24 Declassified: 04 - Cat's Claw

by John Whitman

  The entire Los Angeles headquarters of the Counter Terrorist Unit had been subjected to several briefings on the G8 summit, of course. The briefings thus far hadn’t amounted to much. In the aftermath of 9/11, the newspapers and local law enforcement agencies used phrases like “highvalue target” in connection with an event like the G8, but the truth was, attacking the summit wouldn’t be al-Qaeda’s style. Terrorists connected to Islamic fundamentalism had thus far chosen two specific types of targets: military assets located in Arab countries and purely civilian targets that caused maximum fear and confusion. Al-Qaeda and its loose collection of affiliates would assume that the G8 summit was shielded by a nearly impenetrable security screen and, Jack knew, that assumption would be correct. And, more importantly, both sides knew that attacks, even successful ones, against political targets would generate more outrage than terror. If and when al-Qaeda ever struck inside the borders of the United States again, Jack was sure they would attack a train or a shopping mall, a soft target that promised gruesome results.

  Even so, there were plenty of other terrorist organizations with far more specific political agendas, and for them, the G8 represented the most logical target. Jack had attended no fewer than five high-level security briefings in the past two weeks; at each of them, the various layers of security had been reviewed with agonizing thoroughness. Aside from the uniformed security in and around the Federal Building, response teams had been positioned all around the perimeter of the protest group, and plainclothes agents mixed freely with the protestors. In addition to those plainclothes officers, undercover agents had infiltrated several of the more belligerent activist groups. With all that security on hand, the presence of one additional CTU agent meant very little.

  Which was exactly the point made to Jack by the chief of his department, Christopher Henderson.

  “There’s no need for you to be there,” Henderson had said a day earlier, rejecting his request.

  “There’s no harm in it,” Jack protested. “I’m telling you I saw him.”

  Henderson had tried unsuccessfully to hide his skepticism. He knew from past experience that Jack Bauer didn’t make idle suggestions. Bauer had bucked the chain of command, ignored the opinions of his colleagues, and risked making a fool of himself and everyone around him. If Jack Bauer stomped into his office claiming to have uncovered a plot to assassinate the entire line of succession in the U.S. government, Henderson would probably believe him. But this...

  “So you were just walking along the docks in Long Beach,” Chris had said, “and you just happened to bump into Ayman al-Libbi.”

  “That’s right,” Jack avowed, stating his claim for the tenth time that day.

  “Ayman al-Libbi, Jack! He’s the jack of diamonds in our current deck of cards, one of the ten most wanted terrorists in the world.”

  Jack shook his head. “He’s a bench player lately. The Libyans haven’t used him since Kaddafi got religion, the Palestinians can’t afford him anymore. He’s a hired gun. He’s ripe to be used by someone taking a potshot at the G8. He’d do it, too, just to put himself back in the spotlight.”

  Chris had put his feet up and made a determined effort to rein in the conversation. Jack worked at a furious pace, and it was easy to get dragged along in his wake. After a long pause, Henderson had said, “So let’s say you’re right and alLibbi’s in the country, even in the city. What are you going to do, walk around the Federal Building until you spot him?”

  Moving through the crowd of protestors, Jack grinned in spite of himself. Goddamned Henderson. For a guy who’d been riding a desk for several years now, he was still quick on his feet. Here he was, meandering through throngs of thousands, every one of them shouting down the United States or its allies, protesting globalization, environmental degradation, human rights abuse, or whatever pet cause they’d adopted. The chances of spotting one man who was probably too smart to present himself in person anyway were less than zero.

  Of course, Jack wasn’t using only his own eyes and feet.

  “Unit two?” he muttered into his sleeve, pretending to scratch his nose as he spoke into the microphone clipped under his cuff.

  “Two here, over,” said a sleepy voice into his ear piece. That was fellow field agent Tony Almeida.

  “Did I wake you?” Jack asked.

  “No, I’m still sleeping.”

