24 Declassified: Collateral Damage 2d-8

by Marc A. Cerasini

  He stood beside a lanky, thirty-something technician with a receding hairline and nervously blinking eyes partially obscured behind small, round glasses.

  Jack extended his hand. “Peter Randall? I’m Jack Bauer.

  Have you retrieved the memory cache of Deputy Director Foy’s call?”

  Randall nodded. “I have, sir, but the call lasted less than two minutes, so triangulation will be difficult, even if we can isolate her digital trace inside the phone company’s transmitters.”

  “You have signature protocols, correct?” Morris asked.

  “Of course. Each member of this unit has intelli-signatures unique to them embedded in their cell phones.”

  Jack knew the answer to the next question, but asked anyway. “Have you tried to locate Foy using the GPS chip in her cell?”

  The comm tech frowned. “She deactivated it, sir. I can’t imagine why.”

  “I can.” Jack glanced at Layla. “She didn’t want CTU to know where she was.”

  “I think I’ve got something,” said Morris.

  Jack peered over his shoulder, at the high-definition monitor. Morris tapped a few keys and a map of New Jersey appeared, the telecommunications grid superim-posed over it.

  “Deputy Director Foy’s call came through a forwarding station in this little town here.” Morris tapped the screen.

  “Pissant. Pissant, New Jersey.”

  Peter Randall cleared his throat. “That’s Passaic, O’Brian.

  Passaic, New Jersey. It’s an American Indian word.”

  Morris squinted theatrically. “I must be going goggle-eyed. I swear it says Pissant.”

  “Get on with it, Morris,” Jack said tightly.

  “Anyway, from the forwarding station in Passaic, I traced the signal back to communications grid A — NE 8804.

  That’s right here—” Morris tapped the screen again.

  “Newark,” Jack whispered. He faced Layla.

  “Retrieve the patient admission records from all the hospitals around Newark, see if anyone fitting Agent Foy’s description has been treated in the past hour. Contact the Newark Police Department and the city morgue, too…”

  “On it,” Layla said, punching keys.

  Jack laid a hand on Morris’s shoulder. “I’m leaving for an hour, to check on that other matter,” he said quietly.

  “The one that delayed us this morning.”

  “Bugger,” Morris murmured. “Don’t you want backup?”

  Jack shook his head. “Not from this office. You and Tony hold down the fort until I get back. I’ll be in touch if I run into problems.”

  Morris frowned. “Careful, Jack. I understand New York can be a very rough town.”

  9:39:20 A.M. EDT

  CTU Headquarters, NYC

  “Agent Almeida? I have the system schematics that you requested.”

  Tony nodded, his gaze fixed on the monitor. “Yeah, thanks,” he muttered. “Put them on the desk.”

  “Agent Almeida?”

  It took a moment for the voice to penetrate his concentration. Finally, Tony looked up, to find a young woman with dark, curly hair and wide, oval eyes standing over him. She offered Tony a nervous smile.

  “I just wanted to say… if you need anything… anything at all, I’ll be in the next cubicle.” She pointed to her workstation with a thumb over her shoulder. “My name’s Delgado, Rachel Delgado. Like I said, call me. If you need me.”

  The woman wore black slacks and platform shoes. Her tight, white blouse had a low neckline, showing more than ample cleavage. Tony shifted uncomfortably in his chair.

  “Ah… thanks.”

  As she walked away, Tony watched her swaying hips—

  until Rachel Delgado glanced over her shoulder and caught him peeking.

  Tony quickly shifted his gaze — then the computer beeped, and it was back to work. He grabbed the schematics that Ms. Delgado had brought him and looked them over. In a few minutes, he’d isolated the problem, which turned out to be a glitch with the physical system and not a software issue.

  Tony stood, hung his jacket over the back of the desk chair, along with his shoulder holster and the Glock inside it. Then he rolled up his sleeves and used a screwdriver from the console kit to open the access panel behind the computer.

  The guts of the system revealed, Tony began to physically reroute the entire network through a different set of servers by reconnecting several dozen ports to ultrahigh bandwidth links.

