24 Declassified: 04 - Cat's Claw

by John Whitman

  “Can I at least come in?” she asked. “I don’t need to see the President, but I’ve been around one or two of these ecoterrorists, and I might recognize someone.”

  Carter hesitated. She watched him oscillate between his desire to keep her out, thus eliminating a variable, and letting her in to thoroughly explore any hint of danger to his protectee. Finally, he nodded.

  7:27 P.M. PST Mountaingate Drive, Los Angeles

  The street was as quiet as any street in any affluent neighborhood. Jack parked his car well away from the white house at the end of the lane and he and Sharpton got out. Jack saw no option but the straightforward approach. If the Secret Service caught them sneaking in, it would cause more trouble than it was worth. So he strode up the circular driveway with Sharpton in tow, expecting at any moment to be

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  stopped by an agent stepping around a corner. But none came.

  Jack’s internal alarms would have gone off even without the security failure. There was a gardener’s truck in the driveway. The trucks themselves were common enough in affluent neighborhoods, but it was rare to see a gardener at work after sunset. Jack drew his SIG-sauer, recovered from the riots, and held it low at his side. Sharpton took his cue and did the same.

  7:29 P.M. PST Vanderbilt Complex

  Mercy was impressed by his demeanor. Carter was calm and professional, neither overreacting to her dire prediction nor ignoring her vague warnings. Of course, she wanted to shout at the top of her lungs that the President should be evacuated immediately, but she could not blame the Agent in Charge for his discretion. She’d given him almost nothing to go on.

  She had to find something, she knew. She was desperate for some means of convincing the Secret Service that she was right. Mercy found herself doing something she never thought she would. She thought, What would Jack do? What would Bauer do when confronted with a plot he knew to be real but without the evidence to prove it?

  He’d find another way to move the President to safety, she thought. And he’d do it without regard for himself or his reputation. And in that moment Mercy formed her plan. When she was close enough, she was going to draw her own weapon and fire. The Secret Service would take her down, she knew, but they would also evacuate the President, remove him immediately from the premises to some secure, controllable haven. He’d be safe. Copeland’s plot would be foiled.

  She steeled her resolve as they marched up the wide, shallow travertine steps and through the great double doors. The foyer of the Vanderbilt was more than two stories tall, with several hallways leading in different directions, with signs promising displays from ancient Greece, the Renaissance, and the Impressionist era. One especially magnificent hallway directly across from the doors led straight to the Main Gallery, a central room housing the finest of the complex’s works of art. Two agents were stationed there, as well. Carter waved to them and they let Mercy pass. Art hung on the hallway walls, but Mercy noticed none of it in her eagerness to reach the gallery. The hallway ended at a T-intersection, with short hallways to either side and an archway in front, leading to another magnificent room. Four agents guarded this door, and two of them were Chinese. Beyond, she saw a table set in exquisite fashion, with two empty chairs, almost as though the dining set were an exhibit itself, the vacant chairs offering some statement about the emptiness of modern life.

  “This is as far as I can take you,” Carter said. “If there’s anything more you can tell me, tell it now.”

  Mercy glanced around, but what she was looking for would not be found in art. She needed evidence, and she had none. At the far end of the gallery she saw two men strolling casually from masterpiece to masterpiece. She became hyper-conscious of her pistol’s bulk against her left ribs. She would have to do it. She’d have to.

  Three figures in white coats suddenly burst out of the hallway to her left, carrying silver trays topped with silver covers. Yet another Secret Service agent was with them. That agent gave a thumbs-up sign to the agents at the door. Even so, the door wardens stopped each waiter briefly, lifted the covers, and examined their contents, then waved them past.

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  “Detective?” Carter asked. He rested a hand gently on her forearm.

  Mercy barely heard him. Something about the waiters bothered her. She studied their backs, trying to put her finger on the problem. The waiters strode almost lock-step across the floor and laid their trays on the table. With long, graceful motions, they placed precious porcelain dishes full of food onto the table.

  Not all the waiters, Mercy thought. Just that one. Her eyes narrowed as she focused on a waiter with dark hair. She’d seen his back before. She’d seen it. And as he turned, his eyes fell on Mercy. In a split second his look of confidence turned to one of sheer terror, a look Mercy had seen on his face before—when she’d crashed into the vials of virus.

