by John Whitman
“You have a hard job,” she said at last.
Two black SUVs had rolled up at that moment, saving him from a response.
He pushed his emotions deep below the surface. “These guys will take you back to CTU headquarters. I’ll phone ahead. They’ll know what’s going on by the time you arrive. I’m going to get your father.” The words were a promise.
8:19 A.M. PST Culver City
He reached Culver City at last, armed and ready to fulfill that promise. The field agent who’d picked him up had handed him a shotgun, which he checked quickly while she drove. She was a young agent named Lzolski, which was, for reasons inexplicable to Jack, pronounced “Wuh-zow-skee.”
“Who’s there?” Jack asked her.
“Two of our guys—Paulson and Nina Myers—and LAPD is rolling in quiet as back up. Our ETA is three minutes, give or take the traffic,” Lzolski said. “Any idea what’s in there?”
“Greater Nation,” Jack said. “It’s a militia group.”
“Militia group?” Lzolski said. “That’s so nineties.”
They pulled to the curb a half block from the address. The street was a middle-class setting straight off a 1950 city planner’s desk: a row of bungalows with trim lawns and walkways leading to front doors under small canopies, some of which were still made of the original painted aluminum. The two other CTU agents melted out of the shadows to join them.
“Nina,” Jack said for a hello. “Ready to join the party?”
“I’m a party girl,” she said with a grin.
Jack summarized quickly. “Unknown number of suspects are holding a hostage, an old man named Ibrahim Rafizadeh. Suspects will for certain be white males. Expect all of them to be armed, expect all of them to put up a fight. They’re all Timothy McVeigh types,” he added, referring to the notorious Oklahoma City bomber.
Nina asked, “Didn’t most of them give up this morning?”
“A lot of them were weekend warriors who didn’t like it when the shooting started. These here are the ones who put up a fight and got away.” He was thinking of Frank Newhouse. “They’re carrying out their mission even though their glorious leader is in the tank. Don’t get me wrong, I want them all alive if possible. But I want all of you alive more, so go in ready to put them down.”
Paulson, a field agent as short and wide as a fireplug, said, “Should we just wait them out? Call in the negotiators?”
Jack shook his head. “No time. I had it out with part of their team this morning. If this group doesn’t get a call in—” he checked his watch—“five minutes, they kill their hostage. You two go up the back way. Lzolski, you and I will go in the front door. Okay? Go.”
It was Jack’s third combat mission of the morning. He was already tired and irritable. As he approached the house he nearly tripped over a broken section of sidewalk raised by a tree root. He swore to himself. No one should go this long without sleep or rest. He hoped he never had to do it again.
Jack didn’t have a plan. But he also didn’t have any time. In The Art of War, Sun Tzu had valued surprise as one of the greatest weapons in a warrior’s arsenal. Several thousand years later, Napoleon, when asked what he valued most in his generals, answered, “Luck.” Jack counted on both luck and surprise as he strode boldly up to the door and kicked it in.
“What the—?” Lzolski sputtered, since this particular tactic had not been presented in any academy she’d ever attended.
Jack entered the house behind the muzzle of his SigSauer as a big blond man with a shaggy mustache came lumbering from the hallway off the living room. Jack swept the muzzle toward him him and said, “Down!” The man pulled up short, practically filling the hallway. “Down,” Jack cautioned.
“Company!” the blond giant said. He raised his right arm, and Jack fired three times. The first two rounds vanished in his chest. He fell fast for a big man, and the third round passed over his slumping shoulders and blew a hole in a door at the end of the hall. Jack moved down steadily, hoping Lzolski was right behind him. He slowed just long enough to kick the semi-automatic from the fallen giant’s hand.
There were four doors on the hallway, two on the right, one on the left, and the one at the end with the brand new hole. Jack hadn’t seen which door the big man came from. Wherever they were, they knew he was here now. His best bet was to keep making noise to give Paulson and Nina a chance to come at them from behind.
“Federal agents!” he shouted. “Come out with your hands up!”
There was a slight pause before a panicked voice shouted, “I’ve got a hostage!”
