“I heard a noise,” said Adam, rising quickly.
Though the two wives had been dozing in their chairs, they were awake now too, and whispering nervously. In the sub-basement’s gloom, Adam spied Craig Auburn close to the crank phone, where he’d
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collapsed. He was lying on the ground now, his right hand still holding his left arm. His eyes were closed, his breathing shallow.
A terrible crash boomed, as loud as a landslide.
“Jesus,” Megan whispered. “What’s that?”
Adam informed her, “From what Special Agent Auburn said before he passed out, that’s the calvary....I hope.”
Megan blanched. “You hope?”
At the far end of a long corridor, Adam saw flashlights stabbing through the darkness. Dark silhouettes appeared a moment later.
Raising the USP Tactical that Special Agent Auburn had given him, Adam walked resolutely toward the flashlights, the weapon leveled at the man on point.
“Who are you?” Adam loudly demanded.
“Special Agent Jack Bauer, Counter Terrorist Unit,” Jack replied.
With an audible exhale, Adam lowered the weapon. A moment later the sub-basement was filling with armed men. One of them approached the two ladies.
“I’m Special Agent Evans, Secret Service,” he told them.
“Thank god,” said the VP’s wife.
More men emerged from the gloom, flanking the two ladies and helping Marina Novartov stand on her injured leg. Adam told Evans about Auburn’s serious condition. A medic and another man were summoned to help.
“We’re walking out of here, right now,” he told the ladies and the interns. “Follow these two agents and stick close. We’re not out of danger yet.”
The group walked the length of the dark basement, until they came to an open steel hatch set in the concrete wall. Adam had found the hatch earlier and tried to open it, but it had been locked from the other side.
Just then, five women in fashionable evening gowns and high-heeled shoes emerged from the hatch. Megan shot Adam a curious look. He shrugged, shook his head. Don’t ask me.
Evans stepped up to them. “Let’s go. Through that hatch, to the sewers.”
Megan shuddered. “The sewers?”
Adam smiled and put his arm around her shoulders. “Didn’t I tell you when I first welcomed you to Washington—”
“I know, I know,” she said, “this job has its perks.”
2:13:32 A.M.PDT Chamberlain Auditorium Sub-Level Three
Jack checked the digital map display strapped to his forearm. It glowed green in the dimly lit subbasement. He assembled everyone in front of a large metal grill set into the wall. Using a universal key, Jack picked the lock. The grill swung wide like a door.
Behind the steel mesh grill an aluminum shaft climbed straight up to the Chamberlain’s roof. Steel rungs were embedded in the walls of the shaft, leading upward and out of sight. Jack could see light shining into the shaft from grills on the upper levels—the occupied floors.
“Okay, women first,” Jack whispered. Nina stepped forward, wearing a black spangled dress. The other four women were similarly attired. Jack addressed them all.
“Climb until you pass four more grills, then exit
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through the fifth. You’ll come out in a corridor right next to the women’s rest rooms on the main floor. Presumably the terrorists are allowing people to take bathroom breaks. I want you to mingle with the women returning to the auditorium, then get as close as you can to your respective targets. Understand?”
The women nodded, their faces tense.
“Take them down as soon as you hear the first shot. We’ll fire at exactly 2:45 a.m.—not a second sooner.”
Jack paused. “Remember, the success of the entire mission rests on your actions. Do not hesitate to do what is necessary to save lives. If you fail, hundreds may die.”
Jack and the snipers watched the women enter the shaft. When they climbed out of sight, Jack closed the grill behind them.
“Let’s go,” he said, leading his snipers to the next air shaft, where they would make their own climb.
2:32:27 A.M.PDT Chamberlain Auditorium Mezzanine
Jack peered through the ornate brass grill of the auditorium’s deserted mezzanine. He’d climbed the air shaft with his team of snipers following behind. Now Jack carefully scanned the darkened area, using night vision goggles to determine that every seat was empty. Listening intently, Jack heard the murmur of the crowd on the main floor below.