  “Him!” Mercy yelled. “That’s him!”

  7:35 P.M. PST Vanderbilt Complex

  Stan felt like someone had kicked him in the liver. Seeing the LAPD detective standing there knocked the wind out of his lungs. She shouldn’t be here. She couldn’t be here. How could she have figured it out?

  Her shout broke the spell, and Stan knew what he had to do. He bolted. But he didn’t run for the exit. He ran straight to the nearest masterpiece, the portrait of Louis XIV that was taller than he was. With all his might, Stan grabbed the frame and yanked the picture off the wall. He knew the picture frame was bolted to the wall. He knew that, even bracing his feet against the wall, he would most likely fail to pull it entirely free. He also knew that it didn’t matter. He didn’t care about the picture, nor did he need to pull it entirely free. He just needed to trigger the security measures.

  7:36 P.M. PST Mountaingate Drive, Los Angeles

  Jack moved through the foyer of the Mountaingate house. He and Sharpton had spared a few moments to clear the large front yard, and Jack had made short work kicking in the door. The house was dark except for a pale light from the kitchen shed by fluorescents built under the cabinets. Jack motioned for Sharpton to go upstairs. He cleared the kitchen and the garage quietly, not really expecting anyone to be there. If the Vanderbilt Complex was the target, then the backyard would be the best position. But Jack didn’t want anyone behind him when he reached the back of the house. He moved toward the living room.

  7:37 P.M. PST Vanderbilt Complex

  Alarms shrieked the moment the waiter grabbed the painting. The sirens were so loud that even the best-trained agents flinched for a moment. The Secret Service agents in the room were already moving, two of them going after the waiter and two of them covering President Barnes, dragging him toward the exit. Agent in Charge Carter moved forward, his weapon already in his hand, when he realized something unexpected was happening. A sheet of thick Plexiglas was dropping down from the top of the arched entrance to the Main Gallery.

  “What the hell is this!” he shouted. The Plexiglas barrier was halfway down. He dropped underneath it and rolled into the gallery, scanning the room past his gun sights, seeing several Chinese agents eyeing him over the barrels of their own weapons.

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  It all happened fast after that. The two Secret Service agents reached the waiter and laid hands on him. He struggled for a moment, raising his hand. For a heart-stopping moment Carter thought he was holding a detonator. That was impossible; their security sweeps would never have missed anything explosive.

  He was right. The waiter held only a palm-sized glass vial. He hurled it to the ground at the feet of the two world leaders. Security agents instinctively threw their bodies over the bodies of Barnes and Xu, but it didn’t matter. The glass vial shattered, and for a fraction of a second everyone flinched. But nothing dramatic happened. Glass shards sprayed, and a tiny puff of white gas drifted up in the air and dissipated quickly. The Plexiglas shields closed down on the floor with a soft but definitive click. There was a split second of pure silence.

  T
he next second was complete pandemonium. The two agents put the waiter facedown on the ground. The other two agents, handling Barnes, reached the Plexiglas barricade on the far side of the room and kicked at it angrily. Agent Carter leveled his pistol at the shield, then, thinking of the ricochet, lowered the muzzle. The Chinese agents were screaming in Mandarin.

  Outside the gallery, Mercy, along with a crowd of other agents and staff, looked on in sheer amazement. The room must have been sealed airtight because they could hear nothing that Carter or the others were saying, but they could see them moving frantically. A moment later Carter spoke into his radio, and an agent near Mercy responded.

  “Yes, sir,” the agent said. “We’ll get the glass lifted immediately.”

  “No!” Mercy yelled. The agent scowled at her. “Let me talk to him.”

  The agent consulted with Carter, then pulled the bud from his ear. Mercy leaned in close to him, located the speaker, and grabbed the agent’s hand like it was a microphone. “Carter, it’s Detective Bennet. If I’m right, that entire room is now contaminated with the virus. You can’t open the doors.”

  “Bullshit,” Carter said. He had approached the Plexiglas near her and stood there, his face red with anger. “This is the President of the United States in here and I’ll blow the side of the goddamned building away to get him out, virus or no virus!”

