“Royalty ain’t cheap. These girls, they live on Sutton Place.”
“Don’t worry about money, cholo. Tonight, you talkin’ to the ruler.”
Dante reached over the back of his chair, pulled the silver attaché case from a bin under the backseat. He laid the case across his lap, patted it.
“In here, I’m tellin’ you, I’ve got me a king’s ransom.”
The gang-banger nodded and licked his lips as Dante unsnapped the locks. Then he lifted the lid. Beneath the stacks of money that Griff had flashed him in Tatiana’s parking lot, the one-pound block of C4 detonated.
There were two triggers on the attaché case. In the event one failed, the other would still set off the plastic explosives. Griff had activated both before handing over the closed case. The blast sent the SUV’s sunroof upward, to dash itself against the roof overhead. The windows and doors flew off the white SUV, sending debris and glass blowing outward in a wide and deadly arc.
Sitting directly beneath the superheated blast, Dante Arete was instantly vaporized. The twitching body of his bald lieutenant—burned beyond recognition and still ablaze—was tossed out of the van and over the concrete wall that separated the traffic lanes.
A truck heading to Queens in the opposite direction pulverized what was left of the burning man.
The SUV, billowing orange fire and black smoke, rolled a few feet forward before it was ripped apart by a secondary explosion that spread wreckage and burning gasoline flowing across two lanes of the enclosed roadway.
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 A.M. AND 3 A.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
2:02:03 A.M.EDT CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jamey Farrell divided her attention between the latest Domestic Security Alert on her main screen—now more than two hours old—and a data window on the upper right-hand side of the HDTV monitor, where Dante Arete’s movements on the East Coast were tracked by a GPS program that detected the signal from the microchip embedded under the gangbanger’s skin.
Evaluating the daily Security Alert was an important part of Jamey’s job. The highly classified watch list was compiled by Richard Walsh’s staff in Washington, D.C., and issued electronically every evening at midnight, Eastern Daylight Time. The DSA cited every event occurring inside the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii within the next twenty-four-hour cycle that might pose a security threat, or attract the attention of terrorists. Every division of the CIA—including CTU—and all field agents posted in foreign capitals or the embassies of the world also received the DSA “hot list.”
There were numerous events cited in the current Domestic Security Alert. In the next twenty-four hours a United States Navy Carrier Group would be docking in San Diego; the President of the United States would fly Air Force One on a courtesy call to a Colorado Springs congressman’s district for a fund-raiser; and the Pennsylvania National Guard would conduct maneuvers in the hills of Central Pennsylvania.
Also listed on the DSA was a scheduled movement of spent nuclear fuel rods from the reactor at Three Mile Island, Pennsylvania; a charter flight from the Centers for Disease Control transporting dangerous biological specimens to New York City; and the First Lady’s motorcade visit to a kindergarten in Falls Church, Virginia, to push the President’s education agenda.
Jamey was about to catalog each item as “requiring no further action/CTULA” when she saw the red warning blip blinking inside the GPS data window. Dante Arete’s signal had vanished.
“Oh, damn.”
Jamey thought the problem might be a malfunction, or perhaps the battery in Arete’s subdermal tracker failed much sooner than expected. But when she tried to send a signal to the device, she received no reply—though she should have gotten a single blip in response from the chip’s fail-safe system, even if the device lost all power. The only way the tracker would completely fail to respond was if it was destroyed— which was only possible if Dante Arete’s body had been utterly annihilated.
Heart racing, Jamey reversed the tracking mode camera and retraced the path of the GPS blip back to the second it vanished. The signal ceased transmitting thirty-five seconds before she’d looked up—more than a minute ago when accounting for the East Coast/West Coast signal delay. It took another minute for Jamey to switch from terrain mode, and to overlay the map grid of New York City on the GPS path. As the images were forming on her main screen, it first appeared to Jamey that Dante Arete’s signal vanished over the East River. Finally, the three-dimensional image of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge appeared. The blip had vanished in the middle of the span.
