“Omar Bayat,” Jack whispered.
“You recognize me,” Bayat replied. “I should be flattered.”
“Let her go. Take
“I’m not looking for a hostage, Mr. Bauer. I just want to get out of here without you following me.”
“That’s fine. What do you want me to do?”
“There’s a mailbox about fifty feet away. Do you see it?” Bayat asked.
“I see it.”
“I want you to walk over to that box and drop your cell phone and weapon into it.”
“If I do that, what do I get in return?”
“I’ll let this woman go, after I’m out of the station. Otherwise I’ll kill her on the spot with my bare hands, and no one in the crowd will be the wiser.”
Jack hesitated.
“You know I can do it, Bauer. Move to the mailbox now or she dies.”
“I’m going,” said Jack. He was ten feet from the mailbox when the blond man Jack had accosted by mistake returned — with two New York City policemen in tow.
“He’s the one!” The blond man pointed out Jack. “He pulled a gun on me!”
Members of the crowd around Jack heard the blond man’s statement and moved to get out of the way. Jack used the crowd to shield himself as he turned and ran in the opposite direction. As he raced through the mob of commuters, Jack heard Omar Bayat laughing over his headset.
“Wait, Bayat. Let her go,” Jack cried. “She can’t hurt you now and neither can I.”
“She goes with me, Bauer,” Bayat replied. “A man named Griffin Lynch is anxious to meet her.”
Jack heard the hiss of dead air. “Son of a bitch!”
“Halt!” a voice barked. Jack heard screams and glanced over his shoulder. The policemen were still chasing him. One of them had his weapon out. Luckily, the man couldn’t get a clear shot because so many civilians were in the way. Jack continued to weave in and out of the crowd until he burst onto Forty-second Street.
Traffic was heavy, but moving. Along Forty-second Street, there were cars and trucks as far as the eye could see. Jack looked around, looking for a way out. At any moment, the policemen were going to emerge on the street, where they might just get a shot at him.
Then, across the street, Jack spied a burly man sitting astride an idling Harley-Davidson motorcycle, an American flag waving on a short staff above the rear wheel. The bike was all chrome and rumbling engine.
Before the man could stumble to his feet, Jack gunned the engine and sped away, racing down the sidewalk. Pedestrians scattered as he shot down the pavement for more than a block. Finally, confronted by a knot of tourists gathering under the awning of a hotel, Jack swerved back onto the street.
Using his headset, Jack made contact with CTU. Chappelle answered the call. “Let me put you on speakerphone, Jack.”
“The man who assumed Agent Ferrer’s identity is really Omar Bayat, Taj Ali Kahlil’s associate and the leading exporter of terrorism for the Taliban government in Afghanistan.”
“How do you know, Jack?” Ryan asked. “Did you capture him? Neutralize him?”
“No,” Jack replied. “Bayat managed to get past me and grab Caitlin. He’s holding her now. Is the tracer inside my watch working?”
“Perfectly,” said Jamey Farrell. “I’m tracking Caitlin’s every move. Good thing you gave her your watch in case anything went wrong.”
“Where is she right now?” Jack asked.
“In a van, moving uptown on Third Avenue. The van’s at Fifty-seventh Street, moving into the right lane. I think it’s probably going to cross the Fifty-ninth Street Bridge, into Queens. ”
“We’d better not lose track of Caitlin,” said Jack. “Right now, she’s our only connection to the terrorists. Without her we don’t know where they’re hiding or what they’re up to.”
23. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 7 P.M. AND 8 P.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
The speakerphone at Ryan Chappelle’s workstation buzzed, interrupting him. Tired and cranky, Ryan punched the button. “Yes?”
“It’s Nina. I just spoke with Roger Tyson, Deputy Director of the National Transportation Safety Board.”
Ryan snickered. “Don’t tell me the airport raids hit the news? Does he want to apologize for doubting our intelligence?”
“News of the raids has been suppressed so far, but Deputy Director Tyson did hear about them through bureaucratic channels. He called us with a warning.”
Chappelle sat up. “A what?”
“This afternoon a chartered CDC flight took off from Atlanta. It’s carrying bio-hazardous materials— samples of the deadly 1918 influenza strain—”
“Why the hell weren’t we told? CTU should have received the same security report as the other agencies!”
“The flight was mentioned in the daily DSA security alert, but no one here at CTU made the connection. We should have received a second alert when the aircraft left the ground, but we were shut out.”
Ryan frowned. “What do you mean shut out?”
“It was Hensley,” Nina replied. “According to Tyson, the alert was issued directly to the FBI. Apparently Hensley convinced his superiors to keep CTU out of the loop on alerts until Jack Bauer is apprehended and interrogated. He’s convinced them that until that happens, the entire unit is compromised.”
“I can’t believe this!”
“Ryan, listen. It’s worse than we thought. The CDC plane is a Boeing 727, the same type of aircraft Dante Arete was targeting at LAX. Its destination is LaGuardia Airport in Queens. It’s due to land at approximately 8:45 p.m., Eastern Daylight—”
“Son of a bitch,” Ryan exploded. “That has to be the final target. No wonder nothing happened at five p.m.! The CDC plane isn’t landing until quarter to nine. They want to shoot down that aircraft, spread influenza virus over the entire city — and they just might be able to pull it off.”
“We have to warn Jack—”
“First the NTSB has to order that aircraft to land at the next airport.”
“It’s too late for that, Ryan. The NTSB already tried without success.”
“But they certainly have the authority to order it down.”
“It’s not a question of authority. Due to security concerns, the CDC aircraft is maintaining strict radio silence. The pilot reports in once every hour, and we just missed the last window. The next time they establish radio contact, the plane will be over New York City.”
“Where are they now?” Jack raced toward the Queensboro Bridge ramp, an ancient structure of dirty steel girders rising up from Second Avenue and flanked by multimillion-dollar apartment buildings overlooking the East River.
Jack had kept his cell phone connection to CTU, Los Angeles, open while Jamey Farrell followed Caitlin’s blip on a grid map of Queens. The thirtythree-second coast-to-coast delay had caused a few tense moments, but so far they were tracking the kidnapped woman with accuracy.
“The vehicle Caitlin is in is still moving along Thirty-first Street in Queens,” said Jamey. “It looks like they’re heading for the Triboro Bridge, which means they could be going to Harlem, or even the South Bronx.”
The Queens-bound traffic on the bridge’s lower level was moving in a start-stop fashion. New York was a late
