24 Declassified: Operation Hell Gate 2d-1

by Marc A. Cerasini

  “My what?”

  “Your résumé. You have worked before?”

  “Yes, oh yes,” Caitlin replied.

  “Can you use a computer? Word processor?”

  “No, not really. But I learn quick.”

  “Can you use a Xerox machine? We only use Xerox around here. Company policy.”

  “I used one once. In a Staples store.”

  “You better fill out the form, miss.”

  “But I don’t have a pen.”

  Mamie Greene threw up her hands. “I’ll give you a ballpoint, we have lots of those. But nobody’s using my felt tip.”

  A suitable pen was found, and Caitlin began filling out the application. A moment later the doorbell rang again.

  “I’ll be right back,” said Mamie.

  Caitlin watched through the window as Mamie Greene spoke with the UPS man. Then she reached into her pocket and took out the lighter Jack had bought for her at a convenience store. She quickly stuffed a bunch of loose papers into the bottom of a nearly empty aluminum trash can, touched them with fire. Flames leaped up immediately, too many.

  As per Jack’s instructions, she tossed more paper onto the fire, not quite smothering it but almost. She wanted a lot of smoke and a little bit of fire, nothing more dangerous than that.

  She looked for a place to hide the trash can, heard Mamie Greene say goodbye to the delivery man. Hurriedly Caitlin slid the smoldering can into a walk-in closet, too quickly to see what was inside. She only just made it back to her chair when Mamie returned.

  “You aren’t done yet?”

  Caitlin smiled sheepishly. “There’s a lot of writing.”

  “That’s why we have computers.”

  “Are you the manager, then? Or is it Mr. Wexler?”

  Mamie Greene chuckled. “Mr. Wexler died in 1957. I was working here then, too. I was the assistant office manager when Mr. Wexler was in charge. I was the office manager when his son took over the business. And I’m still the office manager now, after Junior sold the company to that Arab fellow last year.”

  “I see.”

  Mamie cocked her head, sniffed the air. “Do you smell smoke? I smell smoke. ”

  The woman spied brown smoke wafting out of the closet. “My stars!” she cried.

  With a speed that was impressive considering her advanced age and considerable girth, Mamie hurried across the room and yanked an unwieldy fire extinguisher off the wall. Before Mamie could drag the heavy extinguisher to the fire, Caitlin hit the red emergency button on the wall next to the desk.

  Shrill fire alarms echoed throughout the building. Stubbornly, Mamie crossed the room with the bulky extinguisher. But when she yanked the closet door open, roaring hot smoke rolled out, followed by licking orange flames. The woman squawked and dropped the canister. Caitlin peered inside the closet. In the rippling flames, she could see cardboard boxes and reams of papers lining the walls.

  “My god!” Caitlin gasped. She wasn’t supposed to set a real fire, only make some smoke. She jumped when she felt a heavy hand on her shoulder.

  “Honey, let’s get out of here,” Mamie cried.

  Caitlin raced into the waiting room, hands clutching her head. She didn’t even have to fake panic as she began to scream.

  “Fire! Fire! Mother of Mercy, the whole building is on fire!”

  12:59:26 P.M.EDT Boulevard Diner, Forest Hills, Queens

  Three cups of joe and two Cokes. Liam had to piss but he was still knackered. He’d been up all night, mugged, almost run down by a subway, caught in a police raid, then an explosion — no wonder he couldn’t keep his bleedin’ peepers open!

  He swung the stool around, ready to make a trip to the head, when he spied the Lynch brothers’ Mercedes swing into a parking spot in front of the computer store across the road.

  Finally.

  Liam fumbled in his pockets, dumped money for the bill and a tip on the counter. Then he lifted the metal attaché case and left the diner. He would be glad to get this over with. Tell Shamus about the raid in Brooklyn, and get rid of the case — he’d been carrying the damned thing for nearly twelve hours!

  17. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 1 P.M. AND 2 P.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME

  1:01:03 P.M. EDT Houston Street, Lower Manhattan

  Jack Bauer watched the entrance to Wexler Storage from a recessed doorway across busy Houston Street, waiting for Caitlin to make her move. Around him the bohemians of the West Village — women in black dresses, stacked shoes, and wide-rimmed glasses; men with shaved heads, tattoos, and multiple body piercings — crowded the sidewalks, the shops, the sidewalk cafés. Jack ignored the locals, focused attention on the police car parked at the curb, the lone officer inside.

