rotor blades bite into the ground, then shatter.
Their homing devices attracted by the still-spinning rotor, all three Stinger missiles struck the helicopter. The explosion caught Jack Bauer in its fiery grip. Helpless, the CTU agent was swept up like a grain of sand in a sandstorm.
21. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 8 A.M. AND 9 A.M. PACIFIC DAYLIGHT TIME
Ryan Chappelle received an urgent call, a tip from a former colleague now working in the Department of Defense. Face taut, Chappelle listened to the disturbing news with angry disbelief. More than anything, he was puzzled by the government willingness to flush four highly trained and immensely valuable assets down the toilet —
After ending the conversation with his colleague, the Regional Director of CTU, Los Angeles, attempted to speak directly with the President, only to be told the Commander in Chief was “in conference.” He tried the Vice- President and ran into another wall.
Frantic now, Chappelle tried calling the Secretary of Defense, and to his surprise the man accepted his call.
“How can I help you, Director Chappelle?” Secretary Thompson asked in his Tennessee drawl.
“I wanted to inform you that we have four CTU Agents inside of Groom Lake right now,” Chappelle replied.
A moment of silence followed the declaration. “There are a lot of people at Groom Lake, Mr. Chappelle. Good people.”
Chappelle knew that when the Secretary of Defense casually demoted him from “director” to “mister,” Ryan was in trouble. Still he persisted.
“I’m asking you to call off the B–52s, Mr. Secretary. Give my men a chance to deal with the situation before you resort to drastic action.”
Another moment of silence. “I would like to help, but—”
“Secretary Thompson, these are very capable agents. One of them is the very best field agent in our Unit. I believe that even though they may be outnumbered six to one, my agents can and will resolve this situation.”
“Excuse me for a moment, Director Chappelle.”
He held on the phone for almost five minutes. When Secretary Thompson returned, he seemed irritated.
“All right, Director. Noon is our new go time. That means CTU has a little less than four hours to show us your stuff. If those pilots don’t get the proper code phrase by noon sharp, I
“Code phrase, sir?”
“It’s a randomly generated phrase created by our computer and disseminated over a secure channel. We’ll send the phrase directly to you through a secure server.”
“One more thing, Mr. Secretary,” Chappelle said.
“Son, don’t you know when to quit.”
“No sir, I don’t. Not when the lives of my agents are involved.”
“What is it, Director?”
Ryan wasn’t completely sure, but he thought he sensed a new hint of respect in the Secretary’s tone. “I need to speak with my agents in the field,” Chappelle replied. “I want to alert them about the time frame they are facing. To do that, the Air Force needs to stop their jamming for a few minutes.”
“I’ll talk to General Boyd. The jamming will be lifted for five minutes, commencing at exactly 0900 hours — that’s nine o’clock, civilian time. Good enough?”
“Thank you, Mr. Secretary.”
After the loss of his escape plane, Jong Lee established a new command center in Hangar Five, where he could personally watch over the only functioning aircraft left on the entire base. The Blackfoot stealth helicopter figured prominently in Lee’s original plan. That piece of advanced hardware was even more important now that the situation was in flux.
“It was not an attack,” Lee declared. “One helicopter means a reconnaissance mission, not an all out assault.” Jong’s thin lips curled into a smile. “It gives me hope that the Americans have been shocked into paralysis.”
“It is mysterious,” Captain Hsu noted. “The Americans have positioned satellites over our heads. I have seen the contrails of high-altitude spy planes as well. They know much of what is going on here. Why send a reconnaissance helicopter?”
“Have you dispatched men to the crash site?” “Yes, sir. Woo and two men are on their way now.”
A runner arrived, dispatched from the flight tower across the tarmac. With the phones jammed along with everything else, Lee had to resort to nineteenth century-style communications between his units.
“Yizi reports that the jamming continues,” the man said after saluting. “She has not communicated with the base in Mexico since the initial message was sent.”
“Tell her to keep trying. If the curtain of jamming parts, I want her to be ready to send and receive messages at a moment’s notice.”
Tony Almeida spent a long, torturous hour crawling face down through a shallow ravine outside of Hangar Six. His filthy sweat pants clung to his legs and sand filled his sneakers. Though he was covered with grease and grit, the hot morning sun broiled the skin on his back and sent rivulets of sweat rolling down his flanks. He moved slowly to avoid discovery — Tony knew he was being hunted, he’d seen the men fan out across the base. They’d found other hostages, hiding in hangars or in bunkers, but so far he’d managed to elude them.
Finally, he was within sight of the side entrance. The door was locked, but Tony had rigged it so he could open it without a key, back when he was spying on Steve Sable. Risking detection, Tony rose and sprinted across the final stretch of sand. He made it to the door in seconds, yanked it open and ducked inside.
The dim interior of the hangar’s forgotten storage room was at least fifteen degrees cooler than the air outside, and Tony was out of the direct sunlight — a double blessing. He was exhausted and thirsty, and the burn marks on his chest and legs throbbed, an ever present reminder of the torture he’d endured at the hands of the late Dr. Sable.
Tony slumped to the cool floor between two stacks of crates and paused to catch his breath. Just fifty yards away, at the front of the hangar, the hostages were still being held at gunpoint by an unknown number of guards. Tony dared not doze off, his mind remained sharp and alert while he rested his tired muscles. Mouth parched, he longed for a cold beer.
He heard an animal snort. Quietly, Tony rose to his feet, crept to a mountain of wooden crates and peered around them. A man was there, his back to Tony. He slumped in the battered office chair beside the workbench, head lolled to the side. While Tony watched the man snored again.
Tony retreated to a massive spool of cable mounted on a rack. Irregular lengths of the black wire lay around his feet like dead snakes. He selected the most useful one and crept back to the sleeping man.
Tony moved around the work bench and behind the snoring man. It was one of the Cubans. Tony had heard the men speaking Spanish while he spied on them and recognized their accents, though how the Cubans and Chinese came together for this operation was beyond Tony’s grasp at the moment.
Crouched behind the man, Tony saw a Makarov PM tucked his belt. He longed for that weapon more than he’d wanted the beer. Peeking between boxes and banks of machinery, Tony could see a guard standing over the hostages, who were still huddled on the floor.