  9:49:55 A.M. EDT

  Mulberry Street

  After a short cab ride, Jack Bauer exited the taxi on the corner of Canal and Mulberry. At the teeming intersection, he considered his next move.

  It was clear to Jack that someone at CTU New York had tipped off De Salvo and his crew. They knew about Jack’s arrival in the city, and enough of his schedule to set up an ambush in the middle of Hudson Street in broad daylight.

  Or did the leak originate somewhere else, out of the Tacoma office, perhaps? Jack decided to have a long talk with George Mason after this was over.

  Angelo De Salvo had harbored a deep grudge against Jack — for good reason. Jack had led the siege in L.A. that had ended with the deaths of De Salvo’s father and two brothers.

  Angelo hadn’t been with his family during that take-down, but he was a career criminal with a long rap sheet.

  He was also a hunted man, and according to O’Brian’s research, De Salvo’s alias — Angel Salinas — never had more than nine hundred dollars in his bank account. So there was no way he could have paid for the services of professional hit men.

  So who had helped him mount this morning’s ambush?

  De Salvo was dead now, but whoever had helped him was still very much alive. Jack intended to find the source of the payoff money. He would start with the dead man’s employer, Fredo Mangella.

  Jack walked down Mulberry Street, the main drag of New York’s shrunken Little Italy. The street was narrow but clean and colorful, with century-old brick buildings of six and eight stories, housing Italian restaurants, cafés, and gourmet pastry shops at street level. There were iron streetlamps and sidewalk tables with Campari umbrellas, but few tourists were around at this hour of the morning.

  Most of the pedestrians were Asian, heading toward the streets around Mulberry, which belonged to Chinatown, a large area of Lower Manhattan that had grown even larger over the years with the influx of Asian immigrants, reduc-ing Little Italy to no more than a few blocks.

  Morris had provided an exact address for Mangella’s chic new eatery, but Jack found the place difficult to miss.

  Volaré sat halfway down Mulberry, inside an old building that obviously had been gutted and reconstructed with a two-story-high facade of glass framed by gleaming chrome.

  The restaurant wasn’t open, but Jack spotted a tall man entering through the front door. He wore sunglasses and a dark suit, had a pallid complexion, and wore his white-blond hair long, just past his shoulders.

  Jack watched the place a few more minutes from across the street. Then he moved to enter the restaurant.

  Volaré’s interior was large and airy, with a ceiling high enough for an authentic Italian racing plane from the 1930s to be suspended above the perfectly placed tables.

  On the ground floor, double doors to the kitchen were set in a shiny chrome wall beside an Art Deco chrome-plated bar. Jack spied an upper balcony with silver rails and a spiral staircase that flowed down to the main dining area.

  There were no tables on the balcony, only a single door at the end of it.

  For a moment no one appeared. Then a smiling woman exited the kitchen. “How can I help you?” she asked.

  Elegant and waiflike, the thirty-something woman spoke with an unidentifiable European accent.

  Jack forced a smile. “My name’s Jack Bello, of Gardenia Cheese in Vermont. I was wondering if I could speak with Mr. Mangella about sampling our excellent product?”

  For the briefest second the woman glanced at the door on t
he balcony. “I’m afraid Mr. Mangella is quite busy.

  Perhaps—”

  “I’m only in town for the day, and I just need a moment of his time,” Jack insisted.

  The woman’s smile faded, but she relented. “I’ll see what I can do. Wait here, Mr. Bello.”

  She turned on her heels and walked through the kitchen doors. Jack immediately moved through the dining room and ascended the spiral staircase. He crossed the narrow balcony and paused at the door. Carefully he tried the knob, but it was locked. Then Jack pressed his ear against the door. He heard voices inside.

  “The changeover has been made,” a man said. “I’m catching a noon flight to Milan, out of JFK.”

  Jack strained to hear the other speaker’s reply, but the second voice was so soft and raspy, he couldn’t make out the words.

  “Don’t worry,” the first man said. “I’ll stay in Europe indefinitely. My assets here will lose their value after this, so I don’t anticipate returning—”

  A harsh cry rose from the dining room. “Hey, what the hell are you doing up there?”

  Jack looked down and saw the bald man with gold teeth, the one in the cab who’d tried to murder him this morning.

