24 Declassified: 10 - Head Shot

by David S. Jacobs

  Some hardy souls had already stretched prone on the ground to peer over the rim. They’d reported that the bottom of the pit was heaped with fresh mounds of dirt and rock that bore every sign of having been brought down by an explosive blast.

  Vanaheim said, “Our last report from Armstrong and her team reported that they were going to enter the mine in order to investigate the shaft to see if it’d been used as a body dump. It had to have been blown up after that to block the inquiry.”

  Cullen said, “The rubble will have to be cleared and the pit examined. A big job. We’ll have to get a crane hoist out here. They’ll need an earthmoving bucket and enough heavy duty cable to reach to the bottom. It’ll have to be cleared one bucketful at a time.”

  “An order’s already been put in for one but it’ll be hours before it gets here.”

  “And hours more before the pit is cleared.”

  Vanaheim shrugged. “What can you do? That’s the way of it.” He knew Cullen hated delay as much as he did.

  Cullen scowled. “This Prewitt character is shaping up like another Jim Jones.” He was referring to the infamous leader of the People’s Temple cult who’d orchestrated a mass suicide of the nine hundred believers who’d followed him to the hellhole colony of Jonestown in South America. Those who’d refused to drink the poisoned Kool-Aid that the guru had prescribed for the mass self-extinction orgy had been murdered.

  Vanaheim said, “Jones mostly killed his own. Prewitt’s killing mine and yours.”

  Cullen said, “Jones had his death squads, too. They eliminated defectors and mass- murdered a congressman and his entourage and some reporters who went down to Guyana to investigate the cult.”

  “Looks like Prewitt has his own death squads as well. They’re no pushovers, either. They outshot my tac squad, and they were all top men.”

  “At least they went down fighting. My guys Dean and O’Hara never knew what hit them. For that matter, neither do I.”

  One of Vanaheim’s aides appeared, jogging across an open space toward the pit. He spotted his chief and changed direction, coming toward him. Vanaheim turned to face him. “What’s up, Murphy?”

  The aide said, “Message for you from Pike’s Ford, sir.”

  “What is it?

  Murphy glanced at Cullen standing nearby. Vanaheim said, “It’s all right, he’s with us. Shoot.”

  “Sir, they’ve found Jack Bauer.”

  There was a new addition to the Pike’s Ford command post complex. It was a recreational vehicle that had been turned into a mobile laboratory and clinic. Nothing in its exterior coloring, design, or identification numbers indicated that its true owner was the United States Army. Its driver and crew wore civilian garments. It had arrived at Pike’s Ford a few hours earlier that afternoon.

  Its forward section housed the clinic, its rear the infirmary, and its open center space served as a kind of informal office/day room. It was hooked up to a portable generator that powered its lights, air conditioner, and various appliances and equipment.

  The center space held a workstation and several chairs that folded out from the side walls. It was occupied by CTU/DENV head Orlando Garcia and Dr. Fenton Norbert.

  Garcia was heavyset with salt-and-pepper hair, a craggy face, thick dark eyebrows, and a neatly trimmed mustache. He said, “How soon can I see him, Doctor?”

  Norbert said, “Just another couple of minutes. My nurse is finishing up the last of his treatment.” He was tall and slightly built, with a few strands of dark hair combed over his shiny scalp. He wore an open white lab coat over a white shirt, tie, and trousers. He was an active duty colonel in the Army with high-level connections with military and civilian intelligence. He had a black security rating, allowing him access to all but the most stratospheric levels of top secret material.

  Garcia’s brown eyes were so dark that they seemed to blend in with the pupils, giving the impression of a pair of large black dots. They were intent and intense as they fastened on the medic. “He needs to be able to talk, Doctor. That’s vital.”

  Norbert’s hazel eyes, deceptively mild, did not flinch from Garcia’s gaze. “He will.”

  “But will he be making sense?”

  “Yes. I gave him a Thorazine derivative that neutralizes the effects of the drug, as well as a stimulant to counteract the sedative.”

  “Good. I need to know what he knows.”

