24 Declassified: Trinity

“Was the fat guy Ramin Ahmadi?” Henderson asked.

Jack nodded again, and this time he smiled wryly. “This unit of yours is coming along, eh?”

Henderson managed to nod proudly and dismissively at the same time, the way a man takes a compliment on a golf swing he knows is good. “We’re on the distribution list, now. I still think you should come over. Speaking of which…” He spun on his heels and sat down on the curb next to Jack. “What’s a CIA agent doing operating domestically?”

Jack rubbed his eyes and pointed down the road, where an ambulance had just taken Ed Burchanel. “I was just along for the ride. It was Ed’s investigation.”

Henderson snorted. “If you joined the Counter Terrorist Unit, you wouldn’t have to tell tall tales.”

“Like I told Richard Walsh, you guys seem set up to deal with things on this side of the ocean. The real action is overseas.”

Henderson looked over his shoulder at the smoldering house. “Is that so?”

It occurred to Jack that the evidence was against him.

“Well, at least let me give you a ride,” Henderson said.

Jack shook his head. “Can’t. I’ve got to clean this mess up,” he said, referring to the informational debris, not the damage to the house.

“No, you don’t,” Henderson said. “It’s our mess now. CTU’s mess, I mean.”

Jack bristled, but then put his hackles down. He could see it. CIA recruits the FBI to pursue a domestic investigation. The shit hits the fan, and CTU, eager to make its bones, steps in as the new agency in charge of a terrorist case.

“It’s my case,” Jack said. “I want in.”

Henderson winked. “Like I said, let me give you a ride.”

6:28 P.M. PST Westwood

Kim found Aaron sitting on the curb outside the Needham house. She knew boys didn’t like to be caught crying, so she pretended not to notice as he wiped his eyes. When he was done, she sat down next to him.

“I didn’t mean to freak you out,” she said. “I mean, it was just a game—”

“It’s cool, it’s cool,” he said, still sniffling. “You didn’t freak me out. I kinda did that myself.”

“It wasn’t… it wasn’t because you and Janet—”

“No!”

“—because I was just joking—”

“No, it’s not.” His breath caught in his throat, making her stop, too. “It’s not Janet or anything. It’s…”

He adjusted himself in a way Kim couldn’t really explain. It wasn’t like he fidgeted or anything. But she could tell that some machinery in his body or his head, a cog or a wheel she couldn’t see, had shifted, like when you clicked a button on a computer and could sort of sense it gearing up to perform its appointed task.

“I’ve never told anyone before.”

She didn’t say, You can tell me. Thirteen though she was, she was old enough to understand that prompts of that kind were reserved for gossip and rumors in the girls’ room and e-mail. This was more important. She didn’t have to tell Aaron he could trust her. He would know, or he wouldn’t.

“It’s weird no matter what, but it’s especially weird because it’s, it’s the priest at my church.” She nodded, still not sure what he meant or what “it” was, just knowing that somehow all the air had been sucked away from both of them. “He’s been one of the priests there for my whole life, and when he asked me, I didn’t know what to say. I mean, I didn’t know how to say no or whatever.”

“No to what?”

Aaron shivered. “He… did that. What you asked about inside. He did it a lot.”

6:31 P.M. PST Los Angeles, California

Michael dialed the number and waited. The phone rang three times before it was picked up. No one spoke on the other end. “Hello?” Michael said in mock confusion. “Hello? Is Michael there?” When no one spoke, he hung up.

His cell phone rang a moment later. “Is this Michael?” said a voice on the far end.

“Speaking,” Michael replied.

“This is Gabriel.” Gabriel, of course, was not his real name, but that hardly mattered. “What happened?”

“Ramin is dead.”

“What a tragedy. Before the authorities got to him, no doubt?”

“Well, no. During.”

The voice on the far end hissed, somehow sucking all the warmth out of Michael. “Did he pass on any information? Anything that could cause a problem?”

“I don’t see how,” Michael said. “He knew almost nothing. If he told them everything, it would be no more than they might have guessed on their own.”

“Probably you are right,” Gabriel said. “We should meet. We need to move forward. Write down this address.”

Michael wrote.

6:35 P.M. PST CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles

The Los Angeles headquarters of the Counter Terrorist Unit looked like a technological garden run amok. Phone lines and optical cables sprouted out of the ground. More cables draped themselves vinelike from the ceiling. A few desks sat, steady and alone, as certain and determined as rocks in a Zen garden.

There was a picnic going on in this garden — about a half-dozen staffers were camped out on the floor, sitting around a blanket of paper napkins, sharing cheddar cheese and Wheat Thins and sucking bottles of Sam Adams beer.

“This looks cozy,” Jack said as he and Henderson entered the room. “You guys make a great first impression.”

A muscle in Henderson’s jaw pulsed.

“Hey, sir, did you hear the good news!” one of the picnickers said. She stood up and walked toward Henderson with an unopened bottle in her hand. “We made our first bust!”

Henderson did not lighten up. “And it’s big enough so that you’re already drinking on the job?”

The young woman, in her late twenties, glanced at Jack and realized that she didn’t know him. She hesitated, then clearly decided that there was no backtracking. “Well, just to baptize the place, you know? None of us are on call anyway.”

Jack didn’t think she was an operator. None of them looked like operators to him. Even the most bythe-book operator toeing the line for a superior had a certain don’t-fuck-with-me quality about him, and would lean on you the way your dog leaned its weight against you, just to test you, even though it knew you were the alpha. None of these people had it.

“Tell me about the bust,” Henderson said.

The woman glanced at Jack. “He’s all right,” Henderson said, waving away any concern about classification. “Bauer, this is Jamey Farrell, one of our analysts. Jamey, Jack Bauer, CIA.”

She nodded, then said excitedly, “We’re pulling together field reports for the formal summary, but basically we nailed those three guys from the Hollywood mosque.”

“What three guys?” Jack asked.

Jamey said three names he didn’t recognize. “They were leads we were working out of here,” Jamey said, taking obvious pride in the half-assembled office. Or, rather, taking pride in her accomplishments despite her surroundings. “We caught them using Internet cafe computers and Skype technology to contact members of al- Gama’a al-Islamiyya… um, you know what—”

“I know who they are,” Jack said.

“Right. We couldn’t get anything definitive, and the conversations we recorded weren’t incriminating. It took us a while to convince the judge to let us go in.”

Henderson grunted. “Damned warrants. It’s a pain in the ass to get them. It oughta be easier.”

Jamey continued undeterred. “Finally, we got evidence that one of these three had tried to call the Blind Sheik’s number, and the judge decided we had probable cause.”

“Are they booked?” Henderson asked.

“Will be. We found plastic explosives in their house.”