24: Deadline (24 Series) (21 page)

“Follow my lead,” said Jack, as he pushed open the glass door and entered the narrow reception. Like everything else in the motel, it was decorated in fake-wood veneer, with the added bonus of a few drab Western-style paintings hanging on the walls. A radio was playing a bass-heavy track distorted by cheap speakers and poor reception.

Behind the front desk, the manager bolted upright with a start, dropping the glossy magazine he had been poring over. “Yeah?” He blinked.

Jack leaned across the desk and found a line of switches that controlled the flickering neon lights outside. He flipped the switch that turned on the
NO VACANCIES
sign and gave the man a level look. “We need a little local information.”

“Dino” blinked and glared at Jack, then at Chase, as he entered the office behind him. “What do I look like, a tour guide?” He grimaced and stood up, squaring off. “You girls wanna have your fun together up there, go ahead. I don’t judge. But keep outta my way…” He drifted off as Laurel came in, and a leer automatically snapped into place on his face.

The girl indicated Jack and Chase. “I don’t think they got that kinda relationship, pal.”

Dino’s smile melted away. “Triple occupancy, that’ll cost you extra.”

“Who are you working for?” said Jack, and he pushed through the waist-high door that marked the line between the inner and outer areas of the front office.

“Hey! You don’t get to come in here, asshole!” Dino grabbed for the handle of a dented aluminum baseball bat concealed down the side of the desk. “I’ll mess you up, you and your pal!”

Jack struck out and punched the man hard in the chest. Wheezing, he staggered toward a door and Jack propelled him back. The door banged open under Dino’s weight and he stumbled through. Beyond was a grimy apartment stinking of stale cigarettes, little larger than the motel rooms, with an open kitchen area and a wall dominated by a wide-screen TV. Jack shoved Dino into a threadbare recliner and pulled Brodur’s butterfly knife from inside his coat. Dino’s eyes widened at the sight of the blade’s wicked edge as Jack flicked it open.

“You better answer him.” Chase filed in with Laurel, closing the door.

“I’ll ask you again,” said Jack. “Who are you working for?”

Dino tried to recover some shred of defiance. “Man, screw you!”

Jack held the knife in his fist and pressed the tip of it into Dino’s knee joint. The big man cried out and twitched. “Who pays you?” Jack demanded.

“The MC!” Dino grated, shaking, trying to shrink away. “The bikers pay everyone to look the other way, everyone still dumb enough or screwed enough to be stuck here!” He shook his head. “You cops? Rydell’s boys will chew you up and spit you out, count on it!”

“Who’s Rydell?” said Chase. “He in charge?”

“Top dog. Night Rangers Original is who he is,” Dino spat back. He snorted with derision. “Nah, you ain’t cops. Lookit, you’re clueless! You got no idea where you are or what shit you just stepped in, pal.” He attempted to straighten up. “You oughta run while you still can.”

“Where’s the bus?” said Laurel, her tone sharp and hard. “C’mon, needle-dick! Where the hell are Trish and all the others?”

“Answer her,” said Jack.

“I don’t have to say nothin’ to you,” he replied. “You can’t touch me. I work for the MC, I’m
protected
. Get it?”

Jack nodded. “Yeah. I get it.” Then he put a gloved hand over Dino’s mouth and pushed the blade into his knee, deep enough to scrape bone.

The man howled and wept, and Chase smelled the ammonia stink of urine.

“Ah, he pissed himself!” said Laurel, recoiling. “Jeez.”

“That’ll happen,” Chase said with a wan nod.

Dino rocked forward. “Why…” He whimpered. “Why you picking on me, man? I’m … I’m an American, I got rights. You can’t torture me like some … bin Laden asshole…”

“I know what you are.” Jack flipped back Dino’s head. “Anyone with a spine would be long gone from here, but not you. You like it, don’t you?” He leaned closer. “How does it work? The bikers who want some privacy come over here with the girls?” He nodded toward the office. “You keep the radio up loud so you don’t have to listen to them getting smacked around? You clean up for the MC when they get too rough?”

“I don’t make the rules!” Dino shot back, gasping for breath. “They’re just hookers, man! Just trash!”

“
No,
” Laurel spat. “No, we’re not!” The woman tried to push her way forward, but Chase blocked her. “Get out of my way,” she told him. “Gimme that knife, I’m gonna jam it up his ass!”

