24 Declassified: 10 - Head Shot

by David S. Jacobs

  “I was born paranoid, Jack. But you’ve been righteous so far so I’m willing to play out the string. Go ahead.”

  Jack saw that Ryan Chappelle had left him another stack of voice mail messages. His mouth took on a wry twist as he ignored them and pressed the speed dial for Orlando Garcia’s personal number.

  He didn’t know whether the cell would work here but he thought it might because he and the Pine Ridge command post were both on the same eastern side of the mountain range, unlike Shadow Valley farther to the west where the intervening peaks had effectively blocked off the signal. His cell had a scrambler to screen against electronic eavesdroppers so the communication would be secure—if it got through.

  The call was answered on the third ring. Garcia said without preamble, “I’d just about written you off.” The signal was mushy but audible. “Where are you? What’s—”

  Jack cut across the other’s words, “No time for that now. There’s a strike planned against Sky Mount and I’m going to stop it if I can. Have a tac squad waiting outside the estate but don’t go in before you hear from me. Otherwise you might trigger the massacre we’re trying to prevent. Did you get all that?”

  “Now hold on a damned minute— ”

  “Did you get that?”

  “Yes.”

  “Good. If you don’t hear from me by two o’clock— that’s zero two hundred hours, repeat, zero two hundred hours—I didn’t make it and you can start evacuating Sky Mount. You read me?”

  “Yes, damn it, but—”

  “Zero two hundred hours and then move. Not before.”

  “Wait—!” Jack broke the connection and switched off the

  cell. It was the trust factor all over again. Brad Oliver had been warned in advance that he was going to be apprehended. The word could only have come from someone high up in CTU/L.A. or CTU/DENV. Was it Garcia? Jack didn’t know. He wasn’t going to tip his hand until he did know one way or the other. He’d told Garcia just enough to salvage the situation at Sky Mount should Jack fail to accomplish his mission but not so much that Garcia could thwart him if he turned out to be working for the other side.

  He pocketed the cell and picked up his weapon and flashlight. He said, “Pettibone will go first. If there’s any booby traps along the way he’ll get it first.”

  Pettibone said, “There ain’t.”

  “You’ll go first anyway.”

  They went up the slope in single file, Pettibone first, followed by Jack, Griff, and Rowdy. They paused at the lip of the entrance, Jack and Griff shining their flashlights on the portal.

  A flat-topped summit, about six feet wide, aproned the hole in the wall. The hole was the mouth of a tunnel that stretched deep into the spur. It had been drilled through rock and lined with poured concrete. Cool, dry air wafted out of it. The night air was already cool but the tunnel was colder.

  It was dark, pitch- black, not a glimmer of light showing within. Its rounded archway was seven feet tall and five feet wide. The concrete had been poured so the floor was flat. The door, or hatch, was a massive construction of milled steel three feet thick. A pair of curved hinges of corresponding size secured it to the tunnel. The hinges emerged from slots set in the inside of the frame at the head of the portal. The hatch would fit flush with the frame when it was closed.

  Its exterior was faced with rock paneling that blended in with its surroundings. In the years— decades—that it had been in place, it had become overgrown with moss and lichens of the same type as those that clung to the natural rock walls.

  The inside center of the hatch featured an oversized spoked metal wheel the size of a big-rig truck’s steering wheel. Its hub was mounted on a short, squat column fitted inside a cylindrical shaft set deep in the metal mounting. It could be used to open the hatch or dog it closed. The mechanism could only be operated from the inside.

  Rowdy said, “It’s like a bank vault door . . .”

  Griff said, “With a fifty-thousand- dollar payoff inside. And it’s already open. All we got to do is take Reb’s head to collect.”

  “And not get killed.”

  “Yeah, that, too.”

  Pettibone hung back at the threshold. Jack prodded him with the tip of the SMG, said, “Move. And quit dragging your feet. We don’t want to be late for the party.”

  Pettibone started forward, Jack following him inside, the bikers trailing him. The concrete lining was cracked and stained but the excavation was far more stable and solidly built than that of the Silver-top mine. The mine had been damp and clammy but this tunnel was dry and dusty.

