by John Whitman
That had been the one slip. The files had led to the condo, which he had had to abandon, because unlike this apartment, the condo was connected to Frank Newhouse.
Still, it would be nearly impossible for CTU to put two and two together, and if they did, by that time it would be too late. The CTU agent had dismantled his bomb and that worried him a little, although he didn’t see how it could affect his plans. It didn’t really matter if CTU knew about the EMP device. In fact, in some ways it wasbetteriftheydid.But if Jack Bauer and his team focused on that building, they might learn more than he wanted them to, and that would lead them to places where Frank didn’t want them poking their noses. He’d have to tie up a few loose ends.
It also worried Frank that Farrah was taking so long to kill Farid. Farrah should have called in by now. Frank checked one cell phone, but no one had called. Where was Farrah? He had a perfect excuse to get rid of Farid, and plenty of muscle to do it. New-house knew how persistent Jack Bauer was, and how vital it was to seal off certain avenues of investigation.
Two cell phones sat in their cradles on the bar near the kitchen. Frank picked one up, dialed a number and waited while it rang.
“It’s about time,” said Attorney General James Quincy. “What the hell is going on?”
Frank said, “You sound unhappy, sir. Isn’t it all happening the way you wanted? You did great on CNN.”
“Yes, I got my forum,” Quincy said. “But I need the end game now. I’m catching a lot of heat here, Frank.” The Attorney General paused. Frank could hear the anxiety in his voice, and he relished it. “You’re sure you’ve got these guys under control. There’s no real threat, right?”
Frank did a convincing job of inserting surprise into his voice. “You didn’t want a real threat, Mr. Attorney General. You wanted the threat of a terrorist cell to boost your chances for your bill to pass. And you’ve got it.”
“I heard a CTU agent nearly got killed trying to dismantle some kind of bomb. If it had gone off, people would have died.”
“The bomb wouldn’t have gone off,” Frank assured him. He leaned back in his seat and closed his eyes. Politicians were all alike. They talked a tough game, but when it came to doing the heavy lifting, they turned into girls. “As for him getting hurt, I had to do something to make it look dangerous.”
“I didn’t know anything like that was part of the plan.”
“It’s better if you don’t know some of it,” Frank said.
“Just tell me that it will all be over tonight.”
“I guarantee it,” Frank said. He hung up.
He would have felt sorry for Quincy if he’d had even an ounce of respect for him.
“Hey, baby.” His woman stood in the doorway, stretching her lean body and smiling at him. “Mmmm, there’s nothing like afternoon sex.”
“Nothing like sex with you,” he said. She walked forward, sleepy-faced, and he pulled her into his lap. “So I’m going to be busy tonight, but tomorrow I should have plenty of time. We should go up to Santa Barbara.”
“Okay, I’ll finish my painting.” She yawned. “Oh, hey, that reminds me, do you still have those white buckets?”
Frank cocked his head. “White buckets?”
“Yeah, you had a bunch here the other day. I used one as a rinse bucket for my brushes. Mind if I use it again?”
“Sorry, they’re gone,” he said with a smile. But inside, his heart was breaking. One more loose end to clean up.
5:51 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jack pulled in to CTU headquarters. There would be a truckload of paperwork to fill out in the Peppermint shooting, but for the moment he ignored it. He had his phone to his ear, talking with Kelly and the other CTU staff on the crisis even as he entered the building. He was on speakerphone in the conference room, so he kept talking as he entered the building.
“. so someone hires Farid to organize their transition into Los Angeles, and also hires the smuggler that gets them over the border,” Jack was saying. He reached the conference room and saw Sharpton, Chappelle, Nina Myers, CTU chief analyst Jamey Farrell, and Jessi Bandison. He heard his voice coming out of the squawk box on the conference table and hung up his phone. “They get into the country. But it wasn’t six months ago, it was just a few weeks ago. That doesn’t jibe with our warnings about Ramin Rafizadeh. It also gets him off the hook officially.” He took a seat. “It doesn’t make sense that the rumors come first, and then the terrorist cell appears. That’s bugging me.” He had a list of items that bothered him, including the coyote’s connection with MS-13 and Farrah’s obsession with killing Farid. Farrah could just as easily have escaped the building. Instead he’d taken a hostage.
