“Is that right?” Jack arched an eyebrow.
The other man shrugged. “Enough to keep the bitches on their feet, the chumps hard at work. Not enough for them to go elsewhere.” He gave a rough chuckle. “Like there’s anywhere else to go, anyhow.”
“How many girls in the stable?” Jack kept his expression neutral, but inwardly his disgust with Sammy was rising by the moment.
“Plenty.” Sammy made a vague, circling motion with his hand. “I lost count.”
“That’s not true,” said Chase. “I’m willing to bet good money you know exactly how many ‘dancers’ you’ve got under this roof, and exactly what you’re using to keep each and every one of them in line.”
Sammy’s eyes flashed, but in the next moment he was grinning. “Charlie here’s a sharp one, ain’t he? Okay, yeah, you got me. I’m kinda like the head cowpoke and this here’s my herd.” He pointed at the monitors. “I rope ’em. If I need to, I brand ’em.”
“You said you had a new load,” Jack pressed.
The other man nodded. “Gonna put them on rotation. Gotta keep the brothers interested, y’know? They like some fresh meat now and then. The girls that have been here a while, if they don’t earn…” He shrugged again. “They get sold on or Lance takes them to the works. I make sure they know that. Keeps them in line.” He leered at Chase.
Jack wondered what “the works” referred to, and filed the name away for future reference. “You keep them here, at the club?”
“What, you want a free sample?” Sammy leaned forward. “Why d’you even care about the girl-flesh? That ain’t your angle. You know how the deal goes, Chicago gets their cut of the product, all the rest of it is our bag.” There was a moment of hesitation in the ex-biker’s words, and Jack could see the questions starting to form in his thoughts. Sammy’s hand drifted away from the knife and toward the telephone on his desk. “I tell you what, I reckon I’ve said enough. Rydell’s busy, but I’ll get Lance down here. You oughta talk to him.”
From the corner of his eye, Jack saw Chase rub his thumb across the side of his nose, like he was scratching an itch. To anyone else, the gesture would have seemed casual, random even, but to Jack it was a warning sign—a secret signal from their time working as undercover operatives. He’s made us.
Jack’s hand shot out and grabbed the knife before Sammy could pick up the phone and brought it down hard, the tip spearing through the middle of the man’s palm, pinning it to the desk.
* * *
The level of ambient noise inside the Crankcase made it hard for Sticks to hear anything other than one word out of every three, so he shoved his way past the men congregating near the door and out into the night. He nodded at Fang as the other biker passed him in the opposite direction, getting a show of the man’s chromed teeth in return.
“You find that bald fool yet?” he hissed, covering his cell phone’s pickup with one hand.
Fang gave a languid shrug. “Brodur does what he does, man. Probably got that little blond hottie in the bushes somewhere, gettin’ back to nature…”
“He needs to keep it in his pants, is what,” Sticks retorted. He fell silent as he heard a sharp voice on the other end of the line.
“This better be good.” Rydell’s tone was deep and harsh.
“Two guys just blew in off the street, boss,” he began. “Outta nowhere. Say they’re from Chicago, come to take a look-see. Like it’s a kinda surprise inspection, or some shit.”
“Are you high?”
“No!” Sticks insisted, although he had smoked a joint a little earlier. “Boss, no. This is on the level.”
“Ah, Sticks,” Rydell shot back, “it most certainly is not on the level, and do you know why?” He didn’t wait for a reply. “Because I was talking on the phone to our associates in the Windy City no more than three hours ago. And you know how those guinea pricks like to think they’re smarter than us farm boys. If they were sending someone down here, they’d be crowing about it.” Rydell paused. “These guys, they look like cops or feds?”
“Nuh.” Sticks shook his head. “I mean, I guess not. Cops don’t have the stones to come sneakin’ in here, anyhow.” The biker turned his head and spat.
“Well, then we got ourselves a question, don’t we?” In the background of the call, Sticks heard a woman cry out and men yelling. Then there was an echoing gunshot, and silence. After a moment, Rydell was back. “I’m dealing with issues out here, bro. Do me a favor, find out who these two jerks are and put ’em on ice. I’ll come deal with it when I got time.”
