24: Deadline (24 Series)

by James Swallow

Kilner watched the color drain from Margaret’s face. “Whoa. For real?” She blinked. “So the other guy was, what? His victim? His accomplice?”

  “The other guy,” Hadley repeated. “You got a security camera over there. Where’s the recorder it’s attached to?”

  “Ain’t one,” she told him, lowering her voice so no one else would hear her say it. “It’s just for insurance, y’know? A fake.”

  Hadley swallowed an angry reply and walked away a few steps. Kilner frowned. “I’d like you to talk with Deputy Roe. We’re going to need a full statement from you and a description of the other man you saw here tonight.”

  “Is he, like, one of them serial murderers?” Margaret seemed to take a kind of glee from asking the question.

  Before he could frame any kind of answer, he saw Dell enter the diner and beckon them over. Kilner followed Hadley, sensing the frustration in the other FBI agent. So far, the helicopter had given them nothing they didn’t already know and none of the locals canvassed by Sheriff Bray’s deputies had seen hide nor hair of Jack Bauer. The diner was their first real lead, but so far it was proving to be tantalizingly vague.

  Bauer had stopped here to eat and made one, maybe two phone calls. Around half an hour later, another man had arrived and they had talked before leaving together. That was the sum total of information that had been gleaned, and Hadley was pulling at the leash like an angry pit bull, becoming more aggravated with each passing hour at the very real possibility that their quarry would leave them behind.

  But Dell’s expression, her sly grin, made Kilner reevaluate that thought.

  “Tell me you’ve got something that’s worth a damn,” said Hadley.

  “I may well have,” she replied, guiding them back out the doors and into the chilly evening air. “Remember when we arrived there was a police cruiser already here? And paramedics too?”

  Kilner had to admit, he hadn’t registered the latter. “I thought they were here for the canvassing.”

  “Nope,” said Dell. “Local dispatcher got a nine-one-one call around the same time that Todd Billhight phoned in about the helicopter. Turns out a friendly trucker did the good Samaritan act for two chumps who’d taken a beating and got dumped by the highway.”

  “What does that have to do with our fugitive?” said Hadley.

  “Bauer’s BOLO was on the dash of the cruiser sent out to give them a once-over. One of said pair of chumps saw it and opened his mouth about it. The deputy took it upon himself to bring them back here.”

  “Did he now?” Kilner saw the flash of a wintry smile, there and then gone again, on Hadley’s lips. “Show me.”

  In the back of the ambulance were two younger men, and they were very much the worse for wear. One of them, the skinnier of the two, had the beginnings of a nasty black eye and the bigger of them had a leg in a splint and a swollen, reddening throat.

  Hadley flashed his badge at the paramedic standing with them, cutting him off as he tried to say something about needing to get to proper medical attention. He held out his ID to the pair and glared at them. “Special Agent Hadley, Federal Bureau of Investigation.”

  “Oh shit.” The shorter one said the words before he was even aware of it.

  That earned him a hard look from his friend. “Josh!” he rasped. “Shut up.”

  Kilner held up the photo of Bauer. “You know this person?” The way the short one reacted, he knew the man did. “Where did you see him?”

  “Look,” said the man with the busted leg. “I gotta get to a hospital. Can we do this on the way or something?”

  Hadley came over and examined the man’s injury. He made a face. “That looks nasty. Bauer do that to you?”

  “Who?”

  “This man,” said Kilner, showing the picture again.

  “Frank…” began Josh, a pleading tone in his voice.

  Kilner evaluated the situation; he knew bottom-feeders when he saw them. These two guys were at best wannabe mooks who had the misfortune of crossing paths with Jack Bauer and his mystery companion. Maybe they’d mistakenly tried to roll them, or maybe there was more to it. But instinct told him that Josh and Frank here were little more than collaterals, people caught in the wake of Bauer’s escape more than involved in it.

  Hadley seemed to come to the same conclusion. “This man is very dangerous. I need to find him and whoever is with him. Now, you can tell me what you know, or I can drag you both into holding for the next ten hours and you can live with however much those breaks and bruises are hurting. Because no one is going to the hospital unless I say so. Clear?”

