More rounds hit the SUV from the other angle. The car was turning into a bullet sponge. But the angle of impact was changing. The shooter in the Camaro had relocated, improving his position. Jack fired two rounds into the air, just to make noise. Someone would call the police. If he could hold off the shooters until backup arrived, he’d have a chance. The gunfire brought shouts of alarm and screams from somewhere on the street.
Movement. Someone dashed from a building to a vehicle half a block up from the SUV, and Jack had his second shooter. But the first shooter put rounds into the SUV over his head, shattering the rear window, so Jack rolled in his direction and fired over the top of the car parked behind his. Commuters drove by, their startled faces flashing like subliminals in Jack’s eyes. He could not be worried about them now. The shooter from the Camaro stumbled and fell, but Jack wasn’t sure he’d actually hit him.
How do you know you’ve hit your target? the words of an old tactical firearms instructor came back to him.
When he goes down?
He might have fallen, he might be faking. There’s only one way to know. Front sight, trigger pull, follow through. Make sure your sights are on the target. That’s where the round will go.
Jack was sure his sights hadn’t been on target. The man was still operating.
Sirens in the distance. That was good. But his slide had just locked back. He dropped the magazine out and popped in his second and last. Fifteen rounds left. Jessi made herself as small as possible as Jack moved closer to her position. The shooter up the street moved and Jack fired, shattering glass and ripping through a public trash can. A man walking out of a store yelled something and dived back inside.
These weren’t eco-terrorists. They were operators working in tandem — one drawing Jack’s fire, the other improving his position. It was a good plan. It was going to work. And the sirens were too far away.
The shooter up the street popped up, taking aim. Jack fired to keep the enemy’s head down; he had no cover or concealment from that angle; his only cover was to shoot. At the same time, car tires squealed to a stop on the street a few feet away. If there was a third shooter, Jack thought, this was going to get really difficult. But the shooter pivoted, sighting the newcomer, his rounds turning the windshield into a spider web. The driver jumped out of the car and fired at the shooter. Panicked, the shooter changed angles, and there he was in Jack’s sights. Jack dropped him and his gun went into slide lock again. With grim determination he thumbed the slide release and felt it snap back. Now it was a nice blunt object.
Twilight had turned to gloom but the streetlights hadn’t come on yet. Jack couldn’t see the driver’s face, but he saw his body swivel in the other direction. There was a hiss and a snap, and the driver cried out, his gun hand dropping. He fell away behind his car. Jack heard footsteps running onto the street. The shooter from the Camaro was closing in on the newcomer. Jack rolled around to the back of the SUV. He bolted into the street in time to see the shooter reach the new car, a silenced Beretta in his hands. The shooter saw him and tried to turn, but Jack was too fast. He grabbed the Beretta in one hand, holding it off his body, and punched the muzzle of his empty Springfield into the shooter’s face. He recoiled and punched his throat. The man dropped.
Without pausing Jack dropped the Springfield, tapped and racked the Beretta, and dropped to one knee, scanning the street. There was no movement. Cars had stopped passing by. The sirens were close enough to hurt his ears.
He looked up from his kneeling position to see the driver standing over him. “Hey,” said Kelly Sharpton.
“I’m going to kill him.”
Teri Bauer slammed the phone back into its cradle. It was her fifth call to Jack in the last half hour. Like all the others, it had gone straight to voice mail.
Kim sat at the kitchen table, one hand absentmindedly tracing the seams where the wooden leaves of the table met. She looked pale, and concern for her fueled Teri’s anger.
“He did it on purpose,” Teri said out loud. “He took you this morning, but he was on a case.”
“Mom,” Kim said in a tired teenage voice. “Something came up. The first thing he did when that trouble started was get me out of there.”
“And make you sit in a basement for three hours!”
Teri paced the length of the kitchen. The magic of the prior month had worn off. Her fear had been that it would vanish immediately; that Jack would dive right into some crisis. Instead, it had faded like a tan. She’d watched Jack’s attention turn slowly but steadily away from her and toward… whatever it was out there that called him. Teri had worried lately that it was another woman, and the thought had not completely left her. But it didn’t seem possible — Jack was driven by some desire that had nothing to do with sex.
It had nothing to do with disloyalty of any kind. She was furious Jack for leaving Kim, but she knew he loved her. Ultimately, though, Teri was beginning to sense that his deepest loyalty lay with his country. Or maybe it wasn’t even his country. It was his mission.
“Are you all right?” Teri asked.
Kim was holding her head in her hands now. “Yeah. Just tired, I guess. I feel hot. I think I’ll go lie down.”
One of the shooters was dead. The other wouldn’t be eating solid food for a long time, and he was currently gagging uncontrollably thanks to his swollen throat where Jack had punched him.
Jessi Bandison hugged Kelly Sharpton, who winced visibly. His right arm was covered in blood. “Are you—?” she started.
“Not too bad,” he said. He rolled up his shirtsleeve. The round had slid along the inside of his arm, plowing a furrow from his wrist to his elbow, but never fully penetrating.
He looked a little older than Jack remembered him from his short stint at CTU. There was weight in his face and gray in his hair. Jack had worked well enough with Sharpton, though they were never friends and didn’t see eye to eye politically; still, he’d drawn fire when Jack needed it, and Jack felt grateful. “She called you,” he said.
Sharpton nodded. “Odolova was my contact from way back.”
“I was nervous about doing fieldwork,” Jessi said. “I’m sorry I didn’t tell you.”
Jack waved her off. The end counted far more than the means, and they were all alive.
Black and white patrol cars materialized out of the gloom. Sharpton, no longer commissioned, put his gun away. Jack held up his badge, and after a moment or two of explanation, the uniformed officers lowered their weapons and began to cordon off the block. LAPD radioed for paramedics. The surviving shooter was choking to death. “I need him alive,” Jack said. “I’ve got questions.”
“You want to fill me in?” Sharpton asked.
Jack shook his head. “You’re a civilian.”
“A civilian who saved your ass!” Sharpton said amusedly.
Jack nodded. “And for that you have the thanks of a grateful nation.”
“That and a dollar. ” Sharpton sighed without finishing the sentence.
“Jessi,” Jack said, turning to the analyst, “make sure these uniforms keep a close watch on that one. I want him taken back to CTU for interrogation. Don’t let them give you any crap about medical attention. Go tell them.”
He turned away, ignoring her look of panic, and dialed headquarters on his borrowed phone. A moment later he was talking to the head of field operations, Henderson’s voice echoed by the speakerphone he was using.
“They took a shot at us,” Jack said, describing the attack in brief. “I guess al-Libbi’s got some friends in town.” He explained what Odolova had told them about the RPG–29s, and her oblique confirmation of an event happening that evening.