24 Declassified: Cat's Claw 2d-4 Read online

  “I swear,” Tony said, “you could use this music to brainwash people.”

  Nina looked at the crowd of twenty-somethings writhing to the music. “It’s working,” she said.

  They pushed their way through the grinding crowd until they reached a dais at the far side. Their badges got them past that bouncer, too, and they climbed up to stand beside the sound equipment being run by a round-bodied, chubby-faced black man wearing small, squarish, black-framed glasses, who sweated profusely under his earphones.

  “Hey!” Tony said, holding up his badge.

  The DJ nodded at them, then did a double-take when he saw the badge. A look of disgust crossed his face, as he slid the headphones down around his neck.

  “Man, what’d we do? I’ve got permits for everything.”

  Tony shook his head. “Are you Goodnight?”

  “That’s right.”

  “We’re looking for Sarah Kalmijn.”

  “What?”

  Tony put his face close to Goodnight’s ear and said it again.

  “She in trouble?” the DJ shouted back.

  “Not with us. We want to protect her. She here?”

  Goodnight shook his head. “Try the other club, she goes there, too. But if there’s really a problem, I don’t think she’s gonna be there.”

  “Where’d she be?” Tony asked over the music.

  “Her family’s got a boat down in Marina del Rey. That’s where she goes when things get bad.”

  “You know the name of the boat?”

  “No, man, I don’t remember. It’s Marina del Rey, though.”

  2:20 A.M. PST Plush

  Jack accomplished his mission quickly. The DJ at Plush didn’t know Sarah at all and told them to check the other club, where Goodnight was spinning that night. Frustrated, Jack turned to go, motioning for the others to follow. They pushed through the noise and the crowds toward the door.

  Ted saw them first. He produced his pistol as if by magic, shouting something that Jack could not hear over the music. Ozersky shouted again and pointed. Now Jack saw the door. There were three of them, dark-haired men with guns firing at the bouncers, who fell to the ground. One of the men reached in and grabbed the doors to the warehouse and pulled them shut. Just before they closed, another man tossed something inside — a large can with a rag sticking out of it.

  “Down!” Jack yelled. Ozersky grabbed the dancers nearest him and dragged them downward. Jack and Mercy dived for the floor. A moment later the can exploded, spraying flame and liquid everywhere. Burning liquid splashed on the ravers, setting their clothes on fire, and hit the walls, burning wood and posters. The alcohol-sprinkled floor caught fire. People screamed and rushed for the door. Jack barely had time to pull himself and Mercy up before the crowd surged forward.

  Someone pulled at the doors, which opened inward. “It’s chained!” Jack heard. “It’s chained from the outside.”

  The liquid fire was homemade napalm, which not only ignited combustible material but also burned into the skin. The fire was already spreading. Smoke began to blur Jack’s vision. He looked up and saw a window at second-story height to the left of the locked doors. “Help me!” he yelled. He shoved his way to the wall, Ted and Mercy following in his wake.

  “Stand there,” he ordered Ted, and the other CTU agent braced himself against the wall. Jack planted a foot on his slightly bent leg and boosted himself up, his other foot reaching the height of Ozersky’s head, and soon he was standing on the other man’s shoulders. Jack reached up but the window was too high. Maybe if he jumped…

  The room was in chaos. The fire spread with unbelievable quickness. It was almost impossible to think over the heat and the terrified screams.

  “Pull me.” Mercy was below him, reaching up.

  Jack reached his hand down to Mercy. Without hesitation, she climbed up Ozersky’s back, caught Jack’s hand, and mountain climbed up both CTU agents until she was on Jack’s back. She reached the window. Mercy drew her gun and used its muzzle to smash the glass, then knocked out the jagged teeth of shattered glass to avoid being cut.

  Mercy stuck her head out the window to assess the far side. She didn’t hear the gunshot over the noise inside, but she felt it brush through her hair, nearly scalping her. She was so startled she nearly threw herself backward into the crowd.

  “Gun!” she yelled, ducking her head down.

  “Go!” Jack yelled. “Go!”

  “Are you fucking crazy!” she yelled.

