24 Declassified: Operation Hell Gate 2d-1

by Marc A. Cerasini

  Jack raised an eyebrow. “But Georgi, you seem to be an intelligent businessman looking for an opportunity to make a buck. Why did you refuse this one?”

  “The deal sounded political,” Timko replied. “As I said before. I never get involved in politics.”

  The office door opened. Yuri entered. The assault rifle was slung over the old man’s shoulder. In his arms he carried a tray.

  “Ah, hot food at last,” sighed Georgi. “Please join me, Mr. Jack Bauer. I don’t know about you, but nothing makes me hungrier than getting shot at— especially when they miss, eh?”

  1:16:38 A.M.EDT The Last Celt

  The place was nearly empty, the last customer trading jibes with Donnie Murphy at the bar. The pub was dim now that the bright sign in the window had been extinguished; the mahogany bar and booths, the oak paneling on the walls, the framed black-and-white photographs of forgotten boxers, baseball players, and local entertainers all seemed to absorb the light that remained.

  “I got to tell you, Donnie. I took a bath on those damned Mets tonight,” said Pat, a balding man with a well-known penchant for gambling.

  “What can you do?” said Donnie in his rich baritone voice. “It’s the fortunes of war. You place your bet and you take what comes.”

  With stooped shoulders, short-cropped gray hair, watery blue eyes and a loping limp, Donnie looked more like a senior citizen coaching a Little League team than the ex-con, ex-Westie turned pub owner. Only a few knew that Donnie’s limp was the result of a vicious kneecapping masterminded by a prison rival decades before.

  Alone at a table counting the evening’s paltry tips, Caitlin sipped a cup of tepid tea. She’d only heard rumors about Donnie’s past as an Irish gangster and enforcer on the West Side of Manhattan, though it was no secret he’d spent a decade or more in New York’s notorious Sing Sing prison. Caitlin generally disregarded the rumors. She knew Donnie only as a generous and irascible old man who gave her the first real job she had in America, and a place where she and her brother could live when they were down and out and desperate.

  “ ’Night, Pat, see you tomorrow,” Donnie called. “And next time, bet on the home team.”

  The New York Mets game — broadcast live from the West Coast — had ended half an hour before, and the pub had pretty much emptied out after a few celebratory rounds. On the television behind the bar, the post-game highlights had been replaced by silent images of an airplane crash at John F. Kennedy Airport.

  Caitlin pushed an unruly strand of red-gold hair away from her face, messaged a neck that ached from carrying trays all night. With a sigh she rolled the bills up in a napkin and thrust the wad into her blouse. Once milky and smooth, Caitlin’s pale skin was now sallow and uneven. Her formerly lustrous hair was frizzy and tangled. Her generous mouth frowned more than it smiled, and her lipstick — too red— exaggerated the emotion on her tired face.

  The baby fat of her adolescence had melted away unnoticed in the past few months. Her long legs, once shapely, seemed thin and white under the short black skirt. But some of the changes were really improvements — age lent character and beauty to her face, her finely chiseled cheekbones more pronounced, green eyes large and lively despite the lines of exhaustion that edged them. Still, at twenty-two, Caitlin thought she was beginning to look — and feel — middleaged.

  “Better lock up, Caitlin,” said Donnie. “Then get to bed.”

  Before she could rise, the bell over the stout oak door dinged once as it swung open. Caitlin’s heart sunk when she saw Shamus Lynch on the threshold. Shamus had said he might stop by, but it was so late Caitlin, dared hope for a respite. But he was here now, a silver metal attaché case clutched in his hand.

  Shamus pretended not to notice Caitlin, greeting Donnie and accepting a Sam Adams. Caitlin rose, carried the cold cup behind the bar, and dumped the tea into the sink. As he took his first gulp, Shamus caught her eye, winked. The smile Caitlin returned was forced. When Shamus waved her over a moment later, Donnie diplomatically moved to the opposite end of the bar and raised the volume on the television.

  Shamus slipped his arm around Caitlin’s hips. “Miss me?”

  “Depends,” said Caitlin. “Were you gone?”

  Shamus planted a wet kiss on her lips, smearing her lipstick. Caitlin did not resist. Shamus rested his hand on the silver case. “Where’s Liam? I got a job for him.”

