pressed a button and the elevator doors opened with a whoosh. “Oh, wait,” Farrah said. He raised the Kimber and fired twice, both rounds puncturing the victim’s chest. He fell over onto the plastic. “Okay,” Farrah said. The elevator doors closed.
“Where the hell is Jack Bauer!” Ryan Chappelle demanded. “He’s got a prisoner gathering dust in a holding cell and he’s nowhere to be found. And where’s Kelly Sharpton!”
He zeroed in on Jessi Bandison, who was the only analyst not cowering under his tirade.
“Jack Bauer is following leads from the terrorist threat,” she stated. “He tracked down a man who may have smuggled the terrorists into the country, and he is now checking into the man they were dropped off with. Kelly Sharpton went to investigate an address for a militia member who has not been accounted for. He discovered a bomb there. He managed to defuse it, but nearly got his hands burned off. He’s being checked out at the UCLA emergency room before being okayed to return here.”
Chappelle was caught mid-rant. The analysts in the room, and Chappelle himself, experienced a shared vision of Bauer and Sharpton, two rugged field agents, out in the world doing their jobs, while Chappelle, pale-faced and blue-blooded, raged inside the sunless CTU office. As his ears turned red, Chappelle merely grunted and turned away.
Kelly walked back into CTU under his own steam, with both hands still wrapped in bandages. The prognosis was good. He’d have scars, but no permanent damage.
Jessi met him halfway through the door, resisting the urge to hug him. “Chappelle wants to see you.”
Kelly nodded. A meeting with Ryan Chappelle was the perfect homecoming after a date being sprayed with napalm.
Chappelle had camped out in Kelly’s office anyway, so Kelly went up there and sat down in the guest chair.
“Do you want—?” Chappelle offered him the desk chair.
Kelly held him off. “No, I’m fine here. You wanted to see me.”
“Yes.” Chappelle took a deep breath, trying to excise the pedantry from his voice. “I’d like it if you could tell me what’s going on. What’s really going on.”
“Why do you ask like that?”
Chappelle chuckled. “Look, I may not be a field agent like you and mighty Jack Bauer, but I’m not an idiot. You’re caught hacking the Attorney General’s computer and the next thing I know the AG himself is calling to exonerate you. Jack Bauer’s running all over Los Angeles looking for terrorists no one else believes exists. You try to blow yourself up. Tell me everything.” He made his voice as gentle as possible. “Maybe I can help.”
Kelly was impressed by the monumental effort it must have taken for Chappelle to sound like a human being. He proceeded to summarize every piece of information that he and Jack had gathered. He even— against his better judgment — included the Attorney General’s attempt to blackmail Senator Drexler.
He expected Chappelle to reject his story about blackmail. Instead the District Director touched his fingers to his thin lips, then said, “But you don’t have any proof of this blackmail?”
“I erased everything from Quincy’s computer. Drexler is a witness, of course, but she won’t testify. If she does, she’ll drag her staff in and it will hurt them. She’s also got some contact with the CIA that she’s protecting.”
Chappelle nodded. “It’d be impossible to prove anyway. A politician that high up doesn’t make a play of that nature without having an out.” He switched gears mentally. “So Bauer’s sure these terrorists exist? He’s got eight of them being smuggled into the country?”
“The only piece that doesn’t fit,” Kelly said, repeating information Jessi had gathered from Jack, “is that his informant told him they were brought in a couple of months ago. If these guys are attached to the same rumor Jack first heard, they’d have to have been here for at least six months.”
“A lot of loose ends,” Chappelle said. For once, he was not being critical, he was simply analyzing the situation. “How does this damned militia fit in. Do they?”
“Well, I don’t think the Greater Nation does,” Kelly suggested. “I think their part of the story ends once they learn about terrorists and we stop them. All the rest has been Jack. The only part of the Nation that doesn’t figure is Frank Newhouse. If he’s under cover for the AG why not identify himself? If his job was to spy on the Greater Nation, then it’s over. If his job was to track down the terrorists, why not join forces with us?”
“And why blow up an entire building?” Chappelle added. “It was him, wasn’t it?”
Kelly held up his damaged hands. “I would so love to ask him that question in person.” Chappelle nodded in understanding. The two men shared a moment of silence, awkward and self-conscious. Kelly, not ready or willing to share an extended human moment with Chappelle, looked away. He was relieved when the intercom buzzed.
“Kelly, I know you’re meeting, but can I come up?” Jessi Bandison asked.
“Come,” he said.
She was there in a few minutes. “We got our initial analysis of the wiring they found in the apartment. The data is available off the server, but I can give you the rundown. The wire bits we brought back were heavily insulated. The connectors that we found were also insulated. They were specifically designed to protect wiring at points of contact with machines or other wires. It’s almost like some kind of shield.”
“Do we have any idea what that means?” Kelly asked.
“Not yet, but we think we’ll have a working theory by the end of the day.”
Farrah’s car pulled up to the Peppermint, a strip club southeast of downtown in an industrial area nestled between the downtown businesses and the beach communities. The place had just opened for business and the parking lot was nearly deserted. There were plenty of spaces in front, but one of the Armenian giants, acting as the driver of Farrah’s limousine, pulled around to the back anyway.
The sun was bright in the parking lot as they got out. Jack looked around. There was nothing like going to a strip club on a sunny afternoon, he thought, to make you feel like a total loser.
One of the giants opened the back door to the club and Farrah walked in, followed by Jack. The two giants brought up the rear.
Farrah walked through the club’s little kitchen, saying hello to the two men working there. He passed into the main room, which was as dark as midnight. No effort had been spared to shield the Peppermint’s clientele from the world outside. Darkness ruled here, despite the fact that two stages were awash in multicolored stage lights. Music blasted enthusiastically, and a silky-voiced DJ introduced the next dancer as though the club was totally packed instead of almost completely empty, which it was.
A dancer was on stage, going through the motions. A man in a Von Dutch T-shirt sat at the edge of the stage drinking an O’Doul’s nonalcoholic beer. Jack saw one or two other men sitting at tables in the shadows. There were clearly not enough prospects here to give the dancer much enthusiasm. She was naked; she had the body and the moves, but there was no oomph in her performance. She’d gotten stuck with the early shift, and there was nothing to do but get through it as painlessly as possible.
Farrah walked through the Peppermint like he owned the place, clapping for the girl on the stage and whistling. Jack noticed that the twin giants had disappeared. “Ah, Tina, you can shake your ass better than that, I know this from personal experience! Hey, Mikey!” He turned to the DJ tucked away in a corner. “Get one of the other girls on the stage, I’ve got a guest here and Tina is my treat for him!”
The DJ shooed Tina off the stage in his radio voice, and another dancer appeared to take her place.
“Sit, sit, Jack Knudson who needs to get paid to kill.” Farrah laughed. “You are in for a treat, my friend.”
The girl, Tina, came over. She had put her clothes back on, such as they were. Her dark hair was in pigtails.Her blouse wasrolledupand tiedinaknotunder her breasts. She wore a schoolgirl skirt specifically engineered not to cover her ass, and thigh high stockings.
“Hey, big tipper,” she said to Farrah. “I’d ask what brings you in here so early, but I know it’s me.”
“Oh, it’s you, it’s you,” Farrah said. He was like a kid in a candy store. “But it’s also a little business. I want you to keep my friend entertained while I go talk to someone. The dance is on me, okay, okay?”
She smiled at Jack. “Well, as a matter of fact, the dance is on
Jack tried to look as though his attention was on the girl while at the same time trying to track Farrah and his
