bars. It was easier to get around now that he had one hand free.
Griff fitted the key into the lock and jiggled around with it. “Wait a minute — wait a minute — there, I got it!” There was a click and the cuff opened, falling away from Jack’s wrist.
Jack flexed both hands, clenching and unclenching his fists as the feeling returned to them. The sharp edge of it chased away the fog of haziness that shrouded his awareness and sought to pull him down into the sweet, pain- free oblivion of unconsciousness.
An oblivion that might prove permanent if indulged in, he reminded himself. Mr. Pettibone was coming.
Griff urged, “Don’t fade on us now, dude. We’re so close to making the breakout.”
Jack said, “I’m good.”
“Okay. The key to the cell is on a big ring hanging on a hook behind the front desk. You can’t miss it.”
Jack grabbed the cell bars with both hands and pulled himself out of the chair to his feet. He lurched, almost losing his footing but regaining it before he went over. He stood there clutching the bars. Griff’s mouth was moving but the words seemed to come from the bottom of a deep well — or was it the top? They were hollow and echoing in any case, mixing with the sound of crashing surf rising in his ears that threatened to overwhelm him.
Jack stood there until the spell of weakness passed and he could make out Griff saying, “Are you okay? You okay, man?”
Jack said, “Yeah.” He put his hand against the wall to steady himself as he walked step by step from the cell to the front desk. He was stiff-legged and halting at first but grew surer and more certain with each step. The front desk was on a kind of dais that nearly tripped him when he stepped up onto it but he staggered to the desk and rested both fists on the desktop and leaned forward until the pounding in his head went away.
He went behind the desk and tore open a drawer. Griff called urgently across the room, “Not there, Jack! The keys are on a hook on the wall behind you!”
Jack said, “Hey man, chill.” That surprised Griff so that he shut up for a minute. Jack reached into the drawer, reaching for his gun. It lay on its side on top of a pile of hardware that included guns, knives, brass knuckles, blackjacks, and other goodies.
The gun felt good in his hand, he liked the heft and weight and balance of it. He seemed to drew strength from it, like a parched plant soaking up moisture.
He fitted the gun in his shoulder sling. It felt nice nestled down below his left arm.
The key ring was where Griff had said it would be, on a ring on a peg sticking out of a plaque mounted on the wall behind the desk. The oversized ring was a steel hoop as wide in diameter as a pie tin, and when Jack saw the key he thought that little had changed over the centuries when it came to keeping prisoners penned in cells because the key looked like it could have unlocked a medieval dungeon. It had an eight-inch-long bolt with a notched and grooved rectangle at the tip and a solid steel loop at the end.
Jack went with the key to the cell. His progress was better. He never came close to blacking out and he staggered and almost fell only once.
Griff and Rowdy eyed his approach with silent wariness. Griff had a sharp-featured face with long, narrow, slitted green eyes, a beaky nose and pointed chin. Rowdy’s forehead was as wrinkled as an elephant’s knee, the result of deep thought. He said, “You ain’t no cop, Jack. What are you — a hit man?”
Jack realized that coming from Rowdy that was a compliment. He said, “No, I’m a secret agent.” It was more complicated than that but he gave them a short version they could wrap their heads around. They didn’t necessarily believe him but at least they could understand him.
He stuck the key into the cell lock. The steel loop at the end was big enough for him to fit his fingers around and use for a hand grip. He needed it, too, to turn the lock and unseal its reluctant internal mechanism. Bolts and tumblers fell into place with a thud and then the door opened.
Jack got out of the way to avoid being trampled by the two bikers in their eagerness to be free of the cell. They whooped it up. Jack figured it was best to let them get it out of their systems before he made his pitch.
Griff wasted little time on euphoria, hurrying to Sharon Stallings’s corpse to pry the unfired.357 from her hand. He hefted it, saying, “Nice piece! The gun, I mean.”
Jack said, “There’s an open drawer in the front desk that has some of your stuff in it, I think.”
Griff and Rowdy went to it, pulling the weapons out and laying them on the desk. Rowdy picked up a snub- nosed.38 special and eyed it with the tender regard of a schoolgirl for a warm puppy. “I never thought I’d see this again!” He explained, “It’s got sentimental value. I took it off some plainclothes cop I beat the shit out of.”
Griff brandished a commando knife the size of a small sword. It was razor sharp with a grooved blood vein on either side. “My Arkansaw toothpick!”
Jack thought that if they didn’t know it already, when they found out their bikes were in the garage they’d be like a couple of kids on Christmas morning. Now was the time to start working his pitch. He said, “Why fool around with that when you can raid the substation’s armory? There’s sure to be one here and the keys are probably somewhere in the desk.”
Griff stopped waving the knife in the air to eye Jack with crafty calculation. “I don’t get you, Jack. You look like a straight citizen but you’re a stone killer. What’s your angle? I mean, where do you fit in with all this anyway?”
“I told you, I’m a secret agent.”
“Bullshit—”
“I’m also your key to Reb Weld.”
That got them. Saying the name was like invoking the magic word. Griff and Rowdy stopped dead in their tracks, exchanging poker-faced glances. The mood in the air was delicate, hanging by a thread. Their hunting instinct was on full alert and one wrong word, one misstep could trigger a mutually slaughterous gun-down.
Griff said, too casual, “I don’t believe I caught that name.”
Jack said, “Now who’s bullshitting? Reb Weld. A name I’m not likely to forget because he’s tried to kill me several times today. I’ve got a feeling it means something special to you, too. You boys better stick close and make sure nothing happens to me because I’m your one way of finding the Rebel and cashing in on that fifty-thousand- dollar bounty on his head.”
Griff and Rowdy stood there poised on the razor’s edge not knowing which way to jump, torn between greed and suspicion. Jack worked on their greed. “I’ll give you the short version. You may have heard that there’s a millionaires’ convention being held not far from here.”
Rowdy said, “Yeah, we heard of it. Impossible not to with all the cops it draws; they’ve really been cramping our style.”
“Reb’s being paid to wreck the party. My job is to stop him. You want him, too. He betrayed your outfit and sold out his club brothers so he could skip with the proceeds on their gunrunning racket.”
Griff got huffy. “That’s not a job to us — it’s a sacred trust.”
Jack said, “Yeah, with a fifty-thousand- dollar payday. We both want Reb Weld chopped for different reasons. I know how to find him. What’s more, I can square this cop-killing beef so that you’ll never catch any heat for it.”
“You talk big.”
“I can deliver. We’re all in on this double kill together. You know there’s not an undercover cop in the U.S. that could tie into that kind of action and ever testify about it in court.”
Rowdy said, “That’s right, Griff—”
“Shut up and let me think. Who the hell are you, dude?”
Jack said, “I could show you a card that identifies me as a member of the Counter Terrorist Unit but anybody can get a fake ID. You’ve seen me in action, I’ve seen you in action. I’m not asking you to take it on faith. If I can’t deliver Weld, there’s two of you and one of me. You’re not afraid, are you?” Griff tsk-tsked. “That’s low, Jack. No need to get insulting.”
Rowdy said piously, “The ’Benders fear no man!”
Jack said, “That’s what I’m counting on. We can talk about the deal while we’re cracking into the armory. We’re going to need some heavy firepower quick and time’s running out.”
Pettibone wouldn’t talk. He was the stubborn type. Also maybe a little bit stupid because there was no mistaking that Jack Bauer and his two biker allies meant business.
Jack said, “The trouble is he’s more afraid of Weld than he is of us.”
Griff said, “I’ll fix that.”
