24: Deadline (24 Series) Read online

  “No…!” The asset blinked, his eyes shimmering. “All right … But please, don’t hurt them…”

  “Do as we say and they will be fine.” She reached out and put a hand on his shoulder. “We will be waiting.”

  The operative by the door opened it to let the asset leave, and Ziminova watched the man walk away as if in a daze, disappearing out of sight. She glanced at her watch once again. She had destroyed a person’s life here, in less than a minute of conversation.

  Ziminova wondered if it would be necessary to make good on the dire threat, and in a distant, detached way she looked for some shred of sympathy for the asset. She did not find it. Instead, she wondered if the asset would be brave enough to raise the alarm. If he did so, the entire operation would be blown.

  But then she recalled something Bazin had once told her about those they selected to suborn. We never choose men strong enough to resist us.

  06

  Chase parked the Chrysler in the diner’s parking lot with the nose pointing back out on the highway in case he needed to make a quick getaway. It was an instinctive action that came to him automatically, some remnant of his training snapping back into place. He’d allowed some of his skills to atrophy over the last few years, and it was good to know that he hadn’t forgotten it all.

  Before climbing out of the car, he checked the safety catch on the Ruger pistol in the holster under his jacket, and walked into the rest stop. Scanning the faces of the diners, he zeroed in on a lone figure at the shadowy booth in the rear.

  The man Chase had come to see had his back to the wall and he had chosen a place that was both out of the way and within a few feet of the fire exit. It couldn’t be anyone else.

  Chase gave the waitress a wan smile and slipped into the booth. “Hey.” He wanted to open with something else, but now that he was there, looking right into Bauer’s steady green eyes, he wasn’t sure what to say.

  “Thanks for coming,” Jack told him, and it seemed like he meant it. The older man looked strung out and exhausted, but there was still that edge of something feral in his gaze. Bauer reminded him of a wolf backed into a corner. “It’s good to see you, Chase.”

  “Haven’t been Chase Edmunds for a long time,” he replied.

  “I know,” Jack said with a weary nod. “I saw the death certificate.” He paused. “I’m sorry. But you’re the only hope I’ve got right now.”

  Chase gave a humorless chuckle. “So, the New York thing, huh? You’re neck-deep in that? Should have guessed.”

  “It’s complicated.”

  “It always is.” He glanced out of the window, then back. “I got a lot of questions.”

  “No doubt. Look, we should get on the road—”

  Chase held up a hand. “No. Jack, I’m not moving from this spot until you give me some answers. You want my help, you’re gonna have to talk to me.”

  Bauer sank back against the seat. “Fine.”

  The first question—the one Chase really wanted to ask—stuck in his throat and he pushed past it, taking another tack. “I worked hard to make Chase Edmunds a ghost and Charlie Williams a reality. And yet here you are, as if nothing has happened. How’d you find me, Jack?”

  Bauer watched him carefully, and he answered the unspoken question first. “Kim’s okay. She’s back in LA now, married. I have a granddaughter.”

  Chase tried and failed to conceal the emotions that statement brought up in him, the surge of regret mixed with genuine relief. It was hard for him to parse his reaction. “That’s … That’s good. I’m happy for her.” But both men knew that wasn’t the whole truth.

  Years ago, back when Kim Bauer had been taken captive during a CTU operation, it had been Chase that rescued her, and in the aftermath the two of them had grown close. For a while, it had been serious between them—but things had changed after the Cordilla virus incident, after what had happened to Chase during the race to neutralize that deadly threat. He reflexively massaged his bad arm.

  Jack nodded at the injury. “How is it?”

  Chase shot him a look. “You cut off my hand with a fire axe, Jack. You cut it off and they had to sew the damn thing back on again. How do you think it is?” He scowled and Bauer said nothing. The fact was, Jack had been forced to do what he did. In the course of the whole situation with the Salazar plot, a vial of deadly virus bacillus had been attached to Chase’s arm and it would have discharged and infected countless innocents if not removed.

