by John Whitman
What bothered her was his overall demeanor. She’d spoken with him only once, but she had a good memory for interviews, especially on an active case,
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and she was sure that al-Hassan had been much more abrupt, even abrasive, with her during their previous meeting. Frankly, she had appreciated his candor. Tonight he had seemed slicker, a little more polished. But she had little to go on—to get any information more thorough than her report on Peshawar would take days. Tracking down the elusive brother in Pakistan or the Middle East would be like looking for a needle in a stack of needles.
She shrugged. It was either that or go back to sleep. She headed for CTU.
2:03 A.M. PST West Hollywood
Jack had called Christopher Henderson rather than the regular emergency services, laying a bet that CTU had set up some kind of exfil system or cleanup procedure. His gamble paid off. Ten minutes after his call, paramedics arrived, along with a dark-haired man in slacks and a dress shirt, but the sleepy look of someone who’d just dragged himself out of bed.
“Almeida,” he said, shaking Jack’s hand. “These are our people. We’ll check him in and give a story. Is he going to give us any trouble?” He nodded at Dortmund, who was being stabilized by the paramedics.
“I don’t think so,” Jack said. “He’s a pedophile and there is evidence on him. Tell him to agree with your story or you’ll tell the real one.”
Almeida nodded as though that sort of reply was commonplace. He indicated Biehn, still handcuffed on the floor. “We taking him, too?”
“I’m not sure yet.” He studied Almeida’s dark eyes. “You haven’t even asked what’s going on.”
The other man shrugged. “My job’s to solve the problem, not slow down the solution with questions. Although if you did ask me, I’d say this whole thing looks pretty f’d up.”
Jack walked over and knelt beside Biehn. “What do you think of that?” he said sarcastically. “This guy thinks the situation here is fucked up, just because I let a suspected murderer visit a priest and then you tried to kill him. What do you think?”
Biehn, his words muffled by the carpet, replied, “I can give you another name in the plot.”
Jack sighed. “In return for letting you try to kill someone else? I don’t think so.”
“I promise I won’t try to kill him.”
“Oh, well, if you promise! That’s a whole different story,” Jack said acidly.
“I just want to see Mulrooney’s face. I want to know if he’s guilty.”
Jack grabbed Biehn by the shoulders and sat him up. He held Biehn’s anguished, frantic eyes with his own. “Of course he’s guilty. Everyone’s guilty of something. He’s guilty, but you’re not going to kill him. Deal with that right now.”
Almeida watched them. “You know, I am starting to get a little curious.”
Biehn did not back away from Jack’s stare. “You’ve got a daughter. I know her, she’s friends with my son. What would you do if priests had been raping her for the last four years?”
Jack knew. He’d thought about it already, driving in the car with Biehn. He’d make them all disappear
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quietly and painfully, law be damned. The law was a fine instrument, a useful tool. But it occurred to him that it was a tool that was often too clumsy, like a shovel with too long a handle. There were times when you wanted to cut it short. When did I start thinking that way? he wondered.
To Biehn, he said, “Doesn’t matter what I’d do. The only thing that matters is that I’m not going to let you do it.”
“I can give you a name directly associated with the plot. I don’t know if he’s one of the terrorists or just a shill, but I know that he’s a key component. And I can give you a description of the main guy.”
“How do you know all this?” Jack demanded. “What’s your source?”
Biehn said, “The guy in charge kidnapped me. He tortured me. I overhead a conversation and then I escaped.”
Jack processed this. Biehn was not involved in the terrorist investigation. He was a detective from West Hollywood Division, not Robbery-Homicide. “Were you on a case?”
“I’ll tell you that, too, if you let me look into Mulrooney’s face.”
Jack stood and helped Biehn to his feet. He turned to find Almeida practically in his face. The man was close enough to trigger Jack’s fight response, but he held back. Almeida himself was like ice. “I should probably remind you that none of what you’re doing is procedure. But I get the feeling you don’t really give a shit.”
