24 Declassified: Collateral Damage

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

Jack Bauer closed his cell phone and peered through the helicopter’s window. Green hills dotted with farmhouses sped by. Plowed fields, barns, and silos rolled under the aircraft’s belly.

Layla was studying him from across the aisle. She’d changed out of her business suit, into the tactical equipment she’d taken from the armory — blue overalls, a weapons belt with an assault knife, and a 9mm strapped to her waist. Her dark hair was pulled into a bun, and in oversized assault gear, she appeared small and frail.

“Who called just now?” she asked.

“Morris O’Brian,” Jack replied, his voice grim. “They located Brice Holman. He’s in Kurmastan.”

Layla let out a breath. “That’s not all, is it?”

“No. Your boss is in trouble.” Jack unfastened his seatbelt and moved to the cockpit.

Fogarty greeted him with a nod. “We’ve been circling the area for almost thirty minutes, Agent Bauer. We’re nearly down to our reserve fuel. Either I land soon, or we’re diverting to Phillipsburg or Easton to replenish.”

“I want you to land inside the compound and let us out,”

Jack said. “Then you can divert to the nearest airfield, refuel, and wait for further orders.”

The pilot and copilot exchanged looks. “Then you’ve located Director Holman?” Fogarty asked.

“He’s in Kurmastan, and his life may be in danger,”

Jack replied.

Fogarty peered through the windshield. “We can land near the center of town. There’s enough open space for me to—”

“No,” Jack said. “You have to put us down where we won’t be spotted. Maybe half a mile away from the settlement. Somewhere in the woods.”

“You’ll have to hike to get to main street, Agent Bauer,”

Fogarty warned. “The hills around here can be steep.

You’ll lose valuable time.”

Jack frowned. “Can’t be helped. I don’t have numbers.

My only weapon is surprise.”

Fogarty nodded. “We’ll do what we can to back you up, sir,” he said, then shifted his gaze to the control panel, where real-time images of Kurmastan were displayed on the digital map screen.

Jack looked, too, and counted himself lucky that CTU

New York still had satellite capabilities. After the con-certed bomb attacks earlier in the day, no other law enforcement agency on the East Coast had access to orbital surveillance. Right now, a satellite was beaming these pictures of the landscape around the compound to the helicopter’s computer.

“I think I can put you down here,” Fogarty said, tapping the screen.

Jack studied the map. “It’s a shallow valley surrounded by trees. What about the rotors? Do you have enough space to bring this thing down safely?”

“It will be tight, but it’s the best place to land,” the Captain replied. “Chances are they won’t see us behind this hill, and you’ll have a whole line of trees to use for cover as you move toward town.”

Fogarty paused. “With luck, you probably won’t encounter anyone until you reach this stretch of mobile homes. If you do, you may have a fight on your hands.”

Jack nodded, memorizing the landscape.

Fogarty gripped his arm with his free hand.

“Are you sure you want to do this, Agent Bauer? I mean, you and Agent Abernathy aren’t exactly a strike team.”

“I’ve already ordered Morris O’Brian to dispatch a tactical team to the scene,” Jack replied, his tone resigned.

“But we’re not waiting. We’re going in now, even if there’s only two of us.”

Brice Holman shut out the shouts and screams, the sound of Reverend Ahern’s pleading voice as he begged the mob to spare him.

His attention was focused on the old Albanian man with the 9mm Uzi in his wrinkled hand and spare ammunition clips tucked into the belt of his tattered robes. The weapon was tarnished and pitted, and Holman wondered if it was truly functional, or merely for show.

I can take that bastard down, he mused. All I have to do is get close to him, or trick him into getting close to me. But I’d hate to come up empty, stuck with a gun that doesn’t shoot.

Ibrahim Noor and the albino man were long gone.

They’d slipped through the curtained door and had not returned. Soon after they departed, the slaughter began. Now, on the podium, Ahern’s ravings about interfaith harmony and reconciliation morphed into howls of tortured agony.

Bound tightly to a sturdy wooden chair, shirt ripped, clerical collar hanging limply, James Wendell Ahern struggled vainly while two boys, no more than eleven years old, took turns ripping at his throat with a rusty saw.

Holman looked away.

Among the swirling, bloodthirsty throng, he caught brief glimpses of the Cranstons. The woman hung limply from her ropes, and though Mr. Cranston bled from scores of wounds, he was still conscious.

Dani Taylor had been screaming for several minutes.

The young women of the compound seemed to derive a special relish in her torment. They punched and kicked the teenager, smeared the makeup they found in her purse on her face, and tore at her clothing.

A particularly vicious slap from a heavyset black woman tipped her chair over, and the girl vanished in a swarm of flapping robes and kicking feet.

