24 Declassified: Operation Hell Gate

4. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 A.M. AND 1 A.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME

On his way through the command center, Tony Almeida fell into step beside Captain Jessica Schneider.

“Where are you headed, Captain?”

“The same place as you.”

Tony stopped and faced her. Nina had summoned the CTU Crisis Management Team to Doris’s workstation. As far as he was concerned, the CTU team didn’t — and shouldn’t — include an entity from the DOD.

“But you’re not part of the Crisis Team,” he informed her.

“I am now, Special Agent Almeida. Nina Myers just notified me of the security clearance upgrade.”

Tony looked away. “RHIP,” he muttered.

Captain Schneider fixed her blue eyes on him. “You are correct. Rank does have its privileges. But is it really my rank that bothers you?”

Tony glanced to his right and left. “It’s not your rank,” he said quietly enough to keep their conversation private. “It’s your relationship to a powerful member of the House Ways and Means Committee.”

“A person can’t control the situation she was born into. But let me assure you that no strings were ever pulled for me….I earned the rank and responsibilities I hold.”

She whirled and stalked away before Tony could make his meaning clear. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about the woman’s career trajectory. It was her direct line to another branch of government that gave him indigestion. If Captain Jessica Schneider decided to pass judgment on what and how they did things at CTU Los Angeles, she could pass that judgment on to her father, who wielded plenty of influence via his position on a Capitol Hill oversight committee. So why didn’t Nina get that?

Tony continued on alone across the command center floor. He arrived at the Crisis Team meeting to discover a crowd silently watching the young Korean-American woman stretching in her cubicle. Her back turned to the spectators, Doris — head tilted on her long neck — was balanced on the tips of her toes. With balletic grace, she dipped to one side then the other, blithely unaware she had attracted an audience. When she finally stretched her arms high over her head, spun around, and opened her eyes, she found the others watching. Scattered applause followed. Doris, blushing, put her arms to her sides and dropped back down to the soles of her bare feet.

“Sorry. I was sitting so long I kinda needed to stretch. ”

Nina had watched with arms folded and a look on her face as if she were indulging a child. Now that Tony and Captain Schneider had arrived, she was ready to begin. “Miss Soo Min, apprise the group of what you’ve uncovered.”

“Right,” said Doris. She knocked her shoes off the chair and slid into it, then tapped the keyboard.

“Getting the data off the chip was actually, like, a whole lot easier than I thought it would be. Whoever programmed this used the same algorithm the South Koreans use in their toy computers — the stuff they make for their kids. I worked on this kind of program in my uncle’s toy factory in Oakland, so I recognized the pattern immediately. The encryption overlay that the North Koreans tried to hide the data behind was very basic, too. It was almost too easy to break, even without an encryption protocol, which I brought with me and downloaded from my own PC. ”

While Doris babbled on, the large HDTV monitor sprang to life and a half dozen data windows appeared. In each display box, the digital representation of a different type of aircraft appeared. The image shifted so that each individual aircraft was displayed from various angles, followed by an image composed of its heat signature.

Dozens of aircraft were on display — all civil aircraft used in the West — passenger airliners, cargo craft, even research, firefighting, and weather monitoring aircraft were included in the chip’s extensive database.

“What is all this?” asked Jamey Farrell.

“This is all the data I downloaded from the memory stick,” said Doris. “There’s nothing left beyond some random data strains here and there I have yet to decrypt. I’ll continue working on them though; maybe I’ll find something important.”

“What exactly are we looking at?” Milo asked.

“It looks like a pretty thorough civil aircraft registry,” said Tony.

“Real thorough,” said Doris. “This software can recognize dozens of specific types of European, American, and Japanese aircraft by profile and heat signature, IFF frequencies, radio frequencies, you name it. And there’s even a program to compress and download the necessary data into some other system which interfaces with the memory stick through the USB port—”

“That would be the computer guidance system inside the anti-aircraft missile itself,” said Captain Schneider. “Once programmed and fired, the missile can guide itself to the target with the data downloaded from the memory stick.”

Nina’s face was tight with tension. “With this device at their disposal, terrorists could pinpoint and down any aircraft they wanted to. They—”

Captain Schneider raised her hand. “Not quite,” she interrupted. “The effective range of a shoulder-fired anti-aircraft missile is very limited. A civil aircraft at its normal cruising altitude would probably not be at risk. A target aircraft would have to be flying at a fairly low altitude — as it is when it takes off or lands — for a Long Tooth missile to be truly effective.”

