24 Declassified: Head Shot (2009) (39 page)

It was the intake port of a ventilator air shaft. Jack Bauer could feel the suction of air currents being drawn upward into its mouth and away through the piping to be carried through the precincts of the mansion above ground.

Jack moved the crate a man’s length away from the intake port. A wad of C–4 plastic explosive was wedged into the bottom of the crate, wires trailing up from it and over the side waiting for a timing device to be attached. He gingerly disengaged the tip of the detonator cord from the puttylike mass, disarming it and setting the cord a safe distance away from the crate.

He hunkered down beside Rowdy, leaning forward to catch the big biker’s last words. Rowdy said, “Bad luck—he got me before I could get him. Thought I was dead . . . got a big surprise when he found out I wasn’t . . .”

His tired eyes cut a glance toward the BZ crate. “Guess you found what you wanted, dude . . .”

He breathed something that Jack was barely able to make out: “Valhalla is calling— ”

His last breath.

Jack Bauer defanged the plastic explosives rigged to the fuel tanks, pulling the detonator cords, gathering them up, and depositing them in a safe place on the walkway. He went to see what he could do for Griff. Griff was sitting up, holding a wadded bandana against the wound in his side and using it for a compress.

He said, “Rowdy . . . ?”

Jack said, “He got his man before he died.”

Griff nodded. “He went out Hellbender style then.”

“That he did. I’ll get help. Don’t shoot any of my people when they come down here to secure the site.”

“I’ll try not to.”

Jack opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, Griff said, “That’s a joke, man. Just pulling your chain . . . go do what you have to do, I’m okay.”

Jack started to walk away. Griff called after him, “Kill ’em all!” Jack turned, said, “I’ll do my best.” He moved on.

He went to a stairwell that accessed the next level. He found a morbid surprise at the foot of it.
Two bodies lay there where Weld and his crew had put them, undoubtedly intending to come back and carry them topside to the surface and plant them somewhere on the grounds to be found and scapegoated in the aftermath of the horrific hellfire that turned out not to be.

They were the cadavers of Abelson Prewitt and Ingrid Thaler, the grandmaster of the cult of the Zealots and his faithful second- in-command. The bodies were cold to the touch—icy—frozen.

Another piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.

Jack Bauer loaded a fresh clip into his SMG before beginning the long, wearying climb upstairs to the surface.

Don Bass exited a side door in the mansion, hurrying along a flagstone path that curved through silent, nighted gardens toward the guesthouse that served as the command center for the Brand Security Agency cadre overseeing the corps of uniformed and plainclothes guards now on duty on the graveyard shift.

Sleep and the security chief were strangers. Bass’s wavy hair stood out in tufts. His eyes were red embers buried deep in hollow, purple- bruised sockets. His movements were stiff-legged, zombielike as he forced himself to scurry at quick time toward the guesthouse turned guardhouse.

A figure stood outlined in the open front doorway waiting for him. It was Larry Noone, Bass’s top man and figurative right hand, the man whose urgent phone call summoning his boss had jarred Bass out of fitful light sleep and back into action on the double.

Bass was not so tired, however, that he failed to notice the white armband prominently pinned to the upper arm of Noone’s navy blazer. Bass paused at the threshold, clutching the insides of the doorframe with both hands for support while he tried to catch the breath that his hasty arrival had stolen from him.

An expression of concern marked Noone’s face. “Are you all right, Chief?”

Bass blustered it out, barking, “Certainly! Just a little winded, that’s all. I hustled over here after I got your call. Sounded urgent. What’s up?”

Noone said, “Come in and I’ll tell you.”

Bass marched into the front hall, turning left to follow Noone down a short corridor. The heart of the command center lay on the other side of a closed door at the passage’s end, in a room that was an electronic nerve nexus of computerized consoles whose multiscreens imaged real-time feedback from the array of closed-circuit automated TV cameras that kept the mansion and estate under constant surveillance.
A graveyard shift of six top operatives would be posted at the monitors, orchestrating the flexible and adaptive Brand Security defense posture.

