by John Whitman
“Are you staying in the city?”
“Well,” Marcia said, a little more naturally, “they’ve asked me to, for the trial and everything. But after that I’m moving to St. Louis.”
“Friends there?”
“A fresh start, I guess. It’s hard, losing someone. I didn’t know how hard it was.” Marcia Tintfass had gotten her rhythm now and sounded good.
Nina asked a few more perfunctory questions, questions that might explain the urgency in knocking on the door in the dead of night, but she left as soon as she could. In the car, she called in to CTU and talked with Jamey Farrell. “We need a tap on this phone, and her cell phone, and everything else right away. I guarantee you she’s calling someone somewhere right now and she’s nervous.”
3:42 A.M. PST Inglewood, California
The CTU strike team moved in with quiet efficiency. This was as close to a routine assault as the real world could provide. They had the layout of the two-story warehouse. Satellite and infrared imagery located the three occupants of the building. City business licenses, auto registrations, and telephone records told them exactly who would be inside.
By the time Tony Almeida got word from every unit in the assault and confirmed that the building was locked down, his people had three men in flex cuffs sitting in chairs in the middle of the warehouse. Two of them were little more than strong backs and mean looks. The man in the middle, according to their intelligence, was Arturo Menifee, although the name he was currently using was Richard Bonaventure. Arturo, born and raised in Florida, was a former procurement officer at Fort Hood, Texas, who decided to keep his skills sharp after his discharge from the Army. The military did a pretty good job of keeping track of its ordinance and weapons systems, but with such a massive operation, especially in wartime, it wasn’t all that difficult for a patient man to shave off a rocket-propelled grenade here, an M–60 there. Before you knew it, you could have your own little arsenal for sale.
Tony put his hands on his knees, taking himself down eye level with the seated arms dealer. He didn’t say a word, and the prisoner stared back at him, his face alternating nervously between fear and anger as Tony continued to stare. Menifee didn’t look much like Tony if they stood together, but a bystander would have described them about the same: medium height, dark curly hair, dark eyes. I’m better looking, of course, Tony thought wryly.
“Okay,” Tony said at last.
“I ain’t telling you shit,” Menifee spat.
Tony smiled. “I don’t need you to tell me anything. Just talk. I want to hear your accent.”
3:47 A.M. PST InterContinental Hotel
“That’s one hell of a story,” Vanowen said. He still held the gun, but it was no longer pointed at Jack. Vanowen seemed to have forgotten what it was, and waved it around like a lecturer’s pointer stick. “I never met anybody who broke outta prison before.”
A knock on the door interrupted them. Vanowen looked perplexed, then went and cracked the door open. A second later he opened it wide, but did not step out of the frame. Jack could not see the other man’s face silhouetted by the hallway lights, but whoever he was, he was huge, his bulk filling the entire doorway.
“Mark, you gotta be sleeping now. It’s the big day!” Vanowen said. “Can’t sleep,” said the big man. “Gotta talk. Let me in.”
“I got people.”
“Lemme in, Van, come on.”
Vanowen hesitated, but then relented. The man who pushed past him looked like a cartoon drawing of a super hero. He was at least six feet, three inches, with shoulders as wide as two men put together, a narrow waist, and muscles that rippled through his American Eagle T-shirt. His face was chiseled out of rock and the bridge of his nose was permanently swollen. Both his ears were grotesquely misshapen. Jack recognized that as “cauliflower ear.” Wrestlers get it from bumping their ears against their opponents over and over again.
“Guys, this is Mark Kendall. Mark ‘The Mountain’ Kendall, former heavyweight champ, and soon to be returning champ.”
Jack and Ramirez nodded. Kendall grunted, but clearly had no interest in them.
“That’s what I want to talk about,” Kendall said. “I gotta know something, Vanny. You’ve got to promise me that I’ll get other fights if I lose this one.”
Jack had seen Vanowen slip the gun into his pocket as he answered the door. Now he saw the man slide his hand casually back into that pocket. “Come on, Mark. No promises in this business. You knew the score when you started your comeback.” For a man who had just called Kendall the next heavyweight champ, he was suddenly very unsympathetic.
