“Of course,” the Indonesian said, moving past Tony and into the warehouse. His glasses flashed as he looked around. “There is not much here.”
“I know how to pack,” Tony grunted, following him inside. He borrowed the observation from one of the strike team members, who had noted how efficient Menifee had been at stacking his ordnance. He held out his hand. “Menifee. I like to shake hands with the people I do business with.”
Sungkar looked down at Tony’s offered hand as though it might contain some disease. Finally he touched it weakly and removed his hand at once. “I have another meeting. Let’s proceed.”
The buy itself was straightforward: two hundred and fifty thousand dollars for everything explosive, plus all the assault rifles. Keeping in character, Tony tried to sell them the fifty cal, but Sungkar wasn’t buying.
“I’ll open the cargo door and your guys can drive in.” Tony went over to the huge door, almost the size of the wall, and pressed a button. Hydraulics groaned, and the door rattled up into the ceiling.
There were two men with Sungkar, one of whom had driven the truck. He climbed back in and tried to start it up, but the engine wouldn’t turn over. He looked up at Sungkar through the windshield apologetically and tried again. He had no luck, even after fifteen minutes of effort.
While they’d been talking, CTU agents had disabled the vehicle. It wasn’t going anywhere.
“I got a truck I can sell you,” Tony offered with a friendly grin. Sungkar wasn’t amused. While the Indonesians popped the hood and tinkered around, muttering in Malay, Tony said, “Seriously, you need transport to someplace, I can drive you there. No charge. I just want this shit outta my warehouse.”
Sungkar considered Tony had seen him check his watch several times, and knew that he had a schedule to keep.
“Just you. Not your men,” Sungkar said. “My business associates would not like that.”
“No prob,” Tony said, although he would have liked to have had a couple of good guns guarding his back. “Let’s load her onto my truck.”
Dan Pascal was thinking that Officer Lafayette was a prophet. He really would have preferred to do a manhunt in the bayous.
He was standing with a half dozen other marshals and investigators on the curb of a street in downtown Los Angeles, next to a Nissan Maxima. The same Maxima, in fact, that Jack Bauer had stolen. He was happy to have found the car, but as far as he knew, Bauer had just jacked another one. Or maybe he’d just left the car and gone into one of these fine buildings. Far as Pascal knew, he could be looking down on them right now.
This city was immense. They’d simply vanished into the wilderness of civilization.
Pascal was just thinking how he liked that: “wilderness of civilization.” He ought to write that down. But his phone rang and he checked the number flashing. “Pascal. Go ahead, Emerson.”
His assistant deputy said, “Marshal, we got a break, looks like.”
“Don’t hold it in, it ain’t healthy.”
“A surveillance team downtown picked up some images that might be our man.” “What team? Ours?” “LAPD. They were on some other case. Some kind of fence named Vanowen.”
“I got a link in the car. Send me over the image.”
Pascal ambled over to his Crown Vic and punched up the mini-computer. The image downloaded quickly: a typically grainy black-and-white of a blond-haired man. Pascal always wondered why, in an age when a cop could drive around with a computer in his car and have pictures sent through the ether, security cameras still shot video that looked like the Zapruder footage. But even so, it did look like photos of Bauer. He was with a smaller guy, maybe Latino, and a round guy built like a fireplug.
“That’s our guy. Know where he’s going?”
“As a matter of fact, we do.”
Leave it to Los Angeles to take swampland next to an airport and build million-dollar McMansions over it. Playa del Rey, which had once been little more than the soaking ground for branches of the Los Angeles river during the rainy season, now consisted of long fields of beige and ecru archways and columns, cream-colored walls, and acre upon acre of Spanish tile in burnt umber and sienna.
Of course, all those people in all those mini-mansions gathered all sorts of possessions, and those possessions inevitably outgrew their houses, which meant they had to rent storage. The U-Pack Storage Rental facility did a better-than-break-even business renting storage space to the upper middle class. But the owner made his real money as a depot for the lesssavory members of the community who often helped relieve the suburbanites of their excess property.
The U-Pack people also let some of their illegal storage clients use his facility as a meeting ground. It was safe: you needed a pass code to get in, and the upstanding customers almost never visited.
Twenty minutes earlier Jack Bauer had driven with Vanowen and Ramirez to an overnight parking lot near the hotel, dropped off Vanowen’s Audi, and climbed into a mid-sized truck with circular logo and the words “Alliance Moving” in blue letters. Two men were waiting, and hopped in the back of the truck.
“You have a lot of businesses,” Jack observed. “Important to diversify.” Vanowen nodded, and started the truck’s engine.
Downtown to Playa del Rey was an easy drive at that hour, although one could already see early morning commuters easing sleepily onto the 110 Freeway. A police cruiser pulled up alongside for a moment, and Jack, at the passenger window, stared down at it. He wondered what Tony Almeida and Nina Myers were saying about him at CTU. He hoped Henderson had bought his story. If not, Jack wouldn’t be safe in Los Angeles much longer. So far he’d managed to stay ahead of the law by remaining unpredictable, but not untraceable. His pursuers would have found the truck, and then the Maxima. His face had undoubtedly been picked up by security cameras at the hotel, but CTU would have to access the data banks in that particular hotel to find him.
The Alliance truck pulled into the driveway of a place called the U-Pack Storage facility. Vanowen hopped out and entered a code into a button panel, and a big iron gate that had blocked the driveway rattled out of the way.
Vanowen hopped back in and put the truck in gear. “Okay, I took from these guys before. I’m just doing pick up for the guy I do work with” —he threw a knowledgeable look at Ramirez— “and he says there shouldn’t be any trouble. Case there is, you’re on your own.” This was said to Jack.
Vanowen steered the truck up to the largest of three buildings on the lot, next to a big hangar door, then checked his watch with an air of satisfaction. “Quarter till. My dad always said, if you’re not ten minutes early, you’re late.”
“Looks like they’re right on time, too,” Jack said.
Another truck had rolled in through the iron gate. Vanowen watched it through the truck’s big rectangular side view mirror. This truck rumbled past the Alliance vehicle and pulled to a stop in the middle of the driveway. Jack followed Vanowen and Ramirez out of the cab, and one of the two men who’d gotten in back of the truck appeared. The other was nowhere in sight.
The occupants of the other truck appeared as well. There were four of them: three were Indonesian, and Jack’s eyes were drawn straight to the smallest — a little man with scholarly glasses and a look of fierce intensity. He was flanked by two more Indonesians, bigger, sporting tough looks, and undoubtedly carrying weapons. Finally, Jack glanced at the fourth man, and found himself looking straight into the eyes of Tony Almeida.
It took every ounce of self-discipline Tony possessed not to react. That was Jack Bauer. Goddamned-sonof- a-bitch Jack Bauer! What was he doing selling arms to Jemaah Islamiyah? Almeida was one of CTU’s best and brightest, and the connection formed in his mind almost immediately. Tintfass had been an arms dealer moving up in the world. Bauer had launched an investigation against him. CTU had decided not to pursue it. Bauer had killed him. What if Bauer was running a little side business of his own? He wouldn’t be the first law enforcement agent to take his knowledge over to the dark side. Maybe he’d wanted to take over Tintfass’s operation, first using Federal powers to try to destroy him, then taking the more direct approach. Rumors were flying around CTU of misappropriated funds. was Bauer at the center of it? Had he been financing his own sales operation?
All these thoughts raced through Tony’s mind, but none of them showed on his face. No outside observer would have gotten even a hint that Bauer and Almeida knew each other.
“We have your equipment,” Sungkar said. “You have our package, of course.”
