24: Deadline (24 Series)

by James Swallow

  “Undercover again,” said Chase quietly. “Because that worked out so well last time.”

  “Move,” Jack retorted. “Join the back of the group. They’re not taking a head count.”

  Chase nodded and did his best to ignore the dull stink of the blanket, wrapping it around himself. It was big enough to conceal the bulk of the vest and the SMG, but all the same he made sure to hunch forward as much as he could and hold it close to his chest. He kept his head down, eyes to the ground, and shuffled after the rest of the prisoner group.

  Jack walked alongside him, holding a hand to his face as if he were nursing a wound. “Be ready. If they make us, we’ll have to improvise.”

  “Same as always.”

  * * *

  Eventually the raised voice faded away to be replaced by a muttering, tearful tone that Ziminova could just about hear over the sound of the rushing river. She rested against a tree, smoking one of the long, poisonous Polish cigarettes that were her single vice, waiting for the questioning to end.

  Bazin was a master of improvisational interrogation, it had to be said. Taking the hacker Matlow with them aboard the helicopter, her commander had directed the pilot to take them a few miles north to where a river ran swift and deep through the edge of a wooded area. They parked the aircraft in a clearing and with Ekel’s help, Bazin dragged the wounded American to the water’s edge and proceed to bring him to the cusp of drowning. He did it over and over, there in the icy, clear river, lit by the beam of a battery lantern in Ekel’s hands.

  Ziminova didn’t watch, but she couldn’t avoid listening. First to Matlow’s sputtering, angry retorts. Then to the rapid erosion of his annoyance into true fear and abject terror. Finally, to the breaking of him as the cold crept into his bones and threatened hypothermia.

  At the end, she heard a frantic, wild splashing and then only the rush of the water over the rocks. She turned and stepped up as Bazin crossed the grass, drying off his big, boxer’s hands. Ekel carried his coat for him, following a dutiful step or two behind.

  Ziminova didn’t bother to ask if Matlow had talked. Of course he had talked. That had never been in doubt.

  Bazin glanced upward, and she did the same. It was starting to rain, a haze of fine droplets falling down out of a sky thickening with clouds.

  “What have we learned?” Ziminova asked.

  “Much of use,” he replied, glancing toward the pilot aboard the Augusta. Bazin made a spinning motion with one finger and she saw the man nod. He started flipping switches in the cockpit, and the helicopter’s rotor blades began a slow, languid turn about their central hub. “Bauer plans to use the railway to reach his family in Los Angeles.”

  “A train. How European of him.”

  “Bauer is working with this person Williams, as we suspected. I persuaded Matlow to give up all he knew. He provided the locations where Bauer will embark and disembark.”

  “I will contact Yolkin and Mager and have them redirect their team.”

  Bazin released a long, slow breath that turned to vapor in the night air. “This may represent the last chance we have to intercept the man. We must move with speed, but also with care. If we lose Bauer now…” He trailed off, then refocused his attention. “While I was at work, did we receive any further communication from the president’s staff?”

  “No word from Suvarov or his people,” she confirmed. “His flight will land in Moscow in a few hours.”

  “Perhaps by then I will have something in hand to report,” Bazin said.

  She made a show of looking past her commander. “And Matlow … You left him to the river, then?”

  Bazin gave a matter-of-fact nod. “Drowning is a tragic end, and he met it without courage.” He started toward the helicopter as the engine note grew louder, and Ziminova followed, tossing her cigarette into the fast-flowing water as she went.

  * * *

  The doors to the base’s old vehicle store were inch-thick steel plates on rusted roller wheels, and they complained as they were hauled shut behind the group. The biker with the shotgun, the one who had been so generous with his insults and violent encouragement, jerked a thumb over his shoulder at the benches set up across the floor of the bunker. “Get to work, assholes,” he barked. “I’m already sick of lookin’ at ya.”

  “Damn,” breathed Chase, as he took in the scope of the Night Rangers’ operation.

