24 Declassified: Cat's Claw 2d-4

by John Whitman

  The window offered a view of the café’s kitchen. Jack saw the nose-ringed clerk and another employee, a young man with short hair and a goatee, standing with their backs to the kitchen counter. In front of them were two men facing away from Jack. They were small, wiry men with dark skin. They both held guns. They appeared to be asking questions. The two clerks looked terrified.

  Jack pulled out his phone and sent a text message to Mercy: “Distraction ASAP.” He jumped down, landing softly, and waited.

  A moment later glass shattered at the front of the store. The girl inside screamed and one of the men shouted in Farsi. At that moment, Jack kicked in the door. His kick blew through the bolts, and the door swung open. The men inside were fast. They had turned toward the sound of breaking glass, but when they heard the door crash, they whirled around just as quickly, weapons ready. Jack dropped to one knee as bullets sped over his head. He double-tapped, and one of the men crumpled inward and fell on his face. Bullets from the other man’s pistol chipped the asphalt around Jack, who calmly shifted his muzzle over and double-tapped again. The second man was falling before the two clerks thought to scream again.

  Jack jumped to his feet and ran forward, kicking the weapons away from the fallen assailants. Both men were dead.

  “Are you all right?” Jack asked. The two clerks were pressed as far back against the counter as possible, terror and shock and relief all visible in their eyes. “I’m a Federal agent. Are you all right?”

  They nodded. The girl said, “Who… who are those guys?”

  Mercy and Ted rushed in, weapons drawn. “Clear,” Jack said. “Can you call CTU?” Ozersky nodded. Jack turned to the girl with the nose ring. “Did they ask you any questions?”

  She nodded, almost unable to take her eyes off the two corpses. “Um, yeah. They were asking us about Pico. They said they’d kill us if we didn’t help them.”

  “Pico Santiago. We want him, too,” Jack said. “Do you have any idea where he is? Do you know him well?”

  The young man, who’d yet to speak, nodded. “I do. We’ve worked here for a couple years. Is he in trouble?”

  “Not if I can help it. How well do you know him?” Jack’s own body was still adrenalized from the gunfight, but he forced his voice to remain calm and firm. “We need to find him. He’s not at home. We think he’s afraid of these guys and he ran off somewhere. Do you know where he’d go?”

  Jack saw the kid hesitate, his eyes settling on Jack’s gun. He had that same look on his face Jack had seen on some of the protestors that morning, though it seemed a lifetime ago. He spoke irritably, “Yeah, I’m the government and I want him, too. But here’s the difference between us and them. They want him dead, and I want to keep him alive. So tell me.”

  The young man straightened up. “He was working here tonight, but he just took off. Said something had come up and he had to get out of town for a while.”

  “Did he say where out of town?” Mercy queried. “Would he take a plane somewhere?”

  The kid shook his head. “No, dude, that’s not what he means. Pico’s into outdoor stuff, like me. He went up into the mountains to hike.”

  “Give me his cell number.”

  “He doesn’t use one,” the kid said. “He says the microwaves fry your brain.”

  “Up in the mountains where?” Jack asked.

  “Dude, it could be any—”

  “Somewhere he knows,” Jack said, growing impatient. “Somewhere he’d feel comfortable and safe.”

  The kid snapped his fingers. “Temescal Canyon. That’s his favorite spot, and you hike back there past the waterfall,

  you feel like you’re in the middle of nowhere.”

  “Do any of his other friends know about that place?”

  “Lots of people know about it. Yeah, Pico’s got some other friends he hangs with up there. Gina’s been up”—he pointed to the nose-ringed girl, who nodded—“and I’ve been up there with Pico and that freak girl he used to date.”

  “Freaky girl?” Mercy asked.

  The man nodded. “Yeah, Frankie something or other.”

  “Thanks,” Jack said. To Mercy and Ted, “Let’s go.”

  They left the kitchen for the dining area. Behind them, the girl shouted, “Hey, what about these guys!”