“You got it.”
“Don’t screw up,” Rydell warned, and cut the call.
* * *
According to FAA regulations, Hadley and his team were supposed to disembark from the Cessna Citation while the jet was being refueled, but the FBI agent had told the airfield coordinator in no uncertain terms that none of them were going anywhere. Through the open hatchway, Kilner could smell the distinctive tang of avgas as a dumpy six-wheel bowser nuzzled at the aircraft’s wing, pumping fresh fuel into the tanks. The ground crew hadn’t objected. The FBI were footing the bill for all the overtime.
Dell and Markinson leaned over a table in the back of the cabin, studying a highway map of the surrounding states. “So far, this Williams guy is coming up blank,” said Dell, running a hand through her hair. “Nothing on the NatCrime database, hasn’t had so much as a speeding ticket. If we could get something more, we might be able to figure out where he could be taking Bauer.”
“Could be he’s just some unlucky stiff Bauer has taken hostage,” offered Markinson. “He’s going to force poor Charlie to drive him somewhere, then…” She mimed a pistol. “Pop, pop. Two in the back of the head.”
“That’s not Bauer’s style.” Kilner frowned.
“Oh, right,” said Markinson, eyeing him. “I forgot. You’re the expert on this guy.” She leaned in. “People change, Jorge. Just because you want him to be a good guy in a bad place doesn’t make it true.”
“You seeing it from Hadley’s side now?” he shot back.
The other agent shrugged. “I’m considering all the angles.”
“Jack Bauer knows Charlie Williams,” said Hadley, approaching them with a sheet of paper in his hand. “That’s the only explanation that fits.”
The paper was a printout of the results of an identity search on Williams as conducted by the New York office. Kilner took it and skimmed the text, noting the face of the man on a scan of his driver’s license. “Says he works for Roker Dealerships Limited, a car sales outlet.”
“Pittsburgh cops are looking into it,” said Hadley. “But what interests me is this.” He tapped the page. “Go back a few years and Charles Williams vanishes. No details before that point. It’s like he just washed up one day from out of nowhere.”
“So,” said Dell, tapping a finger on her lips. “Fake ID, then? New name, new life. Was he one of ours, someone from the Witness Relocation Program?”
Hadley shook his head. “Already checked. WitSec don’t know this guy. No, I’m thinking he might be CIA, or someone from Bauer’s past. Someone we don’t have on our radar.”
“Can we get a line to the Counter Terrorist Unit?” Markinson put her hands on her hips. “Those people worked closely with Bauer over the years. We could apply some pressure…”
“All divisional CTU operations are currently being held in abeyance, pending a full investigation into the Hassan assassination,” Hadley replied. “That order came down directly from Vice President…” He paused, correcting himself. “From President Heyworth.”
“The new guy didn’t waste any time,” noted Dell.
A chime sounded from the fax printer attached to the workstation at the front of the jet’s cabin and Kilner moved to it, taking the still-warm pages as they dropped into the tray. “It’s from the Pittsburgh Bureau of Police. They sent a unit out to Williams’s apartment, but it had already been turned over.”
Markinson’s eyes narr
owed. “Somebody else is looking for this guy too?”
Kilner read on and his frown deepened. “There’s more. A patrol car reported a possible break-in at the Roker dealership, same thing as at the apartment…” When he pulled out the last page, he stopped.
Hadley snatched it out of his hand and grimaced as he read it. “They sent another unit to Roker’s house, the guy Williams was supposed to work for. Preliminary identification of victims: Roker, Michael and Roker, Barbara. Husband and wife, owners of the property. Both dead from gunshot wounds from close range.” He handed the page back to Kilner. “Okay, now we may be tracking two killers, not just one.”
“You don’t know Williams is responsible for that,” said Kilner, but the words came out flat and without force.
“Could be this new guy covering his tracks,” Dell said, thinking aloud. “He’s got something to hide. Fits the profile.”
“What’s the timeline here?” Markinson looked back at the road map. “What are we suggesting? Bauer calls Williams, Williams murders his boss and wife for who knows why, meets up with Bauer and hits the road … and finds time to beat up two idiots along the way? It doesn’t track.”
