24 Declassified: Collateral Damage

22. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 4:00 A.M. AND 5:00 A.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME

“Come in, Jack. Have a seat.”

Christopher Henderson sat behind Brice Holman’s desk.

At the computer station, Jack saw Layla Abernathy, an un-smiling figure in a black battle suit, Glock strapped to her hip. Her hair was pulled back and she wore no makeup, her sallow face expressionless.

When Jack entered the room, Layla turned her back on him.

“I want you to listen to something Hershel Berkovic, CTU’s economic warfare guru, sent me,” Henderson purred.

Jack sat down. Layla breezed past him and out the door, avoiding his gaze. Henderson activated a digital recorder on the desk. Jack heard a voice speaking Arabic, then the translator talking over him.

“America’s alliance with our enemy has torn the Middle East apart,” the translator said in a robotic voice. “The people of America spit in our faces every day. They must be punished for their transgressions and they soon will be. And we, the Arab peoples, can profit from America’s pain.”

A pause, then the Arabic voice spoke again.

“The Muslim world is ready to rise up and smite America,” said the translator. “When the terrorism comes…

America’s economy will suffer enormous losses. Europe is much more stable, and so is its currency. It would be wise to switch our currency standard from dollars to euros before catastrophe strikes…”

The speech continued, but Henderson turned the recorder off.

“The man you heard was Abbad al Kabbibi, the finance minister for the Saudi government,” he told Jack. “Minister Kabbibi made those remarks last month, in a secret meeting with key representatives of the Arab League.”

“Kabbibi,” Jack said. “As in Said Kabbibi?”

“Turns out our fugitive terrorist Biohazard Bob is the first cousin of the Saudi Arabian Finance Minister. What a coincidence.”

Jack frowned. “And Soren Ungar?”

“Kabbibi has formed an alliance with Ungar,” Henderson replied. “And Ungar, in turn, has aligned himself with French financial institutions and banks in Greece, Austria, Italy, Belgium, Germany, and Japan. As far as we can tell, Soren Ungar now controls two-thirds of the U.S. dollars on the currency market. Perhaps more.”

“So he is engineering a currency crash,” Jack said.

“That’s what Berkovic thinks now, too,” Henderson said with a nod. “But this goes further than that. Finance Minister Kabbibi is talking about switching the Saudi currency standard from the dollar to the euro. The harm that would do to our economy would be irreparable.”

Henderson rose, placed the palms of his hands on the desk.

“Think back to what happened to Great Britain’s economy when the world switched from the pound to the dollar.

Their standard of living dropped and continues to fall, un-employment rose, investments fled for greener pastures.

The Brits have never recovered from the blow.”

“What about the currency reserve held by the Chinese?”

Jack asked.

“The Chi-Coms would have no choice but to dump dollars, too, once a run starts. That, or they collapse along with us.”

Jack’s face flushed. His fingers tightened on the chair’s armrest. “These attacks were nothing but a ploy,” he said, unable to hide his outrage. “Just an excuse for Soren Ungar and the Arabs to dump our currency. The Hawk, the zeal-ots from Kurmastan, maybe even Ibrahim Noor himself, they’re nothing but pawns in the world’s biggest currency scam. Collateral damage, just like their victims.” Jack locked eyes with Henderson. “Will Ungar pull the trigger when the markets open in the morning?”

Henderson shook his head. “He’s going to wait until the full impact of the U.S. attacks set in. He’s got the perfect forum, too. In two hours and fifty minutes — two-thirty in the afternoon, Geneva time — Soren Ungar is scheduled to make his annual speech before the International Board of Currency Traders in Switzerland. That’s when the little bastard is going to drop the bomb.”

Jack leaned forward, his voice quiet but tight. “He has to be stopped.”

“How? Assassination of a foreign national is illegal, under penalty of U.S. law. Besides… we don’t have the assets to move that quickly.”

“Yes we do.” For the first time since he entered the office, Jack smiled. “I know a man stationed in Geneva right now. If anyone can pull off an assassination like this, it’s Robert Ellis.”

“Ellis, huh?” Henderson nodded. “Yeah, he is good…

but it’s doubtful anyone at CTU will green light the operation. Not even Richard Walsh would sign off on that—

too much heat. And you can forget Nathan Wheelock.

Mr. Clean would never get his hands dirty with authoriz-ing an assassination on foreign soil; besides, the internal buzz is pretty ugly on the Northeast District Director.”

“Is that so?” Jack folded his arms.