  Jack ignored her. If those were the last bodies he left behind tonight, he’d be lucky.

  11:37 P.M. PST Miracle Mile, Los Angeles

  If the decision were Eshmail Nouri’s to make, he would have strangled Ayman al-Libbi, left his body in a Dumpster, and gone back to the 213 Lounge he owned and managed just off Wilshire Boulevard. He was tempted to disobey orders and do it anyway, but that was just his independence talking. Eight years living in the United States, living and playing as an American, had given him a veneer of rebellion. But it was thin and did not seep into his heart, which had been with the Ayatollah Khomeini and was with the ayatollahs still. He would do as he was ordered, even if he thought it was stupid.

  And it was stupid, in his professional opinion. The ayatollahs had seen fit to plant Nouri and his compatriots in the United States long before the Americans had increased their watchfulness. Of course, after 9/11, Nouri himself and each of his companions had been questioned, but he had already been in the country for years; he was careful to communicate infrequently with the rest of his cell, and often only through handwritten letters that could not be traced. He was indistinguishable from the thousands of Iranians who had emigrated over the years.

  Which was his point. Nouri understood that he was a valuable asset. His entire cell was a precious weapon kept hidden by the ayatollahs and, if Allah willed it, they would someday come forth to strike a blow against the Americans. He knew the ayatollahs had tried to build other cells in recent years, but almost all had failed, thanks to American intelligence. To risk one of the few well-placed groups at the whim of Ay-man al-Libbi, who had by all accounts become a useless infidel, seemed reckless.

  Not seemed reckless, was reckless, based on the evidence. Mahmoud and Ali should have called in by now, whether they had obtained additional information from the target’s friends or not.

  Eshmail did not yet know about the virus or CTU. All he knew was that at long last his cell had been activated. They were to kill three people, one of whom was already dead, and another who would soon be eliminated.

  Still, he wished he could kill Ayman al-Libbi when all was said and done.

  10:54 P.M. PST Temescal Canyon Road

  Jack stopped the car in the dirt lot where the paved road ended. There was one car, a silver Volvo, already parked there.

  “Could they be ahead of us again?” Mercy said as they got out.

  Jack drew his gun and walked over to the car. “It’s still warm and ticking.” There was a moon out, but it had been a long time since Jack had hunted anyone by moonlight alone. “We should take flashlights. Have either of you been up this trail before?”

  “I have,” Ted said. “It’s hiking, not mountain climbing, but parts of the trail are tough. The waterfall is about two miles up.”

  “We could call the sheriff ’s mountain rescue unit,” Mercy suggested.

  “Do it,” Jack said. Mercy got on her phone and went through 911.

  “Their ETA is more than twenty minutes for the helicopter,” she said after a moment. “No one’s going to get here any sooner.”

  “Let’s see what we can do until they get here,” Jack said, stopping to reload the magazines for his SigSauer. He popped one magazine into the handle and racked the slide. “Let’s go.”

  18. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 A.M. AND 1 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

  12:00 A.M. PST Vanderbilt Complex

  “Moving at last,” President Barnes said.

  Dr. Diebold, still wearing the biohazard suit, nodded. “Yes, sir. The containment tube is complete. It will take you straight down to the hazmat vehicle. You and the others will ride to National Health Services. We have a bio containm
ent unit there.”

  Carter nodded. “Advance teams have already cleared the facility, sir.”

  Barnes turned to Xu Boxiong. “Sir, after you.”

  Xu bowed and smiled. There was nothing like a crisis, Barnes thought, to turn acquaintances into friends or enemies. If either country’s security had botched this up, the other leader would have been at his counterpart’s throat. But both countries had screwed this pooch. They were in it together in every way.

  “I trust the United States will not offer too much of a complaint if the People’s Republic takes stronger steps to break the separatist movement in the Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region?” Xu observed casually.

  “Probably not,” Barnes replied. “And I trust that China will offer the G8 some movement that allows us to save face on humanitarian issues.”

  Xu nodded. “I believe some steps can be taken.”

