Book Read Free

24 Declassified: 01 - Operation Hell Gate

Page 25

by Marc A. Cerasini


  Jack weighed his options, deciding he would have to crawl along the catwalk for the last fifty yards if he wanted to take his enemies by surprise. If he stood or even crouched, Jack would be exposed—the man with the binoculars or the men at the tripod would spot him, cut him down before he got close.

  Before he could move, Jack felt the catwalk vibrate under him, heard the distant rumble of a train cross

  307

  ing the long span. He glanced over his shoulders to see a locomotive was rolling over the park, barreling toward him.

  Jack was pleased. He could use the train as a shield to mask his progress, cover the noise of his feet on the mesh grating. He could run alongside the train until he reached a point opposite the terrorists—if he moved fast enough.

  Rising to a sprinter’s crouch, Jack waited until the engine reached him. The bridge shook like a Los Angeles earthquake under his feet; the noise became a shrill, pounding roar that battered his ears. Finally the train reached him, and Jack took off in a run.

  Feet pounding, Jack thundered down the catwalk, the sound of his footsteps mingling with the thunder of the rolling Amtrak cars. Quickly—too quickly— the final car rolled by him and down the tracks. Jack dropped flat on the catwalk as the roar receded, poked his head up a moment later. The man with the binoculars was directly across from him, separated only by the train tracks.

  He shifted the weapon in his grip, wiped the sweat from his palm. Still on his belly, Jack crawled to the side of the tracks, over the first rail—still hot from the friction of the train’s passing. Jack crawled quickly across the wooden ties, then over the second rail. He slipped into a shallow depression between the tracks, then moved to the next set of rails.

  Jack heard excited voices. The men at the tripod jumped to their feet, and Jack spied Taj as he raced from the shed to the Long Tooth missile launcher. With the others, Taj stared at the green glowing screen affixed to the launcher. From his vantage

  point, Jack could see a single blip on the screen. The CDC aircraft had arrived. Time had run out.

  Caitlin watched as Taj bolted from the shed, ran to the missile launcher. Omar Bayat followed his leader to join the others. The Afghanis clustered around the tripod, talking excitedly.

  Caitlin looked up to find Griff still perched on the roof of the shed. But he was not watching the others. Griff squinted into the darkness, staring across the tracks.

  Hensley emerged from the shed a moment later. He saw Griff peering into the darkness. “What’s the matter?”

  Griff frowned. “I saw movement on the tracks. Someone is out there.”

  “Maybe it’s your brother?”

  Griff shook his head, still staring at the tracks. “He wouldn’t be sneaking up on us.”

  Hensley followed Griff’s gaze. “I don’t see anything—”

  A shot rang out. An Afghani next to Taj clutched his throat and tumbled over the edge of the bridge. The others scattered, diving for cover. Another shot was followed by a howl. A third shot silenced the wounded man.

  “He’s over there, across the tracks!” Griff cried, pointing. He was crouching now, but remained on the roof of the shed. Hensley reached into his jacket, drew his FBI-issue handgun.

  “It’s Jack Bauer. I’m sure of it. I’m going to flank him, finish him off.”

  “Go,” said Griff, dragging an Uzi from his belt. “I’ll keep the bastard pinned until you clip him.”

  309

  Still crouching, Griff aimed the Uzi into the darkness and squeezed off a burst. Sparks erupted as the bullets bounced off the steel rails.

  “It’s Bauer!” Hensley cried from somewhere out of sight. “He’s pinned between the tracks. Pour it on!”

  Griff fired away, the noise deafening. Caitlin thought of Jack out there on the tracks, pinned down and waiting to be ambushed, and she did not hesitate.

  With a shrill cry she jumped to her feet and threw herself against Griffin Lynch. She slammed against his legs with her full weight. Surprised by her sudden move, Lynch dropped the Uzi as he reached for a steel cable—and missed.

  With an expression of shocked surprise, he tumbled over the edge of the bridge.

