walkway overlooking the sunken area where the fuel tanks were located. The sunken area was five feet below floor level with sets of stairs at each corner and bordered by a waist-high rail fence.
The far door was wide open. Jack hustled Pettibone through it, following at his heels. Griff and Rowdy were a pace or two behind.
A man on the walkway was starting toward the vestibule at the same time. He was Loogan, one of Weld’s men. He’d been posted to secure the exit and had heard the sound of movement behind the inner door. He was advancing on it as Pettibone, with Jack behind him, came rushing out.
Loogan fired, his silenced SMG sounding a whispered stutter as it loosed a burst into Pettibone’s middle. Pettibone fell back, writhing against Jack as the slugs tore into him. His last conscious act in this world was to serve as an unwitting, unwilling human shield for Jack Bauer, catching the full measure of Loogan’s triggered slugs.
Jack got his gun hand free and returned fire, stitching Loogan up the middle of the chest. Loogan dropped, his weapon clattering against the walkway. The telltale sound was lost in the vastness of the space, drowned out by the background noise of throbbing pumps and creaking pipes.
Jack eased Pettibone to the floor and stepped around him. Pettibone’s popping eyes stared sightless and unblinking as he sprawled inert on the walkway.
Griff and Rowdy came barreling out of the vestibule. Jack held a finger to his lips, signaling for silence. The bikers halted, charged up, kill- ready. The walkway overlooked a long side of the sunken floor, running parallel to the long axis of the nearest tank.
Jack said in stage whisper, “I’ll go down here and come on them from under the tank. You go around and pin them from opposite ends.” They nodded.
Jack clambered over the guardrail and dropped cat-footed to the sunken floor five feet below. Griff and Rowdy were in motion, scrambling in opposite directions, hustling toward the corners of the tank pit.
Jack slipped across the space to the first tank with shadow stealth. The rigging under the tank was a webwork of black metal beams, braces, and diagonals. The underside of the tank was held suspended in its steel cradle about four feet above the floor. He ducked under the outside rail and began moving forward in a crouch, bent almost double, picking his way through the labyrinth of the undercarriage.
He went as fast as he could but his progress seemed maddeningly slow, with time measured out in every pounding heartbeat. His whole body quivered in anticipation of a shout, a shot, or a scream that would alert his prey to the fact that they were being stalked and hunted.
The steel net let light pass through it screened through a tangle of black beams. He stepped over some, ducked under others. The swelling curve of the cylindrical tank pressed downward as he neared midpoint, forcing him to drop to hands and knees to proceed. He banged his knees, barked his shins, bruised his elbows, and bumped his head in his hurry to gain ground.
The ceiling lifted as the midpoint was left behind and the tank curved upward. The smell of fuel oil was thick in his nostrils and mouth; he could taste it. The layers of cross-bracing between him and his goal thinned, allowing him to see more of the gap between the tank he was under and the one in the middle.
Silhouetted forms flashed ahead and to the right of him. The rise and fall of voices made themselves heard over the pounding of his own pulse that throbbed in his eardrums. Jack forced himself to slow down though it was torturous to fight the overpowering urge to rush into battle. The setup was all- important and he had to be in the optimum position before cutting loose. A misstep could be fatal not only to him but to hundreds of innocent lives.
He hoped with all his being that Rowdy and Griff were taking similar pains. No outcry or outburst had sounded as yet so perhaps they were. Jack couldn’t wait for them to shoot a move, though; he had to seize and keep the initiative.
The trio came into his view, grouped in the open area between the tanks and a dozen paces to his left. He crept forward, inching closer.
Reb Weld with his signature platinum- blond crew cut stood a half a head taller than his sideman, a chunky character with a brown rooster-tail haircut. They both stood watching a third man who knelt hunched over on the floor with the master timer in one hand and the exposed copper wiring of the trunk cable bundling all three detonator wires to the different sets of charges in his other hand.
Jack Bauer went down on one knee, resting the silenced muzzle of his SMG in the V made by the intersection of two cross-braces to steady his aim as he lined up the sight posts on the skull of the explosives expert. He set the selector to single shot for better accuracy and rechecked his alignment to make sure he was on target.
Weld was bickering with the demolitions man. The expert was saying sarcastically, “Thank you very much, that will be deeply appreciated.”
Jack squeezed the trigger.
A single cough sounded simultaneously with the top of Al Baranco’s cranium flying apart. The explosives expert’s head was haloed by the corona of pink mist indicative of a brain being blown to pieces.
A perfect head shot, drilling the brain, switching off all neuro-muscular reflexes and reactions, ensuring that Baranco would cease to exist without so much as a twitch.
Things happened fast after that.
Somewhere on one of the walkways there was a startled outcry of pain, a stuttering exchange of gunfire, and a scream.
Al Baranco dropped. Reb Weld and Graham recoiled from the stinging spray of disintegrated bits of bone and brain matter that had spattered them when the slug fragmented Baranco’s head above the ears.
Jack flipped the selector to autofire. Graham stood between him and Weld. Jack fired a burst that chopped Graham. Graham threw up his hands over his head and shrieked as the legs were cut out from under him.
Reb Weld was quick! He dove forward away from the gunfire, going into a roll and tumbling out of it before Graham hit the floor. He leaped to his feet and lunged sideways, gaining the cover of one end of the oil tank behind him for protection.
Jack snaked out from under the tank, standing upright in the gap between the tanks. Graham lay rolling around on the floor, beating his hands against the upper thighs of his now useless legs as if they were on fire. Jack stood over him, firing a quick burst into Graham’s chest. That switched Graham off but Jack put a few more into his head to be sure.
Reb Weld was racing toward the wall at the end of the sunken floor when Griff popped up at the railing of the walkway above. Both men opened fire at the same time.
Griff missed but Weld didn’t, tagging the biker twice. Griff went over backward. Weld tossed back his head and gave a rebel yell of exaltation as he reached the wall and jumped up grabbing for the guardrail.
Jack’s burst caught Weld in the back in midair. Weld fell back, crashing to the sunken floor. The SMG fell from his grip and went skittering away from him, out of his reach. Weld rose on his elbows, a bloody smear marking the floor where his back had touched it. He reached for his waistband, clawing at the butt of a gun tucked in the top of his pants.
Jack advanced on Weld, methodically spraying him with autofire. Weld flopped around as the bullets ventilated him.
He weltered in his own gore, tiger-striped with blood. He raised the back of his head off the floor, neck muscles cording and quivering from the strain of trying to see who had done him in.
Griff rose to his knees on the walkway, clutching the rail to keep from falling while he watched Weld’s finish.
Jack moved so Weld could see his killer. Weld’s eyes widened, then narrowed as he recognized the CTU agent he’d come face-to- face with in the clearing on Pine Ridge before fate had taken a hand by intervening in the form of a charging bear.
He mouthed the word, “You!”
Jack Bauer said, “The Hellbenders send their regards.”
He delivered the coup to de grace to Reb Weld:
A head shot.
Griff had caught two slugs, one in the right side and the other in the left shoulder. He draped his arms over the bottom rail to hold his upper body upright while he stared down at a torn and bloody carcass that used to be Reb Weld.
He held out a red hand to ward off Jack when the latter moved to help him. He managed to choke out a few
