Right guy for this job.”
And they all saw the logic of it without further explanation. If Zapata was a genius for seeing patterns and predicting the actions of his opponents, who better to send after him than Jack Bauer, who infuriated his superiors with his habit of playing outside the lines?
“How’d you know that this Ramirez was working with Zapata?” Tony asked.
Chappelle heaved a huge sigh. The deep breath seemed to lend him more strength. “Didn’t. Not really. Some minor intelligence that Ramirez had worked with a middleman named Vanowen. We had hints that Vanowen had done a job for Zapata, planning something here in the U.S. Water, please.”
Someone opened a bottle of water. Chappelle wet his lips and continued. “Truth is, Zapata never seems to work with the same people for long. We figured Ramirez and Vanowen would be out of the loop by the time we got to them. I figured the case would dead end, but the worst-case scenario was that Jack Bauer spends a few weeks in jail, and that was all right with me, too.”
A few people chuckled at that.
“And the jailbreak?” Nina asked.
Chappelle threw up his hands feebly. “That’s all Bauer. Only that guy would take an undercover investigation and turn the city upside down.”
The name RAND was simply a contraction of “Research and Development.” RAND itself was a massive nonprofit project dedicated to improving public policy through research. RAND had its hands in every aspect of government consultation, from environmental issues to broad-based discussions of the “new” military to endorsements or criticisms of specific pieces of hardware.
RAND had several restricted areas, but the office space required little more than an employee badge and a guest signature. The security guard gave Talia a familiar wave and asked Jack to enter his name on a sign-in sheet. Bauer made up a name and scribbled “A. Predolin” on the sheet in sloppy writing, then they were through.
Talia’s office was on the second floor of a quiet building where Jack imagined dozens of brilliant minds behind closed doors, brooding and contemplating.
“That’s what it’s like,” Talia quipped. “Lots of us just sitting around thinking brilliant thoughts.”
“Where I work, too,” Jack added.
Talia laughed. “Actually, there are a lot of meetings. Informational meetings given to us by intelligence agencies; we give presentations to them. There’s a lot of dialogue. Here.”
They reached her office, a small but functional space with a desk set against a wall, a computer screen, and shelves full of books. Jack recognized
“I don’t have access to LAPD information,” Talia said, sitting down at her computer, “but if it’s in a Federal database, I should be able to find it.” She spoke succinctly, but without enthusiasm.
“You don’t think this is going to work,” Jack said.
“I hope it will,” she corrected, putting a positive spin on his comment. “It just doesn’t fit Zapata. I can’t imagine anyone he worked with having a tattoo that could lead back to him.”
“He wasn’t expecting the guy to get shot twenty yards from his hotel room,” Jack pointed out. “And remember, this was all right when we got close to him.”
She accepted his point with a small shrug. A few quick strokes and two different passwords later, she was inside an enormous government registry. At Jack’s direction, she did a search for “Emese.” Nothing came up.
“Try getting information on MS–13,” Jack requested.
Talia didn’t type anything.
“MS–13,” Jack repeated. “The letters ‘M’ and ‘S,’ and—” “I know what it is,” she said at last. “Zapata was part of that gang.”
“No kidding.” Jack felt a tiny knot form just below his lungs; it was a good feeling, an exciting tension, the feeling the hound gets just before the start of the hunt.
“If Zapata was Marquez, yes, I think Marquez was part of MS–13 in its early days. Not for long. And I don’t know why he left, but. ” Her voice trailed off as she began typing. A moment later, her computer screen altered and they were looking at an image of the tattoo Jack had seen twice before: “Emese” was a conjunction of the Spanish letters “eme” and “ese.” This one had a tiny “WB” connected to the bottom right part of the number three, which a caption explained stood for “West Baltimore,” but otherwise it was identical to the tattoos Jack had seen on Oscar and Aguillar.
“You said the inmates who attacked you had the same tattoo?” Talia asked incredulously.
“Yes.”
“Do you think Zapata is on to you? He tried to kill you in prison?”
Jack shook his head. “Maybe, but it doesn’t make sense. If he knew something was wrong then, he never would have let Ramirez get that close to him. And I have no idea how he could have known what I was up to in the jail. If he knows that, he’s not a genius, he’s a psychic.”
“Zapata has evaded CTU, the CIA, the FBI, the Russian GRU, the Cubans, the Israelis, everyone. I wouldn’t put it past him.”
“I’ll be sure and ask him in person. Can you get me a name and address for the top of the food chain with MS–13 in Los Angeles?”
Someone knocked on Talia’s door. She was so engrossed in her research that she simply said, “Come in.”
Jack turned as the door opened and he found himself staring up at the big U.S. Marshal who’d arrested him earlier.
He was fast for a big man, and smart. He didn’t go for his gun. Instead he jabbed Jack in the face with a short left, or tried to. Jack slipped inside it and threw a punch to the big man’s liver. He missed, hitting solid muscle. Pascal was big, but he wasn’t flabby. He grabbed Jack by the hair with his left and punched him in the face with a right fist the size of a soccer ball. Jack heard a ringing in his ears and knew he couldn’t take another one of those. Plus they were making a racket; he didn’t know how much noise they were making which meant they were making too much. He blocked the second punch, then slammed his own hands down on top of the hand holding his hair. Unexpectedly, he took a bow, dropping his shoulders to the ground. Pascal grunted, the leverage on his trapped wrist dropping him down to one knee. Jack kicked, connecting to the Marshal’s groin. Then he kicked him in the face, and Pascal went limp and quiet.
Jack closed the door and listened. No noise, no movement. Maybe no one had noticed.
He turned to check on Talia. Her face was white and her eyes were wide, watching Jack as though he were a wild animal that had stalked into her office.
“I could use that address as soon as possible,” he said.
The Reel Inn was one of those beach dives that looked terrible, smelled terrible, and served great food. It consisted of a weather-stained wooden shack — once painted blue but now faded to a stormy gray — and a neon sign that worked at least half the time.
This early on a Saturday morning it was deserted, except for three men who sat on one of the outdoor benches staring across Pacific Coast Highway toward one hundred yards of sandy beach and then nothing but ocean.
Kyle Risdow, the blond man who had picked up Zapata earlier, lay flat on his back on one of the benches, yawning. This meeting had little to do with him directly, so he spent the time dozing and trying to think of unique concepts for online porn websites.
Next to him, Zapata sat upright, but he was otherwise equally relaxed. He had a new identity now, thanks to the third member of their little group. If anyone asked, he was now Bernard de la Plaz.
The third member of their group was a Ukrainian named Franko. Although it was Saturday morning on the beach, he still wore dark jeans and a black leather jacket. He was fingering a piece of paper with an address.
“I only have one question,” Franko said in precise but heavily accented English.
“A man without a question is a man without a brain,” Zapata said.
Franko held up the piece of paper. “You want to get rid of this person because they worked for you. But now I