  “Hilarious. Is the FRS up and running?”

  7:10 A.M. PST Federal Building Command Center, West Los Angeles

  Tony Almeida was straddling a molded plastic chair he’d spun backward so that the backrest touched his chest. He folded his arms across the top edge of the rest and settled his chin down on his forearms. He spoke in soft, narcotic tones that, along with his puppy dog eyes, convinced others that he was slow. This was an often serious, and sometimes fatal, mistake.

  Tony had lodged himself in the basement security room of the Federal Building, a bunkerlike chamber that had been designated as the central command post for the various agencies involved in security during the G8 demonstrations.

  Because the building was Federal property, the FBI had overall jurisdiction, but with the demonstration population expected to grow beyond ten thousand, they had grudgingly asked for help from the Los Angeles Police Department, Beverly Hills PD, and the L.A. Sheriff Department. Since the FBI expected to do all the brain work and just needed bodies, they hadn’t invited CTU. For this reason, Tony hadn’t exactly received a warm welcome when he’d walked into the command center asking to watch the security monitors. The two FBI agents working the visual equipment— pallid techies who’d spent their entire investigative careers, Tony was sure, sitting in little rooms just like this one— reluctantly shifted a little to make room. But no one offered to get him a more comfortable chair.

  He was staring at a bank of twenty video monitors that showed images relayed from cameras all on and around the Federal Building and the plaza. From that small room, the surveillance team could monitor every part of the growing mob of demonstrators from several angles.

  But Tony wasn’t interested in those monitors. He was staring at five smaller screens stacked to the right of the main console. Those screens displayed snapshots of individual protestors, taken at random, that were fed into a highly sophisticated facial recognition system, or FRS, that compared those images to the government’s growing database of known or suspected terrorists.

  “Yeah, it’s running,” Tony replied finally, talking into a headset. “They’re just pulling random images for now.”

  Jack Bauer’s voice crackled over the radio link, its usual grit turned to even more of a growl as he spoke softly. “Get them to focus on short, dark hair—”

  Tony laughed. “Jack, we had about five thousand people come up from Central America the other day to protest deforestation in the Amazon. Two-thirds of the crowd has short, dark hair. It’s WASP-y types like you that stand out like a sore thumb.”

  “If you wanted an easy job, you should have become a postman.”

  “I’d rather read people’s mail than deliver it.”

  7:13 A.M. PST Federal Plaza, West Los Angeles

  Jack allowed himself a half smile as he signed off. He and Tony Almeida weren’t the best of friends and probably never would be, but some recent cases had brought them closer together, and each had earned the other’s respect. Their working relationship, cold in past months, had thawed enough to allow for the occasional friendly insult. Almeida stayed inside the lines too often for Jack’s taste, but he got the job done, so Jack couldn’t complain.

  Jack’s mobile phone rang. He leaned up against a lamppost on Wilshire Boulevard so that he was out of the flow of foot traffic. “Bauer.”

  “Jack, it’s Mercy.”

  Jack felt a stitch in his chest, that tightness he felt back in boot camp when the drill sergeant stormed in for barracks inspection, or even farther back, when a police car cruised by on the road. It was an irrational, automatic feeling of guilt despite having done nothin
g wrong.

  “Mercy,” he said hesitantly, “what’s ...?”

  “Relax, Jack, this is business.”

  “Oh.” The stitch loosened.

  “I’m working a case I want to talk to you about. I think it might involve you guys.”

  “Okay,” he said, feeling his tongue loosening as she spoke. “You want to meet tomorrow?”

  “No, I want to meet now. I can come to you. Where are you?”

  “The Federal Building.”

  “Right, the G8. Where can I meet you?”

  Jack looked around. He was in the middle of an ocean of bobbing heads and milling bodies that stretched for a block in either direction. The sun had risen high enough above the surrounding buildings to shine light over Federal Plaza and warm the demonstrators. Like seals responding to the sun, the demonstrators had begun to agitate more with each passing moment. “I’m not exactly in a great spot for a case review.”