Bass, frowning, said, “What’s with the white brassard, Larry? It’s unauthorized as far as I know.”

Noone glanced over his shoulder, flashing an enigmatic half smile. “Change of policy.”

Bass’s frown deepened. He was a stickler for detail. He said, “That’s news to me and I set dress code policy.”

Noone paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Step right in, Chief, and it will all be explained to you.” He opened the door partway, standing aside so Bass could pass him and enter.

Bass was through the doorway and a half-dozen paces inside the command center before the horror of what he saw registered on his benumbed mind.

It was the scene of a massacre. All six board operators, male and female alike, lay strewn about the room in the places where sudden death had found them.
Their bullet- riddled bodies bore wounds so numerous that they could only have been inflicted by an automatic weapon.
They were torn and tattered. Blood was everywhere. Walls and consoles were cratered with bullet holes.

Don Bass was struck dumb, paralyzed with shock. A timeless interval passed before he drew a shuddering breath. His heart started beating again, hammering with a wild percussive rhythm.

Somehow he managed to turn around and face Larry Noone. Bass was surprised to find that he was not surprised at all to discover his second- in-command pointing a leveled machine pistol at him. There was a certain pride that his deductive and analytical faculties had not deserted him in the fractional span of life left remaining to him to glory in their possession. Noone had to be the killer; his bland demeanor in the face of such carnage proved it.

A distant part of Bass’s mind kept on working, noting that the machine pistol was fitted with a suppressor to silence its workings. It would have to be, since it was the weapon that Noone
had used to treacherously slay the comrades and coworkers who trusted him without betraying the deed to the numerous guards stationed on the estate.

Don Bass asked only a single question: “Why?”

Noone shrugged, quirking a whimsical smile. There was an oddly elfin aspect to the big man, with his too-large knowing eyes, mouth upturned at the corners, and slightly pointed chin. Don Bass realized that the person he’d worked with, played with, and with whom he’d shared a good part of his adult professional and personal life was a complete stranger to him.

Noone said, “Call it a coup d’état. Change of power. I’m in. You’re out. Way out.” He held the gun pointed so it would shoot Bass in the belly where it hurt the most.

He said, “Christ! You can’t imagine how long I’ve waited for this day—this night—this moment. I’m enjoying it so much that I hate to see it end.”

Noone sighed. “But all good things must come to an end.
If it’s any consolation to you, Chief—and I’m sure that it’s not—you can go to hell knowing that in a very short time you’ll have lots of company when Sky Mount and all its lovely creatures go up in flames.
I only regret that you won’t be here to see it.”

He added, “Die hurting, Chief.”

Don Bass laughed out loud, a genuine guffaw at the bizarre turns of fate and reversals of fortune that could occur to a man not in a lifetime, but in a handful of seconds. He experienced an explosion of mirth that left him grinning from ear to ear. Larry Noone arched an eyebrow, surprised by the other’s outlandish reaction at the point of death. He wasn’t sure what he’d expected from Bass at the finish but it wasn’t this. He shrugged it off. “Hysteria. The mind is going. This will be a blessing for you, Don.”

Bass said, “Buddy, you’re about to find out how right you are.”

“Oh really—?”

Larry Noone didn’t live long enough to find out the truth of his words.
He fell forward facedown to the floor, stone dead. The back of his head had been shot away by the burst of rounds Jack Bauer put into it at point-blank range, disintegrating the rear half of his skull as if it had been scooped out and exhibiting the gooey gray matter that remained.

Jack stood slumped against the doorframe, leaning against it for support. He let his gun hand fall to his side, holding the still smoking SMG that he’d used to liquidate Larry Noone.

Jack said, “Sorry I didn’t get here sooner. I saw you running out the side door of the mansion and played a hunch that I’d better follow you and see what’s what.”

