Jack heard the engines straining to keep the aircraft aloft. Then they cut out and the wheels slammed onto the runway, too hard for the landing gear to support the impact. Tires blew, steel snapped, and the landing gear folded. The burning aircraft teetered to port, then the belly hit the concrete and skidded along, trailing a torrent of hot white sparks.
9:32:18 P.M. EDT CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Tony’s land line warbled. He reached across his desk and grabbed the receiver. “Almeida.”
“There’s a Marine Corps captain checking in at the security desk and asking to see Ms. Myers. But the Chief of Staff is not responding to my call.”
“Nina’s in the middle of a video conference with Bill Buchanan from the Seattle office,” Tony replied. “I’ll be right there.”
Tony locked down his computer and headed off to the security desk. On the way, he stopped by Jamey’s area and picked up the latest printout on the mysterious memory stick, which he stuffed into the folder under his arm. He glanced at it first, disappointed to find they had discovered next to nothing in the past two hours of “expert analysis.”
At the security desk, Tony discovered that not all Marines are created equal. This particular captain had blond hair caught in a ponytail, a killer figure in a dress blue uniform, and clear blue eyes to go with her two silver bars.
“Captain,” said Tony, offering her a smile with his hand. “I’m Agent Almeida, head of intelligence here at CTU.”
Nearly as tall as Tony, the woman met his openly appraising gaze as she took his hand in a firm grip.
“I’m Captain Jessica Schneider. Commander of the Special Weapon Analysis Unit in South Korea.”
Her name jarred his memory cells, but the context eluded him. “Welcome to Los Angeles. Come with me and I’ll bring you up to speed.”
As they moved through the busy command center, Captain Schneider took in the setup while Tony deciphered the ribbons and service pins that adorned her uniform. “First Marine Division,” Tony observed. “Looks like you and I ate some of the same dirt.”
A half smile crossed her full lips. “You’re a jarhead?”
“Ex.”
“You’re missing all the fun, then.”
Tony discerned a slight Texas drawl, another clue he felt was important, but he had yet to make the connection. They arrived at the cyber-analysis section. Tony ran his key card through the lock, opened the door. “We actually have lots of fun here at CTU, too.”
Tony offered Captain Schneider a chair, then slid the latest report on the memory stick under her nose. “This is what we’ve got, so far.”
Captain Schneider opened the folder, leafed through it. She lifted two photographs of the object and studied them closely. After a moment, she reached into her pocket and donned delicately framed reading glasses. “And you found this memory stick where?”
“At LAX, this morning,” Tony replied. “It was attached to an array of tubes in the hands of a suspected terrorist. The device looked like a shoulder-fired antiaircraft missile launcher. Unfortunately we lost both the terrorist and the device when the group self-destructed to avoid capture.”
Captain Schneider closed the file. “This data stick you recovered is a component in the most advanced handheld anti-aircraft missile launcher developed to date by the hostile regime in North Korea.”
Tony was impressed. “You’re sure.”
“I’ve seen one before. The launcher, not the memory stick.”
“On the DMZ in Korea?”
Captain Schneider’s blond ponytail bobbed when she shook her head. “On the Texas/Mexico border. About eight weeks ago, the DEA grabbed a launcher in a narcotics raid. The system is highly advanced. It has been code named Long Tooth by the Pentagon. The launcher has twin firing tubes and a computer programming system that interfaces with the missiles themselves. Unfortunately no missiles were recovered so we don’t know their capabilities as yet . . .”
“How did the Marine Corps find out about it? The DEA isn’t known for sharing intelligence with the military.”
“I found out through a ...personal contact. I know someone on the House Intelligence Oversight Committee.”
Tony Almeida closed his eyes a nanosecond, stifled a groan. “Your father—he’s Congressman Roy Schneider of Texas?”
The Captain nodded. To cover her discomfort, she changed the subject. “Have you retrieved any data from the memory stick?”
“It’s encrypted. We have an expert on North Korean software trying to crack it now. No progress to report.”