  “As do I.”

  A narrow passage along the driver’s side wall connected with the clinic, which was partitioned off. A door opened on the right and a nurse emerged, brown-haired, round- faced, and solidly built. She carried a clipboard with some documents attached. She was Army, too, and her security classification was almost as high as Norbert’s.

  She went into the center space. “All through, Doctor.”

  “Thank you, Nurse.”

  She stood to one side to let Norbert and Garcia pass, then sat down at the workstation and began processing the documents. Norbert and Garcia had to proceed single file through the passage, Norbert leading. He opened the door, and he and Garcia entered the clinic.

  It was a windowless rectangular cubicle lit by overhead fluorescent lights and smelling sharply of alcohol and disinfectants. Its design maximized the available space much in RV style but with a medical slant. A foldout examining table stood lengthwise along the vehicle’s passenger side wall. The rear wall had a stainless steel sink with a cabinet above it. A locked glass-fronted cabinet stood in the corner between the rear and driver’s side wall. It contained rows of glass shelves stacked with medical instruments and supplies.

  Jack Bauer sat on the examining table facing the door with his legs hanging over the sides. He was stripped down to his shorts. His athletic form was mottled with a variety of bruises and abrasions, the worst of which were covered with taped gauze patches. The left side of his face was still swollen where Trooper Fisk had hit him with the flat of the pistol. His face was scratched and cut in a number of places and pasted with adhesive bandages in several places. His glittering eyes were calm and clear.

  The two men came in, Norbert closing the door behind them. A lock clicked into place. He and Garcia had to do some careful jockeying to avoid bumping into each other in the cramped confines. Norbert indicated a round-seated metal stool with tubular legs in the corner between the sink and the glass-fronted cabinet. “Why don’t you sit there while I attend to my patient?”

  Garcia said, “I thought you were through with him.”

  “A doctor’s work is never done.” Norbert gestured toward the chair. “Please.”

  Garcia, wide-bodied and thick-armed, sidestepped between table and wall and seated himself on the stool. He sat leaning forward with thick forearms resting on meaty thighs. He said, “I never expected to see you again, Jack.”

  Jack said, “For a while I had some doubts on that score myself.”

  Norbert said, “How do you feel, Jack?”

  “I feel fine—all things considered.”

  Norbert took a silvery pen flashlight and shone it into Jack’s eyes. “The pupils are dilating normally. That’s good. It means that the drug’s effects have been neutralized.”

  Jack said, “What drug is that? You said you had some answers for me, Doctor.”

  Garcia thrust his head forward aggressively. “I’ve got some questions I’d like answered myself. What happened out there on Silvertop? What happened to you and why are you the only one of the team to come back alive?”

  Jack’s face fell. “None of the others made it?”

  “Only you.”

  “That’s a damned shame. I’m sorry.”

  Garcia pressed, “Time won’t wait. I need answers now. The doctor can answer your questions when you’re done.” His manner was surly, skeptical, and suspicious. Jack didn’t blame him. He’d have been the same way himself had their positions been reversed.

  Jack said, “You sure you want the doctor to hear all this?”

  “Dr. Norbert is U.S. Army Colon
el Norbert. He’s not only a medic, he’s Army Intelligence. The Army is working hand in glove with CTU on this.”

  Jack said, “Okay.” Norbert stood leaning against the forward wall with arms folded against his chest. Garcia said, “Just give the highlights that I can use for immediate action. You’ll be fully debriefed later.”

  Jack summarized the team’s actions on Silvertop after going into the mine. He told of finding the mass grave at the bottom of the shaft.

  Garcia said, “How many did you say there were?”

  Jack replied, “I’d say at least twenty, maybe more.”

  “How can you be sure of that?”

  “I can’t, not totally. It’s an estimate. The killers didn’t bother covering them up with too much dirt. I’ve seen mass killings—too many—out in the field before, in the Balkans, Darfur, Iraq . . . You know the litany. I’ve got the experience to make a pretty accurate guess.”

  Garcia looked disturbed, dubious. “But that would be pretty much all of the Red Notch cadre!”

