by John Whitman
Jack nodded his head. “Yeah, I just don’t know why they’d come after me this hard. Could be just coincidence. If that’s the case, then I just lucked out with the tattoo. Whatever is going on, right now they’re my only link to Zapata. Ramirez didn’t know much, but he knew something was going on tonight. I’m going to get Lopez what he needs.”
Dan Pascal had listened to Bauer’s story with growing incredulity. He was a man’s man and a tough cop, but what Bauer had been through sounded beyond belief. But this last statement wasn’t just astonishing, it was criminal. “Hold on there, Captain America,” he drawled. “You ain’t really going to steal crystal meth from one gang and give to another?”
“Yes, I am,” Jack said.
“Don’t you think that’s criminal?”
Jack nodded. “What do you expect from a guy who just broke out of jail?”
“There are still a whole lot of questions,” Tony said stubbornly. “Only three people had direct knowledge of Jack’s innocence: Chappelle, the warden, and the corrections guard. All three of them were attacked or put out of commission when Jack was attacked. Who did that? Zapata?”
“Not Zapata,” Jack said. “If he was on to us then, we’d never have gotten as close as we did.”
Henderson jumped in. “Besides, there’s something more urgent to focus on. We don’t know what Zapata is targeting.”
This observation triggered an eruption of voices all talking at once. Several theories bubbled to the surface, the most immediate of which was espoused by Tony Almeida. Tony had a calm, steady voice, but somehow he made it cut through the din.
“It’s got to be something to do with the Pacific Rim Forum,” he insisted. “The Jemaah Islamiyah guys were for real. They were using a code that we” —he nodded toward Seth— “that repeated the letters PRF. We think it stood for Pacific Rim Forum.”
“Do we even know if those e-mails were going to Zapata?” George Mason said skeptically.
“Gmail accounts bouncing off ISPs in public networks in libraries,” Jamey replied. “We couldn’t trace them.”
Jack considered this. “Well, we were both working with middlemen, and that’s definitely Zapata’s style.”
“But Zapata also walks away when there’s trouble,” Nina pointed out. “Maybe our job’s already done.”
Chappelle was unsatisfied. “We don’t know that for sure. There could have been trouble on every one of his other bombings or attacks, we just didn’t know about it. Besides, he might think he’s closed the door on us by killing those two middlemen. We need to work on the assumption that Zapata is still moving toward his goal. Any suggestions besides the Southeast Asian forum? Any other targets?” A cacophony of voices erupted. “One at a time!”
Jamey Farrell declared over a few other raised voices, “The Chairman of the Fed is in town. I’m not sure he’s much of a target. ”
Pascal snorted. “Right now he is!” Everyone looked at him, and he shrugged. “Ain’t any of you that buy stocks? My 401(k)’s goin’ down the tubes. Right now, I had a choice between savin’ my mama and savin’ Webb, I’d have to give it some thought.”
Jamey thought of herself as a thorough analyst and didn’t appreciate this slow-talking newcomer on her turf. “He’s been on our list since the beginning,” she sniffed. “But he’s not a visible target. Four-fifths of the population couldn’t even name the Chairman of the Fed.”
“The rest listen to every word he says,” Pascal replied.
Tony took Jamey’s side. “But there’s nothing about the Chairman or his schedule that matches the PRF code. “
“I ran it twice,” Seth confirmed.
“Besides,” Tony pointed out, “it seems like Zapata has been trying to get ordnance. I doubt he’d need that much armament to go after the Fed Chairman.”
“But,” Nina said, “you’re saying Jemaah Islamiyah, but they weren’t after explosives, they wanted some computer virus.”
“What’s the status of Jemaah Islamiyah?” Chappelle asked.
Tony said, a little unhappily, “Down but not out. We caught or killed two men in the gun battle, but Encep Sungkar got away.”
“That was our fault,” Pascal confessed. “My people jumped in to get Bauer. We didn’t know there was an operation in progress.”
Jack had been silent for a moment, listening. The analysis was bouncing all over the place. Explosives, Jemaah Islamiyah, the Pacific Rim Forum, computer viruses, MS–13. It was. chaos. “A butterfly flaps its wings in China,” he muttered.