For a man as huge as Kendall, he looked pathetically vulnerable. “I’ve got fans out there. They want to see me fight.”
Vanowen shook his head. “They want to see you come back, Mountain. See if a thirty-six-year-old guy’s been out of the cage for four years can still dish it out. You lose, they’ll have their answer, and no one’s gonna be interested anymore.”
Kendall’s cauliflower ears turned beet red, but Jack couldn’t tell if it was embarrassment or anger. Not just anger, he decided. Kendall’s massive shoulders hung low. He was a beaten man. But Jack was sure the fights hadn’t done it. Something else weighed him down. Something he couldn’t take care of with muscles.
“Come here, let’s talk,” Vanowen said. “I got money riding on you today, and your head’s not on right. You guys sit tight.”
Vanowen led the huge man into the other room. Ramirez stretched himself out on the couch. “Jesus, I didn’t realize how tired I was. I’m not used to running around all night like this.”
Jack shrugged. He’d done it before. Ramirez turned the television on absentmindedly. Jack watched with him, but his mind was on his next move. His eyes flicked about the room until he spotted a cell phone, undoubtedly Vanowen’s, sitting on a chair atop a pile of clothes. Jack got up and stretched. He walked by the chair and palmed the cell phone, then went into the bathroom. Now his movements became much more urgent. He closed, locked the door, and dialed CTU.
3:53 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Henderson was half asleep at his desk. He wasn’t lazy, but it was late and he’d been waiting for updates on the Jack Bauer situation, on Tony Almeida’s leads, and on a few other lower-priority cases, and his eyes had started to droop. The ringing phone brought him to attention. The late night operator told him who was calling, and Henderson felt his heart thud against his ribs.
“Jack?” he said incredulously.
“I don’t have a lot of time,” Jack replied, his voice a hoarse whisper. “How’s Chappelle?”
“Turn yourself in, Jack,” Henderson said. “You look guilty now. You’ve got U.S. Marshals all over the city.”
“Chappelle?” Bauer asked again.
“No one knows. No explanation for his collapse.”
He heard Bauer swear under his breath. “Okay, Chris, I’ve got to tell you something, but I can’t give many details.”
“Come in here and tell me, Jack.”
“Listen!” Jack commanded, though his voice was still quiet. “None of this is what it seems. I’m working a case. Chappelle knows all about it. There’s an FBI unit that knows, too, but I don’t have their contact.”
Henderson frowned and gave an accompanying skeptical sigh. “Jack, come on. A jailbreak as part of a case?”
“Not that part. I had to do that, but it wasn’t part of the plan.”
“I’ll bet.”
“You don’t believe me.”
“Would you believe it?”
Jack didn’t reply, and Henderson heard the low hum of cellular static in the background. Finally Bauer said, “How much of this is about the Internal Affairs investigation?”
Henderson snorted. He wasn’t surprised that Jack had brought up the investigation. Rumors of the inappropriate use of funds had floated around CTU Los Angeles for several months, and the word embezzlement had been used. Most of the field agents had been called in, and the w
ord was that Jack had mentioned Henderson’s name. “First of all, you and I know that any charge against me is bullshit. Second, I’d never let something like that compromise my integrity.”
“I don’t care either way, Chris,” Jack said. “I’m just on a case and I want—”
“I’m the goddamn Director of Field Operations, Jack,” Chris said, “and I have no knowledge of you being on a case. I want you to come in. Or I’ll send someone you trust out to get you. How’s that?” But the line was dead.
Henderson buzzed his intercom. “Okay, new guy. Did you get that traced?” “’Course,” said Seth Ludonowski. “We aim to please.” Henderson dialed Peter Jiminez.
9. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 4 A.M. AND 5 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
4:00 A.M. PST Biltmore Hotel
At nineteen, he was still Jorge Rafael Marquez, but no longer the peasant’s son from Chiapas or the adolescent gangster from Boyle Heights. He went by Rafael more than Jorge in those days because it sounded less rural. Rafael, to him sounded cosmopolitan, a world traveler or, as he fancied himself, an artist of the new frontier. The new frontier, he had recognized years earlier, was the Internet. The Internet thrilled him with its offer of freedom: freedom of information, freedom of discussion, freedom of purpose.
