by John Whitman
“What?” she demanded.
“I need some data analysis,” Jack said. “Did Henderson give you any instructions earlier about downloading feed from LAX for facial recognition?”
Jamey yawned. “Yup. For the last week. That’s a lot of data. If you don’t narrow it down, it’s gonna take—”
“Four days ago. Afternoon. Let’s do 1200 to 2100.”
Jamey hopped out of the cot, grumbling, and went over to the half-finished tech bay. “It’s all here. Let me get to the right area.” She fired up the monitor and punched in some time code. A series of squares appeared within the monitor like a checkerboard, each square representing a camera. In each square was a time code set at 12:00:00. “Starting facial recognition.” Jamey punched in a few more commands, and the video started running at high speed, the travelers hurrying through the frame like Keystone cops. For a brief instant, each face flashed as the facial recognition software captured it. Jack and Jamey watched for a while as the time code ran forward from 12:00 to 13:00, then 13:22, and then suddenly pinged.
“Oh, shit,” Jamey said. She clicked on the warning window that had appeared. A face in the security footage opened up in a new window, and the system summoned another face from its own data banks, an older picture. The older picture had a mustache whereas the security photo did not, and the hair was different, but the features were the same. Under the older photo appeared the name “Abdul Rahman Yasin” and in larger letters under both pictures appeared the word MATCH.
“Right,” Jack said. “Now please get me a list of all flights landing at gates—”
“—coming out of that area and passing that security camera. You want about thirty minutes prior?”
“You’re good,” Jack said. “This CTU might be in good hands after all.”
“Better damned believe it,” she muttered as he walked out.
Jack hurried back to the conference room, but his phone rang on the way. He stopped in the hall when he saw the number flashing on his screen.
“Bauer,” he said quickly. “Thanks for answering the page, Carlos.”
“Sure,” said a throaty, cigarette-induced voice on the line. “No reason I should be sleeping anyway. I mean, why should I still be sleeping when it’s already… oh, damn, look at that, I should be sleeping!”
“Can’t be helped,” Jack replied. “I need help only the NSA can give me at the moment. I need a wiretap run immediately.”
When Carlos was truly annoyed, as now, all the sarcasm left his voice. “Wiretap? Call the locals.”
“I need speed,” Jack explained briefly. “My window to gather information is hours, not days. I need it yesterday and I’ll deal with the FISA court.” The Federal Intelligence Services Act had been established in the early seventies. It allowed intelligence agencies broader surveillance powers under the supervision of a secret court. One of its primary benefits was the ability to set wiretaps and other invasive forms of surveillance prior to getting a court order.
Jack practically heard the espionage man’s shrug through the phone. “It’s your head, Jack, not mine. Gimme the info. I’m on it.”
Jack passed on Farrigian’s information, then hung up and hurried into the conference room, where Biehn and Driscoll sat in silence. Jack threw a you’re-notgoing-to-believe-this look at Harry. “Abdul Rahman Yasin was identified passing through LAX four days ago, in the afternoon.”
“Told you,” Biehn said. “We have a deal?” Driscoll said, “So what? So cooperate and you’ll get a reduced sentence.” Jack said, “What you know has to be worthwhile, or I’ll scrap any deal we make.”
Driscoll turned on Jack as though he’d just suggested they mug a cripple. “Jack, you’re not serious. No one’s making a deal with him—”
“I might be,” Jack replied firmly.
“He killed someone, Jack. Let the DA talk to him. He can cut a deal for a reduced charge, maybe even manslaughter, but—”
“I don’t have time!” Jack snapped. He knew he didn’t have to snap like that. He was getting tired, too. He steadied his voice. “I still don’t know what the hell is going on, but I’ve got all kinds of circumstantial evidence that it’s going down tomorrow. You’re talking about booking him, interviewing him, getting the DA down to talk to him, paperwork, an attorney…” Jack was frustrating himself with the list, so he stopped. “The last time Yasin was in this country, he tried to blow up the World Trade Center. Whatever he’s doing tomorrow, we need to stop it.”
