24 Declassified: 09 - Trinity Read online

  Aaron’s laughter thinned. “Touched me? Well, sure . . .”

  “Uh-uh.” Kim grinned. She glanced wickedly at Janet. “I mean, touched you. Down there.”

  “Kim!” Janet shrieked. The others shrieked, too. All except for Aaron. Kim had expected him to blush, but instead he’d gone ghostly white.

  “Well, spill!” Dean demanded, oblivious.

  “Spill!” repeated the others.

  Aaron was not playing along. He fidgeted, the color gone from his face, his lip trembling. He looked at Kim with wet eyes, then looked down. All the laughter died.

  “Aaron?” Kim asked quietly.

  The boy got to his feet and hurried from the room.

  6:19 P.M. PST Panorama City

  Jack stumbled out of a cloud of dark smoke and into a sea of red and blue flashing lights set against black and white. He was vaguely aware of the police cars and uniformed officers. He knew someone was trying to talk to him, but the words came through as a muffled buzz, distorted by the ringing in his ears.

  Booby trap, he said. Or at least that’s what he meant to say. He couldn’t hear his own words. Bomb in the chair. Pressure release, like a land mine. The fat man sat down and that triggered it. They’re ahead of us.

  The uniformed officers asked him a few more questions, but he couldn’t hear them yet. They’re ahead of us, he kept thinking and saying. They’re ahead of us. The uniforms didn’t know what that meant, so they left him sitting on the curb and went back inside to search.

  Jack breathed in the cleaner air and worked his jaw as though that would open up channels and let the ringing sound leave his head. The muffled voices became a little more distinct as he watched figures in firemen’s jackets carry two people out of the house on stretchers—the fat man covered by a sheet, and Burchanel. Jack couldn’t see much of the FBI agent with the emergency personnel around him, but what little he saw looked bad.

  They’re ahead of us, Jack told himself. They knew we’d talk to Ramin and they tried to put him out of service. They’re ahead of us. It occurred to him that he kept repeating that same phrase. It was not a good sign.

  Someone knelt behind him, tearing the back of his shirt open. The someone—a paramedic—daubed his back with soft, wet gauze. The wetness felt cool at first, then it stung. Jack gritted his teeth but said nothing. This was easier to deal with than the ringing in his head. He could focus on pain. Sounds came into his head now as separate and distinct stimuli. Soon enough he was able to focus on two people standing in front of him. One was a paramedic— maybe the same one who had treated his back. The other was a tall man with steel-blue eyes. It occurred to Jack that he knew that man.

  “. . . got to be a concussion,” the paramedic was saying. “And his back is torn up a little from chair fragments, but there’s nothing serious. Not like the other guys. I can’t believe he survived it, that close.”

  “That’s Jack,” said Christopher Henderson. Henderson stooped in front of Jack to look him in the eye. “You okay, buddy?”

  Jack was. Henderson’s voice came from farther away than it should have, but otherwise, Jack’s head was clearing. “I’m pissed,” he said. “How are they?”

  Henderson shook his head. “The fat guy’s dead. Your FBI man would be, too, but the fat guy shielded a lot of the blast. Still, they’re taking him to ICU.”

  Jack nodded. Every passing moment brought him a little more clarity. Still, he’d had concussions before, and he knew that clarity came in layers—at each stage you felt fine, until the next layer came and you realized how groggy you’d still been a moment before.

  “Was the fat guy Ramin Ahmadi?” Henderson asked.

  Jack nodded again, and this time he smiled wryly. “This unit of yours is coming along, eh?”

  Henderson managed to nod proudly and dismissively at the same time, the way a man takes a compliment on a golf swing he knows is good. “We’re on the distribution list, now. I still think you should come over. Speaking of which . . .” He spun on his heels and sat down on the curb next to Jack. “What’s a CIA agent doing operating domestically?”

  Jack rubbed his eyes and pointed down the road, where an ambulance had just taken Ed Burchanel. “I was just along for the ride. It was Ed’s investigation.”

