on his cell phone and we’re tracking him. There’s nowhere he’s going to go now.”
“Good.” Tony dropped back far enough to avoid being noticed, but close enough to keep good visuals. “I’ll let you know if I lose him.”
“Probably best to keep your eyes peeled, but we can tell you where he’s going,” she replied. “He’s meeting some guys at a place called Little Java. It’s on Atlantic.”
Aguillar had trouble finding his voice. “I. I can’t believe you just did that.”
Zapata looked disappointed. “I thought you knew me.”
Aguillar nodded, and shook his head, and nodded again, unsure how to respond. He had worked with Zapata several times before. He knew the man’s methods. or, really, he understood Zapata’s absolute lack of methods. But this was beyond belief. “Do you. will he. is he going to do it?”
“I think so. Of course, he doesn’t know he’s going to do it. He won’t know it until after the fight tomorrow. He probably won’t decide until right at that moment. But he’ll do it.”
“What if he wins?” Aguillar countered.
Zapata looked at him as if he were insane. Hadn’t he already said Kendall would lose?
Aguillar sighed. “You could make a fortune betting on sports.”
Zapata shrugged. “I have a fortune already.”
Jack burst through the doors and into the outer courtyard of the holding facility. There was a flood of inmates rushing out of other doors from other wings, all with the same idea: safety in numbers. Gunfire crackled from above. The courtyard was surrounded by high walls, and someone had positioned snipers up there. A man next to Jack stumbled and fell.
A chain-link fence at one end of the courtyard was just now swinging shut. Whoever had been smart enough to call out the snipers had been too slow to seal the exits.
“Run!” Jack yelled. Ramirez was next to him, alternately panting and yelping at the gunfire all around him. Inmates roared and shoved, a mass of orange bodies churning toward the gate. No one had gotten out yet, and two guards were bravely trying to roll the high chain-link fence closed. Three or four layers of men stood between Jack and the exit, and they were stalled now, jammed in by the two guards. Another near Jack yelped and went down as something small and hard bounced off him and tapped Jack on the shoulder. Rubber bullets.
Grabbing Ramirez by the collar, Jack shoved his way through the crowd of men. He bladed his body when he could, and kneed, scratched, and clawed when he had to. It helped that some men were now cowering under the rain of rubber bullets from above. Jack reached the fence.
“Get back in there!” one of the two guards yelled. He jabbed his riot stick at Jack.
“Sorry,” Jack said. He grabbed the stick, pulling the guard into the half-closed fence and hitting his head on the metal frame. The man went down, and Jack stepped over him quickly. The other guard swung his stick. Jack ducked, then came up and punched the guard in the jaw. At the same moment something jabbed him in the side. He was sure the rubber bullet had cracked a rib.
Cursing, Jack dragged Ramirez through the fence, then kicked an inmate away and shoved it closed so no one else could escape.
“Run!” he yelled.
5. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 A.M. AND 1 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Jamey Farrell rushed into Chris Henderson’s office, her eyes wide as saucers. “You’re not going to believe what Jack Bauer just did.”
Tony turned the corner on Atlantic and found a parking space a block away from the Little Java. He was in no hurry now. CTU had brought the full power of its surveillance to bear, and Bashir had been tracked through his cell phone, through traffic monitors, and with visuals from Tony himself.
Almeida got out of the car and walked casually past the restaurant and around the back. There was a back door that led out into the alley where the cooks and dishwashers took the trash out to the Dumpsters. Tony walked through that door into the dishwashing room, where two Hispanic men in white aprons and rubber gloves loaded gray trays of dirty dishes into the automatic dishwasher. He ignored their inquisitive looks and walked past them to the small kitchen where two men were cutting and prepping over a hot grill. They didn’t even look up.
Tony reached a swinging door with a round window in it. Looking through the window he could see most of the small restaurant, and he spotted Riduan Bashir almost immediately. The man was sitting at a corner table with two other men, both most likely Indonesian as well. Neither of the two men looked familiar, but Tony hadn’t done much work on Jemaah Islamiyah, so he wasn’t likely to recognize even its top members except by name.
He studied their body language for a few minutes. Although Bashir was doing most of the talking, it was clear that he was reporting, not dictating, and his slumped shoulders and open, expressive hands suggested that he considered himself the other man’s inferior. The third man seemed to speak only infrequently, and then in suggestive, supportive ways to the man in the middle.
Tony knew that whatever Bashir was, he wasn’t a key player. With the exception of his annual trips to Indonesia, he led a sedentary life, and he spent most of his time at home, where he made no suspicious phone calls. But this other man intrigued Tony. He wanted to know more.
A busboy in a white coat and a hairnet barged through the swinging door, which Tony had to dodge. “Hey,” Tony said, flashing his badge. “I need a coat like that. And a hairnet.”
The busboy, wanting no trouble from anyone with a badge, helped him into a white coat from the storeroom. Tony slipped the hairnet over his head and used it to pull his hair back from his forehead. There was a mirror in the employee bathroom. He looked into it and hunched his shoulders. To him, he looked like himself in a hairnet. But to a man who’d just met him and spent only a few minutes while viewing him as a figure of authority, the hunched- over busboy with the hairnet might not be familiar.
Tony walked out into the restaurant and took a tour. It was a small place, no more than ten or twelve tables, but they were all occupied. Out of the corner of his eye, Tony watched Bashir’s table. The man in the middle took a sip of tea from a small cup. They were speaking in some Malay dialect.
“Excuse me.” Tony realized a man at a small booth was talking to him. “I dropped my fork. Get me another.”
Tony bristled at the rude tone, but held his tongue. He simply nodded, and looked around. There was a bussing at the back. Taking the dirty fork, Tony walked back and saw a drawer full of clean silverware. He also saw a stack of porcelain teacups. Tony first reached into his pants pocket and retrieved a small digital recorder he carried whenever possible, and turned it on. Then he wiped the dirty fork off on his coat but picked up a clean one, then returned to the booth and laid the same fork on the table. The man there ignored him. Tony turned just as the man with Bashir took another sip of his tea, finishing it, and laying it down. Exhaling slowly, Tony walked up, set down the new teacup, and picked up the old one. He lifted the teapot off the table and filled the new cup.
“Thank you,” the man next to Bashir said without looking at him.
Tony said nothing. He walked back to the kitchen, holding the teacup delicately so as not to disturb the fingerprints he would find there.
There was an emergency meeting at CTU Los Angeles. It was a moment for sobriety, but Nina Myers began by saying with a shrug, “Jack Bauer escapes from prison. Does this surprise anyone?”
Chris Henderson was livid. “This is no time to be glib, Nina. Do you have any idea how bad CTU is going to look after this?”
“You sound like Chappelle,” she observed.
“How is he, by the way?” asked George Mason. There was a hint of electricity in the air when he spoke to Henderson. They were on decent terms, but both men had been considered viable candidates for the position of