  Jack said, “Yes. I find that to be particularly significant, don’t you?”

  “If true. Maybe they weren’t all Zealots.”

  Jack shrugged. “I suppose one- half of the cadre could have killed the other and then thrown in some other folks they didn’t like, but that’s not how I’d bet it.”

  Garcia demanded, “What about Prewitt? Was he one of the dead? Or Ingrid Thaler?”

  “I didn’t see them. But conditions at the bottom of the shaft weren’t conducive to making any positive identifications.”

  “So either one or both could still be alive.”

  “It’s possible. You’ll know for sure when you dig them up and haul them into the light of day.”

  Garcia shook his head like a bull tossing its horns. “That won’t be for some considerable time. That dynamite blast brought a lot of the shaft down on top of them.”

  Jack said, “Which was the purpose of the exercise.”

  “Eh? How so?”

  “To delay identification of the bodies until the Round Table is over.” Garcia challenged, “Who’d want to do that and why?”

  “Who, I don’t know. Why—because that delay is key to someone’s plans.”

  “What plans?”

  Jack said, “Look at the time element, that’s the critical factor. The Red Notch disappearance took place early on Thursday morning the day before the start of the conference. This morning a hit team liquidates the lone witness to the disappearance and tries to do the same to Neal and me because maybe we heard something. Today a team goes out to Silver-top and finds the blue bus and a mass grave. A strike force shows up almost immediately to eliminate the evidence and its discoverers. It was so important to the plotters that the evidence be concealed that they must have left a spotter in place to sound the alert if anybody got too close. The spotter killed Holtz, blew up the shaft, and sent for the kill squad, not necessarily in that order.

  “The blue bus and mass grave were found out. Killing our team and blowing up the shaft only underlined the fact that something important is hidden in that grave. It’s only a matter of time before it’s unearthed and exposed. How much time? A day, maybe two at the most? That’s when the Round Table ends.

  “I’m saying that a plot is aimed at the conference. A deadly plot that needs the facts to be concealed while Sky Mount is in session.”

  Garcia knitted his two fists together and leaned forward, putting his weight on his thighs while he thought it over. “It’s possible. Prewitt’s crowd hates the Round Table members like poison.”

  Jack said, “I’ll tell you something else. That strike force was no motley crew of cultists turned shooters. They were professional guns.”

  Garcia had been looking down at the tops of his shoes. He raised his head, turning those big-bore, gun- sight eyes on Jack. “Which brings up another question: how’d you escape when no one else on the team did?”

  Jack said, “A fair question and I’ll give you the answer. Because I was the only one who knew what was going to happen when Reb fired the gas grenade.”

  “Reb?”

  “The leader of the strike force. A big, humongous dude with a dyed platinum- blond crew cut.”

  “How come you know his name?”

  “That part of the story comes later.”

  Dr. Norbert took out a pocket digital recorder and set it down on a countertop. “The rest of this concerns me and my part of the operation. I’m going to record it if you have no objection.”

  His last remark was directed at Garcia. Garcia said, “Go ahead. We’re in this together.”

  Nobody asked Jack if he objected to being taped. He didn’t and let it pass. He went on, “The grenade exploded, releasing a cloud of green gas. I knew it was dangerous because of what Lobo had said about a gang of hog-faced demons loosing a green cloud on the compound. As soon as I saw it, I knew the only chance was to get away from it.”

  Garcia accused, “You ran and left the others to die!”

  Jack took it without flinching. He was more than a little contemptuous. “Don’t be childish. You know how the game is played. Better that one should escape to tell what happened than all should die.

  “The gas grenade detonated on the tunnel level where Anne and the others were. I was on the next level down where the gas hadn’t reached yet. They were done for. What good would it have done for me to make a heroic last stand and throw my life away in vain? If I escaped then at least somebody would know the truth.

  “By the way, there’s an ore cart on the level below the tunnel that I used for cover as my shooting point. If you check it you’ll find fifty or more slugs smeared across it. In case you were wondering where I was while the shooting was going on.”