  Henderson snorted. “If you joined the Counter Terrorist Unit, you wouldn’t have to tell tall tales.”

  “Like I told Richard Walsh, you guys seem set up to deal with things on this side of the ocean. The real action is overseas.”

  Henderson looked over his shoulder at the smoldering house. “Is that so?”

  It occurred to Jack that the evidence was against him.

  “Well, at least let me give you a ride,” Henderson said.

  Jack shook his head. “Can’t. I’ve got to clean this mess up,” he said, referring to the informational debris, not the damage to the house.

  “No, you don’t,” Henderson said. “It’s our mess now. CTU’s mess, I mean.”

  Jack bristled, but then put his hackles down. He could see it. CIA recruits the FBI to pursue a domestic investigation. The shit hits the fan, and CTU, eager to make its bones, steps in as the new agency in charge of a terrorist case.

  “It’s my case,” Jack said. “I want in.”

  Henderson winked. “Like I said, let me give you a ride.”

  6:28 P.M. PST Westwood

  Kim found Aaron sitting on the curb outside the Needham house. She knew boys didn’t like to be caught crying, so she pretended not to notice as he wiped his eyes. When he was done, she sat down next to him.

  “I didn’t mean to freak you out,” she said. “I mean, it was just a game—”

  “It’s cool, it’s cool,” he said, still sniffling. “You didn’t freak me out. I kinda did that myself.”

  “It wasn’t . . . it wasn’t because you and Janet—”

  “No!”

  “—because I was just joking—”

  “No, it’s not.” His breath caught in his throat, making her stop, too. “It’s not Janet or anything. It’s . . .”

  He adjusted himself in a way Kim couldn’t really explain. It wasn’t like he fidgeted or anything. But she could tell that some machinery in his body or his head, a cog or a wheel she couldn’t see, had shifted, like when you clicked a button on a computer and could sort of sense it gearing up to perform its appointed task.

  “I’ve never told anyone before.”

  She didn’t say, You can tell me. Thirteen though she was, she was old enough to understand that prompts of that kind were reserved for gossip and rumors in the girls’ room and e-mail. This was more important. She didn’t have to tell Aaron he could trust her. He would know, or he wouldn’t.

  “It’s weird no matter what, but it’s especially weird because it’s, it’s the priest at my church.” She nodded, still not sure what he meant or what “it” was, just knowing that somehow all the air had been sucked away from both of them. “He’s been one of the priests there for my whole life, and when he asked me, I didn’t know what to say. I mean, I didn’t know how to say no or whatever.”

  “No to what?”

  Aaron shivered. “He . . . did that. What you asked about inside. He did it a lot.”

  6:31 P.M. PST Los Angeles, California

  Michael dialed the number and waited. The phone rang three times before it was picked up. No one spoke on the other end. “Hello?” Michael said in mock confusion. “Hello? Is Michael there?” When no one spoke, he hung up.

  His cell phone rang a moment later. “Is this Mi

  chael?” said a voice on the far end.

  “Speaking,” Michael replied.

  “This is Gabriel.” Gabriel, of course, was not his real

  name, but that hardly mattered. “What happened?”

  “Ramin is dead.”

  “What a tragedy. Before the authorities got to

  him, no doubt?”

  “Well, no. During.”

  The voice on the far end hissed, so
mehow sucking all the warmth out of Michael. “Did he pass on any information? Anything that could cause a problem?”

  “I don’t see how,” Michael said. “He knew almost nothing. If he told them everything, it would be no more than they might have guessed on their own.”

  “Probably you are right,” Gabriel said. “We should meet. We need to move forward. Write down this address.”

  Michael wrote.

  6:35 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  The Los Angeles headquarters of the Counter Terrorist Unit looked like a technological garden run amok. Phone lines and optical cables sprouted out of the ground. More cables draped themselves vinelike from the ceiling. A few desks sat, steady and alone, as certain and determined as rocks in a Zen garden.

  There was a picnic going on in this garden—about a half-dozen staffers were camped out on the floor, sitting around a blanket of paper napkins, sharing cheddar cheese and Wheat Thins and sucking bottles of Sam Adams beer.

