24 Declassified: Veto Power 2d-2

by John Whitman

  Tony heard a soft whirring sound and turned to see the boys on their bicycles flash by. They hopped the curb and then, with whoops of daredevil joy, they launched themselves off the edge of the parking lot and down onto the plant-covered slope below. He went back and looked at the slope again. It wasn’t all that steep. A vehicle might just be able to do it.

  Tony had phoned in his information: the Ready-Rooter van was gone, and he thought he’d found another way out of the lot. “Which means,” he had pointed out, “that someone didn’t want that van to be picked up on camera.”

  Tony walked back to the sidewalk, then turned around. He could just make out the security camera recording the parking entrance. He was sure it didn’t reach this part of the parking lot. He stood at the edge of the curb again, staring down the slope. It wouldn’t be hard to drive down that slope, especially late at night if no one was around to see. Tony slid down the slope a few feet, crouched down, and began to snoop among the green, water-fat ice plants. It wasn’t long before he found what he feared: ice plants crushed by tire tracks. He stood up and looked out on the city of Pasadena, with the lights of Los Angeles glistening in the distance.

  The other van had come this way, and they had no idea where the terrorists had gone.

  9:29 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  Ryan Chappelle caught Jack’s eye from across the room. The Director had just hung up the phone. His face was red, and the muscles in his jaw worked furiously. He pointed at Jack and then at the conference room.

  A moment later, Jack and Kelly entered. Chappelle closed the door behind them, then spun around and put his face right up against Jack’s. “Do you realize what you’ve done!”

  Startled by Chappelle’s aggression, Jack reacted instinctively and bumped his chest against him, knocking the Director off-balance. “What are you talking about?”

  Chappelle was livid, ranting nonsensically. “A weather balloon. A goddamned weather balloon! And an EMP device!”

  Kelly, as he had done before, stepped in to mediate. “Ryan, you’re not being clear. What’s wrong?”

  Ryan wiped spittle from his mouth. He took a deep breath and spoke in short phrases. “Ground airplanes. creating a national panic…we lost a man! And all for nothing!”

  “What do you mean, nothing!” Jack shot back.

  “Nothing!” Chappelle said, raising his voice. “I just got the word from the recovery team. There was no EMP device on that balloon. There was nothing but some kind of meteorological package!”

  Jack froze. Everything stopped for him: the clock, his breath, even his heart. He had the sudden and terrifying sense that the floor might simply open up and swallow him, because the natural laws had suddenly been violated. “What?”

  “Oh, now you look doubtful! Before, you were pretty damned sure!”

  Kelly was just as shocked as Jack. “It’s got to be a mistake.”

  “No, no mistake,” Chappelle sneered. “We just got off the phone with the team that launched the damned thing. You know when they launched it? This morning at eight o’clock local time. They’ve been tracking it all day — right up until the moment it was destroyed.” Chappelle closed the distance between them like a terrier ready to fight. “Do you get it, Bauer? You put the whole country into panic mode for nothing!”

  20. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10 P.M. AND 11 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

  10:00 P.M. PST Mullholland Drive, Overlooking Santa Monica

  East of the 405 Freeway, Mulholland Drive evolved into the curvaceous mountain top road favored by Porsche drivers and other daredevils on their way to parties in the Hollywood Hills. To the west of the freeway, Mulholland transformed into a rural mountain road on the outskirts of the city, quietly fading away from city lights into the rural area between Los Angeles and the beach communities to the north. Here you could still see glimpses of Los Angeles as it had been before the Europeans had come: wild brush growing thick and green during the spring rains, only to bake under the summer sun before dying away before renewing itself the following spring. The Santa Monica Mountains were crisscrossed with trails that had become the salvation of the few nature worshippers who took advantage of them.

  Unfortunately, some of those nature worshippers had more love than understanding, and they became lost or injured. A few had even starved to death only ten thousand steps from the second largest city in the United States.

