Milo touched the brass doorknob, turned it. The bathroom door swung open. There was no window in the bathroom, but the tiny space was lit by fluorescent lights on either side of the cracked mirror. There was no bathtub, but the shower curtains were drawn.
He was about to leave the bathroom when Milo noticed brown spots on the white tiled floor...Lots of them. The big splotches weren’t brown, really. More like a dark red. The trail led to the shower. With trepidation, Milo slowly drew the plastic curtains aside.
Fay Hubley lay in the corner of the shower. Milo knew she was dead. There was no way she could be alive. Not after what had been done to her.
Gagging, Milo whirled, stumbled out of the bathroom and into the powerful grip of a brawny giant in a T-shirt and black leather vest. The man had long sandy-blond hair in a ponytail, a raggedy beard and shoulders as wide as a sports utility vehicle. Milo struggled and the man tightened his grip. Then Milo cursed—only to be silenced when the barrel of a sawed-off shotgun was shoved against the side of his head. When the intruder spoke, his breath stank of stale beer.
“Don’t make a sound, kid, or I’ll blow your fuckin’ head off.”
1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24
THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 P.M. AND 1 P.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME
12:00:01 P.M.PDT Abigail Heyer’s estate Beverly Hills
The famously wealthy enclave of Beverly Hills was bounded by Robertson Boulevard on the east, Olympic Boulevard to the south, and the communities of Westwood and Century City on the west. Palm-lined streets and palatial mansions dominated the landscape, but all was not glitz and glamour inside this exclusive neighborhood.
An army of housekeepers and service personnel were also a part of this community—albeit a practically invisible part who cooked, made beds, washed clothes, cleaned pools, drove limousines, cut lawns, and nursed the children of the pampered show business elite.
At the moment, Lon Nobunaga was grateful for the service industry’s relative obscurity in this realm of the high and mighty. That, and a lack of vigilance by a member of Abigail Heyer’s security personnel, had allowed the tabloid photographer to climb a power pole that overlooked the front yard and driveway of the actress’s sprawling, Moorish-style mansion. Abandoning his car several blocks away, Lon, clad in his fake Pacific Power and Light overalls and ID tag, lugged a metal case containing his photographic gear to the front gate of Ms. Heyer’s estate.
“I’m here to check the power grid,” he’d told the guard. Without checking Lon’s ID—he had a fake in case—and without searching the toolbox in his hand, the guard simply nodded and swung the steel gate open. It was so easy Lon nearly chuckled. He knew that a second and third line of defense secured the three-story mansion, the patios and pool behind the house. But Lon didn’t need to get anywhere near the residence to snap the photo he was after—not when he could plainly see the driveway that led to the front door from atop this power pole. Not when he had his trusty Nikon D2X and fourteen different lenses to go with it.
Like most professional photographers, Lon was a recent convert to the digital realm. He’d chafed at the limitations of early digital cameras and stuck to the tried and true. But the technology slowly improved until Lon could find no fault with the newer models. Now he shot his pictures, selected the best, cropped and edited them, and then sent them via e-mail to the Sunset Strip offices of Midnight Confes
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sion magazine. His checks were direct deposit, and cleared in his account in less than twenty-four hours. It was fast, efficient, and best of all Lon didn’t have to see his boss Jake Gollob more than two or three days a month.
For the past fifty-five minutes, Lon had pretended to work on the circuit box at the top of the pole. Meanwhile he listened to the all-news radio network, which broadcast Silver Screen pre-show updates every twenty minutes or so. He learned from the broadcast that Abigail Heyer’s plane had landed at LAX about an hour before. The newscaster mentioned Ms. Heyer’s tireless work on behalf of children trapped in the conflict-torn regions of Bosnia, Croatia, Chechnya, Daghrebistan. He added that her work with the United Nations focused the world’s attention on the plight of orphans around the world. But there was no mention of the woman’s pregnancy, which meant that no photographers or television crews had gotten anywhere near Abigail Heyer at the airport.