Captain Schneider felt it, just then. The instant chill. One mention of her father and there it was: clipped words, tense posture, guarded look. Amazing how fast he shifted, she thought. While she was not surprised by the CTU agent’s reaction, she was more than a little disappointed that he had so easily—and predictably—made the same assumptions as everyone else. No matter how hard she worked, no matter what she accomplished, every time her colleagues discovered the identity of her father, they immediately assumed that she had attained her rank and position through nepotism rather than merit.
Captain Schneider rose, tucked the file under her arm. When she spoke, she added frost to her own voice. “Agent Almeida, I’d like to meet this expert of yours, see for myself how the decryption is progressing.”
9:41:24 P.M. EDT John F. Kennedy International Airport
Jack’s first sensation was pain. His ribs felt bruised. Something warm and sticky had trickled from his head to the side of his face. He heard a crackle. Without moving a muscle, Jack slowly opened one eye to find a live wire dangling from a shattered panel near his head. When he glanced down, he saw the steel bracelet was still clamped to his wrist, but on the other end of the chain was a pair of empty cuffs, the key missing from his pocket. Jack took a deep breath and almost gagged on the thick smoke he’d thought for a moment was just his hazy vision.
The aircraft’s interior emergency lights were still functioning, the fuselage tilted at an odd angle. Jack realized that he’d been thrown into a corner and the airline seat had broken loose from its mount and covered him. Squinting through his eyelashes, he saw Arete standing near an emergency exit. He was having trouble opening the door. The impact of the crash probably had jammed the hatch.
Stumbling through the smoke, the pilot emerged from the forward compartment, fumbled for the handgun at his belt. Arete froze, unarmed and helpless. Then a shot boomed loud, followed by another. The pilot was thrown back, into a bulkhead—dead before he hit the ground. Frank Hensley emerged from the shadows, reloading the Glock.
He looked at Arete. “Where’s Bauer?”
“Why the hell should I help you, amigo? You were gonna shoot right through me.”
“Don’t be a jackass,” Hensley replied. “I was bluffing. Talking tough. You should know all about that. Anyway, I just shot that pilot to cover your ass.”
Arete rubbed his wrist where the cuffs had chafed him. Then he kicked the stubborn emergency hatch. “Bauer’s over there, man. Under that goddamned chair. It don’t matter anyway. We ain’t getting out of here alive...”
Hensley glanced in Jack’s direction, spied Bauer’s legs sticking out of a pile of wreckage. He pulled latex gloves and a handkerchief out of his pocket, donned the gloves, and carefully wiped down the Glock with the handkerchief. Then he shifted the Glock to his left hand, drew his service revolver with his right, and approached Bauer.
Through his half-closed eyes, Jack had been watching Hensley. But playing dead in a burning aircraft was no longer an option. He had to act. When Hens-ley hauled the chair away, Jack grabbed the live wire above him and shoved the still-sparking tip against Hensley’s left arm. The FBI agent yowled and jumped backward, simultaneously discharging the revolver and letting go of the Glock. The shot missed Jack, who was already rolling away, snapping up the Glock before diving behind the cover of upended seats.
“Kill him, man!” Arete was frantic. Over the crackling fire and popping steel,
they heard the distant sound of sirens. “You better waste him fast. If he starts talking—”
“Shut up!” Hensley spied Jack a moment later and opened fire.
Arete kept clutching his head and moaning. “I don’t wanna die here.”
Pinned, Jack looked around for an exit, saw one not five feet away—through five feet of open space. He’d have to get there, release the lever, and hope it wouldn’t jam before Hensley had time to hit him. Jack figured his chances were less than ten percent, but he had no choice.
Suddenly the broken aircraft lurched again, setting off a series of explosions from somewhere outside. The force of the successive blasts rocked the airplane and bounced its inhabitants around. Two things happened next: Hensley was jerked against a table bolted to the floor. He flipped over it and struck his head, his service revolver tumbling to Dante Arete’s feet. And the jammed hatch that wouldn’t budge for Dante a few moments before burst open, filling the choking compartment with cool night air.