  Her own momentum carried Caitlin across the shed’s roof. Now she dangled precariously over the black water. Gunfire rattled around her as Caitlin tried desperately to crawl to safety. Someone jumped onto the roof, grabbed her. Caitlin rolled onto her back, looked up—into the murderous eyes of Omar Bayat. The man pointed his Uzi at her breast—then his head exploded, showering Caitlin with hot blood, brains, and bone shrapnel. The headless corpse spilled over the edge to vanish in the yawning black currents below.

  Caitlin whimpered, tried to wipe the gore from her face. Then strong hands grabbed her, pulled her back from the brink. A moment later, she was clutching Jack Bauer.

  “We have to move!” he cried.

  More gunfire spattered the metal support beams around them. Jack pushed Caitlin along the catwalk, toward Astoria Park.

  “We can’t leave, Jack!” Caitlin cried. “Those men are going to shoot an airplane down.”

  “No they won’t!”

  To Caitlin’s surprise, Jack pushed her onto the train tracks, forced her down on the wooden ties between the rails. “Stay here,” he hissed. “And no matter what you hear, don’t move.”

  She opened her mouth to protest, but Jack was already gone.

  Jack ran back toward the missile launcher and the men clustered around it. He was stopped by a sustained stream of automatic weapon fire. Bullets twanged off the steel beams, eliciting sparks. Jack saw Taj at the tripod, aiming the missile launcher at the fast-darkening sky. The Afghani was mere seconds away from pulling the trigger.

  He knew he had no hope of reaching the terrorists before the missile was fired. Nor could he get a clear shot—every time Jack tried to aim, his movements were met with a hail of bullets. Jack looked up, at the bridge supports rising over his head. He was searching for a way to get around the shooters, to flank them. Then he spied the electrical wires strung along the tracks.

  Of course!

  The trains that ran across Hell Gate Bridge were electric, not diesel-powered. Thousands of volts moved through those live wires. A second peek told Jack that the Afghanis were all standing on the steel catwalk. He jumped up, rolled across the railroad tracks to land on his back. Lying across the wooden ties, Jack aimed the .45 at the wires and emptied the magazine.

  311

  The wires didn’t snap until he’d fired his last shot. Jack watched as the live wire dropped onto the catwalk. The blue flash was so bright, Jack had to shield his eyes. He smelled ozone and heard screams as thousands of volts coursed through the Afghanis, causing their bodies to jerk convulsively before they burst into flames. The tripod was also electrified, and carried the current to the Long Tooth missile launcher. One of the two missiles exploded in its tube, adding to the fiery chaos.

  A moment later, the noise died away as safety breakerscut thepower to thecables, andthe span wasonce again plunged into darkness. Jack rose, ran along the tracks to Caitlin. The woman sat up at his approach, rubbed her eyes. Jack helped Caitlin to her feet.

  “Oh god, Jack. Is it over?”

  Jack opened his mouth to speak, then his eyes went wide. He pushed Caitlin to the side, and she heard two shots. She saw Jack fall, his gun discharging once as he went down. She whirled to find Frank Hensley behind her. The man’s legs were braced, he clutched a weapon in his hand, but his eyes were clouded, and he seemed to sway in the wind.

  Then Caitlin saw a hole in the center of Hensley’s chest, the spreading stain. The man opened his mouth and black blood oozed out. Slowly, he sank to his knees, then pitched forward, sprawling across the tracks.

  Caitlin heard a moan, saw Jack stumbling to his feet.

  “Jack, are you hurt?”

  “He clipped me, but I’m not dead yet.”

  Caitlin ran to him, draped Jack’s good arm over her shoulder and wrapped her own arms arou
nd him.

  “Let’s get you to a doctor,” she said.

  “Don’t need a doctor,” grunted Jack. “What I need is a good night’s sleep.”

  Arm in arm, they limped across the bridge, toward the distant shore.

  epilogue

  After Jack Bauer wound up his part of the debriefing, the conference room was quiet for a long moment. Finally, Richard Walsh spoke. “Talk about Frank Hens-ley. Has your team come up with anything?”

