24: Deadline (24 Series) (26 page)

“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 older 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.
”

He nodded again. “I’m with you on that. We’ll be pushing right into the edge of that storm in about twenty minutes. How does this connect with St. Louis?”

“
Turns out our colleagues in Missouri are up on the phones of an outlaw biker gang running contraband across that whole area. The case is mired in red tape and going nowhere, but they’re still monitoring. No permission for voice recording, just meta-data, for all the good that does … You know how it is these days. If a crook isn’t in bed with Al Qaeda, it’s a long way down the priority list…”

Hadley’s patience was slipping. “Get to the point, Sal.”

“
Their wiretaps just went crazy. Every phone they’re tracking lit up. Someone’s stirring up these bikers.
”

He made an exasperated noise. “And why should I give a damn about what could just be some turf war out in the sticks?”

“
The taps caught a photo message. One of these idiots sent it in the clear. Now, by law that means it is inadmissible as evidence but
…” A smug tone entered the other agent’s voice. “
Go ahead. Ask me whose face is in the picture.
”

“Bauer?”

“
The boys and girls in St. Louis seem to think so.
”

Hadley felt a rush of adrenaline flood through him. “Where?”

“
St. Louis is patching their traffic data through to the plane. You should get it soon.
” Jacobs was quiet for a moment. “
I think this will square my debt.
”

“Not quite,” said Hadley. “One more thing. I want all we’ve got on these bikers. I want to know who’s the top kick.”

“
Checking…”
He heard Jacobs tapping at a keyboard. “
Benjamin Rydell. Multiple counts of assault, attempted murder, in the frame for a bunch more. A real charmer.
”

A risky plan began to form in Hadley’s mind, but with O’Leary’s warning echoing in his thoughts, Hadley knew he would have to go off-book in order to bring this operation to a close. “Give me the number of the cell phone that St. Louis pulled the picture from.”

“
Why?
”

“Just do it, Sal.”

*   *   *

Chase took one of the MP5/10 submachine guns from the gym bag and went back up to the roof, using the weapon’s peep sight as a makeshift spotting scope. It wasn’t a replacement for a real set of starlight optics, but it was all he had to work with and right now that seemed to be the plan of the moment. Adapt, improvise, move forward. He was no stranger to making it up as he went along, but even so Chase yearned for a proper plan of attack.