Arete didn’t hesitate. He snatched Hensley’s weapon and jumped through the exit. Jack cried out, stumbled to his feet. Still clutching the Glock, he bolted for the same exit, stopping in the doorway to see Arete’s heading. Then he turned around and tried to find Hensley, but the smoke had become too thick.
In the choking darkness of the fuselage, he bumped into the corpse of one of the murdered Federal agents. Jack reached into the man’s jacket, found a loaded Browning Hi-Power and some extra ammo.
Jack had to make a choice and he knew it. He gave up trying to find Hensley. Instead he climbed out of the shattered aircraft and took off across the tarmac, in pursuit of the fugitive Arete.
9:52:09 P.M. EDT CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Milo Pressman sat at his workstation, located between Jamey Farrell’s cubicle and the auxiliary computer station where Doris had set up shop.
Milo had been complaining for hours, to anyone who would listen, about being called back to work and away from his girlfriend. Apparently the whole mess was a relationship wrecker, or so he told Jamey Farrell.
“Look,” said Jamey. “Either she understands what you do or she doesn’t.”
“Tina used to understand. Now she doesn’t.”
Milo’s pocket sent out ringtones of a Green Day download. Of course it was Tina. The cell phone conversation quickly degenerated into an argument. Jamey and Doris heard every word on Milo’s end. He hadn’t bothered trying to make the call private.
Jamey decided to fill in some blanks for Doris.
“Of course I’m not with some other woman,” Milo told his girlfriend.
“No,” whispered Jamey. “But your tongue was sure hanging out when Tony introduced you to Captain Schneider.”
Doris pushed up her large glasses with her index finger. “What’s a girl like that got that we haven’t got?”
Jamey shrugged and smiled. “Blond hair, rich daddy, and a sexy drawl that makes men drool.”
Doris smiled back and shook her head. “Barbie in a uniform. Hardly seems fair.”
9:55:21 P.M. EDT John F. Kennedy International Airport
“Agent Hensley! Agent Hensley!”
Sirens wailed, emergency lights flashed. In the distance, a massive aircraft hangar burned, orange flames licking the black night sky. A firefighter cupped blackened hands around his mouth and called out for Hensley one more time.
Others took up the call, their loud voices followed by the stabbing beams from a half-dozen flashlights, columns of light that cut through the smoky darkness. Deep inside the wreckage of the aircraft, someone coughed.
“Over there! He’s alive,” yelled a firefighter.
A stocky man in a gray pinstriped suit pushed past the emergency workers swathed in asbestos, splashed through the fire-retardant foam that surrounded the shattered fuselage. Feet slipping, he climbed onto the broken wing and crawled through the emergency hatch, into the cabin. “Frank! Is that you? Are you in here?”
“Over here,” a voice called weakly.
“You can’t go back there,” a fireman called. “There still fuel in those wings. It’s a miracle this aircraft didn’t explode on impact.”
Special Agent Ray Goodman ignored the man. “Frank! Talk to me, Frank,” he yelled again.
One of the firemen pointed. “I think someone’s moving over there.”
Minutes later, Goodman and the firefighter carried Frank Hensley out of the wreckage. Hensley hung limply between the two men until they reached an ambulance. Immediately, paramedics placed Hensley on a stretcher, slipped an oxygen mask over his face. The FBI agent swallowed air in great gulps. Agent Goodman loomed over him.
“What the hell happened, Frank?”
Hensley shook his head. “Don’t know...A missile, I think . . .”
“It was a missile, all right,” Goodman interrupted. “What happened to Dante Arete? The marshals, they looked like they’d both been shot.”
Hensley nodded. “It was that CTU agent, Jack Bauer. Somehow he...he must have smuggled a Glock aboard. As the pilot was making the final approach, Bauer just started shooting. Killed the marshals . . .”
Hensley gasped like a fish out of water. A paramedic steadied him but he pushed the emergency worker away, struggled to rise. “When the plane hit the ground, Bauer shot the pilot, too. Then he helped Arete escape...”
“Steady, Frank.”
“You don’t understand,” Hensley moaned behind the oxygen mask. “That man has got to be stopped— caught. Dead or alive. Jack Bauer is a traitor and a murderer and he’s got to be stopped . . .”
