Tony Almeida woke with a start when his chin fell forward into his chest. His headache had eased over the last hour, but he was still having that strange post-concussion sensation of layered awareness. Every ten minutes or so he felt as if now, finally, his mind was completely lucid… only to discover ten minutes later that his mind really hadn’t been clear, but now it was… only to make the same discovery again in a few minutes, and so on.
He checked the big round clock on the hospital room wall. He’d been asleep only for a few seconds. Dyson was still in the bed, motionless, the monitors beeping along calmly. Dyson’s skull had been fractured by his impact with the cinder-block wall.
Tony stood up and was glad when the room didn’t spin. He walked over and stood next to the bed, looking down at Dyson. An oxygen tube hung under his nose and draped over his face.
Who are you working for? Tony asked silently. Why did you try to kill me?
The FBI had vetted Dyson’s record and found nothing. Not trusting them, CTU had done its own research, and even Jamey Farrell, who was a tenacious analyst, had drawn a blank. As far as any of them could tell, Dyson had absolutely no connection to Ayman al-Libbi or any groups that might want to hire him.
Tony opened his cell phone and called CTU.
“Jamey Farrell.”
“It’s Tony. Have we had any luck tracking any of the people in the van that took Detective Bennet?”
She sounded mildly annoyed. “Not yet. There’s nothing on the van at all. We ran a check on Frankie Michaelmas. No one knows where she’s at. What makes you think she has anything to do with Ayman al-Libbi?”
“Jack’s hunch,” Tony said. “Why do you ask like that?”
“Ozersky’s a granola. Goes by the name Willow, if that tells you anything. The girl is pretty much the same. She’s an environmental freak, not a political activist. Do you know something I don’t?”
“Just that Jack’s hunches are often right.”
Tony hung up. Jamey had no idea how far out on a limb he’d gone to pursue one of Jack’s hunches. In fact, very few people in CTU knew how far he’d gone. To make it all turn out right, they needed a break — a big one.
“And so far, you’re the only lead I’ve got,” Tony said to Dyson.
As he looked down, he was sure he saw Dyson’s finger twitch.
Mercy closed in on Seldom Seen Smith.
Smith’s strategy had nearly worked. Mercy had lost him when he plunged into the crowd at the south end of the Federal Building. She’d plunged in after him, past jagged lines of people who seemed hesitant and uncertain. The protest chants had ceased, replaced by a loud, fearful buzz caused by the police activity a block or two to the north. She slid between people and stood on her toes, which did her no good.
She’d grabbed a cell phone out of someone’s hand. “Hey!” the young girl complained. Mercy ignored her and dialed 911, but the circuits were busy. She’d dialed the direct line for her office, but the line rang until a recording came on saying, “Thank you for calling the Los Angeles Police Department’s West Bureau. If this is an emergency, please hang up and dial 911…”
Mercy closed the connection and tossed the phone back to the girl. If she needed another one, there’d be plenty around. She pushed forward, not knowing what else to do, knowing that Smith would do everything he could to lose himself in the huge crowd. As she moved forward, she made mental notes about his appearance: Caucasian male, over six feet, balding with brown hair, eye color probably brown, thin, probably under two hundred pounds…
And then she saw him. He had done the right thing, changing his pace, moving slowly to avoid attention. She would have missed him entirely if luck hadn’t turned her in exactly his direction. Their eyes locked for a moment, his opening wide and hers narrowing sharply. He moved away from her and she moved forward.
She had tracked him that way through the crowd until now, at the far northeast edge of the crowd, almost two blocks away from the Federal Building, he was coming to the edge. Mercy saw open street beyond. More importantly, she saw two uniformed police officers stationed at the corner. Pinning her eyes to Smith’s back, she moved toward the cops. “I’m a cop,” she said. “Detective Bennet, West Bureau. I lost my badge during a pursuit. I need help with an arrest. Can you call for backup?”
“Who’d we call?” one of the uniforms said sarcastically. “Everyone’s here.”
“Then it’s you two,” she said.
“How do we know?”
“You don’t,” she admitted. “But who else is going to walk up to you and say they are a female detective from West Bureau?”
The uniformed cops nodded; not quite convinced, but willing to play this out. They followed her into the crowd. Smith had seen them. As they moved forward, he moved back into the crowd itself. What’s he doing? Mercy wondered. She wasn’t going to lose him, and the crowd meant that he moved more slowly.
Much more slowly, in fact. The two uniforms fanned out and easily flanked Smith. Mercy moved forward. Smith had slowed almost to a stop. Was he giving up?
The uniform on Smith’s left moved in. Smith raised his hand and yelled, “I give up! I give up! Stop hurting me!” in a voice full of panic.
The cop stopped, taken aback by the fear in Smith’s voice, since the cop hadn’t touched him at all.
“Stop! Help!” Smith screamed in a high-pitched voice. He lunged forward at the cop, who held up his hands defensively. Smith clutched at the officer but yelled, “Let go of me! Help!”
“Hey, man, he’s not fighting you,” someone standing nearby said.
“Get off him, you freakin’ fascist,” said a blond kid in a Von Dutch T-shirt.
“Get him off me, get him off!” Smith yelled.
The second uniform rushed forward, seeing his partner in a struggle, and pulled Smith away and to the ground.
“Goddamned pig!” the blond kid yelled, angry now.
Mercy saw it happen, but couldn’t stop it. Smith clutched at the officer, preventing him from standing up, but yelled, “Help! Help! He’s breaking my arm!”
Two protestors yelled and grabbed the officer from behind, pulling him away. The officer swung wildly and hit the blond kid in the face. He jumped on the officer’s back, and the first cop, who’d regained his feet, waded in to help. Before anyone could stop it, a huge fight had broken out, and the two uniforms disappeared under a pile of bodies.
Smith slipped away.
At that moment, Jamey Farrell hated camera phones. Worse than useless, they gave the impression of being useful without delivering much on the promise.
She’d received the photo sent over by Jack Bauer — a grainy close-up of a dark-haired man in blue. It might as well have been an Impressionist painting. But Jamey knew her job and she did it well. Within minutes of receiving the file, Jamey fed the data over into CTU’s image-enhancing software. A quick phone call to Jack confirmed that the man was of Slavic/Asian descent, which helped her nudge the program. The computers had spent the last few minutes reconstructing the subject’s face. Every ten seconds or so her computer screen rolled like a wave, and a slightly sharper version of the man’s face appeared. The image had just reached the point where Jamey felt it was worth running through CTU’s facial recognition software.