Silently he slipped his universal key into the slot on the grill and jiggled it. The rattle of metal sounded like an explosion, but the simple lock mechanism was easily tripped. With the squeak of metal on metal, Jack opened the ornamental grill and squirmed through the opening.
He crawled forward on his belly, moving down the aisle between rows of seats. The glass control booth was behind and above him, but it overhung the mezzanine, and even if the booth was occupied, no one would be able to see him.
As he crawled down a carpeted aisle to the mezzanine’s edge, snipers silently emerged from the shaft behind him. Jack used hand signals to position the shooters at various points until they had a complete field of fire.
Finally, Jack peered over the edge of the balcony. Below him he saw hundreds of people, in seats or sprawled on the floor. Debris was scattered on the carpet, clothing draped over seat backs. Circling the hostages along the perimeter of the auditorium, Jack counted sixteen masked men, another two on the stage. There were still two shooters unaccounted for and Jack hoped they were escorting hostages to the rest rooms. As he watched, the missing pair appeared. They began chatting with the man seated on an ornate, throne-like chair in the middle of the expansive stage.
With hand signals, Jack issued the command for the shooters to assemble their weapons. Then he assembled his own.
Jack opened the soft cloth bags he’d slung over his back during the long climb up the shaft. Carefully he unwrapped the barrel, the magazines, the sniper scope and the two receivers and stuffed the cotton packing cloths back into the bag. Quickly and efficiently, Jack assembled the 7.62mm Mark 11 Mod 0 Type Sniper Rifle System.
The Mark 11 was a highly accurate precision semi
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automatic rifle. Men who used it in the field dubbed it “an M16 on steroids.” Light, versatile and portable, the rifle could be broken down into two main sections, which made it perfect for an operation like this one.
When Jack completed assembly, he shoved a magazine in place and flipped the control switch to semiautomatic. He had to hit at least two targets in rapid succession and wanted the fastest rate of fire possible.
Near one of the auditorium’s rest rooms, Nina had just closed the brass grill behind her and smoothed her dress when a masked man appeared at the end of the marble-lined corridor. He spied the knot of women and hurried forward.
“Hey, what for you do?” he bellowed in fractured English. The man slipped the black submachine gun off his shoulder, waved it menacingly.
“Bathroom,” Nina cried, throwing up her hands. “We just went to the bathroom, that’s all.”
The other women followed Nina’s lead, threw up their hands, started to babble.
“Shuddup! Shuddup!” the gunman commanded. “Go back now. Back!”
The masked man gestured them forward, down the long marble lined corridor toward the auditorium.
As they approached the audience, Nina could hear the quiet murmur of the crowd. Another gunman who’d been guarding the doors stepped aside to allow Nina and the other women to enter the vast space. “In, in!” the armed man barked.
“Okay, we’re going,” Nina replied.
Immediately, Nina’s senses were assaulted. The interior of the auditorium reeked—an unsavory combination of stale air, fear sweat, and spilled blood. To move down the aisle, Nina had to walk past a pile of elegantly attired corpses, stacked like cordwood against a wall, rivulets of b
lood staining the lush carpeting. The muted roar of a thousand people talking, crying, sighing, whispering filled her ears.
Once inside the auditorium, the women quickly dispersed, each subtly maneuvering to move as close to their respective targets as they could get. Nina had the farthest to go—from the back of the auditorium to the front row seats where international film star Abigail Heyer waited to blow herself and a thousand of her closest Hollywood friends to Kingdom Come.
Not only did she have a long way to go, Nina had the toughest job. The other women only had to kill their targets, knocking the detonators from their hands and slitting their throats with hidden knives before the suicide bombers had a chance to set off the explosives. Nina had to stop Abigail Heyer from setting off her bomb without killing her. Nina was tasked with taking the movie star alive.
2:43:16 A.M.PDT Chamberlain Auditorium Main Floor
Carla bit down on the pink satin handbag. Her face was flushed, her skin coated with a thin sheen of perspiration. A whimper escaped her lips, which were pale and white. Dark shadows hollowed her eyes, her gaze seemed far away and lost in jets of agony.