  “This looks cozy,” Jack said as he and Henderson entered the room. “You guys make a great first impression.”

  A muscle in Henderson’s jaw pulsed.

  “Hey, sir, did you hear the good news!” one of the picnickers said. She stood up and walked toward Henderson with an unopened bottle in her hand. “We made our first bust!”

  Henderson did not lighten up. “And it’s big enough so that you’re already drinking on the job?”

  The young woman, in her late twenties, glanced at Jack and realized that she didn’t know him. She hesitated, then clearly decided that there was no backtracking. “Well, just to baptize the place, you know? None of us are on call anyway.”

  Jack didn’t think she was an operator. None of them looked like operators to him. Even the most bythe-book operator toeing the line for a superior had a certain don’t-fuck-with-me quality about him, and would lean on you the way your dog leaned its weight against you, just to test you, even though it knew you were the alpha. None of these people had it.

  “Tell me about the bust,” Henderson said.

  The woman glanced at Jack. “He’s all right,” Henderson said, waving away any concern about classification. “Bauer, this is Jamey Farrell, one of our analysts. Jamey, Jack Bauer, CIA.”

  She nodded, then said excitedly, “We’re pulling together field reports for the formal summary, but basically we nailed those three guys from the Hollywood mosque.”

  “What three guys?” Jack asked.

  Jamey said three names he didn’t recognize. “They were leads we were working out of here,” Jamey said, taking obvious pride in the half-assembled office. Or, rather, taking pride in her accomplishments despite her surroundings. “We caught them using Internet café computers and Skype technology to contact members of al-Gama’a al-Islamiyya . . . um, you know what—”

  “I know who they are,” Jack said.

  “Right. We couldn’t get anything definitive, and the conversations we recorded weren’t incriminating. It took us a while to convince the judge to let us go in.”

  Henderson grunted. “Damned warrants. It’s a pain in the ass to get them. It oughta be easier.”

  Jamey continued undeterred. “Finally, we got evidence that one of these three had tried to call the Blind Sheik’s number, and the judge decided we had probable cause.”

  “Are they booked?” Henderson asked.

  “Will be. We found plastic explosives in their house.”

  “Who is this?”

  The voice that spoke was thin and tight as a wire. All three of them turned to see a narrow-faced man with a balding head staring at them. He wasn’t particularly small, but, oddly, Jack got the impression that he thought of himself as small. His shoulders seemed to cave in, but his chest puffed out, as though he was at once collapsing under, and resisting, his own self-image.

  “Jack Bauer, CIA,” Henderson said quickly. “Jack, this is Ryan Chappelle, Division Director of CTU.”

  Jack reached out to shake Chappelle’s hand, but Chappelle only looked at it and raised an eyebrow. Jack realized what he was waiting for, withdrew the hand, and produced his identification. Chappelle read it like he was studying a driver’s test, then nodded. “Welcome,” he said finally. “Excuse me a moment.” Chappelle turned to berate the carpet picnickers.

  Jack took that opportunity to turn to Henderson. “I thought George Mason was Division Director,” he whispered.

  Henderson shook his head. “Mason is District Director.”

  Jack rolled his eyes. Henderson shrugged. “We’re new. We’re a little confused about titles, but it all works out.”

  “Yeah, I can see that.”

  Under Chappelle’s scolding, the picnickers had vanished as if they’d never been. The room successfully cleared of any joy, Chappelle returned to Henderson and Bauer. “Bauer, Richard Walsh tells me you’re considering coming on board with us.”

  Jack bit his lip to avoid scowling. “It’s a discussion we’ve had, but I’m not sure I’m right for it. I’m pretty happy over at the CIA. But I am interested in what you’re going to do with Ramin Ahmadi. I thought I—I mean, the CIA—had turned this over to the FBI.”

  “It should have come to us,” Chappelle sniffed.

  “That sort of case is our jurisdiction now.”

  “I didn’t know.”

  “Now you do.”

