24: Deadline (24 Series)

by James Swallow

  “Huh.” Markinson looked Kilner up and down. “So the medics said you’re okay? No lasting injuries?”

  “Just to my reputation.”

  “Not only yours,” said a voice from the doorway. The three of them turned to see Hadley standing there, his expression rigid and cold. “We’re all going to share in the blowback from this.” None of them had heard him enter.

  Hadley advanced into the room, and for a second Kilner thought the man might actually be gearing up to take a swing at him. “It was a hard call,” he said. “I stand by what I did.”

  The lead agent glared at Markinson and Dell. “Give me the room,” he demanded, and the two female agents left without a word. Hadley closed the door behind them and rounded on Kilner. “Who the hell do you think you are?”

  Given what he knew of the man’s reputation, Kilner had expected Hadley to explode with rage, but instead his tone was even and icy. “I already gave my statement while the paramedics were checking me out,” he told him. “With all due respect, read that. You’ll see I had no choice. Bauer had a gun on me the whole time.”

  “Not all the time,” Hadley corrected. “Not when he was shooting up a public street and firing on federal agents.”

  Kilner’s temper flared. “Remind me again what you were doing during that high-speed pursuit, sir?”

  Hadley ignored the jibe. “What did he say to you, Jorge? What did you talk about?”

  “He told me he would blow a hole in my leg if I didn’t do what he wanted,” Kilner retorted. “Apart from that, Bauer wasn’t that chatty. Then he forced me out of a moving vehicle.”

  “You had a chance to stop him and you didn’t take it. Explain that to me.”

  The younger agent shook his head. “You’re wrong. I did take that chance. I tried to reason with him. Bring him in without any bloodshed. But he wasn’t listening.”

  “Bauer shot first,” Hadley insisted.

  “After you sent in a tactical unit with all guns blazing.”

  Hadley eyed him. “You don’t get to tell me how to run this operation.” He pointed at the cuts and bruises on Kilner’s face. “Looking at all that … Agent Kilner, given your recent injuries I’m wondering if you should stand down and call it a day.”

  “No, sir,” Kilner said defiantly. “I’m on for the duration.”

  The other man’s manner started to slip. “You think he’s some kind of hero, don’t you? Jack Bauer, the man and the legend? I mean, we’ve all heard the rumors about him, right? The Palmer assassination, the meltdown scare, the whole Starkwood thing. There’s enough covert ops ghost stories about Bauer to fill a damn library.” Hadley advanced on him. “But you know what I think? I think Jack Bauer is a relic who belongs in the dark ages. He’s some kind of deep-black, dirty-tricks killer. He’s the worst of us, Kilner. No compunction, no conscience, no right to be roaming free.”

  “You’re wrong,” said Kilner. “You don’t know what he’s had to sacrifice. You don’t know him.”

  “And you do?” Hadley held his gaze. “Jason Pillar, a man who saved my life in the Gulf War and then again when I got home, is dead today because of what Bauer has done! Pillar went after Bauer, and he was killed as a result! That’s who he is. That’s what he leaves behind wherever he goes!”

  Kilner shook his head. “Bauer isn’t responsible for Pillar’s murder. While I was being debriefed, I heard about a leak from the Secret Service. There’s a rumor it may have been Charles Logan who shot Pillar. The man he was working for!”

  But Hadley wasn’t hearing him. “You want to remain on this detail, fine. But from this point onward you are going to do only what I tell you to, and only when I tell you to do it, is that clear?” He didn’t wait for Kilner to reply. “The ASAC has agreed to give me the resources we need to expand the search outside the state of New York. I’m going to bring Jack Bauer down, and you would be advised not to hinder that process any more than you already have. Are we clear?”

  Kilner opened his mouth to speak, but before he could utter a word, Agent Dell came back into the room at a run, holding a sheet of printout in her hand.

  “We got a hit,” she said breathlessly. “The chopper that Bauer hijacked.”

  “Where?” snapped Hadley.

  “Someone found it abandoned in the middle of a field off the Pennsylvania Turnpike, near Greensburg. Called it in to the local sheriff’s office.”