  But that act had forever damaged the bond between the two men, and if Chase was honest with himself, it had sown the seeds of his breakup with Kim into the bargain. After surgery, nerve damage across the severed wrist meant Chase had been unable to requalify for duty at CTU despite all the recovery therapy he had gone through. The job that had been his first, best calling was lost to him, and looking back he could only see it as the top of the slope that had taken him down and down to where he was now. Months later when news reached Kim that her father had apparently been killed, it was the beginning of the end for the couple. Chase had never really believed Bauer was gone, and in a way Kim had hated him for holding on to that belief when all she wanted was to move on with her life. The cruel irony that Chase had been right all along was not lost on him as he sat across the table from Kim’s father.

  “Chloe,” said Jack, returning to the first question. “Chloe O’Brien found you, not me. I asked her to look for you after what happened with the bomb in Valencia.”

  “Right…” Chase nodded to himself.

  “Angela…” Jack said softly, and the mention of the name of Chase’s daughter made his chest tighten. “Was she…?”

  “No.” Chase placed his hands flat on the table. “Thank god, no. She was in San Diego with my sister when it happened. I … sent her away.” He remembered the moment as if it were yesterday. It was a few years after he had been invalided out of the Counter Terrorist Unit, and things had not gone well for him. He was in debt, adrift in his own life. Although Chase had tried hard to find something new to challenge him, working for a private security concern, nothing he did seemed to matter as much as CTU had. Without Kim in his life, he just couldn’t find a focus, and as Angela grew up it became harder and harder for him to connect with the young girl.

  And then a group of terrorists had detonated a low-yield nuclear suitcase bomb in a Santa Clarita warehouse, just miles from where he lived. The blast wiped Valencia off the map and murdered over twelve thousand people in an instant. The effect of that brutality was still being felt today, with a section of Los Angeles County walled off to contain the blast zone, a legacy of human tragedies and an ongoing effort to decontaminate the area that would continue for decades.

  On the day it happened, Chase had been drowning his sorrows in a bottle of Jack Daniel’s on the far side of LA, and something inside him snapped. With perfect clarity, he saw the road ahead of him and he knew it would lead nowhere. He decided to let the world believe that Chase Edmunds had died in the Valencia bombing and begin again. Angela would get his insurance payout and with it a chance at a far better life than any he could have given her.

  “You faked your own death,” said Jack, guessing at the train of his thoughts. “You used the bombing to slip away and make a fresh start. You did well enough to fool most people.”

  “But not Chloe, huh?” Chase looked down at his hands. “I shouldn’t be surprised.” He glanced back at his former partner. “It’s not easy, is it, Jack? To let everyone who cares about you believe you’re gone.”

  “No,” Jack said quietly, and Chase felt a pang of sorrow for the other man. “Now we both understand the price of that choice.”

  “I guess so. Didn’t exactly work out for me the way I planned it, though. Four years down the line and I’m worse off than I ever was.” He smiled regretfully. “Then you fall out of the sky and I come running. What the hell does that say about me?”

  “It tells me you haven’t changed that much. It tells me you’re still loyal to your friends.
” Jack met his gaze. “And right now, I’m pretty short on those.”

  “What happened in New York?” Chase asked, and Jack told him.

  He talked about the plot to kill the leader of the Islamic Republic of Kamistan, of the bomb threat against Manhattan and finally of the conspiracy he had dragged into the light. There was more, though, Chase could sense it—and when he pressed Jack to explain he saw the other man’s eyes go cold and distant.

  “They killed someone that I cared about. And now I have a target on my back. The FBI, Russian intelligence … It’s even money on which of them catches up to me first.” He sighed. “I just want one thing, then I’m gone. I want to see my family one last time.”

  Chase said nothing, and in his mind’s eye he saw Angela again. He tried not to think about her too much these days, but when he did the remorse was like razors on his skin. He could very easily understand the raw, human impulse behind his former partner’s motive. He nodded. “So you need my help to get to Los Angeles in one piece.”

  “I can pay you. I have a covert account that no one knows about, not even CTU.”

  “Parachute money, huh?” Chase shook his head. “No need. You were right when you said you had a marker with me. You saved my life enough times. I owe you.”

