Death Angel
Page 33
The driver stomped the gas pedal and the fire truck lunged forward, bulling the delivery truck backward, sliding it sideways across the lawn. The gate was forced and Tac Squad members poured through it, charging into the Mission Hill grounds.
Jack Bauer motioned to pilot Ron Galvez to drop closer to the roof of the mansion. Galvez shook his head no. Jack was insistent, motioning vehemently.
Galvez worked the controls, hovering six feet above the roofline to the left of the bell tower. He had trouble holding the machine steadily in place.
Jack Bauer slung the M–16 over his shoulder. He unfastened the safety strap and jumped out of the cockpit to the roof.
He hit hard and slipped on the ceramic tiles, knocking some of them loose. His feet worked, seeking purchase. Jack succeeded in draping himself over the rooftop ridgeline, lying facedown across it at right angles, his middle in the center.
Galvez lifted up the chopper. The downdraft battered at Jack. It eased as Galvez guided the helicopter off to the side and away.
Jack got his feet under him and rose up into a low crouch. Like a tightrope walker he crossed the roofline to the bell tower, stepping through an archway to the tower floor. The dead body of one of the riflemen lay sprawled on his back on the floor. A square open hatchway accessed a flight of stone stairs.
Jack unlimbered his M–16 and held it leveled at waist height, pointing the muzzle down toward the interior recesses of the shaft. He climbed down the stone stairs, descending toward the bottom of the bell tower.
Things were out of control in the electronic arena on the ground floor. Adam Zane decided he’d had enough. He broke and ran toward the front of the building, holding his hands in the air, shouting, “Don’t shoot! I surrender—”
Torreon Blanco drew his gun and shot Zane in the back. Zane lurched, almost falling. He recovered his balance and moved ahead, advancing slowly, laboriously, as if he were wading through hip-deep water.
Torreon fired again. Zane pitched forward, falling on his face. “I hate yellow bellies,” Torreon said.
“What’s your plan?” Marta demanded.
Torreon brandished his gun, fist-pumping it in the air. “We’ll go down shooting!”
Marta nodded. “That’s my brother—you’re some kind of hombre!”
Torreon grinned, showing lots of teeth. Behind him, Hugh Carlson eased out of his chair facing the instrument board and began sneaking toward the rear of the room and the sunny patio beyond.
When he got clear of the masses of electronic equipment and saw daylight he broke into a run. His footfalls slapped the tiles, catching Torreon’s attention. He spun around, gun in hand, arm extended as he drew a bead on Carlson’s retreating back. “Another deserter—”
A nearby window shattered and rounds from the gun battle outside raked his chest. Falling, he gasped Marta’s name and landed motionless.
Hugh Carlson ran outside on to the rear patio. The back grounds were filled with Blanco men in retreat, running toward the rear wall. A few of them had reached it and were trying to scale it. It was smooth and ten feet tall and they were meeting with little success. Hugh Carlson ran across the patio to join them.
Ahead, a Blanco gunman had turned to fire at some FBI men who appeared rounding the corner of the house on his right. He glimpsed Carlson in the corner of his eye and saw a stranger charging toward him. He opened fire, cutting him down.
The helicopter zoomed low over the back grounds, Tony Almeida strafing Blanco gunmen with his M–4. Galvez pulled up, made a wide, swooping curve, and came in for another run. Tony looked like he was having a hell of a time.
Jack Bauer reached the bottom of the bell tower just in time to hear a dull booming blast like the sound made by a shotgun. He flattened against the wall beside the doorway opening into the drawing room turned electronics installation. He peeked out cautiously.
On the other side of the room he saw Carrie Carlson standing alone. He went to her. As he neared her, he saw the body of Torreon Blanco sprawled on the floor, shot twice in the back, dead.
Coming closer, he got a good look at Carrie Carlson. Her face was a wide-eyed, staring, openmouthed mask of fear. She stood leaning against a computer console for support. She leaned heavily on the cane that supported her bad left leg.
Nearby lay Marta Blanco, or what was left of her. She didn’t have much of a face.
Most of it had been blown away. Jack Bauer was able to recognize her mostly from her gorgeous mane of hair, now gore-streaked, flecked, and splattered.
Her face was a mess, a red bubbling wreck. Somehow the damage had managed to spare one long, slanted green eye. It glittered like an emerald sliver. The extent of the devastation reminded Jack of the death of Peter Rhee. He’d been slaughtered in similar fashion.
