24: Deadline (24 Series)

by James Swallow

  * * *

  The transition from running to being flat on his back seemed to happen instantly. Jack felt the impact in his torso like the kick from a bull, and now as he tried to right himself, pain erupted across his chest in a wash of fire. His lungs were filled with knives as he struggled to take a breath, tasting iron in his mouth. The MP5/10 was gone.

  Digging deep, Jack found the energy to roll onto his side. He could smell the hot odor of burned plastic from the bulletproof vest under his jacket, where the kinetic energy of the big bullet had been translated into heat as it flattened itself against the armor.

  Rydell was stalking toward him, leaving a trail of crimson as he crossed the floor. The biker’s allies were either dead or dying. It was just the two of them now.

  “Shoulda stayed out of my business, asshole!” shouted Rydell, raising the Desert Eagle.

  Through the pain, Jack couldn’t manage an answer. His fingers snaked around the grip of the semiautomatic in his belt and he let the gun speak for him instead. Before Rydell could react, Jack fired low from where he lay half-prone, and struck the other man with two shots that tore through his shin bones.

  Rydell bellowed in pain and buckled, coming down hard against the concrete floor. He stopped himself from falling all the way, jamming the Desert Eagle into the ground as a prop to support his weight.

  Another man might have given up and let himself drop, but the biker didn’t have it in him to quit, even if there was no other option. Rydell spat hate at Jack and lurched back, swinging his arm up to let off the last round in his magazine.

  Jack fired again before Rydell’s finger could tighten on the trigger. The single shot went through the middle of the biker’s jawbone and blasted a mess of dark fluids out across the blood-streaked floor. Rydell’s body sagged under its own weight and fell forward.

  * * *

  It took an age for Jack to get back to his feet, and with every action aching, every move sending jolts of pain all through him, he reached up and pulled at the tabs holding the heavy armor across his chest. The constricting bulletproof vest fell from his shoulders and he felt like he could breathe again, even though it was still an effort to suck in air without flinching from the pain. He looked up, his gaze crossing the dark rafters overhead, then away.

  “Jack…” called a voice. He ignored it.

  Holstering his pistol, Jack limped toward the van, halting just short of it to drop into a crouch next to Chase’s body. A turbulent mix of emotions swelled up inside him as he reached for the dead man. Gently, he brushed his fingers over his friend’s face and closed his eyes.

  “I’m sorry,” he managed, the words coming out low and broken. I never wanted this for him. Jack’s sorrow echoed in his thoughts. I needed his help and he never questioned it.

  And look what it cost him. Nina’s ghost was there once more, and if he closed his eyes, Jack knew he would see her standing there, silently accusing him. More death, more revenge … Is it ever going to be enough?

  What happens when you have no one left, Jack?

  “Jack, watch out!” Belatedly, he realized Laurel was calling out his name.

  “Bauer!” A shadow fell over him and he looked up into Hadley’s eyes. The FBI agent had his weapon drawn and aimed at his head.

  * * *

  With the melee over, the mess of the gunfight was no longer an issue, and the contractor could concentrate on the endgame. There had been a moment when it seemed as if the biker would make the assignment a moot issue, but Bauer had dealt with the criminal in short order. Even wounded, he was still a lethal adversary, and never one to take lightly.

  The face behind the sniper scope split in a smile. Experience had proved that point on more than one occasion. Slowly, so as to move in total silence and ensure no one below was alerted, the contractor eased up the handle and opened the rifle’s well-oiled bolt, revealing an empty chamber. Gloved fingers felt for and retrieved a single hand-loaded .308 Winchester cartridge from a vest pocket. Like every round the contractor fired, this one had been prepared individually—bullet head, powder, case and primer, all made ready to the exacting standards of a professional killer.

  The cartridge dropped into the chamber and the bolt was locked. Leaning into the rifle, the contractor’s index finger settled lightly on the knurled trigger. A breath was taken, half-released, held.

  * * *

  Jack rose slowly to his feet, holding his hands out to his sides. “You get what you came for?” he asked.

