24: Deadline (24 Series) Read online

  This guy, he had been complaining a lot. About the food, the work, about every damn little thing. Enough that when Rydell had gotten wind of it through one of the brothers minding the works, he had to come see for himself. To set an example.

  It was important, Rydell reflected, to make sure that these chumps understood their place in things. Cattle gotta be branded, his daddy had once said.

  The flabby guy was trying to talk, but he couldn’t manage it. He’d be dead soon. A .50 cal round in the gut would do that to you. Rydell crouched there and watched him bleeding out into the cracked, overgrown asphalt of the old parade ground. “I’m gonna leave you here,” he told him. “So the others can see how whiners get dealt with.”

  He pointed with the gun, toward where the tumbledown barracks stood. There were faces at the windows, all the other civilians, the other cattle who might have been listening to the crap this mouthy prick had been spouting. They might have been getting ideas, but that wouldn’t go any further, not now.

  Rydell stood up. “Don’t feel you gotta die quiet.” He kicked the man in his wound, making him whimper. “Best for me if you scream and howl some. Sends a message.”

  Lance was coming his way, jogging across from the ruined blockhouse that had once been the officers’ quarters building. A lot of the infrastructure across the derelict Fort Blake army base had been “abandoned in place,” as the military liked to call it, and that had worked out just fine for the needs of the Night Rangers MC.

  “What now?”

  “You need to hear this, prez.” Lance held out his cell phone. “Sticks called back.”

  Rydell didn’t like the look on the face of his burly master-at-arms, and he snatched the phone from him, annoyed that he wasn’t going to be able to watch the dying man breathe his last. As he raised the handset to his ear, for the first time he noticed something off in the distance toward the town. A plume of smoke, black against black, climbing lazily into the sky.

  His anger kindled. “What was the last thing I told you, you dumb asshole?”

  “Boss, no,” said Sticks, and with those words Rydell knew the worst had happened. He gripped the gun tightly, and if the other biker had been standing there before him, he would have become the second person to bleed out here tonight. “Wasn’t my fault, it was those guys—”

  “Where’s Brodur? Where’s Sammy? I want to talk to them, not you.”

  “Brodur … don’t know where he’s at. But Sammy, boss. Sammy’s gotta be dead.” Before Rydell could ask another question, Sticks was spilling it all out. “The ’Case is all burning up! They set it alight! The guys from Chicago, they hadda be the ones!”

  “They’re not from Chicago,” Rydell grated. “Idiot. What about the girls?”

  “Not sure. They might have got out with them.” He paused. “I gotta picture,” Sticks insisted. “On the phone!”

  “Send it.” Rydell stabbed the “end call” button angrily and gripped the phone so tightly that the plastic case gave off a popping, cracking sound. A few seconds later, it buzzed and he glared at it.

  “Who we looking at?” Lance hovered at his shoulder, trying to peer at the images. They were blurry and off-angle, but by luck more than judgment, Sticks had captured a shot of two men in the Crankcase’s back corridor.

  “This is what I get when I try to delegate,” Rydell growled. For a second, he wanted to smash the phone on the ground and grind it to pieces under his boot heel. He took a breath through his gritted teeth and glared at Lance. “You see them? Find these two and bring them to me.”

  “They could be anywhere, boss…”

  Rydell turned and shouted into his face. “Find them! There’s only three roads in or out of this town! You know how the cops do it, block them off! Whoever those two fools are, they’re messing with MC property. That don’t get to happen.”

  Lance nodded and set off at a jog.

  Rydell felt something touch his foot and he looked down to see the man he had shot trying to grab at his leg. He brought his boot down and hastened the end of his object lesson.

  15

  Toward the edge of town, where the landscape began to drop back to wide-open spaces and endless dark horizons, the road threaded past an overgrown steel-and-concrete barn as big as an aircraft hangar. The remnants of colorful signage across it were green with mildew and decay, and weeds coiled around everything.