“That explains why the terrorists were at the airport,” said Tony. “They wanted to maximize their chance for success.”

“But it doesn’t explain their choice of target,” Nina replied. “There was absolutely nothing aboard the cargo aircraft Dante Arete’s gang was aiming at to warrant a shoot-down. It was a standard, cargo-configured 727 packed with overnight mail and packages. The cargo was checked after landing and cleared by National Transportation Safety Board screeners under our supervision.”

“Maybe the shoot-down was supposed to be symbolic. Maybe the terrorists wanted to send a message,” said Jamey.

“Or maybe it was a test,” said Tony. “Maybe they wanted to see if the target recognition system really worked as advertised before they went after their real target.”

Nina tucked strands of her short black hair behind an ear. “Whatever Dante Arete’s goal, we know that with this technology, he and his accomplices have the ability to target specific aircraft, even in the crowded skies over a busy airport.”

Nina faced Captain Schneider. “I’m turning the actual memory stick over to you next. Take it apart and put it back together, reverse-engineer the thing, trace each individual component to the original manufacturer or melt them down to their base minerals. I want you to do whatever it takes to find out where this device was made and where the maker got the parts.”

Captain Schneider detached the memory stick from the data port it had been plugged into. She placed the device inside a static-free Mylar envelope and headed back to the Cyber Unit.

When she was gone, Tony confronted Nina.

“What are you doing giving Captain Schneider a spot on the Crisis Team? She’s not an agent; she’s a computer engineer. Captain Schneider doesn’t have any field experience and she isn’t even a member of CTU.”

“We needed her expertise,” Nina replied, still staring over Doris’s shoulder at the images crawling across the HDTV screen.

Tony shook his head. “I don’t accept your explanation. What does Chappelle have to say about all this?”

Nina rose to her full height, faced Tony Almeida. “Ryan Chappelle is on a conference call to Washington. He’s working to control the damage, which is pretty important right now. That means he has no time to monitor the Crisis Team, so he left that task to me. In case you’ve forgotten, Jack left me in charge, too, so I’m handling the situation. My way.”

Georgi Timko cradled his friend’s head in his bloodstained hands. Jack ripped away the ragged flannel shirt to check the downed man’s wounds. Jack could see the man had taken three shots — to the chest, the shoulder, the abdomen. The shoulder wound was not life-threatening. It was impossible to tell how bad the abdominal wound was, but the largest injury was a sucking chest wound. When Jack tried to plug the hole and allow him to breathe, the man gasped, choked on the blood that shot up from his flooded lung and flowed from his mouth.

The man was doomed and Jack knew it. But at the behest of the heavy-set man, whose piercing gray eyes both commanded and pleaded, Jack went to work, applying every first aid skill he’d acquired in fifteen-plus years of service in the Army, and later in the elite, anti-terrorist organization Delta Force. Jack managed to staunch the flow of blood, but the wounded man’s eyes glazed over.

“Alexi, stay with me,” Timko urged, shaking him.

“We have to move him,” said Jack.

Together they lifted the man and placed him on a table.

“I need more light.”

Timko ducked behind the bar and returned with a battery-operated lantern. Jack carefully rolled the man on his side to check for exit wounds. There were two. One, as large as a tennis ball, had taken out part of the man’s spine.

The man on the table gasped in distress, opened his eyes, and thrashed about on the table. Despite his wounds, he fought with great strength.

“Alexi, Alexi! Keep looking at me. Stay with us,” Timko urged.

He calmed when he saw Timko bending over him. Alexi coughed, then slumped back onto the blood-soaked table.

“I’m here, Alexi,” Timko assured him, his eyes damp as he took the man’s hand and squeezed it.

Alexi looked up at Timko and managed a smile. He closed his eyes and muttered in Russian. “I can hear the helicopter. They will be here soon to take me away…”

A minute later, Alexi was gone.

“I’m sorry,” Jack said quietly.

Timko nodded as a tear escaped his eye, lost its way in the stubble of his unshaven cheek. “Alexi was a decent man…for a Russian pig.”

Jack studied the dead man’s naked hide, crisscrossed with old scars. Someone had used a knife to inflict deep wounds that had shredded the flesh on his abdomen and chest. Jack knew that type of cut was meant to cause the most agony a human could endure. He looked up, met the heavy-set man’s stare with his own.