  “How are you still breathing?” Hadley asked, his eyes narrowing. “What gives you the right to survive, Bauer? Good men perish all around you, but you sail on, untouched.”

  Jack’s gaze dropped. “Not a day goes by that I don’t ask myself that question.”

  “Did you kill Jason Pillar?” spat the agent. “Did you make it happen?” He didn’t wait for a reply, and Jack knew that no matter what answer he gave, it would be the wrong one. “I know about you and what you did to Charles Logan! I know exactly what you are, Bauer! This country is on the verge of war because of what you have done! Men like you, you’re not fit to walk the streets with normal people. You’re a weapon. A menace.” He shook his head. “Terrorists, criminals like these bottom-feeders…” Hadley indicated the corpses of the bikers. “You’re more of a risk to this country than any of them!”

  “He saved our lives…” managed Trish, hanging back with Laurel and the others. “He came back for us.”

  “Get out of here,” Hadley warned them. “Go!” His shout was enough to make them run for the doors, but Laurel remained, frozen to the spot and unable to look away.

  Jack held up his hands, wrist to wrist. “Are you going to arrest me, Agent Hadley? That is what you’re here for, right?”

  Hadley snarled and took aim, pointing the muzzle of his gun at Jack’s forehead. “It’s too late for that. Somebody has to put an end to you.”

  “Hadley, stop!” Behind him, Kilner drew his own weapon. “I can’t let you do this. Stand down, now!”

  “He won’t,” Jack told the other agent. “He can’t go back with me alive to talk. Dead, he gets to make up whatever the hell story he wants. Isn’t that right?” He let his hands drop. “So do it, then. Shoot me.” Jack made a pistol-to-the-head gesture with his fingers. “Put me out of your misery.”

  * * *

  What happened next was so fast, when he looked back on it over the days that followed, Kilner would find it hard to break it down into individual moments.

  Bauer turned his back and took a step, as if he was going to gather up the body of his friend, Edmunds.

  Hadley shouted for him to turn around, and the senior agent’s last fraction of reserve broke.

  Kilner surged forward and grabbed Hadley’s arm, pulling him aside, struggling to stop the man before he could cross a line there would be no coming back from.

  And then they all heard the crash of a single gunshot, from high up in the rafters of the tumbledown building. They saw Bauer twist sharply, jerked around like a marionette, and then collapse against the side of the van. A bloom of fresh, bright blood grew on his chest. The woman, Laurel, screamed.

  Shocked rigid, Kilner watched the light go out in Bauer’s eyes as he crashed to the ground. “Shooter!” he shouted, aiming out into the shadows. Had they missed one of the Night Rangers hiding in the darkness, waiting for the opportunity to open up on them all?

  But a second shot did not follow the first, and then there was a hissing sound as a black cable descended from above them. Laurel ran to Jack’s fallen body, and as Kilner watched, a figure in tactical gear came down the cable with almost balletic ease, the spindly form of a sniper rifle across their back.

  He knew the shooter was a woman before the hood fell back from her head; the figure was too lithe and balanced for a male. Kilner saw a pale, hawkish face framed by short black hair. In one hand she held a silenced P99 pistol, and with the other she drew the sniper rifle around to aim it from the hip.

 
“Get away from him,” she told Laurel. The accent was American, but Kilner couldn’t be certain if it was learned or natural. The inflection seemed off. “You’re not on my list, but that will change if you get in my way. Anyone moves, they die.” Hadley shifted and she pointed the pistol at him. “Was I unclear?”

  “Who are you?” Hadley spat. “You shot him…”

  “Call me Mandy. That’s as good a name as any. And yes, I did just kill Jack Bauer.” She moved to the fallen man and gave him a once-over. “Isn’t that what you wanted?”

  Kilner hesitated, aware that the woman had the rifle trained on him. “You’re not one of Rydell’s people…”

  She smiled thinly. “No. I’m a little out of their price range.” She looked at Laurel. “You. Pick up his body and put it in the back of the van.”

  Warily, the woman did as she was told, dragging Bauer up. Tears streaked her face. “You bitch.”

  “I’ve heard that alias before,” Hadley said quietly. “The Heller kidnapping. The Palmer assassination. You’re wanted in connection with both those crimes. You’re a contract killer.”

