She said yes without the slightest bit of remorse.
“They want to kill people. They’ll do nothing with the vaccine,” Copeland said firmly, trying to recover from his shock. “Absolutely not.”
He walked over to the telephone. “We have to call someone. Warn them about the police officer. They can get her into a sterile room before she becomes contagious.” He picked up the telephone.
Frankie Michaelmas stood up, hefted the heavy piece of jade, and brought it crashing down on the back of Copeland’s skull. She had always wondered how many blows it would take to kill him, and now she was determined to find out.
10. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 4 P.M. AND 5 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Ryan Chappelle burst into Christopher Henderson’s office, red-faced and puffed up, looking like a small dog taking up space.
“Bauer.” Chappelle said the word as though it left a bad taste in his mouth.
“Not here,” Henderson said. “What’s wrong?”
“This is,” the Director said, holding up a mini-disc as though the very fact that he was holding it proved his point.
Henderson received the disc, opened his CD tray, and laid it down with deliberate smoothness. The video program fired up, and in minutes Henderson was watching color footage of Jack Bauer hunched down next to an overturned police van. His face wasn’t clear — the video was slightly unfocused, and Jack’s face was turned partly away — but Henderson recognized the slouch of Bauer’s shoulders and the straw-blond hair. He was talking to a man in a blue shirt— Henderson knew it was Kasim Turkel, who seemed to be handcuffed and lying on the ground. Every once in a while Bauer jabbed at the man’s leg and he twitched.
Henderson knew what was coming, but he wasn’t going to make it easy. “So?” he said dumbly.
“So, we’ve got video of a CTU agent torturing a man in public!”
Henderson wished he could have built a wall between himself and Chappelle’s invective. “You know Jack. He had a reason—”
“I’m sure Bauer had his reasons. I’m also sure I won’t like them. And I’m even more sure that if this ends up on the evening news, it’ll be a public relations disaster!”
“Suppress it. Where’d we get it?”
Chappelle paced back and forth, unable to contain his energy. He could be as cold as ice sometimes, but Bauer always seemed to bring out the worst in him. “That’s the kicker. A protestor. Check that, a
Henderson rubbed his temples. Video was unforgiving. Context didn’t matter. The public would see a Federal agent abusing a suspect, and no one would pay attention to the fact that the suspect was a terrorist putting lives at risk, and the interrogator was a man with hours left in which to save lives. “So we buy it off him, or we scare him out of the deal.”
“Maybe,” Chappelle said. “Because the other choice is that I cut this off at the knees by bringing Jack Bauer up on charges.”
Mercy Bennet had followed Smith, on foot, from the Federal Building out of West Los Angeles and into Santa Monica. He seemed to think he’d lost her in the crowd when she had hesitated, looking at Jack Bauer, and she did nothing to dissuade him from that belief. Tailing him on foot seemed ridiculous in this day and age — he should have been followed by two or three teams on foot and in cars, switching drivers and clothing. But with no radio or telephone, Mercy could not call for backup.
So she resorted to cloak-and-dagger movements, staying as far back as possible without losing him, staying behind parked cars, street signs, and other obstacles as often as possible. Copeland seemed to be taking a zigzagging path, one block north then one block west, over and over. Twice she thought she’d lost him, only to follow the pattern and pick him up again. Losing him temporarily had probably helped her more than anything, since it reduced her chances of being seen.
His path led eventually into an upscale neighborhood of Santa Monica above Montana Boulevard. Once he was there, he seemed to relax. His pace had slowed considerably and, though she was too far back to say for sure, she had the impression that his shoulders lost some of their tension. He was on his home turf.
He ended his run at a well-landscaped brick house around Fourteenth Street, the kind of house she would never afford on a government salary. She watched him enter the house, then she made her last dash, reaching a large oak tree planted along the parkway of the house across the street, and partly shielded by a parked Chevy Tahoe. She sat there for a minute catching her breath, trying to decide what to do next, when a Toyota Prius drove into Smith’s driveway. Mercy nearly cursed aloud when she saw Frankie Michaelmas get out of the car and hurry inside. A few minutes later, Frankie had reappeared carrying several small cases. She made a second trip for more cases, then got in the car and drove away. Mercy resisted an irrational urge to jump onto the hood of the car and keep it from moving by force of will. But in the end she did not think Frankie was her target. She focused on Smith.
She sat across the street for a few more minutes, recovering some of her strength and considering her next move, when a middle-aged woman with a round face, wearing a chic bandana on her bald head, came by, walking her dog. Both the woman and the dog moved with tired steps.
“Excuse me,” Mercy said, “I don’t want to bother you, but do you have a cell phone?”
The woman studied Mercy with a sharp eye. “Why?”
“I’m a police officer. I’ve lost my badge and my radio during a foot pursuit, and I need to call my department. It’s an emergency.”
“You don’t have a badge?”
Mercy shook her head.
The woman assessed her shrewdly. Mercy could almost imagine what she was thinking: her story was unlikely… but who would claim to be a police officer in need of a cell phone who was not, in fact, just that?
“How can I believe you?”
“There’s no harm either way,” Mercy pointed out. “You can stand here while I make the call.”
The woman considered again, shrugged, and handed over a small silver flip phone. Mercy dialed 911. This time she was connected — the riots, she guessed, were finally calming down, thanks to police presence and protestor exhaustion— and she identified herself. The emergency dispatcher contacted West Bureau for her. She was connected to Sandy Waldman. She rolled her eyes. Waldman, a twenty-year veteran, had been one of the many who’d mocked her ecoterrorist theory.
“Sandy, I need help,” she said.
“You and half the goddamned city,” Waldman replied. She could picture him sitting at his desk with his feet up, his veteran’s belly rolling over the top of his belt buckle.
“I’m code five on Fourteenth Street in Santa Monica,” she said, using the department’s code for “on a stakeout” to affirm the dog walker’s generosity. “I need units to roll here ASAP code two.”
“Ooh, police talk,” Waldman joked. “You’re lucky. We’ve been code thirteen for the last couple of hours, but now we’re getting back to code fourteen.” Mercy hated Waldman in that moment, but she was glad to hear the department was standing down from major disaster activity caused by the riot. “I’ll roll a couple of slick tops to you now.”
“Thanks. Can you also run an address for me?” She recited the address of the brick house.
“Stand by.”
“What do you want with that house?” asked the woman with the bandana.
Mercy understood intuitively that she’d lost her hair to chemotherapy. “It’s police business, ma’am.”
“But that’s Bernie Copeland’s house. Is he okay?”
