by John Whitman
“Courtesy of your friendly neighborhood morgue.”
4:38 P.M. PST 405 Freeway
It had always been the ace up Michael’s sleeve, that he knew where Yasin was staying. The information had come to him by accident, and he had only intended to use it as a bartering chip if he was caught by the authorities. But he knew that he would only have been able to strike a bargain if he was caught before the attempt on the Pope. Now that so many had died, and with not one but two attempts against the Pontiff, he knew the Vatican would scuttle any deal he tried to make.
It had not been as hard to track Yasin as the Arab liked to think. Yasin had visited the United States several times to strike the bargain with Michael and Gelson, and each time he had met them at a different location, but always within an hour’s time of the phone call. Michael had simply triangulated the area, which was somewhere near the airport. On subsequent occasions, and with some trial and error, he had staked out various arteries into the area and was able to follow Yasin to Playa del Rey.
Michael drove there now in the silent car, with Pembrook lost in thought and Gelson rubbing his left arm, which had suddenly become an alien object attached to his body. He wanted it off.
“We need to get to your doctor,” Gelson said for the tenth time. “He needs to get this thing out of me.”
“Khalid is either dead or in prison,” Michael said. “But we can ask Yasin. He is the contact.”
They exited the 405 and drove on surface streets down into the suburb of Playa del Rey, between the airport and the ocean.
4:43 P.M. PST Cardinal’s Residence at St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
“Yeah, I got ’em,” Jamey Farrell said to Jack Bauer on the phone. “At least I think I do. We’re making some assumptions here. Specifically, what I have here is a cellular signature very similar to the one emitted by the one the coroner dug out of the body. If that’s them, then they are headed down by the airport.”
“Trying to get on a plane,” Jack said from St. Monica’s. “No, more like going to ground. They’re in Playa del Rey, it looks like.” “Got it. Let me know when you have a definite location.”
Jack hung up and turned his attention back to the questioning of Cardinal Mulrooney. He’d been too exhausted to handle it himself, so he’d turned it over to Nina.
“…as I’ve said, I had no idea, none, that this was going to happen. It’s horrific,” the Cardinal was saying, now indignant after being asked for the fourth time.
“But it looks like the guy in charge was your security chief, Mr. Mulrooney—”
“Cardinal Mulrooney. Or Your Eminence.”
“Okay, Mr. Mulrooney. You hired him. He worked directly for you.” “Many people work directly for me. I can’t be held responsible for all their actions, too.” Nina added, “And he was a schismatic. You also are a schismatic, is that true.”
“No!” Mulrooney said. “Not when you ask like that. I have expressed my unhappiness over some of Rome’s changes. But that doesn’t mean I joined a cult.”
“Mr. Mulrooney,” Nina said confidentially, “frankly, it’s not going to look good for you. The leader of your church, a man with whom you have had strong political disagreements, is attacked while in your care, by your security guards. That’s a lot of circumstantial evidence.”
Mulrooney stiffened. “I am in God’s hands. And I want my lawyer.”
4:47 P.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
Harry Driscoll could hear the paramedics working around him. He had the vaguest sensation of some kind of mask over his face, and he could hear watery breathing that must have been his own.
But he didn’t feel pain, and something told him he would never feel pain again. He thought back to the beginning of his troubles, standing at the door of Don Biehn’s home. He hadn’t wanted to open that door. Part of him still wished he hadn’t, but that was water under the bridge, now. Doors open; we move through them. That was how life worked.
Though his eyes were closed, Driscoll saw a new door appear before him. When it first appeared, Harry was filled with dread. He did not want to approach it. But the door came inexorably closer, and the nearer it came, the less Harry feared it. It was, after all, only a door; and Harry was a detective. Opening doors was his job.
The door opened, and Harry Driscoll stepped through.
4:55 P.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
Jack was watching Mulrooney walk away of his own free will. If Jack had had his way, the Cardinal would have been wearing handcuffs. Not for the assassination attempt — Jack thought he was lying, but who knew? — but for the children who had been molested. He was sure Mulrooney had been complicit there. If it were true, Jack thought he ought to be destroyed.
One of the paramedics stepped into his field of vision. “Sir, I’m sorry. Your partner, Detective Driscoll. He just died. I’m sorry. We tried.”
Jack grimaced. Losing Driscoll was a blow, not just to him, but to decency in general. There was no way that Harry Driscoll should die and Mulrooney should walk away. Then he suddenly thought of something he could do to point justice in the Cardinal’s direction. As he did it, Nina’s cell phone, which he was holding, rang.
“Playa del Rey,” Jamey said. “1622 Reina Avenue.”
