There was silence, followed by the sound of a siren. Finally, I heard voices, then the line went dead.”
Jack and Layla exchanged looks.
“Did you trace the signal?” Jack asked.
“That’s standard procedure,” the comm tech replied.
“But the call was so short we can’t triangulate.”
“I’ll be right down,” Jack replied, ending the call. Then he snatched the receiver and dialed Brice Holman’s office.
On the eighth ring, O’Brian picked up.
“What do you bloody want?” O’Brian barked. “Can’t you see I’m busy?”
“It’s Bauer.”
“Oh. Hello, boss,” Morris said smoothly.
“I need you at the comm station. Now.”
Morris groaned. “Can’t Almeida handle it? I’ve got my hands full with the locks on the Director’s computer. This Holman person is nearly as devious as you are. Needless to say, I haven’t quite cracked it — though I’m
“It can wait,” Jack replied. “I need you to trace a cellphone signal. The call didn’t last long so there might not be much of a trail.”
Morris snorted. “Child’s play compared to this, Jack-o.
I’ll be there on the double.”
Agent Abernathy led Jack down a flight of steel steps, onto the floor of the Operations Center. There were no offices, only workstations inside cubicles. When they arrived at the communications station, Morris was already there.
He stood beside a lanky, thirty-something technician with a receding hairline and nervously blinking eyes partially obscured behind small, round glasses.
Jack extended his hand. “Peter Randall? I’m Jack Bauer.
Have you retrieved the memory cache of Deputy Director Foy’s call?”
Randall nodded. “I have, sir, but the call lasted less than two minutes, so triangulation will be difficult, even if we can isolate her digital trace inside the phone company’s transmitters.”
“You have signature protocols, correct?” Morris asked.
“Of course. Each member of this unit has intelli-signatures unique to them embedded in their cell phones.”
Jack knew the answer to the next question, but asked anyway. “Have you tried to locate Foy using the GPS chip in her cell?”
The comm tech frowned. “She deactivated it, sir. I can’t imagine why.”
“I can.” Jack glanced at Layla. “She didn’t want CTU to know where she was.”
“I think I’ve got something,” said Morris.
Jack peered over his shoulder, at the high-definition monitor. Morris tapped a few keys and a map of New Jersey appeared, the telecommunications grid superim-posed over it.
“Deputy Director Foy’s call came through a forwarding station in this little town here.” Morris tapped the screen.
“Pissant. Pissant, New Jersey.”
Peter Randall cleared his throat. “That’s
Passaic, New Jersey. It’s an American Indian word.”
Morris squinted theatrically. “I must be going goggle-eyed. I
“Get on with it, Morris,” Jack said tightly.
“Anyway, from the forwarding station in
That’s right here—” Morris tapped the screen again.
“Newark,” Jack whispered. He faced Layla.
“Retrieve the patient admission records from all the hospitals around Newark, see if anyone fitting Agent Foy’s description has been treated in the past hour. Contact the Newark Police Department and the city morgue, too…”
“On it,” Layla said, punching keys.
Jack laid a hand on Morris’s shoulder. “I’m leaving for an hour, to check on that other matter,” he said quietly.
“The one that
“Bugger,” Morris murmured. “Don’t you want backup?”
Jack shook his head. “Not from
Morris frowned. “Careful, Jack. I understand New York can be a very rough town.”
“Agent Almeida? I have the system schematics that you requested.”
Tony nodded, his gaze fixed on the monitor. “Yeah, thanks,” he muttered. “Put them on the desk.”
“Agent Almeida?”
It took a moment for the voice to penetrate his concentration. Finally, Tony looked up, to find a young woman with dark, curly hair and wide, oval eyes standing over him. She offered Tony a nervous smile.
“I just wanted to say… if you need anything… anything at all, I’ll be in the next cubicle.” She pointed to her workstation with a thumb over her shoulder. “My name’s Delgado, Rachel Delgado. Like I said, call me. If you need me.”
The woman wore black slacks and platform shoes. Her tight, white blouse had a low neckline, showing more than ample cleavage. Tony shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“Ah… thanks.”
As she walked away, Tony watched her swaying hips—
until Rachel Delgado glanced over her shoulder and caught him peeking.
Tony quickly shifted his gaze — then the computer beeped, and it was back to work. He grabbed the schematics that Ms. Delgado had brought him and looked them over. In a few minutes, he’d isolated the problem, which turned out to be a glitch with the physical system and not a software issue.
Tony stood, hung his jacket over the back of the desk chair, along with his shoulder holster and the Glock inside it. Then he rolled up his sleeves and used a screwdriver from the console kit to open the access panel behind the computer.
The guts of the system revealed, Tony began to physically reroute the entire network through a different set of servers by reconnecting several dozen ports to ultrahigh bandwidth links.
After a short cab ride, Jack Bauer exited the taxi on the corner of Canal and Mulberry. At the teeming intersection, he considered his next move.
It was clear to Jack that someone at CTU New York had tipped off De Salvo and his crew. They knew about Jack’s arrival in the city, and enough of his schedule to set up an ambush in the middle of Hudson Street in broad daylight.
Or did the leak originate somewhere else, out of the Tacoma office, perhaps? Jack decided to have a long talk with George Mason after this was over.
Angelo De Salvo had harbored a deep grudge against Jack — for good reason. Jack had led the siege in L.A. that had ended with the deaths of De Salvo’s father and two brothers.
Angelo hadn’t been with his family during that take-down, but he was a career criminal with a long rap sheet.
He was also a hunted man, and according to O’Brian’s research, De Salvo’s alias — Angel Salinas — never had more than nine hundred dollars in his bank account. So there was no way he could have paid for the services of