  Jack said nothing, but he shared the other man’s sentiment. The former tank garages had been stripped down to the bare concrete when the army moved out, leaving nothing but a wide, echoing space with low ceilings and hardened walls that could stop an artillery shell. The MC had repurposed the vehicle bays, bringing in portable generators to run racks of construction lamps and industrial equipment. Metal benches and workstations were arranged in rows, and there were people toiling over them, their features hidden behind used surgical face protectors or the pig snouts of heavy rubber dust masks. Jack saw red-colored metal drums sporting diamond-shaped warning labels, polymer sacks of powder and large fluid tanks, white plastic cubes the size of a compact car. It was hot inside, with a thick fug of chemical discharge in the air that instantly coated the back of his throat. Ammonia, hydrogen, acetone, all mixing to form an unpleasant brew that made him want to back out to the fresh air once again.

  The reason behind the weakened, sickly faces of the workers was clear now; this place was a toxic nightmare, filled with any one of a dozen different kinds of lethal compounds. And the end result of it all, the product that “the works” was creating, lay out on drying racks along one wall of the chamber. Steel trays were covered in mounds of what looked like rock candy, irregular milky-white crystals as big as dimes. Some of the workers were cutting them up and weighing out set amounts into small baggies, under the watchful eye of a biker with a baseball bat cocked over one shoulder.

  Methamphetamine. It didn’t come as a surprise to see that the Night Rangers were dealing the illegal street version of the potent stimulant—it was a common commodity for outlaw biker gangs to traffic in—but the fact that they were manufacturing crystal meth themselves, and on this kind of scale … That was out of the ordinary.

  “This isn’t a meth lab,” muttered Chase. “This is a meth factory.”

  There had to be thousands of dollars’ worth of freshly produced ice right there on the racks, Jack guessed, and that was just what he could see. Instead of cooking up small batches in some trailer park drug den, the MC had set up shop in the ruins of Fort Blake. Suddenly things started to fall into place. Deadline wasn’t just a random town where the Night Rangers had decided to plant their flag, it was the nexus of their unlawful enterprises. The enforced prostitution at the strip club and the trafficking in human misery was just a side deal. The drugs were at the rotten heart of it all.

  “Hey!” One of the guards saw them hesitating, and shoved Jack in the shoulder. “What the hell you staring at, dumbass? Get to work—”

  The biker froze as Jack reacted to the push, his improvised cover slipping before he could stop it. The other man saw the pistol grip of the MP5/10 beneath the tattered blanket and reeled backward, pulling a revolver from his belt.

  Jack and Chase reacted instantly, shrugging off their disguises, bringing up the SMGs, safety catches snapping off. Fear rippled through the workers and there were screams. The two of them automatically fell into firing stances, Chase aiming back toward the rear of the garage, Jack aiming forward toward the doors. Still, he hesitated to start shooting.

  “Pull that trigger and you’re a dead man!” Jack snarled at the biker with the pistol, as his cohorts went for their own guns. “One stray round and this place will be an inferno! You want to take that chance?”

  Nobody moved. Jack’s warning was no trick, and everyone around them knew it. The process for making crystal meth, something nicknamed the “red, white and blue” method, was highly dangerous thanks to the use of a number of volatile chemicals. Phosphorus, hydrochloric acid and methylamine were all par
t of the hazardous cocktail. Under the wrong conditions, a poorly controlled meth lab could create poisonous or explosive gasses like phosphine and hydrogen. Worse still was the so-called “Willy Pete,” the white phosphorus that could ignite on contact with air and burn with furious heat.

  “It’s your call,” Jack told him.

  Slowly, a feral grin rose across the biker’s face, and he eased back the hammer on his pistol. His friends did the same, slackening off the triggers of their firearms, reaching instead for other weapons. “I don’t know who you think you are, or where the hell you came from…” continued the man, and with his other hand he drew out a curved karambit knife, the wicked talon-curl of the blade catching the light as he twirled it around his fingers. “I guess I’ll find out when I’m done gutting you.”

  Jack let his MP5/10 drop to dangle at his side on its bungee cord sling. “Make your play,” he said.

