24 Declassified: Cat's Claw 2d-4 Page 18

  “But why attack here?” Jessi asked. “Why not do it in China?”

  “The security is too tight,” Odolova answered. “Besides, ETIM is frustrated that they do not get more attention from the West. China controls the flow of information, especially in the rural provinces. ETIM commits terrorist attacks in Urumchi to draw attention, but no one ever hears about them. If they make an attack in Los Angeles, the whole world will start paying attention.”

  “How do you know so much?” Jessi asked, unable to disguise her naïveté. “You’re so far ahead of us. How do you know?”

  “It is not so impressive,” Odolova said in a way that indicated how impressive it really was. “In fact, we learned much of our information because of a minor arms dealer in Los Angeles. Some Russian-made RPG–29s were stolen, and we tracked them to this arms dealer, assuming he had bought them, when, in fact, they’d been stolen by ETIM and delivered to this arms dealer for safekeeping.”

  “Farrigian,” Jessi said matter-of-factly.

  Odolova smiled warmly. “You see, you are good at this after all. It was the missing RPGs that made us look more closely at ETIM, and that led us to Tuman.”

  “Do you have any proof of this?”

  “None whatsoever.”

  Jessi’s heart sank. She knew Chappelle would want evidence before moving against a Chinese national. “I thought—”

  “This is not always a business of hard facts.”

  “Why do the Chinese trust him? They’re telling us he’s clean.”

  The Russian cast the thought aside. “No one likes to be wrong.” When Jessi continued to look puzzled, she added, “They believe their own propaganda. They have no reason to think ETIM can do harm if half of them don’t believe the separatists exist. They don’t want to believe one of their own is a traitor.”

  Odolova smiled at her as though waiting. Then, after an uncomfortable pause, she drained her own drink with a flourish and said, “Now I think it’s time for you to buy a drink for me.”

  “Oh,” Jessi said. “Would you like another one of—”

  The Russian agent laughed. “I mean it’s your turn to share information.”

  Jessi felt her cheeks burn as she blushed. “Infor—? I don’t know if I have any…”

  Odolova’s face hardened. The dark mascara, which before had appeared hypnotic, became ugly and severe. “The RPG–29s. Who has them? Where are they?”

  “Oh,” Jessi said, realizing she actually did know that information, and only too late deciding that she shouldn’t have revealed it. “I…I don’t know that I’m allowed to—”

  Her counterpart brushed blond wisps away from her forehead. “I’m not running a charity service, Jessi. I gave you information because I expect something in return.”

  Suddenly there was weight and pressure behind Jessi. She glanced over her shoulder to find a man in a blue T-shirt standing very close, his hard stomach pressed against her elbow.

  “Let’s go for a drive and talk some more,” Anastasia said pleasantly; but it was not a request.

  The man put his heavy hand on Jessi’s arm. Then things happened very quickly. As the man squeezed her arm, Jessi heard a dull thud and a loud pop. The man’s eyes flew very wide, and then he crumpled straight down like a building falling in on itself. And suddenly Jack Bauer was standing there.

  5:45 P.M. PST Cat & Fiddle Pub, Los Angeles

  Jack had listened to bits and pieces of the conversation, though he missed most of it. Odolova was skilled at sounding natural while keeping her voice low. When the Russian babysitter made his move, Jack made his. He slid up behind him and dropped him as soon as he laid hands on Bandison.

  The Russian man was still on the ground, sobbing and holding his broken knee.

  “We’re done talking,” Jack said to Odolova. He took Jessi by the same arm the Russian had grabbed. His grip was gentler but still firm as he guided the analyst away from the bar and past the patrons wondering what had happened to the man on the ground. Jack and Jessi walked outside into the twilight of Sunset Boulevard.

  Jack carried a borrowed phone, and it rang now. He leaned back into the alcove that led into the bar, but away from the door in case the Russians followed. “Bauer.”

  “Jack.”

  It was Mercy Bennet. “Where are you? Are you safe?” he asked.