“Sure. You and I will probably be asked to testify when all of this is over, but let’s face it: this mess happened in his region, under his watch, as a direct result of his managerial policies.” Henderson shook his head. “If Brice Holman had been supported instead of shut down, the terrorists could have been stopped. I’d say Wheelock’s career is hanging by a thread that’s about to snap, which doesn’t leave anyone high enough to authorize the action.”

Jack’s gaze narrowed. “I don’t give a rat’s ass about Wheelock’s career. What I can’t believe is you, trying to find another authority to hide behind.” He rose to his feet.

“We can take action now. You and I. So we face charges, go to prison? So what? It’s a small price to pay to save our country.”

Henderson arched an eyebrow. “Spoken like a true patriot.”

Jack loomed over Henderson. “You’re forgetting that Brice Holman and others have already paid the ultimate price. If we do this, they won’t have died in vain. And we’ll be ensuring America’s security.”

Henderson glanced away.

“Look,” Jack said in a calmer voice, “if you want to pass the buck, then I have a name for you. Tell him everything you know and he’ll back you. He’s got the clout to bury an assassination, too. I know, because he’s done it before. I haven’t met him, you understand? And I can’t tell you how I know, but I know…”

As Jack’s voice trailed off, Henderson rose to his full height, finally meeting Jack’s eyes. “Okay,” he said. “Who is this magic man?”

“The Chairman of the Special Defense Appropria-tion Committee,” Jack replied. “Senator David Palmer of Maryland.”

“Slip this into your pocket,” Tony said, handing Judith Foy the dead driver’s cell phone.

“What’s it for?”

“Keep the line open and I can hear most of what’s going on around you, though obviously you can’t hear me.” Tony shrugged. “It’s not like wearing a wire, but it will do in a pinch.”

“So if this plan all turns to crap, you’ll rush in like the cavalry in a John Ford movie?” Judith said with a smile.

“Something like that,” he replied. “CTU knows everything we know, and probably more. CTU knows there’s a biological warfare lab in the warehouse, and they know the address of the Thirteen Gang’s headquarters. Once we determine Ibrahim Noor is inside, the tactical teams will be dispatched and CTU will raid the entire block.”

Tony paused, then met her gaze. “You don’t have to do this, you know.”

“Yes I do,” Judith insisted. “Noor needs this metal box, so he or his minions will let me in. Once I’m inside, I can feed you intelligence, let you know if Noor is present.

Maybe we can stop something bad before it happens this time.”

“I’ll be no further than across the street, even if you can’t see me,” Tony vowed. “Use the panic phrase if you get in trouble. I’ll do what I can to get you out.”

Agent Foy nodded, her face pale under the ball cap.

“Remember: Semper fi,” Tony said.

Judith nodded. “I should have figured you for a jarhead, Almeida,” she said before stepping into the shadowy urban landscape.

Jack Bauer barged into Layla Abernathy’s office.

“Forgot how to knock, Agent Bauer?” she asked.

He closed the door. “I need to talk to you.”

“Make it quick, I’m typing my resignation—”

Jack switched off her computer. Layla threw up her arms. Jack saw needle marks in her wrists, forearms. He pointed.

“Henderson did that?”

Layla dropped her hands to her lap. “I don’t want to talk about it.”

“Don’t resign,” Jack said. “At least wait twenty-four hours. See this crisis through. Then you can quit if you still want to.”

“Why?” Layla cried. “For a country that betrayed me?

For an organization that had me tortured?”

“For innocent people who don’t deserve what’s happening to them now, or what may happen to them in the next few hours,” Jack countered. “If you quit and something terrible happens, trust me, you won’t be able to live with yourself—”

“CTU doesn’t need me—”

“We do need you. And I believe you’ve got what it takes to be an exceptional field agent.”

Layla dismissed his praise with a wave. “I don’t believe you.”

“Don’t you think there were times when I was on the outs?” Jack pressed. “I’ve been painted as a dirty agent, more than once. I’ve had my security clearance revoked, and I’ve faced prosecution. No one comes away clean in this business. You have to learn to stick it out, soldier through, keep your focus on what you know is right. That’s the way to be true to yourself and your principles. Not quitting when things get a little rough.”

Layla blinked and slumped back in her chair. She was quiet for a long moment.

Jack sat down beside her. “I know what you went through was terrible. But — off the record — I sometimes think that the bad things that happen to us are a kind of punishment for the things we’re forced to do to others.”

“It sounds like you’re talking about yourself now,” Layla softly replied.