  It was hikers like these that kept the L.A. Sheriff Search and Rescue team busy. At a little after ten o’clock that night, the Sheriff’s search helicopter dusted down right on Mulholland Drive and Nina Myers hopped out, keeping her head low. A blackand-white search truck, its emergency lights flashing, was parked nearby. She ran to it and shook the hand of a tall, baby-faced man in a green flight suit.

  “Deputy Pascal,” he said. “I think we’ve got your missing person.”

  Nina followed Pascal to the edge of the road. Outside the white lines of the westbound lane, there was a soft shoulder about three feet wide, and then a steep dropoff. Two more sheriff’s deputies stood there, one belaying a rope and the other holding steady a standing searchlight that pointed down into the ravine below. Nina saw another sheriff rappelling down toward a red Toyota Acura planted grill down in the brush at the bottom.

  “This road is a lot trickier than people realize,” the deputy explained. “We pull people out of here once or twice a month.”

  “I don’t think this one went over the side by accident,” Nina said.

  The rappelling deputy reached the bottom of the ravine some two hundred feet below them. In the bright glow of the searchlight, they watched him lean into the car for a moment. Then he pulled his upper body out and talked into his microphone.

  Nina heard his voice broadcast from the radio on Deputy Pascal’s belt. “She’s alive,” he said, “but not by much. We need a medivac chopper here stat.”

  10:17 P.M. PST Westin St. Francis Hotel, San Francisco

  When oneofhis stafftoldAttorneyGeneral Jim Quincy that Senator Alan Wayans was on the phone, Quincy savored the moment. This is it, he thought. Six months of planning had ended in one night of perfect execution. Now came the coup de grace. If there was anything the last year or two in American politics had taught him, it was this: it took war to bring the people together. First you needed to create the need for urgency and the desire for change. Only then would they be willing to accept the gift you had to give them.

  The New American Privacy Act was Quincy’s gift to his country. Bureaucracy and the worship of individual rights had been a yoke around the neck of justice for too long. Quincy was tired of watching his FBI and his DEA, not to mention other agencies such as the CIA and CTU, paralyzed by laws that protected suspects rather than empowered the law. He despised the liberal left that worshipped the false idol of personal privacy. Who cared if some fringe radical in upstate New York had his library records probed, or if the FBI put wiretaps on him without his knowing? If the person was innocent, it wouldn’t matter. If he was guilty, lives would be saved! Jim’s legacy would be the enhancement of the Office of the Attorney General, its investment with new powers that could probe the populace with a laser.

  He hesitated before picking up the phone, like a wine connoisseur gathering himself for the first taste. He pulled the receiver to his ear and said, “Yes, Senator Wayans. It’s late for you, isn’t it?”

  “I’m up, everyone’s up, I think!” Wayans said in a forced voice. “I…can you believe this thing? A terrorist attack that would’ve knocked out the entire power grid?”

  “Unfortunately, I can, Senator,” Quincy said soberly. “We all know what we’re up against.”

  Wayans sighed. “I guess we do. Is it true that these terrorists have been in the country for months? And that we got wind of them but didn’t catch them?”

  “That’s my understanding,” Quincy said carefully. “I’m sure we’re going to hear more about that when Congress looks into the matter. And with
all respect, Senator, I just want to say that if I’m called before the subcommittee, I’m going to point the finger right at those who have voted to withhold powers of investigation from the Justice Department.”

  Quincy grinned. He could almost hear Alan Wayans shiver on the other end of the phone. “I–I can’t believe our people didn’t get these bastards earlier,” Wayans sputtered, filling himself with righteous indignation. “I–I think it might be time to consider loosening the reins a little bit more. I’m going to give that privacy act some more thought. Have a good night, Mr. Attorney General.”

  “Good night, Senator.”

  Quincy hung up the phone, only to hear his private cell phone ring. He knew who was calling.

  “Congratulations,” said Frank Newhouse.

  “And to you,” Quincy said. “Your plan worked.”

  “I’m happy to play a part, Mr. Attorney General.”

  “Sometimes you have to make people a little afraid of the illness before they’ll take their medicine,” Quincy said. “But in the end this thing will be good for them.”