  They stepped out through the airlock and into a long, clear plastic tunnel. Mitch Rasher was there, his round body hidden behind the bulk of the environmental suit. “Everything’s been handled, sir,” he said. “And it’s been done in coordination with the Chinese staff,” he added with a bow to President Xu. “Both offices issued statements that you both came down with minor cases of food poisoning—”

  “You didn’t say poisoning?” Barnes interrupted.

  “Of course not, sir,” Rasher said. “But that was the underlying message.”

  “Isn’t it a bit too obvious if we two made the same claim?” Barnes asked. It seemed to him a lot like asking for three cards in a game of five-card stud.

  “We got lucky there, Mr. President,” Rasher said, sounding pleased even through the muffled effects of his headgear and microphone. “Mr. Novartov of Russia actually did come down with food poisoning. So it all works out.”

  “So this containment is good,” Barnes said as they reached the end of the plastic tunnel, which was attached to a huge yellow hazardous materials vehicle. “How’s our other containment?”

  “One hundred percent so far, Mr. President,” his top aide replied. “Of course, this meeting was top secret anyway, so very few people knew you were here in the first place. The virus story itself is bound to get out — too many police and NHS personnel know about it. But your infection is known to very few.”

  “Until I keel over,” Barnes said grimly. “Doctor, are you any closer to understanding this virus?”

  Diebold shook his head inside his suit. “No, sir. I have Celia Alexis, one of my top people, working on it. But, sir, we’ve been studying Marburg and Ebola for years and we don’t have cures for them. I understand that the terrorist who did this claims to have a vaccine. Are we trying to locate that person?”

  Barnes nodded. “We have people working on it.”

  12:11 A.M. PST Temescal Canyon

  Jack put one foot in front of the other carefully, settling his foot into the ground gently, then putting his weight down in order to avoid making too much noise. He hadn’t turned on his flashlight yet — it would do more to warn the driver of the car they’d seen at the start of the trail than it would do to illuminate his path.

  This is a terrible way to stalk someone, he thought. His shoes and clothes were all inadequate for the terrain and the darkness. His SigSauer was a fine weapon, but he would have traded the pistol and all three magazines for an M40 sniper rifle with half a dozen rounds, and he might give that away for a decent pair of night vision goggles.

  The Temescal Canyon trail rose steadily from its entrance off Sunset Boulevard and up into the mountains, running parallel to a thin ribbon of water that traveled a tortuous path from the mountains down to the Pacific Ocean. With the exception of a small Park Services ranger station at the entrance, the canyon was completely rustic, a gateway into the Santa Monica Mountains Preserve, a wide tract of wild land that ran along the backbone of the mountains that divided the Los Angeles basin from the inland area of the San Fernando Valley. The preserve was home to deer, rabbits, hawks, and a multitude of other wildlife. Hikers had been known to encounter mountain lions padding along the trails that wound in and out of the hills. Most Los Angelenos spent their days oblivious to the fact that this wilderness lay just outside their doorstep.

  Ozersky and Mercy followed behind Jack, doing their best to be quiet. Ozersky was field trained, but he’d never been an operator as Jack had been, so his movements were a bit clumsy. What Mercy lacked in training she made up for in common sense. Even so, Jack wished he were working alone. He’d have moved faster.

  The moon, nearly full, reflected enough light for Jack to see the path, except when they dipped down under thick groves of trees. Even then Jack didn’t use the flashlight. Somewhere ahead were men like the men he’d encountered at the Earth Café. Those men had reacted fast to his entry. He didn’t want to give their companions any more warning than he had to.

  He’d been giving a lot of thought to those men at the café. Ayman al-Libbi had clearly gotten assistance from somewhere, but where? He was sure these men weren’t ETIM. The two who had attacked him at the Cat & Fiddle probably were, undoubtedly muscle given to al-Libbi by Marcus Lee or the man Jack had questioned at the Federal Building. But the shooters at the Earth Café were more Middle Eastern than Chinese.