Only one bad guy, Jack thought.
“And we’ve got you!” he shouted back. “There’s no way out. We’ve got your friends and we’ve got Ramin. Give it up.”
“Back off!”
Two men stepped out of the second room. Jack recognized one of them immediately as Professor Ibrahim Rafizadeh, thinner than Jack remembered but still wearing his scholarly white beard. His hands were bound in front of him. Behind him, a Greater Nation soldier huddled low, his eyes barely visible over the professor’s shoulder. When Rafizadeh saw Jack, his fear turned to disbelief and indignation.
“Back off or I’ll kill him,” the militia man threatened, shoving Rafizadeh forward. He clearly hoped to back Jack off.
Jack held his ground, snarling, “We’ll see.”
The door at the far end of the hall flew open and Paulson swung in, low even before he dropped to one knee. “Drop it!” he yelled. Nina, standing, leaned in behind him.
Jack steadied his aim, expecting the gunman to spin around in surprise, which would give him a clear shot. Instead the Greater Nation soldier half-spun, pressing his back against the wall and pulling his prisoner close, minimizing his exposure. Surprised, Jack adjusted his aim, favoring the wall to take out the back of the man’s head. He exhaled and prepared to squeeze.
“Jack.”
The voice came from behind Jack. He threw himself against the opposite wall, mirroring the militia soldier, and looked back down the hall. Lzolski was there, but someone had an arm wrapped around her neck and a gun to her head. Like the other milita man, this one huddled low behind his captive. Even so, Jack recognized him.
“Give it up, Frank.”
“We’re the ones with the prisoners, Jack,” said Frank Newhouse.
“But nowhere to go,” Jack said. He swiveled his gun to bear on Brett Marks’s number two man. “We’ve got Brett. We’ve got Ramin. We’ve got you, too. You just don’t know it, yet.”
“I’ll kill him! I’ll kill him!” the other soldier yelled.
Jack stayed cool. Newhouse was formidable. He’d given the SEB team the slip and he’d gotten the drop on Lzolski. “Tell him we get the idea, Frank.”
Frank Newhouse smiled over Lzolski’s shoulder. “Thing is, I think he means it. Why don’t you take a walk into that garage there and let us go.”
“Bauer,” Lzolski said apologetically.
“Your call, Jack!” Paulson shouted from the doorway.
“Good little soldier,” Frank mocked. “Obedience without question.”
Sirens wailed in the distance, which must have been LAPD’s idea of “coming in quiet.” Their arrival changed the nature of the standoff, and Frank New-house understood that immediately. “Shoot them!” Newhouse yelled.
A gunshot filled the hallway behind him. Jack squinted, ready to take Newhouse down even if he had to take off Lzolski’s ear to do it. But Lzolski seemed to lunge toward him suddenly, her eyes wide as she charged the barrel of his gun. Jack shoved her aside, but by that time Frank Newhouse was gone. Jack raced after him, passing the entrance as two rounds chipped the doorframe behind him. Three more rounds whined past his ear and he tucked and rolled, finding cover behind a car. He came up searching for a target, but found none.
Frank Newhouse had escaped again.
8:31 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
There was no such thing as a good visit from Ryan Chappelle. The Los
Angeles District Director never appeared with good news. Thanks and congratulations, in his view, were the stuff of e-mail. Bad news and ass-chewing, however, deserved a personal touch. Chappelle prided himself on being one of America’s watchdogs, even if his territory was the junkyard of bureaucracy. Growing up as the runt of the litter in Detroit, he’d learned to get tough fast. Knowing he’d never be the fastest or the strongest (or even the smartest), little Ryan had learned to work the system. He grew up a Pistons fan watching Isiah Thomas and Bill Lambier win games. They had skill and power he’d never have. But the younger Ryan Chappelle couldn’t help but notice that the team owners were short, round, balding men. Most of them probably couldn’t even bounce a basketball, but they owned the game. Chappelle needed no clearer lesson than this. While most of CTU’s staff had come up through the military, Ryan Chappelle had gone to business school before joining the CIA. Unlike many of his colleagues, he’d never seen action in the military. Still, there was a place for the Ryan Chappelles of the world in every branch of government. He had a reputation for making the trains run on time, a service he knew to be far more valuable than the heavy lifting done by the action junkies he called the fence jumpers and door thumpers.
