by John Whitman
Driscoll checked his watch. “If you’re right about your shit, then something’s going down in less than a day. I don’t want terrorist crap in my town. You keep me involved.” He smacked the side of the car.
Jack pulled off the dirt field and onto the highway. Driscoll was a good man. If CTU could get him, or people like him, they’d be okay.
As he drove, Jack picked up his phone and called Christopher Henderson. “You’re still there, right?” he asked when Henderson answered.
Henderson didn’t sound happy. “What do you think? I’ve been on the phone with the State Department for the last forty minutes. Jesus, you think we’ve got bureaucracy!”
“I’ve got something,” Jack said bluntly. “Not much, but I’m on the trail.” He told Henderson about the meeting with Gelson and the encounter with Dog Smithies.
“I’m following this plastic explosives back to its source. I’m going to figure out who has the rest of it.”
“Hold on, I’m going to conference in Chappelle.” Jack waited on hold, then heard several beeps, then Henderson’s voice again. “Jack, you there? Chappelle?”
“Present,” Chappelle said unhappily. “You know what time it is, right?”
“Justice never sleeps,” Henderson quipped. “Jack has an update.”
For the second time, Bauer explained what he’d been up to for the last two hours. Chappelle was quiet, except for the occasional resentful grunt. When Jack was done, all his questions were cynical.
“You’re assuming it’s the same set of plastic explosives?”
“For now. I’ll know for sure once I get to Farrigian.”
“Your theory is that this Farrigian sold some of the plastic explosives to this biker and some to the terrorists. You think if we find the seller we’ll be able to track it back to the terrorists?”
“Yes.”
“But what if Abu Mousa, the guy we have in custody, was the buyer?”
Jack shook his head at the phone. “I don’t see Mousa as the brains. They were storage and fall guys.”
“Probably right,” Chappelle agreed reluctantly. “But I still don’t see the urgency. Even if Ramin was right about some plan for tomorrow, we’ve stopped it. We have the plastic explosives. If you’re worried about some missing bricks, then you just answered your own question with this biker. He got the rest.”
Jack shrugged. “You may be right,” he conceded. “I just want to make sure.”
There was silence, except for the faint white noise of the cellular transmissions. Jack knew that Chappelle was trying to decide whether to give his authorization for this. Of course, neither one of them was sure what the District Director could do to stop him. Chappelle could help him by endorsing him, but could not hurt him directly. If Jack, acting as a CIA operative, was going to get in trouble for operating domestically, he’d get called to the carpet by the CIA’s Director of Operations, not by Chappelle.
In the end, Chappelle made the decision worthy of a government employee at any level. “I don’t want to know about this,” he said. “As far as I’m concerned, this is a CTU case and CTU personnel are working on it.” He hung up.
Christopher Henderson said, “That’s as close to approval as you’re going to get.”
“I wasn’t looking for approval,” Jack replied as he turned south on the 405 Freeway.
“Come into the office. We’ll plan a move on Farrigian from here. It’ll make Chappelle feel better.”
“On my way.”
10:31 P.M. PST Baldwin Hills, California
There were oil wells in Los Angeles. You could see them when driving down La Cienega Boulevard toward the airport. Where the street passed between the shoulders of two hills, on the west side you could see the pumps, like metallic dinosaurs bobbing their heads up and down. Nearby was the growing suburb of Baldwin Hills, but the oil wells were surrounded by undeveloped land and the expanse of Baldwin Park. Plus the pumps themselves emitted a continuous dull groan.
So there was no one to hear Don Biehn scream.
His captor had rolled the tire of his car over Biehn’s handcuffed hands, crushing them and pinning him face-up on the ground. Biehn’s legs were strapped together with something he couldn’t see, and tied off to the metal base of one of the great pumps, which nodded its giant hood over him as he stared up at the dark sky.
Biehn didn’t know who had kidnapped him, or why. The man hadn’t even asked him questions yet. Biehn had woken from his drug-induced stupor (chloroform?) to find his fingers already crushed under the car. He’d played possum for a few minutes while his captor stood a few feet away, whispering into a cell phone. Biehn heard very little of the conversation, but what he heard was startling. If he could survive this, he might be able to use that conversation to avoid prison or the gas chamber.
