24 Declassified: Trojan Horse

6. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10 A.M. AND 11 A.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME

The eight-man crew representing the Stage Carpenters and Craftsmen Union, Local 235, had gathered inside the union-mandated break area — in this case a large silver recreational vehicle parked on the street outside the mammoth Chamberlain Auditorium.

Not a hundred yards from the RV’s door, the red carpet was being rolled out for the Silver Screen Awards Ceremony. In less than eight hours, celebrities would be strutting down that carpet and into the pavilion. Fans and ranks of paparazzi were already staking claims to the choicest locations — behind well-guarded police barricades.

Inside the air-conditioned RV things were more relaxed. The workers lounged on couches and chairs and some took advantage of the microwave oven and coffee maker. Others smoked — strictly against Los Angeles County regulations — and watched television.

The men had been at it since 6 a.m., putting together the stage props for tonight’s awards show. Everything was in place now, except an elaborate replica of the award itself, and a large wooden podium to set it on. These props were to be placed at center stage, and the prefabricated structure was on its way over from a construction contractor in El Monte. This final piece of the set would arrive within the hour, with plenty of time to set it up before the curtain rose on the live broadcast.

Even if the parts had arrived, the union contract stipulated that after four hours of work, a meal break was mandatory. Of course, the team was supposed to stagger their breaks so that someone was always available for carpentry work. But Pat Morganthau — the team’s regular foreman — had not shown up for work and could not be found at any of his usual haunts. Meanwhile the instructions issued by the substitute foreman the management company had dispatched to the site— a twenty-something guy named Eddie Sabir — were being pretty much ignored by the union men.

In the middle of a cable sports report, the RV door opened.

“Heads up, the Teamsters have arrived,” yelled one of the carpenters. Boos and catcalls followed.

A Middle Eastern man stood in the doorway. He waved a greeting with one hand, the other held a bright blue plastic storage container.

A portly fellow watching ESPN from a lounge chair slapped his forehead. “Shit, Haroun, why’d you have to show up now?”

The man in the doorway offered the union men a broad smile.

“Good morning, good morning,” said Haroun. “The bad news is that the props are in the truck and the truck is here, which means we all have work to do. But the good news is that my wife has made honey cakes again.”

A burly carpenter with a long ponytail whistled. “Man, bring ’em on.”

The portly man muted the sportscast. “Come on in, Haroun, sit down. We just made a fresh pot of coffee.”

Haroun set the plastic container on the table, shook his head. “No, no, I must get the truck into the loading dock. Please be my guest. I shall return in a few minutes and join you.”

“Better hurry,” said the carpenter with the ponytail. “The last time you brought honey cakes they were gone before the foreman got any! And boy did Morganthau bitch.”

Haroun hurried out the door. Ponytail Man helped himself to one of the tiny nutty cakes dripping with sweet honey. He passed the container to the others. “Man, these hit the spot,” he gushed after a hearty first bite.

Before he took another, a groan came from the couch, out of the mouth of the youngest man in the room. He was slumped on the couch beside the portly worker. The lanky, twenty-two-year-old had shaggy blond hair and a deep surfer’s tan. He groaned again and clutched his stomach.

“What the fuck is wrong with him,” the portly man asked before sampling the sticky pastry.

“Dickhead here went to that new strip club out by the airport,” Ponytail Man replied. “He drank till three a.m., then came to work.”

“He ain’t gonna be worth shit,” opined a middle-aged, muscle-bound worker with a shaved head. He leaned back in his armchair and licked his gooey fingers.

The sick young man couldn’t take it anymore — all the eating, the smacking lips, the smells. He jumped up and raced to the john, slammed the door and locked it behind him. He hung his head over the toilet, waiting.

“Another worshipper of the porcelain god,” quipped Ponytail Man. The others laughed.

Inside the cramped head, the young man gagged a few times, but nothing came up despite his nausea, the wracking cramps. He wasn’t surprised. He’d lost the contents of his stomach a long time ago, and wondered now when the agony would subside. Vowing never to drink to excess again, he ran water, washed out his mouth, rinsed his face. After he toweled off, he felt a little better, so he took a deep breath and opened the door.

At first he thought the whole thing was a twisted joke.

Ponytail Man was slumped over the table, head lolling to one side, eyes wide and unblinking, lips blue. The portly sports fan’s eyes were wide and staring at the television broadcast, but he could no longer see. Another man was sprawled next to him on the couch, mouth gaping, tongue black and distended.

