24 Declassified: Veto Power 2d-2

by John Whitman

  Then he was on his feet, sprinting toward the soft glow of the sensors on the walls. He was vaguely aware of footsteps around him, but his mind was focused on the distance to the wall. Fifteen yards away the sensors kicked in and lights flared on so brightly they seemed to make sound. Anyone wearing night vision would have been blinded, but Jack had done his prep work and none of his people was surprised. Ten yards to the wall. Jack picked up his pace — inside the compound, alarms would be sounding, paranoid militia men would be trying to remember the drills they had learned, and someone somewhere would be chambering rounds into an automatic weapon purchased at a gun show in Orange County. Five yards to the wall. Jack gathered himself and jumped. He kicked off the wall with his left foot and went up, and for a moment he might as well have been in Kosovo again, or in Delta training, or even back in basic. Get your chest over the wall, but keep your head low. Hug the top like you want to hump it. Drop down with your feet under you and your muzzle down range.

  His boots hit the ground under bright lights but nearly complete silence. There were four buildings — a two story main house and three one story ranch-style structures. One of them was a supply depot — Baker would secure it. Two were bunkhouses, but neither one should be full; Charlie would lock them down. Jack kept his eyes on the main house as his team came over the wall beside him, and together they charged ahead.

  Lights were coming on now, upstairs and downstairs, and Jack knew that the next few moments would decide if someone had to die. He flew up the steps of the main house and flattened himself against the wall by the front door. The man behind him— Bastion — pressed himself against the other side. The third in line didn’t even hesitate. Barely slowing, he lifted his knee and stomped his boot against the door. It boomed like a war drum, but didn’t give.

  “Reinforced,” Jack said.

  The SEB unit was ready. The fourth man in line slid a heavy metal rod from the third man’s back. It had handles on either side and a blunt head like a medieval mace. The two agents gripped the handles, swung back, then slammed the rod forward. The battering ram smashed into the door. Wood and metal screamed in protest. The door frame shook. Two more blows sent splinters flying and the door swung open.

  The SEB unit flowed into the house like an angry black tide. They were in a bare hallway with hardwood floors and small recessed lights in the ceiling. A room opened up on the left, and on the right broad stairs climbed up to the second story. Blueprints downloaded from the city planners had given them the floor plan, but it was Jack’s six months under cover that really paid off. Half of Able team flowed left, where they knew six members of the Greater Nation would be sleeping in the living room converted to a bunkhouse. The other half rose up the stairs with Jack. At the top they broke left, down a hallway toward a heavy door that slammed shut as it came into view. The door was steel, as was the frame around it. Jack didn’t bother with the battering ram.

  “Charges,” he ordered, stepping back. One of the black-armored SEB agents ripped open a Velcro pocket on his chest and produced a brick of pale, claylike C-4. He massaged it quickly, a sculptor on a deadline, into four thin ropes. Three he pressed along the steel door hinges, the fourth he wrapped around the handle. In seconds, all four were fitted with blasting caps connected by wires. By this time the rest of the team had backed down the stairs. In theory, the C-4 should blow inward, but no one cared about theory and everyone cared about keeping his parts attached to his body, so they’d all backed off.

  “Three, two, one.” BOOM!

  Jack and the SEB team launched themselves forward again, hurtling through the smoke, trampling on the steel door that had been blown off its hinges and onto the hallway floor, and into the room beyond.

  Jack scanned the room in an instant. It was a private study with a mahogany desk and shelves lined with books. Through an archway he caught a glimpse of an unmade bed in a room behind. In the next instant, Jack’s eyes and gun sights settled immediately on the figure sitting calmly, with his feet up, behind a big mahogany desk. He was grinning. It wasn’t the cocky grin of a bluffer who’d been called; it was more like the grin of a chess player who’d been outmaneuvered and was mildly amused that he hadn’t seen the trap. The man’s face was sharp-edged and handsome, with the squared-off angles of a disciplined youth overlaid with the crow’s feet and laugh lines of an energetic middle life. His salt-and-pepper hair was short but annoyingly thick for someone in his fifties, and when he stood his back was straighter than a flagpole. He was wearing his pajamas and slippers, his arms behind his head. Jack’s eyes soaked in details of the room — a zipped-up bag by the window; a pair of pants dropped on the floor beside the bag, shoes half-pulled from beneath the bed. Bauer had the distinct impression that, as soon as the alarms had sounded, the man had initiated an escape plan, then abandoned it as panicky and useless, choosing instead to weather the assault with serene indifference. That was more Brett Marks’s style.

