by John Whitman
“You didn’t see? Guy on the roof. Nearly put one through my skull, and he got some of the others. But someone shot him right through the neck. Pretty shot, whoever it was. My guys brought him down a minute ago.” He chewed the inside of his cheek for a minute. “So you boys must know him. What’s Captain America doing working with these felons when he should be on the run?”
Almeida almost smiled at the Captain America reference. “I don’t know. I was on my case and nearly choked when I saw him standing there.” But when Pascal turned away to talk to another Deputy Marshal, Almeida pulled Jiminez aside. “I have an idea, though.” He repeated his theory about Tintfass.
Jiminez couldn’t, or wouldn’t, believe it. “I just don’t buy it, Tony. Jack’s been hunting terrorists since before 9/11. Why would he jump over to the dark side?”
“Money. Or maybe he’s tired of it. Or maybe he’s running from home.” Tony knew that Jack’s marriage was a roller coaster.
Jiminez clung to his naïveté. “I still don’t think that’s Jack.”
5:20 A.M. PST Biltmore Hotel
It really couldn’t have worked out better, Jack thought as they pulled into the guest parking area of the Biltmore Hotel.
They’d managed to stop Vanowen’s bleeding and put a new shirt on him. Vanowen had said they could not go to the meet — they hadn’t picked up a third of the package. He had to go straight to his employer and explain what had happened. Jack, who’d also borrowed a shirt to cover his own bloodstained arm, hid his excitement, but he was eager to meet the man in charge. He followed Vanowen’s directions to the Biltmore, which, ironically, was only a few blocks from the InterContinental.
They’d put a jacket over Vanowen to hide the bloodstained shirt, but his face was pale and he needed help to walk. Fortunately there were very few people up and about at five o’clock, and when one of the few, a bellman, looked at them quizzically, Jack just said, “Fun night,” and that was it.
They rode the elevator to the eleventh floor and Vanowen guided them to room 1103. The door opened slightly and a face, hidden by the door and the shadows, stared out at them. “What?” the occupant demanded.
“It got fucked up,” Vanowen said weakly. “I gotta explain. And get help.”
The occupant’s eyes studied Vanowen, and then Ramirez, and then lingered for a while on Jack. “Vanowen, Ramirez. Come in. You stay out.”
The door opened ever so slightly more, and Ramirez helped Vanowen slip into the room. The door shut firmly.
Jack waited, but not patiently. He’d been through a rough night, as rough as any he’d experienced, but so far the plan was working. Just a few more minutes and it would be over.
Jack pressed his ear against the door. He heard muffled sounds of conversation. The words were lost but the rhythm was calm, typical. Then he heard two muted gunshots, followed by two thuds.
Shit! Jack stepped back, raised his leg, and kicked. The door swelled inward, but the frame held. He kicked again, and the door broke free of its bolt. Jack was inside instantly, SigSauer ready.
Ramirez and Vanowen lay on the floor, each with a small bullet hole in his head. There was an open door leading to the next hotel room — they’d been connected. Jack rushed through in time to see that door swing closed. He burst out into the hallway again and saw a figure running down the hall. “Freeze!” he yelled, planning to shoot anyway. The man turned and fired, missing. Jack dropped to one knee and discharged three rounds at the moving target. His quarry stumbled, but kept running. Jack sprinted forward, the long night forgotten, his heart pounding with the excitement of the hunt.
The man he chased was shorter than he, with dark hair and a Latino look. His quarry ran into the stairwell. Jack followed, with the runner a full flight below him by the time he was through the door. Jack ran down two flights in pursuit, then paused. He leveled the SigSauer and waited. As the man came around the next turn, he fired center mass, and his target dropped.
Jack ran down. The bullet had passed through the hollow of his shoulder and diagonally through his heart. Checking the wound, Jack saw a tattoo on his neck, below the collar line, that read “Emese” in gothic lettering. He hadn’t known about the tattoo. It was the same tattoo worn by one of the MS–13 soldiers. Jack was surprised, but he didn’t have to worry about it at the moment. He’d brought down Zapata.
Jack heard sirens approaching. He sat down on the stairs next to the body and waited. They could arrest him now.