Jack gave a curt nod. “You’re a good judge of character.” While Almeida saw to the paramedics and Dort
mund, Jack took a deep breath and gathered his arms around the situation. Biehn first, he thought. “Come on.” He uncuffed the detective’s feet and half-dragged him back out to the car. He put him in the front seat and recuffed his legs. “Are you going to—?” Biehn tried to ask, but Jack slammed the door.
He stood outside the car and dialed his cell phone. “Jack, what a surprise,” said Christopher Henderson. “Does everyone at the CIA work this late, or do they regret hiring you, too?”
“You knew the job was dangerous when you took it,” Jack quipped in reply. “Don’t tell me you signed up for a nine-to-five job, anyway.”
“Nine to nine, nine to nine-thirty, but this!”
“You want to gripe, go back to the military. Meantime, you’re the one who wanted me on this thing, so here I am.”
“Does that mean you’re signing on?”
“It means I’m going to figure out why the hell Yasin slipped back into the country, and how a small-time dealer is getting ahold of high-end plastic explosives and passing it around like pot at a party.”
“Does figuring that out include hauling a suspected murderer around the city?”
Jack chewed his lip. Driscoll. Of course Driscoll would have gone over his head. Why wouldn’t he? “Yes,” he said firmly. “I don’t know how it happened, but this guy Biehn has information on Yasin. But in the meantime, I need another lead followed.”
“Shoot,” Henderson said wearily.
“The arms dealer is going to call me any minute. I’m not going to be able to meet with him. I need Diana Christie to go do it.”
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There was a long pause on the far end. “She’s with NTSB, Jack. She’s not undercover. She barely even knows fieldwork—”
“I know, but Farrigian met with the two of us. I can’t go. If he makes the meet now, then there’s no other choice.”
“Let’s just arrest him.”
“For what?”
Henderson snorted. “Says the guy hauling around a murderer!”
“I’m serious, Christopher. Dog Smithies gave us Farrigian’s name, but he hasn’t sold us a damned thing and Smithies is dead. So we haul in a middleman who probably knows next to nothing about the actual plot, and put him in jail for two years for possession of illegal arms? Big deal. No, we are looking for the guys on either end of the deal, either the buyers or the sellers.”
Henderson seemed to consider this for a moment. Jack watched the paramedics roll Father Dortmund out and load him up, then the ambulance drive off, black and silent. Almeida gave him a wave and hopped into an unmarked car.
“Okay,” Henderson said at last. “I’ll see if she’s up for it. Shit, she’s going to be all alone in there, Jack. We don’t have any backup teams yet.”
“She’ll be okay,” he said, willing it to be true. “Now, about Biehn—” He looked toward the car window, where Biehn was staring back at him. “I’m going to take him on one more little trip, then I’ll bring him in. Can you run interference for me?”
“Do you mean can I keep that Driscoll guy away from Chappelle?” “Something like that.”
“Funny thing, I don’t think Driscoll has the heart to go too much higher. He likes you. You guys have history, I take it?”
“When I was with SWAT I saved his ass during a raid that w
ent sideways. I also saved his ass from a cross-dresser, but that’s a different story.”
“Chappelle’s going to hear about it soon enough anyway. Other people know Driscoll brought his prisoner to us. Someone’s going to be calling CTU to find out what’s going on.
“Oh, and Jack. Your friend Driscoll didn’t come to rat you out. He asked me for advice on how to stop you before you got into trouble. Thought you should know that before you see him in person.”
“Much appreciated.” Jack hung up. He pulled open the car door again, stared hard at Biehn, and lied, “I’ve got my bosses threatening to throw me into prison with you. But I won’t have company long because they’ll drag you off to the interrogation room.”
“I’ll go singing,” Biehn said miserably. “After I let my son be molested by—”
“Save it!” Jack snapped. “Fucking crybaby. Your son got molested. Stop making this about you.”
Biehn was dumbstruck by the sudden accusation.
“I’ve got a known terrorist in this city somewhere, a guy who tried to kill thousands of people a few years ago. I need to find him fast. So stop blubbering and help me. Give me one more piece to go on.”
