24: Deadline (24 Series) (10 page)

There was a gentle
knock-knock
at the doorway, and Ziminova looked up to see one of the guards peering through the half-open door. He jerked a thumb at the other room.

She nodded, dismissing him, before turning her attention back to the phone. “Don’t make assumptions,” she continued. “Bazin will want hard facts. I have to go, the asset is here.”

Ziminova cut the call and hesitated a moment, taking in what Yolkin had said. The aircraft he spoke of had a range of around 350 to 400 miles with a full fuel load. She wondered where Bauer hoped to go inside that radius, but it was a waste of time to chase vague possibilities. They would find the target with facts, not guesswork. She stood up and strode into the barbershop.

*   *   *

A man of average height with dark hair and a swarthy complexion was waiting for Ziminova in the middle of the room. The two SVR security men—both silent and thuggish in aspect—stood between him and the doorway back out to the street, and as Ziminova entered, one of them turned the latch to lock them in.

The man—
the asset
—kneaded the collar of his coat and his eyes darted to Ziminova and then to the door. “I came as soon as I could,” he told her. “It was difficult for me to get away. I can’t be here for long, my absence will be noticed.”

She had glanced at the asset’s file. His story was a commonplace one in the world of espionage. He had been suborned not by love of an ideology or through blackmail, but by simple avarice. A technical officer working for the East Coast’s largest cellular network systems provider, he had been well paid by the Russian state in return for minor acts of industrial espionage. The commercial intelligence that he had leaked allowed the corporate interests that worked hand in hand with the Kremlin to compete on a level footing with foreign companies, even stealing a march on their rivals in some areas.

But that information had only ever been part of the deal. The asset had been cultivated for another reason, and now he would learn of it.

Ziminova gave the man a measuring look and set to work on him. “You are going to provide us with full access to your network’s logs,” she told him, and the man went pale. “Specifically, an area centered on New York City with a radius of…” She paused, thinking about it. “Four hundred fifty miles.”

“I … I can’t.”

“You can,” she said, as if the refusal was a foolish thing. “We know you can. And it must be done very quickly. We’re looking for someone, you understand?”

From a pocket she produced a data stick that had been prepared by a technician at the consulate. On it was a captured sample of Jack Bauer’s voice and a dedicated suite of pattern-recognition software.

The asset took the data stick with shaking hands. “You don’t understand,” he was saying. “This isn’t what I agreed to. Industrial secrets are one thing, but this is something else!”

“You will be compensated,” she told him. “Do you really want to consider what will happen if you refuse?” Ziminova didn’t wait for him to come up with an answer. “We do not have time to find a different option. So, the man I work for will have your wife and children murdered one by one until you do as you have been asked.” She kept her tone mild, almost conversational.

“
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.