“The car is registered to the Roker dealership,” said Dell. “This is all connecting up. We just have to work out how.”
“Jack, what are you doing?” Kilner whispered. With every new piece of information, it was getting harder and harder to give their quarry the benefit of the doubt.
A strident tone sounded through the cabin and Hadley pulled his cell phone. “Go for Special Agent Hadley.” He tapped a key so all of them could hear the voice on the other end of the line.
“Tom, it’s Mike Dwyer here. I just got off a call from Liberty Crossing. You want to tell me what this is all about?”
Kilner watched the other agent form his response. Liberty Crossing in McClean, Virginia, was the location of the National Counter Terrorism Center, a cross-agency facility staffed with personnel from all the major US law enforcement and security organizations. The FBI was a key stakeholder in the NCTC, providing staff and intelligence to analyze threats to America on a round-the-clock basis, in tandem with the bureau’s National Security Branch. As a think tank and predictive tool for threat tracking, the center was at the cutting edge. “I reached out to someone I know there, sir. I thought it could help.”
“You went around me. You bypassed this office.”
“I was ordered to use all the means at my disposal to catch Bauer. I figured it would be quicker to go directly to my contact at the center rather than waste time going through proper channels.”
“You decided it was better to seek forgiveness than to ask permission, is that it?”
“Yes, sir.” Hadley didn’t flinch. “I take it they found something?”
Dwyer took a moment before he answered. “They did. A couple of hours ago, a traffic camera captured an image of the car you’re looking for, heading westward off a junction from Interstate 70. According to the NCTC, facial recognition has a sixty percent match on the vehicle’s passenger. It’s Bauer.”
Hadley turned to Dell and jabbed a finger toward the cockpit. “Get in there and tell the pilot I want us airborne and flying west five minutes ago!” Kilner saw a low smile cross his face as he turned back to the phone. “And the driver, sir? It’s the other suspect, Williams?”
“Not exactly,” Dwyer replied. “The driver is a man who is supposed to be dead.” He paused. “Take me off speaker.”
Hadley glanced at the others, then nodded to himself. “Okay.” He tapped the phone and raised it to his ear. Kilner watched him move across the cabin and out of the hatch, stepping onto the runway where he could speak without being overheard. “He broke protocol. Dwyer sounds pissed.”
“So what?” said Markinson. “None of that will matter after Bauer gets what’s coming to him.”
* * *
“Hold for ASAC O’Leary,” said Dwyer, and there was a click in Hadley’s ear as the line switched.
“Sir?” He straightened, waiting for the inevitable tirade.
He didn’t have to wait long. “There’s a difference between acting on your own initiative and abusing your authority,” snarled O’Leary. “If you thought I’d let you get away with anything because my attention is on this Hassan thing, you’re dead wrong.”
“With all due respect, sir—”
“Don’t ever use that phrase with me, Hadley. You don’t respect the chain of command, you never have. I should have known better than to give you Bauer to chase. Now I’m starting to regret my decision.”
“I have good leads. We’re closing in.”
“Which is the only reason you’re not on your way back to Newark right now.” O’Leary blew out a breath. “I guess I shouldn’t be surprised you went to your pal Jacobs at the NCTC. I know all about him. He served under Jason Pillar in the Marines, just like you did.”
“Sal Jacobs is a good agent.”
“That’s debatable. What I know for sure is that Pillar helped him get that job, just like he helped you get yours. Let me ask you, Hadley. What did Pillar tell you? That one day in the future, he’d bring you in to work for him up on the Hill? You think I don’t know that he was setting up his own little network?”
Hadley frowned. “It doesn’t matter now, does it? Pillar’s dead.”
“Yes, he is. So do your damn job. Because if Bauer gets away, you won’t have it for much longer.” O’Leary cut the call.
Behind him, the fuel truck was moving away, and Hadley heard the slow, building whine of the jet’s turbines as they came alive.
14
Sammy released a strangled, agonized sound from the back of his throat that was somewhere between a howl and a sob.