Jamey activated a subsystem that could immediately interface with emergency services departments in dozens of major American metropolitan areas. She keyed in the EMS code for New York City, and ten seconds later a massive log of 911 calls appeared on her monitor.
Before Jamey could even begin to scan the contents a new call appeared on top of the 911 roster—one that alerted the New York Police Department and Fire Department about an accident in the middle of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. According to the frantic 911 call, a white, late-model SUV was engulfed in flames—or possibly an explosion. A subsequent caller reported multiple fatalities.
Jamey stared at the screen in disbelief. The phone beeped and she hit the intercom. “Yes?”
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“It’s Nina.”
“God, Nina I just lost—”
Nina interrupted her. “Listen, Jamey, we don’t have much time. I have Jack on the line. He’s just dumped new intelligence in our lap, including the possible identity of the men with the missile launcher. Now Jack needs an update on Dante Arete’s position.”
2:14:10 A.M.EDT Tatiana’s Tavern
Jack took the news about Arete’s death hard. Their best lead—gone. He ended the call with Jamey Farrell and contacted Ryan Chappelle.
Diplomatically, Georgi Timko chose that moment to “get more tea.” Cups in hand, the Ukrainian mobster left Jack alone in his office to speak to his superior in private, though Jack already assumed Timko had bugged the place.
“You heard about Arete?” Jack began.
“Nina just told me,” Chappelle replied, “but I didn’t have time for a thorough briefing—”
“Listen, I don’t know if I mentioned the fact that the Lynch brothers slipped Dante an attaché case when they met up with him—”
“The Lynch brothers?”
“The men in the Mercedes. The ones who drove away with the missile launcher in their trunk,” Jack explained, impatient that Chappelle had not bothered to keep up with the events he’d already relayed to the command center.
“What about these Lynch brothers, Jack?”
“I think they placed a bomb in that case to take Arete out.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Weren’t they the guys who shot the FBI airplane down to help Arete escape?”
“Maybe Arete’s outlived his usefulness now that CTU’s exposed his activities,” said Jack. “Or maybe it had something to do with the deal Dante Arete made with Special Agent Hensley.”
Jack heard a deep sigh on the other end. “What’s wrong?”
“Special Agent Hensley is talking to his bosses, Jack. He fingered you for the murder of the two Federal marshals, for shooting the pilot, and for helping Dante Arete escape.”
“That’s crazy. I told you Frank Hensley’s the traitor.”
“Naturally the FBI is having a little trouble buying that. Hensley is a highly decorated field agent. He’s been on the job for close to five years. That’s longer than CTU’s been around.”
“So what are you telling me?”
“We’re doing everything on our end to get to the bottom of things, but I’ve got to tell you some of the other agencies are shutting CTU out, and the FBI is not cooperating. The bad news is the FBI has issued a warrant for your arrest.”
A long moment of silence followed. Then Cha
ppelle spoke. “As it stands right now, you’re on your own, Jack.”
The line went dead and Jack lowered the cell phone. As if on cue, Georgi Timko returned with two mugs of sweet, steaming tea. He set one in front of Jack. Then he sat behind his desk and took a sip from his own cup.
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“Bad news?”
Jack did not answer the question. Instead he leaned across Timko’s battered metal desk. “The Lynch boys and Arete’s punks tried to kill you, Georgi. Don’t you want revenge?”
The Ukrainian chuckled. “Of course. And I will get my pound of flesh from those Irish punks and the Mexicans, too—but in my time, Mr. Jack Bauer. Not on your timetable, or your government’s.”
Jack frowned, rubbed his chin. The first signs of stubble were sprouting.
“But . . . since you saved my life, I feel I owe you something,” Timko added. He pulled a Queens phone book out from under his desk, paged through it. He circled something on the Yellow Pages section, then tore a page out.