  Twin flashlight beams reached around Pettibone’s skeletal form to probe deep into the tunnel’s vitals but not deep enough to reach its end. The floor had a slight incline with a grade of less than five degrees. The group trudged silently upward along it.

  The tunnel was stark, functional, utilitarian. The outside world might as well have ceased to exist for all the effect it had here. Its influence was nil. The concrete lining had an absorbent quality that muffled ambient sound. The footfalls of the intruders were whispered rustlings on the treadmill of a seemingly endless trek.

  Jack herded Pettibone along, poking him with the SMG on the ever more frequent occasions that he halted his progress. Jack read that as a good sign. It meant they were nearing their goal at the end of the tunnel, a destination Pettibone had no desire to reach.

  The tunnel ceased its incline and now began to run level. The flashlight beams all at once encountered something instead of being swallowed up by nothingness. They bounced off a distant shape, an unrecognizable blur.

  Jack whispered over his shoulder to the bikers, “Heads up and stand by for action.” A lot of ground remained to be covered but the transit was more endurable now that the end was in sight.

  Jack tilted his flashlight beam to one side. A fuzzy patch of brightness swam at the end of a long stretch. He touched the tip of the silencer to the back of Pettibone’s head where it met the top of his neck, a gentle reminder of the facts of life and death.

  Jack didn’t know what lay at the end of the tunnel, but whatever it was, he didn’t want Pettibone acting up when they got there.

  There was no way to hide their approach but he hoped that the opposition would be lulled by a misreading of the situation. They were expecting Pettibone to arrive with a captive Jack Bauer in tow for delivery to Reb Weld. The two of them would surely be escorted by a couple of armed men from the rear guard.

  Jack planned to take advantage of that split-second window of opportunity before the foe realized the truth.

  The tunnel came to an end, opening on a rectangular chamber twenty feet deep, fifteen feet high, and fifteen feet wide. This end of the shaft was fitted with a massive hatch, twin to the one at the entrance. It opened inward and was swung back all the way on its curved hinges so that its inner face pressed against the chamber wall to the left of the portal.

  The first thing Jack saw inside the chamber was a golf cart, the incongruity of its presence here adding an offbeat, surrealistic touch. It was parked at the foot of a loading platform that stood at the chamber’s far end.

  The platform’s top was four feet above the floor. A well in the left corner held a short flight of stone stairs leading up to the platform. A couple of boxes and packing crates stood on top of the platform.

  A man sat on top of one of the crates facing the tunnel. A square-edged doorway opened in the wall behind him. An electric lantern was set atop a nearby crate. Its glow seemed as cheery and welcoming as sunshine after the tunnel’s dark passage.

  The man was stocky and squat with short hair and a goatee. He wore dark clothing and a white band on his upper left arm. He hopped off the crate and stepped forward toward the edge of the platform as the newcomers arrived. He said, “Pettibone, what kept you— Hey!” He turned, grabbing for the SMG on top of the crate.

  Jack shoved Pettibone aside and made his play. He went for a head shot in case the other was wearing a bulletproof vest under his
shirt.

  His weapon made a throat-clearing noise as it squirted three rounds into the sentry’s face. He fired it one-handed, holding the flashlight in his other hand. The piece when fired in a short burst had a recoil that was a bit heavier than that of a .45-caliber semi- automatic pistol.

  The sentry flopped rearward like he was trying to do a back dive. He bumped into the crate, upsetting but not overturning it. The SMG fell clattering to the platform but didn’t go off.

  Jack darted across the floor to the stairwell and took the steps two at a time. He crossed the platform to the doorway, covered to one side of it, and peeked around the edge into the space beyond.

  The doorway opened into a vast, cavernous area that resembled nothing so much as an underground parking garage and was the size of an airplane hangar. The enclosure was long and low-ceilinged. It was dark except for a line of electric lanterns that had been placed at regular intervals along the center of the floor to the opposite end.