The captor, not quite visible in the gloom, had hung up his phone. He knelt down beside Biehn and slapped him to wake him. Then he cut Biehn’s shirt away and carved a bloody line down his chest, causing Biehn to scream despite himself.
Now his captor came close. There was a dim light somewhere nearby on one of the pumps. In the very faint light, Biehn saw a gleaming bald head and a handsome, clean-shaven face staring down at him.
“That is to let you know I am serious,” said his captor, holding up his knife. “Don’t make me show you how truly, truly serious I am.”
Biehn said nothing. What the hell was going on? Was this guy with the church?
The man held up Biehn’s badge. “Were you there to arrest Father Collins?”
“Yes,” Don lied.
The captor cut away a sickle-shaped piece of skin below Biehn’s left nipple.
“No,” he said calmly as Biehn sobbed. “Police officers do not sneak around the backs of houses to break and enter. They do not come alone, either. Don’t lie to me again.”
This time, Biehn had not screamed, but the cut hurt like hell. He blinked away tears of pain. “Who the fuck are you?” he demanded.
The man cut him again. Biehn thrashed in his confinement, feeling his fingers tear and nearly break under the weight of the car tire.
“I see that you want to ask questions, too,” the man said. “Well, I’m not unreasonable. I will let you ask questions. But your questions will come at a cost. Every time you ask one, I will cut a piece from you. Now, do you want to ask something?”
“Do you work for the church?” Biehn asked.
“Yes,” the man said. “You can call me Michael.”
Biehn spat into his face.
The man cut a thin fillet, just below the epidermis on Biehn’s left side. Biehn cried out and thrashed again. He felt two of his fingers dislocate. But he also felt them start to wiggle in the space he’d created.
“Now it’s my turn,” Michael said. “What did you want with Father Collins?”
“To kill him.”
“Why?”
“Because he deserves to die.”
That answer seemed to strike Michael as curious. He started again. “What do you know of the plan?”
“What plan?”
“That was a question,” Michael said. He gouged a piece from Biehn’s right side. Blood trickled from both sides of his body down into the mud. “What do you know of the plan?” Michael asked again.
Biehn didn’t know how many more cuts he could take. He was losing blood, and the pain was excruciating. “I don’t know about any plan.”
“I will make deeper cuts for lying.”
“I really don’t!” Biehn sobbed. “I have my reasons
for killing that piece of shit!’
“What reasons are those?” Michael asked.
“Fuck you.”
“Who are you working for?”
“Nobody!”
Another cut, not deep, but in the sensitive area of the armpit. Biehn thrashed again, felt another finger dislocate, and this time his arms came free. Michael looked genuinely startled when Biehn sat up. Gripping his two battered hands into a club, Biehn smashed Michael acro
ss the jaw, and the torturer crumpled sideways. Biehn snatched up the knife and cut the leather strap — a belt, it seemed to be— from around his ankles. Michael stirred, and Biehn turned to stab him. But his feet were cramped and asleep, and his hands were too battered to hold the knife well. Michael slapped the blade from his grip. Biehn clutched at Michael’s shirt with his handcuffed hands and headbutted him in the face. His position was weak and the strike wasn’t strong, but it was enough to stun Michael again. Biehn stood up, his legs feeling like dead wood beneath him. He wanted to stay and fight, but he was weak from pain and blood loss. He ran into the darkness.
6. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 11 P.M. AND 12 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
11:00 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jack walked into CTU’s shell of a headquarters looking like a dog’s chew toy. His hair was tousled, and his clothes and face were covered with dust. His wrists were still sticky from the duct tape. But his eyes were on fire, and he was all business as he walked through the office toward the bare meeting room. He passed a woman sitting impatiently in a chair. He recognized her as the same thin, pretty woman he’d passed earlier in the evening. She seemed eager to talk with anyone who would pay attention to her, but Jack hurried past her into the room where Christopher Henderson waited. Nina Myers was there, too. The analyst Jamey Farrell was also present, as were a few others Jack hadn’t met.