  “Where do you think he is? He’s sleeping. You can tell him all about it in the morning.”

  Shamus shook his head. “Sorry, darlin’. Can’t wait. It’s an important computer component. Has to be delivered tonight, so everythin’s runnin’ smoothly for business first thing in the mornin’.”

  “My little brother ain’t going out in the middle of the night, Shamus, no matter what you or your brother say.”

  “It’s a big job, Cait. I had to talk Griffin into giving Liam a crack at it. And the pay’s real good. The kid does well and… uh, maybe he can apprentice in the electronics shop this summer.”

  Caitlin gave Shamus a sidelong glance. “You’d do that?”

  “It ain’t really up to me. Griff’s the boss. But he likes Liam and if the kid shows himself to be responsible. ” Shamus’s eyes held steady, locked with Cait’s green gaze.

  Satisfied he meant what he said, she handed Shamus the key to her apartment. He squeezed the key, still warm from her touch, and winked again.

  “See you upstairs,” he said softly. “After you close up.”

  Then Shamus swallowed the rest of his beer, snatched the case off the bar, and sauntered to the back of the pub. He unlocked a small door and proceeded up the narrow stairs behind it to the cramped apartment Caitlin and her brother shared on the second floor.

  Shamus found fifteen-year-old Liam tucked in a sleeping bag, eyes closed. There was only one bed in the two-room furnished apartment, and Caitlin used it.

  Shamus gently kicked Liam’s leg. “Wake up,” he said, pulling off his suit jacket and loosening his tie. “I got a job for you, lad. Right now.”

  The youth sat up and rubbed his shaggy hair, red-gold like his sister’s. “Hey, Shea. What time is it?”

  Shamus laughed and tossed a pair of sneakers at the boy. “Time for you to earn two hundred dollars up front, another hundred when you’ve done the job.”

  Liam was instantly awake. He rolled up the sleeping bag and tossed it behind the small couch in front of the tiny television set. Then he began to dress— jeans, white T-shirt under a navy blue sweatshirt, the dirty, scuffed sneakers Shamus had tossed him.

  The man sat down on the couch, slid the case across the floor to Liam. “You’re to deliver this to Taj and no one else. By subway. No taxi or car service. Remember how to get there?”

  Liam nodded. Shamus reached into his wallet and took out two hundred in cash, thrust it into the boy’s hand. “If there’s any trouble, do what I told you to do. You remember?”

  The youth nodded. Shamus eyed the attaché case warily. “And whatever you do, don’t open the case. Got it?”

  “I got it, Shamus.”

  “Then take off. And on your way out, tell your sister to get up here. I’m waiting for her…”

  1:24:18 A.M.EDT CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  “Look, Tina. All I said was I wanted to go out with my friends on Friday night—”

  Even from her chair in front of the monitor, Captain Schneider could hear the tearful sobs on the other end of Milo’s cell connection.

  “I never said I was bored with you, honey. I don’t care what that magazine article said, I’m not like that,” Milo insisted.

  “Don’t cry, I—”

  Captain Schneider faced Milo. “I hate to interrupt, Mr. Pressman, but I’m having some trouble connecting to the DOD database.”

  Milo covered the phone. “That’s because you’re using the wrong routing protocol. Use our own network connection. CTU maintains a constant link with the Department of Defense, and the Central Intelligence Agency, too. The sec
urity code is thirty-three dash zeta zed backslash.”

  Captain Schneider tapped her keyboard. A moment later CTU’s random sequencing program was searching through all of the DOD’s stored digital files for a long string of numerals that matched the serial number printed on the memory stick.

  “Look, Tina,” said Milo, the cell phone close to his ear. “There’s a situation here, I really have to go—”

  “I think I just lost the feed from the Commerce Department,” Captain Schneider said. She directed Milo’s attention to a black data window on the massive HDTV monitor.

  “No,” said Milo, covering the phone. “See the blinking red cursor. Your search is completed. Engage the sequencer for a printout of your results.”

  “How do I do that?”

  Milo lifted his finger, pressed three numbers, then enter.

  “Yes,” Milo said into the phone. “You did hear a woman’s voice. It’s my supervisor…Yes, Tina, you’re right. That doesn’t sound like Jamey because it isn’t Jamey…Yes, Jamey Farrell is still my supervisor. But I’m talking to another supervisor right now.”