  “Well, there are degrees of safe,” she said with a morose tone. “CTU contacted me and gave me this number. It’s been quite a day.”

  “The Monkey Wrench Gang,” Jack said. “Smith. All those things you said. They’re all true.”

  Mercy laughed bitterly. “I’ve been waiting for someone to say that to me. It’s just a little too late.” She told him quickly how she’d tracked Smith, whose real name was Copeland, and watched him die; she also told him that before he had died he’d told her she’d been exposed to a virus. “I got checked out at UCLA, but they haven’t gotten back to me yet.”

  Jack felt a great weight settle on his shoulders. “Are you sure he said that?”

  “Pretty damned sure.”

  “Mercy—” the weight that settled on him was guilt; guilt that he hadn’t told her earlier what he was really doing; guilt that he had turned her into an unwitting victim in the war on terror. He still couldn’t tell her the truth, not quite yet. But she did have a right to know her own fate. “Mercy, the virus is deadly. It’s a hemorrhagic fever.”

  The line fell silent. Finally, Mercy said, “Hemorrhagic… you mean like Ebola?”

  “Yes.”

  “Shit. Jack, I’m driving around. Am I…am I contagious?” That was Mercy Bennet. She’d just been handed her death sentence and she was worried about its effect on others.

  “Probably not yet,” he said hoarsely. “My daughter has it, too. She was exposed by Copeland’s people. The doctors tell me she’s not contagious yet, so you probably have hours left.”

  “I’m not going to the hospital yet.” She relayed Copeland’s final words to Jack. “I don’t know what he meant by ‘terror’ but I know who ‘she’ is. It’s Frankie Michaelmas. I get the feeling that girl makes Copeland look like a saint.”

  A chill ran down Jack’s spine. He knew what Copeland had meant by terror. He had known all along. But still he couldn’t tell Mercy. Not while he still needed her.

  “You should get to a hospital. Keep yourself safe,” he said. “Contact National Health—”

  “Screw that,” Mercy said. “If I’m not contagious yet, I’m going to get that little bitch.”

  “Mercy, there’s more here—”

  “I’m going up to the Vanderbilt Complex. That’s what Copeland was talking about. I think she’s going to be there.”

  “Mercy, wait, let me tell you—”

  But Bennet had dropped the line.

  “We have to go,” Jack told Jessi. “This whole thing is hitting the fan in the next couple of hours. Come on.”

  12. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 6 P.M. AND 7 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

  6:00 P.M. PST Cat & Fiddle Pub, Los Angeles

  Jack half ran down Sunset Boulevard to reach the SUV with Jessi Bandison in tow. He had just reached the tail end of the big car when he saw the red Camaro parked across the street, the driver barely visible in the shadowy twilight, his body held steady and angled toward them.

  “Down!” Jack grabbed Jessi and pulled her to the ground as something hissed lightning-fast through the air over their heads. He dragged her behind the SUV. Plunk, plunk plunk! Rounds sank into the SUV. One passed right through the sheet metal over his head. Jack stayed behind the rear wheel, which offered more cover, and shoved Jessi toward the front. “Stay by that tire. Behind the engine block!”

  More dull thuds, but now from another angle, up the street instead of across. They were in a crossfire.

  Jack drew his weapon, a double-stacked.45 Springfield, borrowed, like the phone. He stayed low and leaned around the tire, but the angle was bad, and all he could see was street. Cars zoom
ed by, oblivious. The snipers were equipped with silencers, and none of the cars realized they were driving through a gunfight. Jack slid to the tail end of the car and leaned around, switching the Springfield to his left hand and squeezing off four rounds. Unlike the snipers’ weapons, his.45 wasn’t silenced. The sharp report made Jessi shriek. The Camaro’s side window shattered. Jack rolled back behind the SUV and switched hands again, taking a kneeling position, looking to acquire the other sniper. But there was nothing to see except Sunset Boulevard, with dozens of buildings to hide in, parked cars, and cars moving along the street. A bullet chipped the concrete beside him, and he pressed himself tighter against the SUV.

