Clothing scorched, ears ringing, Jack stumbled to his feet and lunged forward. He slammed his back against the power shed’s metal door — still hot from the blast. Fearing an ambush, he glanced to either side of the square hut, weapon clutched in both hands. Finally Jack dropped to the hard ground and rolled to the rear of the shed.
The man was right where Jack thought he’d be. “Freeze! Put your hands up.”
He was maybe twenty-five. Thin torso but muscular arms. He wore black jeans and a leather vest, his oily hair long, a prominent gold front tooth. He was on his knees, one boot removed and clutched in his hand. He appeared ready to smash an object on the ground. He grunted something, but Jack’s ears were still vibrating and he couldn’t make out the words.
“I said freeze.”
The man stared at Jack, then raised the boot. Jack lowered his weapon, crossed the space between them with a leap. He slammed against the man, using his shoulder to bring him down. The boot flew off into the scrub grass. The man struggled to rise, but calmed considerably when Jack placed the muzzle of the P228 against his temple.
“Move and I will kill you.”
Vaguely, through the ocean’s roar in his ears, Jack heard pounding footsteps. Two of Agent Blackburn’s men appeared on either side of the power shed. Intimidating in full body armor and helmets, they trained their weapons at the suspect, who threw up his hands.
“Take him,” Jack ordered.
One agent grabbed the man by his vest and hauled him off the ground. The other twisted his arms behind him and snapped plastic cuffs over the wrists. Jack rolled onto his hands and knees and searched the ground. He found what he was looking for within thirty seconds — a black plastic device shaped like a handgun’s magazine, featureless except for a USB port and a tiny inscription on the side — Asian script, perhaps Japanese.
Jack knew his hearing had returned when he heard the roar of a Boeing 727. Its wheels skidded onto the tarmac of runway seven, on its fuselage the familiar red and gold National Express banner.
Jack stood and showed the prisoner the device. “What is this?”
The captive smirked, and one of the agents cuffed him with an angry backhand. Jack quickly stepped between the two. “Enough,” he said simply. He slipped the mysterious object into his overalls and searched the prisoner’s pockets. He found a butterfly knife and a wallet, which contained over a thousand dollars in cash, credit cards issued in several names, and a New York State driver’s license with a Brooklyn address. Jack held the picture up next to the captive’s head for comparison. They matched.
Jack tried to key his headset, only to discover he’d lost it in the explosion, or the fight. “Raise Tony Almeida on the horn; tell him to get me all the information he can on a Dante Arete out of New York—”
“Can’t raise him, sir,” said one of the agents. “Almeida is off the net.”
Leaving the two agents with the prisoner, Jack jogged around to the front of the power shed. Ahead he saw the hollow shell of the Explorer, burning too hot to approach. Black rubber flowed like water from the melted tires; the human occupants were unrecognizable. Farther ahead, the white maintenance van in which they’d arrived was still smoking, a bullet hole the size of a baseball had tattooed the grill.
Two CTU tactical assault vehicles were just rolling up behind the smoldering white van. A five-man assault team bailed out of each vehicle before they came to a complete stop. Jack glanced at the digital display on his watch, surprised that less than one hundred seconds had elapsed since the first shot was fired.
Jack exhaled with relief when he saw Tony standing next to the open bay of the disabled van. Agent Black- burn was next to him, his helmet off, leathery brown skin gleaming with perspiration. Only then did Jack see the figure sprawled halfway out of the van. One of the agents had been struck by a stray bullet. Jack recalled the meaty sound, saw that a river of blood had poured out of the van from the agent’s shattered helmet. He raced forward until he was close enough to stare into Gina Costigan’s shocked, dead eyes.
“Son of a bitch—”
Tony turned at the sound of Jack’s curse.
“Call for a medivac,” Jack told him.
