the street, at the building that housed the Unit’s New York headquarters. The place was still as a grave.
“I don’t get it,” Tony quietly said to Jack. “A firefight a block away, and no response from CTU?”
Jack frowned at his destination. “Looks like it’s time to light a fire under these people.”
Jack Bauer leveled a cold gaze on the New York agent who met him at the elevator. She wore a pinstriped suit with a questionably short skirt and stacked heels. Her black hair was caught in a long, smooth ponytail. She had an olive complexion and large, dark, slightly almond-shaped eyes, with features that suggested Middle Eastern heritage. She introduced herself as Layla Abernathy.
“I need to meet with Director Brice Holman.” Bauer’s voice was less than friendly. “Now.”
“Oh yes. Of course!” Agent Abernathy appeared mo-mentary flustered, her gaze darting from Jack to Tony to Morris. But her composure returned inside of five seconds, and she matched Jack’s hard stare. “Brice should be here any minute. I called his cell several times. I’m sure he’ll check in soon—”
“That’s not good enough,” Jack cut in. “I left specific instructions that all CTU personnel were to be present when I arrived this morning.” He took a step closer. “
Layla Abernathy frowned. “I think he’s in New Jersey.”
Jack exchanged a glance with Tony, then asked Agent Abernathy, “What’s he doing in New Jersey?”
“I don’t know,” Layla replied. “That is, I’m not sure. I’m not even supposed to know about—”
“What’s his exact location? Be specific.”
Abernathy took an uneasy breath. “Have you ever heard of a place called Kurmastan?”
Stretched out on his belly in a field of tall grass, Special Agent Brice Holman, newly appointed Director of CTU’s New York Operations Center, gazed down at the tiny hamlet of Kurmastan.
Dubbed “Meccaville” by the farmers and horse breed-ers who lived around it, Kurmastan was primarily populated by men who’d converted to Islam in state and Federal penitentiaries, along with members of their families who’d also converted.
Ignoring the sun beating down on his head, the forty-five-year-old agent checked his watch, rubbed the sweat from his eyes, and went back to peering through a pair of digitally enhanced micro-binoculars.
Before coming to this rural field, Holman had reviewed almost two years of satellite surveillance on this small religious settlement. But those pictures failed to capture the dilapidated seediness of the place.
A dozen clapboard houses sat within the dusty compound, along with seventeen rusty mobile homes, all of them centered around a communal dining hall made of cinder block. A dirty boulevard ran through the center of town. One end was dominated by Kurmastan’s only visible source of income — a factory that turned recycled pulp into cardboard boxes.
The other end held a house of worship, by far the most luxurious structure in the place: prefabricated steel with a resin facade sculpted to look like a Middle Eastern mosque, complete with a metal-framed minaret.
The mosque was no surprise to Holman because the settlement had been founded by Ali Rahman al Sallifi, an Islamic cleric with ties to radical elements in Pakistan and Egypt — and it had been on CTU’s watch list since the agency was established.
Unfortunately, most of the “watching” of Kurmastan had been done by satellite. Things had changed about a month earlier, when Brice Holman’s own boss, the Northeast District Director, ordered any active investigation of this compound to cease. The unit had limited resources, Holman was told, and they were needed elsewhere.
Holman privately disagreed. Just before he’d been ordered to stop investigating Kurmastan, a well-connected activist group had begun loudly leveling “profiling”
charges on Executive Branch agencies, and Holman suspected the decision to give Kurmastan a wide berth was at least partly political.
Deciding to have a look for himself, Holman had driven out to the compound, watching it for an entire weekend.
During that time, he encountered an FBI agent who’d also been watching the place, and had received a similar command from his own boss in Washington.
It wasn’t unusual for FBI surveillance units to trip over CTU in the field. Agents occasionally even shared information, sidestepping the current “wall” between agencies.
When Holman met Jason Emmerick of the FBI, that’s exactly what had happened. The two agents silently agreed to disregard the law prohibiting them from swapping intel.
All by themselves, they connected the dots on “Meccaville,” and a frightening picture began to emerge.
Both men had observed military-style exercises, including weapons training and obstacle courses. There was suspicion of stockpiled armaments and chatter between residents of the compound and parties in Pakistan and Afghanistan.
Holman and Emmerick came up with a plan to continue watching the “Meccaville” compound, in violation of their superiors’ directives. And surveillance chatter soon suggested something was about to go down. Something big.
Unfortunately, the agents were still lacking hard evidence to prove it.
Today, with luck, they would finally get that evidence.
According to recent chatter inside the compound, a “package” from Canada was expected to arrive at Newark Airport. Holman and Emmerick believed the arrival of this “package” was the key to setting off whatever powder keg the men inside this compound had primed.
An hour earlier, two African-American males had left this compound to “pick up the package.” One of the men was bald; the other wore his hair in long cornrow braids.
Both were in their early thirties, clad in blue suits.
Holman recognized the bald man as a former gang-banger from Jersey City. His name was Montel Tanner, or at least it used to be. Holman didn’t know what Tanner called himself now that he’d found religion. The other man, with the cornrows, Holman hadn’t seen before.
Each of these men had slipped behind the wheel of a brand-new black Hummer and took off. Jason Emmerick and his partner took off, too, tailing the two Hummers.
Holman was so certain something major was about to happen, he’d finally briefed his own CTU Deputy Director, Judith Foy, on their rogue operation. Now Judy was on board, too, and due to hook up with Emmerick and his partner at the airport to aid in the surveillance.
Meanwhile, Holman had positioned himself on a hill above the compound. He’d been staked out here since the wee hours of the morning. As a breeze rippled the grass, stirring his black tangle of hair, he lowered his micro- binoculars and shook his canteen.
Thirsty and hot, Holman was about to return to his vehicle for a refill when a flash of sunlight off chrome caught his eye. He zoomed his binoculars in on the factory. The loading bay doors stood open, and a semi rolled out.
In itself, this wasn’t unusual. At four that morning, a truck had departed the factory, full of flattened cardboard boxes. One had left at five as well, also packed with paper.
The truck leaving now looked like the others Holman had seen: a Mac sleeper cab hauling a steel trailer, the logo for Dreizehn Trucking painted on its side. But when Holman glimpsed the interior of the cargo bay, he didn’t see flat stacks of cardboard boxes. Instead, Holman saw bunks. Six of them lined the walls. He spied movement.
There were men inside that trailer; he counted at least eight. One had an AK–47 resting across his knees.
Before Holman could get a picture, an arm inside the truck slammed closed the steel doors. The truck continued rumbling toward the compound’s gate, sped through and toward the rural route beyond.
Holman cursed, rising quickly, and left his hiding place, creeping through the tall grass, back to his van.
That’s when he heard a woman scream.