  “Brett Marks, you’re under arrest for conspiracy to commit murder, conspiracy to commit murder with a weapon of mass destruction, and conspiracy to commit treason against the United States,” Jack said, moving forward behind the steady aim of his SigSauer 9mm.

  The other man nodded and lifted his hands from behind his head to show that they were empty. “Jack Miles. Or what is it really? Agent, or Special Agent?”

  Bauer let the rest of his teams swarm past him and pull Marks from his chair. They put him facedown on the ground and searched him, pulling a handgun out of a pancake holster inside his pajamas. Jack let them tag it as evidence, but he knew Marks well enough by now to know that the weapon would be completely legal. Though his goal was the overthrow of the United States government, the Greater Nation leader took care to stay just inside the law whenever possible. Jack studied Marks, looking for signs of annoyance or anger while they searched him roughly. These were clues he could use during interrogation. Brute force and sleep deprivation were sometimes unnecessary if you could find the key that opened someone’s mouth. Often that key was something simple, a word or phrase that set him off, a certain posture that reminded him of someone he loved or hated. Jack had witnessed an interrogation in Bosnia where a tough Serbian assassin had resisted two days of beatings and headfirst baths in cold water, only to crack at the mention of his sister’s name.

  Jack had instructed his team to bang Marks around once the handcuffs were on. He was curious to see how the militia man would handle being knocked off his pedestal. The SEB team snapped cuffs on Marks’s wrists. He grunted when they went on tight. Bastion used that as an excuse to slap his ear. “Stop resisting,” he warned. Bastion grabbed Marks by his thick hair and pulled him up straight. Bauer studied his face. Marks looked uncomfortable. Jack would have been disappointed if he hadn’t shown at least a hint of pain. But there was something missing, a sense of indignation that Jack would have liked to see. It would have told him that Marks didn’t see himself as a prisoner; it would have indicated that he wasn’t prepared for that abuse. Instead, Jack found Brett Marks staring back at him with a look of mild amusement.

  “Good soldier, Jack,” the militia leader smirked.

  Jack clicked the radio mike at his throat, “Baker, status.”

  There was a moment of white noise, then a clipped voice broke back: “Baker here. Depot secure, over.”

  “Copy,” Jack said. “Charlie, status.”

  There was another moment of white noise. “Charlie, status.”

  A burst of static chopped through the white noise, and someone cut in. “Able, Charlie. Be advised there’s—”

  “Freeze!” “Down!” “Down!”

  A cacophony of commands around Jack overwhelmed the radio call. Four men had burst into the room, guns drawn. They looked half asleep and shocked. Most of them were clearly terrified.

  “Drop your weapons!” one of them ordered. “You’re trespassing!”

  “Federal agent!” Jack said, holding up his badge and his gun. “Drop your fucking weapons now!�
� The speaker was the one to target, Jack thought. The others were shaking so badly they’d probably drop their weapons with or without the order.

  “No,” the newcomer said.

  A half dozen fingers pressed triggers ever so slightly. The SEB agents didn’t like having guns pointed at them.

  “Frank.”

  It was Brett Marks. His voice was calm, the voice of a man who had led men in combat. Jack almost took his eyes off the militia men to look at him.

  “Frank, calm down.”

  Jack hid his surprise. Six months of undercover work and countless hours of research had told him that under Marks’s mainstream exterior lay the heart of a violent anarchist. He hated the Federal government, and he’d been preparing his true believers for a showdown just like this. Why was he striking his colors?

  “Brett, don’t give me this shit,” said the other one. Jack knew him, though not well. He was Frank New-house, a lieutenant in the Greater Nation. Newhouse was Brett’s colorless alter ego. Everything about him was flat, from his crew cut to his pale eyes to the permanent look of disinterest on his face. He had the lean, wide-shouldered body of a man who never worked out but also never stopped working. “This is what we’re here for!”