  Jack leaned back in his chair, finally relaxing now that the whole of this mission was out of him. “Hensley was a mole.”

  “Can’t be, Jack. No mole could get past the FBI’s screening process; their background checks are legendary.”

  Jack shook his head. “I had Nina contact the Pentagon, retrieve Hensley’s military records. Tony went over it all, discovered that Hensley’s pre-Iraqi records, including his fingerprints, had been tampered with— probably by another mole somewhere in the Pentagon. We went back even further, discovered that when Hensley was a teenager, he was fingerprinted for a security assistant’s job at a local department store in Morgantown, West Virginia. We accessed those old prints and compared them with the fingerprints on file in the FBI’s personnel office.”

  Jack met Walsh’s incredulous stare. “The prints didn’t match. The man who went to war in Desert Storm and the man who came back to America were not the same.”

  “999?” Walsh guessed.

  Jack nodded. “The real Frank Hensley was a true war hero. He was captured by the Iraqi forces during Desert Storm and taken to Baghdad. We know that for a fact. What happened after that is speculation, but we suspect he was tortured and murdered by 999, Iraqi’s secret special operations service. They likely extracted enough personal information from Hensley to replace him with one of their own. His parents were no longer living. Some plastic surgery and a standoffish attitude after the war would have helped him make the transition back into civilian life.”

  “But he had a wife?”

  “Not until after the war. He met and married a woman whose father was a Federal judge. That alliance would have helped him into the FBI. Over the years, Hensley forged more alliances, and not with more judges. He began to make deals with the criminals he was supposedly investigating. But the big payoff he promised Felix Tanner and Fiona Brice, the Lynch brothers and Dante Arete, it was all a lie. The plot to blow up airliners to extort money was really just a mask for Hensley’s real mission to down the CDC airplane and unleash a pandemic on New York City and most likely the entire Northeastern seaboard. From what Caitlin told us about what she overheard, Taj and the Afghanis were in on the real plot, and were willing accomplices.”

  “And Dennis Spain, Senator Cheever’s aide?”

  “He disappeared. The FBI is looking for him,

  315

  but . . .” Jack turned his palms to the ceiling. “Noth

  ing so far.”

  “And the Senator’s in the clear?”

  Jack frowned. “Not with me.”

  Walsh nodded. With thumb and forefinger he smoothed his walrus mustache. “And what about that anonymous tipster? The one who triggered this whole mission with the events at LAX? Ever get an ID?”

  “That one was easy. A voice analysis of the tape message proved the man’s identity conclusively—it was Georgi Timko. It seems Georgi’s brother was a HIND helicopter pilot in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. His chopper was shot down by insurgents; Georgi’s brother died in Afghan captivity. I guess Timko felt he had some unfinished business with Taj and his followers . . .”

  “So it’s over now?”

  Jack shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Time will tell.”

  Walsh switched the tape recorder off, signaling the end of the official debriefing. Jack rose, gathered the papers spread out across the table.

  “One more thing,” said Walsh. “The crap hit the fan so fast, we never came up with a name for this operation. Any thoughts?”

  Jack nodded. “Call it Operation Hell Gate.”

  “Why?”

  “The police never recovered the body of Griffin Lynch. A detective told me it was because of the unnatural turbulence under that railroad bridge.”

  Walsh blinked. “Excuse me?”

  “There’s a nexus beneath the bridge, a spot where the Harlem and East rivers merge with Long Island Sound to create riptides and deadly whirlpools powerful enough to swallow even the strongest swimmer. One urban legend says a World War Two Air Force bomber ditched under the bridge and vanished without a trace.”

  “Your point?”

  Jack shrugged. “Arete’s gang, the Afghanis, Griffin and Shamus Lynch, they were like those waters under the bridge, all had their own directions. It took Frank Hensley to bring the factions together into something devastatingly deadly. To bring them to one place.”

