explosion. A subsequent caller reported multiple fatalities.
Jamey stared at the screen in disbelief. The phone beeped and she hit the intercom. “Yes?”
“It’s Nina.”
“God, Nina I just lost—”
Nina interrupted her. “Listen, Jamey, we don’t have much time. I have Jack on the line. He’s just dumped new intelligence in our lap, including the possible identity of the men with the missile launcher. Now Jack needs an update on Dante Arete’s position.”
Jack took the news about Arete’s death hard. Their best lead — gone. He ended the call with Jamey Farrell and contacted Ryan Chappelle.
Diplomatically, Georgi Timko chose that moment to “get more tea.” Cups in hand, the Ukrainian mobster left Jack alone in his office to speak to his superior in private, though Jack already assumed Timko had bugged the place.
“You heard about Arete?” Jack began.
“Nina just told me,” Chappelle replied, “but I didn’t have time for a thorough briefing—”
“Listen, I don’t know if I mentioned the fact that the Lynch brothers slipped Dante an attache case when they met up with him—”
“The Lynch brothers?”
“The men in the Mercedes. The ones who drove away with the missile launcher in their trunk,” Jack explained, impatient that Chappelle had not bothered to keep up with the events he’d already relayed to the command center.
“What about these Lynch brothers, Jack?”
“I think they placed a bomb in that case to take Arete out.”
“That doesn’t make any sense. Weren’t they the guys who shot the FBI airplane down to help Arete escape?”
“Maybe Arete’s outlived his usefulness now that CTU’s exposed his activities,” said Jack. “Or maybe it had something to do with the deal Dante Arete made with Special Agent Hensley.”
Jack heard a deep sigh on the other end. “What’s wrong?”
“Special Agent Hensley is talking to his bosses, Jack. He fingered you for the murder of the two Federal marshals, for shooting the pilot, and for helping Dante Arete escape.”
“That’s crazy. I told you Frank Hensley’s the traitor.”
“Naturally the FBI is having a little trouble buying that. Hensley is a highly decorated field agent. He’s been on the job for close to five years. That’s longer than CTU’s been around.”
“So what are you telling me?”
“We’re doing everything on our end to get to the bottom of things, but I’ve got to tell you some of the other agencies are shutting CTU out, and the FBI is not cooperating. The bad news is the FBI has issued a warrant for your arrest.”
A long moment of silence followed. Then Chappelle spoke. “As it stands right now, you’re on your own, Jack.”
The line went dead and Jack lowered the cell phone. As if on cue, Georgi Timko returned with two mugs of sweet, steaming tea. He set one in front of Jack. Then he sat behind his desk and took a sip from his own cup.
“Bad news?”
Jack did not answer the question. Instead he leaned across Timko’s battered metal desk. “The Lynch boys and Arete’s punks tried to kill you, Georgi. Don’t you want revenge?”
The Ukrainian chuckled. “Of course. And I will get my pound of flesh from those Irish punks and the Mexicans, too — but in
Jack frowned, rubbed his chin. The first signs of stubble were sprouting.
“But. since you saved my life, I feel I owe you something,” Timko added. He pulled a Queens phone book out from under his desk, paged through it. He circled something on the Yellow Pages section, then tore a page out.
“Griffin and Shamus Lynch run a Green Dragon store in Forest Hills. It’s part of a franchise. Computer sales and repair.” He handed the page to Jack. “Here’s the address and phone number. But they do most of their real work out of an Irish pub under an elevated subway train on Roosevelt Avenue. The pub is called The Last Celt. It’s owned by a retired Westie gangster named Donnie Murphy, who is connected to the right people, even though he took himself out of the game a long time ago. Murphy has protected the Lynch boys ever since they arrived on the scene.”
“Protected?”
“In this town, everyone needs protection, Mr. Jack Bauer. Even a remarkably resourceful man such as yourself.”
“No. Right now, all I need is my weapon.”
Timko folded his hands, held Jack’s eyes.
Jack shrugged. “Okay, I guess I could also use directions to this pub, a car, and extra ammunition. Maybe a backup weapon, too, but nothing as flashy as an AK–47—if that’s all right with you and Yuri.”
Timko smiled, nodded, picked up the phone, and began to punch in numbers. “It’s very late, Mr. Jack Bauer, but let us see what I can do.”
Doris hit the delete key, then waited for the results. After five or six seconds, the cache registered zero percent memory and she moved on to the next bundle. After noting this data bundle’s size, she pressed delete once again. This time the system seemed to stall, and Doris tapped her heel impatiently waiting for the program to obey her command.
After Captain Schneider had collected the memory stick for a physical analysis, Doris made a copy of the data downloaded from the device, then stored the original in CTU’s main database. With a specimen safely preserved for the archives, Doris set to work “dissecting” the copy. First she isolated the different data streams, using a variety of self-invented techniques she created to hack programs for her uncle to replicate — and produce cheap knockoffs — in his Oakland, California, toy factory. With the data streams isolated, Doris began to delete them, one at a time. Her goal was to annihilate the program — eradicate it completely — in an effort to discover its architecture, to pick at its bones.
There were amazing things buried in the simplest programs, information of all kinds. Sometimes the creators of a subprogram inadvertently buried information, or hid it on purpose. Watermarks, access, security protocols, and slicing codes — sometimes complete software engineering documentation or embedded schematics were waiting to be discovered and decoded by just the right application of an outside program.
In the past Doris had tested the various reverse-engineering programs floating around in cyberspace or available commercially, but she never much cared for any of them. Instead she dismantled each program she’d come across and used the best pieces to create her personal reverse-engineering monster. She called it Frankie, short for Frankenstein, because her creation was a monstrosity cobbled together from bits and pieces just like the monster. And like the monster, Frankie was also a being that was much more than the sum of its parts. Using Frankie’s phenomenal capabilities, Doris had dismantled the memory stick’s software piece by piece, while mapping its secrets.
Frankie was nearly a decade old now, the first bones put in place back when Doris started working for her uncle. In those days, she never thought much of her hacking skills — not until she went to a conference sponsored by the Working Forum on Reverse Engineering to “pick up a few tips.” The WFORE board members were so impressed by the young woman’s innovative methodology for recovering buried information and systems artifacts from software, they invited her to join their organization. Doris had just turned sixteen.
An urgent beep shocked Doris awake. She blinked and rubbed her eyes, not sure she’d read the screen correctly.
“System failed to execute command!?”
That had never happened before.
She sighed. “If at first you don’t succeed…”