“This man. He fought in Afghanistan,” said Jack.

Georgi looked away. “Don’t be absurd.”

“Scars don’t lie,” Jack replied. “This man was tortured by the mujahideen.”

“Who are you? What do you want from me?”

“My name is Jack Bauer. I’m not from around here. I’m in town for a job. I came right here from the airport because I was supposed to meet an associate—”

Timko snorted. “Now who is lying, Mr. Jack Bauer? Before I came to America, I was trained in the most difficult school in the world — the criminal underground in the former Soviet Union. I learned one thing while outsmarting the Communist enforcers. I learned to recognize the stench of police, no matter his country of origin.”

Timko sniffed the air theatrically. “You, Mr. Jack Bauer, have a very strong odor.”

A gun barrel dug into Jack’s ribs. He turned to find a toothless old man pointing an Uzi at him.

“Meet my friend, Yuri. Do not let his looks deceive you. Yuri understands no English but he knows trouble when he sees it and can kill a dozen different ways.”

Then Georgi Timko slapped Jack on the back.

“Once you have handed over your weapon, we will sit down together, share strong tea, and talk like civilized men.”

The black Mercedes moved along a dark stretch of Roosevelt Avenue under the elevated subway tracks. Steel support beams encased in crumbling concrete moved monotonously past the tinted windows. Though traffic was minimal at this time of night, cars were parked and double-parked along both sides of the busy commercial thoroughfare, making navigation tricky. Shamus Lynch skirted every obstacle.

He pressed the gas to beat a yellow light. The car hit a pothole and Shamus heard — or imagined he heard — the heavy missile launcher bounce in the trunk. Reflexively he glanced in the rearview, caught a glimpse of his ruddy, clean-shaven jaw, his fiery red hair, neatly cut — a professional look to go with the professional suit, the professional act.

For as long as he could remember, Shamus had despised looking younger than his years. Now, at thirty-five, crow’s feet clawed his eyes. Creases gouged his brow. Shamus hadn’t noticed the exact year, month, and hour his boyish face had fled — when the lines around his thin lips had deepened, his cheeks had become lean and angular like his brother’s, his brown eyes as hard — but he was lately beginning to wonder if he’d been daft to ever long for it.

He couldn’t remember a time when he hadn’t admired Griff, ten years older, ten years wiser, the one to follow without hesitation. A stop sign compelled Shamus to tap the brake and consider with a glance the man sitting beside him, staring intensely into the shadows between the streetlights.

In his beige, summer-weight suit, gold Windsorknotted tie, and polished loafers, Griff could easily pass for your typical harried New York businessman. The handsome young freedom fighter was long gone. Not a strand of black Irish hair was left on his silver head and his normally pale features were looking downright ghostly. There was nothing faint, however, about Griff’s resolve. For as long as Shamus could remember, he’d displayed more than enough raging certainty for the two of them, along with a vague paternal contempt toward any questioning of his decisions or plans. Not that Shamus had ever really challenged his brother.

Their father’s death in ’72, at the hands of the British Army had ignited Griff’s sense of injustice. He’d spoken in church basements, organized civil rights protests, lobbied local politicians. Then their mother was murdered in a pub bombing. Gasoline on Griff’s fire, that was. The IRA was Griff’s family after that, vengeance his propeller. Shamus had been too young to sustain true hatred. He’d functioned mainly on need — need for his brother’s affection and, eventually, his respect.

Even as a ruddy-cheeked child, he’d found a way to make Griff see his value. The cherubic freckles, which Shamus had always detested, allowed him to plant plastique unnoticed — at a bus stop near a Royal Ulster Constabulary post, a pub frequented by loyalist paramilitary groups, a British Army checkpoint. It had become a thing of pride for him, a measure of accomplishment to hide the thing and get away, to watch the explosion, to gain the approval of his brothers in arms.

They were fighting to free their countrymen, weren’t they? From repressive, imperial, colonial rule. Human rights commissions were on their side. Hadn’t the British allowed their army to detain and “question” his countrymen for as long as seven days without charges? Allowed their courts to convict based on confessions obtained through abusive treatment during that questioning? Taken away their right to a fair jury trial? Griff had made things clear for him back then, made things right.

