24 Declassified: 01 - Operation Hell Gate

by Marc A. Cerasini

  Finally the white van rolled to a halt, not fifteen yards from the Ford Explorer.

  “Out! Move!” Jack shouted. He popped his own door and rolled into brown desert grass. Engulfed by a cloud of dust, he could barely see the black Explorer. From the shouts and sounds in his headset, Jack knew Blackburn and the rest of the tactical team had burst out of the side and rear doors of the crippled van and laid down suppressing fire.

  Finally an opening appeared in the brown haze. Jack spied one of the suspects racing toward the concrete power shed. The other two had dived into the black Explorer with the third man. One was obviously wounded, the other clutched the unfamiliar

  shoulder-mounted weapon.

  “Don’t let them leave the area!” Jack cried.

  Then he was on his feet. P228 in hand, he pursued the lone runner toward the power shed. A few yards away from the concrete block structure, a wave of hot gases washed over him, followed in a microsecond by an earsplitting roar. Jack was blown off his feet as the Explorer detonated in an orange fireball. The three occupants were engulfed. Completely immolated.

  Clothing scorched, ears ringing, Jack stumbled to his feet and lunged forward. He slammed his back against the power shed’s metal door—still hot from the blast. Fearing an ambush, he glanced to either side of the square hut, weapon clutched in both hands. Finally Jack dropped to the hard ground and rolled to the rear of the shed.

  The man was right where Jack thought he’d be. “Freeze! Put your hands up.”

  He was maybe twenty-five. Thin torso but muscular arms. He wore black jeans and a leather vest, his oily hair long, a prominent gold front tooth. He was on his knees, one boot removed and clutched in his hand. He appeared ready to smash an object on the ground. He grunted something, but Jack’s ears were still vibrating and he couldn’t make out the words.

  “I said freeze.”

  The man stared at Jack, then raised the boot. Jack lowered his weapon, crossed the space between them with a leap. He slammed against the man, using his shoulder to bring him down. The boot flew off into the scrub grass. The man struggled to rise, but calmed considerably when Jack placed the muzzle of the P228 against his temple.

  “Move and I will kill you.”

  Vaguely, through the ocean’s roar in his ears, Jack heard pounding footsteps. Two of Agent Blackburn’s men appeared on either side of the power shed. Intimidating in full body armor and helmets, they trained their weapons at the suspect, who threw up his hands.

  “Take him,” Jack ordered.

  One agent grabbed the man by his vest and hauled him off the ground. The other twisted his arms behind him and snapped plastic cuffs over the wrists. Jack rolled onto his hands and knees and searched the ground. He found what he was looking for within thirty seconds—a black plastic device shaped like a handgun’s magazine, featureless except for a USB port and a tiny inscription on the side—Asian script, perhaps Japanese.

  Jack knew his hearing had returned when he heard the roar of a Boeing 727. Its wheels skidded onto the tarmac of runway seven, on its fuselage the familiar red and gold National Express banner.

  Jack stood and showed the prisoner the device. “What is this?”

  The captive smirked, and one of the agents cuffed him with an angry backhand. Jack quickly stepped between the two. “Enough,” he said simply. He slipped the mysterious object into his overalls and searched the prisoner’s pockets. He found a butterfly knife and a wallet, which contained over a thousand dollars in cash, credit cards issued in several names, and a New York State driver’s license with a Brooklyn address. Jack held the picture up next to the captive’s head for comparison. They matched.

  Jack tried to key his headset, only to discover he’d lost it in the explosion, or the fight. “Raise Tony Almeida on the horn; tell him to get me all the information he can on a Dante Arete out of New York—”

  “Can’t raise him, sir,” said one of the agents. “Almeida is off the net.”

  Leaving the two agents with the prisoner, Jack jogged around to the front of the power shed. Ahead he saw the hollow shell of the Explorer, burning too hot to approach. Black rubber flowed like water from the melted tires; the human occupants were unrecognizable. Farther ahead, the white maintenance van in which they’d arrived was still smoking, a bullet hole the size of a baseball had tattooed the grill.