Driscoll was still staring at Jack, aghast. It was as though he was staring at a stranger. “To stop it you’re going to make a deal with a murderer.”
Now it was Jack’s turn to stare at Harry, but his look was pure disdain at his old friend’s naïveté. “You mean am I willing to get information on a known terrorist by releasing a guy who killed a child molester? Yes.”
It occurred to Driscoll that he had never really known Jack Bauer. Or perhaps the CIA had changed the former LAPD SWAT officer. Either way, it was clear that Jack Bauer was willing to leave closed the doors that Driscoll felt obligated to open, and was probably willing to open doors Harry wouldn’t touch. “That’s against the law,” he said quietly.
Jack pretended he hadn’t heard.
1:18 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Nina Myers had tried to go home and sleep. She had told herself there was nothing left to do that night; that Jack Bauer seemed to want to play with the little blond chippie from NTSB; that she would be a better investigator after a good night’s sleep.
But that hadn’t lasted much beyond midnight. As the clock swung around toward one a.m., she was out of bed and pacing her living room, trying to think of angles she hadn’t covered. When the clock struck one she was in her car, and fifteen minutes later she was walking into CTU. She saw the log and knew Bauer was there, but he looked busy and she was feeling competitive. He hadn’t responded to the direct approach at all. Maybe he’d warm up to a girl who could keep pace with him.
Despite what she’d said earlier, she thought that the Ali Abdul/Abdul Ali mix-up might actually produce some new data. She hopped on to one of the office’s working terminals — these were in short supply during the day, but this late at night, with most of the analysts gone, she had her pick of stations — and logged into the FAA’s records. Through the FAA, she was able to look at Alaska Airlines’ manifests. That’s when she started to learn something about Abdul Ali. According to the airline, he’d been traveling in Pakistan under the mixed- up name. His flight back to the United States had been canceled. For some reason, he had been eager to get home, so he’d jumped airlines to get back to the United States — a flight up to Moscow and then another one to Juneau, then down to Los Angeles. It had been a crazy and uncomfortable jaunt, but it had gotten him into Los Angeles sooner than any other combination of flights.
“So the first thing I know about you, Mr. Abdul Ali, is that you really, really wanted to get home,” she said to the humming computers.
She knew there was nothing to be learned by his contacts in Los Angeles. All had been dead ends. If he was part of some plot, he’d been chosen well. But Pakistan was a very interesting country for a cipher to visit. Nina switched from the FAA’s logs to her list of intelligence reports — a collection of reports from the Department of Defense, State Department, CIA, and NSA. Someday, she hoped, someone would come along and gather all these reports into one official album. It was ridiculously inefficient to have to cull through so many different reports. She did searches on “Pakistan” and “terrorism,” which did almost nothing to narrow the field. Limiting the reports to a window of one week prior to the Alaska flight — which would have been about five weeks prior — helped somewhat, and Nina began skimming the articles.
The list was still long, and Nina couldn’t do much more than spot check the more likely sources. This was ten minutes of boring, frustrating work at that late hour, but it was the kind of work that got the job done. Nina had gotten into fieldwork
for the excitement, and there was plenty of that, but every moment in the field was backed up by hours of research. She remembered something Victor had told her: Before you pull the trigger, you must know where to aim the gun.
She was just about to give up when a string of words caught her eye. It was a report on a meeting in Peshawar, in northern Pakistan, close to the tribal regions that bordered Afghanistan. That area was a hotbed of Islamic fundamentalism, and was an unusual place for an American to visit. The meeting itself was a bit dubious: it had been billed as a Sunni-Shiite détente, which was itself unusual. Not malignant, but unusual. And why would an American with no apparent ties to Islamic fundamentalism be in Peshawar, Pakistan, at the same time as an Islamic conference?
Whoever had done the reporting on the Peshawar conference had been thorough. The report included a complete list of registered attendees. Nina felt herself in the groove now, like a bloodhound latching on to the scent, nose to the ground. She knew his name would be there even before her eyes settled on “Abdul Ali.”