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 10 P.M. AND 11 P.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
10:02:02 P.M.EDT CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
“The FBI aircraft ferrying Jack Bauer and suspect Dante Arete to New York City crashed upon landing thirty minutes ago.”
Shocked, disbelieving voices erupted in the command center. Nina Myers had just descended the metal staircase leading to Jack’s glass-enclosed office. She’d gathered personnel to update the Crisis Management Team on their boss’s situation. Among the group stood Tony Almeida, Jamey Farrell, and Milo Pressman. Doris and Captain Schneider stood on the sidelines listening.
“As yet,” continued Nina Myers over the chatter, “there has been no official word on what occurred. Unofficially, I believe the airliner was shot down as it landed at JFK, perhaps to prevent Dante Arete from talking to authorities. Firefighters and emergency service personnel have only just reached the crash site. Burning debris started a major fire inside a nearby hangar, which impeded rescuers from reaching the scene—”
Jamey’s face turned ashen. “So we don’t know if there are any survivors.”
“No word yet . . .”
“Jack is carrying that new CDD satellite communicator. I can try to raise him,” Jamey offered.
“Let’s give it a little time. We’re supposed to be observing radio silence. Let’s follow protocol. Jack’s in the field. Let him contact us.”
Jamey chewed her lip. “Maybe I should activate the tracker.”
Nina nodded. “Start the protocols, but don’t transmit the signal until you get the order. For the rest of us—be advised that the Threat Clock has been pushed ahead three hours to Eastern Daylight Time.” She glanced at her watch. “That makes it 10:05:52. Synchronize your chronometers, station clocks, and personal timepieces.”
“What do we do until we hear from Jack?” Tony asked.
“If we hear from Jack?” whispered Milo.
“For starters, I want everyone to monitor all the communications coming out of New York City,” said Nina. “That means emergency radio, police bands, fire and medical services, the traffic bureau, city and county government security frequencies—the works.”
The staffers began to return to their stations. Milo heard his cell go off in his pocket. He checked the caller ID, groaned inwardly. No doubt another tearful
voice message from Tina.
“One more thing,” called Nina. “CTU is now in an official lockdown. No one leaves this building until the current crisis has been resolved ...No exceptions.”
Milo cursed, opened his cell phone, and began to toggle to Tina’s stored number. Jamey Farrell reached out and snapped the lid closed.
“We have a situation on our hands, Milo. Get busy. You and your girlfriend can kiss and make up some other night.”
10:28:52 P.M.EDT Queens, New York
The tavern was called Tatiana’s—a seedy dive situated at the end of a dead end street in an industrial section of Queens. A cinder-block building with thick, glass-brick windows, Tatiana’s was trimmed with electric-blue neon and topped by a skylight and a satellite dish. Its litter-strewn parking lot was crammed with a mixture of pimped-up SUVs, tricked out high-performance cars, Harley-Davidson hogs, and, oddly, a late-model black Mercedes with New York plates.
Tatiana’s was the epicenter of activity in this lonely area of urban blight, and it was Dante Arete’s destination after escaping Federal custody. Running from the chaos at the airport, Arete had slipped through JFK’s perimeter fence, crossed a busy highway, and passed through a neighborhood of run-down two-story row houses. Finally he entered a forsaken industrial area of concrete, grime, and graffiti—the last of which appeared to be gang tags. Small factories and automotive repair shops lined either side of the potholed street, occasionally interrupted by a long stretch of chain-link fence capped by barbed wire or an abandoned building shuttered tight.
An unseen shadow in the warm, close night, Jack Bauer had stalked the fugitive’s every step. Though he wasn’t certain where he was in relation to Manhattan, Jack knew he was still close to JFK because, every two minutes or so, airplanes roared low overhead as they made their final approach. Soon Jack would activate the GPS system embedded in his CDD communicator and determine his exact location. But Jack couldn’t risk stopping for any reason. Dante Arete was moving fast, and Jack was determined to shadow him until he reached his final destination.
24 Declassified: 01 - Operation Hell Gate Page 4