“Griffin and Shamus Lynch run a Green Dragon store in Forest Hills. It’s part of a franchise. Computer sales and repair.” He handed the page to Jack. “Here’s the address and phone number. But they do most of their real work out of an Irish pub under an elevated subway train on Roosevelt Avenue. The pub is called The Last Celt. It’s owned by a retired Westie gangster named Donnie Murphy, who is connected to the right people, even though he took himself out of the game a long time ago. Murphy has protected the Lynch boys ever since they arrived on the scene.”
“Protected?”
“In this town, everyone needs protection, Mr. Jack Bauer. Even a remarkably resourceful man such as yourself.”
“No. Right now, all I need is my weapon.”
Timko folded his hands, held Jack’s eyes.
Jack shrugged. “Okay, I guess I could also use directions to this pub, a car, and extra ammunition. Maybe a backup weapon, too, but nothing as flashy as an AK–47—if that’s all right with you and Yuri.”
Timko smiled, nodded, picked up the phone, and began to punch in numbers. “It’s very late, Mr. Jack Bauer, but let us see what I can do.”
2:27:56 A.M.EDT CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Doris hit the delete key, then waited for the results. After five or six seconds, the cache registered zero percent memory and she moved on to the next bundle. After noting this data bundle’s size, she pressed delete once again. This time the system seemed to stall, and Doris tapped her heel impatiently waiting for the program to obey her command.
After Captain Schneider had collected the memory stick for a physical analysis, Doris made a copy of the data downloaded from the device, then stored the original in CTU’s main database. With a specimen safely preserved for the archives, Doris set to work “dissecting” the copy. First she isolated the different data streams, using a variety of self-invented techniques she created to hack programs for her uncle to replicate—and produce cheap knockoffs—in his Oakland, California, toy factory. With the data streams isolated, Doris began to delete them, one at a time. Her goal was to annihilate the program—eradicate it completely—in an effort to discover its architecture, to pick at its bones.
There were amazing things buried in the simplest programs, information of all kinds. Sometimes the
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creators of a subprogram inadvertently buried information, or hid it on purpose. Watermarks, access, security protocols, and slicing codes—sometimes complete software engineering documentation or embedded schematics were waiting to be discovered and decoded by just the right application of an outside program.
In the past Doris had tested the various reverse-engineering programs floating around in cyberspace or available commercially, but she never much cared for any of them. Instead she dismantled each program she’d come across and used the best pieces to create her personal reverse-engineering monster. She called it Frankie, short for Frankenstein, because her creation was a monstrosity cobbled together from bits and pieces just like the monster. And like the monster, Frankie was also a being that was much more than the sum of its parts. Using Frankie’s phenomenal capabilities, Doris had dismantled the memory stick’s software piece by piece, while mapping its secrets.
Frankie was nearly a decade old now, the first bones put in place back when Doris started working for her uncle. In those days, she never thought much of her hacking skills—not until she went to a conference sponsored by the Working Forum on Reverse Engineering to “pick up a few tips.” The WFORE board members were so impressed by the young woman’s innovative methodology for recovering buried information and systems artifacts from software, they invited her to join their organization. Doris had just turned sixteen.
An urgent beep shocked Doris awake. She blinked and rubbed her eyes, not sure she’d read the screen correctly.
“System failed to execute command!?”
That had never happened before. Never.
She sighed. “If at first you don’t succeed...”
Doris called up the bundle again, checked the cache size—the same as before. But before she pressed delete she kick-started the dumping process by opening another bundle for the data to flow into. Sometimes that trick worked for stubborn programs that refused to go away.
Again there was a long lag time before she got a response.
“Failed again!”
Doris called up the cache—but found that all but approximately five percent of the program had indeed been eradicated. A stubborn subset of data remained in the cache, however. Doris suspected it was some remnant of an interfacing program, something that allowed the data she’d erased to be used in another program. Setting the problem aside for the moment, Doris moved on to the next bundle of data.
But five cache deletes later it happened again—a stubborn five percent of the memory cache refused to be deleted no matter what she tried.
Doris issued a tiny squeal of frustration.