  Two CTU tactical assault vehicles were just rolling up behind the smoldering white van. A five-man assault team bailed out of each vehicle before they came to a complete stop. Jack glanced at the digital display on his watch, surprised that less than one hundred seconds had elapsed since the first shot was fired.

  Jack exhaled with relief when he saw Tony standing next to the open bay of the disabled van. Agent Black-burn was next to him, his helmet off, leathery brown skin gleaming with perspiration. Only then did Jack see the figure sprawled halfway out of the van. One of the agents had been struck by a stray bullet. Jack recalled the meaty sound, saw that a river of blood had poured out of the van from the agent’s shattered helmet. He raced forward until he was close enough to stare into Gina Costigan’s shocked, dead eyes.

  “Son of a bitch—”

  Tony turned at the sound of Jack’s curse.

  “Call for a medivac,” Jack told him.

  “We did. It will be here in less than a minute. But it’s too late, Jack. She’s gone...”

  Bauer leaned against the wrecked van, its stilled engine hissing and popping as it cooled. He sucked in the desert air as the adrenaline that had pumped through his body finally drained away, leaving him weak, thinking of Gina’s husband, her daughter... then of Teri and Kim.

  “What have you got?” Tony was there, in front of his face.

  Jack looked up, eyes bleak. “A prisoner named Dante Arete, and a piece of plastic . . .”

  Ninety minutes later, the point team for CTU Los Angeles sat around the table in the briefing room. A brunette with a face of sharp angles and a large, expressive mouth, Nina Myers, Jack’s wisp-thin Chief of Staff, brought the group up to speed on the man Jack had apprehended at LAX.

  Nina was a machine—dependable, efficient, methodical. Single, in her thirties, she had come to CTU with a reputation as a gifted intelligence analyst and a respected authority on domestic and international counter terrorism policy. She was one of the few people Jack had ever met whose level of intensity and commitment appeared to match his own. Unlike Jack, however, who saw the importance of encouraging and protecting underlings, Nina managed staff by being blunt. Jack rationalized this as “directness” born of earnestness. Maybe he cut her some slack because she was so damned good at what she did, maybe because she physically resembled his wife, Teri. One thing about Nina was certain, however; her frosty blue gaze was as penetrating as his own.

  “Seven years ago, Dante Arete, under the street name Apache, was a small time crack cocaine dealer in the Red Hook Projects in Brooklyn,” Nina began.

  “At the age of eighteen he allegedly killed his first man—a rival drug dealer. Since then, Dante Arete has climbed the ladder in the New York City narcotics scene, and recently he went national. It is alleged that Arete is currently involved in drugs and weapons smuggling, primarily across the Mexican border. He is suspected to have played a role in eleven gang murders in the past five years, as well as the killing of an innocent bodega owner who agreed to testify against one of Arete’s lieutenants, a member of the gang Dante founded, the Columbia Street Posse . . .”

  “Your source for this information?” Jack asked.

  Nina brushed back her black bangs before she faced him. “Primarily the New York Police Department and the Metropolitan Anti-Gang Unit. The DEA has also furnished a profile of Arete’s alleged activities over the past five years.”

  “What does the FBI have to offer?”

  “Nothing. They have yet to respond to our request for information on any ongoing investigations.”

  “Standard operating procedure,” Tony observed. “The Federal Bureau of
Investigation doesn’t share their information, and that goes double for CTU.”

  Milo Pressman—a systems specialist in his mid-twenties with sensitive features, soft eyes, and an earring—tapped the table with a well-gnawed pencil. Jack found Milo to be competent, though frequently naïve.

  “Maybe we should raid their database,” he suggested.

  Almeida rolled his eyes. “We’re supposed to be on the same side.”

  Jamey Farrell, a petite young Hispanic woman, displayed a printout. Jamey was head programmer. A divorced mother of a young son and an LA native, she had been recruited by Walsh out of Microsoft’s Seattle office. Jack found her to be a loyal worker and reliable under pressure. “Using the Federal Aviation Administration airline database, I’ve found Dante Arete’s name listed on the passenger manifest of half-dozen flights to France—Marseilles—over the past two years alone.”

