“What do you mean, nothing!” Jack shot back.
“Nothing!” Chappelle said, raising his voice. “I just got the word from the recovery team. There was no EMP device on that balloon. There was nothing but some kind of meteorological package!”
Jack froze. Everything stopped for him: the clock, his breath, even his heart. He had the sudden and terrifying sense that the floor might simply open up and swallow him, because the natural laws had suddenly been violated. “What?”
“Oh, now you look doubtful! Before, you were pretty damned sure!”
Kelly was just as shocked as Jack. “It’s got to be a mistake.”
“No, no mistake,” Chappelle sneered. “We just got off the phone with the team that launched the damned thing. You know when they launched it? This morning at eight o’clock local time. They’ve been tracking it all day — right up until the moment it was destroyed.” Chappelle closed the distance between them like a terrier ready to fight. “Do you get it, Bauer? You put the whole country into panic mode for nothing!”
20. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10 P.M. AND 11 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
East of the 405 Freeway, Mulholland Drive evolved into the curvaceous mountain top road favored by Porsche drivers and other daredevils on their way to parties in the Hollywood Hills. To the west of the freeway, Mulholland transformed into a rural mountain road on the outskirts of the city, quietly fading away from city lights into the rural area between Los Angeles and the beach communities to the north. Here you could still see glimpses of Los Angeles as it had been before the Europeans had come: wild brush growing thick and green during the spring rains, only to bake under the summer sun before dying away before renewing itself the following spring. The Santa Monica Mountains were crisscrossed with trails that had become the salvation of the few nature worshippers who took advantage of them.
Unfortunately, some of those nature worshippers had more love than understanding, and they became lost or injured. A few had even starved to death only ten thousand steps from the second largest city in the United States.
It was hikers like these that kept the L.A. Sheriff Search and Rescue team busy. At a little after ten o’clock that night, the Sheriff’s search helicopter dusted down right on Mulholland Drive and Nina Myers hopped out, keeping her head low. A blackand-white search truck, its emergency lights flashing, was parked nearby. She ran to it and shook the hand of a tall, baby-faced man in a green flight suit.
“Deputy Pascal,” he said. “I think we’ve got your missing person.”
Nina followed Pascal to the edge of the road. Outside the white lines of the westbound lane, there was a soft shoulder about three feet wide, and then a steep dropoff. Two more sheriff’s deputies stood there, one belaying a rope and the other holding steady a standing searchlight that pointed down into the ravine below. Nina saw another sheriff rappelling down toward a red Toyota Acura planted grill down in the brush at the bottom.
“This road is a lot trickier than people realize,” the deputy explained. “We pull people out of here once or twice a month.”
“I don’t think this one went over the side by accident,” Nina said.
The rappelling deputy reached the bottom of the ravine some two hundred feet below them. In the bright glow of the searchlight, they watched him lean into the car for a moment. Then he pulled his upper body out and talked into his microphone.
Nina heard his voice broadcast from the radio on Deputy Pascal’s belt. “She’s alive,” he said, “but not by much. We need a medivac chopper here stat.”
When oneofhis stafftoldAttorneyGeneral Jim Quincy that Senator Alan Wayans was on the phone, Quincy savored the moment. This is it, he thought. Six months of planning had ended in one night of perfect execution. Now came the coup de grace. If there was anything the last year or two in American politics had taught him, it was this: it took war to bring the people together. First you needed to create the need for urgency and the desire for change. Only then would they be willing to accept the gift you had to give them.
The New American Privacy Act was Quincy’s gift to his country. Bureaucracy and the worship of individual rights had been a yoke around the neck of justice for too long. Quincy was tired of watching his FBI and his DEA, not to mention other agencies such as the CIA and CTU, paralyzed by laws that protected suspects rather than empowered the law. He despised the liberal left that worshipped the false idol of personal privacy. Who cared if some fringe radical in upstate New York had his library records probed, or if the FBI put wiretaps on him without his knowing? If the person was innocent, it wouldn’t matter. If he was guilty, lives would be saved! Jim’s legacy would be the enhancement of the Office of the Attorney General, its investment with new powers that could probe the populace with a laser.
He hesitated before picking up the phone, like a wine connoisseur gathering himself for the first taste. He pulled the receiver to his ear and said, “Yes, Senator Wayans. It’s late for you, isn’t it?”
“I’m up, everyone’s up, I think!” Wayans said in a forced voice. “I…can you believe this thing? A terrorist attack that would’ve knocked out the entire power grid?”
“Unfortunately, I can, Senator,” Quincy said soberly. “We all know what we’re up against.”
Wayans sighed. “I guess we do. Is it true that these terrorists have been in the country for months? And that we got wind of them but didn’t catch them?”
“That’s my understanding,” Quincy said carefully. “I’m sure we’re going to hear more about that when Congress looks into the matter. And with all respect, Senator, I just want to say that if I’m called before the subcommittee, I’m going to point the finger right at those who have voted to withhold powers of investigation from the Justice Department.”
Quincy grinned. He could almost hear Alan Wayans shiver on the other end of the phone. “I–I can’t believe our people didn’t get these bastards earlier,” Wayans sputtered, filling himself with righteous indignation. “I–I think it might be time to consider loosening the reins a little bit more. I’m going to give that privacy act some more thought. Have a good night, Mr. Attorney General.”
“Good night, Senator.”
Quincy hung up the phone, only to hear his private cell phone ring. He knew who was calling.
“Congratulations,” said Frank Newhouse.
“And to you,” Quincy said. “Your plan worked.”
“I’m happy to play a part, Mr. Attorney General.”
“Sometimes you have to make people a little afraid of the illness before they’ll take their medicine,” Quincy said. “But in the end this thing will be good for them.”
“I agree. Will you still be reachable in San Francisco tomorrow?”
“That depends on the President.”
“You think he’ll veto?”
“I’ll know soon enough.”
“Well, then, I’m sure we’ll be in touch, sir.”
Newhouse disconnected his mobile phone and shook his head in disgust. He was sitting in his car, parked on a side street off Olympic Boulevard in West Los Angeles.
“It always amazes me how a man can be full of shit and right at the same time,” Newhouse said to the man in the passenger seat. “He says you need to make people afraid of the illness before they’ll take their medicine.”
“Well, he’s right,” said the other man. “That’s what we’re doing.”
Frank Newhouse turned to his companion and grinned. “That’s what I always liked about you, Brett. You always know what to say.”
Jack Bauer ignored the chaos swirling around him and tried to think. Analysts shouted information at one