  “Mr. Pressman? What does this mean?”

  Milo looked up, at the data window for the Department of Defense database. It was blinking yellow. His girlfriend chattered on, but Milo wasn’t listening anymore. He rose to get a better look at the data window, absentmindedly closing his cell and dropping it back in his pocket.

  “I can’t believe it,” gasped Milo

  “Believe what?”

  Milo blinked. “I thought this whole thing was a waste of time. Like finding a tiny needle in an immense digital haystack. But you did it, Captain Schneider. You located a match.”

  1:38:09 A.M.EDT The Last Celt

  Liam’s scuffed, thrift shop sneakers bounded down the stairs. The pub was empty. Donnie Murphy had just left for Forest Hills where he still lived in the tiny brick house he and his late wife had shared for the past twenty years. Donnie trusted Caitlin to take care of the place when he wasn’t there; it was part of the deal he made with her in exchange for access to the dingy apartment upstairs.

  Caitlin handed Liam a cup of hot tea. “I’ll need it to go, sis.”

  “You’ll sit down and drink that before you go traipsing all over town in the middle of the night.”

  “But Shamus is waiting for you. He told me to send you up.”

  Caitlin bristled. “I’m not a servant that he can be summoning at will. Who’s Shamus Lynch think he is, the Prince of bloody Wales?”

  Liam laughed, slid into a booth. Caitlin brought him a sugar bowl and a dish of shortbread cookies. She glanced at the case on the floor. “What’s in the case. Where are you going tonight?”

  “Some computer thing, I think,” shrugged Liam. “I’m taking it to a guy named Taj in Brooklyn—”

  “Brooklyn!”

  “Brooklyn Heights. It’s no big deal. I’ll take the 7 train to Times Square, then switch to the Number 2. That’ll take me to close to Atlantic Avenue. I’ll have to hoof it from there. It’s a gatch walk but I’ve done it before—”

  “But not in the middle of the night.”

  Liam swallowed the dregs of his tea, ignoring the cookies, and lifted the case.

  “Are you sure you don’t want something to eat?”

  “Nah, ain’t hungry.”

  Caitlin rubbed her hand through his mop of hair, the red-gold bangs hanging in his face like a sheepdog. How did it get so long, so quick? she wondered. First thing tomorrow, she was giving it a trim. “Tell me, Liam, and don’t lie. Is this delivery on the up-and-up?”

  “Sure, what do you think? Shamus owns an electronics store, he’s not some criminal.”

  Caitlin sighed. She knew Liam looked up to Shamus like an older brother. They owed him for his help, that was certain. Finding her a job. Paying for Liam’s Catholic school. But Shamus and his brother weren’t exactly freshly washed sheets. She’d seen them talking quietly in this pub with enough shady types to guess they didn’t get all their computer parts by way of legitimate wholesale. Whether they were moving stolen merchandise for small-time thugs or buying crates that “fell off” trucks driven by patsies for organized crime, she didn’t know for sure. She just didn’t want Liam involved in that part of their business. She wouldn’t abide having her brother turned into a common thief.

  “Liam, tell me what Shamus said. I want to know exactly what he’s putting you up to.”

  He shrugged. “Taj has some store in Brooklyn — a deli. He has one of those computerized registers that takes credit cards and bank cards and stuff. It’s probably broken. I’m taking him some kind of component, that’s all.”

  “Anything else?”

  “Chill out, Cait. I’ve done this before, you know.”

  “But not at such an ungodly hour.”

  Liam laughed. “And I’m bein’ paid well for it, which is fine by me. Take it easy, will you? Shamus said he never even met Taj. He’s just a customer. They do all their work over the phone!”

  Caitlin sighed. “All right, all right…it sounds like it’s on the up-and-up…and you might as well know that Shamus talked to me about giving you a job—”

  “He did!”

  “Hush. Yes, he did. But you’re not to mention that I told you. I just want to make sure what Shamus is doing is honest work, that he won’t involve you in anything shady.”

  “Who cares, so long as it’s profitable?”

  Caitlin shook her brother’s shoulders. “Don’t talk like that. There’s more important things than money.”