  Brett Marks shook his head. “This isn’t worth someone’s life, Frank. Not this. Whatever they want, we’ll beat them in court. They don’t have shit on us and we know it.”

  Only a witness who puts you in charge of a plot to steal ten gallons of sodium cyanide, Jack thought. Out loud, he said, “Listen to Brett, Frank. You don’t want to die over this. Neither do those boys with you.”

  Frank grinned. “They don’t want to die? Maybe you’re right. What do you think, Danny?” He elbowed the man next to him, a carbon copy of Heinrich Gelb. “He’s right, probably, isn’t he? We might as well lay down our weapons when the Federal government can send liars and spies into our group, point guns at us, knock down our door whenever they want to, right?”

  Danny said, “Hell, no.”

  “Frank,” Brett said. “You’ve still got a mission to finish. Focus on that.”

  “Put the guns down!” Jack ordered.

  Jack couldn’t tell who fired first. If it was his own people, he couldn’t blame them. A man can only stand under the gun for so long before he has to act. All Jack knew for sure was that the militia man’s words were still hanging in the air when the room erupted in gunfire. Jack found his senses assaulted by the crack of handguns, the flash of muzzles, and the sharp stink of gunpowder. He flinched for only the briefest of instants before laying his sights across Frank Newhouse’s chest and squeezing the trigger. Front sight, trigger pull, follow through. The mantra of an old combat firearms instructor scrolled through his memory as his Sig spat fire, but even as the flashes imprinted on his eyes, he saw the militia boy named Danny fall across his line of sight and knew that he’d missed. Danny hit the ground, along with his three companions. Frank Newhouse disappeared beyond the doorframe.

  “Stay on him!” Jack ordered half his team. The other half followed Jack through the doorway into Brett Marks’s bedroom. White sheets and a heavy comforter lay askew across the mattress. A bathroom door and a closet door were both open, and Frank Newhouse was nowhere to be seen.

  “Shit!” Jack swore. He jabbed a finger at the closet, ordering someone to check it, and threw himself against the wall beside the bathroom doorway. He kicked the half-open door and burst in, following the arc of the swinging door with the muzzle of his gun. Nothing.

  “Sir!” someone called.

  Jack spun toward the closet as several of the SEB agents cleared an aisle. Shirts and pants on hangers had been pushed aside. A panel in the back had been kicked through, revealing a shaft that dropped down into darkness.

  “Go!” Jack said. “Keep on the radio. Get that guy!”

  Three members of the assault team went through the panel and down the shaft. Jack pointed to one of his team. “Stay with them by radio. I want to know what direction they’re heading and where that tunnel comes out.”

  Bauer took a deep breath and assessed his situation. His primary target had been caught. His teams had captured the Greater Nation’s munitions depot and rounded up most of the militia men. One target missing, but pursuit was in progress. He looked to the doorway, where SEB agents were huddled over the bodies of the three militia men. One of the agents looked at Bauer and dragged his thumb across his throat.

  Jack checked his watch: 3:23. The whole operation had taken less than fifteen minutes. Three militia men dead, no casualties on his team. So far, so good.

  “Where’s he going to go, Brett?” Jack asked, returning to the outer room.

  Marks smirked. “You’re an agent of the Federal government, Jack,” he said. “You have no authority to do or say anything against a private citizen like me.”

  Bastion laughed. “He’s shitting you, right?”

  Marks frowned at Bastion like a professor dealing with a naïve student. “Check the law, my friend. Read the Constitution. Your Constitution. Under 18 U.S. Code 242, it is illegal for anyone under the color of law to deprive any person of the rights, privileges, and immunities secured by the Constitution. And the Constitution allows Federal law to act on state territory only for treason, counterfeiting, piracy on the high seas—”

  “Give it a rest, Marks,” Jack growled.

  “—crimes against the laws of nations, or civil rights violations by officials. You are violating the same Constitution you swore to protect. These men should be arresting you.”