If the rumors of her impending childbirth were true—and his boss Jake Gollob was almost never wrong—then Lon’s photograph of the suddenly pregnant movie queen would be a major scoop. It would probably make the wire services, too. That meant money in the bank for Lon, and a happy boss at Midnight Confession magazine.
Lon put the pause on his dreams of wealth when he spied a flurry of activity near the front gate. The guard was on the phone, nodding. Another security man rushed to the estate’s entrance. A Rolls-Royce with tinted glass windows rolled through the gate, followed by a black sedan with bodyguards.
Lon tore off his headset and fumbled for his Nikon.
Crouching low behind the circuit box, he pointed the lens at the Rolls as it halted near the front door of the three-story mansion. He began snapping photos as soon as the driver climbed out and opened the back door. Though the interior of vehicle was dim, he hoped the digital camera pierced the shadows for a decent shot, but almost immediately the view was blocked by a security man—a tall giant with white-blond, short-cropped hair who looked like a KGB man in a 1980s political thriller. Lon stopped snapping when he knew all he was getting was the guard’s broad back.
Finally, after a few long moments, Abigail Heyer climbed out of the backseat with help from the driver and security man, who took her proffered hands. She was very pregnant indeed, almost as big as she was in the movie Bangor, Maine, where the star played a working-class single mother struggling to unionize her low-paying workplace. Lon let out a breath, not realizing he’d been holding it. Then he snapped away, getting close to twenty usable shots by his own estimation, before the woman entered the front door and vanished from sight.
Lon quickly closed up the camera, stuffed it into the case meant to hold power tools, and climbed down the pole. He waited until the activity subsided before he walked back to the gate.
“All fixed,” he declared.
The gate guard didn’t reply. He simply buzzed Lon through, not bothering to open the gate himself.
As he hurried back to his car, Lon again marveled at how much the actually pregnant Abigail Heyer resembled the falsely pregnant character she played in Bangor, Maine. Several critics noted that the preg
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nancy suit she wore in that film was contoured to make her look great no matter what!
Amazing how she looks that good now—maybe better, mused Lon. I guess some people are just naturally photogenic, which explains why Abigail Heyer is a movie star ’cause her acting is crap on a stick.
12:06:33 P.M.PDT La Hacienda Tijuana, Mexico
Milo ceased struggling when he felt the muzzle of the sawed-off shotgun press against his temple. He looked up into the emotionless gray eyes of the Hell’s Angel wannabe.
“Okay, you win,” Milo said, raising his hands. Even in surrender, the CTU analyst couldn’t hide the fear in his voice. He was convinced this man was the same person who’d murdered Fay Hubley.
“Step back against that wall,” the big man said, prodding Milo with the shotgun. Milo backed up until his spine hit the peeling wallpaper. “Now turn around.”
When Milo’s cheek was flat against the wall, the man stepped around him and through the open bathroom door. Still leveling the shotgun at Milo’s head, the man peered into the shower.
“Shit.”
He stepped back, gazed at Milo. “You didn’t do that, did you?”
“Didn’t you?” said Milo. He tried to face the intruder, but the man slammed him flat with a powerful thrust of his tattooed forearm.
“I said don’t move. I meant don’t move.”
“Okay, okay,” Milo’s hands went up higher. “It’s just that you asked me a question.”
“And you had to move to answer it?”
The biker lowered the shotgun, whacked Milo in the gut. Air shot out of his lungs and Milo doubled over. The man crossed the room, opened the front door. Through a haze of pain, Milo heard someone else step over the threshold. The door closed behind the newcomer. The man with the shotgun tried the light switch. It didn’t work. He moved to a bedside lamp, turned it on, knocked the shade off. Milo stood straight again, blinked against the glare.
“Well, well,” said the man who came in. “If it isn’t my old pal, Milo De-Pressman.”
Despite the scruffy-looking armed man still waving a weapon at him, Milo bristled at the sound of his hated college nickname. “Blow it out your ass, Lesser.”
Lesser smirked. “That earring is bad enough. But my God, De-Pressman, what’s with the soul patch?”
