“Oh, oh, well yes, but they told me to. I mean, I got a call from the Secretary herself. I’ve never gotten a call from—”
“Who are you?” Chris demanded.
The voice squeaked. “Dr. — I’m Martin Shue. Dr. Shue. What can I do — I mean, no one explained to me exactly why I was calling.”
Chris’s neck turned pink and he bit his lip, but his voice was calm. “What exactly do you do over there, Doctor?”
“Environmental work,” the doctor said. By the sound of his voice, he was clearly relieved to be asked a question to which he knew the answer. “I was with the EPA for ten years, now here. I’m a zoologist.”
“And Interior told you to call us?”
“That’s — that’s right. They said it was an emergency.”
Chris shrugged. “By any chance do you know anything about radio dye markers or chemical emitters?”
“Oh, oh yes. Of course I do!” The zoologist’s voice perked up even more. “Are you trying to track an animal of some kind?”
Chris smiled. Nina Myers laughed out loud. Jack just glowered. Chris said, “Not exactly. We want to get this emitter out of someone. Do you know how to do that?”
“Out of some
“How do you get the stuff out!” Jack yelled.
The doctor squeaked again. “I’m — I’m not sure. That was never a priority, of course. But the chemicals aren’t harmful. They break down in the body after a year or two anyway.”
“We need it out right away,” Chris said. “It is an emergency. Do you have any ideas?”
“Well, no, no, I don’t, except, yes, maybe,” Dr. Shue hemmed and hawed. Jack couldn’t help thinking that he was the perfect scientist to work for the government.
“Is it yes or no?”
“Well, we never developed a process for removing the marker,” Dr. Shue said. “It just wasn’t necessary. But all you really need to do is filter the blood. You could probably use a regular dialysis machine.”
“Dialysis,” Henderson said. “You mean like for kidney patients?”
“Exactly. I couldn’t guarantee it, but it would probably—”
“Thanks,” Henderson said, hanging up.
Jack ran his fingers through his hair. “Dialysis. That takes hours, doesn’t it?”
Chris nodded. “We’ll put people out in the field for you—”
“Excuse me,” the tech tried to interrupt.
“—I’ll have Nina pick up your daughter, take her home or somewhere safe—”
“I think I can—” the tech tried.
“—we’ll see if Tony can pick up any more leads on al-Libbi—”
“Hey!” the tech yelled.
The CTU agents, not accustomed to being interrupted by others, glared at the technician, who turned bright red. “I have an idea,” he said meekly.
“Okay,” Chris Henderson acknowledged.
“There’s a dialysis machine at UCLA. It only takes thirty minutes.”
The cell phone rang again, and the man Jack Bauer wanted more than anything to meet face-to-face answered. He had left his hotel and was driving toward his next task. He had a big night planned, and many things to accomplish before night fell. “Yes?” he said calmly.
“One of your little errand monkeys picked up a tail,” his informant said. “The blond girl, built like a fire plug.”
“Frankie,” the man said. “Thank you. Make sure no one on your end causes any more trouble.”
He hung up and checked his watch, calculating where Frankie would be and what she would be doing at the moment. He frowned. Interference from the law would be extremely inconvenient at the moment. It would have to be dealt with. He dialed another number.
Tony Almeida camera hopped, his eyes switching from one screen to another as the female detective followed the blond girl across Veteran’s Park. The crowd had thinned to a few stragglers, and Mercy had fallen back out of her quarry’s line of sight. She was good, Tony thought approvingly.
The blond girl was walking away from the last camera that could track her. Tony zoomed in, but she was still fairly small in the screen. Tony thought he saw her reach into her pocket and pull out a phone, hold it to her ear for a minute, then put it away. Seconds later she swerved straight toward Sepulveda Boulevard, making her away across the wide parking lot that separated a YMCA building from the street.
Mercy changed direction to follow.
Frankie reached the sidewalk and turned south, heading against traffic. Mercy dropped back even farther.
“Hey.” The coffee connoisseur returned. “You stare at the monitors like that and you’ll go blind.”
“She’s almost out of camera shot,” Tony said, his eyes glued to the screen.
Cars zoomed by on Sepulveda Boulevard. A big blue van slowed down, and for a moment Tony thought the blond girl would climb inside. But she walked right past it without paying much attention. Mercy, too, passed the van without paying attention. As she did, the van door slid open. Hands reached out and grabbed Mercy, dropping a hood over her head and dragging her into the vehicle. The door slammed shut.
“Holy shit!” Tony yelled. He reached for the radio.
He saw the movement behind him, but didn’t perceive it as a danger until something heavy struck hard against the base of his neck, and by then it was too late.
Mercy gasped for breath and felt the cloth from the hood suck into her mouth. She blew it out and kicked. She couldn’t see a damned thing, but she felt her heel smash into something firm, like a face, and she was rewarded with a yelp of pain. Her arms were pinned, but she shook her right free and reached to her left. She felt hands on her biceps and wrist. She chose the wrist, digging her nails deep into the flesh.
“Goddamn!” someone yelled.
Pain like fire exploded on her face, and Mercy knew she’d been hit. She didn’t let go of the hand, but tore a chunk of flesh out. Another painful sunburst erupted behind her eyes, and she lost consciousness.
Tony Almeida was lying with his face on the floor. His rattled brain tried to make sense of that fact; he believed for a moment that Nick Dyson had told him to lie flat as he slid along the rope during a canopy tour, while monkeys chattered all around him. But a second later he realized that was the concussion talking. He was lying down because he’d been flattened by a blow, and the chattering was actually the shouting of two men locked in some kind of struggle over him.
He propped himself up on his elbows, and a wave of nausea made him heave dryly. He turned on his right side and looked up. FBI Agent Nick Dyson had the other agent, McKey, in a bear hug with one arm pinned. McKey’s free hand was pressed against Dyson’s face, digging into his cheek.
“. get off me, get the hell off me!”
“. kill you!”
Tony’s head was swimming. He didn’t know who was yelling what, or why they were fighting. One of them had clubbed him over the head, but he wasn’t sure which one. He saw Dyson land a knee to McKey’s groin. McKey doubled over. Dyson grabbed his partner by the hair and slammed his face into the video console. McKey turned into a rag doll and slumped to the floor.
Tony managed to climb to his feet, but he was doubled over with his hands on his knees. There was a roaring sound inside his head. The room swayed back and forth like the deck of a ship and he had trouble maintaining his balance. Dyson, however, had no trouble. He covered the distance between them in two short steps and grabbed Tony by the hair just as he’d grabbed McKey. Tony didn’t try to avoid the blow. Instead he slammed his left forearm