  “Thanks.”

  He stood up and Jack followed suit. “I know a guy,” Chase continued. “Guess you could call him a specialist, kinda. He does contract work for my former employer.”

  “Former?”

  Chase shrugged. “I’ll explain on the way.”

  * * *

  But as it turned out, taking their leave wasn’t going to be that straightforward. As the two of them came around the side of a semitruck, Chase saw the blue Pontiac parked clumsily behind his stolen Chrysler 300 and the two men perched on the edges of the sedan’s silver hood.

  Josh and Frank were still wearing their mechanic’s overalls underneath dark jackets, and as they approached, Josh peered out at them from under the bill of a grimy baseball cap. “Finally,” he muttered, slipping off the car.

  Frank advanced, flexing his big hands. “Charlie,” he began, shaking his head. “You shouldn’t have taken off like that. Mr. Roker, he’s real mad about it.”

  Josh pointed at Jack. “Who’s this?” He sniffed the air like he smelled something bad. “He looks like a cop.”

  Chase let out a sigh. “You followed me.”

  “Yeah. Saw the car from the highway.” Frank shook his head. “Mr. Roker wants it back in one piece.”

  Jack had become very still. Chase glanced at him and neither man said a word, but they knew each other well enough to read intent. There was a question in Jack’s look: Are you going to handle this? Chase nodded imperceptibly: I’ve got it.

  “Keys! Hand ’em over!” demanded Josh, holding out his hand. To emphasize his point, he let the short crowbar he was hiding up his sleeve drop down into his grip.

  Chase studied the two mechanics. “Let me guess,” he said. “Roker told you that whichever one of you kicks my ass gets my job, am I right?” That Frank and Josh didn’t immediately reply told him he was correct. He shook his head. “Look, guys. You need to find another place to work. Big Mike’s gonna get you killed one day. Sooner or later, the deSalvos are gonna run out of uses for him and they’ll put him down. You get caught in the cross fire, you really think he’ll look out for you?”

  Frank hesitated, shifting his weight. “You shouldn’t talk about Mr. Roker like that. It’s disrespectful.”

  Chase’s tolerance broke. “He’s an idiot. Tell him I said that, and that I’m keeping the wheels as my severance pay.”

  “Wrong answer!” shouted Josh, and he rocked off his heels, bringing up the crowbar as he came in toward Chase. In the same moment, Frank took a clumsy swing at Jack that hit only air.

  Chase slipped away from the attack and sent a short, sharp punch right into Josh’s face. The mechanic recoiled, but he seemed only slightly dazed. From the corner of his eye, Chase glimpsed Jack put a vicious chopping blow across Frank’s throat and follow it through with a left cross. Blood glittered darkly as Frank coughed out thick gobs of spittle.

  Josh came at Chase again, this time swinging the crowbar like it was a sword, trying to catch him about the head and shoulders with the hooked end. “You’re such a tough guy!” spat the mechanic. “Come at me now, man! Come on!”

  Reflexively, Chase tried to grab at the crowbar and force it away, but he used his bad hand without thinking. He couldn’t close the grip in time and the improvised weapon raked over his skin and drew blood. Josh lunged, now jabbing with the point as if he thought he could stab Chase with it. He backed off as Josh kept coming.

  Nearby, Jack and Frank were trading blows as the bigger man tried to drag Bauer into a choke hold, failing to get a grip on the other man. Chase heard a sickening crack as Jack shot out a hard kick at Frank’s shin and broke bone there. The stocky mechanic gave a strangled moan and fell to one knee.

  It was time to end this before someone inside the diner saw them and decided to call the police. Josh’s mistake was to overextend with one of his stabbing motions and Chase grabbed the crowbar, this time with his good hand. He yanked it toward him and Josh lost his balance, staggering forward. Chase led him into a head-butt that sent the mechanic down to the ground in a crumpled heap. Still gripping the crowbar, Chase came around in time to watch Jack use an elbow strike to crack Frank in the face and put him in the dirt.

