by John Whitman
Nina saw the rest. “Our people got ahold of the news somehow and caught up with you. They flipped you. Jack Bauer shooting you was the setup that put him in jail so he could hook up with someone.”
6:25 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Peter Jiminez walked tenderly as he returned to CTU. His whole body ached from the impact of his intentional crash, but that was nothing compared to the throbbing in his jaw. He’d never been put to sleep by a punch like that.
Henderson met him practically at the entrance, his voice low but full of frustration. Peter headed off his initial outburst. “I know, sir, I’m sorry. I got him, but I didn’t expect—”
“I told you to be ready for anything with Bauer!” Henderson hissed. “You should have taken control of the situation sooner.” Jiminez didn’t have enough energy to argue. He let Henderson stare him down for a moment. The Operations Director held his anger for a minute, then released it in disgust. “Hell, at least the police don’t have him anymore. That’s something.” He jabbed Jiminez in the chest. “But next time you stay on him and you take care of him no matter what he does.”
6:28 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Tony sat with Jamey Farrell and Seth in the conference room, with Nina patched in on the telephone.
“Unbelievable,” Tony said.
“Jack didn’t kill anyone.” Jamey almost laughed.
Nina piped in. “What I want to know is who knows? Someone’s running this operation without telling us. I can handle being treated like a mushroom, but who’s watching Jack’s back?”
Henderson walked in then. “What’s all this about?”
“I want you to tell me,” Tony said. “Apparently jailing Jack was a setup. He set himself up to go to jail so he could meet someone on the inside. Is this jailbreak some part of the plan?”
Henderson looked stunned. “What? What are you talking about?” “You didn’t set up this operation?” Nina asked over the line. Henderson looked at the phone as though it could answer his questions. “What operation?”
“Is the jailbreak part of it?” Tony asked again.
“What the f—!?” Henderson started to swear in frustration. “Stop asking me questions because I have no idea what you’re talking about. What operation is Jack on?”
Tony saw that they’d get nowhere asking Henderson anything. “Okay, if none of us know, we need to figure it out. Let’s go on the assumption that the prison break was part of the plan, either the original plan or something Jack worked up at the last minute.”
“So nothing’s an accident,” Nina said, following his logic.
“Yes, including the guy he broke out with. Let’s get everything we can on him.”
6:31 A.M. PST Mid-Wilshire Area, Los Angeles
He was twenty-one years old, driving on Interstate 5 through the huge San Joaquin Valley between Los Angeles to the Bay Area. He’d left Medved behind two years earlier with more money than he’d ever need, but no sense yet of how to achieve his goals. The world was indeed a puzzle, and he was convinced that it must be broken in order to be rebuilt. But the means had escaped him, even him, brilliant as he was, until now.
The truth was, he had not considered violence until that moment — until the moment word came that his family had been shot in Chiapas while protesting the neglect of the government. He had spent his time in the gang, but that was an alliance born of necessity. He hadn’t reveled in those violent acts the way the others did. Still, violence was a tool and, like any tool, in the proper hands it could work.
Rafael was speeding up a lonely stretch of the interstate near the Buttonwillow/McKittrick exit when he committed himself to violent acts. And having done so, his mind leaped immediately to the consequences, the actions and investigations of the police, their means and patterns of tracking and trapping him. Every life, as complicated as it might seem to the person living it, was a pattern, a set of actions evolving out of the past and moving into the future along predictable lines, with predictable connections, just like the cube. If he was going to remain beyond their reach, he would have to break those patterns. Now.
Rafael stopped the car, right there on that empty stretch of road. He left the keys in the ignition, his cell phone on the seat, and his wallet in the glove compartment. Wearing only the clothes on his back, he walked up into the hills, and Jorge Rafael Marquez was never seen again.