Kelly added, “There’s more that doesn’t make sense. Why did these guys have a cheap apartment in Westwood and an expensive condominium a mile away? Why did they try to blow up the fancy condo but leave the apartment intact, when the apartment had the clues to their plans?”
They looked at one another, searching for answers but finding only bewildered looks, until Nina bobbed her head in the direction of an idea. “It’s a head fake.”
The entire group looked her way. “Go on,” Chappelle encouraged.
“They want the apartment found. They don’t want the condo found, because the condo has real evidence. So they rig the condo to get rid of the evidence.”
“But the condo is connected to Frank Newhouse, not the Iranians,” Jessi Bandison observed. “Frank Newhouse is connected to the Greater Nation and the Attorney General.”
“Frank Newhouse is the key to all this,” said Ryan Chappelle. He spoke definitively, using that voice that Bauer hated. However, Jack had to admit that the director was right. “The unanswered questions all revolve around him.”
“Agreed,” Jack said. “Jessi, are you up for staying on?”
“She’s way overtime,” Chappelle said, falling back into character.
“I’m good to go,” she said. “I’m getting kind of annoyed with that guy. I’ve got records I can check.”
Jack nodded. “Good. Go. Nina, I think we need to go with your head fake idea. Until we know more about Newhouse, let’s assume this EMP lead is the real one and the Islamic poetry clues are a false lead. Get on the phone. Call UCLA and Cal Tech. Tell them to check on everything they have related to EMPs. Do that now.”
Nina understood that “now” meant “right now” and she left the table while Jack was still talking.
“Then get going. Kelly, Jamey,” Jack said. “We need to learn more about this Babak Farrah, may he rest in peace. You should. ” He paused. Kelly was grinning at him so brightly that Jack almost blushed. The two of them were left at the table with Ryan Chappelle. “Damn, Kelly, I’m sorry. I’m not the SAC here anymore. You should be divvying these assignments.”
“No problem, sir!” Kelly said, but he was laughing. “You can’t help yourself, Jack. I’d be the same in your shoes. This is your ship. You ought to be running it. No offense,” he added for Chappelle’s benefit.
The Director wasn’t quite as amused. “I’m surprised you’d let Bauer undermine your authority, Kelly,” he said critically.
Kelly patted his two bandaged hands together. “You serve in the military and you see some interesting things,” he said. “Everyone salutes the officers, but when the excrement hits the fan, everyone turns to the real leaders. Usually it’s some NCO from Bumfuck, Alabama. Doesn’t matter. He’s the guy in the foxhole that everybody listens to.”
Chappelle couldn’t help the disdain that crept into his voice. “Are you saying you’re not that man?”
“Oh, I am,” Kelly said, with a wink to Jack. “This just isn’t my foxhole.”
Jack and Kelly stood up from the table as Nina Myers entered the room. Her face was grave. “We’ve got a problem,” she said. “I talked to Cal Tech. Someone stole their EMP devices. Yesterday.”
16. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 6 P.M. AND 7 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
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6:00 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
The power that CTU brought to bear in the next quarter of an hour was, to say the least, awesome. Within minutes, every computer terminal of every analyst and programmer inside CTU was turned loose on the subject of Cal Tech in Pasadena. Data flowed into the clandestine unit’s Los Angeles headquarters like water flowing into a reservoir. Employee records were checked. Student names and I.D.s were crosschecked against the names of known terrorist suspects. E-mail accounts were run (without the owners’ knowledge) and phrases were matched against key words related to EMPs, Iran, Allah, Persia, and a thousand other phrases that might offer a connection. Two thousand gigabytes of security footage were dumped into CTU’s computers and scanned by Jamey Farrell and a team of analysts. Students and teachers at Cal Tech who never knew they were on camera had their images analyzed by CTU’s facial recognition software. On one single screen, cars running in and out of the Cal Tech parking lot closest to the building that had housed the EMP devices were analyzed, looking for any car that was out of the ordinary.