  More rounds hit the SUV from the other angle. The car was turning into a bullet sponge. But the angle of impact was changing. The shooter in the Camaro had relocated, improving his position. Jack fired two rounds into the air, just to make noise. Someone would call the police. If he could hold off the shooters until backup arrived, he’d have a chance. The gunfire brought shouts of alarm and screams from somewhere on the street.

  Movement. Someone dashed from a building to a vehicle half a block up from the SUV, and Jack had his second shooter. But the first shooter put rounds into the SUV over his head, shattering the rear window, so Jack rolled in his direction and fired over the top of the car parked behind his. Commuters drove by, their startled faces flashing like subliminals in Jack’s eyes. He could not be worried about them now. The shooter from the Camaro stumbled and fell, but Jack wasn’t sure he’d actually hit him.

  How do you know you’ve hit your target? the words of an old tactical firearms instructor came back to him.

  When he goes down?

  He might have fallen, he might be faking. There’s only one way to know. Front sight, trigger pull, follow through. Make sure your sights are on the target. That’s where the round will go.

  Jack was sure his sights hadn’t been on target. The man was still operating.

  Sirens in the distance. That was good. But his slide had just locked back. He dropped the magazine out and popped in his second and last. Fifteen rounds left. Jessi made herself as small as possible as Jack moved closer to her position. The shooter up the street moved and Jack fired, shattering glass and ripping through a public trash can. A man walking out of a store yelled something and dived back inside.

  These weren’t eco-terrorists. They were operators working in tandem — one drawing Jack’s fire, the other improving his position. It was a good plan. It was going to work. And the sirens were too far away.

  The shooter up the street popped up, taking aim. Jack fired to keep the enemy’s head down; he had no cover or concealment from that angle; his only cover was to shoot. At the same time, car tires squealed to a stop on the street a few feet away. If there was a third shooter, Jack thought, this was going to get really difficult. But the shooter pivoted, sighting the newcomer, his rounds turning the windshield into a spider web. The driver jumped out of the car and fired at the shooter. Panicked, the shooter changed angles, and there he was in Jack’s sights. Jack dropped him and his gun went into slide lock again. With grim determination he thumbed the slide release and felt it snap back. Now it was a nice blunt object.

  Twilight had turned to gloom but the streetlights hadn’t come on yet. Jack couldn’t see the driver’s face, but he saw his body swivel in the other direction. There was a hiss and a snap, and the driver cried out, his gun hand dropping. He fell away behind his car. Jack heard footsteps running onto the street. The shooter from the Camaro was closing in on the newcomer. Jack rolled around to the back of the SUV. He bolted into the street in time to see the shooter reach the new car, a silenced Beretta in his hands. The shooter saw him and tried to turn, but Jack was too fast. He grabbed the Beretta in one hand, holding it off his body, and punched the muzzle of his empty Springfield into the shooter’s face. He recoiled and punched his throat. The man dropped.

  Without pausing Jack dropped the Springfield, tapped and racked the Beretta, and dropped to one knee, scanning the street. There was no movement. Cars had stopped passing by. The sirens were close enough to hurt his ears.

  He looked up from his kneeling position to see the driver standing over him. “Hey,” said Kelly Sharpton.

  6:15 P.M. PST Bauer Residence

  “I’m going to kill him.”

  Teri Bauer slammed the phone back into its cradle. It was her fifth call to Jack in the last half hour. Like all the others, it had gone straight to voice mail.

  Kim sat at the kitchen table, one hand absentmindedly tracing the seams where the wooden leaves of the table met. She looked pale, and concern for her fueled Teri’s anger.

  “He did it on purpose,” Teri said out loud. “He took you this morning, but he was on a case.”

  “Mom,” Kim said in a tired teenage voice. “Something came up. The first thing he did when that trouble started was get me out of there.”

  “And make you sit in a basement for three hours!”