Holman strained against his own bonds, until loops of rope sagged onto his lap and tumbled to the blood-soaked floor. He was free now, but pretended to be trapped while he scanned the room, searching for a way out.

An abrupt silence ensued when Ahern stopped screaming.

A moment later, the crowd gasped when an older boy displayed the Reverend’s head, the eyes still twitching in their sockets. The youth swung the grisly trophy by its hair, then tossed the head on top of the stack piling up in the corner.

Several women gripped Mrs. Cranston, and Joe protested, cursing a blue streak and vowing to kill them all.

The old man with the Uzi stepped in front of Mr. Cranston’s chair and fired it in the air, to silence the old man.

Holman almost smiled. That relic still works! And now I know how to get that bastard clutching the Uzi over here to me.

Two burly women untied the ropes and hauled Abby Cranston out of her chair. She was alive, but only semicon-scious. Blood trickled from her nose and ears, the signs of head trauma. Mr. Cranston cried out again. This time women wielding rakes and hoes beat him senseless.

As women in burkas surged past him, carrying Mrs.

Cranston by her arms, Holman shot out his foot and connected with an ankle. A robed woman cried out, then whirled and struck him.

With one eye on the old man, Holman began to curse the woman, then he launched into a string of unspeakable blasphemies calculated to enrage his captors.

It worked.

The old man rushed to his side. But he didn’t aim the Uzi at the ceiling. He placed it against Holman’s temple.

Brice refused to be silenced. His taunts became more vicious, until the old man twisted the gun to pummel him with its butt — then Holman moved.

He shot out his arms, one grabbing the old man’s bony wrist, the other his wattled throat. Holman squeezed until the man’s throat was crushed. Then he yanked the gun out of the man’s dead fingers.

The women reared back, but one young boy lunged for him. Still partly ensnared by the tangling ropes, Holman shot the youth in the face.

A woman howled, dropped to her knees beside the corpse. The rest of the robed wall seemed to withdraw.

Holman spotted a man clutching a double-barreled shotgun and killed him, too. Another armed man fumbled with the rifle on his shoulder, and Holman blew the top of his head off. Finally, Holman shot the kid who’d brandished the Reverend’s head — just because he felt like it.

The woman beside the dead boy clawed at Holman’s shoes, and he kicked her aside. Waving his Uzi at the quak-ing horde, he grabbed clips of spare ammunition from the dead man’s belt.

Holman was about to bolt for the exit when he saw Dani Taylor on the floor. Her chair was broken, and she’d untangled herself from the ropes. Now she was struggling to rise.

“Wait… Take me with you,” she pleaded.

“Come on, then,” Brice yelled.

A woman lunged for Holman, and he shot her at point-blank range. Enraged howls greeted the move, but the mob retreated.

Brice grabbed Dani’s hand. It was slippery with blood, but he managed to haul the girl to her feet. He pushed Dani behind him and nudged her toward the nearest exit.

“Wait,” Dani gasped, snatching the shotgun from the dead man’s grip. Brice was surprised when she waved the weapon at their captors, effectively covering his back.

“You know how to use that?” Brice called.

“I live on a farm. I can fire a shotgun,” Dani replied.

Another woman took a swing at Brice with a rusty rake, and he shot her, too. Robes flapping, the dead woman spun backward, into the arms of her comrades.

Dani and Holman bolted through the door, into the harsh afternoon sun. They were on main street, where Holman hoped to board the church bus. But the vehicle had been tipped over on its side.

Cursing, he grabbed Dani’s arm and they dashed down the dusty street.

“I want you to go that way,” Brice said pointing. “Get to the woods beyond those mobile homes and you’ll have a chance to get out.”

Dani took a step forward. Brice gripped her arm.

“Take this,” he cried, shoving his cell phone into the girl’s pocket.

“What is it?”

“Intelligence,” Holman cried. “Images, recordings.

Give it to the FBI. Do you understand? The FBI. Don’t trust anyone from CTU—”

“Huh?”

“CTU. The Counter Terrorist Unit. They’ve been compromised. Promise me you’ll give that phone to the FBI and no one else.”

The girl nodded, Brice noticed a chunk of blond hair had been yanked from her scalp. “The FBI, I got it,” she said nervously.

Holman pushed her. “Go!” he commanded.

Dani took off in a run toward the line of mobile homes in the distance. Holman whirled to face the Community Center. Legs braced, he aimed at a pair of angry women and an old man who stumbled through the door.

He fired once, bringing down the man. Then Brice fled the scene, fumbling with a clip to reload.

Cries battered Holman’s ears as an enraged mob streamed out of the Community Center. Someone fired a shot that whizzed over his head. They chased after him, and Holman swerved onto the road that led to the factory.