Don Bass said, “Lucky for me that you did.”

“Luck is the difference between hanging and not hanging. I know.
”

“
You heard everything?
”

“
Enough.” Jack Bauer glanced at a wall clock.

“Five minutes to two. Time enough for you to tell your gate guards to open up and let Garcia’s tac squad in.”

THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 2 A.M. AND 3 A.M. MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME

Sky Mount, Colorado

Ernie Sandoval said, “You wrecked the Mercedes, you SOB.”

Jack Bauer said, “Get Garcia to buy a new one.”

“He just might, after this one is all wrapped up.” Don Bass chimed in,

“Hell, I’ll buy you one.”

Sandoval said, “You can’t afford it.”

“The Masterman Trust can. Let them pick up the tab.” Jack nodded in agreement. “That’s the spirit.” The trio were walking briskly side by side down the main corridor of the mansion’s east wing. Bass had a set of keys in hand that would open the anteroom doors and the door to Cabot Huntington Wright’s inner sanctum, but as it turned out they weren’t needed. The anteroom door was unlocked.
The room was dark, but light outlined the closed door to Wright’s suite of offices.

A platoon of Orlando Garcia’s tac squads augmented by an equal number of Inspector Cullen’s ATF agents were swarming the estate, securing the grounds, mansion, and all- important subsurface levels where the BZ grenades and plastic explosives lay, defanged for the moment but very much a potential and potent threat until the moment that agents took possession of them, and that moment was right now.

Jack Bauer’s focus lay elsewhere, on the dozen quick paces it took him, Bass, and Sandoval to cross the anteroom to Wright’s private door. His hand was on the knob, and to his surprise it turned freely and he opened the door and stormed in, the other two at his heels.

Jack said, “You left your door unlocked, Mr. Wright. Careless of you.”

Cabot Huntington Wright was at the opposite end of the room, standing behind his desk, stuffing folders of documents into a briefcase that stood open on his desktop.
He froze at the trio’s entrance, lifting his gaze from what he was doing to the intruders who’d had the audacity to invade his domain.

He looked away first, oddly abashed to be taken in such a manner. His hands were hidden behind the lid of his attaché case, which stood upright.

Jack’s hand flashed inside his jacket, coming into view with a pistol that he held pointed at Wright. Wright raised his arms in the classic hands-up position, obscuring but not hiding the white armband circling his dark-suited left arm.

Bass said, “The white brassard! That clinches it.”

Jack circled around the desk, still covering Wright. Wright’s hands were empty of everything but foldered documents but Jack was taking no chances. He said, “It’s already clinched. It was clinched when Chappelle notified Garcia that he’d found the leaker—and the person to whom he’d leaked.”

Sandoval had given Jack a quick update on the way to Wright’s office. Ryan Chappelle had discovered that a member of his CTU/L.A. staff had passed the word about Brad Oliver’s imminent arrest. A survey of regional division headquarters’ phone logs had unearthed the culprit, one of Chappelle’s top aides. The leaker had confessed when confronted but claimed he had no other motive than to curry favor with the ultra-rich and powerful Cabot Huntington Wright by giving him a friendly heads-up to prepare him for the embarrassment and disruption that would result when Wright’s confidential assistant Brad Oliver was arrested by CTU agents for violating the national security.

The leaker’s true motive would eventually come to light in the exhaustive investigation to which he’d be subjected. What was key was the identity not of leaker but of leakee. Chappelle
tried to notify Jack Bauer to alert him to the identification but he’d been unable to reach him while Jack was otherwise engaged.

Chappelle had finally swallowed his pride and relayed the information directly to Garcia, enduring the humiliation of having to admit to a longtime rival that one of Chappelle’s own was the guilty party. The facts were too vital to withhold, and Chappelle put the potentially career-damaging revelations in Garcia’s hands, oblivious of how the hierarchs on the seventh floor at Langley might put a black mark in Chappelle’s record book because of the dereliction of a trusted aide.