only half a block away now, and his flesh prickled with the heat of the fire. A thick column of black smoke rose from the rubble, pushed along Atlantic Avenue by a faint breeze off the water. The smoke hit Liam, choking him. He smelled burned wood, smoldering plaster, and something else — gas.
A fire chief in white helmet stood in the middle of the street, yelling into a bullhorn. “Get out! Get away! Clear the area now—”
Inside the rubble, among the trapped and moaning FBI agents, hot flames touched the ruptured gas main. Liam was blinded by an impossibly bright orange flash. Behind him, the plate-glass window of a furniture store shattered. A wave of superheated air washed over him, and Liam was bowled over by the force of the blast. Deafened, scorched, trembling, he curled into a ball around the attache case while the sidewalk quaked beneath him.
Jack, Taj, and the young Afghani felt the stones under their feet tremble before the thunder of the gas explosion reached their ears. Then they heard it. Dust fell from the ceiling and smoke billowed out of the narrow shaft they’d climbed out of. First a dusty powder, then oily curls of hot smoke. The young man’s gaze found Taj. His lips trembled.
Another sound made itself known — alien, alive, angry. Tiny, tittering squeals merged into a sustained shriek, the chattering click of thousands of tiny claws brushing stone. In the weak light of the electric bulbs, a rippling brown carpet seemed to flow along the floor, the walls, at the far end of the tunnel. Stampeded by the explosion, they rushed toward the men in a snarling mass of teeth and claws.
“Rats!” Jack shouted.
“This way,” Taj called, turning away from the maddened swarm. Jack followed the man for a few steps before he realized the young Afghani was not with them.
“Taj!” Jack cried.
The man turned, saw the young Afghani. “Borak!” he cried. “Follow us.”
But the young man shook his head. “I will stop them.”
“No!”
The Afghani turned his back on them, lowered the muzzle of the Uzi he drew from his sash, naively fired. The bullets chewed through the squirming, squealing tide without effect. The brown flow swarmed around the young man even as he emptied the magazine into the panicked horde. The rats nipped at his sandals, clawed at his legs. The young man howled and dropped the useless weapon. Reaching into his loose shirt, he pulled out an old, Soviet-made grenade.
“Not in here!” Taj screamed.
But the boy was too frightened to hear him. As the rats swarmed over him, forcing the boy to the ground, he popped the pin on the grenade.
Without a word, Taj and Jack ran away from the rats, the impending explosion. Jack figured on a ten-second fuse and counted down in his mind.
Eight…seven…six…
“Get ready to hit the ground!” Jack cried.
Five…four…three.
“Down!”
Jack leaped forward, skidded along the hard stone floor. He curled into a ball, covered his ears. As expected, the explosion seemed massive in the enclosed space. The sound reverberated off the walls, bringing down dust and jarring more masonry loose as it rocked the one-hundred-and-fifty-year-old structure.
As the smoke cleared, Jack jumped up. Taj was already on his feet, running forward. Over the startled squeals of the swarming rats, they heard another sound — crashing masonry, crumbling earth, and the roaring rush of water. The grenade or the gas explosion — or perhaps both — had ruptured a water main.
Running behind Taj, Jack glanced over his shoulder to see a tidal wave of foaming black water engulfing the horde of rats and following them down the length of the tunnel.
“Here!” Taj cried, “the ladder.”
Jack saw the Afghani scramble up iron rungs embedded in the stone. His fingers closed on the cold metal a split second later, just as the foam washed over his feet, his ankles, his legs.
The FBI received an urgent electronic message from the Centers for Disease Control. The memo informed the Bureau that the long-planned transfer of disease cultures to Paxton Pharmaceuticals in New York City was taking place as scheduled. A flight plan was included in the memo, providing the FBI with the radio frequencies the pilots would use, the airplane’s flight path, altitude, and cruising speed, departure and arrival times and destinations, files on all personnel involved in the transfer.
Signed by Dr. Henry Johnston Garnett, Director of the Centers for Disease Control, the directive urged the FBI to contact all pertinent agencies and alert them to the transfer of the potentially deadly cargo. Immediately, the FBI analyst in charge of intelligence redistribution alerted state and federal law enforcement officials in Atlanta and New York City about the potential biohazard threat coming their way.
Because of the Frank Hensley accusations about Jack Bauer, however, FBI Headquarters in New York City instituted a Bureau-wide intelligence blackout with CTU. Beyond the routine security alert issued eight hours before, no one at the Counter Terrorist Unit was notified about the chartered CDC flight, or the deadly cargo it contains.
Dennis Spain, a bundle of nervous energy in a stocky, compact form, entered the Senate office precisely on time. As Chief of Staff to Senator William S. Cheever of New York, Spain felt his duty to be sleek, smart, and imperially efficient was surpassed only by his obligation to appear that way. Today’s ensemble was one of Spain’s favorites, a lightweight Italian suit and Bruno Magli loafers. The impression, he felt, was “chic competence,” but the finely tailored clothes also left Spain feeling crisp and comfortable, no easy feat during the muggy summer months of the glorified swamp that was Washington, D.C.
After picking up his own mail, Spain’s next stop was his boss’s in-box, where his daily routine of browbeating the staff began. “These letters are all dated three days ago,” he said, shaking a blue folder at a quaking intern sitting behind her desk. The young woman pulled a lock of long, dark, stringy hair away from her face.
“I…I know, Mr. Spain. But the Senator was away on a junket and he couldn’t sign them until today.”
Spain read the names and addresses on the letters. “None of these people matter one bit. Why didn’t you use the signature machine?”
The young woman — an undergraduate at Columbia University and daughter of a rather large donor to the Senator’s last campaign — seemed to shrink in her chair as she avoided his angry stare.
“The…the Senator…Senator Cheever…He said he didn’t want me to do that anymore. Said it was too impersonal.”
“Well, Senator Cheever certainly can’t sign
“Yes sir, Mr. Spain. Right away.”
Her reply was barely heard and certainly not acknowledged. Dennis Spain had already entered his office. He closed the door behind him, dropped into his leather chair, and brushed back his blond-streaked brown hair, exposing a broad forehead over thin eyebrows and narrowly set eyes with a constantly critical gaze that made him appear shrewd. That’s the word his friends used — shrewd. His opponents preferred shifty.
Like everyone in Washington, Dennis Spain had enemies, more than his share considering he’d never run for or been elected to a political office. He’d served only as the Senator’s campaign manager and then his Chief of Staff. Not quite out of his thirties, he occupied a powerful position that had been well earned in Spain’s own estimation.
Five years before, Senator William S. Cheever had been a political dinosaur, an endangered species — just another fading Northeast politician with a penchant for bloated government programs even his constituents no longer favored. His chances for reelection were so bleak that his own party endorsed his rival in the primary campaign. After that blow came, Senator Cheever did the first smart thing he’d done in a decade — he fired his old