“You don’t have any friends in this room,” Jack said coldly. “The only thing that’s going to change the amount of pain you go through is what you tell me right now.”

The man sagged, shrinking away from the bloodstained blade. “What … do you want? Just keep away from me…”

“Where did they take Trish … the girls?” said Laurel through gritted teeth.

“The … Crankcase.” His breathing was labored. “Pretty ones, anyway. Some get sold on sometimes, I dunno. Nothing to do with me. They don’t let me in there no more, not after…” He trailed off. “Rydell said so.”

“It’s not just a strip club for horny truckers, it’s a brothel,” said Chase.

Dino nodded. “S’right…”

“What about the rest?” Jack held the knife in front of the man’s face. “The workers? What happens to them?”

“Fort Blake. The old army base south of town. They bus ’em out there.” He shook his head. “People keep away. Anyone who goes lookin’ never comes back.” Dino licked his lips. “Okay, I talked. Lemme go.”

Chase was about to say how bad an idea that was, but before he could speak Dino made a sudden break for it, lurching forward, up and out of the recliner. He made a ham-fisted grab for Jack, who caught him easily. He cracked him hard across the temple with the metal handle of the butterfly knife. The paunchy man twitched and collapsed back into the chair, robbed of consciousness.

Laurel broke the silence that followed. “You two have done this kind of thing before, haven’t you?”

“We’ve got what we needed,” said Jack. “Help me secure him.”

*   *   *

They drove slowly down the main street, passing the Crankcase on their left. The strip club had once been a big garage, but that had been a long time ago. In the intervening years, someone had gutted it and walled up the roller doors, put in a few glass bricks in lieu of windows and installed more garish neon. A floodlit sign outside bearing the silhouette of a shapely woman sprawled across an engine block promised all kinds of special, illicit treats, and by the gathering of motorcycles lined up on the sidewalk, it was popular. The strains of a loud Southern rock soundtrack blared out of the entrance doors as they flapped open to release a worse-for-wear truck driver nursing a bloody nose.

“Classy,” said Chase, watching the man stagger into a nearby alley. “And real friendly too, I’ll bet.”

Jack scoped out the design of the building, looking for other egress locations, gauging escape routes and possible choke points. The Crankcase was a two-story construction, the upper level just about visible in the gaps between the neon letters that spelled out the name of the strip club. Gaining entry wouldn’t be the hard part, he reflected. Getting out in one piece would be the challenge.

He turned the Chrysler away and parked it in a side street across the road. “Back entrance will be guarded,” Jack said. “Too risky to try that. We’ll go in the front way.”

“So, we’re doing this, then?” Chase replied, his jaw set. “Do I get a say?”

“I don’t know, do you?” Jack checked his pistol.

“You wanna walk into thug central with no plan, no gear and no backup?”

“I have a plan,” Jack replied, pulling back the Springfield’s slide to make sure a round was already chambered. He nodded at the black bag sitting next to Laurel in the backseat. “I have gear.” Then he looked at Chase. “I have backup.”

Despite himself, Chase snorted with amusement. “Three people, a bunch of guns and a car is not exactly CTU.”

“I haven’t been part of that for a long time, Chase. And neither have you.”

The other man paused. “Fair point.”

Jack turned to look at Laurel. “Still got that revolver?”

“Yeah,” she said warily.

“Don’t use it unless you have to.” He handed her the car keys. “If things go wrong, take this and head for the interstate. Keep driving and don’t stop until you reach a city.”

“How am I gonna know if things go wrong?”

“Something will catch fire,” Chase offered. “Or explode.”

“Stay out of sight,” Jack told her, and got out of the car.

Chase fell into step with him as they walked back toward the Crankcase. “So. That plan you got?”

“Remember the Memphis thing?”

“Huh.” Chase straightened his jacket and the gun hidden beneath it. “Memphis was a screwup from start to finish.” It had been the last assignment they had partnered on before the whole undercover operation with the Salazar cartel.

Jack nodded. “Agreed. My thinking is, this time we won’t make the same mistakes.”

“Just new ones.” Chase held out a hand to halt him. “
Jack
. Stop for a second. Are we
really
going to do this? We came to Deadline for a reason, and that reason doesn’t get here for hours yet. We start making noise, stirring up the locals, we won’t live long enough to make that train.” He shook his head. “You’re risking a good plan on the fallout from some random act—”

“Get to the point,” Jack grated, his patience waning.