It was, of course, these same fence jumpers and door thumpers who usually caused the problems Ryan Chappelle had to fix, and this was why the terrierlike District Director appeared at Kelly Sharpton’s door at
8:34 sporting a look that would have curdled milk. “What the hell is Jack Bauer doing?” Chappelle demanded. This was his hello.
Kelly sat up straighter in his chair. He’d been staring at his blank computer screen, as though by will alone he could conjure up the words that had long since vanished.
“You heard?”
“Of course I heard!” Chappelle fumed. “You think I’m not going to hear about it when my agents requisition local law enforcement without authorization, raid private property without a search warrant—”
“Actually, he got an arrest warrant—”
“—and get into firefights in Beverly Hills?” the Director said, steamrolling over Kelly’s comment. “I thought we sent this guy to Siberia. No wait, if we’d done that we’d be at war with Russia!” Chappelle’s words and anger had carried him into the office, where he now passed like a small tiger in an even smaller cage. “Where the hell is Walsh?”
“Washington D.C.,” Kelly said. “Testifying.”
“Testifying? Oh, the NAP Act. God, I wish they’d just pass that thing and move on.” Chappelle didn’t bother to notice Kelly roll his eyes. The District Director continued. “Anyway, I want you to tell Bauer that he’s going in front of the review board the minute he gets in—before he even changes his damned shirt but after I tear him a new asshole.” Kelly, whose own anger at Bauer had diffused over the last hour, felt obligated to fill in for Jack’s mentor Richard Walsh, in defending him. “He did get the guy. We’ve got Marks in the building. And you heard about the terrorist lead?”
“I don’t care if he got Elvis—” Chappelle pulled up short enough to choke on his own words. “Terrorist lead? What lead?”
Kelly tapped his screen and the display lit up with CTU’s internal report on Ramin Rafizadeh. “It’s not all clear yet, but basically the Greater Nation had a lead on a terrorist squad on U.S. soil. They were going after it themselves. Jack discovered it, and it led right back to this guy, Ramin Rafizadeh. Jack was after him for a while until we heard that he was dead.”
Chappelle smiled. “Right, we busted Bauer for that case.”
Kelly nodded. “Well, get this. It turns out Jack was right. The Rafizadeh father did know where his son was and the son was—is—alive. Jack just rescued Ramin from the Greater Nation and he’s going for the father now.” Sharpton checked the chronometer on his computer. “Should be there already.”
Chappelle rubbed his hand across his balding head. He never liked any statement that included the sentence “It turns out Jack was right.” He sighed. “All right, when Bauer checks in give him to me. We have this Marks guy?”
“Holding room two.”
“How’d he get hold of intel on terrorists in the U.S.?”
Kelly had been wondering that himself. “We don’t know. But these guys are pretty well-financed. Most of them are rednecks, but their upper ranks are filled with a lot, and I mean a lot, of ex-military officers, Special Forces, like that. They have money and they’re passionate about their cause.”
“Yeah, well I’m passionate about my cause and I don’t have money so I’m also very irritable,” Chappelle said. “So let’s make sure they pay. Add obstruction of justice to the charges. This guy should have reported the terrorists to us.”
Chappelle started to walk away. Kelly chewed the inside of his cheek before saying, “Yeah, well, that’s an issue . . .”
Chappelle said over his shoulder, “What, there’s no space left on the booking sheet?”
“No,” Kelly said, “I think he did report them to us.”
Chappelle’s shoes squeaked on the tiled floor and stopped. He turned around. “What do you mean?”
“Marks told Jack that he had passed on his tip. We can’t find any record of it anywhere.”
“So, he’s lying,” Chappelle said. “Bad guys lie.”
“Except . . .” Kelly hesitated. He realized there was no way for him to describe what he’d seen on the Attorney General’s computer without exposing himself.