  It had been what modern urban planners would call a “retail park” when they first broke ground in the 1980s—a site for a big-box store surrounded by the flat expanse of a parking lot, where locals and soldiers from the army base alike would have been able to get cheap consumer goods and cheaper groceries. But that never really came to pass, and Deadline’s one and only mega-mart suffered a slow, lingering death that eventually left it vacant and empty. In retrospect, it had been the first sign of the town’s impending collapse, although no one living there wanted to accept that.

  Some of the worst storms of the century had punched holes in the sheet-metal roof during the bitter winters a few years back, and now nobody dared to venture inside the empty shell. The place was shuttered up, each great patch of thick fiberboard across the doors and windows emblazoned with a sun-faded sign warning that the building was unsafe.

  Jack drove the van clean through one of them, smashing the way in through the back so anyone passing on the road wouldn’t see signs of disruption. He killed the engine and stepped down from the driver’s seat, kicking up the thick dust on the floor as he went.

  Laurel and the women held their collective breath as he and Chase walked back to the broken doors and listened. Somewhere out in the night, a motorcycle engine throttled up, but it was moving away, fading. After a while, there was only the dull moaning of the wind.

  “Clear?” said Chase.

  “Clear,” agreed Jack. “We lost them, for now.”

  The other man gave a low whistle and it echoed off the walls. “Whoa. Look at this place. It’s like the end of the world in here.”

  Jack nodded. The glow of the van’s headlights illuminated what pieces of the big store’s infrastructure were still bolted to the floor. In the distance, the glass-fronted doors of long-dead refrigerator cabinets reflected the beams, and there were rows and rows of empty shelves that had once been heavy with all kinds of products. In the far corner, where the roof had partially fallen in, a cloudy night sky was visible through a great rip in the ceiling. Chase’s description was apt; the skeletal remains of the mega-mart could have been the set for some postapocalyptic horror movie.

  “I’ll go look for a vantage point,” Chase told him, and vanished into the gloom.

  Jack walked back to the van, scoping out the floor, measuring it for lines of sight and possible exit routes. Laurel had taken charge and was leading the women to check each other over for injuries, keeping them calm.

  His impression of her shifted. She had seemed so vulnerable when he went to her rescue in the motel car park, but now Jack realized that there was more to Laurel than he had seen on the surface. She was afraid but she wasn’t letting it rule her. She had risked a lot to rescue her friend, the girl called Trish—and he hadn’t forgotten that her brave-but-risky arrival in the car had also kept him alive in the bargain.

  “We can’t just wait here, can we?” Trish was saying. Her terror was real and palpable, and it was in danger of spreading through the rest of the escapees like a flash flood. “They’re gonna come after us!”

  “Why did we stop?” said one of the others. “Why can’t we keep driving?”

  “Not enough gas,” Jack offered, nodding at the vehicle. “You’d barely make it five miles out of town before the engine died.”

  Laurel gave Jack a level look. “Some of these girls have been in that place for months. We have to get them away from here.”

  “Every drop of fuel in this burg will be under the control of the MC,” said Jack. “Can’t just gas up and go. We need another plan.”

  “He’s right.” An ol
der woman, shivering in the chill, nodded bleakly. She told him her name was Cherry, and that it had been three months since she had come to Deadline, drawn by the same hollow promises that had snared Laurel and the rest. “We can’t run away. What about all the others?”

  “What others?” said Jack. He looked back at Laurel. “The ones off the bus?”

  “Those were just the new arrivals,” said Cherry. “I’m talking about the ones they got out at the works.” She took in the other women with a sweep of her hand. “More than just us.”

  “The works.” Jack repeated the name. “The guy who ran the strip club, Sammy. He mentioned that.”

  “That rat!” spat another girl. “Hope he burned alive back there!”

  “You won’t see him again,” Jack assured her. “What was he talking about?”