  “I agree. Will you still be reachable in San Francisco tomorrow?”

  “That depends on the President.”

  “You think he’ll veto?”

  “I’ll know soon enough.”

  “Well, then, I’m sure we’ll be in touch, sir.”

  10:18 P.M. PST West Los Angeles

  Newhouse disconnected his mobile phone and shook his head in disgust. He was sitting in his car, parked on a side street off Olympic Boulevard in West Los Angeles.

  “It always amazes me how a man can be full of shit and right at the same time,” Newhouse said to the man in the passenger seat. “He says you need to make people afraid of the illness before they’ll take their medicine.”

  “Well, he’s right,” said the other man. “That’s what we’re doing.”

  Frank Newhouse turned to his companion and grinned. “That’s what I always liked about you, Brett. You always know what to say.”

  10:27 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  Jack Bauer ignored the chaos swirling around him and tried to think. Analysts shouted information at one another, trying desperately to make sense out of their own confusion. Chappelle alternately scolded Bauer and took calls on his telephone from his bosses in Washington, D.C.

  He’d been wrong. Somewhere in the process he’d taken a wrong turn. He tried not to think about the panic and tragedy he’d caused. He was useless if he let his mistakes paralyze him; he had to forget the fact that he had put the entire country on high alert and had caused the death of an Air Force pilot.

  Jack also had to put aside his fatigue. He hadn’t slept in almost forty hours, and he’d been pushing himself hard for over a day without rest. But there was no time to rest — he had to think!

  Chappelle returned from another phone call to berate Jack further. “You’re being suspended, Jack, pending an investigation into your handling of this disaster!”

  Jack shook his head. “We have to assume they’re still here in Los Angeles. The flight to Kansas was a mistake. They obviously wanted to send us on a wild goose chase, that’s why they parked the van there. Which means they’re probably still in Los Angeles planning something.”

  Chappelle punched a fist into his palm in frustration. “Jesus, Jack, don’t you get it. You’ve blown it, you’re off the goddamed case.”

  “No, no, they’re doing something here, in Los Angeles, with the EMP,” Jack said. “We’ve got to figure out what it is.” Jack suddenly remembered the code that Professor Rafizadeh had translated. “Wait a minute! The code! The plan that Nina called fake! It said they were planning to kill the President in Los Angeles tomorrow.”

  “Right, and Barnes isn’t even going to be in Los Angeles tomorrow,” Chappelle snapped. “Let’s not waste time.”

  Once again, Kelly Sharpton weighed in as mediator, but this time he was on Chappelle’s side. “Jack, what can they do? There is no way for them to launch that device nineteen miles into the air. Every flight is grounded—”

  “Thanks to you, Bauer,” Chappelle added.

  Jack ran to the nearest computer and called up a Domestic Security Alert. CTU always got access to any security issues in its area, including the travel schedules of VIPs. The itinerary showed that the President would be finishing a banquet in San Francisco, then heading down to San Diego on Air Force One. “Every flight will be grounded except Air Force One.”

  Suddenly, finally, a piece fell into place for Jack. He remembered the briefing they’d received on the EMP devices. The plan, like a jigsaw puzzle, suddenly came into focus. He didn’t have all the pieces yet, but he understood the design.

  “You’re right,” he said, “he’s not going to be in Los Angeles. But he is going to be over it.” He pointed at the itinerary. “Imagine what would happen to Air Force One if all its power and computers were shut down over the city.”

  Chappelle’s lip curled in disgust. “Jack, you’re just reaching now. It’s pathetic.”

  Kelly said, “Jack, I just said, they can’t launch it.”

  “They don’t have to launch it,” Bauer insisted.

  “The EMP still works, its range is just limited. It’ll still reach Air Force One if it’s flying overhead.”

  Chappelle backed away. “I’ve heard enough here. Jack, you’re off the case. Officially. You are not to take any action at all. Is that understood?”

