Henderson’s phone rang. “Henderson here.”
“Chris, it’s Jack Bauer.”
“Jack, I thought you’d be here by—”
“I need someone to come pick me up. I’m in Culver City. Tell them to meet me at the corner of Barrington and Ocean Park. Now.”
Chris heard the urgency in Jack’s voice. “Stand by.” He opened another line. “Nina—”
“I’m working on—”
“I need you to get Jack Bauer at Barrington and Ocean Park. Something’s going down.”
“On my way.”
Chris returned to his other line. “Nina’s en route. What can you tell me?”
“Nothing over the phone.” Jack thought fast. He needed people he could trust. “Can I meet with you, Almeida, and Nina when I get back?”
“I can make it happen.”
“Thanks.” He touched the bruise on his left arm. “I’m going to need a medical team and a scanning team at headquarters. I think I’ve got some kind of tracking bug in me somewhere.”
“It’s done.”
“Good.” Jack hung up without further ceremony. He dialed another number. “Kimmy?” he said as soon as the connection was made.
“Hey, Dad! That must be some line for coffee!”
Bauer forced his voice to sound calm. “Sorry. I thought Mom would call you—”
“She did, I’m just guilting you a little. Are you coming back, or should I get a ride?”
“I’ll try to get back. Listen…” He hesitated. “How’s it going there? Any trouble?”
Kim lowered her voice conspiratorially. “Actually, this is totally boring. We’re just standing around. Mr. Cooper says it’s important just to stand up and be counted, but this reeks. All Brad Gilmore wants to do is talk about greenhouse gas.”
“Did you — have you met anyone else? Had trouble with any other groups?”
“Dad, stop asking about trouble. Everything is totally cool. I even got interviewed by a reporter. He’s going to put my name in the paper, which is cool. He was kind of a dweeb, though. He was trying to talk to me and he nearly stabbed me to death with his pen.”
Jack’s heart sank. “His pen—?”
“Well, he didn’t really stab me, but like he poked it at me. I have a red mark and everything.”
Jack had held out the faint hope that his mysterious captor was bluffing. That hope now withered away. “But you’re feeling okay?”
“Dad, yes! You’re totally channeling Mom.”
He couldn’t tell her. There was no reason. There was nothing he could do from here. Not yet. “Okay. I’ll see you soon.”
Kasim had spent the last thirty minutes listening to Muhammad Abbas describe the plan to him. His head was swimming.
This was a whole different world for him — not just the physical world of expensive American hotels and silk suits, but also the world of intrigue. He had plotted and schemed back home, of course, but the plots had been straightforward and the schemes had led almost immediately to action. And always the action had been at his own hands. In his heart, he believed this hiring of a mercenary was distasteful and was frowned upon by Allah. But, by the same token, it was Allah who had led them to Nurmamet, who made all this possible, so maybe it was just Kasim himself who frowned upon it.
“As I said,” Abbas pontificated, “it is important for your group to continue with its normal activities. If your people would normally be at the protests, you must be there. Your absence will make the FBI and others suspicious.”
“It will also give us alibis,” Nurmamet agreed.
“Which you will need,” Abbas assured them. “After tonight, every law enforcement agency from every country in the G8 will swarm over this city like flies on a carcass.”
4. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10 A.M. AND 11 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Nina was slowing the CTU car to a stop, but Jack had already jumped out and hit the ground, running through CTU’s doors with a flash of his badge. Henderson was waiting for him in the main room.
“Medical team?” Jack said.
“Conference room,” Henderson said, equally short.
Henderson, and Nina farther off but gaining, followed in Jack’s wake as he burst into the conference room, where three techs with an array of electronic devices were waiting. Jack was already pulling off his shirt and pointing at the bruise on the inner side of his left elbow. It looked as though someone had drawn his blood.
“I’ll explain everything in a minute,” he said to the other agents. To the techs, he said, “Here’s the deal. I think someone bugged me with a tracking device. I’ve got this bruise on this arm, so I’m putting two and two together and figuring that he inserted it there. Find it.”
He sat on the edge of the conference table as they went to work. Over their shoulders and bobbing heads, he addressed Henderson and Nina, delivering a machine-gun summary of the events of the last hour.
“It’s got to be al-Libbi,” Jack said. “The grab was professional. I was in and out in less than an hour, clean and simple.”
Henderson checked some notes he’d gathered while waiting for Jack. “There were no witnesses to the accident, but several residents called in reports on your car and the red pickup, which were left on the side of a residential street. LAPD is doing forensics on them, but I want to send our people down.”
“I guess we have to, but be careful,” Jack said. “This guy has someone on the inside.”
Nina raised an eyebrow. “Not inside CTU?”
“I don’t think inside CTU. He referred to us as ‘Counter Terrorism Unit’ instead of ‘Counter Terrorist Unit.’ That tells me he’s not too familiar. But he knew we were on to him, and he knew I was the agent investigating pretty damned quick after that, and knew enough about me to know I had a daughter and that she was there. That’s a hell of a lot of information to get in just a few minutes. It’s got to be someone inside G8 security.”
Chris pressed the intercom button on the conference room phone. “Jamey?”
“Here,” Jamey Farrell, senior programmer, replied over the speakerphone.
“I need a list of everyone with every agency who is assigned to security on the summit, and who works as a liaison with CTU.”
“Every agency?” Her voice sounded incredulous. “You realize we are talking about the G8, right? That means we’re talking about all the local agencies, plus State, CIA, DOD intelligence—”
“Everyone, please.”
Jack jumped in. “Start with everyone Tony’s come in contact with.”
“Go, Jamey. Thanks.” Chris terminated the line.
Jack had been ignoring the poking and prodding of the techs, but one of them now stepped into his line of sight. “Excuse me.”
“Did you get it out?” Jack asked.
“No. I mean, there’s nothing there,” said the tech.
Jack was surprised. “Really? This guy was positive about tracking me.”
Nina shrugged. “He was bluffing. Maybe he’s bluffing about Kim, too. We should bring her in and have her tested anyway.”
The tech prepped a small syringe. “All I can tell you is that there’s no transmitter embedded in your arm. Nothing on your clothes, either. It looks like they either drew blood from you or injected something into you. We’re taking a blood sample just to make sure there’s nothing nasty in your bloodstream.”