  “The army base, outside of the town,” said Cherry. “What used to be Fort Blake, until the government closed it down. Rydell and all the Night Rangers use it like it’s their clubhouse. That’s where they take the others. Like a prison out there. Like you see in them war movies.”

  “How many people?” asked Laurel, her face pale.

  “A hundred?” Cherry shook her head. “Don’t know. I was only there one time. But they got folks living out of shacks, working them like dogs.”

  “For what?” said Jack.

  “For the MC,” Cherry insisted. “They’re promised pay but all they get is to be slave labor!” She shook her head. “And people outside of Deadline, they don’t know about it or they don’t care.”

  “This town, it’s a sinkhole,” said Laurel. “Pulls in desperate, poor folks, makes them disappear, and the world just rolls on…”

  Jack remembered something else that Sammy had said, back in the club. We don’t sign on anyone who’s gonna be missed.

  He found the woman looking at him intently. “So. Do you have some kind of plan, mister? If we’re still here by daylight tomorrow, it won’t matter none that you burned down that place. We’ll be got.”

  “They’ll take it out on us,” said Cherry, with a grim nod.

  Jack glanced at his watch. “I won’t let that happen. You’ll all be safe by dawn. We’ll go our separate ways.”

  “And how exactly are we going to do that?” demanded Trish.

  “I’m working on it.”

  Footsteps sounded, and Chase returned, emerging from the shadows. “Hey, Jack. I found a way up to the roof,” he explained. “You can see the road going west from there, but that way is a bust.”

  “Why?”

  “I watched them put a semi across both lanes, jackknifed it.” Chase seemed edgy, and as Jack watched, he absently flexed his right hand, as if it were paining him. “Couldn’t see clear without binocs, but there’s a bunch of those bikers camped out there. Waiting for us.”

  Jack’s jaw hardened. “Safe bet they’ve done that on every route out of Deadline.”

  Chase nodded at Laurel and the others. “They need transport, Jack. Big, fast and right now.”

  “The bus!” Laurel said suddenly. She turned to Trish. “What happened to the bus that brought us from Indianapolis?”

  “It drove on,” said the other woman. “I didn’t see where to.”

  “The works,” Cherry insisted. “Like I said, new arrivals. That’s where they take anyone they don’t want as their entertainment.” She said the last word with venom.

  “All roads lead to Rydell,” Jack said, almost to himself.

  “He’s a stone killer,” insisted Cherry. “He likes to make it hurt.” She fell silent, and Jack found himself wondering what the woman had seen—or worse, experienced—that had made the Night Rangers’ leader so terrifying to her. “If he turns on you, that’s it. Better if you get away without him ever seeing you.”

  Jack shook his head. “We’re way past that.”

  * * *

  The jet’s wings returned to level flight and Kilner felt a shudder move down the length of the aircraft from nose to tail as they passed through a pocket of clear-air turbulence. At his side, Agent Dell gripped the armrests of her seat as if she were trying to squeeze blood out of them.

  She noticed his attention and grimaced. “I really don’t like flying,” she admitted. “Probably doesn’t help that I worked a bunch of air-crash cases with the NTSB.”

  “She’s a real ray of sunshine,” said Markinson, with a smirk. “Isn’t that right, Kari?”

  “Bite me, Helen,” retorted Dell.

  Kilner ignored the exchange and looked up at the digital clock mounted on the cabin bulkhead. “If Bauer is smart, he’ll already have ditched that car and found another vehicle.”

  Markinson had a copy of the captured images from the traffic camera in front of her. “Does he look asleep to you?”

  “It’s this other guy, the driver, I don’t get.” Dell tapped the picture. “NCTC comes up negative on a facial match for him against criminal records, but then we run it through the federal law enforcement database and out pops the jacket for a dead guy.”

  “Presumed dead,” corrected Hadley, without looking up from a sheaf of printouts in front of him. He hadn’t spoken since the materials had spooled out of the jet’s printer, studying them with an intense, unwavering focus. “Chase Edmunds is not the first person to use a national tragedy as a means to create a new identity. The same thing happened after nine-eleven.”

