Marks shrugged. “He fooled you guys a lot worse than he fooled us.”
“Did Frank mention what he thought the terrorist plan might be?”
“That’s what we were trying to find out. We had a lead on someone who knew the terrorists. Ramin Rafizadeh. We were looking for him when you got in the way. Other than that, all Frank knew was that they were going to attack the President sometime when he came to Los Angeles. It was going to be soon, I think.”
Jack wasn’t sure where to go next. It was time to start fishing.
“Tell me what you know about EMPs.”
Brett Marks blinked. Jack had seen him do it before, but not very often. The militia leader was cool and composed and rarely caught off-guard. This had surprised him. “You mean electromagnetic weapons?” Brett asked.
“You know what I mean,” Jack said, pressing his small advantage.
“I know the government is developing weapons that short-circuit electronic equipment. I know that nuclear blasts can do the same thing, but cause a lot of other damage. My theory is that the powers that be would use weapons like that to shut down the entire infrastructure of the country if the people ever rise up and overthrow the illegal government. That’s just my opinion, of course.”
“My opinion,” Jack said, losing patience, “is that you’re insane. You couldn’t shut down the whole country.”
Marks gave him that professorial smile, the one he reserved for naive students who had not read their Constitution. “You really don’t know anything, do you, Jack. A decent-sized EMP blast, either from a nuclear weapon or an EMP weapon, could black out the entire country. All you have to do is set it off high enough and in the right spot. Nineteen miles over Kansas would do the trick.”
Kelly Sharpton was already on the phone by the time Jack left the holding cell and burst into the observation room.
“I’d say he’s given us something now, wouldn’t you, Jack?” Chappelle said.
“We’ll see,” Jack growled.
Sharpton hung up the phone. “Jesus, he’s right. I just got off the phone with DOD. Nineteen miles up you lose all grounding effects and the blast range extends far enough to reach the whole goddamned country.”
17. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 7 P.M. AND 8 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
“Jamey!” Jack roared, leaving the observation room and steaming into the main computer room, pulling Sharpton and Chappelle in his wake. “How far can they get?”
“I’m on it!” Farrell called from her workstation. “Come see.”
Jack was hovering at her shoulder in seconds.
“All we have is a process of elimination,” she explained. “Assuming our terrorists aren’t just joyriding up to Santa Barbara to visit their boyfriends, then the plane that took off from that hangar is a Cessna Citation Encore.”
Her computer screen filled with specs on the aircraft, a sleek twin-engine jet with a certain executive-level appeal.
“Once they deviated from their flight plan, they could go anywhere. There’s enough traffic up there that they’d be hard to track. But. ” she added, before Jack could interrupt her with a question, “this Cessna’s maximum distance is right around two thousand miles, so either they have to refuel somewhere, or their destination is less than that.”
Sharpton said, “Kansas City. Seventeen hundred miles.”
Jack nodded. “We need to pull the trigger on this.” He looked at Chappelle. The District Director nodded.
President Barnes was on his third attempt to tie his bow tie. He grimaced at himself in the mirror as the wings came out lopsided yet again.
“Hal, I keep telling you Chris will do that for you,” his wife said. Juliette Barnes was already dressed — her ability to be ready on time for all social functions was one of the reasons he’d fallen in love with her — and watching him in the mirror from the sitting room attached to their suite.
Barnes’s frown deepened. “It just seems ridiculous to be the leader of the free world and not be able to tie your own goddamned bow tie.”
“Well, Mr. President, we’re running out of time.
You’d better either do the job yourself or get the steward to do it.”
He snorted. “Let’s hope you’re only referring to my bow tie when you say that.”
Her laugh was interrupted by a knock on the door. She turned to answer it, but by that time there were seven Secret Service agents in the room, two for her and five for him. The head of the detail, Avery Taylor, was a handsome man with a square jaw and jet-black skin. “Mr. President, sorry for the intrusion.”
“What is it?” he asked. The Secret Service worked incredibly hard to stay hands off, even in a public environment like the Westin Hotel. If they had walked into his private room like this, something was wrong.
“Just a minute, sir,” Avery said. He put a hand up to his ear bud and listened. “Affirmative. Patriot is en route.” Avery focused on Barnes. “Sir, we need to move you immediately. We’re taking you to a secure area of the Presidio on the east side of the city.”
“Why?” Barnes asked, “What about the dinner?”
“It’s being canceled, sir. This is blue.”
“Hal?” his wife asked anxiously.
“Blue” was Secret Service shorthand for an extreme emergency — one in which their commands overrode even his own. Their job was to protect him, and if they felt the danger was extreme enough, they would countermand his orders with their own.
“Go with them, Julie.”
With enough manpower and control, a man can exit any building quickly. Whisked out the door to a waiting elevator, its call button overridden, and down to a waiting car, President Barnes departed the Westin in less than three minutes, while his wife was escorted by Secret Service agents out a separate exit. By that time, Barnes was already on the phone with Admiral Toby Scarsdale (Ret.) his Homeland Security secretary, Mort Jacobs of the NSA, and Jim Quincy of Justice.
“Electromagnetic?” he was saying. “We spend sixty million a year trying to gather up nukes in Eastern Europe, and someone steals a fucking giant magnet in our own backyard?”
Scarsdale spoke up. “We’re still waiting for Rudy at the CIA to join the call, but I was told that these terrorists may have been in the country for over a year.”
“Six months,” Quincy corrected. “But it’s still a goddamned long time.”
“What are all our intelligence people doing!” Barnes roared. “Forget Rudy. Get me the guys on the ground that are in charge of this operation. Now!”
Jack was on the phone with air traffic controllers in Kansas City, Kansas, when Jessi Bandison, her coffee- colored face suddenly pale, handed him the phone.
“Hang on,” Jack said.
Jessi shook her head so vigorously it could have popped off. “Uh-uh. It’s the President. For you.”
Jack hung up one phone and took the other. “This is Jack Bauer.”
“Bauer, this is Harry Barnes.”
“Yes, sir, Mr. President.” He straightened automatically.
