by John Whitman
“Is it common for Persians and Arabs to attend the same mosque?” Nina asked. She had a degree in Middle East studies, so she already had a fairly clear idea of the answer, but Yasdani seemed to be a thoughtful man, and she was curious about his perspective.
Yasdani’s nose twitched, a sign Nina had recognized during the interview as an indication of annoyance. “If his name is Ali, he is probably Shi’a, like me. So yes, we would go to the same mosque. But that doesn’t mean we are best friends. You do under stand that we are not all alike, don’t you?”
“Yes, sir,” Nina said amiably. “Thank you again.”
Nina turned and walked back to her car, disappointed and frustrated. She’d known this would be a dead end. Millad Yasdani was exactly what he appeared to be: chief information officer for a small insurance company, who lived in El Segundo with his wife and three children, and happened to be a Muslim. The only reason he’d shown up on her radar at all was that he drove a long way to go to a mosque in Los Angeles. It was a pathetic lead, but with the Three Stooges in jail not talking, she was reduced to chasing pathetic leads until they’d stewed for a while.
Her other lead, Abdul Ali, was no better. No criminal record, no suspicious activities, no political affiliations. He was hardly even an active member of the mosque where the Three Stooges belonged. But he traveled a lot, and according to the State Department, he’d visited several Muslim countries in the past few years. Again, a pathetic lead.
Nina got into her car and pulled away from the curb, thinking about the weak trail she was following. Jack Bauer popped into her thoughts. She wasn’t sure what to make of him, yet, but she always appreciated the direct approach, so she could only applaud what he’d tried with Abu Mousa. Unlike Chappelle, who missed the subtlety and simply assumed that Bauer was a mindless thug, Nina had understood Bauer’s tactic immediately. Mousa had been comfortable. It seemed clear to her that everything they’d done to him had been worked into the equation. Bauer had tried to shake him up a little. She wasn’t sure it had worked, but at least Jack had tried. On the way to Yasdani’s house, Nina had made some calls and dug up a little more information on Jack Bauer. He was, indeed, an interesting one. She hoped he stayed around CTU. She knew some people who might be very interested in getting close to him.
9:53 P.M. PST Lancaster, California
Jack turned the borrowed Ducati motorcycle into the Killabrew, a bar on Carter Street in Lancaster. He’d had to hustle to make it on time. He hoped the RHD detective they’d borrowed the bike from didn’t mind the wear and tear he’d just put on the engine.
Mark Gelson had given them one name — a biker mechanic named Earl “Dog” Smithies. Dog was definitely the kind of character a wannabe like Gelson would hang around. That is, Dog’s rap sheet full of misdemeanors, and his one four-year stint for mayhem was significant enough to impress Gelson but not hard-core enough to scare him away. The fact that Dog lived out in Lancaster added to his mystique. To a Malibu celebrity like Gelson, Lancaster— a former boondock turned suburban sprawl perched in the desert flatlands north of Los Angeles — was far enough away to seem dangerous and exotic, but still close enough for him to get home by bedtime.
Jack walked into the Killabrew just before ten o’clock, which was perfect. They’d managed to scare up Dog’s parole officer, who told Driscoll that Dog usually shut his garage up and was in the bar by ten. Jack wanted to be there before him. Jack had already been wearing jeans, and his plain black work shoes passed for boots in the dim bar light. Driscoll had an old NASCAR T-shirt in his trunk. It was musty and wrinkled, which didn’t please Jack but added to the effect. In moments he’d transformed himself from a CIA field agent to a scruffy barfly.
He sat at the bar and ordered a beer. There was some kind of electronic keno game at one end of the bar and a television at the other. The bartender was a thick, heavy woman with a wide face that accounted for every year of her life in blemishes and wrinkles. But she smiled jovially under thin wisps of blondish hair, and she handed Jack his Bass Ale with a friendly nod.
Dog Smithies showed up a minute later. He was big everywhere. Big hair tumbling down from under an oily Harley-Davidson baseball cap. Big beard exploding from the bottom and sides of his face. Big chest, big arms, and a very big gut spilling over the top of his jeans. Big voice, too.