  “There’s a bus shelter on the corner of Wilshire and Federal, right next to the building,” Mercy said.

  “Right,” Jack said, spotting the shelter. “I think it’s currently the protest headquarters for the Latin American Coffee Growers.”

  “See you there at eight a.m.”

  “The crowd is huge. You’ll never get here in twenty minutes.

  “Jack, this is L.A. You can get anywhere in twenty minutes.”

  7:35 A.M. PST West Los Angeles, California

  He did not think of himself as a man of action. He was a man whose circumstances had imposed the need for action upon him. He had committed acts of violence, and planned to commit more such acts very soon, but he did not adore violence as did some others with whom he had worked. Unfortunately he could not denounce violence, either. Violence was a tool, and at times a very useful tool indeed, and he had long ago sworn to use any and all tools necessary to satisfy his ambitions.

  He was lying across the bed of his room, studying the lines in the ceiling created by uneven plastering. The lines reminded him of aerial maps of the Fertile Crescent. The beige plaster served as desert, the rough patches were arid mountain ranges, and the long cracks wound their way across the landscape like overtaxed rivers.

  His room was sparse. He didn’t care—he spent very little time there. He had roomed in the best hotels in the world, and also spent nights in tents under desert skies or in jungles, and they were the same to him; strategic locations from which to plan his assaults on the powers aligned against him.

  When he had begun his crusade, he had fought in the name of “his” people. They were his adopted people, of course, and he acknowledged that. But it made them no less his own, and he had poured all his energies into protecting them from occupiers and colonialists. The fight, back then, had been personal. As the years passed, the fight had grown, until now he saw himself as a crusader fighting for worldwide justice.

  He smiled in spite of himself. He was self-aware enough to know that the image of the crusader existed only to satisfy his ego. Still, that did not make it untrue.

  His mobile phone vibrated. He recognized the number. It belonged to someone sympathetic to his cause, someone well placed and therefore useful. He picked it up. “Yes,” he said calmly.

  “The Feds are getting involved.”

  He felt nervousness tighten his stomach, but he forced himself to relax. “Well, they intended to be here all along. After all, you are a ‘Fed,’ too.”

  “Part of a standard security team. These guys are looking for someone specific.” The man on the phone recited a description.

  “That could be anyone,” the man in the hotel said.

  “Which means it could be you. You make the call, I’m just passing on the information.”

  “These ’guys’ to whom you referred. You know them?”

  “Only by reputation. The point man is Jack Bauer. He’s the one looking for you.”

  “And how close do you suppose he is to finding me?”

  “Not very. But they have some kind of lead.”

  “I see,” said the man in the hotel room. “Well, let’s learn a little more about Mr. Bauer. We may have to pay him a visit.”

  7:45 A.M. PST Federal Plaza, West Los Angeles

  Jack had cruised by the Teen Green assembly and waved to

  Kim when his ear bud chirped.

  “Jack, Tony. You’re not going to believe this.”

  “Tell me anyway.”

  “I think we got something.”

  “Al-Libbi?”

  “No, but a lead. How fast can you get to the southwest corner of the building?”

  “They say you can get anywhere in L.A. in twenty minutes.”

  “Well, make it faster. There’s something you’ll want to see.”

  Jack turned on his heel. He had almost reached the northeast corner of Federal Plaza, putting him as far as possible from his destination. The fastest way to reach the far side would be to cut diagonally through the plaza itself. But looking over the heads of the still-growing mobs of protestors, he saw a line of uniformed riot police assembled along the perimeter of the building itself. So far the protestors had stuck to the script and stayed fifty yards away from the police line.

  Jack decided that rushing toward that line of grim officers would cause a riot long before he had a chance to flash his badge.