  Garcia looked away, rubbing the lower half of his face with his hand. After a while he said, “You’re right, you’re right, of course. You did what you had to do, what I would have done if I’d been in the same position. It’s just that I’m so damned pissed about what they did to Anne and the others!”

  Jack said steadily, “How did they get it?”

  “Shot in the head at point-blank range. Cold-blooded murder!”

  “I’m sorry. I liked Anne, liked them all. They were good teammates, good agents.”

  “I’ve known them all for years. I’m the one who’ll have to tell their families.”

  There was nothing to say to that. Jack went on, “The killers gave them the coup de grâce. It was as easy as shooting a sitting duck. Easier, because the duck’s not drugged up. The team would have been totally out of it, helpless as babies from the green gas.”

  Garcia said, “The strike force did worse to their own. Blew their heads apart with shotgun blasts. No facial or dental identification there. Then they cut their hands off and took them away with them. No fingerprint ID. We don’t know if they did it just to their dead or if they killed the wounded, too.”

  Jack said, “Delay. There it is again. Some if not all of the bodies will eventually be identified by their DNA, height, weight, and age, distinguishing body marks such as scars and tattoos, but it’ll take time. Time enough for them to accomplish their purpose.”

  “Which is?”

  “Something massive with the Round Table on the receiving end.”

  Dr. Norbert cleared his throat, said, “You were lucky to get out alive, Jack.”

  Jack nodded. “I thought the green gas was some kind of knockout gas but it’s not. It’s a hallucinogen. I got a whiff of it and it sent me rocketing clear out of this world for a while. Anybody that got a lungful of it would’ve been knocked flat, too tripped out to do anything but lie there and look at the pretty color.

  “That must be what happened at Red Notch. A strike force—maybe the one at Silvertop, maybe another, I don’t know—bombed the compound with gas grenades and rounded the cultists up while they were helplessly tripping out. Some might have tried to resist or been too crazed to control so they were killed there. That explains the seemi
ngly random dispersion of bloodstains at Red Notch. I don’t think they were all killed there, not enough blood, but who knows? Dead or alive, the Zealots were loaded onto the blue bus and taken to Silvertop where they were finished off. They were thrown down the shaft and covered with dirt, not to be found until after whatever is supposed to happen at Sky Mount happens. That was the plan, anyway.”

  Garcia said, “You’re making a lot of sense for a guy that was blitzed with a psychedelic bomb not too long ago.”

  Jack grinned. “You should’ve seen me earlier, I was flying like a moon bat. Before that I made my break by going over a ridgetop and tumbled into next valley. I climbed the next hill and went into a forest.”

  “Pine Ridge.”

  “If that’s what it’s called. The strike force must’ve seen me get away because the leader and one of his sidemen came after me. I wandered around the pines in a daze, not knowing what I was doing. I didn’t know Reb and his buddy were dogging me. The stuff started to wear off but I was still pretty wasted. I stumbled into a clearing and came across a mama bear and her cub. I guess it was a mama bear but I don’t know for sure.

  “That’s where Reb and his pal found me. I didn’t even know they were there. One of them stepped on a twig and broke it. Mama bear charged me and I dodged right when Reb’s pal tried to shoot me in the back. He missed, but the gunshot spooked the bear into going for the shooter instead.” Jack shook his head. “Frith was right.”

  Garcia said, “The tac squad leader? Where’s he fit in with all this?”

  “Earlier he said that bears were fast. He was right. That bear moved like an express train. It knocked the shooter down and ripped him up like he’d fallen into a threshing machine. He cried for help to his partner—once. Called him Reb. Reb was busy hightailing it out of there.

  “I got out, too. The bear didn’t bother with Reb or me. It had what it wanted and was slicing and dicing him with those wicked claws. Seeing that pretty well straightened me up and brought me to my senses. I followed Reb out of the woods. He didn’t know I was there. Once he started running he never looked back. I lost sight of him but could hear him in the distance up ahead, crashing through the brush. Good thing, too. I’d lost my bearings, and without his lead I’d have had a tough time finding my way out.