“Except what?” Chappelle said.
“I may have a little information that suggests the Attorney General knew about the tip but didn’t pass it on. And I also got a clue that the AG’s office may have their own man inside Greater Nation.”
Chappelle stepped back toward Sharpton. He didn’t like surprises. He didn’t like them on his birthday, he didn’t like them disguised as suitcases in train stations, and he especially didn’t like them coming from his own staff. “What sort of ‘little information’? Who gave you the clue?”
Kelly looked right into Chappelle’s small eyes. “I can’t tell you. It’s a personal source,” he lied.
“Proof?”
Kelly watched in his mind’s eye as the data were destroyed by his virus. “No, it’s gone. But I saw it with my own eyes. The Attorney General knew about the terrorists but didn’t pass it on. And he had his own mole inside Greater Nation and no one ever mentioned it to us, even though we had our own man in there six months.”
“No proof, no case,” Chappelle declared, waving the issue off. “Especially when you’re talking about the AG. Besides, Bauer got one bad guy. That sounds like plenty for one day.”
Chappelle turned his back on the issue.
8:35 A.M. PST Westin St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco
James Quincy bit into the last bit of cantaloupe on his room service breakfast, wiped his hands on the white napkin, and picked up the phone. He relished this call, and had decided to wait until after breakfast to make it. This act of vengeance would make the perfect dessert.
“Zelzer,” he said. “Make the calls. Washington Times, Wall Street Journal,the Nation. Add the Washington Post and the New York Times as well. She’s a hero over there, and I want them to choke on their own rags. Right, do it now. I’m sending the pictures.”
Quincy hung up. He fired up his laptop and connected remotely. The laptop contained encryption software, and there were five or six hoops to jump through to reach his own desktop via the remote software, but eventually he arrived at his own terminal’s log in. He typed his name and the password “winstonsmith” and waited. After a moment, his desktop booted up. At least the screen said his desktop had booted up. But there was nothing on it. He clicked on the icon for his hard drive and saw all his applications, and none of his files. None of them.
“Son of a bitch,” Quincy muttered. He didn’t know how his files had been deleted. But although he did not know how, he was sure he knew who. He had had no idea Debrah Drexler could be so formidable.
He picked up the phone
again. “Zelzer, I need you to get someone from IT security over to my office. Someone’s been tampering with my computer. I want to know who and I want to know now!”
8:37 A.M. PST Culver City
Black and white patrol cars filled the street, their red and blue top lights spreading color over the scene. Uniforms were searching backyards and bushes, but Jack knew they wouldn’t find anything. Newhouse was good. He was much better than a weekend warrior deserved to be.
Jack watched LAPD tape off the area, adding bright yellow ribbon to the rainbow. He ducked under it and went into the house. The body of the big blond militia man lay where it had fallen. The second Greater Nation goon, the one who’d held Rafizadeh, also lay where he’d died. Lzolski was pouting by the door, furious at having been caught. Paulson and Nina were arguing over whose shot had put the second militia man down.
“That was my head shot,” Paulson said, raising his empty hands and aiming his fingers like a gun.
Nina rolled her eyes. “Get over yourself. You missed. That was my shot.”
“Whoever shot him ought to be hanged,” Jack said. “That guy was our lead. These militia nuts are after the same thing we are—terrorists—but they’re always one step ahead of us.”
Jack went into the living room. Professor Ibrahim Rafizadeh was sitting on the couch flanked by two paramedics. They were checking his vitals and giving him oxygen. Two more paramedics were pulling a stretcher into the house. Even through the oxygen mask, Jack saw that the professor’s face was covered with bruises and blisters, the same kind of blisters that Ramin would have by now. The Greater Nation had tortured the old man.
Rafizadeh lifted his eyes to meet Jack’s. Just as Nazila had felt compassion for Jack, Jack now empathized with her father. The old man had withstood intense interrogation from Jack himself not six months ago, and he hadn’t cracked. This morning he’d been brutalized and broken down. He’d handed the torturers his own son. And then he’d been saved by the man who had apparently ruined his life.
“Ramin is safe,” Jack said.