“I can’t let you do it,” Amistad Medved had told him, using the phrase Rafael least liked to hear. Rafael had just insisted that they open their operating system to the public.
Medved was his partner, but also his boss. Only twenty-three himself, he was still considered a veteran of the burgeoning world of connectivity. He’d made a small fortune in software design and had used it to began writing his own Web browser. Medved had recognized Rafael’s genius immediately and brought him on board, given him a huge number of options, and let him run rampant in the fields of cyberspace. With his gift for patterns, Rafael had written algorithms that shortened the lag time of search engines to nanoseconds. His work had trebled Medved’s fortunes and made Rafael himself a rich man.
Then the rumors first started to fly about Internet service providers offering tiered delivery: slower connections for lower-paying customers, faster speed for more money. Rafael blanched. It sounded like the sharecropper scams he’d witnessed back in Chiapas. It reminded him of extortion rackets run by MS–13 back in Boyle Heights. Only this time it was sanctioned by the government.
Rafael had wanted to respond by publishing an algorithm that latched on to high-speed connections regardless of the pay rate. Medved, who had invested heavily in several different ISPs, refused to allow it.
Rafael had walked away, leaving his career behind. He abandoned his name as well, but he was not yet Zapata. He became Zapata a year or two later, when the Mexican government raided Chiapas and killed his father and his cousin, and he realized once and for all that the Rubik’s Cube was a trick, created by leaders to occupy the time and minds of the people. The cube did not need to be solved. It had to be broken.
Zapata listened carefully as Aguillar told him about the upcoming buy. “I am sending Alliance to meet with the arms dealer. They are providing transportation.”
Aguillar saw the flicker of concern cross Zapata’s face like a shadow. He waited.
“We used Alliance the last time we were in the United States.”
“To transport the Cubans, yes. But you were already using him for his other business, so I assumed—”
“The fight game is different,” Zapata said dismissively. “An entirely different sphere. I do not like using the same people too often because it creates a pattern. Patterns can be followed.”
“I know, but there was no one else available. Farrigian has disappeared, and the others we have worked with more.”
“Okay,” Zapata said. “But kill him afterward.”
Aguillar nodded. He was done, and should have gone to his own room to get some sleep, but he hesitated. “I’m sorry, Zapata, but I have to ask—”
Zapata smiled. Aguillar had sounded apologetic, but he knew (as did Zapata himself) that Zapata’s ego relished these opportunities to play the mentor.
“Why this deal? We could get the equipment we need from other sources, without trading with the Indonesians.”
Zapata nodded. “Two reasons. The first is obvious. These people we trade with will cause their own stir, and that will attract some attention. It’s a distraction. But my reason is more. aesthetic. I am simply trying to drop the biggest rock I can into the pond.”
“I will call Alliance to confirm.”
4:09 A.M. PST InterContinental Hotel
Jack leaned back against the sofa cushions, his feet up on the coffee table and his eyes closed. He wanted to sleep, but would not allow himself the luxury.
Vanowen’s phone rang. He popped out of the other room, saying, “You okay now, Mark? Head on straight?”
Mark “The Mountain” Kendall looked far from okay, but he grunted an affirmative, barely looked at Jack and Ramirez, and left. Vanowen talked into his phone a little, mostly listened, and then said, “I’ll be there.” He snapped the phone shut.
“Okay. Hey, wake up!” Vanowen kicked the feet of Ramirez, who was snoring. Ramirez jumped as if he’d been bitten.
“I have a job this morning,” Vanowen said. “Some of the kind of work you were getting involved in, before you went and killed someone, you moron. You want to come?”
Ramirez rubbed his eyes. “Yeah, okay.”
“Me, too,” Jack said.
Vanowen grinned at him, a big, toothy grin out of his round face. “You I did some checking on while I was in the other room. You fucked somebody up, huh? You’re really on the run now.”