  “He is shitting you,” Bastion said in disbelief.

  Brett shook his head. “It’s a felony punishable by ten years in prison.”

  Bastion nodded his head sarcastically. “Oh well, in that case I’ll just take these off and put them on Agent Bauer here.”

  Marks half-turned so he could look Bastion in the eye. “Officer, you are joking. But I’m telling you the truth. Look it up.”

  “Sorry, I don’t subscribe to Nutcase Weekly.”

  “Then maybe you should check the Constitution. Or the United States Code published by the House of Representatives. What I’m talking about is right there in black and white.”

  “Move him out of here,” Jack said. Guns and handcuffs aside, Marks was still on his home turf, in his comfort zone. He needed to change that. “Get him in the van and sit on him until you hear from me.”

  Jack’s ear bud chirped. “Agent Bauer, this is Able, over.”

  “Able, Bauer. Go ahead.”

  “We’re in the munitions depot. You want to come see this now, over.”

  “On my way. Bauer out.” Bauer eyed Bastion. “If he keeps talking, shut him up. But keep your eyes on him.”

  Bauer spun toward the door. As he did, he started to take himself down from his assault status. He checked and holstered his weapon, then pulled the black skullcap from his head and tugged the gloves off his hands. He stopped in a bathroom and splashed water on his face, letting it rinse away the black combat paint he’d smudged there. Lastly, he slid his mobile phone out of a Velcro pocket of his black battle dress uniform pants and turned it on. Immediately it emitted an angry buzz.

  3:35 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  It was after three-thirty in the morning, and CTU Special Agent in Charge Kelly Sharpton’s mood was as dark as the unlit hallway. He banged his toe against a chair and swore like a sailor. He wasn’t a sailor, though, he was Air Force — eight years in, ending up in the Office of Special Investigations before leaving the Corps to join the FBI. He’d been a field agent in the San Francisco office before his computer skills — and a few personal problems — drove him off the streets. Now he mostly rode a desk, but he didn’t mind. At CTU he had eyes and ears that saw the entire world. He was good at his job, and he liked it most of the time.

  Not now, though. Now he’d been roused out of bed by the gravediggers — his nickname for the analysts who worked the swing shift from oh-dark-hundred until the sun came up.
Sharpton was used to getting calls from the graveyard, so it wasn’t the when that angered him — it was the who.

  “Bauer here,” said the gravelly voice on the other end of the line.

  “Yousonofabitchwhatthehellareyoudoing?” Sharp-ton spewed. “I’ve been calling you for the last hour.”

  “Sorry, Kelly, I had my phone off. I’m in the middle of something.”

  “So I hear,” Sharpton spat back. “Of course, I don’t hear it from you. I hear it from the gravediggers, who happen to be monitoring police frequencies to keep themselves awake.”

  “I told you I had this militia leader—”

  “That requisition was denied,” Kelly said, lowering his voice. He’d reached the end of the dark hallway and entered the guts of CTU’s operation — a war room lined with computer terminals, overlooked by a loft designed for several windowed offices. All of the offices and most of the computer terminals were dark at this hour. A few swing-shift analysts — the gravediggers — looked up from their screens, braced to weather the brewing storm. He gave them a nod and a wave as he passed them and climbed the stairs to his office.

  “The denial was for manpower,” Jack said. “No one said I couldn’t arrest him.”

  “What the hell do you think you’re doing authorizing the seizure anyway.”

  To Kelly, Bauer’s answer sounded rehearsed. He’d prepped himself for the criticism.

  Now at his desk, Kelly sat down, put his feet up, and rubbed his forehead. Loose cannon, he thought, although the sentiment wasn’t entirely negative. Four years in military special investigations had taught him that loose cannons sometimes blasted through red tape.

  But Bauer’s current path seemed to be one of self destruction. Bauer’s fall from grace was, in fact, the reason Kelly Sharpton had been transferred to CTU Los Angeles. The transfer hadn’t been popular — certainly not with Bauer, nor with his second in command Nina Myers. Jack’s star had been on the rise after the recent “Hell Gate” case, only to fall precipitously in recent months after a botched arrest and interrogation.