“Everyone’s up to speed?” Jack asked.
“You want to clean up first?” Henderson offered.
Jack waved him off. “Do we have a list of likely targets?”
Jamey Farrell spoke up, but she spoke to Henderson out of deference to his position. “Yeah, but it’s so long it’s not usable.” She passed around packets of paper. “Sorry, our monitor isn’t hooked up to the network yet. These will have to do. Look at the first six pages.” They did, and saw a long list of Los Angeles landmarks. Jack frowned. With the exception of a few financial institutions, he could have found the same list in any Los Angeles guidebook.
“We have to narrow this down,” he said.
Henderson observed, “Our working assumption is that the weapon is plastic explosives. If that’s the case, they can’t have much of it. Even if they have twice as much as we’ve already uncovered (and that’s next to impossible), they still don’t have huge amounts.”
“Which means their target is specific,” Jack added. “Something small.”
Nina Myers made a skeptical noise in the back of her throat. “That doesn’t fit their MO.” She sat down, leaning back in one of the brand-new chairs. “I mean, our theory is that this is Yasin, right? One of the Blind Sheik’s guys? Maybe even al-Qaeda. You all know al-Qaeda, right?”
Jack did. Al-Qaeda was an Arabic phrase that literally meant “the base.” It was the catchphrase for a network of Islamic fundamentalists with very anti-Western, anti-American sentiments. The loose network had gotten its start during the Russian war in Afghanistan. In 1991, al-Qaeda turned its anger on the United States when that country dared to maintain its troops in Saudi Arabia, the land of the two mosques, Medina and Mecca. Al-Qaeda had bombed an embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, killing a number of Americans. One of the primary terrorists in the 1993 World Trade Center bomb attack was Ramzi Yousef, a known associate of al-Qaeda. Although the al-Qaeda name hadn’t gotten much play in the media yet, operators in intelligence circles were already talking about them as the next big threat.
Nina continued. “They don’t seem to pick small targets. They go after headlines. Embassies. The World Trade Center.”
Jack studied the list while she spoke. “Always the big-ticket items?”
Nina considered. “The Blind Sheik was implicated in the death of Meir Kahane, the ultra-rightist Israeli rabbi. But if it’s just an assassination, why use plastic explosives?”
Henderson added, “And if they want an explosion, they’ve already proven they can make homemade explosives.”
Jack knew what they were thinking, what they were trying to tell him through the facts. This wasn’t adding up. All of them were trained investigators, accustomed to uncovering facts that began to form a pattern. There didn’t seem to be a pattern here.
“Here’s what we know for certain,” he said, returning to the beginning. He picked up the laser pointer, but the monitor was as dead now as it had been before.
“Sorry,” Henderson apologized.
Jack snatched up a pen, flipped over one of the packets Jamey had provided, and started scribbling a flowchart. “One: Israeli agents contacted the CIA a while ago with intelligence that some known terrorists were planning an attack in the United States. After tracking down leads in Cairo, I was given the name of Ramin, who I knew had been distantly associated with the Blind Sheik. When I tried to question him, someone blew him up. But he did say that Yasin, another WTC bomber, was involved, and that he was planning an event for tomorrow night.
“Two: you guys uncover some Muslims in Los Angeles who are hiding plastic explosives under their bed. Some if it is missing.
“Three: a washed-up actor apparently gave money to some low-level troublemakers to buy plastic explosives from an arms dealer who got his hands on some.”
Nina Myers rubbed her temples. “There’s enough here to tell us something is going on, but not enough to know what.”
“No luck with the guys in custody?” Jack asked.
Nina scowled and said sarcastically, “They are holding up under our most ruthless interrogation methods. We’re only serving them tea twice a day now. They still won’t break.” Jamey Farrell chuckled.
“If it is a smaller target,” Jack mused, “what would it be? What people or events are happening tomorrow?”
