The woman beside the dead boy clawed at Holman’s shoes, and he kicked her aside. Waving his Uzi at the quak-ing horde, he grabbed clips of spare ammunition from the dead man’s belt.
Holman was about to bolt for the exit when he saw Dani Taylor on the floor. Her chair was broken, and she’d untangled herself from the ropes. Now she was struggling to rise.
“Wait… Take me with you,” she pleaded.
“Come on, then,” Brice yelled.
A woman lunged for Holman, and he shot her at point-blank range. Enraged howls greeted the move, but the mob retreated.
Brice grabbed Dani’s hand. It was slippery with blood, but he managed to haul the girl to her feet. He pushed Dani behind him and nudged her toward the nearest exit.
“Wait,” Dani gasped, snatching the shotgun from the dead man’s grip. Brice was surprised when she waved the weapon at their captors, effectively covering his back.
“You know how to use that?” Brice called.
“I live on a farm. I can fire a shotgun,” Dani replied.
Another woman took a swing at Brice with a rusty rake, and he shot her, too. Robes flapping, the dead woman spun backward, into the arms of her comrades.
Dani and Holman bolted through the door, into the harsh afternoon sun. They were on main street, where Holman hoped to board the church bus. But the vehicle had been tipped over on its side.
Cursing, he grabbed Dani’s arm and they dashed down the dusty street.
“I want you to go that way,” Brice said pointing. “Get to the woods beyond those mobile homes and you’ll have a chance to get out.”
Dani took a step forward. Brice gripped her arm.
“Take this,” he cried, shoving his cell phone into the girl’s pocket.
“What is it?”
“Intelligence,” Holman cried. “Images, recordings.
Give it to the FBI. Do you understand? The FBI. Don’t trust anyone from CTU—”
“Huh?”
“CTU. The Counter Terrorist Unit. They’ve been compromised. Promise me you’ll give that phone to the FBI and no one else.”
The girl nodded, Brice noticed a chunk of blond hair had been yanked from her scalp. “The FBI, I got it,” she said nervously.
Holman pushed her. “Go!” he commanded.
Dani took off in a run toward the line of mobile homes in the distance. Holman whirled to face the Community Center. Legs braced, he aimed at a pair of angry women and an old man who stumbled through the door.
He fired once, bringing down the man. Then Brice fled the scene, fumbling with a clip to reload.
Cries battered Holman’s ears as an enraged mob streamed out of the Community Center. Someone fired a shot that whizzed over his head. They chased after him, and Holman swerved onto the road that led to the factory.
In the cool darkness of the brick-lined coffeehouse, Tony Almeida studied the woman across the table while he sipped his fourth espresso. Judith Foy fidgeted in her chair while she nursed her third iced tea.
The Deputy Director was wearing a navy-blue tracksuit, no-name sneakers, and a knockoff New York Yankees cap meant to hide the bandages on her head. Tony was no fashion guru, but he had grabbed what he thought was appropriate at a discount store on a shabby block of clothing and apparel shops in the Central Ward, while Judith Foy cowered in the hospital gown, inside the stall of a McDon-ald’s restroom.
Securing clothing was their first priority after the escape, and Tony had handled that situation well and efficiently. He was having less success convincing the Deputy Director of the New York Division to turn over the intelligence she’d gathered to analysts at CTU Headquarters.
Every time he broached the subject, Agent Foy changed the topic of conversation. Now she peered across the table with an expression that bordered on admiration.
“You’re quite resourceful, Agent Almeida. The way you whisked me out of the hospital… It was some of the quickest thinking I’d ever seen.”
“Call me Tony,” he said.
While she spoke, his gaze continued to scan the coffee shop. So far, the only other patrons were a pair of college coeds bemoaning their romantic life, and a man in a jacket and tie pounding on the keyboard of his laptop.
“What are you thinking, Tony?” Judy said. “Wish I could tell. But for the last hour, your expression covered the emotional spectrum from A to B.”
Tony arched an eyebrow. “You caught me at a bad time.”
Judy Foy shook her head. “I caught you at a very good time. You’re one of the best agents I’ve ever seen.
You were smart to grab the wheelchair and put me in it.
When you put on those green scrubs, even I thought you were part of the medical staff. Then you triggered the fire alarm, pushed me right past the police guarding the door, along with the rest of the evacuees… makes me wish you worked for me.”
Tony ignored her praise. “Too bad about Delgado’s car.
We had the keys. We could have been in a safe house by now, if the police hadn’t cordoned off the parking lot.”
“Don’t worry about it,” Foy said. “You recovered my cell phone and camera. That’s what counts.”
“Not if we don’t get the information to CTU.”
“We’ve been over this, Agent Almeida.”
“Look,” Tony said. “You can trust Jack Bauer. He’s from Los Angeles, not New York. He never even heard of Kurmastan until today.”
Foy shook her head so vigorously, her scarlet ponytail whipped back and forth. “I don’t know your boss from Adam, or who this Bauer chose to trust,” she replied. “He can unwittingly help the traitor if he shares information with the wrong person.”
“Maybe we got the traitor,” Tony argued.
“Rachel Delgado was a mole,” Foy replied. “But I doubt she’s the only one. I don’t trust Brice’s assistant, either.”
“Agent Abernathy?”
Foy nodded. “I told Holman about my suspicions, but he laughed them off…”
“What if we call Morris, forward the intelligence to him—”
“We’ve been through this, Almeida. Any data we forward to your friend will have to go through CTU New York’s network. I’m convinced the traitor has access to the data dump. The bastard will see the intelligence as soon as it comes in — maybe even delete it before your friend has a chance to retrieve it.”
The woman stared through the window, at the rush hour traffic building outside.
Tony calmly sipped his espresso, but inside he was cursing. Judith Foy had ordered him not to use his cell phone, and almost made him deactivate his GPS chip, until she realized CTU New York didn’t have Tony’s telecommunications signatures in their database and couldn’t track him if they wanted to. The woman was so cautious, it bordered on paranoia. She even tossed Rachel Delgado’s cell into a storm drain, along with the woman’s car keys, purse, and wallet. Foy kept only the dead woman’s cash and her Glock.
“If only your friend Morris had a laptop,” Foy said.
“Something not connected to the mainframe.”
Tony struck the table with his fist, rattling the espresso cup on its saucer. “That’s it!”
“What?”