5:37 A.M. PST Chatsworth, California
Nina Myers hunched down over the steering wheel, trying to see the street sign. Chatsworth lay on the edge of Los Angeles county, in the northwest corner of the San Fernando Valley. It wasn’t the middle of nowhere, but it was rural enough to be zoned for horses. The streetlights were fewer and farther between, and the street signs were hard to read. It was also far enough out that her GPS map didn’t show any roads.
The place she looked for was on a street called Baden, somewhere below the rocky hills that marked the border between Los Angeles and Ventura counties. She was interested in the address because it was associated with a phone number, a number that Marcia Tintfass had called three times immediately after Nina’s visit. She was going to find that house and talk to whoever had received those phone calls.
5:40 A.M. PST Biltmore Hotel
Hotel security had no interest in dealing with a gunman, but Jack heard them moving around up on the floor. They’d surely found the bodies of Ramirez and Vanowen by now. He heard the fire door to the stairwell open twice, then close quickly after a pause. They’d be startled to see Zapata’s body lying there, with Jack sitting calmly beside it — startled, and none too interested in dealing with it.
Jack felt his eyelids droop. It had been a long night, and the truth was, he hadn’t gotten much sleep in prison for the three previous weeks. He could use a real rest.
When the police finally arrived, they came from above and below, guns drawn. They proned him out and he didn’t resist, letting them cuff him. They led him upstairs to the hallway, now full of emergency personnel, police officers, and one very large man in plain clothes.
“Well, there’s Captain America,” the big man crowed. “You’ve had a busy night.”
Jack looked at the badge on the man’s belt. He was a U.S. Marshal. “I want to talk to Chris Henderson at the Counter Terrorist Unit,” Jack said, “or Ryan Chappelle, if he’s out of the hospital.”
“You can talk all you want once we get you back into jail,” the man said.
Jack nodded. There was no need to put up a fight. Even if it took another day, this whole mess would straighten itself out. In jail, they’d put him in isolation, where he’d be safe from MS–13 and their strange vendetta. The biggest mystery for him now was why Zapata had worn an MS–13 tattoo. He’d had no idea of that connection. It was impossible that Zapata had sent MS–13 after him — absolutely impossible. What was the connection?
Jack mulled this over as the big man — Jack heard someone refer to him as Pascal — and another marshal led him downstairs. Pascal didn’t engage him in conversation, and when Jack asked two more times to talk to someone at CTU, the big marshal repeated his previous statement. On Jack’s third try, Pascal shook his head. “Son, you don’t get me. My job ain’t to accommodate you in any way. My job is to put you back in your hole.”
They reached the hotel’s parking lot, and Pascal guided Jack, still handcuffed, over to a beige Crown Victoria. Jack saw bullet holes in the door and guessed it was the same Crown Vic he’d seen at U-Pack. Pascal tucked Jack in the backseat — although unmarked, the car was all cop, with the plastic shield and no door handles on the backseat interior. Then Pascal maneuvered himself into the driver’s seat with the other marshal riding shotgun. They drove out of the hotel and turned onto the early morning downtown streets.
The other marshal got on his cell phone for a minute, then turned to Pascal. “The victim was DOA.”
Pascal grunted. “Guess you got anothe
r one,” he called back to Jack. “You keep busy, that’s for damned sure. Out less than twelve hours and you steal two automobiles and commit a murder. I don’t suppose you’re going to tell us what you had against Mister. What was his name again?”
“Aguillar,” the other marshal said. “Francis Aguillar.” Jack felt the blood freeze in his veins.
5:53 A.M. PST Biltmore Hotel
Zapata stood in the crowd in the lobby watching the police and paramedics parade in and out. He looked no more or less a part of the crowd than any of the others — an average-sized man with a shaved head, wearing track pants and a zip-up jacket, he passed easily for a guest out for an early morning jog. If anyone asked for his ID, he would have a problem — the Ossipon identity was connected to one of the two rooms. The police would want to know why three men had been killed in or near those rooms, and Zapata had no interest in long conversations with the authorities.