  When the fire alarm wailed, Jack was ready. He burst out of hiding, into the street. Dodging cars, he watched the policeman hurriedly report the fire on his radio, then climb out to offer assistance.

  A large black woman stumbled out of the storefront, collapsed with a coughing fit on the sidewalk. Caitlin appeared a moment later, screaming her head off. She spotted Jack and the cop at the same time.

  Thinking fast, the woman literally jumped into the young policeman’s arms.

  “There’s smoke and fire! The building is burning.”

  As she babbled, Caitlin swung the cop around so Jack could race past the man unseen.

  The waiting room was already filled with black smoke. Jack blinked against the burning haze. Through the window behind the counter, he saw orange flames racing through the inner office. The plasterboard wall around that window began to smolder; beige paint bubbled and curled from the tremendous heat.

  He’d wanted Caitlin to set a small fire with enough smoke to empty the building. Clearly, she had gone overboard. Jack thought about escaping the building, too, but a sudden noise changed his mind.

  Jack heard a clang as a steel door burst open. A Hispanic man in a gray uniform stumbled out of a stairwell, choking against the billowing smoke. Jack pushed the man toward the exit, then ran into the stairwell and slammed the door behind him.

  The stairwell was relatively free of smoke. There was no way down; the stairs ended on the ground floor. So Jack climbed the stairs to the second floor. He found another steel door, this one locked from the other side. Cautiously Jack peered through a small wire-lined window in the center of the door. He saw long rows of storage bins, each with its own door and padlock — none of them large enough to hold a North Korean missile launcher.

  At the opposite side of the room Jack saw sliding metal-mesh doors blocking an empty elevator shaft. Smoke was beginning to penetrate the second floor through the floorboards and elevator shaft. It hung in the air.

  Jack climbed to the third floor, the fourth, then the fifth. On each floor the steel doors were locked, the floors themselves seemingly deserted — just row upon row of storage bins, and an empty elevator shaft on the opposite wall. No sign of a terrorist cell, no trace of the Long Tooth missile launchers.

  Finally Jack reached the sixth floor and the top of the stairs. Only a ladder climbed higher, leading up to a hatch in the ceiling. As he approached the steel door, Jack wondered if he was on a wild goose chase, if he’d trapped himself inside a burning building for nothing.

  1:06:15 P.M. EDT Sixth floor, Wexler Business Storage Houston Street, Lower Manhattan

  When the fire alarms began to sound, Tarik dropped his hammer, barked instructions in Pashto for the others to stay where they were and to keep working. They had to pack up the precious cargo in wooden crates, for transport to the airports, no matter what else was going on around them.

  Tarik opened his cell, dialed up Taj. He cursed when his call was rerouted to a voice mail system. He left his leader a warning in Pashto, then ended the call.

  He turned, found the men struggling under the weight of the missiles; the launchers had not yet been sealed in their boxes. He wanted to curse these men, goad them into action with kicks and insults. But he did not. These m
en were old, some with missing eyes, hands, limbs — their legacies of the war against the Soviets.

  Tarik reminded himself that these men were all that remained of Taj Ali Kahlil’s once-mighty clan, heroes of the Afghan war, men who boldly risked their lives against the Russian infidels who’d invaded their homeland. They had shed blood and limbs and eyes for the cause of Muslim freedom — only to be betrayed by the American intelligence services that aided them.

  Instead of berating these men, Tarik felt only respect. He was about to pitch in to help when Tarik saw movement through the window of the fire exit. Someone was lurking on the stairwell.

  Tarik drew his Uzi and approached the steel door.

  1:09:04 P.M. EDT Green Dragon Computers Queens Boulevard, Forest Hills

  It took Liam a long time to cross the ten lanes of traffic on Queens Boulevard. Finally he was on the sidewalk, just a few storefronts away from Green Dragon Computers, when a black BMW squealed to a stop in front of the shop. The driver double-parked, blocking Shamus’s car, then leaped out.

