey, what about these guys!”

  Jack ignored her. If those were the last bodies he left behind tonight, he’d be lucky.

  11:37 P.M. PST Miracle Mile, Los Angeles

  If the decision were Eshmail Nouri’s to make, he would have strangled Ayman al-Libbi, left his body in a Dumpster, and gone back to the 213 Lounge he owned and managed just off Wilshire Boulevard. He was tempted to disobey orders and do it anyway, but that was just his independence talking. Eight years living in the United States, living and playing as an American, had given him a veneer of rebellion. But it was thin and did not seep into his heart, which had been with the Ayatollah Khomeini and was with the ayatollahs still. He would do as he was ordered, even if he thought it was stupid.

  And it was stupid, in his professional opinion. The ayatollahs had seen fit to plant Nouri and his compatriots in the United States long before the Americans had increased their watchfulness. Of course, after 9/11, Nouri himself and each of his companions had been questioned, but he had already been in the country for years; he was careful to communicate infrequently with the rest of his cell, and often only through handwritten letters that could not be traced. He was indistinguishable from the thousands of Iranians who had emigrated over the years.

  Which was his point. Nouri understood that he was a valuable asset. His entire cell was a precious weapon kept hidden by the ayatollahs and, if Allah willed it, they would someday come forth to strike a blow against the Americans. He knew the ayatollahs had tried to build other cells in recent years, but almost all had failed, thanks to American intelligence. To risk one of the few well-placed groups at the whim of Ay-man al-Libbi, who had by all accounts become a useless infidel, seemed reckless.

  Not seemed reckless, was reckless, based on the evidence. Mahmoud and Ali should have called in by now, whether they had obtained additional information from the target’s friends or not.

  Eshmail did not yet know about the virus or CTU. All he knew was that at long last his cell had been activated. They were to kill three people, one of whom was already dead, and another who would soon be eliminated.

  Still, he wished he could kill Ayman al-Libbi when all was said and done.

  10:54 P.M. PST Temescal Canyon Road

  Jack stopped the car in the dirt lot where the paved road ended. There was one car, a silver Volvo, already parked there.

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  “Could they be ahead of us again?” Mercy said as they got out.

  Jack drew his gun and walked over to the car. “It’s still warm and ticking.” There was a moon out, but it had been a long time since Jack had hunted anyone by moonlight alone. “We should take flashlights. Have either of you been up this trail before?”

  “I have,” Ted said. “It’s hiking, not mountain climbing, but parts of the trail are tough. The waterfall is about two miles up.”

  “We could call the sheriff ’s mountain rescue unit,” Mercy suggested.

  “Do it,” Jack said. Mercy got on her phone and went through 911.

  “Their ETA is more than twenty minutes for the helicopter,” she said after a moment. “No one’s going to get here any sooner.”

  “Let’s see what we can do until they get here,” Jack said, stopping to reload the magazines for his SigSauer. He popped one magazine into the handle and racked the slide. “Let’s go.”

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  THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 A.M. AND 1 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

  12:00 A.M. PST Vanderbilt Complex

  “Moving at last,” President Barnes said.

  Dr. Diebold, still wearing the biohazard suit, nodded. “Yes, sir. The containment tube is complete. It will take you straight down to the hazmat vehicle. You and the others will ride to National Health Services. We have a bio containment unit there.”

  Carter nodded. “Advance teams have already cleared the facility, sir.”

  Barnes turned to Xu Boxiong. “Sir, after you.”

  Xu bowed and smiled. There was nothing like a crisis, Barnes thought, to turn acquaintances into friends or enemies. If either country’s security had botched this up, the

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  other leader would have been at his counterpart’s throat. But both countries had screwed this pooch. They were in it together in every way.

  “I trust the United States will not offer too much of a complaint if the People’s Republic takes stronger steps to break the separatist movement in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region?” Xu observed casually.

  “Probably not,” Barnes replied. “And I trust that China will offer the G8 some movement that allows us to save face on humanitarian issues.”

  Xu nodded. “I believe some steps can be taken.”

  They stepped out through the airlock and into a long, clear plastic tunnel. Mitch Rasher was there, his round body hidden behind the bulk of the environmental suit. “Everything’s been handled, sir,” he said. “And it’s been done in coordination with the Chinese staff,” he added with a bow to President Xu. “Both offices issued statements that you both came down with minor cases of food poisoning—”

  “You didn’t say poisoning?” Barnes interrupted.

  “Of course not, sir,” Rasher said. “But that was the underlying message.”

  “Isn’t it a bit too obvious if we two made the same claim?” Barnes asked. It seemed to him a lot like asking for three cards in a game of five-card stud.

  “We got lucky there, Mr. President,” Rasher said, sounding pleased even through the muffled effects of his headgear and microphone. “Mr. Novartov of Russia actually did come down with food poisoning. So it all works out.”

  “So this containment is good,” Barnes said as they reached the end of the plastic tunnel, which was attached to a huge yellow hazardous materials vehicle. “How’s our other containment?”

  “One hundred percent so far, Mr. President,” his top aide replied. “Of course, this meeting was top secret anyway, so very few people knew you were here in the first place. The virus story itself is bound to get out—too many police and NHS personnel know about it. But your infection is known to very few.”

  “Until I keel over,” Barne
s said grimly. “Doctor, are you any closer to understanding this virus?”

  Diebold shook his head inside his suit. “No, sir. I have Celia Alexis, one of my top people, working on it. But, sir, we’ve been studying Marburg and Ebola for years and we don’t have cures for them. I understand that the terrorist who did this claims to have a vaccine. Are we trying to locate that person?”

  Barnes nodded. “We have people working on it.”

  12:11 A.M. PST Temescal Canyon

  Jack put one foot in front of the other carefully, settling his foot into the ground gently, then putting his weight down in order to avoid making too much noise. He hadn’t turned on his flashlight yet—it would do more to warn the driver of the car they’d seen at the start of the trail than it would do to illuminate his path.

  This is a terrible way to stalk someone, he thought. His shoes and clothes were all inadequate for the terrain and the darkness. His SigSauer was a fine weapon, but he would have traded the pistol and all three magazines for an M40 sniper rifle with half a dozen rounds, and he might give that away for a decent pair of night vision goggles.

  The Temescal Canyon trail rose steadily from its entrance off Sunset Boulevard and up into the mountains, running parallel to a thin ribbon of water that traveled a tortuous path from the mountains down to the Pacific Ocean. With the ex

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  ception of a small Park Services ranger station at the entrance, the canyon was completely rustic, a gateway into the Santa Monica Mountains Preserve, a wide tract of wild land that ran along the backbone of the mountains that divided the Los Angeles basin from the inland area of the San Fernando Valley. The preserve was home to deer, rabbits, hawks, and a multitude of other wildlife. Hikers had been known to encounter mountain lions padding along the trails that wound in and out of the hills. Most Los Angelenos spent their days oblivious to the fact that this wilderness lay just outside their doorstep.

  Ozersky and Mercy followed behind Jack, doing their best to be quiet. Ozersky was field trained, but he’d never been an operator as Jack had been, so his movements were a bit clumsy. What Mercy lacked in training she made up for in common sense. Even so, Jack wished he were working alone. He’d have moved faster.