Even so, there were plenty of other terrorist organizations with far more specific political agendas, and for them, the G8 represented the most logical target. Jack had attended no fewer than five high-level security briefings in the past two weeks; at each of them, the various layers of security had been reviewed with agonizing thoroughness. Aside from the uniformed security in and around the Federal Building, response teams had been positioned all around the perimeter of the protest group, and plainclothes agents mixed freely with the protestors. In addition to those plainclothes officers, undercover agents had infiltrated several of the more belligerent activist groups. With all that security on hand, the presence of one additional CTU agent meant very little.
Which was exactly the point made to Jack by the chief of his department, Christopher Henderson.
“There’s no need for you to be there,” Henderson had said a day earlier, rejecting his request.
“There’s no harm in it,” Jack protested. “I’m telling you I saw him.”
Henderson had tried unsuccessfully to hide his skepticism. He knew from past experience that Jack Bauer didn’t make idle suggestions. Bauer had bucked the chain of command, ignored the opinions of his colleagues, and risked making a fool of himself and everyone around him. If Jack Bauer stomped into his office claiming to have uncovered a plot to assassinate the entire line of succession in the U.S. government, Henderson would probably believe him. But this…
“So you were just walking along the docks in Long Beach,” Chris had said, “and you just happened to bump into Ayman al-Libbi.”
“That’s right,” Jack avowed, stating his claim for the tenth time that day.
“Ayman al-Libbi, Jack! He’s the jack of diamonds in our current deck of cards, one of the ten most wanted terrorists in the world.”
Jack shook his head. “He’s a bench player lately. The Libyans haven’t used him since Kaddafi got religion, the Palestinians can’t afford him anymore. He’s a hired gun. He’s ripe to be used by someone taking a potshot at the G8. He’d do it, too, just to put himself back in the spotlight.”
Chris had put his feet up and made a determined effort to rein in the conversation. Jack worked at a furious pace, and it was easy to get dragged along in his wake. After a long pause, Henderson had said, “So let’s say you’re right and alLibbi’s in the country, even in the city. What are you going to do, walk around the Federal Building until you spot him?”
Moving through the crowd of protestors, Jack grinned in spite of himself. Goddamned Henderson. For a guy who’d been riding a desk for several years now, he was still quick on his feet. Here he was, meandering through throngs of thousands, every one of them shouting down the United States or its allies, protesting globalization, environmental degradation, human rights abuse, or whatever pet cause they’d adopted. The chances of spotting one man who was probably too smart to present himself in person anyway were less than zero.
Of course, Jack wasn’t using only his own eyes and feet.
“Unit two?” he muttered into his sleeve, pretending to scratch his nose as he spoke into the microphone clipped under his cuff.
“Two here, over,” said a sleepy voice into his ear piece. That was fellow field agent Tony Almeida.
“Did I wake you?” Jack asked.
“No, I’m still sleeping.”
“Hilarious. Is the FRS up and running?”
Tony Almeida was straddling a molded plastic chair he’d spun backward so that the backrest touched his chest. He folded his arms across the top edge of the rest and settled his chin down on his forearms. He spoke in soft, narcotic tones that, along with his puppy dog eyes, convinced others that he was slow. This was an often serious, and sometimes fatal, mistake.
Tony had lodged himself in the basement security room of the Federal Building, a bunkerlike chamber that had been designated as the central command post for the various agencies involved in security during the G8 demonstrations.
Because the building was Federal property, the FBI had overall jurisdiction, but with the demonstration population expected to grow beyond ten thousand, they had grudgingly asked for help from the Los Angeles Police Department, Beverly Hills PD, and the L.A. Sheriff Department. Since the FBI expected to do all the brain work and just needed bodies, they hadn’t invited CTU. For this reason, Tony hadn’t exactly received a warm welcome when he’d walked into the command center asking to watch the security monitors. The two FBI agents working the visual equipment— pallid techies who’d spent their entire investigative careers, Tony was sure, sitting in little rooms just like this one— reluctantly shifted a little to make room. But no one offered to get him a more comfortable chair.
He was staring at a bank of twenty video monitors that showed images relayed from cameras all on and around the Federal Building and the plaza. From that small room, the surveillance team could monitor every part of the growing mob of demonstrators from several angles.
But Tony wasn’t interested in those monitors. He was staring at five smaller screens stacked to the right of the main console. Those screens displayed snapshots of individual protestors, taken at random, that were fed into a highly sophisticated facial recognition system, or FRS, that compared those images to the government’s growing database of known or suspected terrorists.
“Yeah, it’s running,” Tony replied finally, talking into a headset. “They’re just pulling random images for now.”
Jack Bauer’s voice crackled over the radio link, its usual grit turned to even more of a growl as he spoke softly. “Get them to focus on short, dark hair—”
Tony laughed. “Jack, we had about five thousand people come up from Central America the other day to protest deforestation in the Amazon. Two-thirds of the crowd has short, dark hair. It’s WASP-y types like you that stand out like a sore thumb.”
“If you wanted an easy job, you should have become a postman.”
“I’d rather read people’s mail than deliver it.”
Jack allowed himself a half smile as he signed off. He and Tony Almeida weren’t the best of friends and probably never would be, but some recent cases had brought them closer together, and each had earned the other’s respect. Their working relationship, cold in past months, had thawed enough to allow for the occasional friendly insult. Almeida stayed inside the lines too often for Jack’s taste, but he got the job done, so Jack couldn’t complain.
Jack’s mobile phone rang. He leaned up against a lamppost on Wilshire Boulevard so that he was out of the flow of foot traffic. “Bauer.”
“Jack, it’s Mercy.”
Jack felt a stitch in his chest, that tightness he felt back in boot camp when the drill sergeant stormed in for barracks inspection, or even farther back, when a police car cruised by on the road. It was an irrational, automatic feeling of guilt despite having done nothing wrong.
“Mercy,” he said hesitantly, “what’s…?”
“Relax, Jack, this is business.”
“Oh.” The stitch loosened.
“I’m working a case I want to talk to you about. I think it might involve you guys.”
“Okay,” he said, feeling his tongue loosening as she spoke. “You want to meet tomorrow?”
“No, I want to meet now. I can come to you. Where are you?”
“The Federal Building.”
“Right, the G8. Where can I meet you?”
Jack looked around. He was in the middle of an ocean of bobbing heads and milling bodies that stretched for a block in either direction. The sun had risen high enough above the surrounding buildings to shine light over Federal Plaza and warm the demonstrators. Like seals responding to the sun, the demonstrators had begun to agitate more with each passing moment. “I’m not exactly in a great spot for a case review.”
“There’s a bus shelter on the corner of Wilshire and Federal, right next to the building,” Mercy said.
“Right,” Jack said, spotting the shelter. “I think it’s currently the protest headquarters for the Latin American Coffee Growers.”
“See you there at eight a.m.”