  Kilner shot him a look. “So you’re certain it’s him?”

  “Of course it’s him.” Hadley almost sneered.

  “That’s a pretty calculating thing to do,” said Markinson. “Don’t you think? I mean, thousands died when the Valencia nuke went off. What’s one more missing person on top of all the others? It’s not like anyone could walk into the middle of the blast zone and start checking dental records. Not for a couple of centuries, at least.”

  “It doesn’t matter why Edmunds faked his own death,” said Hadley. “What matters is that he’s aiding and abetting a federal fugitive, and a potential killer. This man was Jack Bauer’s partner at CTU Los Angeles, he was in a relationship with Bauer’s daughter … And as a self-made ghost, he’s the ideal accomplice.” At last, Hadley looked up. “So he can share in the culpability when we catch them.”

  “A former officer in the DC Metropolitan Police Department,” Dell read aloud from another copy of the suspect’s file. “Transferred to the SWAT Emergency Response Team … Later recruited to the Washington and Baltimore office of the Counter Terrorist Unit. Invalided out due to injuries suffered in the line of duty.” She shook her head. “As if Bauer wasn’t enough to deal with.”

  “This changes nothing,” Hadley insisted. “We knew the target had outside help. Now we have a face, a name. And we can use that.”

  Markinson was nodding. “According to his records, Edmunds left behind a daughter and a sister in San Diego. If we track them down, apply some pressure…?”

  “Do it,” said Hadley. “Call the ASAC on duty at the San Diego field office, have them pull in the relatives.”

  Kilner shifted in his seat. “Is that really necessary? Edmunds dropped off the grid years ago. There’s nothing to indicate he’s reached out in all that time. I doubt his family even knows he’s still alive.” He paused. “Again, assuming Bauer’s wheelman there is Chase Edmunds.”

  Hadley closed the folder in front of him and stared directly at the other man. “Are you going to continue to challenge everything that comes out of my mouth, Agent Kilner? It’s becoming tiresome.”

  The temperature inside the jet’s cabin seemed to drop twenty degrees. “I’m just doing my job,” Kilner retorted. “Pointing out alternatives. Considering all the possibilities.”

  “Make sure you stay on the right side of being obstructive,” said Hadley. “When this is all over, remember who will be making the report to the deputy director.” His cell phone rang and he glanced at it. Kilner saw something behind Hadley’s expression change and the agent picked up the phone, moving away to the front of the cabin
where he could talk without being overheard.

  Kilner watched him go. When he turned around, Markinson was staring at him. “Stop poking the bear,” she told him. “Or else he’ll see you wind up in the cell next to Bauer’s.”

  “Don’t you get it? Hadley doesn’t want to put Jack Bauer away,” Kilner said quietly. “He wants to put him down.”

  * * *

  “Talk to me,” said Hadley, turning his back on the other agents. “What have you got?”

  “I thought we were going to keep this quiet,” said Sal Jacobs. The FBI agent was calling back from his desk at the NCTC. “Now I have people looking over my shoulder, asking me why I ignored procedure!”

  “That’s on me,” Hadley told him. “You won’t take any flack for it, I promise.”

  “Easy for you to say.”

  “Remember who we’re doing this for, Sal. Jason Pillar was as much a mentor to you as he was to me.”

  “I know. I know, we both owed him.” Jacobs took a breath. “Look, I coordinated with divisional in Missouri and I asked their tech guys to keep an eye out for anything unusual.”

  Hadley nodded. The route Bauer had been taking when the image was snapped would pass right through the middle of the operational area managed by the FBI’s St. Louis field office. “Go on.”

  “Projecting Bauer’s possible pathways leads to nothing but a bunch of two-horse hick towns and dirt farms. Right now, there’s a storm front coming down from Canada, so nothing is going to be flying, which means he’s not aiming for an airstrip. He’s got to be on the back roads, Tom, off the interstates where he might be seen.”