  Hadley snatched the paper from her hand. “We’re certain it’s the same helo?”

  “Bell Long Ranger,” Dell said with a nod. “It’s gotta be him.”

  “The Penn Turnpike takes you right into Pittsburgh,” offered Kilner, thinking it through. “But Bauer doesn’t have any active contacts in that city.”

  “That we know of,” said Hadley. He looked up at Dell, suddenly animated. “Get me a map of that area, and I want to talk to the local law. Tell Markinson to contact the Tactical Aviation Unit, we’re going to need an aircraft if we want to get out there.”

  Dell hesitated. “If he left it in plain sight, he has to know we’d find it.”

  Hadley agreed. “But not before dawn. We may have caught a break here. Let’s not waste it.”

  The other agent left, and Kilner found himself alone with Hadley again. “He’ll be long gone,” ventured the younger man. “This may even be a deliberate attempt at misdirection.”

  Hadley didn’t bother to look up at him. “Agent Kilner, you’re more than welcome to stay here and keep telling anyone who listens why we’ll never catch our fugitive. But within the hour I intend to be wheels-up and on my way to whatever flyspeck airstrip is closest to Greensburg.”

  07

  Chase drove on into the evening, taking them out and away from the interstate and on toward Cedar Creek. The tree line grew dense and the other traffic on the road tailed off. After a while, he started to count down mile markers until they passed the head of an unfinished track peeling off the main road.

  Jack shot a glance over his shoulder to make sure no one was following them as the Chrysler bounced off the tarmac and onto the dirt path. The track was barely visible from the road, half-concealed by overgrown bushes that clattered against the flanks of the silver car as it passed deeper into the darkness. “Not an easy place to find,” Jack offered.

  “Not unless you know where to look.” Chase nodded and flicked off the Chrysler’s lights, easing off on the gas. “That’s deliberate. The guy we’re gonna see … He doesn’t like to draw attention. He doesn’t like…” Chase paused, thinking about it. “Well. People, really. He doesn’t like people that much.”

  “Tell me again why we’re out in the middle of nowhere?”

  Chase kept his eyes on the path ahead. “I’m taking you to meet Hector Matlow. Calls himself ‘Hex.’ He’s a bit of a shut-in but he’s good at what he does. The deSalvos used him to set up all their cyber-crime stuff, crooked online gambling sites and porn hubs, the whole nine yards.”

  “You mentioned that name before,” said Jack. “Local hoods?”

  Chase nodded. “Your garden-variety scumbags. Nothing to write home about.”

  “And the other one, Roker? He’s connected to them?” Jack watched the other man, considering him. He couldn’t help but wonder how the path of Chase Edmunds’s life had pushed him into the orbit of an organized crime family.

  “He wishes. Mike Roker is small fry trying to make big. Hex does some work for him too, mostly massaging DMV records to make stolen cars seem kosher.”

  “Right. So how is this Hex guy going to help me?”

  Chase turned the steering wheel as the dirt track opened out into a clearing. “You want to make it to Los Angeles under the radar, he’ll have a solution.” He brought the car to a halt. “This is it.”

  Jack pulled a Maglite torch from his bag and stepped out of the vehicle. Keeping one hand close to the pistol in his waistband, he panned the beam of the flashlight around to get his bearings.

  They were standing before the remains of an
abandoned trailer park. A half-dozen mobile homes stood atop crumbling wooden foundations, all of them dark with rain, dirt and disuse. There were no signs of habitation anywhere, nothing that would indicate the presence of another human being in this place. It looked as if it had been this way for years, perhaps even decades.

  He aimed the torch up at the roof of the nearest trailer. There were no visible telephone cables or power lines running from any of the double-wides. It was as if they had been dumped here in two orderly rows and left to slowly rot. A mulch of windblown leaves had gathered at the bases of the trailers.

  “Your man lives here?” Jack frowned.

  “The thing you have to realize about Hex,” said Chase, producing a flashlight of his own, “is that he’s what you might call eccentric.”

  “How do you know him?”

  “He owes me a favor.” The tone of Chase’s answer told Jack that was all he was willing to say for the moment, and so he didn’t press the issue any further.