Nina could have gotten an analyst to help her, even woken one up if need be, but her own computer skills were nothing to sneeze at. In seconds she had the computer running a match between her list of “persons of interest” in Los Angeles and the guest list from Peshawar. Aside from Abdul Ali, there was one match: Sheik Abdul al-Hassan.
Nina sat back and stared at the name as it burned a mark into her screen and into her brain. This was interesting. Al-Hassan was already on her list. She had questioned him briefly. If he was a terrorist, he was so deep under cover, even he had forgotten who he was. According to a very thorough background check, al-Hassan was an avid promoter of Islamic causes, but an equally avid promoter of peace. The Imam al-Hassan had proven himself to be an outspoken critic of Western intrusion into the Middle East… but an even more outspoken critic of Islamists who used violence to achieve their ends. According to the report, the conference had been a small part of a global religious peace effort. Even if Peshawar was an unusual place for the conference, the meeting’s purpose fit with al-Hassan’s file. From what Nina could tell, Ryan Chappelle was more likely to attack the United States than Sheik Abdul al-Hassan. And yet the Imam hadn’t mentioned that trip during his interview. That bothered her. Bothered her enough, in fact, that she was going to go wake Mr. al-Hassan up.
1:31 A.M. PST West Hollywood, California
Jack had no intention of letting Don Biehn kill anyone. He didn’t care at all if Biehn never served a day in prison for killing a child molester, but Jack wasn’t an accomplice to murder. But letting Biehn confront his son’s molester in private, away from the public eye, was a small price to pay for information that might save hundreds of lives.
He was still thinking of Abdul Rahman Yasin as they turned off Sunset into a West Hollywood neighborhood. Yasin, the Blind Sheik, and others had tried to bring down the World Trade Center about seven years earlier. Their plan had been simple: they’d parked a vehicle filled with homemade explosives in the parking structure beneath Tower One. They had hoped to blast loose the support foundations on one side, causing that building to fall into its twin. They had also included cyanide gas, hoping the gas would expand through the ventilation system and cause additional deaths.
The explosion had injured more than one thousand people and killed six. But considering its potential, the plan had been a failure. Tower One’s foundations stood, and the heat from the explosion had burned the cyanide away.
None of this made Jack feel any better. Yasin and whoever he was working with now had had years to learn from their mistakes. It was the grandeur of their schemes that worried him. Had the WTC bombing been even a moderate success, thousands of people would have died. If that was the scale on which they still operated, Jack had to find out what they were planning and stop it. And he had only a few hours left in which to do it. Until Carlos and the NSA plucked any information out of Farrigian’s communications, Biehn was Jack’s best lead. He had to follow it, and Harry Driscoll’s righteous indignation be damned.
Father Dortmund’s bungalow was a holdout against the redevelopment of West Hollywood, a one-story cottage holding its ground against the six- and eight-story condominium complexes on either side. It was not unkempt, but it was plain — a square lawn with no flower bed, a small white porch front, and white paint. The porch light was the kind of tolerable but unimaginative light sold at big box hardware stores across the country. Jack had the distinct impression that Father Dortmund wanted his residence to be livable without investing too much time or affection, as though he might need to move at any moment.
Jack parked a few houses down and used a second pair of handcuffs to hobble Biehn’s feet. “I’m not in running condition,” the detective protested.
“Now you’re not,” Jack agreed. “I’ll be back in a minute.”
Jack got out, moved toward Dortmund’s house, and performed a quick reconnoiter. One car in the detached garage, which sounded right for a priest living alone. A light went on in back when Jack hopped the fence, but it was one of those motion-sensor lights so it meant nothing. Jack checked for the alarm certification that was required by the city for any residence that contained a burglar alarm, and found none. Just to be sure, he checked one or two windows, searching for telltale wires or tabs that indicated an alarm circuit. Nothing. Apparently Father Dortmund trusted his safety to God.
Jack hurried back to his car and uncuffed Biehn’s legs. “I’ll get us in,” he said firmly. “I’ll take control of the situation. You talk to him when I say so.” He didn’t ask if Biehn understood. If there was a problem, he would make Biehn understand.