The Bowie knife had gone cleanly through the center of the ex-biker’s right hand and a good half-inch into the surface of his wooden desk. Jack expected him to reflexively grab for the blade’s handle with his other hand, but Sammy spat curses and clutched at something beneath the frame of the desk.
Chase saw it too. “Gun!” He threw himself aside and Jack did the same, as Sammy’s fingers grasped the pistol grip of a concealed sawn-off shotgun. Both barrels went at once, even before the weapon had cleared the spring clips holding it to the underside of the desktop. A hollow discharge of buckshot ripped a chunk out of the chair in front of Sammy and blasted apart the glass cabinet containing the dented fuel tank. Jack heard the clatter and whine of pellets ricocheting off the brick walls.
Sammy reeled back, his chair spinning away, trying to keep his balance while one hand was still nailed in place. He came around with the smoking sawn-off, wielding it like a club, battering Jack about the head.
As Chase picked himself up, fresh red streaks across his cheek where he had taken a near-hit, Jack vaulted across the desk and bodychecked Sammy. He hit with such force that he dislodged the knife and Sammy went back, his ruined hand ripped open and gushing blood. Jack placed two hard, sharp punches into the other man’s throat. Bone and cartilage cracked, and this time Sammy went all the way down—and stayed there.
“Shit…” Chase wiped blood from his face with the back of his hand. “You think they heard that?”
The constant thumping of the strip club’s rock soundtrack hadn’t lessened in all the time they had been there, but Jack wasn’t about to stick around to find out. “So much for undercover,” he muttered.
Chase drew his Ruger and moved to the office door. “What now?”
Jack kicked the sawn-off aside and lowered his head to look at the monitor screens. Out in the bar, it seemed like business as usual. He spotted Sticks gesturing animatedly to another Night Ranger outrider, waving a cell phone around. Jack glanced at the other monitors. “Looks like two, maybe three men upstairs. Let’s do this quick. We need to move before anyone comes looking for our friend here.”
“A diversion is what we need,” Chase replied.
“Yeah.” In a glass-fronted liquor cabinet near the desk were two bottles
of Wild Turkey, and Jack pulled the corks on both, slopping the bourbon all over the piles of papers and across the walls. Sammy had a cigar box on the desk with a gasoline lighter resting on top, and Jack flicked it alight.
“That’s not what I meant,” said Chase, catching on.
“Get ready.” Jack pulled his gun and tossed the lighter back at the desk. The naked flame immediately ignited the spilled alcohol, and a line of bluish flame swept across the wood paneling. The office was top-heavy with flammable items, and it would take only seconds to turn it into a torch. “Go!”
He pressed his hand into the small of Chase’s back, and the other man slipped out into the corridor leading from the bar. Jack pulled the door shut behind him, trapping the fire inside the room.
The corridor led away toward the back of the strip club, past a stand of out-of-order pay phones and doors that opened on to reeking toilet stalls. A wide wooden staircase rose, and Jack indicated it with a nod. “Take point.”
“Got it.” Chase moved quickly, holding his pistol down low. In the dingy interior of the club, their weapons wouldn’t be seen until it was too late.
Jack chanced a look back over his shoulder and for one brief instant he locked gazes with Sticks on the far side of the barroom.
* * *
“You hear that?” Fang rubbed the claw tattoo on the side of his face, eyes narrowing. “I thought I heard somethin’.”
But Sticks was talking, not listening. “Find Marshall and Tyke,” he said, raising his voice to be heard above the buzzy shriek of guitars coming over the Crankcase’s sound system. He prodded Fang in the chest to underline his point. “And get irons too, ’cause we have ourselves a—”
He stopped dead as he caught sight of movement out behind the now-empty dance stage. At the edge of the harsh glow of the spotlights, he saw the two strangers emerging from Sammy’s office. Their movements were quick and furtive, and Sticks immediately feared the worst. If they weren’t cops, then they had to be something worse, he guessed. Perhaps they really were from Chicago, but Mob hitters sent down to Deadline to whack the Night Rangers for some infraction Rydell had made, or maybe guns-for-hire dispatched by any one of a dozen rival MCs. It didn’t matter. They had to be dealt with.
24: Deadline (24 Series) Page 18