  Teri paced the length of the kitchen. The magic of the prior month had worn off. Her fear had been that it would vanish immediately; that Jack would dive right into some crisis. Instead, it had faded like a tan. She’d watched Jack’s attention turn slowly but steadily away from her and toward… whatever it was out there that called him. Teri had worried lately that it was another woman, and the thought had not completely left her. But it didn’t seem possible — Jack was driven by some desire that had nothing to do with sex.

  It had nothing to do with disloyalty of any kind. She was furious Jack for leaving Kim, but she knew he loved her. Ultimately, though, Teri was beginning to sense that his deepest loyalty lay with his country. Or maybe it wasn’t even his country. It was his mission.

  “Are you all right?” Teri asked.

  Kim was holding her head in her hands now. “Yeah. Just tired, I guess. I feel hot. I think I’ll go lie down.”

  6:18 P.M. PST Cat & Fiddle Pub, Los Angeles

  One of the shooters was dead. The other wouldn’t be eating solid food for a long time, and he was currently gagging uncontrollably thanks to his swollen throat where Jack had punched him.

  Jessi Bandison hugged Kelly Sharpton, who winced visibly. His right arm was covered in blood. “Are you—?” she started.

  “Not too bad,” he said. He rolled up his shirtsleeve. The round had slid along the inside of his arm, plowing a furrow from his wrist to his elbow, but never fully penetrating.

  He looked a little older than Jack remembered him from his short stint at CTU. There was weight in his face and gray in his hair. Jack had worked well enough with Sharpton, though they were never friends and didn’t see eye to eye politically; still, he’d drawn fire when Jack needed it, and Jack felt grateful. “She called you,” he said.

  Sharpton nodded. “Odolova was my contact from way back.”

  “I was nervous about doing fieldwork,” Jessi said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”

  Jack waved her off. The end counted far more than the means, and they were all alive.

  Black and white patrol cars materialized out of the gloom. Sharpton, no longer commissioned, put his gun away. Jack held up his badge, and after a moment or two of explanation, the uniformed officers lowered their weapons and began to cordon off the block. LAPD radioed for paramedics. The surviving shooter was choking to death. “I need him alive,” Jack said. “I’ve got questions.”

  “You want to fill me in?” Sharpton asked.

  Jack shook his head. “You’re a civilian.”

  “A civilian who saved your ass!” Sharpton said amusedly.

  Jack nodded. “And for that you have the thanks of a grateful nation.”

  “That and a dollar. ” Sharpton sighed without finishing the sentence.

  “Jessi,” Jack said, turning to the analyst, “make sure these uniforms keep a close watch on that one. I want him taken back to CTU for interrogation. Don’t let them give you any crap about medical attention. Go tell them.”

  He
turned away, ignoring her look of panic, and dialed headquarters on his borrowed phone. A moment later he was talking to the head of field operations, Henderson’s voice echoed by the speakerphone he was using.

  “They took a shot at us,” Jack said, describing the attack in brief. “I guess al-Libbi’s got some friends in town.” He explained what Odolova had told them about the RPG–29s, and her oblique confirmation of an event happening that evening.

  He summed up: “Russia, the U.S., and China are having a secret meeting tonight around seven. Al-Libbi almost definitely wants to attack it.”

  Henderson replied, “RPG–29s are tank killers. He’s got to be going after the presidential limo. It’d take a tank round to do any real damage to that thing. But there’s no way the meeting is at Marcus Lee’s house. The Secret Service wouldn’t have picked it even if he wasn’t Chinese intelligence. So why were they there?”

  Jack told him about his conversation with Mercy Bennet. “The Vanderbilt Complex.”

  “That makes sense,” Nina Myers broke in, her voice softer and more distant from the microphone. “I was up there. Lee’s house looks right down on the place. That’s got to be why the Secret Service was staking it out.”

  “Tell them what’s going on,” Jack said.

  “Stand by,” Henderson said. The line dulled and Jack knew he was on hold.

  “Never a dull moment for you,” Sharpton said during the interlude.

  “That’s because I didn’t retire.”

  The line came alive again. “Jack,” Henderson said, “the Secret Service tells us everything is under control at the Lee house. They checked with their men up there and all’s well.”