24 Declassified: 06 - Chaos Theory

by John Whitman

  “Planning ways to burn Jack Bauer,” Jiminez muttered.

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  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

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  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. “Ar

  rest 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 play

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  ing 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.

  He hadn’t driven for more than a few minutes when he realized there was another call he needed to make. Probably it was a call he should have made hours earlier, but he had forgotten. The conciliatory conversation with Jiminez had reminded him. He dialed.

  “Hello?” Teri’s voice was inquisitorial. This was a number she did not recognize.

  “Ter, it’s me.”

  “Jack.” He couldn’t tell if that sound in her voice was anger or relief. Maybe it was both. “What’s—?” “I’m good. It’s all good now. Thank you. Thank you for everything.”

  And suddenly sh
e was crying on the other end of the line. He did not interrupt her. A moment later her sobs subsided, and she said amid her tears, “God, I was so scared last night, I’ve been so scared, and all the time keeping this secret—”

  “I know, I’m sorry, I really am,” he said, meaning it. It hadn’t been fair to expose her to danger. He’d already asked too much of her by just going under

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  cover in prison. He’d told her, of course, but then he’d insisted that she maintain the secret. That hadn’t been hard—Jack’s work wasn’t well known to their friends and neighbors, and he traveled enough that a three-week absence, while unusual, wasn’t suspicious. But she’d slept every night with images of him in prison. “But that part’s over. The police know that I was undercover.”

  “So you’re coming home?” she asked hopefully. “Kim hasn’t seen you in—”

  “Today, later. But I can’t yet. I still have work to do.”

  Even before she spoke, he sensed the change in tone. It was as though the word work had opened a huge chasm between them that no cell phone could reach across. “Okay,” was all she said.

  “Ter, you know, what I’m wor— when I’m involved in something like this, I—”

  “I know, Jack. It’s important. I’ll see you when you get home.”

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  THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 1 P.M. AND 2 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

  1:00 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  Ryan Chappelle was feeling more like himself. That is to say, he was feeling peevish and unhappy. Of course, at this particular moment he had two reasons to be unhappy. The first was that someone had given him a barbiturate overdose. The second was that Jack Bauer, of all people, had saved him.

  It did not occur to Chappelle to admire Bauer for the sacrifices he’d made in the last few weeks. Not a day went by without some field agent somewhere surrendering his blood or his family time for the sake of his country. The possibility that Bauer might give

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  more than others was, in Chappelle’s opinion, overshadowed by the man’s willingness (he would say eagerness) to flout policy and procedure.

  As for the fact that Bauer had been instrumental in getting close to Zapata, well, as far as Chappelle was concerned, that proved his own good use of resources.

  Chappelle considered Zapata his personal nemesis. Chappelle despised terrorists. He considered them evil and immoral, villains willing to kill and maim the innocent to achieve their ends. But at least they had an end goal, abhorrent as it was. Zapata was not immoral, he was amoral. He had no end in mind; he simply worked toward the deconstruction of the world as it was. Anarchy. Without leaders. Preposterous. The man had to be destroyed.

  “You wanted to see me?”

  Chris Henderson entered the office where Chappelle had made himself comfortable.

  Chappelle motioned for him to sit down. When Henderson had settled in, he said, “This Internal Affairs investigation is heating up.”

  A look of disgust crossed Henderson’s face. “It’s all anyone’s talking about.”

  “From what I’ve read, it looks like Jack Bauer’s the one who’s been doing the talking. About you.”

  The scowl on Henderson’s face deepened, his frown lines becoming sinkholes. “I assume Jack said what he thought, even though he’s wrong.”

  Chappelle nodded. “Being wrong never occurs to him. The man’s a hard-headed smart ass. Frankly, I’d

  love to see him brought down a notch or two.” Henderson hesitated. “Is this what you called me in to talk about?”

  The Regional Director seemed not to have heard him. “Between you and me, I’ve been tempted to pack his parachute myself, if you know what I mean, then let him jump out of the plane and just see what happens. But something always holds me back. Maybe it’s my own sense of right and wrong, but no, now that I think of it, it’s not that.”

  “I’ll bite. What is it?” Henderson asked.

  Chappelle leaned forward. “It’s that as much as he’s a rule-breaking pain in the ass, Bauer does what he does to get the job done. He doesn’t do things to stop the job from getting done.”

  “Is there a point here?”

  “Yes,” Chappelle said. “You know how much I dislike Bauer, and that’s even though I admit he tries to help the mission. Do you have any idea how miserable I’d make someone who was actually trying to stop the mission?”

  Henderson’s mouth went dry. He tried to smile. “Pretty miserable, I’ll bet.”

  “Pretty goddamned miserable,” Chappelle agreed. His eyes did not waver from Henderson’s face. Like a snake, he did not blink. “If I found out that someone tried to sabotage the Zapata mission just to save their own skin from the Internal Affairs investigation, especially if they did something to me as part of their sabotage, I’m going to personally see to it that person is crucified.”

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  “What the hell are you implying with—”

  “That’s all,” Chappelle said.

