One of the men with Jack, a short bulldog of a man with a mustache as thick as a shoe brush, nodded. “Right here.” He held up two CD jewel cases wrapped in rubber bands. He unwrapped the rubber bands and handed one to Sungkar. “This is most of it. We put the equipment on my truck, and I give you the rest.”
Sungkar nodded, having expected this. “Let’s get this done.” He motioned to his men, one of whom stood off to one side, the cover man, while the other unstrapped a dolly from the back of Tony’s truck and began to cart boxes over to the Alliance truck.
Tony didn’t know any of the men with Jack. The bulldog was completely unfamiliar. There was another guy with salt-and-pepper hair, but he looked to be no more than hired muscle. The last one wore a thin black mustache. Tony thought he’d seen a picture of him. Was he the other fugitive from jail?
Jack’s heart was pounding, but no one would have known he was nervous. What the hell was Almeida doing here? But Almeida couldn’t rat him out. He was obviously on a case of some kind and wouldn’t want to blow his cover.
Jack saw Vanowen ease up on Almeida, and his hand went casually to his hip where his Sig was stashed.
“You don’t belong here,” Vanowen said to Tony.
“Huh?” Tony replied, a little startled, but the bulldog’s expression was amused.
“You ain’t Chinese or whatever,” Vanowen said. “You the token white guy?” Almeida grinned as if he were amused. “I’m the token whatever, long as I get paid.” The conversation gave Jack the opening he needed. “Amen to that.” Almeida looked at him with those sad-sack eyes. “This’ll be a good payday, huh?”
Jack knew that Almeida was fishing. He was about to respond, but his words were cut off by a voice blaring over a loudspeaker. “
Two squad cars had blocked the iron gate, and another one had rolled in from some back entrance, along with a white unmarked car, probably a Crown Victoria. They were surrounded, but neither Vanowen nor the Indonesians were inclined to surrender. Vanown and his henchmen poured fire into the two police cars at the gate, and the cops there ducked for cover. The Indonesians attacked the other way. Someone from the Crown Vic fired a big weapon—.10mm Desert Eagle, had to be — that boomed like a shotgun, and one of the Indonesians went down immediately.
But the others put rounds into the cars, and those officers, too, went for cover.
“What the fuck!” Vanowen said, dropping back near his own truck. He glared at Jack, his most likely suspect.
“You kidding?” Jack yelled back, pointing at his arm now running red with blood.
Dan Pascal hadn’t been in a real firefight since ’91. He heard the combined ping-thud of rounds puncturing the door of his car and he smirked.
He raised himself up, just barely over the top of his car, and surveyed the terrain. LAPD was after the arms- selling crew, but Pascal was worried about Jack Bauer. He’d spotted his blond fugitive as they rolled up, but now he’d disappeared. Someone chose his car as a target, and his windshield shattered. He fired a few more rounds from his Desert Eagle, the sound like thunder compared to the little 9-millimeters plinking all around. This wasn’t going to last long. They had the bad guys in a cross-fire. He was just reaching for his mic to give more orders through the loudspeaker, when one of the officers in the squad car next to him went down without a word. Then the other one fell, too, and Pascal had a flashback of a little town in southern Iraq, watching three grunts in his platoon drop before someone yelled.
“Sniper!” he roared. They were standing next to a friggin’ three-story building, which meant that to someone looking down on them they’d be like fish in a barrel. He discharged a few rounds up-angle and slid back into his car as a round chipped at the asphalt he’d just vacated.
Jack saw Vanowen spin around as a high-caliber round hit him, and something small and shiny flew out of his hand. He needed Vanowen and couldn’t let him die. Jack sprinted the short distance between them and caught the other man before he fell, pinning him against the side of the truck.
“We’re leaving,” he said. He opened the cab and shoved Vanowen inside, following behind. He knew Vanowen’s other man, the one who’d disappeared, was on the roof, but he had no problem leaving the sniper behind for the cops to pick up. Jack gunned the engine. Ramirez appeared at the passenger door, threw it open, and scrambled inside.
Jack didn’t bother turning around. He jammed the truck’s long stick shift into reverse and hit the accelerator. The truck roared and lurched backward, heading straight for the two black-and-whites at the gate. He got a quick image of Tony Almeida glaring at him as he fled.
He knew the cops at the gate were firing at the back of the truck, and he hoped none of them hit the ordinance that had already been stowed. The cop cars came up fast in the side view mirror. Jack gritted his teeth, and a second later he felt his head nearly rattle off his shoulders and the truck plowed into the cars, nearly stopped, then shoved its way between them.
Then he was through. There was no more fir-ing — the cops at the cars were either injured or had taken cover. Jack spared a second to survey the fire-fight. The Indonesians were firing at the other police cars, and Jack saw flashes of fire from the roof of the storage building. Someone was firing down on the cops. Vanowen’s second man. He glanced over at his two companions, both cowering in pain and fear. He switched his SigSauer to his left hand and leaned out the driver’s window. It was a ridiculous shot to try — way over fifty meters, with a handgun, firing left-handed. But he saw no reason for cops to get killed. He steadied his left arm and aimed, relaxing. There was a psychological tendency for shooters, aiming at distant targets, to muscle their way into the shot, as though their bodies needed to help the bullet travel. But the opposite was true, of course. The bullet would travel a certain distance, period, and no push from the shooter would help — it would only spoil the aim. Jack relaxed, made his best guess as to windage and the force of gravity, and squeezed.
Then he threw the truck into first and gunned the engine, and they were gone.
10. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 5 A.M. AND 6 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
“Jesus, Jesus,” Ramirez whispered with both hands covering his face.
“Goddamn!” Vanowen rasped through clenched teeth, his right hand pressed tightly over his left shoulder.
“It went through,” Jack said calmly. There was no pursuit. They had to ditch this truck, though, before the helicopters were in the air. “If no arteries were hit, you might live, but your shoulder’s ruined.” His own right arm stung, but he’d been lucky. The round had taken off a layer of skin, but hadn’t done any real damage.
He saw what he was looking for and made a hard left. There was a long tunnel on Sepulveda Boulevard just south of LAX. He reached it and stopped in the slow lane, then jumped out. The next few moments would be pure luck. He saw headlights approach up the lonely road and enter the tunnel. If it was a cruiser, they were done.
It wasn’t. Jack waved at the car, a red Chrysler SUV. The car slowed. Jack jumped in front of it and raised his weapon. “Out, now.”
The driver, a forty-ish man in a dress shirt and tie, looked shocked and took a moment to comply.
“The stuff,” Vanowen said. “Put as much in as you can.”
Jack didn’t question. He helped Vanowen into the SUV, then he and Ramirez spent a minute or two tossing the boxes from the truck into the SUV. The delivery was shrinking. They’d loaded only half the equipment into the