  The urge to shoot him was strong, but Jack had to play it smart. He was here for information, not revenge. So he tamped down his rage.

  But the cold play was blown anyway. Gold Teeth recognized Jack, too.

  “Dominick! Petey! We’ve got trouble,” he cried, reaching for the police special tucked in his belt.

  Jack quickly turned and slammed his shoulder against the locked door. It broke inward, and he stumbled across the threshold into a tiny office with a cherrywood desk and Tiffany lamps.

  Jack scanned the room for an escape route. There were no windows, only another door on an adjacent wall. Standing by that door was the pale man with the white-blond hair and the dark suit — the man Jack had spotted entering the restaurant a few minutes ago. His sunglasses were gone now; his strangely pinkish eyes blinked in surprise.

  Behind an open laptop, an extremely portly man struggled to his feet, face flushed with outrage. “Who the hell are you?” he demanded.

  Jack shifted his gaze to Fredo Mangella behind the desk. “My name is Jack Bauer. I’m an agent in the Counter Terrorist Unit. I need to speak with you—”

  Jack heard clanging footsteps, as several men surged up the spiral staircase. He leveled his Glock at Mangella.

  “Call your men off,” he demanded. “I’m not here to arrest you. I just want to ask you some questions.”

  Fredo Mangella remained silent, considering Jack’s words. There was slight movement, a drawer opening.

  Then a weapon appeared in the fat man’s hand.

  Jack shot Fredo Mangella twice in the chest. As the restaurateur dropped back into his chair, the standing white-haired man pulled a.45 and aimed it at Jack.

  Before he could fire, the door next to him opened, striking the Albino’s arm. His.45’s barrel dropped as the woman who’d greeted Jack appeared. She stepped forward, preventing Jack from getting a clean shot, then screamed when she saw the guns, screamed louder when she saw Mangella’s corpse flopped in the chair.

  Jack heard the shouting voices of Mangella’s men. He slammed the broken door shut with a spinning kick, then pressed his back against the wall next to it.

  “Don’t move,” he cried, trying again to draw a bead on the Albino.

  But Jack couldn’t shoot. The pale man had curled his long arm around the woman’s throat and was using her as a shield.

  “Pull the trigger and she dies,” he rasped, his.45 back up. “Throw your weapon onto the desk and step away from the door or you’ll die, and then she dies.”

  Looking into the Albino’s ghostly eyes, Jack knew the man wasn’t bluffing. He tossed his Glock on the desk beside the laptop and raised his hands.

  4. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10:00 A.M. AND 11:00 A.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME

  10:00:06 A.M. EDT

  Rural Route 12

  Hunterdon County, New Jersey

  “Hang back, Leight, I don’t want them making us.”

  For ninety minutes now, FBI Agent Jason Emmerick had been driving across the Jersey countryside, his twenty-six-year-old partner, Douglas Leight, at the wheel of their white Saturn.

  “We’ve been following this Hummer since it left the airport,” complained Leight after they hit another bone-jarring bump. “If they didn’t make us, they’re blind.”

  They were off the highway now, surrounded by trees and plowed fields, wooden fences and cows. The rural road was narrow and dusty and in disrepair.

  “It may not matter, either way,” Emmerick said. An African American in his late forties with a lean, strong build, Emmerick was clad in pressed khakis and an Izod shirt, a navy-blue blazer over it. He reached into the blazer, his hand brushing the butt of his weapon as he pulled out a pack of Juicy Fruit. “Now that their precious package has arrived from Montreal, I don’t think these guys will be changing plans.”

  “Well, they must know we’re tailing them,” said Leight, his sandy eyebrows knitting beneath his light brown crew cut. “And I think they’re leading us on a wild-goose chase.”

  “They may know we’re tailing them, but they’ve got a destination. This is the way to Kurmastan,” Emmerick replied, shaking out a stick of gum and unwrapping it. “And if this Hummer isn’t going there, it may take us to someplace new, which means it’s someplace we should know about.”

  “Yeah,” Leight grunted. “Like the Slurpee counter at the 7-Eleven.”