  A sliver of white bone was protruding from the leg of Frank’s trousers, and he gasped as he clutched at it. Jack helped himself to the mechanic’s cell phone and crushed it beneath his boot. He nodded at the broken leg. “That’ll heal. You’ll be able to walk okay in a couple of years. Ten months if you’re motivated.”

  Chase pointed the crowbar’s head at Josh as the other man tried to get back up. “Stay,” he said “Be smart for once in your life.” He used the point to puncture the Pontiac’s tires and then tossed the crowbar into the long grass.

  Jack gave him a look as they got into the Chrysler. “Is this Roker guy going to be any more trouble?”

  “Nah.” Chase shook his head and started the car. “You’re carrying enough of that for both of us, right?”

  * * *

  Jorge Kilner winced as he walked through the field office, the bandage around his right calf pulling tight with each step he took. He had another wrapped over the palm of one hand and a couple of adhesive dressings on a couple of small cuts on his face—all the marks left behind by his brief and dangerous sojourn as Jack Bauer’s unwilling driver. Falling from the moving car had ruined his coat and now Kilner wore a raid jacket with the FBI crest on the chest and the initials of the bureau emblazoned on the back. Other agents in similar clothing looked up as he crossed the room, none of them willing to meet his gaze. Everyone had heard about the car chase through Chelsea and the stolen helicopter, despite attempts to keep a lid on the information, and by now Kilner’s part in the whole sorry mess had to be an open secret from here to Miami.

  He scowled as he made his way toward the conference rooms. Some of the civilians who had been at the heliport were milling in an anxious little knot in a waiting area near the coffee machine, and as Kilner walked by them a man in a business suit sprang to his feet.

  “Are you an agent?” he demanded.

  Kilner’s lips thinned and he said nothing, just pointed at the jacket he was wearing.

  The businessman launched into a tirade about how it was unfair to hold him here when he was a very important executive with a major corporation, who had a very important meeting with another major corporation in Baltimore that he was going to miss because of the FBI’s “interference.”

  He looked up as Dell emerged from a side corridor, walking an older man out. “Thank you for your cooperation,” she was telling him. “If you’ll just wait here, we’ll get you a ride home and…”

  The businessman turned on Agent Dell, immediately dismissing Kilner. “Finally.
Look, I need to get out of this place. Can you just assume I saw what these people saw and leave it at that?”

  Dell’s dark eyes flashed. “Sit down and wait,” she retorted, with the kind of tone someone might use on a poorly disciplined dog. “You’ll get your turn.” She glanced at Kilner. “Still with us?”

  “More or less.” They walked away, leaving the businessman fuming. “You get anything useful?”

  Dell jerked a thumb over her shoulder. “The old guy was in Korea and he offered to come with us to find Bauer. Said he had skills.”

  “He can take my place. I think Hadley will can me for getting caught up with him.”

  Markinson called out as they approached the open door to the briefing room. “Could go either way,” she offered.

  “How so?”

  “Soon as we got back here after securing the site, Hadley was dragged into a meeting with Special Agent Dwyer and the ASAC. If you listen real hard, you can hear O’Leary tearing him a new asshole even through the soundproofing.” She sipped at a plastic cup of water. “But did you not think of actually stopping the car, Agent Kilner?”

  “No,” he said hotly. “That never occurred to me.” He glanced between Markinson and Dell. “I tried to bring him in. I really did. But you’ve seen Bauer’s file. He’s not exactly the compromising type. He wouldn’t listen.”

  Markinson raised an eyebrow. “So you’ve changed your mind about shoot-on-sight, then?”

  “I never said that.”

  “Well…” Dell perched on the end of the table. “However it happened, we need a new plan, and we need to mail it to two hours ago.”

  “Anything on his contacts?” Kilner asked.

  “No, Bauer’s too smart to reach out to any of his known associates on the East Coast.” Dell shook her head. “Beyond that? Maybe.”

  “That woman he worked with at CTU, O’Brien?” began Markinson. “We should bring her in, see what she knows.”

  Dell shook her head again. “Agent Franks and his team are on her. She’s gonna be in cuffs soon enough, but we won’t get a look in.”