“Aaaaaggh,” he sighed loudly as he eased himself onto a bar stool. “Thanks, Gabs,” he added as the bartender brought him a glass full of beer. He drank. “Shit, that’s good.” Dog behaved like a man in his own home. He eyed the two or three customers in the Killabrew, including Jack, before calling out, “Which one o’ you guys rides the Ducati?”
Jack waited just long enough to seem surprised at the question, then said, “Who’s asking?”
“Me. Didn’t you just see my mouth movin’?” Dog rose without an invitation and moved down to the stool next to Jack, resettling himself noisily. “That’s a nice bike,” he said. “Who you gotta blow to get a bike like that?”
Jack thanked Driscoll silently. He’d have thought of some way to strike up a conversation with Dog, but the RHD detective had formed this plan the minute they’d learned Dog’s occupation. One of his fellow detectives was an avid motorcycle rider, and Ducati was considered one of the best bike makers in the world.
“It’s who you know, man,” Jack answered. “You know the right people, they just give you stuff. Really, you take it from them. They just don’t know it.”
“You take that bike?”
“Why do you like the bike so much?”
“I work on ’em. Ducati makes a nice bike. I’m just makin’ conversation is all. You don’t like talkin’?”
“My experience, strangers who start talkin’ aren’t what they seem to be,” Jack said. Perfect. The trick to any good setup was to make the mark think he was steering the conversation. As far as Dog was concerned, he had initiated this conversation and he was pursuing it. Jack was the reluctant follower.
“What, you got somethin’ to hide?” Dog laughed. “You don’t strike me as the kind to make trouble.”
Jack nodded. “That’s my point. Trouble is what I’m trying to avoid.” Jack downed his beer and ordered another. “So if you’re another one of them trying to set me up, forget it. I’m clean.”
Dog blinked at this, the conversation having moved a little too fast for him. “One of them? Them who?”
Jack eyed him now, as though appraising the big, hairy man for the first time. “You’re a cop.”
Gabs the bartender shrieked with laughter as she dropped off his beer.
“Bullshit,” Dog laughed. “Bullshit.” He laughed awhile longer, loud just like he talked. When he settled down a bit, he said, “So why are cops looking for you? What’d you do?”
Jack smirked. When he spoke, his voice was conspiratorial. “Nothing. I was just interested in something and I made too much noise about it.”
Dog grinned mischievously. “What was it?”
Jack hesitated, then shrugged. “You know that bombing thing in Oklahoma City a few years back. I was just curious how they blow things up. How to make bombs and shit like that.”
Dog’s eyes lit up when Jack said bomb. “You shitting me? Why you want to know about bombs?”
Jack laughed. “What the hell, you never wanted to blow something up?”
“The thought has crossed my mind,” Dog said, raising his glass in a toast. He took a sip. “Listen, you really want to know how to make a bomb, I can show you the real shit.”
“What do you mean?” Jack asked, lowering his voice.
“Come on outside. My truck.”
Jack followed the hairy giant out of the Killabrew. There was a dirty white Dodge Ram 1500 parked off to the side of the parking lot, a tarp thrown over the bed. “I got cool shit back here,” Dog said, his voice growing more animated. “I think you’re gonna like it. Help me with that cover.”
Jack put his hands on the heavy tarp to lift it, but his fingers lost all s
trength as something cold and heavy struck him on the back of the head.
5. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10 P.M. AND 11 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
10:00 P.M. PST National Transportation Safety Board, Los Angeles Field Office
Diana tried to blink the sleep from her eyes. She’d been up since last night, trying to find the clue that would help everyone else see what she, bleary-eyed though she was, saw so clearly. Alaska Airlines Flight 442 had been deliberately bombed.
Diana Christie was not prone to hysterics. One did not become an investigator for the NTSB without a large supply of objectivity, not to mention patience and meticulousness. NTSB investigators had access to the finest investigative forces in the world, but they often worked alone, working their way through tiny scraps of evidence, minuscule warps in the fabric of shattered aircraft, minute scars on the wheels of locomotives, and usually under the watchful eye of the media. The pressure was enormous, and only the coolest and calmest were chosen for the job.