  * * *

  “You’re out of line,” Kilner heard the pilot saying. “Sir, I know what the orders say, but I can’t land there.”

  “You’ll do what I damn well tell you to!” Hadley snapped back. “You’ve got the location, put this thing on the ground, now!”

  Markinson and Dell exchanged worried looks, but Kilner wasn’t going to wait for an explanation. He moved up the Cessna’s cabin, gripping the tops of the seats as he walked to steady himself. The jet had crossed into bad weather an hour after they had gotten back in the sky, and despite all the pilot’s entreaties to let him turn around and find another route west, Hadley had refused at every turn. Now it seemed that their disagreement was threatening to spill over into something worse.

  “What’s going on up here?” Kilner said as he reached the cockpit door.

  “This is above your pay grade,” Hadley snapped, shooting him a hard look. “Get back there and sit down.”

  “He wants us to land,” said the copilot, holding up a map.

  “Why is that a problem?”

  “Because there’s no damn airstrip there!” said the pilot, his temper flaring. He snatched the map from the copilot and stabbed a finger at what was clearly a long stretch of paved highway. “This is a road, not a runway!” He shook his head. “Special Agent Hadley, I don’t know where you’re getting your information from, but we can’t put down there. End of story.”

  “You’re trained to make an emergency landing on that kind of surface,” Hadley shot back. “This aircraft is more than capable of doing it.”

  Kilner couldn’t believe what he was hearing. “Hadley, wait. You can’t be serious—”

  “I told you to back off!” Hadley bellowed. He turned on the pilot and jabbed at the air in front of him. “You listen to me. Land this plane where I told you to. Or I will make certain that both of you will lose your wings, your pension, your entire careers! Jack Bauer is the most dangerous man in America and he is down there! We lose him and I will burn you for it. Believe me.” His words were like thunder, and in that moment not one person on that aircraft doubted that Hadley would make good on his promise. The agent’s hand drifted toward his holstered sidearm, and Kilner paled.

  But then the pilot gave a sullen nod. “Fine. Get back in the cabin and strap in. I’m doing this under protest. And you can bet your ass I’ll be filing the mother of all grievances with divisional command when this is over.”

  “Just get us on the ground,” Hadley snapped, and pushed past Kilner, back toward his seat.

  “That’ll happen,” said the pilot bitterly. “One way or another.”

  Kilner fell into his chair and pulled his seat belt tight as the jet dropped suddenly. “I know you want Bauer,” he said, “but you’re risking our lives!”

  Hadley’s moment of fury had gone as quickly as it had arrived. “I’ve already risked everything on finding him,” he replied, and looked away through the window as the ground came rushing up to meet them.

  17

  The biker with the curved karambit knife came at Jack, wide-eyed and laughing. In the hard illumination from the industrial flood lamps behind him, he could see that the Night Ranger had been abusing his position on the drug-lab factory floor to help himself to the raw product; his pupils were dark and dilated.

  Dealing with an assailant in a chemically altered state always represented another level of risk. Someone on meth could be impulsive and dangerous in random ways that Jack couldn’t account for. An ordinary adversary could be counted on to react in a predictable manner that an experienced fighter could measure and counteract. But all bets were off with this guy, who leapt with the knife slashing at the air, lethally focused on nothing more than cutting Jack Bauer as quickly and as violently as possible.

  If it had just been the two of them, Jack would have extended his distance, let the biker lose his momentum and waited for the ideal time to strike. That wasn’t an option here, though. There was little room to maneuver among all the workbenches and chemical drums, too many civilians at close range who might get in the way or end up as collateral damage. He would have to finish this one fast. The biker had three more friends to back him up, and Jack couldn’t expect Chase to handle those odds on his own.

  The karambit sang as it described a horizontal arc through the air, level with Jack’s throat. He dodged, bending back to let the weapon pass, but he wasn’t quite fast enough to miss it entirely. The razor-sharp tip of the blade barely touched the skin over his left cheekbone, but it left a cold touch as it cut the flesh, heat burning in its place a split second later. Jack flinched at the jolt of pain but didn’t let it slow him. He saw the biker coming back the other way with a return swipe, hoping to bury the blade in his chest.

