24: Deadline (24 Series)

by James Swallow

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  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  Thanks to Melissa Frain, Amy Saxon, and Marco Palmieri at Tor Books for giving me the opportunity to tell this lost story from Jack Bauer’s turbulent narrative; to Joshua Izzo and Katie Caswell at Fox for their timely assistance; to Evan Katz and Manny Coto for sparing me some time from their busy schedule writing 24: Live Another Day to answer my questions; Roberto Suro, and the dedicated fans at the 24 Wiki and 24 Spoilers for some invaluable research data; also, not forgetting a tip of the hat to my old mate Keith Topping for leading the charge with A Day in the Life, and m’colleagues Dayton Ward and David Mack, because they both get how cool this is. And finally, to my very own femme fatale: the lovely Mandy Mills, who is always there for me when the clock is running.

  CONTENTS

  Title Page

  Copyright Notice

  Acknowledgments

  Prologue

  24 Hours Earlier

  Chapter 1

  Chapter 2

  Chapter 3

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  About the Author

  Copyright

  PROLOGUE

  He was barely through the door when they came at him.

  Two men, one from either side, bolting out from behind the cover of the supply containers and storage racks. In the dimness of the basement, he couldn’t make out much detail, just an impression of muscle mass and speed before the blows were raining down on him.

  A hard strike from a stubby baton cracked over his forearm and the force of it set his nerves alight. He dropped his gun, the weapon falling from his numbed fingers, and grunted with the pain. His other arm came up to parry a haymaker punch from the second assailant.

  Turning in place before either man could lay their hands on him again, he leaned in with a follow-through from the parry and planted his elbow in the chest of the man coming from the left. He felt a rib snap under the impact and heard the assailant gasp in agony.

  The room was lit by an industrial lamp, stark white light spilling out from behind an oval cage, casting the space around them with deep shadows. It was more than enough for him to fight with.

  Keeping up the momentum, he let the man with the busted rib stagger back and pressed his attack on the one with the baton, who swung it up high for a second blow. Turning his emptied hand into a talon, he shot forward and grabbed at the first attacker’s throat, hitting hard enough to blow the breath out of the man’s chest. Stumbling, the two of them fell into the pool of light from the overhead bulb, and he kept up the pressure, punching over and over—short, stabbing strikes that landed in the softer tissues of the man’s throat.

  He was aware of movement behind him. The one with the cracked rib was coming back into the fray, and he turned to put up a defense—but he was slow. Too slow.

  All the fatigue of the past hours, all the endless strain, it was blunting his edge, and little by little, it robbed him of the precious seconds he needed.

  Too slow. The other assailant kicked him hard in the back of the knee and his leg folded underneath him with a jolt of pain. He stumbled and went down toward the dusty concrete floor, palms smacking the ground as he arrested his fall.

  He heard someone else call out, but the words were muffled and indistinct, the sound distorted through a fog left behind by the punches he’d taken to the head. Only the tone was clear—a command, sharp and hard. Someone angry about him, somebody who wanted him dealt with in short order.

  A tiny flash of blue lightning glittered in the hand of one of the men, and before he could deflect it, the metal contacts of a Taser pressed into his chest and the device discharged.

  Thousands of volts of electricity surged through his flesh and he howled. His muscles locked rigid, and for long, agonizing seconds it felt as if he had been dipped in fire. Then he was on his back, shivering with the aftershock. He smelled the faint odors of burnt cotton and seared meat.

  They dragged him up by his elbows and dumped him in a careworn plastic chair. He lay there like a puppet with its strings severed, panting, trying to gather himself.

  The man he had hit in the throat eyed him murderously, wheezing and coughing out blood, rubbing at his neck. The other assailant stooped to gather up his pistol from where it had fallen, moving with exaggerated slowness thanks to his new injury.

  He became aware of others in the room. A larger, tanned man with a boxer’s craggy face and thinning white hair stood at the edge of the shadows, hands crossed in front of him with the long shape of a silenced pistol in his grip. Another figure—this one less distinct—was farther out from the pool of light, framed by the glow of a cell phone display. A woman, he realized, the cold blue of the telephone screen casting the planes of her face like an ice sculpture.

  “Secure him,” said the big man, gesturing with the gun. The two thugs came in and used zip-ties to tether his wrists to the arms of the plastic chair.

  He shifted slightly in the seat, thinking about angles of attack. It came to him automatically, instinctively. He began to build a plan about getting the man’s pistol, evaluating who was the greatest threat in the room, deciding which of them he would kill first.

  “It amazes me you are still alive.” The big man spoke directly to him for the first time. There was a distinctive Eastern European accent beneath the words; Georgian, most likely. “You should be dead a dozen times over.”

  He gave a weary nod. “It’s been said.” Carefully, he tested the play in the zip-ties. There was a small degree of freedom there, but not much.