Chase took a breath. “You came to me out of the blue, you asked me to help you get back to Kim. I’ll do that.
I owe you that
. But this?” He gestured toward the strip club. “It’s not on us. If you want, when we get to LA we can get the word out to someone who can deal with it, but not you and me, not right now.” The other man’s voice dropped to a whisper. “If you need to prove something, this isn’t the way to do it.”

“Is that what you think?” Jack glared at him, keeping his temper in check. “We haven’t seen each other in a long while, Chase, but you know me. Do you think I’ve changed?”

The younger man answered after a moment. “No.”

“Have
you
?”

“You tell me.”

“Do you think I could look my daughter in the eye knowing I’d ignored what’s going on in this town?” Before Chase could answer, he went on. “Do you think for one second that the FBI and the state police don’t know about the Night Rangers? For an MC to keep a whole community under their thumb, that takes money and force. Bribes. Influence. Like I said, I saw the same thing in Serbia when I was with Delta. There was always more to it than just drugs and prostitution. This is no different. So. I’m not going to walk away.” He held his gaze. “And I don’t think you will, either.”

At length, Chase gave a nod. “Okay. We go get Laurel’s friends. What then?”

Jack resumed walking. “We turn over some rocks and see what crawls out.”

*   *   *

For someone who liked to consider himself as “off the grid,” the speed with which agents of the Russian government discovered his location would have shocked Hector Matlow to the core. The number of the “dead drop” digital mailbox Matlow had given to Mike Roker was meant to insulate him from a permanent wired connection, but after a few calls the SVR team had been able to marshal technicians from one of their covert cyber-security installations in Minsk to track the American hacker and find a probable location for him. With the carte blanche President Suvarov had given Bazin’s unit in their search for Jack Bauer, they had the resources they needed in short order.

He considered this as the Augusta AW109 swept low over the treetops, running dark so that anyone who spotted the helicopter would have no clue as to its identity. Like Bazin, everyone on board the aircraft wore a set of night-vision goggles, turning the world around them into a lunar landscape in shades of pale green and deep black. He peered at the paper map in his hand and looked up at Ziminova, who sat across the rear compartment from him. She had a plastic case open in front of her, and she was at work assembling the pieces of a weapon: a stubby, wide-mouthed tube, a pistol grip, a wire-frame stock ending in a shoulder pad.

“I would prefer a more nuanced entrance,” he told her. “Stealth more than sound and fury.”

“What is that phrase the British have?” she said, without looking up. “
Needs must when the devil drives
.”

“There is a risk you will kill him.”

Ziminova nodded. “A margin of error. But if the sensor does its work…” She trailed off.

On that thought, Bazin turned in his seat to address Ekel, who sat up front in the copilot’s position. On his lap he carried an olive drab portable monitor and keyboard setup, trailing wires. The device’s screen showed a series of start-up displays as it came on line. The text on the screen and the keyboard was all in Chinese. Bazin tapped him on the shoulder. “You can read that?”

“Of course,” Ekel replied. “Who do you think stole it from Shanghai?”

The helicopter was slowing and Bazin looked at the map again. “We’re here,” he announced to his team. “Get ready.”

As the AW109 slowed to a hover over a clearing in the trees, Ekel pointed at the ground. “Sir, if you would?”

“Of course.” Checking to make sure he was securely strapped in, Bazin leaned over and pulled on the latch holding the helicopter’s side door shut. It slid open on oiled rails, allowing the cold night air to gust into the cabin, buffeting them. Bazin looked down, seeing rectangular shapes arranged in messy rows beneath them. There was no sign of movement.

He picked up the heavy sensor head from where it lay on the floor of the cabin, taking care not to get entangled in the cables that led back from it to ports on the side of Ekel’s monitor unit. Bazin could feel power running through the sensor as he aimed it out of the side of the helicopter and down at the ground.

“Working,” announced Ekel.

“No other aircraft in the area,” reported the pilot. “But that may change at any moment.”

“Understood.” Bazin craned his neck to look back at Ekel’s screen. The display showed an image that resembled waves breaking on a shoreline as viewed from above. Some were disrupted by blemishes, others smooth and regular. The ground-penetrating radar system had originally been built by the Chinese army to detect buried land mines, but in the hands of a trained user, it could seek out anything concealed beneath the earth.