“Like you wouldn’t believe,” Jack said.
Vanowen chewed his lip. He seemed to be weighing his innate suspicion against some need. Finally, he said, “Yeah, come. I can use the extra muscle. Besides, ain’t nothing you’re gonna see Ramirez couldn’t have burned me for by now anyway.”
4:14 A.M. PST Inglewood
Tony Almeida had changed out of his old clothes— which looked like clothes that had been worn for days — into a clean shirt and jeans, as though he’d gotten up early instead of staying up all night. Two members of the CTU strike force had changed into civvies as well to pose as his muscle.
They knew Encep Sungkar was coming. When he was still twenty miles away they knew which streets he took, his average speed, and they could have determined his mileage per gallon if they’d wanted to. Tony’s team spent the intervening minutes rifling through Menifee’s records and the stack of crates under canvas in his warehouse. It wasn’t the most impressive stockpile Tony had seen, but it would do some damage. There were four launchers and twelve rocket-propelled grenades, a.50-caliber machine gun that could put rounds right through a brick building, a baker’s dozen of M–60s and MP–5s, and other assorted goodies.
Tony’s earpiece buzzed as Sungkar’s vehicle, followed by a truck, pulled up to his warehouse. He opened the regular-sized door, which was cut into the wall near the huge sliding cargo entrance, as his target approached. He recognized Sungkar from the table in Little Java. Sungkar was small and bespectacled, with a mild manner and a slight smile. But his eyes were intense, and though he walked softly, Tony had the distinct impression of a mongoose ready to spring.
“You Perkasa?” Tony hailed in his best imitation of Menifee’s voice, using the alias they’d discovered Sungkar to be using.
“Of course,” the Indonesian said, moving past Tony and into the warehouse. His glasses flashed as he looked around. “There is not much here.”
“I know how to pack,” Tony grunted, following him inside. He borrowed the observation from one of the strike team members, who had noted how efficient Menifee had been at stacking his ordnance. He held out his hand. “Menifee. I like to shake hands with the people I do business with.”
Sungkar looked down at Tony’s offered hand as though it might contain some disease. Finally he touched it weakly and removed his
hand at once. “I have another meeting. Let’s proceed.”
The buy itself was straightforward: two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for everything explosive, plus all the assault rifles. Keeping in character, Tony tried to sell them the fifty cal, but Sungkar wasn’t buying.
“I’ll open the cargo door and your guys can drive in.” Tony went over to the huge door, almost the size of the wall, and pressed a button. Hydraulics groaned, and the door rattled up into the ceiling.
There were two men with Sungkar, one of whom had driven the truck. He climbed back in and tried to start it up, but the engine wouldn’t turn over. He looked up at Sungkar through the windshield apologetically and tried again. He had no luck, even after fifteen minutes of effort.
While they’d been talking, CTU agents had disabled the vehicle. It wasn’t going anywhere.
“I got a truck I can sell you,” Tony offered with a friendly grin. Sungkar wasn’t amused. While the Indonesians popped the hood and tinkered around, muttering in Malay, Tony said, “Seriously, you need transport to someplace, I can drive you there. No charge. I just want this shit outta my warehouse.”
Sungkar considered Tony had seen him check his watch several times, and knew that he had a schedule to keep.
“Just you. Not your men,” Sungkar said. “My business associates would not like that.”
“No prob,” Tony said, although he would have liked to have had a couple of good guns guarding his back. “Let’s load her onto my truck.”
4:32 A.M. PST Downtown Los Angeles
Dan Pascal was thinking that Officer Lafayette was a prophet. He really would have preferred to do a manhunt in the bayous.
He was standing with a half dozen other marshals and investigators on the curb of a street in downtown Los Angeles, next to a Nissan Maxima. The same Maxima, in fact, that Jack Bauer had stolen. He was happy to have found the car, but as far as he knew, Bauer had just jacked another one. Or maybe he’d just left the car and gone into one of these fine buildings. Far as Pascal knew, he could be looking down on them right now.