  “Hell Gate?” Walsh chewed on it for a minute. “Okay...good name.” He pushed back from the table and unfolded his large frame to its full height. “Jack, I have to be straight with you. Nobody in Washington’s gonna buy the connection to 999 . . . that Frank Hensley was a mole planted by Iraqi special ops.”

  “Why not?”

  “Most likely reason . . . it’ll make them look bad.”

  Jack swallowed his frustration.

  “Either way,” said Walsh, “the threat’s been neutralized.” He checked his watch then extended his hand. “Thanks, Jack.”

  Still distracted, Jack shook. “Sure. If you need any more information—”

  “No, son. You misunderstood me.” Walsh smiled. “Thanks, Jack.”

  acknowledgments

  The author would like to thank Hope Innelli and Josh Behar of HarperCollins for their vision, guidance, and support. Thanks also to Virginia King of 20th Century Fox for her continued encouragement.

  Very special acknowledgment to the groundbreaking, Emmy Award-winning “24” creators Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran, and to their talented writing team. And especially to Keifer Sutherland for bringing the memorable character of Jack Bauer to life.

  Thanks to my literary agent, John Talbot, for his ongoing support. And a very personal thank you to my wife, Alice Alfonsi. A guy couldn’t ask for a better partner—in writing or in life.

  About the Author

  MARC CERASINI

  MARC CERASINI’s writing credits include The Complete Idiot’s Guide to U.S. Special Ops Forces and Heroes: U.S. Marine Corps Medal of Honor Winners and several projects for Tom Clancy, including creating the bible for the Clancy Power Play series, writing the YA action/adventure thriller The Ultimate Escape for Clancy’s NetForce series, and writing a major essay on Clancy’s contribution to the technothriller genre for the national bestseller The Tom Clancy Companion. Among the movie tie-in novelizations Marc has written are Wolverine: Weapon X, based on the popular X-Men series; the USA Today bestseller AVP: Alien Vs. Predator, based on the motion picture from 20th Century Fox; as well as five original novels based on the Toho Studios classic “Godzilla,” and co-authored (with

  J.D. Lees) a nonfiction look at the film series, The Official Godzilla Compendium. Marc’s other credits include the book 24: The House Special Subcommittee Investigation of CTU, which he co-authored with his wife, Alice Alfonsi.

  www.fox.com/24

  Visit www.AuthorTracker.com for exclusive information on your favorite HarperCollins author.

  24 DECLASSIFIED Books

  Operation Hell Gate

  Coming Soon

  Veto Power Trojan Horse

  Copyright

  This book is a work of fiction. The characters, incidents, and dialogue are drawn from the author’s imagination and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.

  24 DECLASSIFIED OPERATION HELL GATE. Copyright © 2005 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the
non-exclusive, nontransferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.

  Adobe Acrobat eBook Reader February 2007 ISBN 978-0-06-128654-4

  10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1

  About the Publisher

  Australia

  HarperCollins Publishers (Australia) Pty. Ltd. 25 Ryde Road (PO Box 321) Pymble, NSW 2073, Australia http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com.au

  Canada

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 55 Avenue Road, Suite 2900 Toronto, ON, M5R, 3L2, Canada http://www.harpercollinsebooks.ca

  New Zealand

  HarperCollinsPublishers (New Zealand) Limited

  P.O. Box 1 Auckland, New Zealand http://www.harpercollinsebooks.co.nz

  United Kingdom

  HarperCollins Publishers Ltd. 77-85 Fulham Palace Road London, W6 8JB, UK http://www.uk.harpercollinsebooks.com

  United States

  HarperCollins Publishers Inc. 10 East 53rd Street New York, NY 10022 http://www.harpercollinsebooks.com

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Dedication Page

  Epigraph Page

  Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter One

  Chapter Two

  Chapter Three

  Chapter Four

  Chapter Five

  Chapter Six

  Chapter Seven

  Chapter Eight

  Chapter Nine

  Chapter Ten

  Chapter Eleven

  Chapter Twelve

  Chapter Thirteen

  Chapter Fourteen

 

‹ Prev