  Milo Pressman scratched his scraggly goatee and unshaven cheek. “A lot of heroin still comes out of Marseilles. Maybe he’s got a French connection.”

  “I’m thinking more about the illegal arms trade,” said Jack. “Arete is already involved in gunrunning— which may mean he also has ties to international terrorism and is looking to expand.”

  “The weapon his men used? Was it recovered from the explosion?” Milo asked.

  Jack shook his head. “Just bits and pieces. Nothing specific to any surface-to-air missile system we’re familiar with. All we have is the unidentified object Arete was trying to destroy.”

  “It’s a memory stick,” said Milo Pressman. “And you could be right. This memory stick might interface with a targeting system of some kind; there’s a port for the transference of data, and there’s a chip inside that seems to contain a massive amount of information.”

  “Like what?” Tony asked.

  Milo shrugged. “It’s blocked by a security code, but the Cyber Unit is working on it now. They’ll come up with answers soon.”

  “What about the Japanese characters inscribed on the outside?”

  “They’re Korean, Jack,” said Nina. “North Korean, specifically.”

  A moment of perplexed silence followed.

  “We need to put this investigation into high gear, ramp it up,” said Jack.

  Nina stepped forward. “We got lucky. The Marine Corps agreed to send an officer from their Special Weapons Unit to examine the device. Seems they’ve seen something like it once before . . .”

  Milo perked up. “And the embedded software?”

  “Division is dispatching a software security expert to extract the data it contains. She’s apparently an expert on the intricacies of Korean software.”

  “What about Dante Arete?”

  “He’s giving us the silent treatment,” Tony replied. “A real tough guy. Acts like we’re not even in the room.”

  Jack activated one of the monitors in the center of the conference table. Dante Arete sat on the only chair in the interrogation room, gazing straight ahead, his arms cuffed tightly behind his back. Jack studied the image onscreen. “I need a hook to get into this guy. We need to find out what he was doing, and who he’s working for.”

  A three-toned ring interrupted his thoughts. Jack answered the briefing room phone, listened for a moment, then slammed down the receiver.

  Nina met his eyes. “What’s wrong?”

  “There’s an FBI agent at the security gate with two federal marshals in tow. They’re here to claim custody of Dante Arete.”

  “They can’t do that!” Tony threw up his hands. “We haven’t even told the other agencies about this operation yet. How the hell did the FBI find out?”

  Jack glanced back at the monitor, then rose. “Tony, Nina. Intercept our visitors, stall for time. I’m going to talk to Arete right now.”

  Almeida folded his arms and shook his head. “Come on, Jack. Get real. How long do you think we can stall them?”

  Jack stared at Tony, his voice soft steel: “As long as you can.” He strode to the door, jerked it open. Ryan Chappelle blocked his path. The Regional Director of CTU locked eyes with Jack, who looked away.

  “Hello, Jack . . .”

  “Ryan, I’ve got to go—”

  “You’ve got to stay right here, Special Agent Bauer,” Chappelle said evenly. “We’re going to sit down together and wait for Special Agent Hensley of the FBI to be escorted in.” Chappelle looked over Jack’s shoulder. “The rest of you can go back to your stations. Now.”

  As they filed out, Nina gave Jack a sidelong glance, Tony Almeida couldn’t hide his disgust.

  “That’s okay,” said Milo Pressman, glancing at his watch. “I’m off duty as of an hour ago.”

  Jamey Farrell paused at the door, searched Jack’s face for some sign of what to do.

  “Get back to work, Jamey,” Chappelle commanded, impatient with what he saw as the Loyal Staff act. He’d seen it before where Jack’s people were concerned, and he didn’t like it. When the petite woman was gone, he closed the door behind her. Then Ryan Chappelle turned to find Jack Bauer in his face.

  “You can’t let the FBI take Arete away from us.” Jack’s voice was soft but tight. “At least not until we interrogate him.”

  “It’s out of my hands.”