  Liam halted when he saw Taj Ali Kahlil. The Afghani man wore an unadorned white skullcap over a lightweight suit. He strode into the Green Dragon store, an angry scowl darkening his long, narrow face.

  Liam ducked into the exterior doorway of a dry cleaner’s. An Asian woman inside the shop eyed him warily through the plate-glass window. Breathing hard, he shifted the metal case in his sweaty hands. He’d been dragging that attaché around so long, it felt like a bleedin’ anchor.

  His mind was in turmoil. He never wanted trouble, just a bit of money. Now trouble found him in the shape of a shiny metal attaché case and the piece of plastic and silicone it contained. Liam recalled the violence the FBI had used to smash their way into the Brooklyn store and decided Taj must be some kind of crook.

  Now Liam didn’t know what to do. He thought of his sister, and the world of hurt he was bringing down on her. Maybe if I talk to her, he thought, warn Caitlin that trouble was coming. The last thing Liam wanted to do was jeopardize the only person he had in all the world.

  And the next to the last thing Liam wanted to do was face Taj and the Lynch brothers — he knew they were crooks now. Who knew what they would do to him?

  So Liam turned and hurried away from the computer store as fast as he could. A few blocks away, he spied a pay phone and dug into his pocket for some coins, dialed The Last Celt. The pub was open now and Caitlin should have been working lunch duty. But it was a stranger who answered on the second ring.

  “Can I speak to Caitlin, please?”

  “Who’s Caitlin?” the voice growled in reply.

  “There’s an apartment upstairs. Is that where this Caitlin lives?”

  Liam heard other voices in the background, none he recognized. He stopped talking, but did not hang up.

  “Listen, son,” the voice said. “My name is Detective McKinney of the New York Police Department. If you know something about the murder of Donnie Murphy you’d better turn yourself in right now.”

  Liam hung up the receiver down, letting it go like a poisonous snake. Sick with anxiety, he didn’t know where to turn. All he wanted to do was lose the attaché case and go home. Now it looked like he was stuck with the bloody case, and he had no home to go back to.

  1:10:01 P.M. EDT Sixth floor, Wexler Business Storage Houston Street, Lower Manhattan

  The fire alarm continued to ring throughout the massive brick building. On the sixth-floor landing, Jack peered through the wire-meshed glass, spied a group of elderly men in turbans and skullcaps frantically trying to load two Long Tooth shoulder-fired missile launchers and a dozen missiles into two large, unmarked wooden crates. A dolly waited near the open doors to the freight elevator to carry the deadly weapons away.

  One of the men, younger than the rest, with an Uzi tucked into his sash, turned his head in Jack’s direction. Jack ducked behind the door, but not quick enough — he was certain the man had spotted him. Slowly Jack drew the Mark 23 USP from its shoulder holster. A moment later, over the wail of the fire alarms, he heard the handle click, and the metal door opened outward. Jack immediately thrust the barrel of his gun through the narrow opening and fired. The blast was deafening. It continued to echo inside the confines of the stairwell as Jack ripped open the door and jumped over the corpse of the man he’d just killed.

  Jack fired as he moved. Another man’s head exploded, and a third pitched backward, clutching the fountain of blood that gushed from the wound in his throat.

  Another young Afghani appeared out of nowhere, to let fly with a volley from an assault rifle. Jack rolled behind a steel storage bin as the chattering AK–47 tore up the floorboards where he’d stood only a split second before. With a shooter pinning him down, two of the old men stumbled toward the Long Tooth missile launchers, rolled them off the rack and onto the dolly. Jack managed to shoot one of the men, who had a stump for a right hand. But even though the Afghani was wounded, he stubbornly helped his colleague wheel the dolly into the freight elevator.

  Jack knew he had to stop these missiles from arriving at their destination, but whenever he tried to move out of cover, the young Afghani with the assault rifle would open up on him. Suddenly the fire door opened again. Jack whirled, figuring he’d been flanked. When he saw a blue uniform, Jack tried to warn the newcomer of the danger. But the AK–47 barked first, and the New York City policeman who’d been sitting in the squad car was ripped in half in a hail of bullets.

  Taking advantage of the momentary distraction, Jack squeezed off four shots. They slammed the shooter backward, into a wall.

