Standard security precautions dictated that their CTU-issued vehicle not be parked on the same street where Paz's bodyguards had kept their all-night vigil. They might have noticed it and become suspicious. Instead it stood on the next street running east of Fairview and parallel to it.
Jack cut through an alley to reach it, a passageway so narrow he could barely go through it without his shoulders brushing the walls.
The machine was there, right where they'd left it hours before on Friday night, parked at curbside on the west side of the street. A dark green SUV with a souped-up V-8 engine, bulletproof glass, armor-plated hull, reinforced chassis and suspension to carry the extra weight, and puncture-proof tires, solid all the way through. Plus an onboard wireless computer, satellite-phone communications capability, and an array of high-tech electronics hardware.
The vehicle was protected by an invisible, electromagnetic web woven by the sensors of a silent alarm system. So sophisticated were its threshold parameters that it could distinguish between random bumps and jostles such as any car might sustain when parked on a city street, as opposed to a deliberate attempt to tamper with the vehicle. In case of the latter, it would activate a receiver in the driver's handheld keying device, notifying him of the attempted breach.
No such alarm had been tripped during the night watch. Jack switched on the keying device, electronically unlocking the car.
He opened the door, stepping into a blast of heat. The SUV had been locked up tight all night, windows sealed shut. Inside it felt as hot as a pizza oven.
Jack, dehydrated and gasping, fired up the engine. It started right up, with a thrum of power. Smooth and potent. He lowered the windows to let out some of the heat and turned the air conditioner on full blast.
He angled the SUV out from between the two cars it was parked between and into the street. He turned right at the corner, going east along Bourbon, rolling past Fairview Street and the Golden Pole.
He cruised along, his search pattern an ever-expanding spiral whose center was the club building. Sticking his head out the open window on the driver's side, he peered into cross alleys, low-walled courts, recessed doorways, and similar places that offered cover to a fugitive.
He had two goals. Vikki was his primary objective, but he also kept an eye out for Paz. The Colonel had fled the scene on foot, too. He'd made his way south of the club, across Bourbon Street and beyond. Vikki had begun her flight by heading north.
He used his scrambled, comm-secure cell phone to contact CTU Gulf Coast Regional.
The Center was sited outside the city proper, New Orleans being a below-sea-level bowl bordered on the north by Lake Pontchartrain and the south by the Mississippi River. The facility was south of the river on the opposite shore, safely planted on high ground in Algiers, avoiding the danger of being trapped in the flooded bowl of the city, in the event of a reprise of an event like Katrina. A point that had now become more than academic, with Hurricane Everette churning its way across the Gulf on a course that was New Orleans-bound.
He drove with one hand on the wheel, the other holding the cell to the side of his head, his head craning out the open window, peering up and down various side streets, alleys, and footpaths in search of Vikki or Paz.
'Jack Bauer here.'
A comm-sys operator at CTU GCR Center said, 'Your call is being switched to Director Randolph.'
Jack hadn't requested to speak to Randolph, he was just reporting in, but Randolph had some ideas of his own. The director was already up to speed on the Golden Pole massacre, having already been briefed by Pete Malo.
Randolph said, 'We've got a forensics team and every available backup unit dispatched to the scene. They'll be there any minute now.'
'They'll be needed. It's one unholy mess out there.'
'What happened, Jack? How do you read it?'
'Somebody tried to liquidate Paz and botched the job. It was a professional job, a pretty slick setup. Unfortunately for them, Paz was slicker. And they had the bad luck to shoot their move when Pete and I were on the scene. They didn't know we were there, and got caught in a crossfire between us and Paz.'
Randolph tsk-tsked. 'Lord! This is the kind of thing you expect to find in Iraq or some banana republic, not in the United States of America. New Orleans is already on edge that Everette's going to swat it. An incident like this — well, it's the last thing we or the city needs right now.'
Jack said, 'I guess there's never a good time for a massacre.'
'It's going to raise a big stink, Jack.'
'Maybe the storm will wash it away.'
3. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 7 A.M. AND 8 A.M. CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME
Because of the shape it takes, sandwiched between the lake and the river, New Orleans is known as the Crescent City.
On the other side of the world, the capital of the kingdom of Saudi Arabia, Riyadh, could fairly be called a 'city of the crescent' — said crescent being the holy symbol of the faith of Islam.
Chance — or destiny — has seen fit to locate the world's richest sea of high-grade oil under the kingdom's desert sands. Petro-power has made it one of world's supreme wealth generators, whose power and influence has been a major geopolitical factor for the last half century and more. And whose economic and political clout can only increase, as world demand for oil inexorably rises as existing reserves steadily shrink.
Riyadh is a showcase for Arabian oil riches, a wonder city reared up in a desert wasteland, a vast, sprawling technopolis of skyscrapers and palaces, its modernistic urban complexes knit together by a network of superhighways.
There is luxury in Riyadh, opulence. Supreme master of the city and all the kingdom is the inner circle of the royal family of the House of Saud, a ruling cadre numbering several hundred individuals. They seek luxury and splendor the way flowering plants turn their faces to the sun.
But not the twelve men who now met in solemn conclave in the conference hall at an obscure substation of the Ministry of the Interior, located at the inland edge of the city, the borderland where the great desert begins.
Their rank and power entitled them to sit in the most august and respected precincts of power, but instead they preferred to assemble in the relative obscurity and anonymity of a minor office complex on the outskirts of the megalopolis.
It was safer that way. Their mission was a dangerous one, best shielded in secrecy.
The building was unprepossessing, one of the Ministry's more modest holdings. No lofty glass and steel needle tower, it was wide, squat, low-slung, and built close to the ground. It fronted south, its east wing facing the city, its west wing facing the dark immensity of the mainland, of vast stony plains marching inland to depths of desert solitudes.
The structure was integrated closely into the landscape, so that it seemed to be an outcropping of the hill on which it was set. There was something in its form suggestive of ancient stone forts and castles, updated to the modern era. A pile of tan and sandy vertical and horizontal slabs of stone and steel-reinforced concrete, with narrow, slitted windows. Arrays of satellite dishes mushroomed atop its flat roof.
On the third, top floor, in a conference room, the Special Council met. The meeting place had the aspect of a corporate boardroom. A rectangular wooden table, long and slender, occupied the central axis of the space. Grouped around it was an oval ring of high-backed swivel chairs. Occupying those chairs were the twelve members of the special committee.