  “That’s the guy,” Josh blurted. “He got the drop on—”

  “Shut up!” shouted Frank. “Stop. Talking. Asshole.” He winced at pain from his leg. “Okay. Okay. He’s right, that guy, what’d you call him, Bauer? He’s the one that busted me up.”

  “Why?” said Dell.

  “We were just here for the car,” Frank said between gasps. “Like, a repo.”

  At Hadley’s urging, they described a silver Chrysler 300 with Pennsylvania plates, and Dell stepped away to contact the NY office and get the license running through the database.

  “Who was the driver?” Kilner demanded. “The man Bauer was meeting?”

  “Charlie Williams,” said Josh after a moment. “Car didn’t belong to him, he took it. That’s all,” he insisted. “We were gonna get it back.”

  Frank nodded. “Yeah. So, can we go now?”

  Hadley nodded distractedly and strode away to where Bray was talking to one of his men. “Sheriff? I need those two idiots arrested on suspicion of aiding and abetting a known federal fugitive. I want you to lean on them hard, and get me full statements when you’re done.” He didn’t wait for a reply, and started toward the parked SUV.

  Bray shot Kilner a surprised look and then called after the other agent. “And just what are you gonna be doing?”

  “I have a name and a vehicle. I’m going to find both.”

  * * *

  Chase awoke as a rolling burn spread down his arm along the tracks of his nerves. He gritted his teeth and levered himself up to a sitting position, fingers briefly touching the butt of his Ruger semiautomatic among the pile of his jacket before gripping his scarred wrist. In the semidarkness of the motel room, the web of blemishes and pockmarks around the place where his wrist had been severed were invisible—but Chase knew them intimately, like the streets where he had grown up. Lines of fish-belly-white scarring that would never take on color, never tan in the sun, a reminder that would stay constant for the rest of his life.

  “Jack?” he whispered. The seat by the window was empty and Chase frowned. He was alone in the room, listening hard. Had Jack stepped out for some air? That had to be it.

  The pain alternated between slow, sullen throbs and random jolts that made his arm twitch. It had been a long time since it had hurt this badly, but then it had been a long time since Chase had used his bad hand to throw punches. A pang of self-loathing settled in on him even before he committed to the act of reaching for the pill bottle. With motions that had become almost reflexive muscle memory, Chase popped the plastic cap and dry-swallowed a single tablet. He kneaded the flesh of his arm, as if by doing so he could work in the effects of the painkiller a little quicker.

  Shadows moved by the window. He slipped behind the room’s only easy chair and drew the Ruger, taking aim at the door.

  The latch clicked and the door opened slowly, until it reached the stop where the cupboard was wedged in the way. “It’s me,” said Jack, and he slipped into the room. Chase rose, but he kept the gun at hand as he realized the other man wasn’t alone.

  A woman, her features lost in the dimness. She balked at the sight of the pistol and froze.

  “It’s okay,” Jack told him, and he closed the door, switching on a bedside lamp. “This is Laurel. We’re helping her.”

  Chase gave the woman a look. A little younger than him, she looked strung-out and fearful. Her face was dirty
and scratched, as if she had been knocked down.

  “You said you had something to eat,” she began.

  Jack nodded toward a bag on the dresser—inside were snacks, bottles of water and sodas they had looted from a gas station vending machine back along the highway. Laurel helped herself to a 7 Up and a stale sandwich, demolishing it hungrily.

  “Waifs and strays now?” Chase said irritably. “What the hell, Jack?”

  “This is Chase,” Jack told the girl. “He’s okay.”

  “Not right now,” he shot back. “Who is this?”

  “Laurel,” said the girl. “Laurel Tenn.” Chase noticed how she had positioned herself close to the door in case she need to make a run for it, and by the way she held her jacket close to her, she had something hidden in its folds. A weapon, most likely.

  Jack sighed and went to the sink in the small bathroom cubicle. “Brodur, that biker from before? He was going to kill her.” He ran his hands under the taps, and rivulets of red streamed away down the plug hole.

  “Not for starters,” Laurel added, with a grim look in her eyes.