Zapata ended his jog in the Larchmont area, a fortress of affluence just west of downtown, besieged on all sides by the lower classes. On the way, Zapata had dropped his Ossipon identification, credit cards, and cell phone in various trash bins. He was now naked before the informational world, but he’d been there before, and it did not bother him. Besides, he had other contacts and different associates. Zapata cooled down from his jog by walking. When he came to a pay phone outside a 7–Eleven, he stopped.
6:38 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
“Emil Ramirez,” Jamey Farrell read aloud. “Arrested on Federal charges of embezzlement and murder. What would Jack want with him?”
Tony studied the data sheet on Ramirez. “Alliance,” he muttered, reading a list of known business contacts for Ramirez. The shootout at U-Pack came back to him. “There was a truck with the word Alliance on the side. What was the name of the guy?”
“Vanowen,” Seth said. “He’s the other corpse in the hotel room. He’s not going to be answering any questions.”
Tony snapped at him. “Follow the connections. Jack hooks up with this Ramirez and busts him out of jail. Jack turns up with Ramirez at an arms trade with Vanowen. I doubt it’s a coincidence. Jack was climbing the ladder. Ramirez to Vanowen. Vanowen to. who?”
“Whoever shot him, you can get on that,” said Nina, now back in the office.
Chris Henderson had sat at the table, practically sulking. Finally he said, “Why don’t we have more information on these guys?”
“I don’t know,” Jamey said.
“Right. So how was Jack conducting some kind of operation without any intel at all? It seems like we’re filling in huge blanks with big assumptions about Jack.”
Nina said, “You still think Jack has just gone to the dark side? He didn’t kill Tintfass!”
Henderson shrugged. “Tony’s theory. I just think it might be possible. You and I both know that Jack has always had one foot on the dark side anyway.”
Nina fixed her eyes, catlike, on the Director of Operations. “You’re pretty quick to go to the worst-case scenario on this. Is it something personal?”
Henderson’s ears turned pink. “What do you mean, personal?”
“I just wonder if the rumors are true. Jack dropped your name to Internal Affairs over some misappropriation—”
“Go to hell!” Henderson exploded, slapping his open palm on the table. He was halfway out of his seat as though he was going to lunge at her. “I don’t give a damn about any rumors. I’m doing my job with a clear head. You’re the one who’s thinking of Jack as a goddamned hero without a shred of evidence.”
He looked at the others, challenging them one by one. No one said anything about the rumors. But after a pause, Tony said, “I’m not willing to assume Jack’s just turned rogue. There’s a reason for all this. So, assuming you don’t mind that we continue, I’m going to find it.”
6:42 A.M. PST UCLA Medical Center
It does not take much to make a disguise. Thick-rimmed glasses, so the eyes focus on the glasses rather than the face. A hat, but not pulled down to hide the eyes, just sitting atop the head to change its shape and hide the hair. Celebrities whose faces appeared daily on televison and in tabloids got away with it. Jack Bauer, whose name was known to few and whose face had not been broadcast by the news during the escape, certainly managed it.
He abandoned Peter’s car in a public parking structure in Westwood and walked a mile to the medical center. He strode right through the lobby, past the security guard, and up to the information desk.
“Ryan Cha
ppelle, please? He was admitted last night.”
“Five-thirty-four,” said the plump Asian nurse at the desk. “But you’ll need to check in before seeing him. Visits are restricted.”
Jack nodded and went to the elevators. A short ride brought him to the fifth floor, where the elevator doors opened onto a circular desk and a sleepy attendant. “Morning,” he said, smiling as she yawned.
“Ah, morning, sorry,” she replied.
“I’d like to visit room 534,” he said innocently. “They told me I had to check in?”
“With the guard.” The nurse nodded, pointing down the hall.
Jack was happy to see that 534 was out of view. He walked down the corridor, turned a corner, and then went straight up to the uniformed guard sitting by room 534. The man was sleepy, but the purposefulness of Jack’s stride brought him to attention and he stood up, grabbing a clipboard.
“Help you?” he asked.
Jack nodded. “I hope so, they told me I had to see you.”