“Huh?” Nina said, overhearing him. The others stopped talking, too.
“Just something this analyst at RAND said,” Jack explained. “Chaos theory. When a system is so complicated that it looks like chaos, but there’s some order hidden in the middle of it. That’s what Zapata does. That’s why he’s hard to track. He’s got us chasing our tails.”
Tony frowned. “Are you suggesting we ignore JI?”
Jack nodded. “I think we should ignore anything Zapata lets us get close to. He didn’t care about Ramirez or Vanowen and walked away from the weapons we brought him at the hotel. If PRF was that easy to crack—”
“Gee, thanks,” Seth interjected.
Jack ignored him. “—then we should throw it out because Zapata didn’t think it was important. The only thing I think that has knocked him off balance was when I got near him at the hotel and killed Aguillar. We know from phone records and card key files that he was in the next room right before then. Killing Aguillar was the closest we’ve come to him, and Aguillar led us to MS–13. I want to stay on that trail.”
“Then do it,” Chappelle said. “Get what you need and get back in the field. Tony and Nina, you support him. Everyone,” he said, standing up to gather their attention. “I know you aren’t used to hearing this from me, but don’t think inside the lines on this one. Zapata will spot us like he’s spotted everyone else. Now go.”
The next fifteen minutes were filled with the less glamorous but vital work of the data analysts. Jack needed as much information as he could get on a Russian or Ukrainian gang operating in West Los Angeles. CTU tapped into the computers of LAPD, Santa Monica PD, the Federal anti-gang task force, Immigration, and Customs. Getting the general information was easy — LAPD had formed a joint task force with the FBI to investigate a gang of Ukrainian immigrants suspected of criminal activity. The man Jack needed to get to was Sergei Petrenko, head of the Ukrainian outfit. Thanks to the Patriot Act, the NAP Act, and its successors, CTU tapped into Petrenko’s cell phone and e-mails immediately. Inside of ten minutes, Jamey Farrell and her crew were analyzing his phone records, his e-mails, every shred of electronic communication that Mr. Sergei Petrenko had used recently.
“He’s a careful one,” Jamey told Jack as the analysts continued their review. “He doesn’t say much or write much. But he has been talking to someone a lot.” She checked her notes. “Felix Studhalter. Looks like he’s a buyer and distributor.”
“Have they ever met?” Jack asked.
“Phone records wouldn’t show that, of course, but I don’t think so. It looks like we have a different kind of break. The FBI’s joint task force has been on these guys for a while. It looks like they have someone undercover in the group. Code name Ivan of all things. Looks like Ivan’s been feeding them bits of information. Felix is new business for them, and the buy is supposed to go down today. I guess that’s what your gang-banger friend heard about.”
Jack formed a plan immediately. First, they would track down Felix Studhalter and detain him. Jack would go to the buy in his place, steal the drugs, and get them to MS–13.
He checked his watch. It was almost noon. If Ramirez was right, then whatever Zapata was planning would happen sometime today. And, Jack realized with a pang of frustration, Zapata still had him running around in circles.
He walked down the hall to clean his wounds and found himself side by side with Chris Henderson.
“Thanks for all the help last night,”
Jack said sarcastically. “You have no idea how much I’ve helped you,” Henderson spat back.
Jack stopped. “What kind of help did you give me last night when I called you at four o’clock in the morning!”
“I had no idea you were on an operation—”
“But you know me,” Jack retorted. “And you still left me out in the cold. I never thought you’d want so badly to get even.”
Henderson squared up on Jack. The two agents faced each other like boxers just before the fight. “This has nothing to do with that Internal Affairs thing. I don’t give a damn who you dropped my name to. I’m not guilty of anything.”
Jack’s eyes drilled into him. “When I mentioned your name I was doing my job. If I find out you’re trying to screw me, this will get really, really personal.”
17. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 P.M. AND 1 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
12:00 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
For the first time in a long time, Jack climbed into a car that he hadn’t stolen. He’d taken a minute just before the hour to clean himself up and dress his wounds — the second bullet wound on his right forearm stung like hell and would require attention eventually, but his arm functioned — then found a change of clothes. Jamey had downloaded a picture of Felix Studhalter, and Jack compared himself to it in the mirror. They looked nothing alike, but Studhalter’s hair was light brown, not so far off from blond, and according to information from a prior arrest, Studhalter was roughly the same height. If Sergei knew his buyer only from description, the sting might work.
Now he started the engine of a borrowed black Chevy Tahoe and started the engine. It was at that moment that another car pulled into the secure parking area at CTU. Jack saw Peter Jiminez behind the wheel with an enormous purple bruise on the left side of his swollen face.
Their two cars, facing opposite directions, pulled up to one another. Peter’s eyes flashed as he saw Jack, and the parts of his face that weren’t purple turned an angry red.
“Peter,” Jack said out the window of his car. “Jack,” the younger agent grunted through a nearly immobile jaw. “It wasn’t personal,” Jack explained. “It was part of the job. Chappelle or Henderson will catch you up.”
“We’ve all got jobs to do,” Jiminez said coldly.
As Jack drove out, Henderson parked and entered CTU. He received two types of looks as he walked toward Henderson’s office: surprise and sympathy from those who hadn’t heard about his encounter with Jack; and amusement and sympathy from those who knew how he felt. He walked up the stairs to Henderson’s office and entered without knocking, then closed the door.
“Where the hell have you been?” Henderson asked, looking up from the files on his desk. He was digging through all the information he could get on MS–13.
“Planning ways to burn Jack Bauer,” Jiminez muttered.
12:05 P.M. PST Temescal Canyon Road
Kyle Risdow had a nice split-level house in Temescal Canyon, an upscale neighborhood overlooking the ocean between Santa Monica and Malibu. He’d paid cash for it back in 1994, right after the North-ridge earthquake rocked Los Angeles. He’d bought a bunch of damaged homes at rock-bottom prices, slapped new drywall and paint on them, and sold them “as is.”
Risdow was examining proformas on a business proposition, but he kept one eye on Zapata. He wasn’t suspicious; he was fascinated. He did not consider himself Zapata’s friend — if he gave the matter any thought at all, he’d have guessed that Zapata had no real friends. Friends were connections, and connections caused patterns, and Risdow knew enough to know that Zapata abhorred them. In fact, he was sure that this was the last time he would see the anarchist. They had had a peripheral connection on a previous event, when the middlemen Zapata was using had brought Risdow in to finance the operation. Something about Risdow had attracted Zapata — Kyle suspected it was his complete lack of compunction— and the anarchist had shown up at his door two years later, planning to crash an oil tanker in the Gulf of Mexico and allowing Kyle to profit from the cleanup effort. Now there was this. To be honest, Kyle wasn’t even sure why Zapata had brought him in this time. But he did know that Zapata abandoned his colleagues soon after the job, and he expected the mysterious anarchist to vanish forever.
At the moment, though, Zapata was answering his cell phone and then listening with consternation. A moment later he hung up and stood perfectly still, staring at the wall.
“Something?” Kyle asked.
“Franko didn’t finish the job,” Zapata said simply. “He was interrupted by another gunman.” “A gunman? Or a cop?” “That is what I was considering.” Zapata continued to stare at the wall, but what
he saw was a complex network of nodes and lines, each connected to each. “Not a cop,” he said at last. “Franko said he never identified himself and just came in shooting. The police don’t behave that way.”
“Maybe it was nothing to do with you.”
“Maybe.” But Zapata felt a tug in his chest, a little twinge of anxiety. He considered abandoning his current project and leaving the country. But he saw no way in which the authorities could follow a path to his intentions. Even if, by the slimmest of chances, Smiley Lopez could point to him in some way, the MS–13 leader had no reason to cooperate with the authorities.
“Still, fortune favors the prepared mind,” he murmured, quoting Louis Pasteur. He had created an escape plan during his last adventure in Los Angeles (a riot; his involvement had gone totally unnoticed by the authorities) but had not needed to use it. He thought, with a quick update, the same plan would work perfectly well. “Kyle, I need a map of the city streets.”