The detective hesitated, clearly reluctant to play the only cards he had left. “I’ll tell you one more name. I have more. But I heard the name Abdul al-Hassan.”
The name meant nothing to Jack, but he commit
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ted it to memory nonetheless. He wanted to be done with Detective Don Biehn, but something was nagging at him. Not a clue, exactly, but an absence of explanation. If Biehn had already started his vendetta (which Jack assumed was true), and that’s when he was grabbed by Yasin, or whoever tortured him, was there some kind of connection? Why would Yasin bother with an LAPD detective? There was an enormous gap in the logical flow of events, and the only way to fill that gap was to follow Biehn down this dark hole into his own personal hell.
“Come on,” he said at last. “We’re going to see Mulrooney. “Then you’re going to tell me everything you know, or I’ll kill you myself.”
2:15 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
“You sure you’re up for this?” Christopher Henderson asked again.
This time Diana Christie glared at him. “Yes. I met him before. He’s not that hard to handle. I go in, I try to buy the plastic explosives. My goal is to figure out where he buys from or who else he sold to.”
“Don’t push it,” Henderson cautioned. “It’ll be enough for us to get the goods. We may be able to trace—”
“—them back to their point of origin. You said that, too,” the NTSB agent interrupted. “Look, I’ll admit. This is new for me. But I can always just play dumb. Jack’s character was the boss.” She twisted her finger in her hair and turned one knee in girlishly. “I’m just his girl Friday.”
Henderson grinned. “Works for me. Good luck.”
He watched her walk out the door, hoping to god that everything went well, and praying for the day CTU was fully staffed and able to send backup.
2:17 A.M. PST Los Angeles
Michael was asleep when the phone rang. He had willed himself to bed. Years of experience had taught him that, although he needed very little sleep, his circadian rhythms demanded rest from around two o’clock to five o’clock in the morning. With those three hours of sleep he could operate at full capacity. If he remained awake during that block of time, he could sleep eight hours on any other cycle and feel exhausted.
“What,” he said grumpily.
“This is Pembrook,” said the voice of one of his men. “There’s been more trouble. The police detective was taken by Federal agents, but he’s disappeared since then. And another of our clerics, Father Dortmund, has just been hospitalized.”
“Was he attacked?”
Pembrook replied, “According to our sources, it was an accident. A dresser fell on him while he was asleep. It nearly crushed his throat. A neighbor found him. But . . .”
“Finish.”
“It’s too much of a coincidence. Dortmund was one of the church’s . . . relocations.”
Michael considered this. Biehn had most certainly killed Father Giggs. He’d been taken into custody by the Federal government, but now suddenly an
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other priest, whom Michael knew to have the same unsavory habits as Giggs, had been injured. “Get a man over to Dortmund. Find out what happened to him.”
He hung up and then sat up in bed. He could feel the Federal government nipping at his heels. Federal agents had captured their extra plastic explosives— thank god he’d left it in the hands of those bumblers on Sweetzer Avenue for just such a reason. Federal agents had nearly gotten their hands on Ramin. Federal agents had spoken with al-Hassan, but the man seemed to have passed with flying colors. Federal agents were tracking the plastic explosives backward, talking to the middleman he had hoped would divert curious eyes. Well, he had shored up that breach as best he could. That was the key, and Michael hoped that Yasin was right about what tactics to use in that battle. According to Yasin, it was foolish to try to hide from Federal investigators. They were relentless, and they had the resources to break down any defenses, once they spotted their objective. They could not be blocked, only redirected. So Michael, following Yasin’s advice, had prepared to redirect them. He would know within the hour.
Ironically, the government’s actual terrorist investigation was leading them only in circles. But this rogue detective was ruining everything.
Damn that detective, Michael thought. Damn his son. Damn those boy-fucking priests who can’t keep their hands to themselves. And damn me for not killing Biehn when I had the chance.