  Jack was on his feet in time to see the metal grate close and the freight elevator begin its descent. Crossing the floor, he scooped up the AK–47. The banana magazine was nearly full — the shooter must have reloaded just before he shot the cop. Jack reached the elevator, thrust the muzzle through the grate, and opened fire.

  But instead of firing down, into the cage, Jack shot the cables. Sparks flew, a pulley wheel broke and tumbled down the shaft. Then he heard a ripping sound as the cable snapped.

  Howls echoed up the shaft as the freight elevator plunged to the basement. The screams ended abruptly when the elevator car was dashed to pieces. Smoke billowed out of the shaft, rolled over Jack until he had to shield his eyes. When the smoke cleared, Jack peeked down the shaft, saw two corpses and a pair of shattered missile launchers among the twisted debris.

  Smoke began to rise up the elevator shaft from the fire raging on the ground floor. Jack decided it was time to go. He ran back to the fire door. But when he opened it, smoke and heat struck him. A bonfire roared at the bottom of the stairs. The roof was his only hope. Jack grabbed the first rung of the ladder and climbed up to the hatch in the ceiling, praying it wasn’t locked.

  1:21:13 P.M. EDT Freight Terminal C Atlanta Hartsfield Jackson International Airport

  The hazardous material vehicles pulled away from the Boeing 727 and the ramp closed.

  Dr. Colin Fife stood on the tarmac beside CDC Director Henry Johnston Garnett. They watched in silence as the jet taxied down the runway, then leaped into the sky.

  Dr. Garnett sighed. “I only hope we’ve done enough to protect the public.”

  “Only an act of God, a totally unforeseen catastrophe like a plane crash could unleash the virus,” said Dr. Fife with confidence. “And even then the explosion and fire would most likely destroy the cultures. Oh, perhaps if the aircraft broke apart, or it crashed without a fuel explosion there might be a danger, but the chances of such an event are simply astronomical.”

  1:46:44 P.M. EDT Green Dragon Computers Queens Boulevard, Forest Hills

  Inside the Green Dragon store, Taj confronted Griffin Lynch.

  “My brother is dead, the safe house in Brooklyn destroyed, and I still do not have the memory stick I require to shoot down the CDC aircraft,” Taj complained.

  “Don’t panic,” Griffin replied. “We sent Liam to deliver the stick. He’s done it a dozen times. We don�
��t know what went wrong this time.”

  “Do you think he went to the police?” Taj asked.

  Griff exchanged an unhappy look with Shamus. “We don’t know what happened, but our associates in Los Angeles know about the loss of the memory stick. Another missile launcher with a new stick has been dispatched from the Green Dragon factory in Los Angeles. It’s scheduled to arrive at LaGuardia Airport in a little over an hour.”

  Taj face clouded. “That wasn’t the plan.”

  “No, but it will get the job done,” said Griff. “Me and Shamus will pick up the launcher and bring it to you ourselves. It’ll mean changing our plans. We never wanted to come to the bridge. We should have been on a plane by now, but we’ll do it to get the bloody job done.”

  “We won’t have time to test it.”

  “We don’t need to test it. We know from Dante Arete’s trial run that the aircraft identification software works. Arete’s men were able to target an approaching Boeing 727 in the busy skies over LAX without difficulty.”

  “Then the fool was captured and we lost the device,” grumbled Taj. “And we lost another memory stick when your boy failed to deliver it to me.”

  “Liam will pay for that bloody fuck-up, I guarantee it,” Griff swore.

  Taj’s eyes clouded as he thought of his murdered brother. “I have sacrificed much. This plan had better work.”

  “It’s perfect,” said Griff. “With the CDC aircraft nearly out of fuel, it’s not likely to burn when you shoot it down. The aircraft will simply break apart— and it will be low enough to disperse the disease cultures over the city’s population. Many of the cultures will be destroyed, but enough will survive to infect millions. New York City will become a ghost town within two or three weeks.”

  The Afghani’s skeletal face split into a cruel grin. “Then I shall have my revenge, for my hand will be the Hammer of God that will smite millions.”

  The phone rang, it was Frank Hensley. Griff put the FBI agent on speakerphone.

  “There’s trouble at Wexler Storage,” Hensley began. “Add that to the raid at the factory in Los Angeles, and it’s obvious CTU is getting too close.”