“Ours is a justified war, and we’re soldiers in it. The Brits…they try to label us ‘terrorists,’ but if that’s so, then what are they, eh? Weren’t the RAF ‘terrorists’ when they dropped two thousand tons of bombs on Dresden civilians? Weren’t they guilty of ‘terrorism’ when they forced civilians into concentration camps in South Africa where thousands of ’em died?”

Whether their war was justified or not, in the end, Griff and Shamus both realized they’d been the losers. What was supposed to have been the highest achievement of their lives, the most important accomplishment for the Cause, had left them barely escaping the British Army, hiding on a tanker bound for North Africa. Everything had changed after that spring of ’81. They could never again return to their homeland, never go back to using their real names. Yet Shamus had trusted Griff and he’d come through — found a way for them to continue the fight.

“Don’t our brothers need arms?” Griff had told him. “Don’t they need explosives and weapons? That’s what we’ll provide. The Cause is still ours. Now we’ll just be fightin’ it another way …”

Of course, Griff had said all that a long time go, almost seventeen years. Since then, their homeland— what they could remember of it — had changed its outlook. Peace agreements renouncing violence were now being struck by the IRA’s political arm. While their comrades were rotting in hellishly long sentences in British prisons, the thrust of their people’s will was being spent on disarmament.

Griff’s cell phone rang. He pulled it out, flipped it open. Shamus’s eyes were drawn to the twisted blast scars on his brother’s hands, wrists, the callused knob that was once a finger. The wounds went deeper, spidering up his arms. The extent of their reach was hidden beneath the neatly tailored suit. For years, Shamus had seen them as badges of honor. Only in the past few weeks had he begun to ask.

“What are we doing, Griff? This job has nothing to do with the Cause.”

“We didn’t leave the Cause, Shea. It left us.”

Griff had said the writing was on the wall. Adjustments were necessary. Shamus had disagreed. Weren’t there still splinter factions like the real IRA who were still fighting the good fight? The Omagh bombing alone had proved the fight was still on. Wasn’t a five-hundred-pound bomb tearing through a small town, killing twenty-eight and injuring hundreds, enough proof that peace under British rule was not a certainty?

But Griff was unyielding. He claimed the real money for arms had dried up. And Shamus realized the real money was all he seemed to be after now.

“Chin up, lad,” he’d told Shamus. “With our new employer, we can ply our trade and get rich doin’ it. We both know this is better than babysitting a stinking warlord in that stinking weapons market in Somalia.”

The red light blinked to green and Shamus gave the Mercedes gas. Listening in on his brother’s cell phone conversation, he maneuvered the sedan along the narrow, congested streets. From what Shamus could deduce, there was some kind of snag — bad news, coming less than twenty-four hours before the whole operation was supposed to go down. By the deferential tone in Griff’s voice, Shamus concluded their associate was not happy, and his brother was trying to fix the problem.

“Don’t worry, I’ll take care of it. Just like I took care of Dante and his Posse. Tell Taj the delivery will be there by morning. I guarantee it.”

Griff ended the conversation, closed the cell, and stared straight ahead. “There’s been a complication.”

“Is that so?”

“Did you hear our boy Dante mention a lost memory stick?”

“Not a word,” Shamus replied. “I figured it was blown up with the missile launcher.”

Griff sighed in disgust. “That’s the story he told our associate, but I think he has doubts and so do I. I’ll be thinking the Feds got hold of that stick. Not the Federal Bureau of Investigation, but CTU.”

“CTU! Can they crack it?”

“Of course they can…But it might take time.”

“Enough time?”

Griff forced a laugh. “Ah, well…What’s another three-letter word, eh? The SAS, the FBI, the CIA— now CTU — we took on all the others and we always walked away with our hides intact.”

Shamus said nothing. Didn’t smile or laugh. His hands tightened on the steering wheel.

“Pull over, right here,” Griff commanded.

“But the pub’s still a few blocks away—”

“Pull over.” Griff’s voice was tight, the forced levity gone.

On the mostly empty sidewalks, small knots of men and a few women gathered around Irish pubs to smoke, talk, and drink. This area, called Woodside, had for years been a haven for Irish immigrants. It still was, although these days it shared its sidewalks with the vast influx of newer immigrants. The century-old pubs and taverns were now interspersed between Korean greengrocers, Chinese and Filipino restaurants, and Arab-run newsstands and wireless stores.