  “Look!” he said. The fire raged. If Plush had a sprinkler system, it was malfunctioning. The walls were in flames. Panicked ravers pounded against the door as those behind pushed forward, crushing those in front.

  This virus isn’t going to kill me, Mercy thought. Knowing Jack Bauer is going to kill me. She gathered herself, adjusted her grip on her pistol, and launched herself upward. She vaulted over the window frame and fell almost a story to the ground below. Gunshots sounded almost in her ear. Mercy rolled on the ground and came up, weapon in hand.

  It was the most lucid moment in Mercy Bennet’s life. She was aware of moving quickly, but she did not feel hurried. She experienced a groove, the steady calm of a snowboarder hurtling downhill, but completely under control. She acquired the first man and put one bullet into him, then swiveled to the next. Bullets ricocheted off the ground around her. She felt one pass through the cloth of her shirt between her arm and her ribs. She laid her muzzle over the chest of the second man and squeezed. She was about to shoot the third when Jack landed on him heavily. The man crumpled under Jack’s weight. Bauer smashed him in the face three times with the muzzle of his SigSauer. Jack turned toward the doors. A short, thick chain had been looped through the handles, locking the doors in place. Jack pointed his own gun at the lock and fired four times, shielding his eyes from the blast and hoping no ricochets killed him. When he was done, smoke rose up from his gun as the chain fell down.

  “Help them!” Jack commanded. Mercy helped Ted shove the doors inward, against the pressing crowd.

  Ozersky appeared in the crowd, yelling “Move, move, goddamn it!” The crowd inside managed to make enough space, and the next moment they were streaming out of the building.

  Jack ignored it all. He knelt down beside the man he’d struck. Finally, he had one of them alive. “What’s al-Libbi’s plan?”

  The man grinned at him with broken teeth. “Who’s al-Libbi?”

  Jack lifted the man’s left hand, placed the muzzle of his gun against the palm, and fired. The man screamed.

  “Jesus!” Mercy screamed at him. Jack ignored her.

  “What’s his plan?” Jack said. He didn’t know if he’d gone mad or if he was thinking with perfect clarity. But he did know that time was running out, he was low on leads, and important people would die if he didn’t find a solution.

  “I…I don’t know,” the man said, his voice suddenly pleading and desperate.

  “Tell me something,” Jack threatened. “Tell me something worth knowing right now or I’ll get some of that napalm you made and pour it down your throat.”

  The man started to speak. What he said brought Jack no closer to finding Sarah Kalmijn, but it was valuable nonetheless.

  2:45 A.M. PST Rancho Park Neighborhood, Los Angeles

  Henderson and his squad divided the rescued papers into five charred piles and began to sort through them. Many of the pages were in Arabic and would need to be translated later.

  “Do we know what we’re looking for?” Patterson asked in a low voice. He had gone down earlier when a bullet had punched him through the vest he wore. The Kevlar had stopped the round, but the force had bruised his sternum.

  “No,” Henderson conceded. “But anything with American names on it. Santiago, Romond, Kalmijn…”

  “Kalmij-n?” one of the operators said, holding up a burned scrap and mispronouncing the name.

  “Kal-mane,” Henderson corrected. “Give me that, please.”

  It was a sheet of notepaper
written in English, the words hastily scribbled. Under Sarah Kalmijn’s name Henderson saw the addresses of two clubs or bars, and also the phrase “Marina del Rey At Last.” He guessed it was another bar.

  “Call Jack Bauer,” Henderson said.

  2:53 A.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

  Bauer’s recovered cell phone rang again, and this time Ryan Chappelle answered.

  “To whom am I speaking now?” Ayman al-Libbi asked. Chappelle signaled for the trace to begin.

  “This is Regional Division Director Ryan Chappelle.”

  “That sounds important,” al-Libbi said patronizingly. “That’s good, because my message is also important. Tell the President of the United States that he is holding five men prisoner in a secret holding facility just outside Los Angeles. You know who they are. These five men are to be allowed to go free. If this is not done within one hour, I will destroy the antiviral medicine. If it is done, I will give you the antidote. I will call again in forty-five minutes.”