  Al-Libbi might be using this whole attack as a means of getting back into the good graces of terrorist sponsors. And if he’d already found muscle to do his bidding, his plan might already have succeeded. Which also meant that Jack had no idea the size of the force he was dealing with.

  There was nothing for it. He had to save Kim’s life. He had to save the President. He was going to find someone who could deal with this virus, and God help whoever got in his way.

  12:22 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  A cell phone sitting on a counter kept ringing. It rang every ten minutes or so. For more than an hour everyone had ignored it — there was far too much going on for anyone to pay attention to a phone not his own. But now, after midnight, the situation with the President had stabilized and the atmosphere at CTU, although tense, was steady.

  So when the phone rang again, Jamey Farrell saw that the ring was coming from a phone inside a plastic bag sitting at Jack Bauer’s station. She picked it up without answering it and carried it up to the security desk. “Where’d this come from?” she asked.

  The night guard had no idea personally, but he checked his log. “It was brought over from someone at the Federal Building. Bauer got himself arrested earlier and they took his cell phone.”

  Jamey nodded and brought the phone to Christopher Henderson. “Figures,” Henderson muttered. “He loses his gun, his ID, and his cell phone, and only the phone comes back.”

  As if on cue, the phone rang. “Bauer’s line,” Henderson said.

  “At last,” said the smooth voice at the other end of the line. “Am I speaking to Agent Bauer or some other agent of

  the Counter Terrorist Unit?”

  “How can I help you?” Henderson said.

  “This is Ayman al-Libbi.”

  12:31 A.M. PST Temescal Canyon

  Jack and the others trudged up a steep rise where the path rose up out of a gorge and onto a hilltop. Up ahead he could hear the murmur of falling water. Then, over that, he heard someone shout in alarm. He started to run.

  12:34 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  Three minutes after the phone call, Henderson had a recording of it put into a digital player. He and Ryan Chappelle played it back with Jamey Farrell listening.

  “This is Ayman al-Libbi. I was given this number by a certain young woman who was also kind enough to give me a very deadly virus. As you may know already, I have both the virus and the antiviral medicine that cures it. This puts me at a distinct advantage since I also know that your President and the Premier of China have both been infected. They will both die within a few hours unless they are given this medication. I will be in touch with you soon.”

  Chappelle swore a long, thin stream of expl
etives. “According to that waiter, how much time do they have?”

  Henderson checked his watch. “Less than eight hours.”

  12:38 A.M. PST Temescal Canyon

  Anything can happen in four minutes. The terrorists, whoever they were, could have killed Santiago a dozen times over. Or it might not even be Santiago. The people from the Volvo might not even be terrorists.

  But Jack Bauer ran as if his daughter’s life depended on it. More shouts drifted down from above. He didn’t wait for Ozersky or Mercy. He plunged down into another dell, then sprinted up out of it into moonlight again. The path leveled out and the sound of rushing water grew louder.

  Voices called to each other in Farsi and a moment later several shots rang out. Jack guessed that the terrorists had tried to dispatch their victim quietly, but had failed. Now they were resorting to gunfire. He saw several muzzle flashes in the distance.

  Jack stopped, took a deep breath, raised his weapon, and waited. A moment later there was another muzzle flash. Jack leveled his sights behind the flash and pulled the trigger twice. He heard one cry of pain and several shouts of alarm. He’d given his position away, but now the terrorists had to divide their attention between their victim and him.

  Jack moved to the inward side of the path. Trees lined the path from here to the waterfall he could hear ahead, but they were scraggly trees with thin trunks. They offered more concealment than cover, but he would take what he could get. Jack moved from tree to tree, silent now because his quarry had gone silent.

  The victim, however, was making a lot of noise. “Help! Help!” he shouted. “Whoever’s out there, they’re trying to kill me! Help!”

  Keep yelling, Jack thought. Cover the sound of my movement.

  He moved up to the next tree and stopped, listening. He could see nothing, nor hear any threat, but some sixth sense told him he’d covered enough ground. The ambush would be somewhere in this range. That’s where he’d have put it.