“The rest listen to every word he says,” Pascal replied.
Tony took Jamey’s side. “But there’s nothing about the Chairman or his schedule that matches the PRF code. “
“I ran it twice,” Seth confirmed.
“Besides,” Tony pointed out, “it seems like Zapata has been trying to get ordnance. I doubt he’d need that much armament to go after the Fed Chairman.”
“But,” Nina said, “you’re saying Jemaah Islamiyah, but they weren’t after explosives, they wanted some computer virus.”
“What’s the status of Jemaah Islamiyah?” Chappelle asked.
Tony said, a little unhappily, “Down but not out. We caught or killed two men in the gun battle, but Encep Sungkar got away.”
“That was our fault,” Pascal confessed. “My people jumped in to get Bauer. We didn’t know there was an operation in progress.”
Jack had been silent for a moment, listening. The analysis was bouncing all over the place. Explosives, Jemaah Islamiyah, the Pacific Rim Forum, computer viruses, MS–13. It was. chaos. “A butterfly flaps its wings in China,” he muttered.
“Huh?” Nina said, overhearing him. The others stopped talking, too.
“Just something this analyst at RAND said,” Jack explained. “Chaos theory. When a system is so complicated that it looks like chaos, but there’s some order hidden in the middle of it. That’s what Zapata does. That’s why he’s hard to track. He’s got us chasing our tails.”
Tony frowned. “Are you suggesting we ignore JI?”
Jack nodded. “I think we should ignore anything Zapata lets us get close to. He didn’t care about Ramirez or Vanowen and walked away from the weapons we brought him at the hotel. If PRF was that easy to crack—”
“Gee, thanks,” Seth interjected.
Jack ignored him. “—then we should throw it out because Zapata didn’t think it was important. The only thing I think that has knocked him off balance was when I got near him at the hotel and killed Aguillar. We know from phone records and card key files that he was in the next room right before then. Killing Aguillar was the closest we’ve come to him, and Aguillar led us to MS–13. I want to stay on that trail.”
“Then do it,” Chappelle said. “Get what you need and get back in the field. Tony and Nina, you support him. Everyone,” he said, standing up to gather their attention. “I know you aren’t used to hearing this from me, but don’t think inside the lines on this one. Zapata will spot us like he’s spotted everyone else. Now go.”
The next fifteen minutes were filled with the less glamorous but vital work of the data analysts. Jack needed as much information as he could get on a Russian or Ukrainian gang operating in West Los Angeles. CTU tapped into the computers of LAPD, Santa Monica PD, the Federal anti-gang task force, Immigration, and Customs. Getting the general information was easy — LAPD had formed a joint task force with the FBI to investigate a gang of Ukrainian immigrants suspected of criminal activity. The man Jack needed to get to was Sergei Petrenko, head of the Ukrainian outfit. Thanks to the Patriot Act, the NAP Act, and its successors, CTU tapped into Petrenko’s cell phone and e-mails immediately. Inside of ten minutes, Jamey Farrell and her crew were analyzing his phone records, his e-mails, every shred of electronic communication that Mr. Sergei Petrenko had used recently.
“He’s a careful one,” Jamey told Jack as the analysts continued their review. “He doesn’t say much or write much. But he has been talking to someone a lot.” She checked her notes. “Felix Studhalter. Looks like he’s a buyer and distributor.”
“Have they ever met?” Jack asked.
“Phone records wouldn’t show that, of course, but I don’t think so. It looks like we have a different kind of break. The FBI’s joint task force has been on these guys for a while. It looks like they have someone undercover in the group. Code name Ivan of all things. Looks like Ivan’s been feeding them bits of information. Felix is new business for them, and the buy is supposed to go down today. I guess that’s what your gang-banger friend heard about.”
Jack formed a plan immediately. First, they would track down Felix Studhalter and detain him. Jack would go to the buy in his place, steal the drugs, and get them to MS–13.
He checked his watch. It was almost noon. If Ramirez was right, then whatever Zapata was planning would happen sometime today. And, Jack realized with a pang of frustration, Zapata still had him running around in circles.
He walked down the hall to clean his wounds and found himself side by side with Chris Henderson.
“Thanks for all the help last night,” Jack said sarcastically. “You have no idea how much I’ve helped you,” Henderson spat back.
Jack stopped. “What kind of help did you give me last night when I called you at four o’clock in the morning!”
“I had no idea you were on an operation—”
“But you know me,” Jack retorted. “And you still left me out in the cold. I never thought you’d want so badly to get even.”
Henderson squared up on Jack. The two agents faced each other like boxers just before the fight. “This has nothing to do with that Internal Affairs thing. I don’t give a damn who you dropped my name to. I’m not guilty of anything.”
Jack’s eyes drilled into him. “When I mentioned your name I was doing my job. If I find out you’re trying to screw me, this will get really, really personal.”
17. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 P.M. AND 1 P.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
For the first time in a long time, Jack climbed into a car that he hadn’t stolen. He’d taken a minute just before the hour to clean himself up and dress his wounds — the second bullet wound on his right forearm stung like hell and would require attention eventually, but his arm functioned — then found a change of clothes. Jamey had downloaded a picture of Felix Studhalter, and Jack compared himself to it in the mirror. They looked nothing alike, but Studhalter’s hair was light brown, not so far off from blond, and according to information from a prior arrest, Studhalter was roughly the same height. If Sergei knew his buyer only from description, the sting might work.
Now he started the engine of a borrowed black Chevy Tahoe and started the engine. It was at that moment that another car pulled into the secure parking area at CTU. Jack saw Peter Jiminez behind the wheel with an enormous purple bruise on the left side of his swollen face.
Their two cars, facing opposite directions, pulled up to one another. Peter’s eyes flashed as he saw Jack, and the parts of his face that weren’t purple turned an angry red.
“Peter,” Jack said out the window of his car. “Jack,” the younger agent grunted through a nearly immobile jaw. “It wasn’t personal,” Jack explained. “It was part of the job. Chappelle or Henderson will catch you up.”
“We’ve all got jobs to do,” Jiminez said coldly.
As Jack drove out, Henderson parked and entered CTU. He received two types of looks as he walked toward Henderson’s office: surprise and sympathy from those who hadn’t heard about his encounter with Jack; and amusement and sympathy from those who knew how he felt. He walked up the stairs to Henderson’s office and entered without knocking, then closed the door.
“Where the hell have you been?” Henderson asked, looking up from the files on his desk. He was digging through all the information he could get on MS–13.
“Planning ways to burn Jack Bauer,” Jiminez muttered.
Kyle Risdow had a nice split-level house in Temescal Canyon, an upscale neighborhood overlooking the ocean between Santa Monica and Malibu. He’d paid cash for it back in 1994, right after the North-ridge earthquake rocked Los Angeles. He’d bought a bunch of damaged homes at rock-bottom prices, slapped new drywall and paint on them, and sold them “as is.”
