A flash exploded in Jack’s night vision goggles as Wildman opened fire. Tracers lit the walls as they tore down the corridor. Silhouetted in the muzzle flash, Jack saw Don Driscoll drop. The leader of the hit team was exposed now, and Jack fired his last round. Wildman slammed into the wall and slid to the floor, the top of his head blown away.
Jack stepped over a dead man to reach Don Driscoll. He didn’t have to check the body to know the man was dead. Wildman’s random shots had cut Don Driscoll’s body in half.
Jack cursed. He’d hoped to grill the man about Hugo Bix’s next move. Holstering the Glock, Jack reached into his back pocket for his cell, pressed speed dial.
“O’Brian,” Morris answered. “It’s over,” Jack announced. “Give me some lights down here…” The lights sprang on a moment later. The grotesque scene was not improved by the harsh fluorescent glare. “Jack, could you come upstairs. We have another development,” said Morris. Jack touched his forehead, looked away from the dead men sprawled on the floor. “I’ll be right up.”
Jack closed the cell phone — and it chirped immediately. He checked the display, didn’t recognize the number.
“Jaycee,” he answered.
“Jaycee! What is Stella doing? Why is she threatening to hurt my daughter?” “Lilly, is that you? Slow down. What’s going on?” “Some man, with Stella. They’re here at the Baby
lon. They’ve got my daughter, Jaycee! They say they’ll hurt her if I don’t do what they want…”
Jack’s mind raced. There was something at the Babylon tonight… He’d seen it in the daily threat report. An anti-drug conference with VIP guests.
“Where are you right now?” Jack cried.
“I’m in the ballroom, the speeches are about to start. I—”
Suddenly the line went dead. Jack tried for a signal, got one immediately. He hit redial and after three rings, was transferred to Lilly’s voice mail. Jack raced down the corridor and took the stairs two at a time.
Curtis stomped on the gas pedal, crashed the Dodge Sprinter through the security gate at the entrance to the hotel’s underground parking garage. Over the squeal of tires, Curtis heard the guard’s shouted commands to halt.
He circled the first level of the parking garage, looking for the other truck bombs. He realized only then that there were six levels to this parking garage, enough space for thousands of cars, light trucks, and SUVs. He could never find the bombs in time. Not without help.
Curtis skidded to a halt, snatched the shotgun off the seat and jumped out of the truck. He’d spied a fire alarm box near the elevators. Curtis broke the glass with the butt of the shotgun and pressed the red button.
The teeth rattling sound of a dozen alarm bells filled the garage. Covering his ears, Curtis moved on to another alarm box and smashed it open.
He knew that triggering the fire alarms was an act of desperation. Curtis did it because he’d run out of options. For the last hour, he’d experienced the deja vu feeling he was trapped in one of those nightmares he’d experienced as a child, dreams where you try to make an important phone call but keep messing up the numbers, or you try to yell for help and can’t find your voice. Curtis had never felt more ineffectual or more isolated.
The irony was that ten minutes after he left the dead cops, Curtis believed his problems were solved. He steered the truck into a strip mall where he’d spotted an all night liquor store with a pay phone under its sign. Standing in the neon’s glare, Curtis punched in the ten digit emergency phone number to CTU, a number unique to this current operation. He hoped to reach Jamey Farrell or Milo Pressman, convince them to issue a Code Red and dispatch emergency teams to the Babylon.
Instead, Curtis was connected to an electronic voice telling him the number he called was no longer in service. He hung up and called again, fearing he’d erred in the dialing. Curtis nearly smashed the receiver when he got the same taped message a second time.
He cursed loudly, causing the winos on the corner to give him a wide berth. Curtis realized something bad had happened. Someone back at CTU headquar-ters — Ryan Chappelle, George Mason, Alberta Green, or maybe Richard Walsh or Henderson himself — had shut them down with extreme prejudice. The Vegas operation was in the throes of deactivation, a bureaucratic mess that left Curtis without any access to CTU. It was a Draconian move usually reserved for missions that had been compromised: when an agent broke the law, or leaked intelligence, or there was a catastrophic threat and the field agents had to be recalled.
Curtis realized that might be enough to warrant deactivation, but who would talk? He didn’t, and he was damn sure Morris could keep a secret, too.
But there was no use speculating. Whatever happened to trigger deactivation, Curtis was now effectively on his own. CTU wouldn’t recognize his operational codes, even if he called the number listed in the phone book and tried to explain who he was and what was happening. As far as his superiors were concerned, he, Jack, Morris, and probably Tony Almeida at Groom Lake, were all compromised. They would have to be thoroughly debriefed by their superiors before they were reinstated and their security clearances restored.
Clutching the receiver in a death grip, Curtis dialed O’Brian’s number at the Cha-Cha. He was shocked to get the man’s voice mail. What could Morris be doing that was more important than monitoring the activities of the field agents?
Probably establishing deactivation protocols with whoever showed up to shut us down, Curtis mused bitterly. He left a message outlining what was going on, then hung up.
Curtis considered calling 911 and reporting an anonymous bomb threat. But in the end he vetoed the idea. It would only cause more chaos. Better if he was on the scene, Curtis decided. He could do more at the hotel.
After that he drove directly to the Babylon and began setting off the fire alarms, hoping to bring the authorities. But as he sprinted toward the elevator, Curtis stopped in his tracks. Three armed men in security uniforms blocked his path. Someone shouted. Even over the shrill, constant clang of the alarm bells, Curtis heard the words clearly.
“Drop the shotgun or we’ll shoot.”
All eyes were on the podium. In the glare of a spotlight, Congressman Larry Bell commenced his introduction of the keynote speaker with a rambling account of a moment the two men shared back when they were both pro basketball players.
Lilly tried to call Jaycee Jager again, but she could not get a signal. She tried a pay phone next, but it seemed to be out of order. There was no tone, and all she heard was white noise.
Approaching the kitchen, Lilly spotted a man in a waiter’s uniform standing beside a wheeled cart strewn with flowers. She approached the stranger warily, intimidated by his intense gaze. When Lilly was within arm’s length, he seized her wrist.
“Do you wish to see your daughter again?” he hissed, his hot breath on her face.
Lilly nodded and the man released her.
“Wheel this cart to a spot behind the speaker’s podium, there—” he gestured with a jerk of his head. “In front of that row of flags.”
“Why do you want me to do this?” Lilly demanded.
“Do as you are told,” the man snapped. “Leave the cart and come back here. Then I will take you to your daughter.”
Balboa Rojas slid the cart in front of her. Numb, Lilly gripped the handles.
“Hurry,” he commanded. “You are running out of time.”
She stumbled forward. As she pushed the wheeled cart in front of her, Lilly’s mind was racing.
Lilly looked down at the mass of flowers. There was nowhere to hide an explosive that she could see. But then, Lilly realized she didn’t know what to look for, really. She reckoned that three sticks of dynamite attached to an alarm clock was probably not how bombs looked these days.
She realized the bomb was hidden under the table cloth. Weaving around a knot of women heading for the