The big, bald dude lay dead on the floor, fingers curled and clutching the carpet. The youth whimpered, felt more than saw movement behind him. Then something hard and cold touched the back of his head. The young man froze, knees suddenly weak.

“You really should have eaten the cakes,” said Haroun. The sound suppressed Colt bucked in his hand. The young man’s head burst like a melon; his body jerked and tumbled limply to the floor.

Haroun grunted as blood sprayed across his face. “As Hasan commands, so it shall be,” he murmured.

The muffled sound of the shot had hardly faded before eight men in jeans and T-shirts entered the RV. Unlike Haroun, not one of these men was of Middle Eastern origin. All were Caucasians with brown or black hair, three were blond with fair skin and gray or green eyes. Their appearance easily fit the names and identities of the dead men around them.

Silently, the newcomers stripped the tool belts, ID tags, wallets, vests, clothes, keys and watches from the dead men. Meanwhile Haroun gingerly lifted the box of cakes and gathered up the fallen pastries, careful not to touch the tainted confections with his bare flesh. He dumped the poisoned food into a garbage bag, tossed the sound suppressed handgun in with it, then joined the others.

For the past two weeks, Haroun — obeying the instructions of the mysterious Hasan — had worked side-by-side, and socialized with the murdered men who lay at his feet. On three previous occasions Haroun had brought honey cakes baked, he said, by his dutiful and obedient Muslim wife. In truth Haroun had no wife, nor would he ever have one— except perhaps in Paradise where he would have many. Each time, the cakes had been delivered to him by an operative of Hasan, and Haroun was advised to share them with these men.

But not today. This time Haroun was told not to touch the pastries on pain of death. As always, he obeyed his master’s instructions to the letter.

It was the least he could do for the man who showed him the Gate of Paradise, granted him a tantalizingly brief vision of the world beyond this one.

Haroun did not know what deadly poison his master had used to kill these men. Nor did he care. All that mattered was that at last the plan had been set into motion. Nothing could stop the tide of blood to come. The dead men scattered around him were but the first of many who would fall. But unlike the quiet, anonymous deaths of these foolish pawns, the massacre to come would be seen by hundreds of millions all over the world.

The pop tune ringtone shook Fay Hubley out of her monitor trance. She saved her work, reached for the cell in her leather bag, dangling off the back of the chair

“Hello.”

“Fay? It’s Jamey. I tried to reach Tony but—”

“He turned his phone off. He hooked up with some smelly snitch down here and he’s following a lead or something.”

“He should have passed that information on to Nina.”

“Tony told me to make the call,” said Fay. “I was just about to—”

“What’s the name of this snitch?”

“The guy’s last name’s Dobyns. His first name is Ray.”

“Can you spell his last name?”

“No, but Tony said he knew the guy from before so it’s probably in one of his after-action reports.”

“And where did Tony go?” asked Jamey.

Fay exhaled with distaste. “Some ho’ house. A place called El Pequeños Pescados on Albino Street.”

Jamey noted the information in the mission log, pumped Fay for more and came up dry. She was concerned about Fay. The girl sounded distracted. “Listen, Fay, I want to give you a heads up. We found a Trojan horse. It’s an attractive download for people with the right equipment — a movie that hasn’t been released yet. Milo Pressman matched the hidden virus with the protocols you isolated and he says it has Lesser’s fingerprints all over it.”

Fay chewed her lip. “That’s bad. If Lesser’s launched something in the last five days, he did it from a server we know nothing about. That means he’s at least one step ahead of us.”

“Ryan Chappelle is sending Milo Pressman down there to back you up. He should arrive in a few hours. I’ll update you when I know more.”

“Cool,” said Fay. “That will be fun. Milo’s cute.”

“Listen up, girl. You’re not on vacation. Stay alert. Stay wary. Tony’s an ex-Marine, and he has good field experience. If he left you with instructions, follow them. This mission is heating up and a lot can go bad down there.”

Fay laughed. “Take it easy, Jamey. I’m not in Afghanistan. I’m just across the Mexican border. Really, what can happen to me in the middle of the day?”

Ray and Tony took a cab to the choked streets of Centro, but Tony made them get out in front of Planet Hollywood.

“Why are we switching cabs?” Dobyns asked nervously. “Are we being shadowed or something?”

“We’re walking from here, that’s all,” said Tony.