“Oh, Jesus. Oh, God,” Carla wailed.
Teri Bauer kneeled on the floor, both hands grasping Carla’s arms to steady the woman. The contractions had started up again. Now they were less than three minutes apart. The baby was on its way.
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“You! American bitch. Keep her quiet!”
Teri looked up. A masked man watched her from the aisle, just two empty seats away. He clutched a machine gun, the strap draped over his shoulder.
Teri bit her lip. Carla howled again, louder.
“Shut her up!” barked the gunman.
Carla cried out just then, oblivious to the danger.
Angrily, the man stepped forward. “I shut her up,” he grunted.
Teri Bauer jumped to her feet, blocked the assassin’s way. Her knees trembled, but her veins were suddenly filled with burning ice and she refused to back down.
2:44:06 A.M.PDT Chamberlain Auditorium Mezzanine
Peering over the edge of the balcony, Jack had already taken aim at the masked man seated center stage. The way the others deferred to him, and the way the man clutched his Agram 2000 in the crook of his arm—“Palestinian style”—told Jack this was their leader, Bastian Grost. Though the Serbian fugitive might prove to be a valuable prisoner, Jack decided he would not take the man alive. Victor Drazen’s killers had a knack for eluding justice. But Bastian Grost wouldn’t get away with anything. Not this time.
Jack checked the digital clock inside his sniper scope. It was less than a minute before the strike. His grip tightened on the pressed Kevlar handle, his finger rested on the grooved steel trigger. As he prepared to fire, Jack’s attention was drawn to a commotion in the aisles. A gunman was gesturing wildly at a woman.
Even from this distance he recognized his wife. Jack tensed when he realized it was Teri. He swung the Mark 11 away from his target, to level the barrel at this new threat.
Squinting through the scope, he placed the crosshairs over the masked man’s forehead. As the seconds ticked down, Jack steadied his hand and held his breath.
Five seconds—
The gunman stepped into the aisle. Teri jumped to her feet to block him.
Four seconds—
“Leave her alone,” Teri shouted.
The man raised an arm, poised to strike her down, possibly kill her with a blow from the butt of his machine gun.
Three seconds—
Jack pulled the trigger. The man’s head exploded.
2:45:00 A.M.PDT Chamberlain Auditorium Main Floor
Rifles seemed to pop all over the auditorium at roughly the same time, followed by supersonic cracks as the bullets warbled toward their targets.
Everywhere armed men in black jerked wildly, or spun around, or threw their arms wide as 7.62mm rounds tore bloody holes through their flesh, bones and organs.
One masked man, his skull shattered by a single round, flopped onto the lap of Chip Manning, still
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seated beside his agent. The dead man’s brains spilled out on the star’s Helmut Lang jacket.
Tough guy Manning squealed like a little girl.
Abigail Heyer jumped to her feet when she heard the supersonic crack. She’d been watching Bastian Grost, who suddenly flew backward as two bullets blew a massive hole through his chest, and the back of his chair.
When the Heyer woman stood up, Nina Myers spied a plunger in her hand. It was black, about the size of a large hypodermic needle, and trailed two thin wires that flowed into her clothing.
Nina leaped over a seat, grabbed the woman’s arm and twisted it backward until she heard the satisfying snap of bone. The actress howled, the plunger dropped from her limp hand. But Nina didn’t relent. She jerked the broken wrist upward, forcing Abigail Heyer to bend double. Then Nina brought her forearm down on the back of the woman’s neck, smashing her to the ground.
Nina dragged the still struggling woman into the aisle, flipped her over and cut the dress away with the Gerber Guardian II double-edged knife she’d tucked into her garter. Under the shreds of designer clothing, Nina saw the white harness. She sliced the straps and yanked the prosthetic loose. The inside of the fake belly was stuffed with explosives.
“Clear!” Nina cried at the top of her lungs.