  Chase’s lips thinned. “So you got in the way.” The blood on Jack’s hands was answer enough as to the thug’s fate.

  “You’d have done the same.” Jack returned and took a bottle of water for himself.

  No, I wouldn’t. Chase wanted to say those words. I wouldn’t put us at risk. But then he realized that all the years in the wilderness after leaving Valencia behind hadn’t hardened him as much as he wanted to believe they had. It actually made him a little angry to see that he was still that same man, deep down. He hadn’t changed, and neither had Jack Bauer. What kind of idiot does that make me? He frowned. “This is a complication.”

  “Hey!” Laurel glared at him, talking around a mouthful of bread. “Don’t speak about me like I’m not in the room!”

  “You’re right,” Jack agreed. “But there wasn’t a good alternative.”

  “Never is.” Chase sat down on the bed and blew out a breath. “Fine. She stays here until we go. Then she’s on her own.”

  “I’m not the only one in trouble,” Laurel insisted. “Trish and the others…” She faltered over the name. “Look, you know what these Night Ranger pricks are doing here, right?”

  “Human trafficking,” said Jack, and Chase’s eyes widened.

  But the woman was shaking her head. “That’s only a part of it. I mean, I heard things … I saw things. But you never believe that kinda crap, do you?” She seemed to deflate. “Not until it’s too late.”

  “Since when are biker gangs involved in the people smuggling game? It’s not their bag.”

  Jack gave Laurel an encouraging nod. “Tell him what you told me.”

  She swallowed the last of the soda. “These guys … recruiters … they go looking all around for folks who are down on their luck. Not just girls. Workers. A lot of them. They offer good money, short-time jobs, out of state. No tax, cash in hand, all quiet.”

  “And you believed that?” said Chase. “You had to know it would be something illegal. At best.”

  “I know!” she retorted. “Everyone on that stinking bus knew that! But when you’re drowning, you take the first rope you’re thrown, right? Right?”

  He gave a reluctant nod. “No argument there.”

  Laurel was silent for a long moment before she spoke again. “But then I got cold feet. I wanted to run, Trish and I tried to run, she got caught…” The woman took a shuddering breath. “They didn’t want me and Trish for just work, though. Some, but not us. And the other girls.”

  “Saw the same pattern in Serbia, years ago,” offered Jack. “Trading in human beings. Modern-day slavery.”

  His words seemed to trip something inside the woman, and Laurel suddenly stood up, her face going pale under the grime on her skin. “I gotta … get clean.” She almost ran into the bathroom, slamming the door shut behind her.

  * * *

  Jack walked over to where Laurel’s jacket had fallen and picked it up, unfolding it. He pulled out Brodur’s revolver, snapped open the chamber to examine the loaded bullets.

  “I can see it,” Chase said, his voice soft. “Right then, when she talked about her friend.”

  “See what?” Jack put the pistol back on top of the jacket and turned to look at the other man.

  “Kim.” Chase gestured at his face. “Around the eyes. And the hair. Don’t pretend you don’t see it too.”

  Jack’s lips thinned. “That’s not why I went out after her.”

  “You sure?”

  He gave his former partner an iron-hard glare. “I’m sure. If you think I’d let anyone get assaulted and murdered twenty feet from where I was sitting, then you’ve forgotten a lot about me, Chase.”

  The other man nodded at the glowing yellow-orange numerals of a digital clock on the bedside table. “If you wanted to kill time, read a book…” He sighed. “So what do we do now? Call the FBI? That’s not gonna work. And we sure as hell can’t take her with us.”

  “I’m considering the options,” said Jack. With exaggerated slowness, he slipped off his jacket and started to remove his shirt. The pain he had experienced in the fight with Brodur was still there, and to his dismay he saw that the bullet wound he had taken during the situation in New York had reopened. “There’s a medical kit in my bag. Pass it here.”

  Chase nodded and found it for him. “Sooner or later, Brodur’s playmates are gonna come looking for their buddy. Then what?”

  Jack peeled off the used dressing and worked at cleaning up the wound. “How long do we have until the cargo train gets here? Six, seven hours?”