  1:11 P.M. PST Santa Monica

  Sergei’s address was easy enough to find—a small Craftsman just north of Main Street, on the border between Santa Monica and Venice. The neighborhood was straight middle class, and except for the brown, untended grass, the Ukrainian’s house blended in perfectly well.

  Jack climbed the three steps to the porch and pushed the old metal doorbell. There was a slightly rusty screen door that opened outward, but he left it closed and waited. After a moment, the inner door was opened by a small man who barely reached Jack’s shoulder. He studied Jack with bright, aggressive eyes, and Jack had that same, cautionary feeling one gets while being sniffed by a guard dog.

  “Malenkiy, let him in!” someone ordered from inside.

  Jack pulled open the metal screen door as Malenkiy stepped back. Jack walked into a house that looked like it had been decorated by a couple of college boys, with haphazard furniture and cheap prints on the walls. The hardwood floor was badly scratched in places.

  Sergei was sitting on a brown faux leather couch. He had the same sharp eyes as Malenkiy, and they wore the same hawklike nose and thin brown hair, but Sergei was much bigger, taller and broader than Jack. He was reading the newspaper. Jack noticed that Malenkiy remained behind him and off-angle, ready for trouble.

  The drug dealer folded the paper and stood up. “Mr. Felix Studhalter,” he said in a gentle accent, offering his hand. Jack shook it firmly. “We do not know each other. I must search you.”

  “I’m carrying,” Jack said. “I’m sure your guy is, too.”

  Sergei nodded. “I am not concerned about guns.”

  Jack understood. He’d re-equipped himself with a SigSauer, which he carried in a pancake holster at his hip. He popped it out and laid it on the edge of the couch, then slipped off his jacket and pulled up the long-sleeved T-shirt until his chest was visible. He turned around slowly. He was not wearing a wire.

  “Good,” Sergei said pleasantly. “Now we can do business. Why, again, have you hurried up our deal? Something about St. Louis?”

  “Oklahoma City,” Jack corrected. “Like I said, the sooner the deal is done, the more I make.”

  “Who is in Oklahoma?” Sergei asked.

  Jack shook his head. “I make money because I know them and you don’t.”

  Sergei sighed. “We are all middlemen. So, this is how it works. You and me and Malenkiy are going to our little warehouse. We are going alone, and you are bringing cash. For cash, you get crystal meth and the truck it comes in—”

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  “Do I know the truck is clean?”

  “Your grandmother could sell it to a policeman,” Sergei assured him.

  “And what makes you think that, all by myself, I’m going to go somewhere with the two of you with a bag full of cash?”

  Sergei grinned. “Because it is the only way you will get the deal.”

  Jack made a show o
f hesitating, assessing Sergei and his miniature. The truth, of course, was that this arrangement was fine with him. Tucked into the compartment under the back area of his SUV was a briefcase full of cash courtesy of CTU. Jack was perfectly content to hand it over and drive away with the meth, which he’d deliver to Smiley Lopez in return for information. LAPD and the FBI could sort out the gang-bangers and the drug dealers. He had a global anarchist to catch.

  1:22 P.M. PST Don’t-Shoot-the-Messengers Carson, California

  Gabriel “Pan” Panatello hung up the phone, having just received the most unusual phone call of his life. He was the owner of Don’t-Shoot-the-Messengers, a messenger company (and a name) he’d inherited from his jerk brother-in-law a few years back. He’d taken it partly because his wife nagged him to do it, and partly because the messenger service was a convenient front for his small-time drug deals and transportation business. The thievery wasn’t much more profitable than the actual delivery, but at least it wasn’t boring pencil-neck work. Pan got to keep his hand in the pot even though, as far as his wife, Tapia, knew, he’d gone legit. Plus, it allowed him to give work to some of his pals from Folsom, and that made him feel like a hero.

  This call, now. This call was way out of the ordinary. Ironically, as crazy as the job was, the first thing Pan did was very pencil-neckish. He called his insurance company to make sure the insurance was up to date on all six of his cars. ’Course, he realized right away that that was stupid—he couldn’t use all his own cars for this. Maybe one, but the rest had to come from somewhere else. So next he made the first of several calls to some of the guys from the cell block.

  “Hey, Doogie, it’s Pan. Yeah, listen, man, you still looking for work? Naw, man, not exactly. You still got a car? Yeah, I got my own, but I can’t—just listen. You’re gonna need your own car, and it might not run too good afterward, but I’ll give you a legit loaner. Okay, here’s what you gotta do . . .”

  1:25 P.M. PST Santa Monica

  A few minutes after they left Sergei Petrenko’s house in the drug dealer’s big black Mercedes, Jack and his

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  two new acquaintances pulled up in front of a building that was neither a warehouse nor little. They were parked in front of a large condominium complex. Sergei had activated his phone and muttered something in Russian or Ukrainian, which brought a man in a black leather coat and black cap out of the complex’s security gate. The man sauntered across a short strip of lawn, jerked open the back door of the Mercedes, and dropped himself heavily into the backseat next to Malenkiy and behind Jack.