  It was empty, unoccupied. Jack Bauer strained his ears listening for the sound of an alarm or hue and cry. None came.

  He turned his attention back to the chamber. Griff stood crouched holding his weapon to Pettibone’s head. Rowdy climbed the stairs to the top of the platform and joined Jack.

  Jack said, low- voiced, “This level is clear—I think.” He switched off the flashlight and set it down on a crate. He said, “Cover me.”

  Rowdy said, “Right.” He leaned the shotgun against the wall and held the SMG in both hands.

  Jack ducked low and went through the doorway into the sprawling bunkerlike construction that lay on the other side. He dodged to the right, out of the glow of the electric lanterns lining the floor and into the welcoming gloom that hovered on either side of the illuminated central path.

  Rowdy covered behind the doorway’s edge and stuck the SMG outside, the tip of its silenced snout quivering like a dowsing rod in quest not of water but of human targets.

  The floor was carpeted with a layer of dust several inches thick once Jack moved aside from the center space. It smothered the sound of his already light-footed tread. His movements disturbed the dust, each footfall raising puffs of the stuff. It tickled his nose, and he had to fight to keep from sneezing. That would be a hell of a note, to give himself away by sneezing!

  Jack advanced, guided by the lamplight glimpsed out of the corner of his eye. The space dwarfed him with its slab-sided monolithic immensity.

  His eyes grew accustomed to the dimness, allowing him to make out a line of closed doors in the wall to his right. They were tall, narrow oblongs a shade lighter than the shadows engulfing them. No lights showed behind any of those doors. The wall space between them was lined with stacked cardboard boxes furry with dust.

  He went to the opposite end of the bunker. A glow brightened in the right-hand corner as he neared it, an independent light source separate from the lanterns marking out the centerline.

  It revealed a stairwell. A flight of stone steps climbed to a landing, then another stairway led to a second landing. The light came from electric lanterns

  with hooks at the top that were hung from horizontal bars of the metal railing enclosing the open side of the stairs. A closed door was set in a wall at the second, final landing. It was outlined by light coming from the other side of the door.

  Jack figured he’d come far enough by himself. No point in having allies if you didn’t use them. He turned, heading back toward the antechamber. This time he did it the easy way, following the well- lit center aisle. It was a well-traveled route, judging by the lack of layered dust that pervaded the rest of the bunker.

  He halted at the halfway point, motioning for the bikers to join him. They came to him, Griff hustling Pettibone along with them. Jack said, “All clear. A stairway leads to the next level. I didn’t want to go past that without Pettibone as a stalking horse.”

  Griff looked around, his eyes glittering slits, his shoulders hunched as if anticipating a blow. He said feelingly, “What a creep joint!”

  Rowdy said, “What is this dump?”

  They all spoke in hushed voices. Jack said, “It’s a fallout shelter for surviving an atomic war. Must’ve been built a half century ago.”

  Rowdy said, “Man, I’d rather get nuked than live in this mausoleum!”

  Griff said, “Hey, did you dig that golf cart?”

  “Beats walking through the tunnel.” Jack said, “It’s a good way to bring supplies in, too. Like bombs and gas grenades.”

  They went to the far end of the bunker and stood at the bottom of the stairwell. Griff said, “What’s on the other side of that door?”

  Jack Bauer said, “The showdown.”

  THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 1 A.M. AND 2 A.M. MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME

  Sky Mount, Colorado

  Reb Weld did not handle frustration well. He was an action man; he liked to be up and doing. Standing around waiting did not sit well with him. Delay irritated him, especially when it involved matters over which he had no control. He was a control freak, too. He said, “What’s the stall, Al?”

  Grant Graham started at the sound of Weld’s voice. He was standing next to Weld, but he’d been watching Al Baranco rigging the timed detonator to the last set of explosive charges. He was so caught up by Baranco’s air of methodical concentration that it came as a jolt when Weld spoke up, shattering his reverie.

  Baranco labored on, doing what he’d been doing, giving no sign that he’d heard the Rebel’s words.

  Graham flinched, said out of the side of his mouth, “Take it easy, Reb.”