  “Ryan, I lost an agent today. She was twenty-eight years old—”

  “A tragedy.” Ryan turned from Jack, brushed his fingertips along the conference table. “The good news for you is I won’t hold you accountable, even though I recommended that we hold off on the action you took until further voice tests could be made on the phone tip.”

  “There was no time, Ryan. You know that. And you know we paid a high price for Arete. We can just give him up without a fight.”

  Chappelle sat down, leaned back, and opened his arms. “We’re all on the same team, Jack. Think of it as a gesture of interagency cooperation.”

  Almost imperceptibly, Jack winced. “Cooperation’s been a one-way street with the Bureau since day one. You know that, Ryan.”

  “Maybe this gesture will change things.”

  But Jack knew letting go of Dante Arete would change nothing. The current Administration had intentionally erected an impenetrable wall between the various governmental law enforcement and intelligence agencies. They were not allowed to share intelligence, even if it involved the same suspects, the same crimes. The CIA had allowed CTU to be created as an experiment in getting around those dangerously constraining walls, but they only seemed to grow higher. These days, interagency cooperation was not only rare, it was illegal. While Jack bristled under the limitations of what he saw as an absurd policy, the pragmatic and ambitious Ryan Chappelle chose to adapt.

  Chappelle was the new model for a career bureaucrat. A product of Wharton’s MBA program, he’d come up through assistant positions in the Agency; no field work, no military or police training, which made him suspect in Bauer’s mind. Post–Cold War Washington had already taken the teeth out of its intelligence communities, making the language of give-and-take and compromise and political correctness the terms of survival in the current Federal system. Now it was breeding a special kind of administrator, more political animal than intelligence agent. Jack worried about the sort of man who floated to the surface in such an ocean. There were men like Walsh, thank God. And then there were men like Chappelle, who paused to factor career advancement—or decline—into every critical decision, regardless of whether the security of the nation was in question.

  “Excuse me, gentlemen.” The door had opened without a knock. Jason Ridley, Chappelle’s young, dapper assistant, escorted FBI Special Agent Frank Hensley into the conference room. With a polite nod, Ridley quickly departed. Chappelle rose to shake the man’s hand. Bauer was already standing.

  “Special Agent Hensley, your fame precedes you,” said Ryan Chappelle. “I received a call from Dennis Spain, Chief of Staff to Senator William Cheever of New York. He mentioned you were coming.”

  “Senator Cheever has been keeping close tabs on
the Arete case,” Hensley replied.

  “This is CTU Special Agent Jack Bauer. He commanded the assault team that apprehended your man.”

  Frank Hensley gazed at Bauer through close-set eyes that were so dark blue they were nearly black. Under thick brows and a shock of dark, slicked-back hair, Hensley’s sneer appeared to be a permanent fixture on his face. The shape of his jaw, his thin lips, and aquiline nose were all slightly twisted, as if to better accommodate the man’s perpetual scowl. As tall as Jack, Hensley was thinner, more compact under a perfectly tailored charcoal-gray suit and spotless white Egyptian cotton shirt, a tie of cornflower blue.

  “Special Agent Hensley.” Jack offered his hand.

  Hensley clenched his hands into tight fists and rested them on his hips. “You’re the guy who blew two years of sweat, blood, and hard work.”

  Jack lowered his arm. “I don’t understand.”

  “I mean I put two years of work—nine months of it undercover—to gather enough evidence to indict Dante Arete. The case was almost made. We were ready to grab him in his Red Hook hangout, along with his associates, his cache of weapons, drugs . . .” Bristling now, Hensley slapped his fist into the palm of his hand. “We had that SOB Arete under constant surveillance. We had wiretaps, electronic surveillance. My partner followed him around for six weeks with a goddamned parabolic amplifier!”

  Jack didn’t blink. “If that’s the case, then how did Arete end up in Los Angeles, pointing an anti-aircraft missile at a cargo plane?”

  Instead of answering, Hensley looked away, stared at the closed door for a good twenty seconds. “Two days ago Arete slipped through our net,” he said at last. “He murdered my partner and got away. Used a stolen credit card and fake ID to fly to California. The next thing we heard was that you had him . . .”