  “Then you risk spreading the thing all over the city,” Mercy said.

  President Barnes appeared at Carter’s side. It was a surreal moment for Mercy—an LAPD cop suddenly finding herself talking to the leader of the free world through a sheet of Plexiglas. He looked exactly as he did on television, except that his face was turning pink and a vein had started to pulse in his forehead.

  “What the hell is this?” he demanded. “Who are you?”

  Carter listed her credentials succinctly.

  “There’s a virus, sir,” Mercy said.

  Barnes blanched. “Are you sure—?” he started to ask, but discarded the question. Of course she was sure. She wouldn’t be there if she weren’t sure. “How bad?”

  “Fatal,” she replied. “But not for a few hours at least. And I think there’s an antidote. But if we open these doors it will spread—”

  Barnes was nothing if not decisive. He turned to Carter. “Get rid of anyone nonessential. Seal off the whole complex. Get National Health Services on the line, tell them to prepare some kind of contained transportation for all of us to a safer location. Keep these doors sealed until we know the entire building is evacuated.”

  “But, sir—” Carter protested.

  One of the other Secret Service agents shouted something

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  to Carter, who turned to see the man holding up a small device. As Carter’s had earlier, Mercy’s heart stopped for a moment as she thought bomb, but a second later it was revealed to be a portable DVD player.

  “The guy who did this is a political activist, not an outright murderer,” Mercy said to Carter. “I’m guessing there’s a message there for you.”

  Carter activated the DVD player, and an image came on the screen. Mercy could just see it between Carter and President Barnes, and Carter’s mike carried the message to her ears.

  The image was little more than a silhouette, but Mercy recognized it as Copeland. “Hello,” he said in a gentrified voice. “You can call me Seldom Seen Smith and, if you’re watching this, Mr. President, you’ve just been infected with a deadly virus. You have approximately twelve hours to live.”

  Carter glanced at Mercy with a damn-you-were-right look on his face.

  The DVD continued. “Our purpose here is simple. To save the rain forests of the Amazon. Your first question, of course, will be to wonder what the connection is between our cause and your infection. Let me assure you that the connection is very direct. The virus that is now replicating in your system is called Cat’s Claw. It exists naturally in the Amazon. Of course, I have to confess, I’ve done a little tinkering with the virus. In its natural state, it kills human beings in about twenty-four hours. The strain that I have developed for you kills in half that time. I discovered it by lucky accident, but rest assured that loggers and developers will stumble upon it and carry it back to civilization soon enough. More importantly, there is an antidote...and the antidote also grows naturally in the Amazon. To date, I am the only person who knows from what plant the vaccine can be synthesized, and how to do it.

  “My proposition to you is very simple. Go on television right now and announce that the rain forests must be secured immediately, and that all development and logging must halt. I will give you the antidote, and you will live.

  “If you don’t, you’ll never hear from me again, and you will die. I would like you to note that I have gone to a great deal of trouble to keep the virus contained. Your location is isolated. The security system acts as a sort of quarantine zone. I have no wish to kill people unnecessarily. But you are destroying the planet, and I have to stop you. So if it comes down to it, I will spread the virus into the population, forcing them to preserve the Amazon until they can discover the vaccine for themselves. I expect my associate to be released unharmed. He knows how to contact me.”

  The screen went blank.

  7:41 P.M. PST Mountaingate Drive, Los Angeles

  The moment the alarms sounded from the complex below, Jack shifted from his slow and steady pace to a sprint. He was through the living room in a flash. He opened the sliding glass doors to the backyard as quickly and quietly as he could, and then he was out onto the patio of the backyard.

  If there were lights in the backyard, they’d been killed. A line of tall shrubs along the perimeter shielded the yard from the city lights below, so the yard was almost completely in shadow. Jack crouched down, waiting for his eyes to adjust, scanning the deep pools of darkness along the edge of the yard. Finally he saw what he was looking for—a hunched

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  figure almost invisible against the tree line. Jack didn’t bother with warnings. He leveled the SigSauer and exhaled as he squeezed off three rounds. Noise and fire shattered the silence and darkness, mixed with a startled cry of surprise and pain. Jack fired again. This muzzle flash left an afterimage seared on to his eyes, an image of Ayman al-Libbi on one knee, his face contorted in pain, an RPG pointing straight at Jack.