  Weld said, “Screw you, Graham.” He spoke in a normal conversational tone, contrasting with Graham’s husky prison-yard whisper. Graham had taken falls on several felony counts and spent years in Federal penitentiaries.

  Talking out of the side of his mouth so only fellow inmates could hear him and prison guards couldn’t had become second nature to him. He’d carried the habit with him even though he was outside the walls. Being within arm’s length of enough explosives to blow him to atoms as he now was only intensified this habitual trait.

  Weld said, “Get with the program and shake a leg, Al.”

  Graham said, “Reb, please— ”

  “Shut up.”

  Al Baranco stopped what he was doing, namely attaching a wire to one of the terminals on the timing device. The device was the size and shape of a paperback book. It had a matte black plastic casing. Its face had a digital display slot screen and a numerical keypad with some additional buttons. Twin terminals protruded from the top of the case above the readout screen, small brightly polished metal knobs with little caps that screwed on or off.

  Baranco held a pair of needle-nose pliers that he was using to strip the insulation off the end of one of the wires leading to a packet of blocks of C–4 plastic explosives that had been taped together.

  He paused but did not look up. He said, “It’s unwise to distract a man when he’s setting a bomb timer, Reb.”

  The mansion at Sky Mount had two underground levels that were officially in use. The one nearer to the surface held storerooms of various types. Food supplies, an extensive wine collection, glassware, table settings, and the like were only a few of the commodities that were resourced there, along with a treasure trove of paintings, statuary, antiques, and other art objects that had been removed from permanent display upstairs and put in storage on Level One.

  Level Two, the subcellar, housed the vitals of the mansion, the all- important mechanisms and support systems that kept it going. Here were the banks of fuse boxes, meters, dials, and relays that monitored and controlled the countless miles of electrical wiring that made up the great house’s nervous system. Here were the hydraulic pumps and pipes that kept the plumbing running smoothly everywhere from the sinks in the custodians’ supply closets to the outdoor Olympic-sized swimming pool—as well as the slightly smaller indoor heated pool.

  Here were the boilers and furnaces and fuel tan
ks that gave the mansion its heat and hot water. This last was the target of Reb Weld and his associates. Sky Mount was equipped with three fuel storage tanks, each the size of a railroad freight car and filled to the brim with heating oil. They stood lined up in a row in a sunken area at one end of the subcellar.

  Each tank rested on its own cradle, an intricate webwork of cross-braced metal beams and struts that held them suspended above the floor to allow workmen access to their undersides.

  Reb Weld, Graham, and Baranco were grouped alongside the tank in the middle. The other two tanks flanking it had already been rigged with explosive charges. The middle tank had been gimmicked like the other two with blocks of C–4 plastic explosives in the critical junction points that would rip their bellies open and ignite their contents into a colossal firestorm of holocaust proportions.

  It was a laborious, time-consuming process. The blocks of plastic explosives and the detonators had previously been stored in the fallout shelter below, an abandoned area whose existence was known only to a few. Reb and his crew had spent the night hand-carrying the blocks up the stairwell and through a secret door near the fuel tank area.

  They’d been planted on the undersides of the tanks.

  All three sets of charges were separately wired to a single master detonator-timer.

  This had been done to save time that would have been eaten up by fixing each load with its own individual timing device and to limit the exposure time of Weld’s team in the Level Two area.

  Three sets of wires fed into a trunk cable. Baranco was wiring the cable to the twin terminal posts of the master timer. It was set to go off at three o’clock in the morning, when an electric charge would pulse down the trunk cord and along the three separate sets of wires whose detonator tips would simultaneously explode all charges and blow the tanks and the great house above it to kingdom come.

  Once Baranco was done wiring and setting the master timer only one final task remained: to switch on the timer on a smaller charge attached to a crate holding the remaining BZ gas grenades. They’d been placed near a ventilator intake grille at the base of a metal conduit duct air shaft. The bomb would be set last but would go off first, at 2:50 a.m., ten minutes before the oil tanks blew.