  He hung up. Chappelle looked at Jamey Farrell, who shook her head and slapped the table in frustration. “He had some kind of router. We can beat it, but he needs to be on the phone longer.”

  Chappelle ran a hand over his balding head. He knew of the men al-Libbi wanted. They were Iranians the CIA and CTU were sure belonged to Iran’s terrorist network; all three had history with Hezbollah. They’d been plucked out of various European countries using methods some would call illegal. They’d been bounced around from secret bases in Europe to Guantanamo Bay, but as those facilities came under scrutiny they’d been moved, so they ended up in a secret holding facility CTU maintained out in the high desert region above Los Angeles along the Pear Blossom Highway.

  “I have to take this to the President,” he said.

  21. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 3 A.M. AND 4 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME

  3:00 A.M. PST West Los Angeles

  Jack hurtled down the 405 Freeway chasing the last lead they had. Tony had called him with the news about a boat in Marina del Rey. He had no more information, so Jack had jumped in the car, barely giving Mercy and Ted time to climb in, before he peeled off.

  “Call Jamey and have her search the harbormaster’s records. Sarah’s name is bound to be there somewhere.” He hung up and drove.

  There was silence in the car again, but this time Mercy broke it. “You shot that man through the hand,” she said at last.

  Jack nodded. “That man knows how to keep you from dying sometime in the next few hours.”

  “I don’t have any sympathy for him,” Mercy said. “But. but do you ever wonder if what you’re doing is okay? What if sometimes they’re right and you’re wrong?”

  Jack looked at her, his eyes steady and his face like stone. “Sometimes I’m wrong,” he said. “But they are never right.”

  His phone rang again. “Bauer.”

  “Jamey,” said the analyst. “Jack, Tony relayed your request. There’s nothing in the harbormaster’s database for any Sarah Kalmijn, or anyone else with that surname. If she really does have a boat, the slip and the boat are registered to someone else.”

  “Keep digging,” he said, speaking shorthand. “There’s got to be something.” He hung up, but the phone rang yet again.

  “Jack, it’s me,” said Christopher Henderson. “I’ve got something random here. It’s one of those things that sticks out, but I don’t know where to put it.”

  “Go.”

  “We raided the cleric’s house and pulled some notes. By the way, if nothing else goes right, unearthing this sleeper cell itself was a huge security coup. Anyway, there are notes here on one of your targets, Sarah Kalmijn. I know you’ve already been to the clubs, but another note says ‘Marina del Rey At Last.’ That mean anything to you?”

  Jack felt fear and dread settle side by side in his stomach. “Yes, it does,” he said. “Thanks, Chris. You have no idea how much you just helped.”

  At the end of the day, it was that sort of teamwork that made field operations possible. One agent relaying information to another, the analysts at headquarters sifting data and digging for information. In less than two minutes Jack’s headlong, purposeless race to Marina del Rey had a purpose, because one phone call to Jamey Farrell, and a few strokes of her keyboard, told him that the thirty-foot sailing yacht At Last was docked in slip 268, H Basin, in Marina del Rey.

  It also told Jack that al-Libbi’s people knew about it and would be there, too.

  At three o’clock in the morning, the Los Angeles freeways worked the way they were supposed to. Jack swung onto the 90 Freeway from the 405 and arrived in Marina del Rey in less than ten minutes.

  “I don’t want to be surprised by these guys again,” Jack said. “Ted, stay at the near end of the dock in case they come after us. Mercy, follow me down to the finger where slip 268 is, but then do some reconnaissance past that. Okay with you?”

  They both nodded.

  The harbor at Marina del Rey was huge, a manmade project that involved digging four separate basins that were subsequently flooded with sea water. H Basin lay just off Admiralty Way. Jack parked the car in a small lot near a blue shack that advertised sailing lessons. All three got out and hurried toward the docks. The docks were lit, and they saw row after row of slips holding boats of all shapes and sizes. The main dock, running perpendicular to the slips, was accessible, but a fence ran the length of that dock and a gate at each row required a key to get down to the boats themselves.

  As they set foot on the long dock, Ted took up a position in the shadows and waited. Mercy and Jack hurried down the ramp and along the dock until they came to the row containing number 268. Just then a boat engine powered up.