A head taller than Milo, Richard Lesser was bone thin, with curly brown hair coiled into a crown atop his high forehead, a sallow complexion, crud-brown eyes, and, in Milo’s opinion, a chin as weak as ever.
“Look, Lesser . . .” Milo tried to step away from the wall but the big man slammed him back again.
“Down, boy. Heel, Cole,” said Lesser. The armed man stepped back, lowered his weapon. “This is my bodyguard, Cole Keegan. Cole, meet my dear old classmate, Milo De-Pressman.”
Lesser turned his back on the pair, examining Fay’s network configuration. “I believe you or your colleagues were monitoring my Internet activities from
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here, am I correct? It’s a nice setup, and the software is something I’ve never encountered before. But you have to have a big mainframe somewhere, feeding you this stuff.”
Lesser gestured contemptuously at the computers linked to the tiny server in the middle of the room. “This Mickey Mouse set up just won’t do. Are you working for a corporation? Boscom perhaps?”
Lesser poked the wireless mouse and the computer came out of hibernation. He blinked when he saw his own Internet accounts, banking records on the screen. “I’d like to meet the individual who invented this search program. Very clever.”
“She’s in the bathroom,” said Milo with contempt. “Why don’t you go in and introduce yourself.”
Cole Keegan shook his shaggy head. “You don’t want to go in there, boss. It’s a mess.”
“Listen, Richard,” said Milo, his tone reasonable. “I was sent down here to bring you back.”
“Sent? By whom? To take me back where? To prison?”
“I work for the CIA’s Counter Terrorist Unit.”
Lesser laughed. “You work for CTU? That’s rich. I see the old saying, ‘good enough for government work,’ still applies if they’re hiring you.”
“And I see you’re still as arrogant an asshole as you ever were, Little Dick.”
“Watch it, Milo. I’ve got the bodyguard and Cole has the shotgun.”
Cole Keegan touched Lesser’s arm. “Remember why we came.”
Lesser sighed. “Yes, of course. You’re right.”
“Why did you come, Lesser?” Milo asked. “To gloat over murdering Fay?”
“I murdered no one,” said Lesser. “I came here to make a deal because someone named Hasan is trying rather hard to murder me.”
Milo stared. “Gee, I can’t imagine why.”
12:11:21 P.M.PDT Palm Drive Beverly Hills
Jack Bauer followed Ibn al Farad and his captors to Beverly Hills. As he hoped, the kidnappers assumed they’d made a clean getaway. The farther away they got from the shootout, the more they relaxed their guard. By the time the kidnappers rolled through West Hollywood, Jack was less than a block away.
The vehicle finally swerved into a gated estate on Palm Drive, just a few doors down from Jean Harlow’s mansion, and the house Joe DiMaggio and Marilyn Monroe shared during their ill-fated marriage. Jack cruised past the three-story Spanish-style house and down the street.
When he was around a curve and out of sight, Jack rolled to a halt under a knot of palm trees. Here in the hills, he was just five miles from the ocean, yet no cooling breezes reached even this elite enclave. The lawns may have been greener in Beverly Hills, the air conditioners more expensive, but even the wealthy had to step outside sometime and nothing could save them from the punishing heat now scorching all of LA.
Head throbbing, Jack called Jamey Farrell. He reported his position and asked for the property records of the house on Palm Drive. Jamey had an answer for him in less than three minutes.
“The home belongs to Nareesa al-Bustani. She’s
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the widow of a Saudi billionaire named Mohammed
al-Bustani.”
“What’s his background?”
“He went missing during a recent purge of political dissidents.”
Jack chewed on that a moment. In recent months the Royal Saudi intelligence service had begun to investigate citizens suspected of funding terrorism. During the course of their inquest, the secret police rounded up dozens of businessmen, government ministers, imams, and prominent citizens. Most were never seen again. There were no public trials, they just disappeared— tortured to death or shot, or dumped in the desert to perish. Mohammed al-Bustani had been one of them.
“Do the files contain any intelligence to suggest why al-Bustani was arrested?”
“Nothing.”
“What about Mohammed’s wife?”