Meanwhile, Jack and Kelly received more information from Nina. “Two devices are missing. The first is a bomb. Not a bomb like we think of,” she added, “a pulse weapon. Set it off, it emits an electromagnetic pulse that wipes out all electronic devices in its range. The second one is, as far as I can tell, the rocket-propelled grenade of the sci-fi world. Aim it, fire, it zaps its target with an electromagnetic beam that fries all its circuits. The Cal Tech people called it a HERF Rifle — HERF for high energy radio frequency.”
“What’s the range?” Kelly asked.
“Unknown. They were testing. The bomb’s potential depends on how it’s delivered. The rifle is more directed. You can build a little one for a few hundred bucks, but it doesn’t reach more than a hundred feet. This one is supposed to be the surface-to-air missile of radio waves.’
“Why did Cal Tech have these things?” Kelly asked. “They don’t build weapons there, do they?”
“That’s what I asked,” Nina replied. “I got two answers. The Director of Research for the Advanced Physics Department told me they had a contract with DOD and I should mind my own friggin’ business.”
Jack considered this. “I know Cal Tech is the research branch of Jet Propulsion Laboratories.”
Nina nodded. “Then some public relations person with a little more tact got on the phone and said they’d been loaned the devices to test some shielding mechanism. Either way, they’re both gone.”
“We should have known this earlier,” Jack said. “Why didn’t they report it?”
“They didn’t know. The devices had been stored and weren’t scheduled for use again for two more days.”
Jack had the distinct sense that they were fighting on too many fronts. In combat, a classic strategy was to engage the enemy in one location, causing him to move resources to that front, then attack him elsewhere. He had the vague sense that he was falling victim to that strategy, but he couldn’t tell where the real attack might happen.
His intercom buzzed. It was Jamey Farrell, CTU’s head programmer. “We’ve got something.”
6:09 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
Jack watched the video screen as Jamey Farrell fast-forwarded through video from a security camera at the edge of the parking lot. It showed a walkway from the lot toward the buildings near the Physics Labs at Cal Tech. “They did a really good job,” she said in grudging admiration. “If there hadn’t been about eight of us working on this, we’d have missed it. There.” She froze the video. Jack saw two men walking together. They were dressed like grad students; that is to say, they wore sloppy jeans and sloppy T-shirts, and they looked like they didn’t eat well enough. Both were dark-skinned, but that meant nothing. Half the student body of Cal Tech was Pakistani or Indian. There were other people in the shot, but Jamey used computer enhancement software to zoom in on the two men.
“Do you see anything unusual about them?” Jamey asked.
Jack pressed the keyboard, zooming out so he could see other students. “No.”
“You will,” Jamey promised.
She fast-forwarded and froze. “There. This is ten minutes later.”
Two more men, both dark-skinned, both dressed like graduate students. “I don’t see it yet.”
Jamey fast-forwarded again. On the third set of two dark-skinned men, Jack understood. “No backpacks.”
“Right. There’s a fourth set, too. Yesterday afternoon we had four sets of two males, probably of Middle Eastern descent, walk on to campus with no backpacks within a five-to ten-minute span of each other.”
Kelly nodded. “Are you working to ID them?”
Jamey looked mildly insulted. “Of course. So far, they aren’t in the records.”
“That’s them, then,” Jack said. “Transportation?”
Jamey nodded and clicked her keyboard, minimizing video of the walkway and calling up a camera shot of the driveway into the lot. “We studied the parking lot for a half-hour window prior to the appearance of the first two.” The video ran until she froze it on the image of a blue van. “This van pulls in. It doesn’t leave until nearly midnight that night. The eight guys never appear on camera again. When they left, they
definitely avoided any areas that had cameras.”