  “No,” Jack said calmly. He vaulted the fence and ran down the row of moored boats. Number 268 was near the end, and by the time he reached it, the boat — a white thirty-foot single-masted yacht — was sliding out of its space. Jack gathered steam as he ran and launched himself onto the boat. He landed with his feet on the deck but nearly bounced back from the lifelines that ran the perimeter like a wire fence. Catching his balance, he hopped over the lifelines.

  “Get the hell away from me!” yelled a woman’s voice, and a metal pole jabbed Jack in the face, tearing into his cheek. “Get off my boat!”

  “Wait!” Jack yelled, staggered back from the blow, and nearly fell off the boat. She hit him again with the pole. Jack grabbed it to keep it from moving. “I’m a Federal agent!” he snapped. “I’m here to help you.”

  That did not seem to make her any happier. “Get the fuck off my boat! I didn’t do anything!”

  The pole jabbed him in the stomach this time. He’d had enough. Pivoting, he wrenched the pole from her hands, dropped it, and lunged forward. He jumped onto the molded bench near the wheel and caught the woman’s wrists.

  She was pretty and blond with short hair. Her eyes were lovely, but currently filled with panic. “Shut up and listen,” he said. “I’m a Federal agent. I know all about the Monkey Wrench Gang and Bernard Copeland or Smith or whatever you want to call him. I know about the virus.” At this, her panic increased, but he stifled her movements with his grip on her wrists. “I’m not here to arrest you. We need you.”

  She stopped struggling. “You… need…?”

  “You’re Sarah Kalmijn, right?”

  “Yes.”

  “Listen carefully because I don’t have a lot of time. Part of Copeland’s plan worked. The President did get the virus. In fact, several people have contracted it. But Frankie Michael-mas sold you all out. She gave the virus and the antiviral medicine to terrorists, real terrorists. We need to know how to create a new antiviral medicine or people will start dying.”

  Sarah looked terrified. “Do they have the weaponized version or the natural—?”

  “Both. Stop asking questions,” he said. “I’ll tell you everything you want to know when there’s time. Right now assassins have killed Pico Santiago and Todd Romond, and you’re n
ext. Do you know how to make more vaccine?”

  “It’s not exactly a vaccine. It’s an antiviral—”

  “Whatever. Can you make it?”

  “No,” Sarah said. Jack’s heart sank until she added, “But I know where Copeland kept his notes stored.”

  “We searched his house—”

  “Not there. It’s at Santa Monica Airport. I can show you.”

  “Good.”

  The boat had drifted out into the main channel as they spoke. Sarah grabbed the wheel and straightened the boat out, the chugging engine barely giving them any momentum. She started to turn the boat around as she said, “Did you— did you say that the President has the virus? Is he okay?”

  “Last update I got,” Jack said. “But not for much longer.”

  Sarah hesitated, then said, “I have something you’ll want. Hold her steady.” She put his hands on the wheel and reached down into her bag. She removed a leather camera case that had been stuffed with strips of rags. Tossing the rags aside, she removed a thin vial of clear liquid and handed it to Jack.

  “Is this what I—?”

  “The antiviral,” Sarah said. “When Bernard really started messing with the virus, I stole a dose for myself. I’m terrified of that virus.”

  Jack took the vial from her and put it into the pocket of his jacket. “I’ve seen what it does to—” He stopped. A powerful engine roared nearby, and Jack heard the hiss and splash of rapidly displaced water. A searchlight fired up, shining brightly on Sarah’s boat.

  “Get down!” Jack yelled, slamming Sarah Kalmijn onto the deck. Guns blazed on board the speedboat, and bullets riddled the side of the boat, splintering the fiberglass. The speedboat came closer, intending to board. Jack fired his SigSauer, and the boat veered away as someone cursed in Farsi.

  Jack got off a few more rounds, but the assassins had fire superiority. There must have been four or five of them in the speedboat because they laid down a constant rate of fire, forcing Jack to stay low, covering Sarah as she murmured, “Oh god, don’t let them hurt me,” over and over.