“Naressa was living in her Beverly Hills home at the time of her husband’s disappearance in Saudi Arabia. The couple’s been estranged for decades, according to CIA intelligence.”
“If that’s true, then why is she helping a known terrorist now? And could Nareesa al-Bustani have a connection to Hasan? Or is there some connection to Ibn al Farad that we don’t know about yet? Maybe he’s a member of the woman’s family—”
Jamey interrupted his verbalized speculations. “Nina’s here. She wants to know what you plan to do next.”
“Tell her to dispatch Chet Blackburn’s team to Olympia Boulevard, but no closer than that. They’ll be minutes away. I’ll call if I need them.”
“Jack? What are you going to do?” It was Nina’s voice on the phone this time.
“The al-Bustani mansion has a man at the gate, armed. Otherwise the home security doesn’t seem particularly daunting. I’m going to break in.”
“But the kidnappers are still in there,” Nina countered. “They’re trained and armed.”
“They think they’ve won. I’m sure they’ve let their guard down.”
“But—”
“I can’t wait, Nina. I’ve got a feeling time is running out.”
12:19:07 P.M.PDT La Hacienda Tijuana, Mexico
“At first it sounded pretty good. Rip off the digital files of a yet-to-be-released tent pole film from a secured server at a special effects studio in San Francisco. A piece of cake, and money in the bank for me and Cole here.”
Lesser leaned back on his chair, a self-satisfied grin on his narrow face. “Secured server! What a joke. The studio’s computer system was easier to crack than that lockout code you put on your computer back in grad school.”
The two men spoke in Tony and Fay’s darkened hotel room. Milo sat on the edge of one of the two narrow beds, Lesser on the wobbly desk chair. Cole Keegan stood near the only exit, shotgun in hand, ear pressed to the door.
Milo narrowed his eyes. “Let’s not relive our old school days, Dick. You’re still not telling me about the virus you created, and why you chose to stick it in the movie download file.”
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“Don’t be so impatient. Have you no sense of drama?”
Milo folded his arms and waited.
“Well, as I was telling you,” Lesser continued, “I had a copy of the film when suddenly I get a knock at my door. Turns out my former associate Guido—”
“Guido?”
“Guido Nardini,” Lesser replied. “So
me folks would call him a mobster. I, however, prefer to speak of Mr. Nardini as a folk hero comparable to Robin Hood or the Scarecrow of Romney Marsh, immortalized—”
“Cut to the chase,” Milo snapped.
“So, anyway, Guido mentioned to certain parties that I had the Gates of Heaven download and not so very long after that I had a visit from a representative of an ethnic organization based right here in Tijuana.”
“The criminal gang Seises Seises?”
Lesser nodded. “The double-six boys had a proposition for me, and since a Federal indictment was being handed down along with a warrant for my arrest, I decided to take them up on their kind offer of asylum south of the border in exchange for pirating more Hollywood blockbusters.”
“So why did the Mexicans turn on you?”
“Who said they turned on me? I had no trouble with the banditos. Give them a couple of downloads they can turn into knockoff DVDs, teach them a few computer games and they’re happy as clams in a paella. The trouble came when the Chechens arrived.”
Milo blinked. “Chechens? Like from Chechnya?”
“Da, comrade,” said Lesser. “These guys were real self-starters, not like the laid-back Mexicans. Pretty soon the cholos were taking orders from the Chechens and their leader, some guy named Hasan.”
“Did you meet this Hasan?”
“No. But I took his money. Lots of it. Hasan asked me to develop a Trojan horse program that would target a specific auditing program used by the Hollywood studios.”
“Do you know why?”
Lesser shrugged. “I assumed they wanted to rip off the studios with bogus wire transfers of money or something. But the execute file Hasan had me create worked more like a security override program—there were all kinds of protocols to seal or unseal doors, disable alarms and stuff. It seemed more like he was going to knock-off a bank vault than steal currency the easy way—electronically.”
“If you created the program he wanted, then why did Hasan turn on you?”
A shadow crossed Lesser’s face. “Two days ago, Hasan’s agent, a Chechen named Ordog—”
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