“We did. It will be here in less than a minute. But it’s too late, Jack. She’s gone…”
Bauer leaned against the wrecked van, its stilled engine hissing and popping as it cooled. He sucked in the desert air as the adrenaline that had pumped through his body finally drained away, leaving him weak, thinking of Gina’s husband, her daughter… then of Teri and Kim.
“What have you got?” Tony was there, in front of his face.
Jack looked up, eyes bleak. “A prisoner named Dante Arete, and a piece of plastic. ”
Ninety minutes later, the point team for CTU Los Angeles sat around the table in the briefing room. A brunette with a face of sharp angles and a large, expressive mouth, Nina Myers, Jack’s wisp-thin Chief of Staff, brought the group up to speed on the man Jack had apprehended at LAX.
Nina was a machine — dependable, efficient, methodical. Single, in her thirties, she had come to CTU with a reputation as a gifted intelligence analyst and a respected authority on domestic and international counter terrorism policy. She was one of the few people Jack had ever met whose level of intensity and commitment appeared to match his own. Unlike Jack, however, who saw the importance of encouraging and protecting underlings, Nina managed staff by being blunt. Jack rationalized this as “directness” born of earnestness. Maybe he cut her some slack because she was so damned good at what she did, maybe because she physically resembled his wife, Teri. One thing about Nina was certain, however; her frosty blue gaze was as penetrating as his own.
“Seven years ago, Dante Arete, under the street name Apache, was a small time crack cocaine dealer in the Red Hook Projects in Brooklyn,” Nina began.
“At the age of eighteen he allegedly killed his first man — a rival drug dealer. Since then, Dante Arete has climbed the ladder in the New York City narcotics scene, and recently he went national. It is alleged that Arete is currently involved in drugs and weapons smuggling, primarily across the Mexican border. He is suspected to have played a role in eleven gang murders in the past five years, as well as the killing of an innocent bodega owner who agreed to testify against one of Arete’s lieutenants, a member of the gang Dante founded, the Columbia Street Posse. ”
“Your source for this information?” Jack asked.
Nina brushed back her black bangs before she faced him. “Primarily the New York Police Department and the Metropolitan Anti-Gang Unit. The DEA has also furnished a profile of Arete’s alleged activities over the past five years.”
“What does the FBI have to offer?”
“Nothing. They have yet to respond to our request for information on any ongoing investigations.”
“Standard operating procedure,” Tony observed. “The Federal Bureau of Investigation doesn’t share their information, and that goes double for CTU.”
Milo Pressman — a systems specialist in his mid-twenties with sensitive features, soft eyes, and an earring — tapped the table with a well-gnawed pencil. Jack found Milo to be competent, though frequently naive.
“Maybe we should raid their database,” he suggested.
Almeida rolled his eyes. “We’re supposed to be on the same side.”
Jamey Farrell, a petite young Hispanic woman, displayed a printout. Jamey was head programmer. A divorced mother of a young son and an LA native, she had been recruited by Walsh out of Microsoft’s Seattle office. Jack found her to be a loyal worker and reliable under pressure. “Using the Federal Aviation Administration airline database, I’ve found Dante Arete’s name listed on the passenger manifest of half-dozen flights to France — Marseilles — over the past two years alone.”
Milo Pressman scratched his scraggly goatee and unshaven cheek. “A lot of heroin still comes out of Marseilles. Maybe he’s got a French connection.”
“I’m thinking more about the illegal arms trade,” said Jack. “Arete is already involved in gunrunning— which may mean he also has ties to international terrorism and is looking to expand.”
“The weapon his men used? Was it recovered from the explosion?” Milo asked.
Jack shook his head. “Just bits and pieces. Nothing specific to any surface-to-air missile system we’re familiar with. All we have is the unidentified object Arete was trying to destroy.”
“It’s a memory stick,” said Milo Pressman. “And you could be right. This memory stick might interface with a targeting system of some kind; there’s a port for the transference of data, and there’s a chip inside that seems to contain a massive amount of information.”