Jack led Biehn over to the porch and left him there, then walked around to one of the side windows. The bungalow was decently maintained, but it was almost all original. The old-style casement window was easy to jimmy, and Jack slid it open in a few seconds. He hopped up and slid himself through the window into what appeared to be the living room. No alarm had sounded, and there was no noise inside the house. Jack stood and walked carefully and quietly to the door. He unbolted the door with only the faintest of clicks, and opened it. Biehn was standing there, his bruised face ghastly in the porch light. The man looked eager, perhaps manic, and it occurred to Jack that he might be collecting information from a madman. Still, Biehn had known the time and place of Yasin’s arrival. There was bound to be more.
The two men, one cuffed and the other guiding him, entered the house, and Jack closed and relocked the door. Together they moved down the hallway and easily found the one bedroom. Jack’s heart started to pound as a rush of adrenaline hit him. Now was the time for both speed and stealth. He moved forward quickly.
Dortmund was a light sleeper. He was sitting up, drowsy and startled, as Jack reached him and clamped a hand hard over the priest’s mouth, shoving him back down into the pillow. He put a knee across the priest’s sternum, robbing him of breath. Dortmund panicked, thrashing ineffectually under his blankets. Behind Jack, Biehn hopped onto the bed, straddling Dortmund’s legs and pinning them down. Madman or not, he knew how to gain control of a suspect.
“Stop. Listen,” Jack commanded.
Dortmund, realizing he was trapped, went limp.
“Good. Don’t give me any trouble and you won’t get hurt. Don’t change positions. Don’t move at all. Don’t make a sound unless you’re told to. When you speak, speak quietly. Understood?”
He could see Dortmund’s eyes wide and gleaming in the dark bedroom and felt him nod his head. He released his grip over the priest’s jaw and face, but kept his knee on the chest. Dortmund did not say a word.
Jack lifted his knee away and nodded at Biehn, who crawled awkwardly off the priest’s lower half. He stepped back and allowed the detective to step forward. Dortmund was frantic to ask a question, but the authority in Jack’s voice still held him in silence.
“You’re Father Dortmund from St. Monica’s,” Biehn said menacingly.
“Y-yes,” the man said. He was mid
-sized, perhaps 160 pounds, Jack guessed, with close-cut brown hair. His face was slightly chubby. There was terror in his eyes.
“You know Aaron Biehn?” the detective asked. He fidgeted, shifting his weight from foot to foot. His hands twitched inside the cuffs, but Jack could see that they were still on.
Dortmund looked bewildered for a moment, then replied, “Y-yes, I know him. He’s a good kid—”
“Shut the fuck up!” Biehn said, his voice quiet but as intense as a scream.
“Please, what did I—?”
“Don’t ask what you did! Don’t ask. You know. You tortured my son. You molested him!”
Had Jack been present for Frank Giggs’s interrogation, he would have seen that Dortmund’s reaction was entirely different. Giggs had been forced to confront his monstrous self for the first time, and in public, and it had sent a shudder through him. Dortmund’s reaction was fearful, of course, but there was more disappointment and resignation than sudden self-loathing.
“I… don’t know what you’re talking about,” the priest said. “I didn’t do anything.”
Biehn’s hands twitched again, and Jack knew that he wanted to strike the priest. He was glad he’d kept the handcuffs on. “You violated my son. My son, you sick son of a bitch.”
“Please,” Dortmund said. “I don’t know what you’re talking about.”
Jack needed this all to happen much faster. “We already have one confession,” he said. “You might as well confess, too.”
“Confess—?” Dortmund said. “Are you… are you the police? I want a lawyer.”
“We are the people who decide what happens to you next,” Jack threatened. “And that depends on what you say next. Did you sexually abuse Aaron Biehn?”
Despite the darkness, he could see Dortmund look from one of them to the other, trying to decide what to do. Jack suspected that the priest saw the madness in Biehn’s eyes, and that it scared him, because he finally said in a tiny voice, “Yes.” Biehn said something that was lost behind a choked sob.