but—” He clucked loudly with his tongue.
“But what?” Pascal asked.
“You can watch it on the video. Pretty clear that Bauer got out, then turned around and shut the gate.”
Pascal grunted. “That was stupid. More inmates that got out, more trouble it would make for us. Pure chaos.”
“That’s what I’m saying. He had to push some of those boys back to close it. I don’t think he wanted them out.”
Pascal turned to one of his own people, Emerson. “That guy here yet?”
Deputy Marshal Emerson put a radio to his ear. His lips moved, then he listed. “Two minutes, Marshal.” They all called him “Marshal,” even though he was a deputy marshal. But he looked so much like Marshal Dillon from
Pascal nodded. Right around midnight he’d gotten two calls right in a row. The first had been from his own commander, the actual marshal of this judicial district, informing him that there’d been a prison break at the Federal Holding Facility and that he should take charge of the manhunt for two escapees. The second call, so fast it had actually beeped into the first, was from someone at someplace called the Counter Terrorist Unit, telling him that they were sending someone to talk with him. How they learned that he’d been assigned to the manhunt even before he did, he meant to ask them.
Pascal looked at Lafayette. “You from Louisiana?”
Lafayette nodded. “N’awlins. Born and raised.”
“Accent’s still with you a little bit. You ever do any manhunts down there?”
“Couple.”
“Me, too. At least there are no bayous here.”
Lafayette spit through his two front teeth. “But there’s a world of people here. Bayous might be easier.”
Pascal looked out at the buildings, lit dimly by their lights, stretching for miles in every direction. He decided Lafayette might have a point.
A man approached them. His suit fit well and his thin hair sat nicely on his head. “Deputy Marshal Pascal? George Mason.”
“Yes, sir,” Pascal said, looking down politely. Mason looked a little too neat for him, but he had a good handshake, which said a lot, and Mason also looked him right in the eye, assessing him. Pascal liked that. “You have some information on the fugitives?”
“One of them.” Mason eyed the others and suggested they step apart for a moment. Pascal complied. When they had put some space between themselves and the others, Mason said, “One of the men who escaped is one of our people. A field operative for CTU.”
“I’m afraid I don’t know what CTU is.”
Mason explained briefly about the Counter Terrorist Unit’s mandate and Jack Bauer’s background, and phrases such as “Delta Force,” “covert operations,” “counterintelligence work,” “subterfuge,” and “survival tactics” rolled off his tongue. With each new phrase, Pascal’s broad shoulders settled a little deeper into a determined, unhappy slump. Mason painted as clear a picture as he could of Jack Bauer’s capabilities without divulging any classified information.
When he finally finished, Pascal heaved a huge sigh. “Well,” he drawled at last, “I figure he was got once, we’ll get him again. Come on, Emerson,” he added with a wry look on his face, “we got to go catch Captain America.”
Tony walked back into CTU carrying the glass delicately in his hand. He dropped it off with the forensics team, already bleary-eyed from some other task that took them past midnight. “This is a priority,” he said. “I need to know whose prints these are. Now.”
He walked into the heart of CTU, the computer stations where analysts worked, often around the clock, digging up information and analyzing data for the field agents to act on. Jamey Farrell was at her own station with her eyes, apparently beyond the need to blink, fixed on her screen. “Jamey, I need information on a group.”
Jamey didn’t look up from her screen. “Seth Ludonowski. New guy, very good. Not going to last long. Take advantage of him now.”
Tony went down to the other end of the row of stations to a young man with short, bleached blond hair and pale skin. He might have been an albino but for his blue eyes and freckles.
“Seth?” Tony asked.
“Agent Almeida,” he said. “We haven’t met, but I picked your name up. What can I do for you?”
“Jemaah Islamiyah. I need everything you can tell me about them. I’ll be at my desk.”
Tony walked over to his own desk, and by the time he got there, Seth was already feeding him information. Tony began to scan it closely. Jemaah Islamiyah was an Islamic fundamentalist group operating out of Indonesia, with the same mission that most such groups pursued: to establish a fundamentalist Islamic theocracy, in this case in Indonesia, Singapore, and other Southeast Asian states. Jemaah Islamiyah (Seth had already translated it simply as “Islamic group”) had bombed hotels in Bali and the Australian embassy in Jakarta. The degree to which JI lusted after American blood was uncertain, since they limited their activities to the Asian Southeast, but they had targeted tourist sites that catered to Westerners, both Australians and Americans. California’s decision to host a Southeast Asian trade conference gave JI a logical new target, combined with the fact that an emigre from Indonesia had met with a JI supporter, created a trail that demanded exploration. Riduan Bashir didn’t strike Tony as much of a terrorist threat, but the fact that he’d identified the vehicle as a van when the published report — and Tony’s own comment — declared it was a truck, suggested that he had slightly more intimate knowledge than the average person.
Tony wasn’t sold yet — the comment could have been an innocent slip, and his late night meeting with the other Indonesian men could be nothing more than it seemed. The fingerprints would—
His phone buzzed and he saw Seth’s extension. “We’ve got a match.”
“Already?”
“Hey, we’re professionals. I’m sending it over now.”
Tony leaned forward in his chair as the information flowed top to bottom down his computer screen.
“Goddamn,” Tony murmured to himself.
Riduan Bashir had just had an evening meal with Encep Sungkar, third in command of Jemaah Islamiyah.
6. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 1 A.M. AND 2 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Tony touched the call back button on his phone.
“Seth, I’ve got more work for you.”
“Hey, I’m just getting started.”
Tony smiled, and at the same time understood what Jamey had meant about this one not staying around long. The data analsts at CTU were a unique breed: brilliant, inexhaustible, and quirky. Seth had a little too much liveliness in him to fit the job entirely. He’d love it for a while, and then burn out and look for a job that allowed him to see the sunlight directly, rather than through videotape downloaded from a traffic camera. Still, he’d be a godsend while he was around. “I want you to track down credit card receipts coming out of a restaurant called Little Java.” He recited the address. “Start digging for anything that looks out of the ordinary. I’m after an alias for Encep Sungkar, an Indonesian terrorist I think got into the country somehow. I’m guessing he’s got a full alias, and I need to know it.”
“Coming right up!”
There are two ways to evade a search: stay ahead of its expanding perimeter, or lay low and let it pass you