So the Ossipon cover was blown, but Zapata could deal with that. What disturbed him most was how close the authorities had come to him. They had been, literally, within a step or two of catching him. He had not seen the undercover agent himself, but he had known it the minute Vanowen showed up at his door, bloody, with Ramirez, of all people, and saying they had a stranger with them. How obvious. It was a pattern almost too easy to recognize. Did they have so little respect for him that they thought he would not see this pattern? A new element thrown into the middle of his carefully laid plans. Zapata clicked his tongue reproachfully. Would Leonardo fail to notice bird droppings fall on the Mona Lisa?
This had been a clumsy effort on the part of the government, he thought, a big blunt instrument. Yes, he had to admit it had almost worked. If Aguillar had not been there to delay the agent. Well, the fault was his, in the end. He had fallen into a pattern himself. He should never have allowed Aguillar to use Vanowen again. It had not been enough to cut off Ramirez. He should have removed Vanowen from his list for good.
Well, Zapata thought, slipping on a pair of sunglasses against the rising sun, lesson learned. He slipped out of the hotel and went for a jog.
5:59 A.M. PST Downtown Los Angeles
Francis Aguillar. The name bounced around in Jack’s head obsessively. Francis Aguillar. Not Jorge Rafael Marquez? Maybe it was a mistake, or an alias for Zapata. No, not an alias, Jack thought. Aguillar was a known associate of Zapata’s who had vanished years earlier. Zapata would never take the alias of an associate.
I got the wrong man, Jack thought. Jesus, I got the wrong man, and now I’m stuck in here.
Jack felt the claustrophobic sense he’d experienced in jail when he’d learned that the warden, the corrections officer, and Chappelle had all been disabled. The walls that had seemed so unreal suddenly seemed concrete and dangerous. Now, in the backseat of the cruiser, which a moment ago had seemed such a temporary thing, he felt hemmed in, trapped.
He was in the middle of that thought when Peter Jiminez rammed the Crown Victoria.
11. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 6 A.M. AND 7 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
6:00 A.M. PST Downtown Los Angeles
Peter’s car hit the unmarked police cruiser on the driver’s side trunk, spinning it around in the middle of Flower Street, which was still empty at this hour. The force of the crash hurled Jack against the window, where he hit his head with a thud. By the time his vision cleared, someone was opening the driver’s door, and Jack had a blurry vision of someone blasting Pascal in the face with pepper spray. The noxious gas only seemed to make the big man angry. He struggled to get himself out of his seat when the assailant punched him in the jaw.
Jack’s vision had cleared now, although the scene felt unreal. He saw Peter Jiminez handcuff the marshal’s hands to the steering wheel, then rip out the car’s radio.
A moment later the back door flew open and Peter was pulling him out, holding up a handcuff key. A moment later his cuffs were off.
Jack didn’t bother asking Peter where he’d come from. It didn’t matter. He was free, and he still had a job to do. “I need your car,” Jack said. “There are police about three blocks from here. We have to clear this scene.”
“I’m going with you,” Jiminez said.
“Okay,” Jack said, and chopped Peter across the jaw with an elbow. Jiminez sagged like a puppet whose strings had been cut. Jack took the handcuffs and locked Peter to the door of the Crown Victoria, took Peter’s Para Ordinance.45 and his magazines, his car keys, and his telephone, and jumped into his car.
6:03 A.M. PST Chatsworth
It turned out Baden was an unmarked street that led up into the rocky hills. This was an alien world, a forest of boulders jutting up from the chaparral. One boulder — Stony Point — was so huge and steep that mountain climbers came up here to practice on weekends. The whole area looked like a movie set dropped into the area by Hollywood producers.
Nina followed it through small winding canyons until she came to a few lonely houses inhabited by recluses seeking the solitude of the wilderness with all the comforts of city life. This was an ideal location — it felt like a whole different state, while being only an hour and a half from downtown.
The house was built ranch-style, one low, single-story building that would be easier to cool in the summer heat. The building was set back from the street, but there were few trees and no shrubbery. The lawn was brown with a few green sprouts fighting to stay alive. This morning’s L.A. Times lay on the walkway wrapped in blue plastic. They always wrapped the paper in plastic these days, even if it wasn’t going to rain.