Good, you dumb bastards, he thought. Follow me and Dani will get away clean…

In the cool darkness of the brick-lined coffeehouse, Tony Almeida studied the woman across the table while he sipped his fourth espresso. Judith Foy fidgeted in her chair while she nursed her third iced tea.

The Deputy Director was wearing a navy-blue tracksuit, no-name sneakers, and a knockoff New York Yankees cap meant to hide the bandages on her head. Tony was no fashion guru, but he had grabbed what he thought was appropriate at a discount store on a shabby block of clothing and apparel shops in the Central Ward, while Judith Foy cowered in the hospital gown, inside the stall of a McDon-ald’s restroom.

Securing clothing was their first priority after the escape, and Tony had handled that situation well and efficiently. He was having less success convincing the Deputy Director of the New York Division to turn over the intelligence she’d gathered to analysts at CTU Headquarters.

Every time he broached the subject, Agent Foy changed the topic of conversation. Now she peered across the table with an expression that bordered on admiration.

“You’re quite resourceful, Agent Almeida. The way you whisked me out of the hospital… It was some of the quickest thinking I’d ever seen.”

“Call me Tony,” he said.

While she spoke, his gaze continued to scan the coffee shop. So far, the only other patrons were a pair of college coeds bemoaning their romantic life, and a man in a jacket and tie pounding on the keyboard of his laptop.

“What are you thinking, Tony?” Judy said. “Wish I could tell. But for the last hour, your expression covered the emotional spectrum from A to B.”

Tony arched an eyebrow. “You caught me at a bad time.”

Judy Foy shook her head. “I caught you at a very good time. You’re one of the best agents I’ve ever seen.

You were smart to grab the wheelchair and put me in it.

When you put on those green scrubs, even I thought you were part of the medical staff. Then you triggered the fire alarm, pushed me right past the police guarding the door, along with the rest of the evacuees… makes me wish you worked for me.”

Tony ignored her praise. “Too bad about Delgado’s car.

We had the keys. We could have been in a safe house by now, if the police hadn’t cordoned off the parking lot.”

“Don’t worry about it,” Foy said. “You recovered my cell phone and camera. That’s what counts.”

“Not if we don’t get the information to CTU.”

“We’ve been over this, Agent Almeida.”

“Look,” Tony said. “You can trust Jack Bauer. He’s from Los Angeles, not New York. He never even heard of Kurmastan until today.”

Foy shook her head so vigorously, her scarlet ponytail whipped back and forth. “I don’t know your boss from Adam, or who this Bauer chose to trust,” she replied. “He can unwittingly help the traitor if he shares information with the wrong person.”

“Maybe we got the traitor,” Tony argued.

“Rachel Delgado was a mole,” Foy replied. “But I doubt she’s the only one. I don’t trust Brice’s assistant, either.”

“Agent Abernathy?”

Foy nodded. “I told Holman about my suspicions, but he laughed them off…”

“What if we call Morris, forward the intelligence to him—”

“We’ve been through this, Almeida. Any data we forward to your friend will have to go through CTU New York’s network. I’m convinced the traitor has access to the data dump. The bastard will see the intelligence as soon as it comes in — maybe even delete it before your friend has a chance to retrieve it.”

The woman stared through the window, at the rush hour traffic building outside.

Tony calmly sipped his espresso, but inside he was cursing. Judith Foy had ordered him not to use his cell phone, and almost made him deactivate his GPS chip, until she realized CTU New York didn’t have Tony’s telecommunications signatures in their database and couldn’t track him if they wanted to. The woman was so cautious, it bordered on paranoia. She even tossed Rachel Delgado’s cell into a storm drain, along with the woman’s car keys, purse, and wallet. Foy kept only the dead woman’s cash and her Glock.

“If only your friend Morris had a laptop,” Foy said.

“Something not connected to the mainframe.”

Tony struck the table with his fist, rattling the espresso cup on its saucer. “That’s it!”

“What?”

Tony leaned across the table, speaking softly. “Before we left Los Angeles, George Mason gave Jack Bauer a briefcase computer with all the codes and mission protocols inside. Only we never even cracked it because things went Code Red in a hurry.”

“So?”

“What if we forward the intel you collected to that system, then alert Morris to open the files inside the briefcase computer, effectively cutting CTU New York out of the loop.”

“That might work. But how are you going to transmit the data?”

Tony shrugged. “There’s an internet café around the corner and down the block. We rent a computer for an hour and download the information.”

“But you still have to contact this Morris person. If you call him, even on a public phone, that could compromise everything.”

Tony shook his head. “I won’t be contacting Morris.

Someone from CTU Los Angeles will. Someone Morris can’t ignore.”