now.”
Novartov laughed. “I will pay attention to the issue when the trees can vote.”
“If they haven’t all been cut down by then,” Barnes said darkly.
Jack stared at the tubes sticking into his abdomen. A diluted saline solution was still flowing into his body, creating pressure around his stomach. He imagined the solution mixing with his blood, filtering out the chemical transmitter. It tingled, but that was only in his head. He’d received a local anesthetic so there was no pain, but his mind still created the ghost of a feeling. The brain simply could not acknowledge the fact of foreign objects injected into the membrane lining his organs without attaching some sensation to it.
Six minutes on the machine. Twenty-four minutes to go.
The conference room phone beeped. Before it rang a second time, Henderson was in the room. “You’ll want to hear this.”
He slapped the speaker box and said, “Go ahead, Tony. I have Jack.”
“Hey, Bauer,” Tony said fuzzily.
“Tony, you sound like hell.”
“Thanks. Damn, my nose is bleeding again, hold on.” There was a pause. They heard Tony shuffling around. Then he came back on. “I’m back. Jack, I found the mole.”
Jack’s eyes lit up. “Hold on to him for twenty-three more minutes.”
“Oh, he’s not going anywhere. That’s the problem. I noticed something going on the video monitors down here. He clubbed me. I’d be dead if it weren’t for the other surveillance guy here, McKey. He fought Dyson — that’s the subject — until I came to. I put Dyson down, but he’s not regaining consciousness. He might be in a coma.”
Jack bit his lip. This was the lead he needed. More work had gone into this one clue than anyone around him knew. He wished Tony had had the foresight to put on kid gloves, but he couldn’t blame Almeida for fighting to survive. “Don’t worry about it,” he said with difficulty. “What do we have to go on? Are we digging into his background?”
“I have Jessi Bandison on it,” Chris said. “So far, no connections to al-Libbi. But something will turn up.”
“What triggered the attack?” Jack asked. “You’ve been with those guys all morning, right? There must have been something specific.”
“I was about to sound the alarm… oh, shit!” Tony yelled, as though he’d just remembered something. “My brain must still be fractured. I was reaching for the phone to call because I saw that detective, what’s her name, Bennet? She was grabbed.” In his still-quavering voice, Almeida described Mercy Bennet’s kidnapping.
Jack tried to will the frustration out of his body. “This never would have happened if she hadn’t come to meet with me. I should have done a better job of dodging her.”
Tony said, “I’ve already been in contact with LAPD. They’re on the lookout for the blue van, but the angle was too bad for us to get a license plate. They gave me the information Bennet was focused on.” Tony told Jack that Theodore Ozersky, a.k.a. Willow, had been taken into custody, and he passed along the name of Frankie Michaelmas.
“Okay,” Jack said. “We need to deal with Ozersky eventually. Is he cooling his heels for now?”
“He’s okay, there’s no hurry there,” Tony said. “I’m taking Agent Dyson to the hospital. I might have myself checked out, too.”
“Good,” Henderson said. “Keep us informed if he comes around.”
“We should add in Gordon Gleed,” Jack said. “He’s deceased. That’s the murder that started her investigation. There’s bound to be some connection.”
Chris Henderson scowled. “Well, then, we’d better get our asses in gear. There’s a terrorist plot happening tonight, and we don’t have a clue yet what it is.”
Jack looked at the tubes in his stomach and growled like a caged animal.
Twenty minutes left.
He sat back in his chair. He slipped a maracuja leaf into his mouth and chewed it slowly. The Spanish had called the maracuja “passionflower” because the broad white flowers somehow reminded the conquistadores of the Passions of Christ. The native population was much more practical, of course, and had long understood the maracuja’s natural properties. When taken in large doses, it acted as a sedative. In smaller quantities, such as he now absorbed, the maracuja had a pleasant, tranquilizing effect.
There was a small GPS tracker on the table next to him. The tiny blue dot was stationary at a location corresponding to CTU headquarters. He recalibrated the device, and a tiny red dot appeared at the Federal Building. Both Jack Bauer and his daughter were being well behaved.
He had just received a call from some of his operatives. Detective Mercy Bennet was in hand, and currently being transported to one of his two remaining safe houses in Los Angeles — the first having been used up during his temporary imprisonment of Jack Bauer. The involvement of CTU and the investigation by the LAPD both caused him anxiety, but now he felt the maracuja’s chemicals easing through his body like ice water flowing into his veins, and he relaxed. He wondered if he should have killed Jack Bauer. He was not squeamish; he had killed people before, but only when necessary, and he had not perceived it as necessary to kill the CTU agent. It was almost beyond the realm of possibility that CTU or any other government agency could discover his purpose. Few of his own people knew his real name or his whereabouts, and they were true believers. None would betray him willingly. By tomorrow, of course, everyone would know him, but by then he would be safely out of the country. He only needed to delay CTU for a few more hours.
No, it wasn’t Jack Bauer who disturbed him most. It was the LAPD detective who had thrown a monkey wrench into his own plans. He had her under wraps now, but how long would that last? Her absence would soon be noticed.
The man shrugged. Maybe it was the effects of the maracuja, but he found himself adopting a very Zen quality. The day would play out as fate would have it.
He picked up a vial that lay on the table next to the GPS. Its contents were clear liquid, basically water, but this was water no one should drink. In that liquid swam one of the most aggressive viruses nature had ever manufactured, a hemorrhagic fever so violent that it would kill a human being within hours. He had learned to weaken its strain ever so slightly. The smaller, weaker strains killed within a day, and they could be destroyed inside the body if the antidote were delivered on time. It was this smaller, weaker cousin that he had introduced into Kim Bauer’s body. She might feel ill, but she was in no real danger for another day.
As far as Kim Bauer was concerned, the demonstration was a bust. The weather had grown much warmer than anyone expected, she was surrounded by hot and sweaty people (none of whom, as far as she could tell, had bathed), and Brad Gilmore had turned out to be a major league dork. And to top it all off, she felt like she was coming down with something.
“I’m burning up,” she said to Janet York, one of her best friends, who looked as bored with Teen Green as she felt.
“I’m so sticky it’s disgusting,” Janet said, tugging at her shirt to air herself out. “How much longer?”
Kim checked her watch. “We’re supposed to stay during school hours if we want credit on the political science project.”
Janet rolled her eyes. “As if.” She glanced at their chaperone, Marshall Cooper, who was busy separating Brad Gilmore and another boy who had begun to wrestle for no apparent reason. “You want to skip out? We can hit the mall or whatever.”
Kim touched her forehead and felt beads of sweat.
Jack’s cell phone rang. “Bauer.”
“Agent Bauer.”
It was the voice of his former captor. “What?” he demanded. He waved to Henderson and motioned for him to track the call. Henderson nodded and ran silently out of the room, hailing Jamey Farrell as he did so.