Nina, her attitude not changed the least since her visit to Marcia Tintfass, pounded on the door. There was no answer. She pounded again. “Federal agent!” she yelled. “I know you’re there. You answered Marcia’s phone call!”
She didn’t know what kind of reaction that would get, but she didn’t like being ignored.
The door opened, and a young, well-built man of Japanese descent answered. “Yes?”
Nina showed him her badge. “Agent Nina Myers.”
The man frowned, looked behind him uncertainly for a moment, then sighed and said, “That’s the second CTU badge I’ve seen in one day You guys are fucking unbelievable.” He reached into his pocket, intoning “ID” when Nina tensed. He pulled out a
small wallet of his own and showed her the badge inside. “Special Agent Jason Fujimora, FBI,” Nina read. “Can I come in?” “Why not,” the FBI agent said in disgust. “You’re clearly going to blow this whether we help you or not.”
Fujimora stepped aside and Nina walked in. There was another man, undoubtedly FBI, sitting on the couch in the living room. And, just stumbling out of his bedroom, sleepily tying his robe around his waist, was Adrian Tintfass.
6:14 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
CTU Headquarters was full of bleary-eyed agents and analysts when Tony walked in. His own eyes stung. It had been a long night with a weird ending. Tony had called ahead to make sure Henderson would still be around. Now he staggered into Henderson’s office and sat down heavily in the visitor’s chair.
Henderson looked like Tony felt. There were bags under his eyes, which were themselves bloodshot, and his skin was pale.
“Seriously?” Henderson said as though they’d already been talking for several minutes. “He was there?”
“Standing right there, close enough to touch. And of course I was undercover and couldn’t do a damned thing—”
“I get it, I get it,” Henderson said. “Any idea at all what he was up to?”
“First,” Tony said, “I have to ask, Chris. Was Jack undercover? Working on some case that none of us knew about? I won’t be pissed. I’ve been on tight operations, too.”
Chris met his gaze steadily. “No way, Tony. Nothing I knew about, and if I don’t know about it, my operators aren’t doing it.”
“Okay, then, if that’s true, here’s my idea.” Tony related his theory: Jack had set up Tintfass for a legal fall so he could take o
ver his business. When that didn’t work, he’d killed him. “You and Jack were friends,” Tony ended, “so I don’t expect you to believe it.”
He was surprised to hear Henderson say, “I hate to admit it, but it’s not all that far-fetched.” He saw Tony’s astonishment. “Look, I’m not an idiot. Bauer never plays by the rules. His home life’s a mess. He’s just the kind of guy to look for an out. Maybe this Tintfass was it.”
Tony shrugged. “Well, I can’t wait to ask him. I heard they picked him up.”
Henderson sighed. “Old news. The new news is that he got away. Some kind of traffic accident. Peter Jiminez was there. Apparently Jack beat him up and took his car.”
6:20 A.M. PST Chatsworth
Nina paced the width of the living room as she mulled over the story Fujimora had told her. “So why wasn’t the wife put into witness protection, too?”
The other FBI man, Holmquist, answered. “She will be, but we couldn’t come up with a plausible scenario where Bauer killed them both. It’s not his style. So the plan is — was, at least — to put him in hiding while she played the weeping widow. Then when the spotlights were off, we’d put them into their new identities.”
“Best vacation I ever had,” Tintfass commented.
“How many people are in on this operation?” Nina asked. She was surprised Henderson wasn’t aware of it.
“I don’t think you can even count us,” Fujimora said. “This is as much of it as we’ve got. Tintfass had to go into witness protection anyway. CTU was looking to set up one of its own agents for an undercover job inside the jail. What the mission is, I have no idea.”
“Why were you going into witness protection anyway?” Nina wondered. “What was the story?”
Tintfass shrugged and tucked in his bathrobe. “Truth is, it wasn’t my idea. A couple months ago I was looking to score off a weapons deal. I’d got my hands on some equipment from a guy I know out of Camp Pendleton. I made a connection with a guy, I don’t know much about him. I was supposed to meet his number two, I guess, but I got lost, walked in the wrong door or something, and I think I saw the guy your people want.”