Diana was one of them. She’d worked on the go team that investigated TWA 800. She’d headed the investigation of the American flight that went down over Chicago, and the Amtrak derailment in Denver. She was an expert.
Which made her current investigation all the more frustrating. She had no vested interest in this particular disaster, no emotional attachments. She certainly had no agenda beyond the truth, and no reason to bang her head against the brick wall of other people’s incompetence… except that her job was to find the cause of a particular effect. That was her raison d’etre, and she took it seriously.
Diana was investigative by nature, but the mystery she currently attempted to pierce led her into unknown territory. She examined equipment and shards of blasted metal, not people. Her work led her to the conclusion that the blast had originated in seat 29D. The airline manifest told her that the seat had been occupied by one Ali Abdul. Now, Diana wasn’t a police detective, but she could pick up the phone as easily as the next person, so she’d made telephone calls. The address Ali Abdul had listed was out of date. To make things more frustrating, it appeared that every Ali Abdul residing in the city of Los Angeles was alive, which was very inconvenient considering that her theory was Ali Abdul had blown himself up.
There was, undoubtedly, an answer to this mystery. However, to resolve it she needed someone with the right sort of investigative skills. She decided to try the jerks at CTU one more time.
10:06 P.M. PST Shoemacher Avenue, Los Angeles
Shoemacher was one of those streets you rarely see on television programs about Los Angeles: a beautiful, well-landscaped street lined with elegant mid-sized houses and set in the heart of the city. The television usually showed the nice houses only on the west side or in the suburbs, but the truth was a vibrant community existed south of Hollywood and east of downtown. There were vibrant communities in south central and east L.A., too, but the television rarely hinted of that.
Don Biehn knew all this. A cop of twenty-two years, of course he did. But he didn’t know why he was thinking of it at that moment. Self-distraction, maybe. Compartmentalization of emotions. Sheer madness, for all he knew.
Whatever it was, it allowed him to get from St. Monica’s to Shoemacher Avenue without eating his own gun. He parked his car at a metered spot near the corner of San Vicente and Olympic, then crossed Olympic and went up Shoemacher, a diagonal street cutting a swath through a mid-Wilshire neighborhood. It was a short walk from there down the darkened sidewalk to the pretty brick house occupied by a monster.
Aaron hadn’t known his name. In his journal, he’d simply called him “the other father.” Father Frank had brought him in for “special visits.” Don now planned to pay a special visit of his own.
The first time down the street, he walked right by the house, taking in as much information as he could without pausing. Lights were on, and the flicker of colors against the thin rice-paper panel blocking the large front window told Don that the priest was watching television. He went halfway up the block, paused and looked around as though lost, then turned back. This time, he favored the shadows, and when he reached the brick house, he glanced around to see if anyone was looking, then turned in a quick and businesslike way up the side lawn to the gate. It was unlocked. He opened it slowly, keeping the creaking to a minimum, then closed it himself so the self-closing spring didn’t slam it shut. He had to negotiate some trash and recycling bins, but in a moment he was around the side of the house and into the backyard. There was a set of French doors between the backyard and the kitchen. It was locked.
Undiscouraged, Don hurried back around to the front of the house. There were several cars parked on the street right in front of the priest’s house. Don wasn’t sure which of them was owned by Collins. It didn’t really matter. Once again glancing around to see if any neighbors were out, and finding no one, the detective slapped first one and then the other car hard.
Car alarms wailed. One of them was the annoying kind that changed its pitch and tempo every few seconds, and both were loud. Don hurried back around the house to the French doors. Even from here, the alarms sounded shrill and loud on the quiet street. Inhaling deeply, Don wrapped his fist in his jacket and wound up to punch out one of the glass squares.
But before he could, something covered his mouth and nose. He inhaled sharp, eye-watering fumes, and everything went black.