  “Something like that.”

  He nodded to himself. “Plenty of time.”

  “For what?”

  “You know me.” Jack gritted his teeth as he rolled out new bandages over his skin. “I like to keep occupied.”

  12

  The argument was loud enough that it could be heard on the stoop of the house, filtering through the ornate door that fronted the expensive colonial-style suburban home. The man halted with his hand reaching for the big brass knocker and listened.

  He could hear two distinct voices. A man, all snarls and growling, and a woman, her pitch high and wheedling. The words were lost to him, but the tone was clear. Husband and wife, he guessed, years of resentment seething between them.

  He banged on the door, and after a moment he saw a shape through the frosted glass panels, moving down the hallway toward him. The husband, who didn’t even halt his tirade as he walked.

  “For crying out loud,” he was saying, “can you just shut your mouth for one damn second? I can’t hear myself think!” The door opened a few inches on a metal security chain, and the husband’s face was revealed. Ruddy complexion, sweaty and irritable. “Yeah?” he demanded. “What do you want?”

  Dimitri Yolkin held up a passable fake of an NYPD detective’s badge. “Mr. Roker?” He didn’t really need to ask. Yolkin had seen a grinning, larger-than-life-size advertising cutout of “Big Mike” Roker inside the car dealership a short while earlier, after he had broken in to investigate the office there. It had been the next step in his search, after finding nothing of note in the sparse apartment rented to one Charles Williams, nothing worth following up but the paperwork that led to the car showroom. From there, Yolkin had found Roker’s home address and now he was here. “I have questions for you.”

  Roker’s deep-set eyes narrowed. “What kinda accent is that? You ain’t no Pittsburgh cop, take a hike.”

  “Who’s that out there?” called a shrill voice from the kitchen.

  Roker glanced away, starting to close the door. “Shut up, it’s nobody—”

  Big Mike, Yolkin reflected, wasn’t really that big at all. With a quick, hard blow, the SVR operative slammed the heel of his hand against the door with such force that the security chain popped out of its latch. The side of the front door clipped Roker across the cheek and he ducked back, shocked by the sudden
flurry of motion.

  Yolkin quickly stepped in over the threshold, drawing a silenced CZ 75 semiautomatic. Roker panicked and fled toward the back of the house, almost slipping on the hallway’s tiled floor. “Barb!” he shouted. “Oh shit, call the police!”

  “What?”

  The wife’s question gave Yolkin enough time to make it into the kitchen on Roker’s heels, and when she saw him she screamed and fumbled for a telephone handset fixed to the wall.

  The Czech-made pistol coughed and the phone exploded into hot fragments of plastic and circuit board, eliciting another scream from the woman. “Your husband told you to be quiet,” said the Russian, offering the muzzle of the gun to the two Americans. “That is good advice.”

  The kitchen was large, almost half the size of the entire apartment in Kiev where Yolkin and his family had lived when he was a youth. In the middle was an island table topped by expensive marble and festooned with various electrical cooking gadgets. He pointed at two stools and gestured for Roker and his wife to sit down.

  “Did Ernie deSalvo send you?” asked the woman. “Oh, Mike, you stupid shithead, you pissed him off one time too many…” Tears began to stream down her face.

  For a second, Roker forgot he had a gun aimed at him. “You gotta blame me for everything!”

  “I do not know who this ‘Ernie’ is,” Yolkin corrected. He shrugged. “I do not care.”

  “Then what the hell are you doing here?” Roker shouted.

  “Calm down.” Yolkin moved to a position where he could see all entrances to the kitchen and keep the happy couple in his sights. “Charles Williams. Where is he?”

  “Charlie?” The wife blinked. “You come looking for Charlie? He ain’t here!”

  “Oh yeah.” Roker shifted in his chair and tapped his collar. “I see them tats you got. I get it now. You’re with the Russkie Mob, right?” He managed a weak smile, his confidence returning. “He owe you money or something?”

  “Something,” Yolkin repeated, content to let the American continue with his mistaken assumption. “He works for you.”

  “Not anymore,” Roker spat. “I fired the prick tonight. He stole my damn car!”