Shamus guided the Mercedes into a spot in front of a darkened plumbing supply store. In the shadow of the overhead train, he cut the engine, killed the lights. The Number 7 Flushing-to-Manhattan train rumbled overhead.

“Wait here.”

Griff opened the door and went to the back of the car. Shamus watched his brother through the rearview mirror. After the trunk opened, he could feel the weight shifting inside, though he couldn’t tell what Griff was up to. A moment later, the trunk closed and Griff returned. When he sat down, he placed a silver metal attaché case on the seat between them — an identical twin of the one he’d handed off to Dante Arete.

Shamus eyed the case suspiciously.

“I took the memory stick out of our missile launcher and put it in here,” Griff explained. “Have Liam deliver this case to the drop on Atlantic Avenue. He’s to give the case to no one but Taj. And no taxis or car services. They keep logs that can be traced.”

Shamus shook his head. “I can do it, Griff. Liam’s just a kid, and it’s one o’clock in the morning. Caitlin will have a frothing fit.”

“I don’t give a damn what your whore thinks. And you can’t go. Neither of us can risk being seen anywhere near that dead drop. Liam’s to do it and that’s that. You were doing much more at his age, as I recall… Besides, he and his sister cost you enough of your money — those charity cases might as well be useful.”

“Liam can take it in the morning—”

“Tonight. Get on it.” Griffin seemed to regret his shortness. His voice became conciliatory as he added, “I know you’ll be wanting to stay the night with Caitlin. Send Liam off and have your fun. Just be at the shop first thing in the morning. We need to close things down, tie up loose ends before our chartered flight takes off.” He slapped Shamus on the shoulder. “Cheer up, brother. I know you don’t much like pullin’ up stakes again. But where we’re goin’, I hear the women are as beautiful as the beaches.”

Attaché case in hand, Shamus nodded and climbed out of the car. Griffin slipped behind the wheel, made a fast U-turn, and sped away in the opposite direction. As another elevated train rumbled overhead, Shamus strolled the last few blocks to the corner pub called The Last Celt.

Captain Schneider climbed the metal staircase to the command center’s mezzanine, a classified folder under her arm. She had been directed there by Jamey Farrell, who told her that Nina Myers had set up shop in Jack Bauer’s office until his return.

She knocked twice, then opened the door. “Agent Myers? Can I have a moment of your time?”

Nina looked up, startled. She closed the file she was reading, sat back in the chair. “Come in, Captain Schneider.”

The Marine slid into a chair. Her blond ponytail was unraveling, and there were bags under the woman’s eyes, but Schneider’s expression was alert, her voice strong when she spoke. “I have some progress to report.”

Nina blinked. “On the memory stick. That was fast.”

“When I opened the device up, it was clear the interior circuitry was manufactured in North Korea. The chips were made at their number two microchip plant in Pyongyang, and it was probably assembled there, too. But what is interesting is the fact that this stick was further engineered at a later date. It was retrofitted with the USB port, and inside I found some routers manufactured in Mexico.”

“Any clue who did the retrofitting?”

Captain Schneider shook her head. “Not yet. But I did find this.”

She reached into her folder and took out a digital photograph. “This is the surface of the main bus port, magnified fifty times. Note the serial number…”

Nina took the printout. A sequence of thirteen numbers and letters was stamped in the polymer surface.

“You can trace this?”

Captain Schneider nodded. “Given enough time. There are about five thousand firms in the United States, Mexico, and Canada licensed to manufacture this bus port. Each of these firms have thousands of clients who purchase these ports—”

“So you’re saying it’s impossible?”

“Not at all,” Captain Schneider replied. “The Defense Department, the NSC, the Commerce Department, even the State Department keep tabs on the sale of such technologically sensitive devices. One of them is bound to have this serial number on file, but that’s a lot of information to process, and from a lot of different locations.”

“How can I help?” asked Nina.

“I need access to a computer with a large memory and a random sequencer. That’s the only way I’m going to be able to collate so much data in a short time frame.”

Nina didn’t hesitate. She touched the intercom button.

“Jamey here.”

“I want you to set up Captain Schneider at a station that interfaces with the mainframe. She needs a random sequencer and DSL access,” Nina said.

“Roger. I’ll put Milo on it. The sequencer should be up and running in five minutes.”

“Okay?” Nina said to Captain Schneider.

“That’s great. Thank you,” Captain Schneider said, rising. “I should be able to determine precisely which computer firm did the retrofitting within the next few hours.”