It was apparent from his girth that Ray Dobyns didn’t like walking. All the way to Albino Street the man complained about his sore feet, the uneven pavement, the crowds, the heat, the exhaust fumes.

The neighborhood surrounding the tavern and brothel called El Pequeños Pescados had decayed since the last time Tony had been to Tijuana. Perhaps in its heyday Albino Street had aspired to genuine middle class status, but things had obviously gone to seed. Now there were too many bars nestled between ramshackle storefront churches, fortune tellers in street stalls, pawnshops, liquor stores and check cashing businesses. There were also unmistakable signs of criminal activity — gang graffiti, street whores, pickpockets visible to those who knew how to spot them. A battered shell of a car, windows shattered, interior looted, sat next to a crumbling curb.

Ray Dobyns described Number Five Albino Street as a warehouse, but it was obvious to Tony that the building had been an ice house in the 1940s and ’50s before it was converted to industrial use. The warehouse was a flat-roofed, windowless rectangle of dingy red brick. A three-story wooden clapboard tavern and inn had been built against the older brick structure sometime in the 1950s. Over the rough wooden porch that fronted the tavern, a faded billboard for Azteca beer and a neon Cuervo sign in the window were the only indication this place was more than another tenement. A battered Ford van was parked in front of the building, locked tight. No one was visible on the porch, or on either of the narrow wooden balconies fronting the second and third floors.

“Do we go in?” Tony asked.

Dobyns shook his head. “Listen, Navarro. I don’t want to blow this deal — I need the money bad. Let me go in first and check the place out. I’ve been here before. They know me. I’ll be back in five minutes or less. You can time me.”

Tony considered the man’s plan. While he didn’t trust Dobyns, Tony knew the con man would gain nothing by double-crossing him. Above all, Dobyns loved money, and he seemed to be in desperate need of some right now.

“Okay,” grunted Tony. “I’ll meet you right here in five minutes.”

Dobyns waddled across the street, pushed through the wooden screen door and into the seedy tavern. Tony watched for a moment, then went into a tiny store and purchased a cold bottle of Jarritos. Sipping the sugary Mexican soda, he waited, glancing at his watch from time to time.

Dobyns reappeared exactly five minutes later. But instead of crossing the street, he motioned to Tony from the porch.

Tony chugged his drink, tossed the empty bottle into a garbage can and crossed the dusty street.

“It’s Lesser, all right,” said Dobyns. “He’s upstairs on the third floor. He’s not even hiding. The bartender spilled when I slipped him an Andrew Jackson.”

“Is he alone?”

Dobyns nodded. “Come on. The faster you find him, the faster I get my money.”

Tony hesitated. As tactical situations went, this whole set up stunk. He was heading into an unknown environment armed with only the Gerber Mark II serrated combat knife in his boot. On the other hand, Lesser was small potatoes and had no clue anyone from the U.S. government was looking for him, and he was not a violent felon. He was, in fact, a computer nerd. Plus Dobyns had nothing to gain and everything to lose if the deal fell apart.

“Lead the way.”

Dobyns grinned and pushed through the screen door.

The interior was dim and nearly empty. Behind the bar, a squat bartender nodded at Dobyns, then went back to watching the jai alai match on the television above the bar. At a corner table far from the door, two middle-aged men were partying with two young prostitutes. The men were hang-dog drunk, the women clinging. Two more women sat in the corner, gossiping and polishing their nails. They looked up when the door opened, but when they saw Tony was with Dobyns, they returned to their conversation.

“The stairs are back here.”

Dobyns led Tony across the bar to a narrow hallway. Beyond the single rest room another door opened into a stairwell. A trio of leaping silver-gray fish, stuffed and lacquered, were mounted above that door, which gave the brothel its name, El Pequeños Pescados—“Little Fishes.”

Dobyns, in the lead, squeezed through the narrow doorway and slowly lumbered up the steep staircase to the second, then third floor.

Through another door, another narrow hallway flanked by peeling wallpaper, a floor of stained, avocado-green linoleum. From somewhere behind a wall, a man grunted, a woman laughed.

They went to the wooden door at the end of the hallway. Dobyns knocked twice. “Come,” a muffled voice called from within. Dobyns winked at Tony and opened the door.

The room was dark, the curtains drawn, but Tony could see two computer monitors flickering brightly, a figure seated in a chair facing them, his back turned to the door. Computers and components were scattered about on tables and chairs, even on the floor.