  “No longer,” said the Georgian. “Today, the clock runs out for you.” He cocked his head, examining his new prisoner as if considering a puzzle of some kind. “I know all about you. You have made so very many enemies, my friend. I wonder how many men will sleep sounder tonight, after this is done?”

  He said nothing, waiting for the right moment.

  The other man went on, disappointed that he hadn’t gotten the response he wanted. “Yes. It will be a sort of kindness, I think. Look at you. Like a war dog, long in the tooth and too far off your leash to be controlled. Your own people want you dead! I do them a favor.”

  “So do it,” he growled. “And be on your way.”

  The big man glanced at one of others, who produced a cell phone of his own and held it up, framing the two of them with the device’s tiny camera.

  The gun rose and dull light glittered off the black barrel of the silencer. “Jack Bauer…” The Georgian said the name like it was a curse, and his finger tightened on the trigger. “Your time is up.”

  24 HOURS EARLIER

  01

  Chet Reagan emerged from the staff roo
m, pulling the top of his scrubs straight and working to stifle a yawn. As he crossed to the front desk, he noted that the waiting room was unusually empty for a weekday. Typically, the evening shift was when things started to get busy at the clinic. People coming off a hard workday would filter into the drop-in medical center, maybe looking for an excuse not to have to go back in the office tomorrow—those, or the folks who couldn’t get time off to make a doctor’s appointment in the a.m.

  Not tonight, though. He saw a couple of people waiting their turn, East Village trendy types rather than the usual locals who lived in the clinic’s Lower East Side neighborhood. They looked a little out of their element, and he amused himself wondering what they had wrong with them. A little STD action, maybe? Something they didn’t want their regular doctor to know about? He suppressed a grin. The clinic got a lot of that sort of trade.

  As he approached the desk, he saw Lindee on duty and he couldn’t help but scowl as she made a face and tapped her wristwatch with a long, manicured finger. Chet’s gaze flicked up to the TV screen on the waiting room wall, forever tuned to CNB’s main news feed, and he saw the time stamp in the corner. Five o’clock. That was the time his shift started and that was the time he was here. Sure, he knew full well that their supervisor liked the medical technicians to be in ten, even twenty minutes early, but Chet wasn’t about to spend any more of his day at the clinic than he had to. They didn’t pay him enough to go above and beyond.

  “What?” he asked Lindee. “I’m not late.”

  “Not early, either,” she retorted. “You’re lucky there’s not a rush on. Could be, though, any second. Did you get the text?” Her eyes narrowed, her dark, oval face tightening in an expression of annoyance.

  “No.” His phone battery had died the night before and he had neglected to recharge it. “Look, I got in on time, didn’t I? No thanks to the cops, though. Damn police are all over the place today…”

  “The text message,” Lindee insisted. “City Hall put all the hospitals and clinics on alert…” She trailed off. “Have you, like, been in a cave for the last day? Haven’t you seen the news?”

  “No,” he repeated. “What, did someone famous die?” Chet scowled. One of the most inconvenient things about living and working in Manhattan was that it was also home to foreign dignitaries, embassies and the United Nations—and whenever they were in town in force, every ordinary New Yorker had to deal with the disruption their presence caused. Chet recalled something he had seen in the papers about a big political deal going on with people from one of those Arab countries, but he was disinterested in the details. “I never watch the news,” he said. “It’s a damn cartoon, is what it is.”

  Lindee rolled her eyes. She’d had this conversation with Reagan more than once before and long since grown tired of it. Instead, she picked up the remote control for the TV and aimed it at the screen, thumbing the volume control. “Well, you might wanna pay attention to this part.”

  Chet looked back at the screen as the voice of CNB’s anchorwoman grew louder. Over the shoulder of the blond-haired announcer were inset images of the UN building and then a roll of footage showing President Allison Taylor standing before a lectern. “I never voted for her.” Chet sniffed.

  “… as circumstances continue to be fluid,” the anchor was saying. “What CNB can confirm at this time is that President Taylor, in a shock announcement to the world press, has walked out of the peace treaty talks between the United States, the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Kamistan. The president spoke of a conspiracy behind the treaty and of criminal activity that she herself has played a role in. The White House has promised that a full formal statement is imminent, but on a day where rumors abound regarding possible terrorist activity in New York City, a day that has also seen the assassination of IRK leader Omar Hassan on American soil, we can only guess at what revelations the next hours will bring.”

  “Huh,” said Chet, taking it in. “So a politician lied about something. What a surprise.”

  Lindee glared at him. “Don’t you get it? This is a big deal! People will get angry … People could get hurt!”

  But Chet was already walking away. “This is the kinda crap that happens when we mess around with other countries. Wouldn’t be anything if those Kami-whatever guys stayed at home, yeah?” He gathered up a clipboard and threaded his way down the corridor toward the examination rooms at the rear of the building. The first job he was going to do this shift was the inventory for rooms ten and eleven—and if he took his time about it, Chet knew he’d be able to stay off his supervisor’s radar for at least a couple of hours.