  Liam threw his head back and laughed. “Not here in America, sis. In America money is everything.”

  “Hush your mouth.”

  “No way,” Liam replied. “I’m sick of wearin’ charity shop Nikes and listenin’ to the radio instead of playin’ CDs. I want a Nintendo. I want my own PC. And I’m tired of livin’ in some dump of an apartment above an old pub. Aren’t you?”

  1:55:33 A.M.EDT The lower level of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge

  “I’m tellin’ you, man. You ain’t seen anything this fine. These bitches ain’t whores and they ain’t hookers. They’re high-class, know what I’m sayin’? Carne dulce.”

  The white SUV bumped onto the ramp, climbing the bridge that spanned the East River from Queens to Manhattan. Dante Arete rolled down the window to disperse the fog in his head from too many beers, too much cocaine. For the last three hours, he’d been partying with his lieutenant at strip clubs on the Queens side of the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge. Now the stout drug dealer with the shaved head and tattoo of bloody thorns around his neck was driving him to a whorehouse that one of his Manhattan clients frequented.

  “Word,” the lieutenant told Dante, “these sluts… they’ll make you feel like a fuckin’ king.”

  The noise level increased as the van entered the mile-long lower level, which was enclosed in a steel support structure. Dark water flowed far below the span. Ahead, the lights of Manhattan twinkled in the warm spring night. Dante closed the window, sank deeper into his seat.

  “A king, huh. Bring it on, ’cause that’s what I am tonight.”

  More than a king, Dante felt downright immortal after surviving the last twenty-four hours. A CTU bust and a plane crash — neither had ended him. Now that it was over, Dante was gonna party till dawn.

  “Royalty ain’t cheap. These girls, they live on Sutton Place.”

  “Don’t worry about money, cholo. Tonight, you talkin’ to the ruler.”

  Dante reached over the back of his chair, pulled the silver attaché case from a bin under the backseat. He laid the case across his lap, patted it.

  “In here, I’m tellin’ you, I’ve got me a king’s ransom.”

  The gang-banger nodded and licked his lips as Dante unsnapped the locks. Then he lifted the lid. Beneath the stacks of money that Griff had flashed him in Tatiana’s parking lot, the one-pound block of C4 detonated.

  There were two triggers on the attaché case. In the event one
failed, the other would still set off the plastic explosives. Griff had activated both before handing over the closed case. The blast sent the SUV’s sunroof upward, to dash itself against the roof overhead. The windows and doors flew off the white SUV, sending debris and glass blowing outward in a wide and deadly arc.

  Sitting directly beneath the superheated blast, Dante Arete was instantly vaporized. The twitching body of his bald lieutenant — burned beyond recognition and still ablaze — was tossed out of the van and over the concrete wall that separated the traffic lanes.

  A truck heading to Queens in the opposite direction pulverized what was left of the burning man.

  The SUV, billowing orange fire and black smoke, rolled a few feet forward before it was ripped apart by a secondary explosion that spread wreckage and burning gasoline flowing across two lanes of the enclosed roadway.

  6. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 2 A.M. AND 3 A.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME

  2:02:03 A.M.EDT CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  Jamey Farrell divided her attention between the latest Domestic Security Alert on her main screen — now more than two hours old — and a data window on the upper right-hand side of the HDTV monitor, where Dante Arete’s movements on the East Coast were tracked by a GPS program that detected the signal from the microchip embedded under the gangbanger’s skin.

  Evaluating the daily Security Alert was an important part of Jamey’s job. The highly classified watch list was compiled by Richard Walsh’s staff in Washington, D.C., and issued electronically every evening at midnight, Eastern Daylight Time. The DSA cited every event occurring inside the continental United States, Alaska, and Hawaii within the next twenty-four-hour cycle that might pose a security threat, or attract the attention of terrorists. Every division of the CIA — including CTU — and all field agents posted in foreign capitals or the embassies of the world also received the DSA “hot list.”

  There were numerous events cited in the current Domestic Security Alert. In the next twenty-four hours a United States Navy Carrier Group would be docking in San Diego; the President of the United States would fly Air Force One on a courtesy call to a Colorado Springs congressman’s district for a fund-raiser; and the Pennsylvania National Guard would conduct maneuvers in the hills of Central Pennsylvania.