  Chase took the lead, walking between the dead trailers, counting them off until he reached the fifth one. He pulled at the latch of the door and it came open with a metallic snap. He beckoned Jack and the two men entered.

  Inside, the trailer was devoid of all decoration, furniture and fittings except for a waist-high chest refrigerator that Jack caught in the glow of his torch beam. Chase fumbled at the wall and found a light switch. Over their heads, a fluorescent tube flickered on and drenched the interior space with greenish illumination.

  Jack cast around. The inside of the trailer had been refitted with heavy gray panels, a second interior wall that showed no features other than the seams where each panel had been bonded to the next. He’d seen this kind of thing before; the trailer had been shielded with the same sort of counter-spectrum materials the US military used to hide forward bases in battle zones from the eyes of drones and satellites.

  He squinted past the overhead lamp and saw what appeared to be a camera rig in the far corner. “He’s watching us.”

  “Listening, too,” came a sharp reply, broadcast from a hidden speaker. “Charlie, is that you? I told you never to come here without calling first. And I definitely told you not to bring strangers.”

  Chase gave the camera a wave. “Hey, Hex. Yeah, sorry about that. But I had to move quick, y’know? Didn’t have the time to call.” He nodded to Jack. “This is an old friend of mine. I’ll vouch for him. He’s got a situation that requires your unique skills.”

  “That so?”

  Jack approached the camera. “I need transportation.”

  “Right. And what about you, Charlie?”

  “Just helping out a friend.”

  “Are you? Because that dickhead Big Mike has already been on the line to me, trying to get me to track you down. I told him I couldn’t help. He swore at me a lot.”

  Chase gave a faint smile. “Thanks.”

  “I don’t like him. I don’t like you, either, but I don’t like Roker a lot more.”

  “So, are we going to deal, here?” said Jack.

  There was an overly long pause, and for a moment Jack thought that Hex had decided to dismiss them. But then the voice returned. “Okay. Take any weapons you got—guns, knives, sharp sticks, whatever—and put them in the ice chest. Your cell phones too.”

  Chase opened the refrigerator lid. There was no power going to the chest, but the walls of it were thick enough to trap any outgoing signal. “Hex is a little paranoid,” Chase noted, and did as he had been told.

  “I heard that,” snapped Hex. “Don’t try anything clever. I got two Claymore antipersonnel mines buried in the walls of that trailer. I flick a switch and they’ll turn the pair of you into chunky salsa.”

  “Is that true?” Jack asked in a low voice.

  Chase shrugged. “I wouldn’t test him.”

  Jack frowned and did the same, dropping in his M1911 and Kilner’s doctored cellular next to Chase’s iPhone and Ruger semiautomatic. The lid slammed shut, and in the same moment a slab of the empty trailer’s floor abruptly popped up. As Jack watched, it rose up like an inverted drawbridge, revealing a set of concrete stairs below. The faint odor of cooked food filtered up to them.

  “Come on in,” called Hex from below. “And no funny stuff.”

  * * *

  The hidden hatch came down on them as they reached the foot of the staircase and Chase heard it seal with the thud of heavy bolts. Looking back up, he could see the door was made of thick cast iron, like something he would have expected to find on a World War II submarine.

  Ahead of them, a wide space stretched away. The ceiling was low and lined with industrial lamps, and everywhere he looked Chase could see skeletal metal shelves piled high with every conceivable kind of supplies.

  Jack peered closer at one of the racks, heavy with boxes of canned goods and toilet paper. “Did this guy rip off a supermarket?”

  Elsewhere, there were cartons of US Army–issue combat rations and gallon drums of purified water alongside steel boxes that contained various types of ammunition, filter pods for gas masks and emergency medical kits. Every available inch of space had been converted for storage. They moved forward, into an open area that was a cross between a teenager’s basement apartment and a military bunker. In one corner was a state-of-the-art desktop computer with multiple monitors and a radio setup with an antenna that vanished into the ceiling. Chase realized that the underground space they were in was easily the width of the whole false-front trailer park over their heads.