  “Still talking about those, huh?” Mandy pursed her lips. “It’s just business, understand? Don’t interfere and you won’t get hurt.”

  And now it came to Kilner in a rush. “At the field office … there was chatter from the Secret Service about the Russians having their own beef with Jack … Did they send you?”

  “Does it matter?” Mandy walked around to the front of the van and tossed the rifle inside. “You wanted Bauer gone … he’s gone.” She opened the driver’s-side door. “My employers want proof, though. Don’t do anything as stupid as trying to follow me.” The van’s engine rattled into life, and the vehicle slewed around before bouncing out through the wrecked doors and into the rainy night.

  Hadley jogged after it, falling short as Kilner came up beside him. Markinson came running. “Is it over?” she asked. “I saw Bauer…”

  “It’s over now.” Kilner’s jaw hardened and he holstered his gun, reaching instead for his handcuffs. He grabbed Hadley’s wrist before the other agent could react, and hooked the metal loop around it. “Thomas Hadley,” he said, his tone firm. “I’m relieving you of operational command of this assignment. You’re under arrest pending a full investigation into your actions tonight.”

  “You can’t…” Hadley’s denial seemed weak; it was as if all the man’s energy had suddenly been drained from him. He’s lost, Kilner thought, and he knows it.

  “You’re done,” said Kilner. “Markinson, take his badge and his sidearm.”

  The woman nodded and disarmed Hadley. “Shit. What a mess.”

  Kilner looked back and saw Laurel and the other women gathered at the door of the bus. Their expressions were a mix of grief and elation, but there was hope there too, for the first time.

  “Yeah,” he agreed.

  20

  Out beyond the Deadline town limits, the railroad came off a wide, long curve into the beginning of a straightaway that fell like an arrow across the countryside. It vanished into the western horizon, lost in the low clouds and the sheeting rain that was now coming down hard and constant.

  The rails dropped through a cutting, slicing their way through a low rise. A skinny metal bridge made of dull iron, big enough to carry a cluster of power cables over the line but little else, glittered wetly in the night as the van’s headlights caught it.

  Mandy brought the vehicle to a skidding halt on the dirt track road that paralleled the rails and turned to look over her shoulder. Bauer lay there in the back of the van, his face pale and lifeless, his shirt a wet, blood-sodden mess.

  How many people wanted this man dead? The question played on her mind. Some said you could measure the caliber of a person by the number of enemies they had, and if that was true, then Jack Bauer’s worth had to be high indeed. The Serbians, the Chinese, the Russians, the cartels in South America, who knew how many different radical extremist groups both here in the West and in the Middle East … They all prayed for his ending, for revenge on him. And now, she could give them exactly what they wanted.

  Mandy pulled back the cuff of her glove and looked down at her wristwatch, seeing the glowing green numerals there. Miles distant but coming closer, the distant moan of a train horn sounded. She scrambled out of the van and recovered a large waterproof kit bag she had secreted earlier at the foot of the cable bridge’s main support. The trail bike Mandy had used to get here was still where she had left it, hidden under a few loose branches.

  She took the bag back to the van, hauled open the cargo door, and dumped it on the deck. Mandy fished a TerreStar satellite smartphone from among the gear inside and set about taking photographs of Bauer. She got shots of his face, his chest. The white blaze of the phone’s camera flash lit up the darkness.

  Selecting the best images, she tapped a number into the device and hit the “send” key. The phone gave a melodic chime, and with that, it was done. Mandy looked at her watch again. Ten minutes, give or take, and her fee would materialize in the Cayman Islands trust account.

  She took a small black plastic case from the bag and opened the lid. Puffs of dry-ice vapor billowed out. Inside, a preloaded jet syringe sat on a cooler cradle, and she picked up the device, feeling the chill of it through her leather gloves. Mandy weighed the injector in her hand, considering the import of what it represented.

  It would be easy to wait. Time had almost run out. She could just stand here and do nothing.

