Pascal took down the make, model, and license plate number.
Jack whirled and swept away the hand that held him, trapped it, and clamped his hand across his attacker’s throat. Only then did he recognize Teri Bauer’s face.
Her eyes were now bulging and her face had contorted into a mask of sudden terror.
Jack released her immediately and pulled her into the shadows of the apse. “Jesus!” he hissed.
“Jesus yourself!” she shot back. “Your face, I didn’t recognize you for a minute.” She was shaking. His expression had shocked her far more than his physical movements. His blue eyes had gleamed ferociously, and his lip had curled into a snarl. She had known for years that her husband was capable of killing people; that he had, indeed, killed people when necessary. But not until that moment did her thoughts reshape themselves into something more definitive.
“What are you still doing here?” he asked, immediately sorry that his tone was so accusatory.
“I waited to see if I could help,” she replied. “I was just about to go.”
He forced his voice into a slower, more soothing tone, though his heart was still racing, his muscles still coiled for a fight. “That would have been better. There’s, there’s a lot going on right now.”
“Who’s this?” Ramirez asked. He had been surprised by Jack’s sprint across the intersection, and then had hesitated, not sure if he should follow or not. But he disliked being left alone.
Teri Bauer spotted the look of caution in Jack’s eyes. “A friend,” she said vaguely.
“Are we staying with her?” Ramirez said. “We need a place to—”
“No,” Jack snapped, before Teri could respond.
“We’re not that good of friends,” Teri followed up.
Either she was pissed at him, or she was good at this. Jack decided it was probably both. He caught the dull roar of a car shifting gears as it came around the corner. The others seemed not to notice.
“Damn,” Ramirez said, kicking one of the planters with the toe of his stolen sneakers. “I’m exhausted. We need someplace to—”
“Down!” Jack commanded. He smothered Teri with his body and grabbed Ramirez by the back of his Lakers jersey, nearly strangling him as he pulled the other fugitive to the ground. At the same moment, the air around them exploded with sound: shotgun blasts and semi-automatic pistol reports, whining bullets, shattering glass. Shards of glass rained down on Jack’s head as he leveled his Sig at the car — a black Chrysler 30 °C that screeched to a halt. They couldn’t see Jack or the others in the shadows under the apse, and most of their shots went high. Jack’s did not. He put two rounds right through the front passenger window, and a silhouette there vanished. He swiveled a few degrees to the rear window, but Ramirez struggled underneath him and the shots went low, punching holes in the door frame. Someone inside the Chrysler screamed, and the big car roared away.
“Oh my god, oh my god,” Teri whispered over and over.
“Got to move now,” Jack stated. He jumped up and hauled her to her feet. “Get out of here,” he commanded. “You were home. If the phone rang or anyone knocked, you didn’t hear it because you were asleep. Go.” He shoved Teri toward the corner. Before she could protest, he grabbed Ramirez by the arm and half-dragged him across the street. Teri was going to hate him for that, but she’d be alive to hate him.
“Who the hell was that? And who the hell was
“She was no one in particular. They were more of the same from jail.” Jack didn’t know it for sure, but the guess was a good one. The hit was gang-style, the car was gang-style. MS–13 was still after him. This couldn’t be a gang vendetta, which meant he didn’t know why they were after him. And what was more, how had they found him?
Jack didn’t release Ramirez until they reached the car, and he didn’t say a word until they were driving away. Two blocks down the street he pulled over and parked at a meter, now dormant for the evening. He killed the engine and the lights. “Get low,” he said to his companion. They both slid low in their seats. A minute later sirens wailed and two squad cars hurried by, lights blazing. Jack calculated. If CTU cooperated, LAPD would run ballistics on the SigSauer and track it back to him. He had to stay ahead of the law, stay ahead of the pattern.
“What the hell did you do to MS–13 that they come after you?” Ramirez asked.
“Nothing,” Jack said truthfully. “Maybe it’s you.”
“I’ve got nothing to do with them!” the other man protested.
“Either way, we need cover. A hotel is out because neither one of us has ID,” which was a lie because the navy blue pouch had included some cash and a driver’s license and credit cards under the name of John Jimmo. “You said you might know some people. Now’s the time to go there.”
Ramirez hesitated. The pause itself was rewarding, as far as Jack was concerned. Whoever Ramirez was considering, he was important enough to cause fear and concern. That was just the kind of person Jack wanted to meet.
“All right,” Ramirez conceded. “Let’s go.”
Even when he wasn’t around, Jack Bauer dominated the activities at CTU Los Angeles. Tony was up to his elbows in his Jemaah Islamiyah investigation. With Henderson’s permission, he’d put two field agents out, wiretaps on every phone they could find for Sungkar’s alias and Riduan Bashir’s phones as well. Thanks to Seth, Sungkar’s e-mails and instant messages were already popping up on Tony’s computer as soon as they went out. Sungkar had just received an obscure e-mail, probably in code, but referenced an upcoming visit to Papa Rashad’s factory. The e-mail repeated “Papa Rashad’s factory” several times, and Tony was sure it was code. He was waiting for data analysis, and his patience was short.
“Jamey!” he yelled into the phone, though his voice carried straight to her. She buzzed him back and said more quietly, “We’re on it, Tony, but we’re also on this thing with Jack.”
“Bauer.” The word was not said with any kindness. Even as a fugitive from justice, Jack caused problems inside CTU. The man was a bull in a china shop. “What’s going on?”
“Took your advice and spent some time digging into the victim’s story. Adrian Tintfass.”
“Some kind of small-timer, right? A middleman.”
“Yeah, never really on our radar because he’d never done anything big.”
“I remember.”
Jamey jumped on his words. “But that’s just it. He’d never really done anything big because he’d never really done anything. I mean the guy is nonexistent, and then all of a sudden he pops up, gets a label for a few small- scale transactions that might interest local law but wouldn’t raise an eyebrow here, and then all of a sudden he’s doing this big deal and Jack goes and kills him.”
Tony did not see the mystery. “Lots of bad guys do lots of bad things that we don’t know about. They get a reputation with other bad guys even if we don’t have their whole resume.”
Jamey made a skeptical noise into the phone. “That’s where I don’t buy this thing with Jack. There wasn’t any reason to kill this guy. How many people do you think Jack’s killed?”
“A freakin’ lot!”
“Right, but do you honestly think he’s ever killed anyone he didn’t have to?”
Tony paused. “Read his service record, Jamey. It’s not that hard to believe—”
“—for somebody who’s read the service record. That’s why this story stands up to a typical investigation. But I’m talking about us, people who know him. Do you believe it?”
There was another long pause while Tony considered. He put aside his snap judgments and disapproval of Jack’s actions. “No,” he said at last, “I don’t believe it.”
Jamey felt a thrill. She’d won a point. “I have a name. It’s Adrian Tintfass’s widow. Can we send someone to go check her out? No point in me asking Henderson about this, he’ll just say no.”
“Nina,” Tony said. “Get Nina to do it. Now where’s my analysis?”
“Got it.” Seth Ludonowski was standing at his shoulder, beaming.
Tony hung up. “Go.”
Seth didn’t bother with any impressive overview of the cryptographics programs, the analysis of semantics, allophones, or any other highly relevant but distracting methodologies used to parse through the intercepted e- mails. He just said, “Papa Rashad’s factory is pretty unimaginative encryption for the initials PRF. If you ask me, PRF can also stand for—”
