“Yes,” he replied. “But only because of what I heard in there.” He thought again of the sheer terror in Ramin’s voice, the fear that did not allow for lies. “I know you hate me, Nazila, but just for a minute put yourself in my position. Finding terrorists is my job. And all of them, and all the people associated with them, lie all the time. Every one of them lies, and some of them are dressed up like normal people, like professors and grad students and journalists. It isn’t enough for me to have someone, even someone like you, say that he’s not a terrorist. I need proof, and it’s my job to keep working until I get that proof. Because if I stop too early, then somewhere in the world, maybe right here in Los Angeles, people die. If I had gone in there right away, then Ramin would end up right now in a holding cell being questioned by our people.”
The girl touched her fingertips to her mouth. “Are you saying…are you saying that won’t happen now? That he can go free?”
Jack shook his head. “I’m sure they’ll want to question him. But they won’t put pressure on him. I’ll tell my people what I’ve learned, and he should be okay.”
Nazila’s shoulders dropped, and tension seemed to leave her as though exorcised from her body. But just as quickly, new worry filled her. “Am I. in trouble for lying? My father—”
Jack had considered that already. That would be up to Ryan Chappelle, not him, and Chappelle was a vindictive ass. He might pursue them for obstruction of justice simply for denying that they knew where Ramin was. But the truth was that the only person with a right to be angry was Jack himself. He’d pushed Ibrahim Rafizadeh to the extreme, sensing (correctly, it turned out) there was more to his story, only to get slapped down by his own department and sent into CTU exile. But of course during his exile he had already foiled an incident of domestic terrorism and come around full circle to the same leads that had made him an outcast. It was like a puzzle he’d finished by accident — completed but unsatisfying.
He struggled for something to say, caught unexpectedly in a maelstrom of emotions — compassion for her, anger at her deception, guilt in realizing that Ramin was probably innocent despite everything, primal anger at being shot at by the Greater Nation.
He looked at Nazila, who was already staring up at him, her dark eyes soft and deep. She watched him as though his emotional struggle was a drama played out clearly across his face. The warmth of her look gave him pause. He was a reader of looks and moods — it was vital to his profession. A poker player read bluffs, a psychologist probed for the secret release of emotions. Jack read the change of expression, the hardening of an eye that preceded the drawing of a gun or the start of a lie. In his career, he had read the looks of killers, madmen, and patriots. The expression on Nazila’s face was one he had not seen, at least not in a long, long time. She offered him a warmth that was more pure than compassion or sympathy. It was understanding. And in that moment Jack, who had wanted only to alter her emotional state, found himself being altered. He had not had someone, not even his wife, bless him with that look of pure, unconditional understanding, in as long as he could remember.
“You have a hard job,” she said at last.
Two black SUVs had rolled up at that moment, saving him from a response.
He pushed his emotions deep below the surface. “These guys will take you back to CTU headquarters. I’ll phone ahead. They’ll know what’s going on by the time you arrive. I’m going to get your father.” The words were a promise.
He reached Culver City at last, armed and ready to fulfill that promise. The field agent who’d picked him up had handed him a shotgun, which he checked quickly while she drove. She was a young agent named Lzolski, which was, for reasons inexplicable to Jack, pronounced “Wuh-zow-skee.”
“Who’s there?” Jack asked her.
“Two of our guys — Paulson and Nina Myers — and LAPD is rolling in quiet as back up. Our ETA is three minutes, give or take the traffic,” Lzolski said. “Any idea what’s in there?”
“Greater Nation,” Jack said. “It’s a militia group.”
“Militia group?” Lzolski said. “That’s so nineties.”
They pulled to the curb a half block from the address. The street was a middle-class setting straight off a 1950 city planner’s desk: a row of bungalows with trim lawns and walkways leading to front doors under small canopies, some of which were still made of the original painted aluminum. The two other CTU agents melted out of the shadows to join them.
“Nina,” Jack said for a hello. “Ready to join the party?”
“I’m a party girl,” she said with a grin.
Jack summarized quickly. “Unknown number of suspects are holding a hostage, an old man named Ibrahim Rafizadeh. Suspects will for certain be white males. Expect all of them to be armed, expect all of them to put up a fight. They’re all Timothy McVeigh types,” he added, referring to the notorious Oklahoma City bomber.
Nina asked, “Didn’t most of them give up this morning?”
“A lot of them were weekend warriors who didn’t like it when the shooting started. These here are the ones who put up a fight and got away.” He was thinking of Frank Newhouse. “They’re carrying out their mission even though their glorious leader is in the tank. Don’t get me wrong, I want them all alive if possible. But I want all of you alive more, so go in ready to put them down.”
Paulson, a field agent as short and wide as a fireplug, said, “Should we just wait them out? Call in the negotiators?”
Jack shook his head. “No time. I had it out with part of their team this morning. If this group doesn’t get a call in—” he checked his watch—“five minutes, they kill their hostage. You two go up the back way. Lzolski, you and I will go in the front door. Okay? Go.”
It was Jack’s third combat mission of the morning. He was already tired and irritable. As he approached the house he nearly tripped over a broken section of sidewalk raised by a tree root. He swore to himself. No one should go this long without sleep or rest. He hoped he never had to do it again.
Jack didn’t have a plan. But he also didn’t have any time. In
“What the—?” Lzolski sputtered, since this particular tactic had not been presented in any academy she’d ever attended.
Jack entered the house behind the muzzle of his SigSauer as a big blond man with a shaggy mustache came lumbering from the hallway off the living room. Jack swept the muzzle toward him him and said, “Down!” The man pulled up short, practically filling the hallway. “Down,” Jack cautioned.
“Company!” the blond giant said. He raised his right arm, and Jack fired three times. The first two rounds vanished in his chest. He fell fast for a big man, and the third round passed over his slumping shoulders and blew a hole in a door at the end of the hall. Jack moved down steadily, hoping Lzolski was right behind him. He slowed just long enough to kick the semi-automatic from the fallen giant’s hand.
There were four doors on the hallway, two on the right, one on the left, and the one at the end with the brand new hole. Jack hadn’t seen which door the big man came from. Wherever they were, they knew he was here now. His best bet was to keep making noise to give Paulson and Nina a chance to come at them from behind.
“Federal agents!” he shouted. “Come out with your hands up!”
There was a slight pause before a panicked voice shouted, “I’ve got a hostage!”
Only one bad guy, Jack thought.
“And we’ve got you!” he shouted back. “There’s no way out. We’ve got your friends and we’ve got Ramin. Give it up.”
“Back off!”
Two men stepped out of the second room. Jack recognized one of them immediately as Professor Ibrahim Rafizadeh, thinner than Jack remembered but still wearing his scholarly white beard. His hands were bound in front of him. Behind him, a Greater Nation soldier huddled low, his eyes barely visible over the professor’s shoulder. When Rafizadeh saw Jack, his fear turned to disbelief and indignation.
“Back off or I’ll kill him,” the militia man threatened, shoving Rafizadeh forward. He clearly hoped to back Jack off.
Jack held his ground, snarling, “We’ll see.”
The door at the far end of the hall flew open and Paulson swung in, low even before he dropped to one knee.