10:14 P.M. PST Desert Outside Lancaster
Jack’s head shook clear when he hit the ground. He wasn’t sure how long he’d been totally out. He’d been groggy for the last few minutes, lying in the back of Dog’s truck with his hands and feet bound with what felt like duct tape and a tarp thrown over his head. He was going to have a massive headache and a good-sized lump on his head, assuming he survived this.
Jack was vaguely aware that the truck had pulled off the road somewhere and was bumping along the pathless high desert. Eventually, the truck had stopped. The tarp disappeared, and Jack had felt himself lifted and then dropped. That’s when the impact shook his head clear.
It was pitch-black. They were far from Lancaster’s faint glow of lights, somewhere out in the desert off the Pearblossom Highway that ran south and east. There wasn’t enough starlight or moonlight for Jack to make out Dog’s face clearly, but he could see the hulking shape crouched down in front of him.
“So we don’t misunderstand each other,” Dog said out of the gloom, “you wouldn’t be the first cop I killed.”
Jack didn’t say anything. Dog grunted and continued. “It was a good one, the bike thing. I do like Ducati. But I’m not dumb, just country dumb, and don’t nobody start talkin’ about blowing things up in a bar.”
Jack allowed himself some silent absolution. He hadn’t had much time to lay out and execute a longer, slower, less obvious sting. This was still a failure, but the risks had been unavoidable.
“I figure it’s Farrigian sold me out,” Dog said. He grabbed Jack by the throat. “Was it Farrigian? You tell me who it was and I’ll end you quick.”
Jack fought the natural panic of suffocation and stared into the shadows where Dog’s eyes would be. He wasn’t going to give this two-bit scum the satisfaction of seeing him struggle. After a second, the big man let go. Jack willed himself to breathe in slowly, easily. He didn’t gasp.
“Tough sumbitch.” Dog laughed.
“You should just let me go now,” Jack said when his lungs stopped burning.
Dog laughed. “What, you think I’m a moron?”
Jack heard the faint whup-whup of the helicopter first. “Yes,” he said, “I think you’re a moron.”
Spotlights ignited like a half-dozen suns leaping into the sky all around them. A voice blared over an unseen bullhorn. “This is the police! You are under arrest! This is the police!”
Dog whirled, blinded by the light and stunned by the noise. “Get down, get down, get down!” a voice shouted, and footsteps thudded toward them out of the darkness.
The hairy giant th
rew a hand up to shield his eyes from the blinding light as he reached under his shirt. His arm swung up, holding a huge revolver.
Jack never heard the shots, but he saw Dog’s body shudder three times as three red flowers blossomed across his back. One of the sniper rounds hit the ground near Jack’s leg with a soft puffing sound, like someone punching a pillow, and grains of dirt sprayed into Jack’s face. Dog’s body hit the ground before the SWAT team could reach him.
The next moment or two were controlled chaos as the SWAT team swarmed Jack to protect him and secured the area. Some of the spotlights were dimmed and cars were rolled up. The police helicopter continued to circle overhead for a few minutes, its powerful beam sliding around the scene. Finally someone spoke into a microphone, and the chopper dropped away loudly.
“You good?” Harry Driscoll said as Jack was freed and hauled to his feet.
“Yeah. I wish you hadn’t shot him.”
Driscoll nodded. “Me, too, but he was waving a gun at our badges.”
Jack looked at Dog, still lying where he’d fallen. “I get it, I just wish I could ask another question or two. But I think I got what we needed. You know anything about a guy named Farrigian?”
Driscoll had driven Jack’s car, and they walked to it now as the detective called in any information on that last name. By the time Jack was behind the wheel, he knew that Farrigian was an importer with a history of minor scrapes with customs. He’d also been brought up on charges of possession of illegal weapons, but the charge had been thrown out on a technicality. He was on a number of Federal, state, and local watch lists, but he was considered small-time.
Jack stuck his hand out the window. “Thanks, Harry. I owe you.”
Driscoll shook his hand. “Bet your ass. And I’m collecting now. Keep me up on this. I want to stay in the loop.”
“What, you don’t have enough work?”