2:22 P.M. PST St. Monica’s Cathedral, Downtown Los Angeles
Jack had no way of knowing, but he parked in exactly the same spot that Don Biehn had used hours earlier. After freeing Biehn’s feet, he pulled the man out of the car and escorted him down the street. Biehn was looking haggard, almost a walking corpse, except for his eyes, which were bright with an unhealthy glow.
“I meant it,” Jack warned, speaking for the first time since they’d left Dortmund’s. “You give me the slightest bit of trouble, and I’ll shoot you. I’m already in enough trouble over this. Shooting you is not going to make it all that much worse.”
“I’m thinking,” Biehn said in a hollow voice, “that you and I aren’t that much different. I’m throwing everything away for something really important to me. You look like you’re willing to do the same. I’m doing it for Aaron. What’s your story?”
Jack shrugged. “A terrorist kicked my dog when I was a kid.”
“No, really. Why risk your career?”
“Because someone has to care more about saving the world than saving his job.”
“Exactly!” Biehn laughed. “I knew it. You’re the hero of the story.”
“I guess that makes you the villain,” Jack answered.
“Nope, but I bet you’re about to meet him.”
Jack didn’t stand on ceremony. He led Biehn straight through the cathedral and into the grounds beyond. Biehn seemed to know his way around the place, and led Jack past the rectory to the small
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house standing alone at the far corner of the cathedral grounds. Lights were on in the house, and there was a man standing in front. He looked utterly dumbfounded by the appearance of the two men. “We need to see the Cardinal,” Jack said simply. “It’s urgent.”
“I’ll have to—”
But Jack hadn’t stopped walking. He brushed right past the guard and pulled on the door of the house. It was unlocked and opened easily onto a small hallway. Jack, still holding tightly to Biehn’s arm, walked down the hallway and turned left into the first lighted room, to find himself staring at an utterly average man. He had the look of a man of about sixty; his hair was medium brown and only slightly thin on top; he was of average height and medium build. Jack was immediately reminded of one of his daughter’s old “Felt Friends,”
ambiguous human figures that could be dressed up in different costumes with different expressions. This man could have been dropped into the suit of a Washington politician, or a sales clerk at Nordstrom’s, or an Iowa farmer’s overalls, and he would have blended perfectly.
The nondescript man looked shocked, but said nothing to the newcomers. He looked past Jack, to the flustered guard who was coming up behind.
“I’m sorry, Your Eminence,” the guard said. “He just walked right past. I didn’t expect—” “Apologize later,” Jack interrupted. “You’re Cardinal Mulrooney?” The man, wearing black slacks and a white shirt, unbuttoned, nodded. “Tell me what this is about.” “It’s about the perverts who abused my son!”
Biehn shouted. Jack should have known he’d find the energy to work himself back into a frenzy. “The ones you knew about!”
Mulrooney was extremely self-disciplined. For a man interrupted at such a late hour, and so accused, he remained impressively calm. Jack saw the Cardinal’s eyes dart from Jack, to Biehn, to the placement of his hands behind his back, noting everything. But he said to both of them, “Are you the two who killed Father Giggs?”
“No,” Jack replied. “I’m—”
Jack felt the change in air pressure more than he heard anything. The men who rushed in through some unseen door were quiet as wraiths. Jack was already dropping to a crouched position as the first pffft! pffft! sounds of bullets leaving silencers spat into the room. As the rounds thudded into the wall behind him, Jack already had his own gun out and put two rounds into the lead man. The report of his SigSauer was loud and alarming in the otherwise quiet room, and seemed to shock everyone into the reality that there was a real gunfight going on. Mulrooney dove for the floor. Biehn dropped heavily to the ground. The flustered guard flung himself backward, terrified of friendly fire.
The newcomers were all dressed in black, nonmilitary attire. As the first man dropped under Jack’s fire, the second stumbled over him. Jack fired again, blasting the enclosed room with noise, but the third attacker had rolled around the corner in the hallway. Jack saw the muzzle of his gun stick itself blindly around the corner. He rolled away, entering fully into Mulrooney’s living room.