From other parts of the auditorium, she heard her words echoed several times. What she didn’t hear told the real story. There was no deafening thunder of a detonating bomb, and Nina knew CTU had won this round.
320 24 DECLASSIFIED
***
“Go, go, go!”
Captain Stone screamed the words into his headset. Not even a second passed before dozens of LAPD squad cars, armored vehicles, ambulances, fire trucks and emergency vehicles rolled out of cover and across the pavement to converge on the Chamberlain Auditorium. Sirens blared and dozens of emergency lights flickered like tiny red beacons.
There was no way for Stone to know if Jack and his team had met with success or failure but it didn’t matter anyway. His orders were to move his officers in to surround the building at precisely 2:45 a.m., to open the fire doors they’d opened before, and enter the auditorium with maximum force, and that’s exactly what he did.
Stone watched through binoculars as firemen opened the steel doors, then police and SWAT team units poured through the opening. He listened for a long time, waiting for an explosion, the sounds of a fire fight. Instead, a voice crackled over his headset.
“Area secure. Repeat, area secure. The hostages are safe ...”
2:59:09 A.M.PDT Terrence Alton Chamberlain Auditorium Los Angeles
Jack found his wife in the lobby. An emergency rescue team was wheeling Carla out on a gurney, with Chandra and Teri following close behind. As she rushed past him, Jack touched his wife’s arm and their eyes met.
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“Jack, Jack,” Teri cried, throwing herself at him. “I knew you’d come. I just knew it.”
“It’s okay,” Jack whispered, holding her close. “You’re safe now.”
For a long time they embraced, an island in a sea of swirling activity. Then Teri pulled back, tears dewing her face.
“Is it over, Jack? Is it really over?”
“Almost,” he replied.
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 3 A.M. AND 4 A.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME
3:09:10 A.M.PDT CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jamey, Milo and Doris had taken control of the Cyber-Unit. It took all three of them to enter all the search parameters into Fay Hubley’s bloodhound program. Along with the names of the victims and players in the hostage drama—Bastian Grost, Nawaf Sanjore, Valerie Dodge, Hugh Vetri, Nikolai Manos—the names of their firms, companies, and institutes such as the Russia East Europe Trade Alliance, were also added to expand the search exponentially.
On
ce the program was launched, there would be so much information to correlate, so many places for
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the computer to search, that virtually every other computer function at CTU had to be shut down or curtailed.
“Ready?” Jamey asked when the programming was complete.
“Go,” Ryan commanded.
Jamey punched “execute” and they waited.
Jack and Nina observed the search from Jack’s glass-enclosed office on CTU’s mezzanine while they waited for a security team to process their prisoner, Abigail Heyer. Nina had expressed skepticism that the process would yield results, but Jack was willing to try anything. Milo, Jamey, and Doris all believed it was possible that the computer, augmented by CTU’s random sequencer, would come up with some clues— perhaps even answers—but none of them would state categorically that the program would work.
Only Tony Almeida, boots propped on a desk while he silently watched the process, truly believed Fay’s creation would find her killer. He remained cool when five minutes went by with no results.
The single screen that should have displayed promising leads remained dark.
Then, twenty-one minutes and six seconds into the process, the monitor abruptly lit up and the screen was filled with hundreds of possible clues. The operation was moving so fast Jamey had to step in and slow things down. In a steady stream, pertinent facts continued to emerge.
The single link that united all the disparate threads was Nikolai Manos. The program revealed that one of Manos’s shell companies hired a very expensive mapping firm to survey public land in the Angeles National Forest.
MG Enterprises, a Nikolai Manos-controlled shell company, paid for a series of deliveries of construction material to an area along Route 39—a road through the San Gabriel Mountains that had been closed to traffic for over a decade.
Pacific Power and Light recorded two years of mysterious power surges and incidents of voltage theft from high-tension wires running through the same region of the San Gabriel peaks where the survey had been conducted.
Three hikers and a pair of campers in an area near the spot where Ibn al Farad had been captured vanished without a trace over a fourteen-month period.
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