“Good.” All the fatigue fell away as Jack jumped to his feet. He was going to end this once and for all.
24. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 5 P.M. AND 6 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
5:00 P.M. PST Playa del Rey
Yasin heard the knock on the door and reached for his gun. He was in the upstairs room of the house, in the back; the room that made for the quickest getaway. He was inclined to simply bolt — no one in the entire world had reason to knock on this door — but something about the gentility of the knock kept him from fleeing. He figured it was a salesman of some sort, and he would ignore it. But to make sure, he walked as quiet as a cat to the front part of the house and peeked through the curtained window at the top of the stairs, which gave him a view of the porch below.
“Oh, shit,” he growled. He always liked swearing in English better than Arabic. This knock he could not ignore.
Yasin hurried downstairs and opened the door. They stood at his threshold like the three wise men of the Christian tale, or maybe like the three parts of the Catholic god that Yasin found so blasphemous. How could Allah be divided into three parts?
“Get inside,” he said, and closed the door behind them. When they were inside, he pointed his gun at them. “What are you doing here? I won’t even ask how you found this place. What are you doing here?”
Michael ignored the gun and sat down on the couch. The house was sparsely furnished, but there were a few pieces of furniture and some pictures to avoid curious questions. “It all went sideways,” he said. “The Pope is still alive. Your man, al-Hassan, got blown up but no one else did. We tried to kill the Pope back at St. Monica’s but some government agent stopped us.”
Yasin closed his eyes deliberately, then opened them after a moment. “I told you not to underestimate the Federal agents. They are not always brilliant, but some are tenacious.”
Michael didn’t need to be reminded of that. “We need a way out, and you are our best chance.”
Yasin scoffed. “I can’t help you. If you’ve ruined things this badly, I may have trouble myself getting out.” There were ways. The border with Mexico was porous. That was how he had reentered the United States several times after 1993. But he did not relish these alternate routes. “You must have set up your own exit plan.”
“I did,” Michael said. “But it involved confusion and misdirection because of al-Hassan and Collins and Gelson.”
“And I want this out now,” Gelson demanded, holding up his left arm and revealing, for the first time, the wicked scar from his operation. “I was willing to trade my life for the heretic’s, but that chance is gone. I want this out.”
Yasin ignored Gelson. G
elson, though he was in his fifties, reminded him of the young suicide bombers from Gaza, so eager to prove their religious faith, so willing to give their lives. They were useful fools.
Superficially, Yasin was calm and collected. He offered them water and some leftover Chinese food. He suggested they sit down. But the wheels in his head were spinning. How could he get rid of them? How could he escape? He was sure his window of opportunity was growing narrower by the second.
“Tell me what they know,” Yasin said.
5:13 P.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
Amy Weiss was not allowed inside the cathedral, though she’d tried several times to sneak around, over, and under the crime scene tape. Finally she’d given up, and stood outside the tape at the entrance to the cathedral, making note of who came in and out.
To her surprise, she saw a uniformed officer walk out the front door carrying a plastic bag. He scanned the crowd until his eyes fell on her, and he hurried forward.
“Ms. Weiss, this is for you. Jack Bauer left it.”
Amy took the parcel, plastic bag and all. It appeared to be a journal of some kind. She just barely made out the name scribbled childishly along the spine. It read “Aaron Biehn.”
5:18 P.M. PST Playa del Rey
Jack should have waited for a backup team. That was just common sense. But he had been chasing this killer for twenty-three hours without stopping, and he felt that if he stopped now he would simply fall apart.
So he jumped out of the car before Nina had a chance to stop completely and charged the house on Reina Avenue. He just had time to glimpse Nina run around to the back before he kicked open the door with a violent crash.
Yasin moved faster than Jack expected. Before the door hit the wall, Yasin was rolling over the back of his couch while Jack fired rounds that vanished into the pillows and couch frame. Gelson practically screamed. Michael, too, rolled out of Jack’s line of fire. The last man rose to a squat and aimed, but by that time Jack had pumped three rounds into his chest and face, and he crumpled.
Jack dove to his right, into a hallway, as both Michael and Yasin fired back, shattering the door’s small plate-glass window. No more shots came, and Jack knew that both men were on the move. He heard footsteps thump upward. Yasin, or Michael? Jack decided he didn’t care, and gave chase.
Fourteen steps went up to the second floor. Jack leaned around a corner and then pulled back as rounds discharged and four holes popped into the wall at his back. Jack stuck his hand around the corner and fired without looking. Then he rolled into the hallway and sprinted forward as a door slammed shut at the end of the hall.