12:14 P.M. PST Los Feliz
Felix Studhalter wasn’t a permanent resident of Los Angeles. He’d rented a house in Los Feliz, but only for a month or two while he conducted business. According to CTU’s intelligence, he mostly moved heroin but had recently pursued the crystal meth craze. He’d been convicted once and served a few years in state prison, but had been paroled. Now he was back in business, if the LAPD was to be believed. They were simply waiting for him to make his next move.
Nina and Tony weren’t going to give him the opportunity.
Nina knocked on the door of the rented bungalow and smiled when Studhalter answered. He was about forty, with puffy cheeks and a little too much skin around his neck. “Mr. Studhalter?” she asked pleasantly.
“Who are you?” he asked casually.
She stepped into the room, and he immediately tried to slam the door on her. She shouldered it back open and charged in. Studhalter was no fighter. He turned and ran through the half-empty, rented living room and into the kitchen, where he met Jack Bauer, who’d just kicked in the back door.
The drug dealer stopped and raised his hands. “Arrest me, what the fuck. I haven’t done anything.”
Jack motioned him back into the living room where both Nina and Tony waited. “Back so soon?” Nina asked. “What’s this about?” Studhalter demanded. “You guys can’t be cops.”
“Sit down.” Jack pointed at the couch, and Stud-halter obeyed. He was nervous, but not panicked. He was an ex-con, and prison held no unknowns for him. He was also smart enough to know his place in the world. “This ain’t about me,” he said. “No way this is about me.”
Jack nodded.
As Jack interrogated Felix Studhalter, another car drove up in front of the house, and Nina saw Peter Jiminez exit. She met him on the walkway. “Isn’t this overkill?”
Peter worked his swollen jaw. “Henderson wants me to take this guy back to CTU. He thinks there might be more we can get out of him once Jack’s done”
“You’ve heard of the phone,” Nina said.
“You two are supposed to check out the Pacific Rim Forum site. He says he wants someone with more experience.” Jiminez looked miserable. “I’ve got years doing protective services with Diplomatic Security and he thinks I don’t have the experience. So I get stuck with prisoner transport
.”
Jack walked out a moment later. “He’s all yours,” he said to Nina. “He’s cooperative enough. And this can work. He’s never met the Ukrainians before, and he’s supposed to arrange a meet with them. I’m playing him and making the call now.”
“Change of plans,” Nina said, pointing at Peter.
“I’m taking him in,” the young agent explained.
“Okay,” Jack said. He didn’t spare more than a quick glance at Peter. He had liked Jiminez well enough, and he was aware that he’d become a kind of father-figure to the younger man, but he had time for neither hero worship nor shattered expectations at the moment.
Nina had no desire to get in the middle of the dispute, so she went back inside.
“Jack,” Jiminez started. “Look, I was pissed before, you could tell. I even went in to Henderson to bitch about you. He set me straight. I’m sorry, man, I just — you know, I have a lot of respect for you, and to take a shot like that right after I’d, I mean, smashing the car and everything—”
Jiminez was stumbling over his words. Jack choked back his frustration. The kid was saying something nice, and if several sessions of marriage counseling had taught him anything, it was to listen when the other person said something nice. “Thanks, Peter. Thanks for getting me out of that police car.” He shook Peter’s hand.
Jack went to his car and got in. He had Studhalter’s mobile phone with him, and he dialed the number the drug dealer had given him.
“Yeah?” said a rough, accented voice on the other side.
“Hey, this is Studhalter,” Jack said. “Give me Sergei.”
“When do you want to meet?” said the other man, obviously Sergei.
“Now. I want to move the stuff now, too.”
Pause. “You’re in a hurry now, all of a sudden?”
Jack let his answer come naturally, not rushed and defensive. “I have some buyers in Okahoma City. The sooner I get to them, the more money I make.” “Okay. Come to me. If the feelings are good, we’ll go for a ride.” Sergei gave him an address in Santa Monica, and Jack hit the road.