in the wind.
Then Caitlin saw a hole in the center of Hensley’s chest, the spreading stain. The man opened his mouth and black blood oozed out. Slowly, he sank to his knees, then pitched forward, sprawling across the tracks.
Caitlin heard a moan, saw Jack stumbling to his feet.
“Jack, are you hurt?”
“He clipped me, but I’m not dead yet.”
Caitlin ran to him, draped Jack’s good arm over her shoulder and wrapped her own arms around him.
“Let’s get you to a doctor,” she said.
“Don’t need a doctor,” grunted Jack. “What I need is a good night’s sleep.”
Arm in arm, they limped across the bridge, toward the distant shore.
EPILOGUE
After Jack Bauer wound up his part of the debriefing, the conference room was quiet for a long moment. Finally, Richard Walsh spoke. “Talk about Frank Hens-ley. Has your team come up with anything?”
Jack leaned back in his chair, finally relaxing now that the whole of this mission was out of him. “Hensley was a mole.”
“Can’t be, Jack. No mole could get past the FBI’s screening process; their background checks are legendary.”
Jack shook his head. “I had Nina contact the Pentagon, retrieve Hensley’s military records. Tony went over it all, discovered that Hensley’s pre-Iraqi records, including his fingerprints, had been tampered with— probably by another mole somewhere in the Pentagon. We went back even further, discovered that when Hensley was a teenager, he was fingerprinted for a security assistant’s job at a local department store in Morgantown, West Virginia. We accessed those old prints and compared them with the fingerprints on file in the FBI’s personnel office.”
Jack met Walsh’s incredulous stare. “The prints didn’t match. The man who went to war in Desert Storm and the man who came back to America were not the same.”
“999?” Walsh guessed.
Jack nodded. “The real Frank Hensley was a true war hero. He was captured by the Iraqi forces during Desert Storm and taken to Baghdad. We know that for a fact. What happened after that is speculation, but we suspect he was tortured and murdered by 999, Iraqi’s secret special operations service. They likely extracted enough personal information from Hensley to replace him with one of their own. His parents were no longer living. Some plastic surgery and a standoffish attitude after the war would have helped him make the transition back into civilian life.”
“But he had a wife?”
“Not until after the war. He met and married a woman whose father was a Federal judge. That alliance would have helped him into the FBI. Over the years, Hensley forged more alliances, and not with more judges. He began to make deals with the criminals he was supposedly investigating. But the big payoff he promised Felix Tanner and Fiona Brice, the Lynch brothers and Dante Arete, it was all a lie. The plot to blow up airliners to extort money was really just a mask for Hensley’s real mission to down the CDC airplane and unleash a pandemic on New York City and most likely the entire Northeastern seaboard. From what Caitlin told us about what she overheard, Taj and the Afghanis were in on the real plot, and were willing accomplices.”
“And Dennis Spain, Senator Cheever’s aide?”
“He disappeared. The FBI is looking for him, but. ” Jack turned his palms to the ceiling. “Nothing so far.”
“And the Senator’s in the clear?”
Jack frowned. “Not with me.”
Walsh nodded. With thumb and forefinger he smoothed his walrus mustache. “And what about that anonymous tipster? The one who triggered this whole mission with the events at LAX? Ever get an ID?”
“That one was easy. A voice analysis of the tape message proved the man’s identity conclusively — it was Georgi Timko. It seems Georgi’s brother was a HIND helicopter pilot in Afghanistan during the Soviet occupation. His chopper was shot down by insurgents; Georgi’s brother died in Afghan captivity. I guess Timko felt he had some unfinished business with Taj and his followers. ”
“So it’s over now?”
Jack shrugged. “Maybe. Maybe not. Time will tell.”
Walsh switched the tape recorder off, signaling the end of the official debriefing. Jack rose, gathered the papers spread out across the table.
“One more thing,” said Walsh. “The crap hit the fan so fast, we never came up with a name for this operation. Any thoughts?”
Jack nodded. “Call it Operation Hell Gate.”
“Why?”
“The police never recovered the body of Griffin Lynch. A detective told me it was because of the unnatural turbulence under that railroad bridge.”
Walsh blinked. “Excuse me?”
“There’s a nexus beneath the bridge, a spot where the Harlem and East rivers merge with Long Island Sound to create riptides and deadly whirlpools powerful enough to swallow even the strongest swimmer. One urban legend says a World War Two Air Force bomber ditched under the bridge and vanished without a trace.”
“Your point?”
Jack shrugged. “Arete’s gang, the Afghanis, Griffin and Shamus Lynch, they were like those waters under the bridge, all had their own directions. It took Frank Hensley to bring the factions together into something devastatingly deadly. To bring them to one place.”
“Hell Gate?” Walsh chewed on it for a minute. “Okay…good name.” He pushed back from the table and unfolded his large frame to its full height. “Jack, I have to be straight with you. Nobody in Washington’s gonna buy the connection to 999. that Frank Hensley was a mole planted by Iraqi special ops.”
“Why not?”
“Most likely reason. it’ll make them look bad.”
Jack swallowed his frustration.
“Either way,” said Walsh, “the threat’s been neutralized.” He checked his watch then extended his hand. “Thanks, Jack.”
Still distracted, Jack shook. “Sure. If you need any more information—”
“No, son. You misunderstood me.” Walsh smiled. “
Acknowledgments
The author would like to thank Hope Innelli and Josh Behar of HarperCollins for their vision, guidance, and support. Thanks also to Virginia King of 20th Century Fox for her continued encouragement.
Very special acknowledgment to the groundbreaking, Emmy Award-winning “24” creators Joel Surnow and Robert Cochran, and to their talented writing team. And especially to Keifer Sutherland for bringing the memorable character of Jack Bauer to life.
Thanks to my literary agent, John Talbot, for his ongoing support. And a very personal thank you to my wife, Alice Alfonsi. A guy couldn’t ask for a better partner — in writing or in life.
About the Author