Dobyns opened his mouth to speak; Tony silenced him, stepped over the threshold.

“Richard Lesser? I need to speak—”

Tony never saw the truncheon that came down hard on the back of his head. Mercifully, he never felt the blow, either.

That pain, and more, would come later.

Jack Bauer observed the suspect through a one-way mirror. The Middle Eastern youth was locked in an interrogation room in the LAPD’s Central Facilities. Routine prisoners were taken to one of the city’s jails and booked there. But celebrity criminals — or soon to be celebrity, as was the case with this man — were often brought here because the press had not yet tumbled upon the existence of cells and interrogation rooms in what was basically a garage and repair facility a block away from the Los Angeles bus station.

The interrogation room was dim, the man pinned in a single column of bright white light as he sat immobile on a restraining seat, staring straight ahead, arms and legs shackled. His torn, bloodstained clothing had been collected as evidence. Now the killer wore virgin white overalls, white tube socks sans shoes. He’d been scrubbed clean, too. Blood samples and bits of human flesn had been collected from his skin, from under his fingernails, from between his teeth. His raven-black long hair was still damp.

Detective Frank Castalano stood at Jack’s shoulder, his partner Jerry Alder a discreet distance away.

“I might have called you in even if this wasn’t personal, Jack,” Castalano was saying. “This man’s a Saudi national. He’s been talking jihad, praising Allah, and claiming he was doing the will of a terrorist named Hasan. When we ran his fingerprints, his education visa gave him away, and his name turned up on a Department of Homeland Security memo as a person of interest.”

Jack took the file from Castalano’s hand, flipped through it.

“His name is Ibn al Farad, twenty-two years old,” Castalano continued. “His father is Omar al Farad, a millionaire vice president of the Royal Saudi Bank of Riyadh and a Deputy Minister in the government. He sent Ibn to America to study at the University of Southern California, but the boy vanished a year ago. The Saudi Arabian Consulate is looking for this kid and they may get word of his capture at any time…”

Jack’s studied the suspect. “So now Ibn al Farad has resurfaced, this time as the suspect in a heinous multi-murder.” Bauer shook his head. “It doesn’t make any sense. Has he given any sort of statement?”

Castalano frowned. “He was ranting when we caught him, babbling in the helicopter, and chattering all the way down here to the interrogation room. But as soon as we started asking real questions, taping his words, the suspect stopped talking.”

“You say he spoke of a man named Hasan,” said Jack, recalling that same name had cropped up in the past twenty-four hours in connection with the fugitive Richard Lesser.

“He kept referring to this Hasan as ‘the old man on the mountain.’ Claimed that’s what he was doing driving like a madman all over the San Gabriels— trying to find the old man.”

Bauer frowned. The reference to the old man on a mountain jogged something in Jack’s brain, but he could not isolate the memory thread and gave up. “You said he was high on some drug?”

Castalano showed Jack the vial he pulled out of the wrecked Jaguar. “I thought it was methamphetamine, dyed blue for street marketing, maybe a gang marking. But it’s not meth, which might explain the color.”

Jack held the vial up to the light and his frown deepened. “This is a new drug called Karma,” he said hoarsely. “This stuff makes meth look like NoDoz.”

Jack handed the vial back to Castalano. “Did he have anything else on him? A murder weapon? A copy of the Koran?”

“He had a note. It’s in Ibn al Farad’s own handwriting — we matched it with university records. But the note doesn’t make much sense, it just seems like ravings scrawled when this guy was under the influence.”

Castalano opened another file, showed Jack the handwritten document now sealed in a Mylar evidence bag. The handwriting alternated from tiny and cramped to expansive, the language lapsed between

English and his native Arabic.

“Crazy stuff,” muttered the detective.

But from what Jack could understand from scanning the man’s writings, it was not all that crazy — not to a newly converted Muslim fanatic who claimed to have experienced a powerful vision of the afterlife, as Ibn al Farad did in this document. The man also vowed to purge the Islamic world of the satanic and pervasive influence of American culture.

Could that have been the reason why Hugh Vetri and his family were murdered? Because he made movies?

Much of the document was unreadable and Jack gave up trying. Perhaps CTU’s Language and Document Division could make more sense of it.

Bauer turned his back to the prisoner, faced Detective Castalano.