  Jack’s arms caught the biker’s and brought them across each other in a motion like a pair of shears snapping closed. The move trapped the biker’s arm and cleanly snapped the radius bone halfway along its length, causing inches of it to rip out of his flesh and through the sleeve of his denim shirt.

  The attacker released a yowl of agony and he lost his grip on the karambit, his hand opening with the shock of the pain. Even the meth he had smoked a while ago wasn’t enough to numb him, and he recoiled.

  But not quickly enough. Jack caught the knife as it fell, snatching it before it hit the ground and bounced away. Without conscious thought, he mirrored the attack of his assailant and sent the karambit back to its owner. The tip of the blade pierced the left eye of the biker and Jack pushed it home, sinking it deep like a fishhook.

  One down.

  The biker tumbled to the floor, but even as he dropped a second man was bearing down on Jack, an enraged roar on his lips. This one was a lot bigger, one of the guards who had been walking around inside the drug factory. If not for the thick ponytail that fell to his shoulders, he could have been the brother to the man-mountain Jack had seen behind the bar at the Crankcase.

  He rushed at him, catching Jack before he could sidestep out of the way. They collided with a freight train impact and he felt the MP5/10 submachine gun dangling from his shoulder snag on something and become lost. Before Jack could process that, the big Night Ranger had both of his thick, meaty paws around the front straps of his bulletproof vest. Jack felt the world turn around him as the towering thug dragged him off his feet and hauled him around in a fast, dizzying spin.

  * * *

  Chase ducked and wove, calling on old boxing moves as the rail-thin biker with the crackling cattle prod carved up the air in front of him. The bright, actinic glow of the prod’s electric discharge left muddy purple afterimages on Chase’s retinas, and he blinked furiously, knowing that all it would take to be beaten was one straight-on connection with the weapon. He had taken a Taser hit in SWAT training half a lifetime ago, a savage jolt through his torso to teach him and his fellow cops how to deal with such an eventuality. It wasn’t something he was in any rush to repeat.

  He glimpsed a second figure joining the first and now there were two of them coming at him through the blur of motion and crackling electricity. One struck high and the o
ther went low, forcing Chase to stay on the defensive. He tried to keep outside their reach, but he was aware they were backing him deeper into the drug factory, trying to limit his options. Chase let his training take over, dodging, moving, presenting a shifting target. For the bikers, it was like clutching at smoke, but they knew that all they had to do was wear him down. Sooner or later, Chase would plant a foot wrong and they would fall on him, and beat him into the concrete.

  He couldn’t wait for that to happen. From the corner of his eye, Chase caught sight of a plastic drum in bright fire-truck red. Black stenciled letters and hazmat labels on the side of the container warned about the volatility of whatever it was full of, but Chase didn’t have the time to double-check. He threw himself at the cylinder, hearing cries of alarm as some of the captive workers scattered before him.

  Chase put his weight onto the top of the drum and used that to rock it on the wooden pallet where it stood. It was half-full, and thick liquid sloshed around inside. He directed a kick at the base of the wobbling drum and that was enough to push it off the pallet. Gravity took over. The plastic container tipped on its side and the impact blew out the safety cap, vomiting the contents across the concrete floor. A noxious gush of industrial-strength iodine solution washed over the boots of the bikers, the spill lighting a surge of panic through the workers. They bolted for the doors, chaos erupting around the echoing concrete chamber.

  * * *

  There was a dizzying moment when Jack was actually flying through the air; then he collided with one of the water containers, bouncing off it with a hollow, echoing clank. He tried to get to his feet, but the big man was already there, already hauling him up again by the straps on the vest. Jack kicked and punched, but his blows didn’t seem to have any effect. The giant biker threw him to the right and the left, back and forth, slamming him into the drying racks over and over again. Showers of meth rocks exploded around him, raining down, trays full of freshly cooked crystal tipping over and grinding to powder beneath the boots of the man trying to bludgeon him to death.