  He was two steps into examination room ten when he realized the light switch wasn’t working. Chet flipped it up and down twice and grimaced, but in the next second his shoe crunched on a piece of broken glass and he realized that the fluorescent tube overhead had been deliberately smashed. Cold air touched his face and he saw the wired-glass window across the room was open, letting in the breeze.

  Lit only by the fading day, the room was all shades of gloomy, and Chet’s heart leapt into his mouth as he belatedly sensed the presence of someone else in there with him.

  A man in a torn, slate-colored sweatshirt emerged from behind a privacy curtain near the examination bed, and in one hand he held the metallic shape of a gun.

  Chet’s gut tightened and he felt a cold sweat break out on his neck. “Oh shit.” He threw up his hands. “Hey. Hey, wait. Don’t shoot me, okay? I … I have a family. Just … Look, take whatever you want, okay? I won’t stop you.” They had warned him about this kind of thing when he took the job at the clinic. Strung-out junkies or street criminals looking to make a fast buck by robbing walk-in clinics of painkillers or whatever drugs they could sell.

  “Lock the door,” said the man with the gun.

  “What?”

  “Lock it.” The second time he spoke, Chet found himself obeying without hesitation. Hands shaking, he turned the latch and then retreated into a corner, eyes darting around the room in search of some means of escape. There was only the open window, and the gunman was between him and it.

  The guy looked like he had been in an argument with a Mack truck and come off worse. He sported cuts on his forehead and chin, and through tears in the sweatshirt Chet could see other wounds and contusions of varying seriousness.

  “You’re going to help me,” said the gunman. He eyed the technician’s name badge. “Chet. I need to clean up. I need fresh dressings. Medicine.”

  “Are you going to kill me?” Questions fell from Chet’s lips before he was even aware of them forming in his thoughts. “That thing on the news, is that you? Are you … a terrorist?”

  “No.” The gunman let the barrel of the pistol drop until it was aimed at a point somewhere near Chet’s right kneecap. “But what I am is a very good shot. And I will cripple you if you try anything stupid, understand?”

  “Yes.” It was the most emphatic answer Chet had ever given for anything.

  “Good.” The man switched on a bedside lamp before picking up a scalpel and using it to slice open the sweatshirt, shrugging it off to reveal his bare chest beneath.

  Chet’s breath caught in his throat as he glimpsed the patchwork of scars across the gunman’s torso. He knew the healed pucker marks of bullet wounds when he saw them, and the severe lines of stabbings and old knife cuts. But there were other blemishes there, things he couldn’t even begin to guess at. The man’s flesh was a map of violence done and violence survived. The most recent was a field dressing over a grazing gunshot, and the cloth patch taped over the wound was black-brown and soaked through. Gingerly, Chet peeled the old bandage away and set to work applying a new one.

  * * *

  Jack Bauer watched as the technician did as he was told. The man’s hands were shaking, but that was to be expected.

  “You said you’ve got a family.” The man tensed when Jack spoke.

  “Yes?” he said, his voice thick with fear.

 
; “Tell me about them.”

  Chet swallowed hard. “A … A son. Petey. He’s six. Wife. Jane.”

  “Here, in New York?”

  “Right. Yes.”

  Jack weighed the stolen Sig Sauer pistol in his hand. “You should take them out of town for a few days. Get away.” He couldn’t stop himself from seeing Kim’s face in his mind’s eye, his daughter smiling up at him and promising him that things were going to be better for them. At this moment, Jack wanted that to be true more than anything in the world.

  But fate had a habit of getting in the way of what Jack Bauer wanted, of dragging him into one bloody mess after another. He looked at the man before him, this ordinary guy with his ordinary job and his ordinary life, and for a split second Jack hated him for it.

  Chet must have seen that flash of fury in his eyes, because he backed away, the color draining from his face. “Wh-what?”

  Jack shook off the moment. “Keep working.” The impulse had faded as quickly as it had come, but the burn of it lingered. On some level, Jack resented the fact that whatever chance at a normal life he might have had was long gone. He could feel the weight of it all pressing down on him, not just the hours of fighting and running and battling to stay alive, but the ache in his soul. The consequence of all the choices he had made and the things he had done.

  Once upon a time he had been a soldier for his nation, for an ideal that he believed was right and good. Somewhere along the line, that loyalty had blurred and slipped away. He turned his gaze inward and found a question waiting there: What are you going to fight for now, Jack?

  “I have family,” he said in a low mutter. “They’re all I have.”

  “Are they … here?”

  Jack didn’t answer. Anything he said to this man would eventually end up in the hands of the people who were hunting him. “I’m getting out,” he said after a moment. “Far from here. Hong Kong.” It was the first place he thought of, and a good enough lie to leave behind him.

  Chet paused, the bandage over the gunshot wound replaced and the other cuts dressed as well as they could be. He turned, pointing toward one of the medicine cabinets. “Look, I can…”