He glanced at the clipboard, which made the guard look down, too. Jack popped him in the throat with the webbing between his thumb and index finger, gagging him. Then he kneed the man in the groin, doubling him over. Jack wrapped an arm around the guard’s throat and squeezed until he went limp. Jack glanced down the hall. No one came. No one had heard.
He pulled the unconscious guard into the room and used his own cuffs to shackle the man to the sink in the bathroom, then closed the door.
Ryan Chappelle looked like a naked mole rat on life support. His skin was pale in the fluorescent hospital light, and he seemed smaller than usual lying in the railed bed. “You picked a goddamned terrible time to get sick,” Jack muttered.
Jack wasn’t sure of his next move. His knowledge of medicine was rudimentary, and if the medical team here couldn’t bring Chappelle out of his coma, he couldn’t imagine how he could do it. But then the medical team wasn’t as desperate as he was, and in his experience desperation counted for something.
A doctor walked into the room, a woman with a tired, heavy look on her face. “Oh,” she said in surprise. “Have you seen the guard?”
“He’s around,” Jack said, glancing at her name tag. “Are you his doctor?”
“Czikowlis.” She nodded. “Who are you?”
“I work with him,” Jack said evasively. “And I need him to wake up right now.”
The doctor smirked. “Yes, that would be nice. I wish that worked on all our patients.”
“It has to work on this one,” Jack insisted. “What’s wrong with him?”
“Coma,” Dr. Czikowlis responded. Maybe it was her long night, but she took an instant dislike to this visitor, coming so early in the morning and asking so many insistent questions. “It came on suddenly. I’d. you work with him?”
Jack read her tone and guessed that she had some vague awareness that Chappelle worked for the government. He played on it. “Yes, ma’am. I hope you understand that I can’t show you any kind of ID. But we work in the same unit.” He lent a vague, clandestine-sounding mystery to his words.
Dr. Czikowlis nodded. “I guess. To be honest, I’m not sure what to do. Apparently it came on suddenly. It’s got all the indications of a barbiturate overdose, but the tests came back negative.”
Overdose. That sounded right. Jack could not believe it had been a coincidence that Chappelle and Cox and the warden had all gone down at the same time. Someone had taken them down.
“If it were an overdose, how would you treat it?”
“Well, the simplest way would be to lower the level of barbiturate. You can do that with a gastric lavage and time.”
Jack shook his head. “I don’t have time. What if it were an emergency?”
The doctor looked at him as though he were an idiot. “It’s not an emergency. He’s on life support, he’s stable.”
Jack had no more time for subtlety. He pulled Peter’s gun from under his shirt and said, “Imagine it’s an emergency because I’m pointing a gun at you, Doctor. Now what would you do?”
Dr. Czikowlis gasped and looked around as though the security guard might suddenly appear.
“Stay calm,” Jack said soothingly. “I don’t want to hurt you or him. I just need to ask him a question. I think someone poisoned him. Get him awake. Now.”
Dr. Czikowlis hesitated. She was not particularly heroic, but she was responsible for this patient, and she did not like demands being made on her. Still, her mind went instantly to the treatment. Massive amphetamine injection. Prep nitropresside to prevent cardiac arrest. She might be able to wake him up without causing much damage to him.
“Now,” he repeated, a little more threateningly. The doctor weighed the risk versus the reward and then went to the cabinet.
12. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 7 A.M. AND 8 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
7:00 A.M. PST Marriott Hotel, Downtown Los Angeles
The phone rang shrilly, jolting Mark Kendall out of his sleep. He sat up, his huge heart pounding in his chest. He looked around, befuddled by the confusion of deep sleep. His sense of himself and his place came back to him as the phone continued incessantly. Hotel. Saturday. Fight day.
“Hello?” he said in a rough morning voice.
“Hey.” That soft voice, that understanding voice. He loved that voice.
“Hiya, babe,” he said, rubbing his eyes. “How are you ladies doing?” His eyes focused and he checked the clock. It’d be about ten in the morning back home.
