by John Whitman
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.
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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—”
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“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 over 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
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wrong door or something, and I think I saw the guy your people want.”
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?”
&nb
sp; 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
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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.
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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
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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 Chappelle, 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 Cha
ppelle 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.”
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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?”