No gunshot wound that, which had destroyed Marta Blanco’s face, not even from a big-caliber gun. A shotgun blast had done the damage. At close range. Only—where was the shotgun? Jack saw no shotgun nearby, not a conventional model or a sawed-off job. Not in Torreon’s hand, or Marta’s, either.
“Thank god you’ve come,” Carrie Carlson said. “It’s been a nightmare! They kidnapped me, swore they’d kill me—”
Jack Bauer looked her up and down. A thin line of smoke was rising from the bottom of her cane. Smoke?
He got it then. It all came together:
The way Peter Rhee had died—the pair of curious round holes that had been pocked in the sand beside the car where he’d been killed—the nagging feeling that had irked him at the Carlson house when he’d seen the umbrella holder with the three canes in it—
Most of all, that telltale line of smoke, thin, straight, rising from the base of the cane that Carrie Carlson was now leaning on.
He swung the M–16 to cover her. “I wondered how anyone could have gotten close enough to Peter Rhee to take him out with a shotgun blast. He was on his guard against assassins. But you, Dr. Carlson’s wife, the well-respected humanitarian and do-gooder—you could have got close enough to him,” Jack said.
“How did you set him up? Did you tell him in confidence that you’d discovered something shocking about your husband that threw his loyalty into question and that you had to meet him in private to tell him the awful truth? Rhee would have bought that. He expected danger and treachery from all sides, but not from you.
“The African artifacts in your house were a tip-off, too. Or they should have been, if I’d been paying attention at the time. I’m sure when the dates are checked they’ll show that you were in Africa at the same time and place as Annihilax.”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Carrie Carlson said.
“The fatal clue is the hardware itself, lady. Another minute or two and you would have been in the clear. But you blasted Marta right before I came in and that’s what tripped you up.
“Gun smoke is coming out of the bottom of your cane, smoke from the shotgun blast you discharged into Marta’s face, just like you did to Peter Rhee. It’s a trick cane, a single-barreled shotgun disguised as a cane. I’m betting the trigger is concealed somewhere in the handle. It’ll make a hell of an exhibit at your court case,” Jack said.
“No court case—no court case for Annihilax,” Carrie Carlson said.
She leaned back against the console, taking her weight off the cane so she could swing it freely, raising it up to level against Jack Bauer to deliver another killing shot.
He squeezed the trigger of the M–16 unleashing a quick short burst into her middle. She fought to raise the cane higher and he tilted the M–16 upward and shot her between the eyes.
She fell and lay there with her eyes open. Jack pried the cane from her hand and examined it. The base where the rubber tip had been was a black empty bore with traces and flecks of rubber around the edges that the shotgun blast hadn’t entirely dislodged.
The curved handle had a decorative metal band where it met the shaft. When he twisted it, the curved handle came off, revealing the breech where a fresh
shotgun shell had been loaded and was waiting for use. The trigger and firing pin were built into the curved handle.
Somewhere in the distance, church bells started ringing, reminding Jack Bauer that it was Sunday morning, about time for services to be letting out.
The church bells tolled, sounding a requiem for she who had been Annihilax.
Annihilax, the Death Angel—dead.
About the Author
DAVID JACOBS is the author of over three dozen works of fiction and nonfiction, including most recently the nonfiction titles The Mafia’s Greatest Hits and Snakes on a Plane: The Complete Quote Book. Other nonfiction titles include Notes from The Barn, the companion volume to The Shield TV series; Best of Court TV Volumes I-IV; and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the FBI. David is a longtime member of the Mystery Writers of America.
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24 DECLASSIFIED Books
From Harper
DEATH ANGEL
HEAD SHOT
TRINITY
COLLATERAL DAMAGE
STORM FORCE
CHAOS THEORY
VANISHING POINT
CAT’S CLAW
TROJAN HORSE
VETO POWER
OPERATION HELL GATE
Copyright
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously and are not to be construed as real. Any resemblance to actual events, locales, organizations, or persons, living or dead, is entirely coincidental.
24™ DECLASSIFIED: DEATH ANGEL. Copyright © 2010 by Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. All rights reserved under International and Pan-American Copyright Conventions. By payment of the required fees, you have been granted the non-exclusive, non-transferable right to access and read the text of this e-book on-screen. No part of this text may be reproduced, transmitted, down-loaded, decompiled, reverse engineered, or stored in or introduced into any information storage and retrieval system, in any form or by any means, whether electronic or mechanical, now known or hereinafter invented, without the express written permission of HarperCollins e-books.
First Harper paperback printing: May 2010
EPub Edition © March 2010 ISBN: 978-0-06-200651-6
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