“Frank, I need to move Ibn al Farad to CTU Headquarters for a thorough interrogation. As a suspect in a homicide, there are limits to the means the L.A. police can use to break him. But as the obvious perpetrator of the brutal terrorist act, the assassin of Hugh Vetri, a prominent and influential U.S. citizen, CTU can push his interrogation to the limit using methods you don’t want to know about.”

He could see the war behind Castalano’s eyes. “Believe me, Frank,” Jack continued. “I can break this man, but not here. Police methods are inadequate in the face of this man’s fanaticism.”

Castalano’s features darkened. “A couple of years ago, the loss of basic civil liberties you’re talking about would have scared the hell out of me…But that was before I saw the horrors in Hugh Vetri’s home this morning.”

The detective paused, thought of that van full of innocent kids, thought of his own. He swallowed hard. “If the Chief of Police signs off on the transfer, then this bastard’s yours. But I’m going with you, Jack. I’m going to sit in on this man’s interrogation and I’m going to hunt down any accomplices he names, no matter who they are.”

Fay Hubley heard a sound in the hall outside the door of her hotel room. Heavy footsteps, then whispering. She quietly saved her work, put the computer to sleep and slipped out of her chair. Silently she crept across the room. Remembering Tony’s instructions, she placed her ear against the door rather than open the peephole — a move that only served to alert anyone lurking outside that the room was occupied.

Fay held her breath, listened for a long moment. She heard nothing. Relieved, she took a step toward the bathroom. The knock exploded like thunder in the tiny room and the noise made her jump.

What do I do? What do I do?

Tony had told her that if someone knocked, she was to pretend she wasn’t there, that the room was empty. With the chain lock in place, even with a key, it would be difficult for someone to get inside without making a whole lot of noise and attracting undue attention.

Fay stifled a gasp when she noticed she’d neglected to fasten the chain lock after Tony left with Dobyns. The knock came again. Louder and more insistent this time.

Fay remembered the gun Tony had given her, telling her to have it in her hand if anyone tried to gain entry to the room. There’d been two Glocks hidden in their van outside and he’d brought one of them up, shown her how to fire it — but she had told herself the entire time she didn’t want to fire it, never intended to, wouldn’t have to. So she’d shoved it beneath a pillow on her bed.

Now she’d have to choose — run for the gun or fasten the chain.

The chain. That’ll be enough, she told herself.

Practically leaping to the door, she fumbled with the metal links, barely got it fastened into place before the door reverberated from a powerful blow that knocked her backward. The frame splintered, the lock and chain gave way, and the door flew open.

Fay opened her mouth to scream, but the first of three men was too fast. His hand closed over Fay’s mouth, even as he dragged her to the bed. Two other men followed the first one into the room, slammed the broken door behind them.

She struggled helplessly, her muffled cries reaching a frenzy when the man’s rough hands fumbled under her blouse, groped her soft flesh.

Jamey Farrell had finished updating the Lesser file with information she culled from her conversation with Fay Hubley. Now she was ready to analyze the CD-ROM disk Jack had given her. But when she turned away from the monitor to retrieve it, she found Ryan Chappelle silently hovering over her shoulder.

“Can I help you?” she asked.

“I was looking for Jack Bauer,” said Chappelle. “Have you seen him?”

“He was in his office a half an hour ago. I’ve been busy since.”

Chappelle made a sour face. “So you have an analysis of the virus for me?”

Jamey blinked. “Excuse me?”

“An analysis of Lesser’s Trojan horse. I promised the Cyber-Division Headquarters in Washington that I’d have something for them today.”

“If that’s what you wanted, you probably shouldn’t have sent Milo — our encryption expert — to Mexico on a wild goose chase.”

Ryan’s frown intensified. “So you’re saying you can’t do it?”

“I’m saying I’m the head programmer. Mayhem-ware is not my specialty.”

“Well contact Division and get someone — pronto. We need to know what systems and programs the Trojan horse targets, and what it does.”

“But—”

“Now, Jamey.”

Ryan turned and walked away. Jamey cursed under her breath. What was she supposed to do now? Pull an expert out of her butt?

Jamey was about to make what she knew to be a futile call to the Cyber-Unit in D.C. for help, when she suddenly remembered the name of someone who might be available to do the job on short notice. Jamey opened her Filofax and flipped through it. She found the name and phone number she was searching for on the first pass.

Lifting the receiver, Jamey punched up an outside line and dialed the number of Doris Soo Min.