Jack met her gaze. “Let’s just say that I’ve done things I’d never want my family to know about. I don’t want my wife, my daughter, to ever think of me that way…”

Jack’s eyes drifted, his expression haunted.

“Twenty-four hours then,” Layla said. “I’ll give you that, Jack Bauer. We’ll see if it changes my mind.”

Her phone rang and she put it on speaker. “Abernathy,”

she answered.

“Morris here. I need you in Station One, to help monitor a situation. I believe we’ve located the last truck.”

“I hope you can hear me, Tony, because I’m about to go in.”

Judith Foy warily approached the garage door of the old warehouse. She limped a little — hoping it would add to her cover story. She shifted the heavy metal box in her hand, then knocked on the boarded-up garage.

Silence. The place seemed to be as abandoned as it looked.

Foy knocked again, harder this time. She kicked the door for good measure, though her sneakers didn’t make much of a sound.

She was about to knock a third time when a spy hole opened in the middle of the big door.

“Who the hell are you?” a voice demanded.

“Klebb. Sonya Klebb,” Foy replied.

She flashed the dead woman’s passport, too fast for the observer to notice the crude job she’d done replacing the picture of the dead woman with her own driver’s license photo.

“I am a chemical engineer with Rogan Pharmaceuticals,” Foy continued. “Soren Ungar sent me.”

There was a long pause. Foy was about to speak again when a different voice, deep and booming, emerged from the spy hole.

“Where is Dubic?”

It’s Noor, she realized. He’s here.

“Dead,” Foy replied. “We were attacked on the road. I think a gang was trying to rob us. Our car was struck by another vehicle. I was hurt. Dubic more so. Before he died, he told me where to go, made me promise to deliver the package here, to this address.”

“I see. And do you have the package?”

“I do,” Foy replied, displaying it.

On the other side of the garage door, she heard activity.

Then a rumbling sound as the door partially rose.

“Inside, quick,” a black youth said, gesturing to her.

Beyond the door, the interior was pitch-black, and Judith could see nothing. She stepped inside anyway, heart pounding in her chest.

Another rumble of machinery, and the door closed behind her. Then brilliant spotlights ignited, blinding her. Someone snatched the package out of her hand; other hands frisked her.

They were obviously looking for a weapon. She had none, and when they found her passport and Dubic’s cell phone, they ignored them. She hoped they hadn’t broken the phone circuit, but she couldn’t check now.

“Is that the aerosol dispenser?” Ibrahim Noor demanded.

“Yes, yes it is,” an accented voice replied. “I can install it in less than an hour.”

“Do it,” Noor commanded.

Judith blinked against the light, strained to see through her tears.

“Why did you come here?” Noor asked. “Who sent you?”

“I told you. Dubic—”

“If Dubic told you to come here, he would have given you the remote control to open the door. All of my men have it. Dubic knows our security. Anyone stupid enough to bang on our door is either a neighborhood addict or a cop.”

“No! Dubic must have forgotten. He was very injured.

He could hardly speak—”

“You are a fraud. An impostor,” roared Noor. “Take her.”

Strong hands seized her arms. Judith struggled, then yelled out the panic phrase: “Semper fi! Semper fi! ”

Someone punched her in the face, and the lab’s bright lights faded.

From his position among the branches of a century-old oak, Detective Mike Gorman shifted the sniper rifle in his grip, then aimed his night vision binoculars at the trailer truck three hundred feet away.

The vehicle sat in the middle of Schenley Plaza, once the grand entrance to the 456-acre conservancy, now used as a parking area for county rangers and concession employees. The truck had arrived sometime between mid-night and four a.m., when a sharp-eyed Allegheny County Parks Department ranger recognized the vehicle from a Federal government alert sent out to local authorities.

Two men slept in the cab. The driver’s window was open, his arm hanging out. The guy in the passenger seat slouched so low, only the top of his New York Mets ball cap showed above the dashboard.

He’s the tougher shot, and I got him, Gorman mused.

For thirty minutes, Gorman and his partner, Chuck Romeo, had observed the sleeping targets, fearing they would awaken and drive away at any moment. So far they’d been lucky, but luck never lasted long — just one lesson Gorman had taken away from the McKee’s Rocks mess.

I should have fired, Gorman thought, flashing back to the hostage standoff. A young mother had been held at gunpoint by an escaped convict. I should never have waited for authorization. If I’d have pulled the trigger, that poor woman would be alive today and her murderer dead, instead of the other way around.

“What are we waiting for?” Gorman said into his headset.