Nothing for it now but to finish, he thought, kicking that door inward. Suddenly, there was Michael, his semi-automatic in Jack’s face. Michael pulled the trigger as Jack grabbed the gun and moved it. The round discharged and Jack felt heat blossom under his hand, but he held on, and the sting was already fading as Jack jammed his own gun into Michael’s neck.
Michael’s eyes went suddenly wide, and strangely sad. He whispered in disbelief, “I thought God was on my side.”
Jack said, “Everybody thinks that.” Michael tried to grab for the gun, and Jack pulled the trigger.
5:21 P.M. PST Playa del Rey
Nina jammed her knee into Yasin’s crotch and felt his grip on her gun loosen. He’d surprised her as she came in through the back. She had grabbed his gun and he had grabbed hers, and for a moment they had been locked in a silent struggle, until her knee struck him and she was able to tear her gun free.
She backed up a step, tapped, racked, and cleared as she’d been taught… but the jammed round wouldn’t clear. Yasin stood straight up, so Nina kicked him again. Instead of trying to clear her weapon, she punched it, muzzle first, into Yasin’s face. She grabbed his gun from his hand just as he lunged forward to put her in a bear hug. She braced herself with one foot back to stop him from going down on her, then calmly put the muzzle of her confiscated gun in his side and fired twice. The gun clicked dry on the third trigger pull.
She was just pushing Yasin’s now lifeless body away from her when she saw Gelson stick a gun in her face.
5:23 P.M. PST Playa del Rey
Jack swept down the stairs, his muzzle leading the way, then pulled up short. Mark Gelson was there, standing behind Nina Myers, who looked much more pissed than terrified. Gelson was behind her, holding a gun to her head with his right hand, with his left arm wrapped around her neck.
“I’ll kill her,” Gelson said. He was panicked, out of his league, and he knew it. “I put a fucking bomb in my arm, you think I won’t shoot her?”
“I think you’d probably miss,” Jack said. “You’re a screwup, Gelson. You got talked into paying for this debacle. You even got talked into blowing yourself up.”
“I didn’t get talked into it. I volunteered. I’m willing to die if I have to.”
“Then you won’t mind blowing up in a minute. We took the receiver out of Collins. It had a fail-safe. It was going to blow up at five-thirty whether it received a signal or not. It’s probably the same with you.”
This caught Gelson by surprise. At the same moment, Nina snatched at the gun, pulling the muzzle away from her head. Her other hand came up and caught it as well, and she snapped it out of his grip. Before he could react, she elbowed him in the stomach, then in the face, and the former Future Fighter dropped like a rock.
“He’s not really going to explode, is he?”
“I don’t think so,” Jack said. “I don’t even know if he has one. And I think Jamey can jam it now that she has the signal. But let’s stand over here just in case.”
Other cars were arriving, and Christopher Henderson walked in behind a flood of uniformed officers.
“Yasin is dead,” Jack said.
“Nice work,” Henderson replied.
“You can thank Nina for that. She got him.”
Jack felt the heaviness return to his limbs. He hadn’t slept in forever. Had he been going nonstop for twenty-four hours? He walked outside to the sidewalk and sat down on the curb. He put his head in his hands and heaved a huge sigh.
He was, in fact, sitting in the same position he’d been the night before, when Christopher Henderson met him at Ramin’s devastated house. Henderson sat down next to him, not talking for a while. Finally, he said, “After a day like this, Jack, I get it if you don’t want to sign on.”
“I’m signing on.”
“What?”
Jack lifted his head and rubbed his eyes. He didn’t look at Henderson, though; he looked down the
358
street at the row of suburban houses. “We weren’t ready for this, Christopher. Any of it. Not your organization, not the CIA. They had it all planned out and we were nearly blind.”
Henderson nodded his head yes and then no. “We did all right in the end. You did.”
Jack disagreed. “No offense, but CTU would have quit a day ago. I probably would have figured we were done after Castaic. You know the only reason we kept going? Don Biehn. His vendetta made the connection between Yasin and the church. We would have been blind without it. We need to do better.”
“You ready to help us?” Christopher said. Jack stood up and stretched. “Yeah. Just promise me I’m not going to have any more days like this.”
About the Author
JOHN WHITMAN is the author of numerous books and projects, including the “Star Wars: Galaxy of Fear” series, Zorro and the Witch’s Curse, and, most recently, the trading cards for “24 Day 3.” He is a 4th-degree black belt and defensive tactics instructor in Krav Maga, the official hand-to-hand combat system of the Israeli military, has trained in protective services and defensive tactics in both the United States and in Israel, and has served as an instructor for U.S. law enforcement agencies and military anti-terrorist units.
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