  The reduced-velocity bullet Mandy shot into Bauer’s chest had penetrated the upper layers of his flesh, but did not enter his body cavity or do any serious organ damage. The tiny measure of synthetic tetrodotoxin that had been contained in the bullet head was just enough to simulate the appearance of death. Cultured from puffer fish venom, the TTX neurotoxin analogue could kill instantly with a large enough dose … but even a small amount would be fatal if it was left to work unchecked. The compound in the injector was capable of neutralizing the compound. If she wanted it to.

  For the second time that night, Mandy held Jack Bauer’s life in her hands. She liked the feel of it.

  But then she smiled to herself, and pressed the syringe to his carotid artery. It hissed like a snake, discharging its drug load into his bloodstream.

  For long seconds, Bauer didn’t move, and Mandy wondered if her timing had been off, but then he was suddenly twitching, coughing, his arms and legs curling inward as pain wracked his body. He rolled over and vomited up thin, watery bile, gasping for air.

  “Welcome back, Jack.” Mandy replaced the injector back in the case and started gathering up her gear.

  “Where…?” he managed.

  “Outside Deadline,” she explained. “Exactly where you wanted.”

  “Good.” Color began to return to his face, and Mandy watched him systematically check himself over. He came upon the shallow wound in his chest where the frangible bullet had struck and shot her a look.

  Mandy handed him a small first-aid kit. “You said there would be two of you. What happened to the other man?”

  Jack looked away, wincing as he cleaned the wound and patched the fresh injury. “Chase … He didn’t make it.”

  She picked up her rifle and strapped it to side of the gear bag. “The fee remains the same.”

  “You’ll get your money,” he grated.

  “I know I will.” Mandy smiled. “Because you’re a man of your word, Jack. That’s why I’m here.” She hefted the bag and stepped away. “I’ve got to say, though … you’re the last person I ever thought would hire me for a job.”

  Bauer gave a weary nod. “I’m low on friends right now. You were the smart choice.” He drew his gun and checked it. “But don’t think that makes us allies. You’re an assassin, a mercenary, and if I had my way, you’d be behind bars paying for your crimes.”

  She cocked her head. “You wouldn’t have gotten to Habib Marwan if it wasn’t for me. You haven’t forgotten that, have you, Jac
k? I helped CTU stop a dozen nuclear meltdowns all across this country.” Mandy smirked. “The president pardoned me. I guess it’s too much to expect that you could forgive me as well.”

  “You’d have let Marwan’s plan go ahead if we hadn’t caught you, if it was to your advantage. Don’t pretend you gave him up out of any kind of conscience.” Unsteadily, Jack got to his feet and climbed out of the van.

  “True enough.” She shrugged. “As much fun as it is to talk about old times, this is still a business transaction.” Mandy offered him the smartphone. “I did what you asked. I killed you in front of a handful of witnesses, agents of the FBI, even. You’re a dead man again, Jack, as requested. Now pay up.”

  He made no move. “The Russians gave you the same job, didn’t they? When did the SVR contact you? Was it before or after I called you from the diner?”

  Her smile returned. “Still as sharp as ever, aren’t you?” Mandy nodded. “You’re right. They knew I was on the East Coast. They knew you and I had history. I took the assignment. Their money is as good as yours…” She eyed him. “Although I’m guessing that whatever secret bug-out fund you’re using doesn’t go as deep as Moscow’s cash reserves do. After all, you’re just one guy.”

  “Is that your play?” He still had his pistol in his hand. “I pay you to pull me out from under, then you kill me anyway and take the bounty from the Russians as well.”

  When Mandy turned back she had her Walther drawn. “Jack.” She said his name in a chiding tone. “I’ve already claimed the price they put on your head.” She held up the phone, showing the photos of his “corpse.” “So let’s behave like professionals here. I already killed you once tonight. You want me to make it twice?”

  Jack’s gun didn’t waver. “Why were you on the East Coast?”

  The question caught her off guard. “What?”

  He pulled back the hammer on the pistol. “Were you in New York?”

  She saw where his reasoning was going and shook her head. “If you’re asking if I had anything to do with the plot against Omar Hassan, the answer is no.” She shook her head. “I turned down that particular job. Too many variables.”