from the truck tipped the scales and sent it tumbling off the precipice.
Taggart had stopped screaming but Hardin didn’t notice it because he was too busy screaming himself. He screamed all the way down until the car hit a rocky outcropping four or five hundred feet below.
The car bounced off it like a kicked football, sailing into the void for another thousand feet before hitting bottom.
The truck rolled backward away from the edge deeper into the parking lot and halted. Jack Bauer put it into park, unfastened his safety harness, opened the driver’s side door, and slid out from behind the steering wheel. He rose, holding on to the side, standing half- in and half-out of the truck cab.
Griff and Rowdy ran out from behind the substation where they’d been hiding and watching. They thought it was a hell of a show and whooped and hollered to show their appreciation.
Jack was oblivious of them, having eyes only for the spot where the car with Hardin and Taggart had gone over the edge. He said, “Adios, amigos. No hard feelings.”
He was lying.
21. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 11 P.M. AND 12 A.M. MOUNTAIN DAYLIGHT TIME
Jack Bauer made the mistake of assuming.
Pettibone had told Hardin and Taggart earlier that he’d be taking Jack to Winnetou. Jack had assumed that Winnetou was a code name for someone big, a major player in the Sky Mount strike, possibly even Reb Weld’s boss. That Weld had a boss was never in doubt in Jack’s mind. The Rebel could never have put an operation like this together in a million years. He lacked the brains, money, and connections. Weld was strictly a hired hand in this deal. Maybe Winnetou was the hidden hand, the shadowy mastermind behind the conspiracy.
Now Jack knew that Winnetou was not a person but a place, a onetime summer camp that had stood shuttered and abandoned for thirty years. It lay in a park just north of Sky Mount, a narrow cleft in the mid-slopes of Thunder Mountain, third and northernmost of the trinity of peaks bordering the estate, Mounts Nagaii and Zebulon being the other two.
A mass of foliage screened the entrance to the dirt road connecting the site with Masterman Way. “Screened” was the word for it because the path wasn’t as overgrown as it looked when seen from the paved road. It was camouflaged behind a pair of screens eight feet on a side that were made of chicken wire strung on a wooden framework and hung with bunches of leafy branches to give the impression of a wall of unbroken brush.
They were not unlike the canvas flats that are used in theaters onstage to create the illusion of a scenic background. They were light enough to be handled by one man.
They were rolled back now, pushed out of the way to allow access to the campsite that lay hidden within the woods. It would have been easy to miss the entrance even if they hadn’t been there. The trees lining both sides of the path met in an archway above it, their dark boughs interlaced to form a canopy of foliage. The path drove through them like a tunnel, a tunnel whose mouth was sheltered by the real brush hemming it in at both sides.
A pair of metal gateposts each three feet high stood set back a few feet into the passage. The chain that linked them to prevent access now lay flat on the ground. So did the sentry who’d been posted here, whose duty was to keep watch and work the screens and chain to permit the exit and entry of authorized persons.
Pettibone was authorized to engage in such comings and goings. He’d been expected tonight. The pickup truck had halted at the entrance, and the sentry had come out to move aside the camouflaged screens to allow its entry. Griff had been there lurking in the brush, and he crept up behind the sentry and clapped a hand over his mouth to stifle any outcry while he cut his throat. Griff was handy with a knife and he liked the action.
He wiped the blade clean with a handful of leaves and returned the knife to the belt sheath that hung down the side of his left hip. He ran south along the paved road for fifty yards or so before coming to the place where he’d left his bike, a break in the undergrowth where Rowdy sat waiting on his motorcycle.
The bikers kick-started their machines, powerful Harley engines coming alive with a growl of power. Their headlights were dark as they rode to the entrance of the passage.
Jack Bauer sat there behind the wheel of the pickup truck. The slab of steel plate armoring the truck’s front was hardly nicked or dented, seemingly impervious to the effects of this day’s labors in demolishing three cars: Brad Oliver’s vehicle, Jack’s CTU Mercedes, and Hardin and Taggart’s patrol car. It was a real Deathmobile.
Now Jack was in the driver’s seat. He wore his gun holstered under his left arm and a second sidearm in a gun belt holstered on his right hip. The latter was a big.357 that had been provided courtesy of the Mountain Lake substation’s armory. A fully-loaded sawed-off twelve-gauge riot shotgun from the same source lay on the passenger seat beside him. It was secured by the seat belt harness. The left side pocket of Jack’s coat held spare clips for his pistol, the right held extra shotgun shells.
Griff and Rowdy had also augmented their own firepower with arms and ammo from the armory. Rowdy had a riot shotgun wedged muzzle-down in a hard saddle bucket on the Harley’s right side, its butt end nestled against the inside rail of the protective A-bar that was bolted to the top of the back of the seat to serve as a backrest.
Griff sported a pair of.357s. The weapons were in their gun belts, which he wore not at the hips but across his neck and over his shoulders with the holstered pieces nestled butt-out under his arms. The gun belts crossed over his chest and upper back, making a pair of Xs. A bandana was worn knotted across the top of his head to keep his long hair out of his face during the action. The bandana and crossed gun belts heightened his resemblance to an old-time bandito but he rode an iron horse rather than one of the flesh-and-blood variety.
Jack waited for them to join him. He’d warned them of the danger of the green gas and given each of them a slapshot ampoule containing the antidote. The ampoule was in a syrette, a mini-syringe designed for battlefield use. A person exposed to the gas must remove the hypodermic needle’s protective plastic cap, jab the spike into the upper thigh, and plunge the thruster home. The needle was tough and able to go straight through pants or other garments when driven into the flesh, a vital time-saving attribute where chemical weapons were involved and every second counted. Jack found himself hoping the bikers wouldn’t try it out just to see what kind of a buzz it would give them.
Jack was not alone in the truck cab. Pettibone was there, too. He sat on the floor with his hands cuffed behind him and a second set of cuffs manacling his ankles. He was so skinny that the bracelets easily encircled the bottoms of his pipestem legs. A noose was snugged around his neck, its opposite end tied to the bottom of the passenger side seat. He was left ungagged; from here on in he could make as much noise as he liked. A locker at the substation had yielded a shirt, which now clothed his upper body.
He was silent, perhaps in reaction to the session earlier when he’d spewed a torrent of words, telling about the base camp at Winnetou, its hidden entrance, sentry, and layout. He’d rattled on about Weld, BZ, and the diabolical plan set to be unleashed at zero hour. He now seemed broken but Jack was taking no chances in case Pettibone had misled him or withheld some vital piece of information. Pettibone was going along for the ride and would share in the consequences of any treachery he might have up his sleeve.
The bikers pulled up on either side of the truck cab, Griff on Jack’s left and Rowdy on his right. The rumble of their Harleys chorused with the heavy throb of the pickup’s powerful motor.
Jack said, “I’ll go in first down the middle, you two come in after and take them on the flanks.”
Griff looked up at him, impatient. “We know the plan, dude.”
Rowdy said, “Let’s get it on!”
Jack prodded Pettibone with his boot toe, causing him to look up. Jack said, “Any last-minute information you’d like to volunteer? Because your neck is on the line as much as anyone’s.”
Pettibone shook his head. Jack pressed, “Nothing you’re holding back?”
Pettibone said dully, “You’ve got it all.”
Jack called out through the open windows, “All set?” He looked right, looked left. Rowdy nodded and Griff gave him a thumbs- up.
Jack worked the stick, shifting it into gear. The truck lurched forward. He hit the high beams, filling the leafy archway with bright light. A pair of rutted tracks grooved the ground where other vehicles had been before. The