“A biohazard team with a tent,” his boss, Captain Kelly, advised. “Once it’s in place, we can move.”

Gorman glanced across a grassy clearing at his partner, perched in a tall maple tree. He was sure Chuck was staring back at him. Then Romeo’s voice crackled in his headset.

“A biohazard team? Is there something you’re not telling us, Captain?”

“Relax, boys,” Kelly said. “Just do your job and the Feds will do the rest.”

More baffled than alarmed, Gorman lowered his binoculars and shifted the fourteen-pound M24 sniper rifle into position. The composite stock against his armored shoulder, he peered through the infrared scope.

Placing the ball cap in the center of his crosshairs, Gorman once again adjusted the instrument for wind speed, temperature, humidity, and distance. Gorman knew he had only one shot. It had to be on the money. He wasn’t going to mess up again.

Minutes passed. Then Gorman heard the sound of an engine. He watched in disbelief as two white panel trucks rolled into the plaza and halted just inside the gate.

“I thought the road had been cordoned off to traffic,”

Gorman hissed.

“It’s the biohazard team. They’ll be ready to go in two minutes.”

Gorman glanced through his scope again. His target was still snoozing, but the driver had shifted position.

Had he heard the vans, too?

“I think my mark’s awake,” Chuck Romeo warned.

“Do not fire,” Captain Kelly commanded. “I repeat. Do not fire until I give the command.”

“Son of a—” Gorman stifled his curse, remembering that everything he and the others said was being taped—

just like McKee’s Rocks.

Unbidden, the memory returned. Two a.m., outside a strip joint on the main drag of that scummy little suburb.

The drunk convict, using the dancer for a shield, gun to her head. Gorman had a clear shot, begged Captain Kelly for authorization to pull the trigger, but it never came. The only shot fired that night went into the dancer’s skull. The single mother from Wheeling, West Virginia, died because he’d hesitated.

Through his scope, Gorman saw the driver wake up the man beside him. Both stared at the vans with open suspicion.

“If he starts that engine, the men who are supposed to be hiding inside that trailer will know something’s up,”

Gorman warned.

“Do not fire,” Captain Kelly repeated.

“You ready to shoot, Chuck?” Gorman asked.

“Ready,” Romeo said after a short pause.

“Fire on three,” Gorman said, aiming.

“Stand down and wait for my command,” Kelly warned.

“Do not fire.”

“One,” said Gorman.

“Stand down, I said!” Kelly cried.

“Two.”

Kelly was screaming in their headsets now. “If either of you shoots I’ll have your heads—”

In the truck, the driver reached for the ignition. His partner pulled a cell phone from his jacket.

“Three.”

Two holes appeared in the windshield simultaneously.

Inside the cab, two heads exploded. The men flopped forward, dead. The driver slumped over the steering wheel; the man in the passenger seat dropped to the floor.

“Got them,” Gorman whispered. “They’re down. I repeat. The targets are dead.”

“So are your careers,” Kelly growled, his voice icy with rage.

Obviously the Feds had been monitoring the conversation. As soon as Gorman announced the kills, the doors on both vans burst open. Five men in plastic biohazard suits rushed to the truck, dragging what looked like a huge cel-lophane blanket.

Gorman was impressed by the speed and efficiency with which the men tossed the massive tarp over the vehicle, then sealed the edges of the covering to the pavement with some sort of instant adhesive pumped out of a glue gun.

Inside of a minute they were finished, and a third white van raced into the plaza. This one contained a huge vacuum pump that was immediately attached to the tarp.

Before Gorman and Romeo climbed down from their respective trees, the pump was sucking the air out of the bag, hermetically sealing the vehicle and all its contents.

When they were on the ground, a man in a black jumpsuit approached them. Gorman thought it was a Pittsburgh policeman, but revised his opinion when the man got close enough for Gorman to see the CTU crest on the uniform.

“You’re the Feds?” Gorman asked, fully expecting to be arrested.

“Special Agent Clark Goodson, CTU Biological Terrorism Specialist, Midwest Division.”

Still juiced with a killer’s high, Gorman’s adrenaline was pumping and his hands trembled. He fumbled for a reply.

Suddenly the man slapped him on the back. “Exceptional work,” Goodson said. “If you’d waited, it would have been too late.”

“Tell that to our boss,” Romeo replied.

“Oh, I will.” Goodson nodded. “And if that a-hole Kelly does take your heads, I’ll find you both jobs on a CTU tac team. In fact, I hear L.A. is looking for a few good men.”