of the mountains that divided the Los Angeles basin from the inland area of the San Fernando Valley. The preserve was home to deer, rabbits, hawks, and a multitude of other wildlife. Hikers had been known to encounter mountain lions padding along the trails that wound in and out of the hills. Most Los Angelenos spent their days oblivious to the fact that this wilderness lay just outside their doorstep.
Ozersky and Mercy followed behind Jack, doing their best to be quiet. Ozersky was field trained, but he’d never been an operator as Jack had been, so his movements were a bit clumsy. What Mercy lacked in training she made up for in common sense. Even so, Jack wished he were working alone. He’d have moved faster.
The moon, nearly full, reflected enough light for Jack to see the path, except when they dipped down under thick groves of trees. Even then Jack didn’t use the flashlight. Somewhere ahead were men like the men he’d encountered at the Earth Cafe. Those men had reacted fast to his entry. He didn’t want to give their companions any more warning than he had to.
He’d been giving a lot of thought to those men at the cafe. Ayman al-Libbi had clearly gotten assistance from somewhere, but where? He was sure these men weren’t ETIM. The two who had attacked him at the Cat & Fiddle probably were, undoubtedly muscle given to al-Libbi by Marcus Lee or the man Jack had questioned at the Federal Building. But the shooters at the Earth Cafe were more Middle Eastern than Chinese.
Al-Libbi might be using this whole attack as a means of getting back into the good graces of terrorist sponsors. And if he’d already found muscle to do his bidding, his plan might already have succeeded. Which also meant that Jack had no idea the size of the force he was dealing with.
There was nothing for it. He had to save Kim’s life. He had to save the President. He was going to find someone who could deal with this virus, and God help whoever got in his way.
A cell phone sitting on a counter kept ringing. It rang every ten minutes or so. For more than an hour everyone had ignored it — there was far too much going on for anyone to pay attention to a phone not his own. But now, after midnight, the situation with the President had stabilized and the atmosphere at CTU, although tense, was steady.
So when the phone rang again, Jamey Farrell saw that the ring was coming from a phone inside a plastic bag sitting at Jack Bauer’s station. She picked it up without answering it and carried it up to the security desk. “Where’d this come from?” she asked.
The night guard had no idea personally, but he checked his log. “It was brought over from someone at the Federal Building. Bauer got himself arrested earlier and they took his cell phone.”
Jamey nodded and brought the phone to Christopher Henderson. “Figures,” Henderson muttered. “He loses his gun, his ID, and his cell phone, and only the phone comes back.”
As if on cue, the phone rang. “Bauer’s line,” Henderson said.
“At last,” said the smooth voice at the other end of the line. “Am I speaking to Agent Bauer or some other agent of
the Counter Terrorist Unit?”
“How can I help you?” Henderson said.
“This is Ayman al-Libbi.”
Jack and the others trudged up a steep rise where the path rose up out of a gorge and onto a hilltop. Up ahead he could hear the murmur of falling water. Then, over that, he heard someone shout in alarm. He started to run.
Three minutes after the phone call, Henderson had a recording of it put into a digital player. He and Ryan Chappelle played it back with Jamey Farrell listening.
“This is Ayman al-Libbi. I was given this number by a certain young woman who was also kind enough to give me a very deadly virus. As you may know already, I have both the virus and the antiviral medicine that cures it. This puts me at a distinct advantage since I also know that your President and the Premier of China have both been infected. They will both die within a few hours unless they are given this medication. I will be in touch with you soon.”
Chappelle swore a long, thin stream of expletives. “According to that waiter, how much time do they have?”
Henderson checked his watch. “Less than eight hours.”
Anything can happen in four minutes. The terrorists, whoever they were, could have killed Santiago a dozen times over. Or it might not even be Santiago. The people from the Volvo might not even be terrorists.
But Jack Bauer ran as if his daughter’s life depended on it. More shouts drifted down from above. He didn’t wait for Ozersky or Mercy. He plunged down into another dell, then sprinted up out of it into moonlight again. The path leveled out and the sound of rushing water grew louder.
Voices called to each other in Farsi and a moment later several shots rang out. Jack guessed that the terrorists had tried to dispatch their victim quietly, but had failed. Now they were resorting to gunfire. He saw several muzzle flashes in the distance.
Jack stopped, took a deep breath, raised his weapon, and waited. A moment later there was another muzzle flash. Jack leveled his sights behind the flash and pulled the trigger twice. He heard one cry of pain and several shouts of alarm. He’d given his position away, but now the terrorists had to divide their attention between their victim and him.
Jack moved to the inward side of the path. Trees lined the path from here to the waterfall he could hear ahead, but they were scraggly trees with thin trunks. They offered more concealment than cover, but he would take what he could get. Jack moved from tree to tree, silent now because his quarry had gone silent.
The victim, however, was making a lot of noise. “Help! Help!” he shouted. “Whoever’s out there, they’re trying to kill me! Help!”
He moved up to the next tree and stopped, listening. He could see nothing, nor hear any threat, but some sixth sense told him he’d covered enough ground. The ambush would be somewhere in this range. That’s where he’d have put it.
Someone sobbed in the darkness, and Jack’s muzzle swung there like a magnet to a steel plate, but he didn’t fire. It was the man he’d put down.
Footsteps behind him. Ozersky and Mercy were coming. They would draw fire. Jack prepared himself.
He heard Ozersky’s heavy footsteps and Mercy’s labored breathing. They’d get shot in the dark if the terrorists were any good.
Thunder and lightning erupted under the trees as the two gunmen opened fire. The minute their rounds went off, Jack found them. Jack emptied his magazine at them, and then all firing ceased. Smoothly he ejected the magazine and slid another one into place. As the snap of the slide gave his position away, he moved forward and crouched low.
“Help!” someone yelled from near the water. “Help me!”
Moans and whimpers rose up from the ground. He could hear something shuffling or rolling back and forth in the dirt. Jack moved forward quietly. Shreds of moonlight turned the area deep gray, and in the gloom he saw two figures lying on the ground, one motionless and the other twitching and sobbing. “Search them,” he whispered into the darkness behind him, and moved on. He passed the third body, the one he’d shot from long range, and kicked the gun from the corpse’s hand.
“Help me!” The waterfall was just ahead.
He couldn’t see it well in the moonlight, but from what he could tell, the falls consisted of one short cascade from the ridge above into a wide pool, then another much higher fall into the gorge below.
“I can’t hold on!”
The voice came from the darkness of the gorge. Jack pulled out his flashlight and shined it downward.
“Pico Santiago!” Jack yelled, his voice nearly blending with the rush of falling water.
“Help!”