  “Okay, so they stopped at a convenience store,” Emmerick snapped the stale stick of gum and popped it into his mouth. “Get over it. Everybody’s got to take a piss sooner or later. Even terrorists.”

  Leight gripped the steering wheel. “I just wish I’d had the chance to grab a hot dog. I haven’t eaten since last night.

  Good food, too — Val’s a great cook. You should take me up on my invite, come on over for dinner some night.”

  “You two are getting married next month, aren’t you?”

  “Right, but it’s the honeymoon I’m looking forward too.” Leight grinned. “You’re invited. Remember?”

  “To the honeymoon?”

  Leight smirked. “You wish. You got the invitation, didn’t you?”

  “I don’t know. I’ll check with Bettina. She’s got her hands full lately. Our au pair went back to Ireland, and now she’s trying to take care of the twins and her keep her freelance business going. And, by the way, for future reference, the

  ‘terrible twos’ aren’t a myth. Want some gum?” Emmerick held out the pack.

  Leight took a stick. “So this guy we’re tailing. You said his name’s Amadani. But you didn’t know it was him we were waiting for, right?”

  “Right.”

  “Yet you recognized him?”

  Emmerick nodded. The second he saw Amadani at bag-gage claim — five-eleven male, late forties, gray hair, scar on his left cheek — he’d ID’d him.

  “You mentioned an alias, too,” said Leight.

  “Yeah,” said Emmerick. “Amadani’s an Afghani who fought the Soviets as a boy. That’s where he got his nick-name—‘the Hawk.’ A few years back, he was convicted for selling a million dollars’ worth of black market ciga-rettes with phony tax stamps out of a warehouse in Wayne, New Jersey. He hooked up with our boys in Kurmastan during his prison term. After he was paroled, he skipped the country. Since then, he’s turned up in Madrid, Hamburg, London. And every time he appears, a terror attack follows inside of a week.”

  Leight’s eyebrows rose. “And you know all that how?”

  “Because I busted him, just like half the other punks in Kurmastan. You’ve only been my partner for what, eight months? I had a whole life before I took on your sorry rookie ass.”

  Leight cracked the window, spit out his gum. “Forgot,”

  he said. “I don’t like Juicy Fruit.” He glanced
at Emmerick. “Those guys in Kurmastan, they really bother you, don’t they?”

  “Sure,” said Emmerick. “You’re talking about a whole town full of felons, guys I spent the past twenty years trying to lock up. Now they’re free again and up to no damned good.” He shook his head. “It’s pushing the same rock up the same hill all over again.”

  Leight snorted. “Don’t get your underwear bunched, Sisyphus. We’ll lock them up again, maybe forever this time.”

  Emmerick peered through the dust-flecked window.

  “Watch. He’s turning again.”

  “Great. This road looks worse than the last one.”

  “Lay back, but don’t lose him.”

  “I’ll try, but it’s too bad the packages separated into two Hummers. It would have been better if Foy could have come with us. We could have traded off. It would have been harder for them to make us.”

  Emmerick didn’t reply. Back at the airport, he hadn’t been able to ID the man who’d been traveling with the Hawk, and that bothered him. Fortunately CTU Agent Judith Foy was there to tail the unknown man, while he and Leight had stayed with the Hawk.

  Up ahead, the black Hummer made its turn and suddenly sped up, trailing a cloud of dust. Doug Leight hit the gas, swerved the Saturn onto a narrow road.

  Emmerick held on. The road was so pitted, it rattled the fillings in his mouth. He looked ahead; the Hummer crested a low hill between two rows of trees, and vanished from sight.

  “Hurry. Don’t lose him.”

  The Saturn crested the hill a moment later — and Emmerick saw the Hummer. The huge vehicle had come to a dead stop. It sat in the middle of the road, just over the rise.

  “Holy shit!” Doug Leight cried, slamming on the brakes.

  The Saturn skidded to a halt, not six inches from the Hummer’s rear bumper. The billowing cloud of dust that trailed the Saturn rolled over it. When it settled, Emmerick saw a large, brown van had pulled up behind them. He glanced at the trees bordering the road on both sides — no escape there.

  “We’re boxed in,” he said, reaching for his weapon.

  Before he could pull it free, the Saturn’s windows blew inward.