Jack felt a cold weight settle into his stomach. “What do you mean? Did he get you more plastic explosives? Can we trace his other customers?”
“Yes,” Diana said. “But it’s not Islamic terrorists.”
“Or the Catholic church, which you just terrorized,” Chappelle pointed out. Henderson dipped his head.
The weight in Jack’s stomach grew heavier. “Tell me what’s going on.”
Diana Christie began, and no one interrupted her. “I met with Farrigian. He didn’t suspect anything about me. You saw how he was before. We checked out, as far as he was concerned. He told me who the buyers were — they were more people like that Smithies character. Some biker gang coming down from the San Joaquin Valley. He gave me names. As far as I can tell, he has no connection to the plastic explosives found on Sweetzer Avenue.”
Jack tried to process that, but couldn’t. “That’s ridiculous. Two different groups, both suddenly appearing on the scene with plastic explosives? It’s pretty unlikely.” That was obvious to him, and he hoped it was obvious to them, too. Henderson met his gaze just long enough to shrug, but he remained silent. “What’s the point here?”
“The point,” Chappelle said condescendingly, “is that you’re on a wild-goose chase. You and the detective you helped get killed.”
“Not possible,” Jack argued. He listed the evidence for them: the assassination of the informant
Ramin; Biehn’s knowledge that Yasin was back in Los Angeles, which had been confirmed by security cameras; the three Islamists in possession of plastic explosives. “You’re going to put all that aside based on comments from a small-time arms dealer?”
“
“Just don’t ignore all the rest of it.”
“We’re not, Jack.” Christopher Henderson played good cop, speaking in slow, measured tones. “We’ve already got the three men with the plastic explosives. We think that did a lot more to mess up their plans than you realize. Maybe Yasin got here just in time to find out we’d fucked up his plans. But we’ll get him, if he’s still in town.”
“And Biehn…?” Jack challenged. “Had his own agenda,” Chappelle said, “which you fell for hook, line, and sinker.”
It was possible. Jack hated to admit it, but it was possible. There was one gaping hole, of course — how did Biehn know about Yasin? That was an enormous question mark squatting on any other theory. But put it aside for a moment, and what they were proposing made sense. In that moment, Jack tried to step back and away from his ego. Ego was the enemy of a good investigator, he had decided long ago. Men fell in love with their own theories, and once enamored, held on to them like prize possessions. The very best investigators pursued their theories with determination but not tunnel vision. Jack hadn’t been at this long enough to know if he was one of the very best, but he refused to stumble over his own ego.
Yasin certainly was up to something. But maybe CTU had shattered that plan. Maybe Jack, who had thought himself to be the man exposing the plot no one else had foreseen, was instead just a latecomer to a party that was already over.
“Jack, we’ll get him,” Henderson said, continuing to act the friend. “But according to Diana, that’s not where the urgency lies.”
Jack looked at the injured woman. She nodded. “Farrigian says the buyers were friends of Dog Smithies, who I guess you dealt with. They bought more plastic explosives than what was found on Sweetzer. A lot more. The buyer was a man named Dean.”
“Jamey Farrell ran down his information,” Henderson went on. “Dean runs a biker gang that is an offshoot of the Hell’s Angels. They want the Angels to go back to the old days. Back when they’d take over towns and make themselves the law. One of their gang was arrested last night in Fresno. He said that Dean was on his way down to L.A. He said they were going to ‘Blow some shit up.’ He said everyone would wake up tomorrow morning to a big surprise.”
Chappelle checked his watch. “Which gives us only a few hours to find them and stop them. And, much as I hate myself for saying this, Agent Bauer, you are going to help.”
10. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 3 A.M. AND 4 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
His real name was Dean Schrock, but he’d just been Dean for so long that even he had mostly forgotten the last name. He was old enough to feel a long day’s ride in his ass and lower back, but he was still young enough to bully the one-percenters who were part of his gang, and hell of bad enough to terrify the crap out of any cagers he saw on the streets.
Dean was part of a dying breed, and he knew it. Hell, he took pride in it. He’d been a kid during the heyday of Altamont, so he hadn’t been busting heads back then, but he was old enough to remember when whole towns would head for the hills when the Hell’s Angels rode down Main Street. These days most people calling themselves Hell’s Angels were wannabes or squiddies who’d just as soon ride a rice burner as a Harley and pretend to be badass. Sure, there were still a few throwbacks; Dean had heard about a Hell’s Angels club in New York City, and another up in Canada (friggin’ Canada, of all places!) that were hard-core and full of one-percenters, but they were few and far between.
Dean pushed an empty beer bottle off his belly and sat up. They were in a house on the outskirts of Santa Clarita, in the upland valleys north of Los Angeles. He’d forgotten — or, more to the point, he never really cared — whose house it was. Four or five of his boys were sprawled out on couches or chairs or on the floor. A couple of women were there, too— nothing to look at, or he’d have taken them into one of the bedrooms and had them himself. A few more of his boys were crashed in the bedrooms or the hallways, sleeping off the ride down from Bakersfield and the six-packs they’d swallowed since then.
All Dean’s boys were one-percenters — that is, part of the “one percent” of bikers that were outlaws, rather than the ninety-nine percent that the Hell’s Angels claimed were law-abiding citizens — and in just a few hours they were going to prove that even if only one percent of the biker population were outlaws, it was one hell of a one percent.
Bleary-eyed, he checked his watch. Little bit of time left. That puke Dog Smithies was supposed to show up before sunrise. Dean was looking forward to meeting him face to face, see what that bullshitter was really like. But right now he could close his eyes a little bit and dream of the big explosion.
As far as LAPD was concerned, Cardinal Mulrooney was a candidate for beatification. They maintained a small dossier on him, but the contents might as well have been provided by the Catholic Church’s public relations department. The report discussed Mulrooney’s upbringing in a poor Irish neighborhood of Chicago, his travel to Los Angeles as a teenager in the fifties, where he slept on the floor of the Catholic mission and then volunteered for their soup kitchen. Soon after, he had promised himself he would become ordained, and Allen James Mulrooney had been a servant of the Catholic Church ever since. There was, to Harry’s utter relief, not even a whisper in the dossier of child abuse or hushed-up scandals.
Harry would like to have stopped there. The Mulrooney file was flimsy, but it was official, and Harry could rightly have told Jack that was far as he could or would go. He sat in his office for a few moments, fingering the number Jack had given him. Finally, he punched in the long string of numbers. It didn’t seem like a phone number at all, but a few moments later, his phone was ringing.
“Marianno,” said a female voice on the other end.
“Maddie Marianno, this is Detective Harry Driscoll, LAPD,” he said. “Jack Bauer asked me to contact you. You have a moment?”
“Driscoll,” she repeated, and he was sure she was committing it to memory. “What kind of trouble has Bauer gotten you into?”
“Ha!” Harry said. “You definitely know Jack. Listen, I’m sorry for calling you so early, but I need a little