  “Chappelle, you have to contact the Secret Service. At least reroute Air Force One—”

  “Are you insane!” Chappelle yelled so loud that every head in CTU turned toward them. “You just shut down an entire state! An Air Force pilot just died because of you. No one is going to listen to you. I’m not listening to you!”

  Chappelle stormed away, leaving the people behind him in awkward silence. Jack looked at them, and few would look him in the eye. Jack felt defeated for one of the few times in his life.

  The phone rang, breaking the spell and sending everyone back to busywork. Jessi Bandison handed the phone to Jack. “Tony Almeida.”

  “Bauer,” Jack said.

  Tony Almeida said, “You’re not going to believe what I found.”

  10:33 P.M. PST Hills Above Glendale

  Tony Almeida had been working hard. Once he found the unobserved exit out of Cal Tech, he set Jamey Farrell to work her magic. She and her team of analysts had gone back into the records, calling up traffic cameras and security footage anywhere and everywhere in the vicinity of that street. Using scraps of footage, Jamey had built a very basic scenario for the Ready-Rooter van:

  After midnight the night before, the van was spotted heading east away from Cal Tech. A minute later it was on a side road headed north, into the hills above Pasadena. The area had no traffic cameras, so there was a gap of nearly an hour. Then the van showed up on the same security camera heading in the other direction. At that point, CTU lost them. Jamey was widening her search during that time period, trying to reacquire its travel path.

  With no other leads, Tony had followed the van’s path into the hills. He knew he was on to something: this area was much too desolate for a Ready-Rooter van to have any reason to take this route. He used basic logic to plan his cursory search: the van had been out of pocket for one hour. Driving at a fairly fast clip, Tony drove into the hills for thirty minutes, then he turned around and stopped. He was sitting in the foothills of the San Gabriel Mountains, looking down on Pasadena and the hilly land between the San Gabriels and the Santa Monica ranges. There was nothing but sagebrush and fire roads here, and way too much ground to cover by himself. He’d need a team and daylight.

  Tony started his car again and headed back down the road. As he drove he had a thought: he’d gone too far. The driver came up here to do something, and in Tony’s experience “something” always took longer than a few minutes. Figuring twenty minutes each way as a maximum, Tony shortened the search area he would recommend to CTU for tomorrow morning.
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  He was so lost in thought that he barely saw the coyotes. They were scrawny brown and gray phantoms skittering across the edge of his headlights. Their eyes flashed demonlike in the lamp glare. They scattered off to the brush, but they didn’t run away. That was odd. Coyotes were scavengers and cowards — the only reason they would resist their flight instinct was if…

  Tony stopped the car and turned out the lights. It was dark now, but he could still see the coyotes, ghosts in the darkness. They crossed the road again. A few seconds later he heard yapping and snarling.

  Almeida grabbed his flashlight and jumped out of his car. Drawing his gun, he ran across the road and into the brush. Most of the coyotes scrambled away from the flashlight beam and the sound of his footsteps, but one big male stood its ground, fur raised up and teeth bared. Tony fired one shot into the air, and the crack of the discharge stole the coyote’s courage away. It yelped and ran off with the others.

  Tony probed the ground all around with his flashlight beam. The circle of light fell across a large patch of broken ground. The earth had been upturned and then patted down in an area about fifteen feet wide and ten feet long. The coyotes had been digging and scratching at it, and Tony now saw what they’d been fighting over.

  A human hand, partially mauled, was sticking up from the earth.

  10:40 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  Tony Almeida’s news struck Jack like a blow to the stomach. Eight bodies. He’d discovered eight bodies buried in a shallow grave in the hills above Pasadena. In the dark, looking at bodies buried for nearly a day, Almeida couldn’t be sure, but he thought they looked Middle Eastern, either Arab or Persian.

  Kelly had stood by Jack, even after Chappelle’s tirade. Like everyone else in CTU, he knew Bauer had made the wrong call, but Kelly had led men in battle, and led investigations, too. He understood that the only way to get things right was to act, and sometimes the wrong actions were taken. Good leaders learned from their mistakes and overcame their deficiencies.