before him.
Paz stepped down to the sidewalk, a spring mechanism pulling the door shut behind him. A short, squat, bull-necked individual built like a fireplug, he had a head the shape of a pineapple, with a pockmarked complexion to match. His eyes were long, narrow slits. He sported a neatly trimmed little eyebrow mustache.
He wore a woven straw Borsalino-style hat; a dark blue blazer with gold buttons; a loud, floral print- patterned sport shirt; wide-cut khaki pants; and two-toned brown-and-white loafers with tasseled uppers. His right arm hung down at his side, holding an executive-style attache case.
An unlit cigar jutted from the side of his mouth, clamped in place between steel-trap jaws. He glanced quizzically at the interplay between his bodyguards and the repairman.
Baca told the repairman, 'Okay, we go now. Happy?'
'That's more like it,' Dixie said. The hand holding the work orders refracted back into the cab, dropping out of sight below the top of the passenger side door. It flashed into view again, this time holding a gun, a semi- automatic pistol with what looked like a silver hot dog screwed onto the end of the barrel.
He squeezed the trigger, shooting Baca in the throat. The silver hot dog was a silencer, muffling the report to a sound like that of a piece of cloth tearing.
Baca lurched back a few steps, then folded at the knees, sitting down hard on the sidewalk. He clutched with both hands the hole in his neck that was jetting out blood. Streams of blood, so dark they looked black. Lots of it, geysering.
Baca choked, making sputtering noises. He went horizontal, writhing on the pavement, still holding his throat with both hands.
Dixie shot Espinosa in the eye, the bullet emerging out the back of his head. The big man toppled, smacking the concrete with a meaty thud.
Dixie's primary target was Paz, but the bodyguards had stood between him and the Colonel. He'd had to clear them away to get Paz in the firing line. Espinosa now lay stone dead, but Baca was still flopping around on the sidewalk. Dixie shot him in the chest, stilling him.
The instant it took him to finish off Baca was the margin of life or death for Paz, giving him time to counter with a secret weapon.
The attache case had nagged at Jack Bauer from the instant he saw it, since it seemed out of character with the rest of Paz's leisure time outfit. But for all he knew, it could have held a couple bottles of booze and some sex toys to spice up the hours spent in Vikki's boudoir.
Now Jack realized that his first impression was right, and that the attache case was more than it seemed.
Colonel Paz raised it at a tilted angle, pointing its narrow front side at Dixie. He made some quick, tricky little hand movement, fingers writhing, pulling at something on the handle.
Gunfire erupted from the side of the attache case, sending a burst of rounds ripping up the side of the truck cab's passenger door and then ripping up Dixie, who jerked and flopped around in his seat as he was shot to pieces.
He looked outraged, as though indignant that Paz had committed some sort of unsportsmanlike conduct in not letting himself be slaughtered on the spot but instead terminating the assassin.
Herm the driver no longer looked bored. He flung open the door and jackknifed out of the cab, flopping heavily on the asphalt. The truck now screened him from Colonel Paz. He reached into the cab and hauled out a long- barreled.44.
Paz ducked down on the sidewalk, covering behind the bulk of his armored limousine. Hunkering down, he popped open the attache case, flinging back the lid and revealing the gimmick that had let him shoot as if by magic.
Inside the shell of the gimmicked case was an Uzi-style machine pistol secured in a wooden frame. One end of a length of baling wire had been looped around the trigger, leaving a fraction of an inch or so of play in it. The wire was threaded through a set of eyelet screws mounted in the frame, emerging through a hole in the top of the case, where the opposite end was secured to the handle.
All he'd had to do was reach down around the underside of the handle, wrap his fingertips around the wire, and pull, tightening the wire noose around the trigger and firing the gun.
It was a neat little trick that had served him well in the past, back in the early years when he'd been a drug gang enforcer and executioner.
Paz now craved more direct action. The machine pistol's trigger guard had been removed, allowing him to slip the wire noose free and loose the weapon from its mounting in the case.
Herm had now regained his feet and stood crouching behind the truck cab, reaching around it to shoot at Paz, the big.44 reports booming like artillery fire.
It had all gone down like lightning: Dixie gunning down the bodyguards, Paz shredding Dixie with his attache case gun, Herm the driver now taking potshots at Paz while the latter sheltered behind the armored limo, cradling a machine pistol.
Suddenly the situation was dealt another wild card, as the truck's back doors popped open and a new shooter popped out.
Jack recognized him as the long-haired youth in glasses who'd strolled down the street earlier, right before the advent of the utility truck. He must have been the spotter, casing the scene in advance of the other assassins. He now had a gun in each hand, shiny, chrome-plated.32 pistols, and he came out with both barrels blazing.
He hit the pavement running on sneakered feet, dashing behind the back of a car parked several lengths behind the limo and taking cover.
He blasted away in Paz's direction, not hitting him, but making plenty of noise.
Bullets spanged the limo's armor plating, turning into lead smears. Other rounds tagged the bulletproof windows, starring but not shattering them.
In his wake, the truck box yielded two more shooters, one a chunky guy and another wearing a red bandana knotted around the top of his head, pirate style.
The chunky guy featured an Elvis-style pompadour, sunglasses, and a goatee, and wielded a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol. Hopping down to the asphalt, he dodged around the left rear corner of the truck, putting him on the same side as Herm the driver.
The third man, the bandana wearer, was reluctant to leave the cover of the truck box. Remaining inside, he peeped around the edge of the right rear of the door frame, reached around it with his gun, and snapped off shots at Paz.
He fired deliberately, methodically, mechanically. Bullets hit the club building, pecking out craters in the stone wall.
Jack Bauer and Pete Malo recovered quickly from the surprise, drawing their handguns and going into action like the professionals they were.
There was a stall for several heartbeats as the store's front door, sealed for months, balked at Jack's efforts to open it. Jack put a shoulder to it, popping it open and rushing outside, crouching low and dodging to the left. Pete followed, breaking right.
They knew what had to be done. The situation was unexpected, the solution simple.
Paz was necessary, a living link not only to the machinations of the Venezuelan spy apparatus he headed, but also possibly to the elusive and much-wanted General Beltran, himself the key to uncovering a subversive communist Cuban network that had been operating in the United States for decades.
Putting the would-be assassins in the expendable column.
The chunky guy caught a glimpse of the CTU agents coming, his eyebrows rising in surprise over the top of his sunglasses. He shot at Pete, missed.
Pete fired back, scoring. The chunky guy's knees buckled and he slid down the side of the truck, leaving a bloody smear to mark his descent. He sprawled on the street, motionless.
Herm the driver turned toward Jack, the two throwing down on each other at the same time. Jack fired first, pumping two slugs into the driver's middle, all but cutting him in two.
At that, Herm still had enough left to burn off a shot as he folded, firing wildly into the side of a parked car.