  “Keep your hands where I can see them,” said Hex. Of below-average height, Hector Matlow was a little too doughy for the heavy-gauge cargo trousers he was wearing, and the hooded camouflage sweatshirt across his shoulders was dirty and unkempt. Once upon a time, he might have had teak-dark skin but his face had the obvious pallor of someone who didn’t see daylight very often. His pug nose wrinkled as he hefted the nickel-plated .38 snub revolver in his right hand. “Don’t try anything,” he insisted. “And don’t touch my stocks. It’s not for you.”

  Chase spread his hands. “We’re not here for your MREs, Hex.”

  Jack moved to one wall where stacks of books lay in orderly rows, above them more shelves containing boxes and boxes of complex war games. A folding table nearby was set up with just such a game in mid-play, an abstract map with a hexagonal grid filled with tiny square counters, each one representing a squad of infantrymen or a tank. “The Battle of Stalingrad, am I right?” asked Jack, meeting Hex’s gaze.

  That got him a nod. “Couple more turns and I’m gonna win it.”

  “Who are you playing against?”

  Hex’s brow furrowed. “Against? I don’t have any opponents.”

  “Okay.” Jack glanced at Chase and gestured at the stockpile around them. “So I guess your friend here is a prepper.”

  “Is that what they call it?” Chase had heard of such people, but never come across someone who had embraced the idea as much as Hex clearly had. Forty years ago, someone like Matlow would have been referred to as a “retreater,” someone who had abandoned a normal lifestyle in order to disconnect from a society they saw as flawed and ultimately doomed. In more recent times, technology had paradoxically made it easier to do so, provided you had the money and the resources.

  “I prefer to think of myself as a survivor,” Hex told him. “Because that’s what I plan on being when the collapse comes.”

  “That’s what you do down here?” said Chase. “I always thought you were … I dunno, growing weed or something. You’re waiting for the end of the world? How’s it going to happen?”

  Hex snorted. “Look, man, when the crunch comes, people won’t be ready. I will, though. I lived in the city for years, I saw how it is. That’s why I sold up, came out here and dropped off the grid. Me, I’m ready for anything. Invasion. Viral pandemic. Financial meltdown. Supervolcano eruption. Anything. I just work for you and your pals to keep the motor ticking over, know what I mean?”

  “You really be
lieve that?” asked Jack. “That the end is coming?”

  The other man nodded emphatically. “Do you watch the news?” He went to a wide-screen TV on the far wall and snapped it on. “How many times has this country taken hits from terrorists, enemy combatants, even our own people? Oh, it’s going to all fall apart, man. The only question is when.” On the screen, a reporter was standing outside the White House as a text ticker along the bottom of the screen scrolled past. Hex shook his head grimly. “Frankly, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already.”

  The volume was down low, but Chase heard the location reporter talking about President Taylor—no, scratch that, former President Taylor—and the shock wave her abrupt resignation had sent through the government. As they watched, the view changed to footage shot earlier that evening, of former Secretary of Defense James Heller arriving with the Taylor administration’s Ethan Kanin for what the anchorwoman called “emergency talks.”

  Chase saw a shadow pass over Jack’s face as he saw Heller, but then a moment later it was gone.

  “I guess I can’t fault your logic,” admitted Jack. “So why don’t we talk about how I can make a generous contribution to your survival fund?”

  * * *

  The drab green Ford Econoline van that the SVR team had been issued was leaving Hell’s Kitchen when the satellite phone chirped, and Ziminova pulled the handset from the cradle. “Yes?”

  “Let me talk to Arkady,” said a strange, toneless voice on the other end of the line. It had the genderless neutrality of someone being masked electronically, but still the Russian agent got the instinctual sense that she was speaking to another woman. The display on the phone showed a garbled string of numbers that shifted and changed, indicating that the incoming call was being bounced across multiple voice-over-Internet-protocol servers, effectively rendering it untraceable.

  Ziminova glanced across at Bazin. “The contractor,” she explained.

  He nodded and tapped his ear, indicating for her to switch on the speaker. “This is Bazin,” he said to the air. “You have had ample time to consider my offer. Will you accept the contract?”