sleeping in their chairs from sheer exhaustion.
One person was still up. Jamey Farrell sat in her seat, analyzing data signals from Ayman al-Libbi’s phone. His trick was simple, as the best tricks usually are. His cell phone bounced around various satellites, being rerouted so that its point of origin, if it could be tracked at all, took time to find. And of course he never stayed on the phone that long.
But each time he’d called, Jamey had narrowed her field of search. She knew he was in Los Angeles somewhere, so the signal had to bounce off a local cell station first. On his first call, she’d figured out that he was not in West Los Angeles anymore. On his second call, she knew he was calling from somewhere south of downtown.
He had just called a third time, and she had him. He was at the Los Angeles International Airport. Smiling to herself, Jamey called Jack Bauer.
22. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 4 A.M. AND 5 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Jack listened to Jamey Farrell speak, and then he knew what he had to do.
“Mercy,” he said. “You and Ted take Sarah to Santa Monica Airport. Get the documents to National Health Services. I’m going to get Ayman al-Libbi. He’s at LAX. Sarah, do you have a car?”
She nodded. “But the keys were on the boat.”
“I’ll hotwire it. Just tell me where it is.”
She pointed out a Toyota Prius. Jack got in and drove away.
Mercy was feeling light-headed. “Ted, you should drive if you don’t mind.”
“Sure,” he said. They got in the car and drove off before the police arrived. There’s going to be a hell of a lot of paperwork, Mercy thought.
“You okay?” Ozersky asked.
“No,” she admitted. “I don’t know how much time I have left. It was, what was it? One o’clock in the afternoon.”
Sarah, in the backseat, sat back and pulled her arms in and away from Mercy. “Are you saying what I think you are?”
Mercy nodded. “When your guy kidnapped me. I escaped, but I got exposed to the virus. So did your lovely Frankie Michaelmas. I spilled all kinds of the stuff, I guess. She got the faster one. I’ve still got… oh, what, nine hours left to live.”
“I want to go home,” Sarah said, her voice trembling. “I don’t want to be any part of it. I don’t want to be around you when you become contagious.”
Mercy wrapped her arms around her body, feeling her joints ache. “Thank you for your sympathy.” She looked at the CTU agent. “Ted, you okay with this?”
Ozersky shrugged. “I like your style, Mercy. Always did, even when I was undercover. How can I say no?”
Ozersky hadn’t looked at her when he spoke. Maybe it was just because he was driving, but she didn’t think so. She had the distinct impression that he hadn’t wanted to reveal too much. And it suddenly occurred to her that maybe she’d fallen in love with the wrong CTU agent.
Ted Ozersky’s thoughts were on Mercy. Probably too much on Mercy, he decided. And he was right. If he’d been paying more attention, he might have noticed the black Mazda that followed them out of the marina and onto the freeway.
In the early hours, the drive from Marina del Rey to Santa Monica Airport was ten minutes. Santa Monica Airport serviced small planes, mostly private planes and a few charters.
The airport made extra income by renting out some of its spare hangars and mechanics sheds to other businesses. One Hollywood screenwriter actually used a spare shed as his office, swearing that he got more work done because no one thought to come bother him down there.
Now just after four o’clock in the morning, the LAPD detective, the CTU agent, and the eco-terrorist drove down the main lane, past a pub called the Spitfire Grill, and pulled up in front of one of those sheds. Without ceremony they exited and hurried over to the shed.
“I don’t have a key,” Sarah warned. “Copeland actually owns a plane here somewhere, but I never got very involved in this stuff.”
“I have a key,” said Mercy. She drew her gun and fired rounds into the door until the bolt shattered. She kicked open the door.
The room inside was tiny, but it reminded her of Cope-land: neat stacks of paper, file cabinets with labels on them, maps rolled into orderly scrolls.
“Hurry, please,” Mercy said.
Sarah went to the file cabinet, pulled out a folder, and held it up. “That’s it?” Mercy said. “That’s it,” she repeated, this time answering her question. They’d been running all night, killed people, watched people die, and now all of a sudden here it was, plain as day.
But then her knees lost all their strength and she fell to the ground. Ozersky rushed forward but Sarah stepped back, gasping, “Don’t touch her! Don’t! Look!”
She was pointing to the football-shaped bruise that had appeared on Mercy’s neck. Ozersky did not back away, but he stopped moving forward, his hand hovering near her.
Mercy felt her skin until her fingers found the bump. “Oh,” she said. “I thought…I thought twenty-four hours…”
Sarah shook her head. “It depends on the person. Maybe you had the weaponized virus, and it just took longer to replicate.” She backed away further. “I’m sorry. I’m sorry, I can’t stay here. You’re becoming contagious…”
Mercy felt like all her joints had suddenly become flaked with rust. They didn’t want to move. And her head was on fire. She smiled weakly at Ted Ozersky. “Willow. What a stupid name.”
“It worked,” he said without much conviction.
“Go,” she pushed her hand through the air. “Get that file back to your people.”
The CTU agent said, “I’m not just going to leave you here.”
“You’re not going to get sick,” she said. “Get that stuff where it can do some good. But do me one favor.”
“What?”
“Send Jack Bauer. I need to see him.”
If she’d been any stronger, she’d have noticed the look of pain on Ozersky’s face. But he nodded and hurried out of the shed.
“I know he’s in there,” Jamey Farrell said to Jack over the
phone. “But I can’t put you belly to belly.”
“I can.”
Jessi Bandison was standing beside her. The girl’s face was drawn and sad, but otherwise she looked ready to work. “I thought you were leaving,” Jamey said.
“There’s work to do, right?” Jessi said. She sat down at the terminal next to Jamey and called up a window she’d already prepared. “I tapped into the LAX security cameras. Let’s see if we can’t find him sitting somewhere.”
“I haven’t heard back from your people,” Ayman al-Libbi said. He was sitting in his car on the third floor of the LAX parking structure, talking on his cell phone. He had the window rolled down to keep the car from getting too stuffy. “I know two of them are dead, but I don’t know about the other.”
“We just had contact from one of our people,” the Iranian voice said. “They’ve been released.”