Jamey ticked off a few things from memory. “The Pope is in town for the Unity Conference. The Vice President will be attending, but he’s not scheduled until the day after tomorrow and isn’t in town until the early morning of that day. The Governor of California will be in the city for a huge Democratic fundraiser, which is a likely political target. The space shuttle is scheduled to land tomorrow, although Edwards Air Force isn’t the primary landing site, always the emergency one.”
Henderson held up a hand to stop her. “Actually, it’s not. I read there are issues with the landing strip at Kennedy Space Center. Edwards is the primary zone now. Has been for over a month.”
They all paused. “The shuttle would be an interesting target,” Jack said. “If it’s Edwards, that adds new meaning to the fact that these bikers are somehow connected. Lancaster is a lot closer to Edwards than we are down here.” He looked at Henderson. “Do you have someone you can put on that?”
Henderson opened his arms wide. “I’ve got a whole room full of people,” he said humorlessly.
“Can you borrow—?” Jack started to say.
“Relax, Jack,” Henderson drawled. “You’re not the only resourceful one. There’s someone I’ve been after to join up. Guy named Almeida. I’ll see about him.”
“Another recruit?” Jack laughed.
“You’re not the only fish in the sea.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “So we’ll pursue the space shuttle angle. I’m going to deal with this Farrigian issue. I guess that’s it for now. Thank you all.”
The group started to disband. Nina Myers hung back until only she and Jack remained in the room. “You look like hell,” she said.
Jack looked up from the target list and grinned. “I don’t look much better when I’m cleaned up. Although my wife does try.”
She walked halfway to the door, then turned back toward him. “I like the way you take charge here.
You’re going to help us get this unit into shape.” “I turned down the job. I’m just working my own case through here.”
“Uh-huh,” she said dismissively. “You’re what this place needed. Oh, and by the way,” she said with a Cheshire cat smile. “You didn’t have to mention your wife. I saw the ring. I just don’t see it as an issue.”
Jack wasn’t often surprised, but her boldness left him momentarily speechless. She laughed charmingly at it. “You just keep that thought in mind. Might be a reason for you to stick around CTU. Meanwhile, I’ve got to keep up this ridiculous search for Abdul Ali, a man who seems to have vanished.”
“Excuse me.”
That same woman was standing in the doorway. Her arms were crossed in front of her and her feet were planted, as though she was prepared to be defiant. But she wore a look of astonishment. Jack had the impression that he’d caught her halfway between two different attitudes.
“I’m… I’m sorry,” the woman said. “Did you say you were looking for someone named Abdul Ali?”
Nina’s own expression had turned instantly from flirtatious to judgmental. “You’re the NTBS investigator, aren’t you?” she asked coldly.
“Diana Christie,” the woman affirmed. “It was Abdul Ali, right?”
Nina shook her head. “All respect, but this is a Federal case we’re discussing. You shouldn’t be eavesdropping—”
“I’m on a Federal case, too,” Christie interjected. For all her frail prettiness, she clearly had a hard, determined core. “And if I hadn’t just eavesdropped, you’d be out running your ass off for no reason. If I’m right, the guy you’re looking for is dead.”
11:12 P.M. PST Shoemacher Avenue, Los Angeles
Father Sam Collins crouched down beside his back door, trying to sweep up the glass one-handed. He’d broken his left arm a few weeks ago in a car accident, and it was causing him a lot of trouble. The break had been bad, apparently, and they’d put a steel rod in his arm and popped his dislocated elbow back into place. He hadn’t had his own doctor, and the archdiocese had recommended one to him. Collins wasn’t sure the man was any good. His arm hurt a hell of a lot.
The pain in his arm wasn’t the only thing making Collins grumpy. Someone had broken one of the glass squares in his beautiful French doors. At first he’d thought it was a robbery, but nothing had been taken. The door itself was still locked from the inside. Probably the gardener, Collins had thought with a sigh. It was probably time to get rid of his current guy. Melanie across the street had told him that you had to change gardeners every year or so because their work got sloppier. Collins didn’t like to believe that — he liked to believe the best in everyone. But someone had broken his window, that was certain.