  Jack dived to the side as he heard the familiar hiss and whistle of the launching rocket. The rocket-propelled grenade smoked across the short distance and exploded into the house behind Jack. The CTU agent felt himself lifted off the ground by tongues of fire and glass fragments glittering like a starburst as the sharp, short thunder of the ordinance enveloped him. He landed in the grass, barely keeping his hands on the SigSauer. Jack forced himself up to his knees, shaking his head and ignoring the roaring echo in his ears. Something in the house was on fire, casting uneven light out onto the yard. It was enough to see by. Jack raised his weapon one-handed and found Ayman al-Libbi on the far side of his sights. Before he could squeeze the trigger, someone body-slammed him from the side and Jack went over, landing heavily in the grass. This time he lost the SigSauer completely. The person on top of him was unskilled, but an animal, throwing violent knees into his body and tearing at his face. Jack caught the assailant’s arm, hooked his leg around the man’s leg, and bucked his hips, rolling over and ending on top. Without looking he threw a head butt downward and felt the hard bone of his forehead smash through lips and teeth. He raised his head back and slammed his elbow down onto the same spot. Only then did he look and see Muhammad Abbas’s face, now all blood and pulp.

  Jack’s eyes were intent on Abbas but his senses were alert, aware of his surroundings. The movement was three-quarters behind him but he saw it nearly in time, rolling away as the shovel swung at his head. The shovel head glanced off his skull, making his head ring again. There were two accomplices with al-Libbi. Where the hell was Sharpton?

  Jack rolled in the semi-darkness, groping for his weapon,
but then he heard someone else tap and rack the SigSauer and he knew his attackers had found it first.

  “Stop,” said a male voice. Abbas. Jack looked up. Abbas was on his feet, half his face illuminated by a half-dozen small fires burning in the damaged house. Beside him, holding the shovel, was a short girl with curly blond hair. She was holding Jack’s pistol in her hands. She didn’t hold it well, but her hands were steady and her eyes were clear and determined. She had cleared and racked the weapon. She could certainly pull the trigger.

  Al-Libbi shouted in Arabic from across the yard. He sounded as if he was in pain. Abbas stepped behind the girl, out of her line of fire. “I’m going to check on him. Kill this one.” He ran into the shadows.

  The girl stepped forward. One shot rang out and Jack flinched, but at the same time he knew that the girl had not fired. A hole erupted in the girl’s shoulder and she screamed, dropping the weapon. Sharpton, it had to be. Jack lunged forward, grabbing his SigSauer. He grabbed her by the hair and shoved her down onto the ground, making her eat grass as he turned to reacquire the terrorists. He saw them, two shadows moving in and out of the darkness. Jack fired, tracking them, but the shadows kept moving until they reached the corner of the house.

  The girl. Sharpton. Al-Libbi. Jack had three elements to

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  prioritize. Jumping to his feet, he stepped toward the girl’s feet and stomped hard on her ankle, hearing it crack. She screamed, and he knew she wouldn’t be going anywhere fast. Jack ran across the yard, parallel to the house, and saw Sharpton on the ground, his body lying across the threshold. His clothing was shredded on his body and his skin had been half flayed from his bones. His arms were stretched out, the gun lying under his right hand. He ran past Sharpton and reached the corner of the house. Firelight illuminated the corner, and Jack knew he’d be visible. He leaned around the corner quickly, then pulled his head back as someone discharged rounds from a pistol. Two of them tore chunks of wood from the frame of the house. Jack kept his body on the safe side and stuck his gun around the corner, firing several rounds. Then he dropped low and sprinted down the side of the house. He zigzagged forward, but no more shots came. Jack reached the front end of the house where an open gate led to the front yard. Jack hoped for more gunfire; if al-Libbi and Abbas stood and fought, it gave him a better chance of getting them. But the front of the house was quiet. Jack ran to the sidewalk. Lights were on in the houses down the block, and a few people stumbled out with cell phones in their hands and shocked looks on their faces. Jack saw the lights of a car hurrying away, but it was too dark to catch the make or license plate.