2:36:19 A.M.EDT Tatiana’s Tavern
Yuri appeared at the office door, jerked his head. Georgi rose and roused Jack Bauer, who had fallen asleep in his chair after a long phone conversation with someone named Almeida.
“Your car has arrived, Mr. Bauer.”
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Jack rubbed sleep out of his eyes. “What time is it?” He blinked when he saw the weapons and ammunition on Georgi Timko’s desk.
Jack ignored the shotgun, but lifted the Heckler & Koch Mark 23 USP, the .45-caliber self-loading version of the smaller, lighter USP Tactical, which Jack had used during his stint at Delta Force. The standard Mark 23 lacked the bells and whistles of the Tactical model—including the O-ring barrel that allowed the use of a KAC suppressor, and the rear target sight adjustment. But more important to Jack, the Mark 23 had the same ambidextrous magazine release just behind the trigger guard as the high-end Tactical. This allowed ejection of the spent magazine using the thumb or index finger without having to readjust one’s grip on the weapon—an essential feature for quick reloading and accurate fire.
“The best I could do in such short notice,” Georgi said apologetically.
Jack checked the pistol’s extractor, which doubled as a loaded chamber indicator. The magazine was full, but to satisfy himself the readout was accurate, Jack pulled the slide back slightly and looked inside. There were additional magazines on the desk— twelve of them—each loaded with a dozen .45caliber slugs.
Jack was accustomed to using 9mm rounds, not the bigger .45-caliber slugs. But with the Mark 23’s recoil-reduction system, which featured a spring within a spring, Jack knew the felt recoil would be dampened enough for him to switch to the harder-hitting ammunition without difficulty.
Offering sincere thanks to Timko, Jack engaged the safety and slipped the weapon into his shoulder holster. Then he pocketed the extra ammunition in his pants, shirt, and jacket pockets.
“Take the shotgun as well, Mr. Jack Bauer,” Georgi insisted. “You never know when you might have to shoot something bigger than a man.
”
Jack snapped up the double-barreled, sawed-off weapon and rested it on his shoulders. Then he followed Georgi outside. They avoided the bar area, where the sounds of construction continued, to exit through a back door hidden between the tavern’s outdoor Dumpsters.
“My escape hatch,” Georgi explained.
Emerging from behind the smelly garbage bins, Jack found himself in Tatiana’s parking lot. Outside the night had cooled somewhat, but the humidity level remained high, much higher than LA. The sky was clear and cloudless, the parking lot nearly empty. Yuri was waiting for them, leaning against a 1998 cherry-red Ford Mustang Cobra convertible. He tossed the keys to Jack.
“I’ve given you directions to The Last Celt. Sadly I could not provide the proper paperwork for the automobile, so I advise you not to get stopped by the New York Police. They may ask some embarrassing questions . . .”
Jack slid behind the wheel. “I’ll try to get the car back to you as soon as I can,” he said.
“Do not worry about it,” Timko replied with a dismissive wave. “The car is not mine.”
Jack inserted the key into the ignition and the 305horsepower V8 engine roared to life. A moment later Georgi Timko and Yuri watched as Jack sped into the night. When Jack was gone, Georgi shook his head. “I certainly hope the real owner of that superb automo
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bile has taken out plenty of insurance. With Mr. Jack Bauer behind the wheel, he’ll need it.”
2:45:13 A.M.EDT CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
“The serial number on the bus port of the memory stick matches one manufactured in Shanghai and imported by a Swiss firm called Abraxsus-Gelder LLC,” Captain Jessica Schneider began. “The shipment it came in passed through United States customs in May of last year and this particular component was purchased by a Green Dragon Computers store in Little Tokyo, right here in Los Angeles.”
While she spoke, Captain Schneider tapped the blue folder that lay closed on the conference room table. She’d compiled the data herself, so she didn’t have to refer to her notes to know what they said. Her update to the Crisis Management Team was concise and informative.
24 Declassified: 01 - Operation Hell Gate Page 9