  Jack smiled thinly. He was reminded suddenly of a

  story of Abraham Lincoln, who was overheard talking about another guest at a reception. “I don’t much like that man,” Lincoln was heard to say. “I’ll have to get to know him better.” Jack suspected that such efforts would not pay off with Ryan Chappelle.

  “I’d like to continue with the case,” Jack said. “It started with some of the work we did in Cairo.”

  Chappelle tipped his chin. “My people will tell you it started with our work in Los Angeles, but whatever. You’re welcome to read the reports. But I can’t have CIA working a domestic case for obvious reasons.”

  “The FBI didn’t have a problem.”

  Chappelle’s laugh was derisive. “Oh, well, if the FBI didn’t have a problem!” He shook his head. “Aren’t they the ones who let Abdul Raman Yasin walk out the front door?”

  Jack decided he’d had enough. “It’s easy to pick on the other guys when you don’t have any track record at all.”

  “We’re one for one,” Chappelle replied.

  “Impressive,” Jack sneered. “Three wannabe terrorists talking on the Internet. You saved the planet.”

  “Jack,” Henderson soothed. “There’s coffee down that hall. Why don’t you get some.”

  Jack glared at Chappelle a moment longer, then turned away. Chappelle watched him go. “That’s the guy you want to bring in here?”

  “Richard Walsh says he’s the best,” Henderson said. “We need him.”

  “I need him like a hole in the head,” Chappelle replied.

  1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24

  THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 7 P.M. AND 8 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

  7:00 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  Jack found the break room. There was a woman pouring herself a mug of coffee. She was thin, with sharp features and a wry look, but somehow it all came together in a nice-looking package.

  “It’s barely worth drinking,” she said, stepping out of his way and leaning against a counter, sipping.

  “That’s okay. I just had a conversation barely worth having. The coffee will go great.” He found a mug in the cabinet and poured it full.

  “Nina Myers,” she said.

  He lifted his cup at her. “Jack Bauer. You’re part of all this?”

  She nodded. “Yep. Are you the new kid?”

  Jack shook his head. “You guys are the new kids. And the teacher’s pets. You just pulled jurisdiction and took over my case.”

  “Yep, there’s a new sheriff in town,” she said with mock pride. “Sorry you get strip
ped of the ball.” Her eyes lingered on Jack over the rim of her coffee mug. “Was it something to do with these three guys we’ve got in storage?”

  “Maybe,” Jack said. “I was working a case that may lead to a terrorist attack in L.A. You guys seem to have found three Muslims with plastic explosives. I’m sure they’re connected.”

  “You want to ask my three young Turks?”

  “Your three—?”

  “I collared them. I’m going down to interrogate them in a few.” She let her eyes rest on him again. “Come on, watch the tape with me first.”

  She led him down the hall to a room that wanted to be a technical bay, but wasn’t yet. There was a large console, but only one screen, surrounded by empty cubbyholes with a few wires poking out like snakes. A computer had been set up. Nina woke it up and clicked a few times. The large inset monitor came to life. Jack began to watch the shaky, high-definition video footage of the backs of Federal agents wearing blue Windbreakers with “ATF” and “FBI” written across the back in yellow block letters. Jack watched with interest, but most of it was routine footage recording the interior of a house in the mid-Wilshire area. The house was totally unremarkable until the police videographer arrived at the detached garage at the back of the property. The garage was lit by only a single bare bulb sticking out of a cobwebbed socket high up on the wall. A very old, rickety, homemade workstation had been built along one wall. But next to it stood a brand-new white cabinet, the kind that could be purchased at a big box store and assembled at home. An agent opened the cabinet to reveal a crate, which two agents pulled out and placed on the floor. It was long and low—the voice narrating the description said it was four feet long by three wide by three feet high. The agents popped the lid off the top and removed it to reveal the contents.

  The plastic explosives had been molded into gray-blue bricks, stacked five high and six across in the case. There were two gaps in the top layer.

  “What do you think?” Nina asked. Jack had the impression she’d been watching him the whole time.