sentences between gasps and stifled groans.
Griff said, “I’ll make it — Rowdy must’ve ran into trouble — check on him… The big slob was never any good without me.”
He added after a pause, “I’ll stay here and enjoy the scenery.”
Rowdy had run into trouble. He sat on the opposite walkway, back propped upright against the wall. His right arm was at his side, outstretched at the elbow, his hand wrapped around the grip of a still- smoking SMG. His midsection was a red ruin of an anatomy lesson. His left hand held his insides back from tumbling out.
Incredibly he still lived, awareness in his eyes as Jack went to him.
A body lay nearby, twisted in the angular contortions of violent death: the last member of Reb Weld’s elite hit team. He lay facedown, reaching for a crate of BZ gas grenades that lay inches short of the fingertips of his clutching hand. A shiny sheet-metal, square-sided length of duct conduit piping was bolted vertically to the wall above the crate, its scooped- mouth bottom covered by a metal grille and hanging two or three feet above the top of the grenade-laden box.
It was the intake port of a ventilator air shaft. Jack Bauer could feel the suction of air currents being drawn upward into its mouth and away through the piping to be carried through the precincts of the mansion above ground.
Jack moved the crate a man’s length away from the intake port. A wad of C–4 plastic explosive was wedged into the bottom of the crate, wires trailing up from it and over the side waiting for a timing device to be attached. He gingerly disengaged the tip of the detonator cord from the puttylike mass, disarming it and setting the cord a safe distance away from the crate.
He hunkered down beside Rowdy, leaning forward to catch the big biker’s last words. Rowdy said, “Bad luck — he got me before I could get him. Thought I was dead… got a big surprise when he found out I wasn’t…”
His tired eyes cut a glance toward the BZ crate. “Guess you found what you wanted, dude…”
He breathed something that Jack was barely able to make out: “Valhalla is calling— ”
His last breath.
Jack Bauer defanged the plastic explosives rigged to the fuel tanks, pulling the detonator cords, gathering them up, and depositing them in a safe place on the walkway. He went to see what he could do for Griff. Griff was sitting up, holding a wadded bandana against the wound in his side and using it for a compress.
He said, “Rowdy…?”
Jack said, “He got his man before he died.”
Griff nodded. “He went out Hellbender style then.”
“That he did. I’ll get help. Don’t shoot any of my people when they come down here to secure the site.”
“I’ll try not to.”
Jack opened his mouth to say something, but before he could, Griff said, “That’s a joke, man. Just pulling your chain… go do what you have to do, I’m okay.”
Jack started to walk away. Griff called after him, “Kill ’em all!” Jack turned, said, “I’ll do my best.” He moved on.
He went to a stairwell that accessed the next level. He found a morbid surprise at the foot of it. Two bodies lay there where Weld and his crew had put them, undoubtedly intending to come back and carry them topside to the surface and plant them somewhere on the grounds to be found and scapegoated in the aftermath of the horrific hellfire that turned out not to be.
They were the cadavers of Abelson Prewitt and Ingrid Thaler, the grandmaster of the cult of the Zealots and his faithful second- in-command. The bodies were cold to the touch — icy — frozen.
Another piece of the puzzle had fallen into place.
Jack Bauer loaded a fresh clip into his SMG before beginning the long, wearying climb upstairs to the surface.
Don Bass exited a side door in the mansion, hurrying along a flagstone path that curved through silent, nighted gardens toward the guesthouse that served as the command center for the Brand Security Agency cadre overseeing the corps of uniformed and plainclothes guards now on duty on the graveyard shift.
Sleep and the security chief were strangers. Bass’s wavy hair stood out in tufts. His eyes were red embers buried deep in hollow, purple- bruised sockets. His movements were stiff-legged, zombielike as he forced himself to scurry at quick time toward the guesthouse turned guardhouse.
A figure stood outlined in the open front doorway waiting for him. It was Larry Noone, Bass’s top man and figurative right hand, the man whose urgent phone call summoning his boss had jarred Bass out of fitful light sleep and back into action on the double.
Bass was not so tired, however, that he failed to notice the white armband prominently pinned to the upper arm of Noone’s navy blazer. Bass paused at the threshold, clutching the insides of the doorframe with both hands for support while he tried to catch the breath that his hasty arrival had stolen from him.
An expression of concern marked Noone’s face. “Are you all right, Chief?”
Bass blustered it out, barking, “Certainly! Just a little winded, that’s all. I hustled over here after I got your call. Sounded urgent. What’s up?”
Noone said, “Come in and I’ll tell you.”
Bass marched into the front hall, turning left to follow Noone down a short corridor. The heart of the command center lay on the other side of a closed door at the passage’s end, in a room that was an electronic nerve nexus of computerized consoles whose multiscreens imaged real-time feedback from the array of closed-circuit automated TV cameras that kept the mansion and estate under constant surveillance. A graveyard shift of six top operatives would be posted at the monitors, orchestrating the flexible and adaptive Brand Security defense posture.
Bass, frowning, said, “What’s with the white brassard, Larry? It’s unauthorized as far as I know.”
Noone glanced over his shoulder, flashing an enigmatic half smile. “Change of policy.”
Bass’s frown deepened. He was a stickler for detail. He said, “That’s news to me and I set dress code policy.”
Noone paused with his hand on the doorknob. “Step right in, Chief, and it will all be explained to you.” He opened the door partway, standing aside so Bass could pass him and enter.
Bass was through the doorway and a half-dozen paces inside the command center before the horror of what he saw registered on his benumbed mind.
It was the scene of a massacre. All six board operators, male and female alike, lay strewn about the room in the places where sudden death had found them. Their bullet- riddled bodies bore wounds so numerous that they could only have been inflicted by an automatic weapon. They were torn and tattered. Blood was everywhere. Walls and consoles were cratered with bullet holes.
Don Bass was struck dumb, paralyzed with shock. A timeless interval passed before he drew a shuddering breath. His heart started beating again, hammering with a wild percussive rhythm.
Somehow he managed to turn around and face Larry Noone. Bass was surprised to find that he was not surprised at all to discover his second- in-command pointing a leveled machine pistol at him. There was a certain pride that his deductive and analytical faculties had not deserted him in the fractional span of life left remaining to him to glory in their possession. Noone had to be the killer; his bland demeanor in the face of such carnage proved it.
A distant part of Bass’s mind kept on working, noting that the machine pistol was fitted with a suppressor to silence its workings. It would have to be, since it was the weapon that Noone had used to treacherously slay the comrades and coworkers who trusted him without betraying the deed to the numerous guards stationed on the estate.
Don Bass asked only a single question: “Why?”
Noone shrugged, quirking a whimsical smile. There was an oddly elfin aspect to the big man, with his too- large knowing eyes, mouth upturned at the corners, and slightly pointed chin. Don Bass realized that the person he’d worked with, played with, and with whom he’d shared a good part of his adult professional and personal life was a complete stranger to him.
Noone said, “Call it a coup d’etat. Change of power. I’m in. You’re out. Way out.” He held the gun pointed so it would shoot Bass in the belly where it hurt the most.
He said, “Christ! You can’t imagine how long I’ve waited for this day — this night — this moment. I’m