“Oh, you know,” she said breezily, “up all night at the clubs, breakfast at the Waffle House, then appointments at the hair salon. It’s a full life.”
He laughed. She always made him laugh. But then he heard crying in the background, crying that pierced him and dug into his gut. “How’s she doing?”
“The same,” his wife said, suddenly weary. “She can’t stop crying, poor thing. I took her back to Dr. Krasnoff, but he says we can’t use any more pain medication. We might have to put her back in the hospital.”
Mark grumbled, “They don’t help her there, either.”
He heard his baby wail even louder in the background, as his wife said, “She needs that operation.” “I know. She’ll get it,” he vowed. “Markie, I just wanted to call and say I hope you
know, you’re my, my champion, either way. I hope you know that.”
He smiled, big and boyish in that way only she could make him feel. “I love you. And I’m going to get her what she needs. I promise.”
“I’m going to watch tonight.” “You are?” She had never come to his fights, never even watched them on pay-per-view. “It’s your big comeback. I figured it’s time I worked up the guts. You’re going to do great.”
He looked at the envelope the bald little man had given him. He hadn’t opened it. But he hadn’t thrown it away, either.
“Like I said, I promise. I’m getting her what she needs. No matter what.”
7:16 A.M. PST UCLA Medical Center
Before Dr. Czikowlis could slide the syringe out of the IV shunt, Ryan Chappelle’s chest heaved and his heart rate soared, turning the monitors into panic buttons. His eyes popped open and he gasped like a man coming up for air.
“Jesus, it worked,” the doctor said. “You know what this means?”
“Yeah, I can talk to him,” Jack said.
“It doesn’t make sense. The tests came back negative. No barbiturates in his system. This shouldn’t work.”
Jack leaned over Chapelle, but said to the doctor, “Someone poisoned him. That same person could have switched the test results. Chappelle!” He tapped Chappelle’s thin, pale cheek. “Chappelle, it’s Bauer!”
Chappelle turned toward Jack, but his eyes were unfixed. “Chappelle!” Jack called out again.
“Bauer,” Chappelle whispered, his voice barely audible. “Should be. jail.”
“Yeah, I know. I need help. I need you. I need your Zapata resource!”
Chappelle breathed a long but
shallow, rattling breath.
“Your Zapata resource. I need her now.”
Chappelle blinked several times before saying breathlessly, “Gerwehr. Talia Ger. wehr. RAND.”
“Gerwehr,” Jack said, his shoulders releasing enormous amounts of tension. “Thanks. Thanks, Chappelle.”
7:24 A.M. PST Beverly Wilshire Hotel
Martin Webb woke up without the alarm, but feeling heavy. Old men didn’t sleep, but they needed to. It was after ten o’clock on the East Coast. That’s what he got for staying up till all hours watching sports on television. He sat up and put his feet down, slowly turning his feet in circles the way his physical therapist had told him to, trying to get the circulation going in his feet. His steel-trap mind recalled clearly training camp from his college football days, but to his feet they were a distant memory.
Martin put his glasses on and checked the clock. “Oh, damn it, old man,” he said aloud, “all you’ve got left is your brain and it’s turning to mush. That call is right now.”
Martin dialed the front desk and had them put a call through to the Secretary of the Treasury at his home.
“Lou, it’s Marty. Is now still good?”
Across the country, Lou Friedman sat in the leisure chair in his den, but he was anything but leisurely. As Treasury Secretary, he was ostensibly responsible for the country’s coffers, and those coffers were dangerously low, while the debt to other nations was alarmingly high.
“No time like the present,” he replied glibly. He’d known Marty Webb since college. A good man, maybe the best man to lead them out of this mess. “So what do you think of the President’s stimulus package?”
“Malarkey,” Webb said. “More like a favor to big business than a goose to the economy. I’d rather see more effort put into lowering the value of the dollar overseas.”
He and Marty had gone through this debate before. “You know that’s going to mean less revenue for businessmen here.”