  He headed west on the Wilshire sidewalk, blading his way through the crowd. This was no easy task, as the number of protestors was swelling by the minute. The G8 summit was scheduled for opening statements and photo ops at eight-thirty, and the protestors were mustering for action. Placards were sprouting like angry weeds all over the place, and some of the crowds, relatively normal in their dress before, had now changed into costumes. Jack elbowed past a Grim Reaper wearing a sign that said globalization kills.

  He neared the northwest corner and cut across the grass as close to the forbidden concrete plaza as he dared, then headed south. His phone rang again, but this time the screen read Home.

  “Hey,” he said, not slowing his pace.

  “Hi, how’s everything there?” his wife, Teri, asked.

  “Crowded,” Jack grunted. “You wouldn’t believe the line to get coffee.”

  “Are you sure she’s going to be okay?” Teri said worriedly. She had asked that question, in that same tone of voice, ten times since last night.

  “She’ll be fine.” Jack wedged his elbow between two pale-faced grad students with uncallused hands whose matching T-shirts bore pictures of Che Guevera. “The student advisor is keeping them away from the front of the pack. If things get out of hand, they’ll be far enough away.”

  “Plus she’s got you with her.”

  Jack suspected that a mother’s definition of “with” didn’t include being separated by ten thousand political activists and platoons of anxious policemen. “I promise she’ll be fine,” was all he could say.

  He heard soft static on the telephone. “Jack, are you okay?”

  “Me? Of course.”

  “You’ve just got your work voice on.”

  “It’s just the crowd,” he replied. “It puts me on edge a little.”

  Teri’s voice lightened. “Relax a little. You’re not saving the world today, just taking care of your daughter.”

  “Saving the world is easier,” he said. “I’ll talk to you later.”

  7:55 A.M. PST Southwest Corner of the Federal Building, West Los Angeles

  Jack hadn’t been off the phone for more than sixty seconds when his ear bud chirped again. “Tony, I’m here,” he said. “What am I looking for?”

  “I see you,” Almeida said from inside the command center. “Turn to your four o’clock and move to the street. Look south on Veteran Avenue. Hurry!”

  Jack made a quarter turn to his right and slid through the crowd to the curb. Veteran Avenue, one of the streets bordering the Federal Building, had been closed off for security reasons and a barricade had been set up half a block down. A line of protestors had formed at the barrica
de, where police were doing cursory searches to ensure that no weapons got through, and most people, once they passed the police line, hurried toward the building. Jack looked just in time to see one man moving in the opposite direction. “Blue T-shirt, long sleeves, dark hair,” Jack described.

  “You’ve got him.”

  Jack sped up to a jog. “Who am I chasing?”

  “The FRS thinks it looks an awful lot like Muhammad Abbas.”

  Jack broke into a run. “Can you get sound?”

  “We’re angling the shotgun mikes.”

  Muhammad Abbas, Palestinian refugee turned Lebanese parliament lap dog for the PLO, turned arms-dealing middleman. Abbas had been a functionary working in the shadows of real power brokers in the Middle East for twenty years. He had, in fact, served as the factotum for one particular terrorist: Ayman al-Libbi.

  “I’m at the police barricade,” Jack said, his breath coming shorter. He couldn’t see beyond the barricade and the crowd waiting for approval to move past it. He looked around urgently, spotting a cement trash can. He jumped on top of it and looked over the crowd, spotting the blue T-shirt near a red Toyota Camry with the door open. There was another man standing there, but Jack couldn’t get a clear view of them.

  “I’ll never get to them in time,” Jack said. “How about those mikes?”

  “We’ve got them, but—”

  “But what?” Jack snapped. “Feed it through so I can hear it.”

  “Jack, they’re not on Federal property anymore. We don’t have a warrant to eavesdrop—”

  “Screw it,” Jack said. “If that’s Muhammad Abbas, we have all the probable cause we need. Patch it through.”

  Over the radio, Tony made a short, disgruntled sound, but a minute later there was a burst of static, then Jack was hearing the voices of the two men talking half a block down the street.