“License plate?”
“Obscured.” Jamey zoomed in and digitally enhanced the video. The front license plate was missing. She jumped to another screen, late night footage that showed the van leaving. The back plate was half covered with mud, and only the digits 42[][]G[] were visible. “We’re running all permutations of those letters to see what comes up.”
Jack nodded. “It’ll be stolen or false. That’s our target.”
“There’s one more vehicle we can’t account for,” Jamey said. She rewound the tape and froze on a second van. This one was white with the name “Ready-Rooter” on the side panel. “This van comes in a little after nine in the morning. We have no record of it leaving.”
“You checked with Cal Tech, I assume.”
Jamey nodded. “Oh, yeah. They definitely called for plumbing service, and Ready-Rooter checks out, too. But it bugs me. Here.” She sped ahead to a shot of the van leaving.
“I thought you said it didn’t leave,” Jack said.
“That’s the thing. You saw it arrive. Now you see it leave. Now,” she zipped forward for the last time. “Now it arrives again. But I’ve got no final departure. Far as this video’s concerned, that van is still in the parking lot.”
“Did we send someone over?”
“Tony Almeida offered to go. We’re expecting a call.”
“Stay on the blue van,” Jack suggested.
“My team is tracking it,” Jamey said. “Give us a few more minutes.”
“Okay,” Jack said. “I’ll be right back.”
“What are you going to do?” Kelly asked.
“I’m going to talk to the guy that started this whole thing.”
6:14 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles, Holding Room 2
“And here I thought you’d forgotten about me,” Brett Marks said.
Jack closed the door behind him and sat down. Marks was, finally, starting to look tired. He’d been kept in that room all day with only one toilet break. There was nowhere to lie down, and the chairs were anything but comfortable.
“You were right about the terrorist cell,” Jack said. “They’re in the city.”
“We knew that this morning,” Brett said.
“We’ve learned a little more,” Jack said. “But the puzzle piece that doesn’t fit is your friend Frank Newhouse.”
Marks’s face wrinkled as though he’d been presented with a foul-smelling food. “If he’s who you say he is, he’s no friend of mine. Apparently I’m a lot less perceptive than I thought. I thought it was bad enough that I got fooled by you, but Newhouse seems to have played me for a lot longer.”
“How long have you known him?”
“Go on,” Jack said.
Marks sat up straight and stretched. “You know, it occurs to me. I’ll tell you everything I know about Frank Newhouse,” he offered, “if you let me go.”
Behind the one-way glass that looked onto holding room two, Kelly Sharpton and Ryan Chappelle both groaned. “Oh, shit,” Kelly muttered.
6:17 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
“No!” Jack fumed. “No way!”
Ryan Chappelle held up both his hands to appease Bauer. “Jack, it’s not a bad deal. Marks is low-level. We don’t even know if he could have pulled off the sodium cyanide bomb.”
“He has a fortress up in Palmdale!” Jack protested. “Two days ago they were ready to kill that foreman and steal ten gallons of poison. He’s as much a nutcase as Frank Newhouse or these Iranians. He’s got his own army!”
“He’s a political radical, but he’s not very capable,” Chappelle said. “His guys proved willing to do damage, but mostly inept, right? I talked to the prosecutors. They think the best they’ll get is a number of weapons charges.”
Jack got right up in Chappelle’s face. “And conspiracy to commit murder, and conspiracy to commit a terrorist act—”
Chappelle, though much shorter than Jack, didn’t back down. “Most of his men won’t testify. All we’ve got is Heinrich Gelb’s testimony, and Martin Padilla thinks Marks’s defense team will chop him into pieces.”
Chappelle and Bauer locked eyes so fiercely that Kelly Sharpton imagined he could see a line of fire blazing between them. Kelly spoke very calmly, “Jack, I hate to say, but it might be worth it.”
