“Stand there,” he ordered Ted, and the other CTU agent braced himself against the wall. Jack planted a foot on his slightly bent leg and boosted himself up, his other foot reaching the height of Ozersky’s head, and soon he was standing on the other man’s shoulders. Jack reached up but the window was too high. Maybe if he jumped…
The room was in chaos. The fire spread with unbelievable quickness. It was almost impossible to think over the heat and the terrified screams.
“Pull me.” Mercy was below him, reaching up.
Jack reached his hand down to Mercy. Without hesitation, she climbed up Ozersky’s back, caught Jack’s hand, and mountain climbed up both CTU agents until she was on Jack’s back. She reached the window. Mercy drew her gun and used its muzzle to smash the glass, then knocked out the jagged teeth of shattered glass to avoid being cut.
Mercy stuck her head out the window to assess the far side. She didn’t hear the gunshot over the noise inside, but she felt it brush through her hair, nearly scalping her. She was so startled she nearly threw herself backward into the crowd.
“Gun!” she yelled, ducking her head down.
“Go!” Jack yelled. “Go!”
“Are you fucking crazy!” she yelled.
“Look!” he said. The fire raged. If Plush had a sprinkler system, it was malfunctioning. The walls were in flames. Panicked ravers pounded against the door as those behind pushed forward, crushing those in front.
This virus isn’t going to kill me, Mercy thought. Knowing Jack Bauer is going to kill me. She gathered herself, adjusted her grip on her pistol, and launched herself upward. She vaulted over the window frame and fell almost a story to the ground below. Gunshots sounded almost in her ear. Mercy rolled on the ground and came up, weapon in hand.
It was the most lucid moment in Mercy Bennet’s life. She was aware of moving quickly, but she did not feel hurried. She experienced a groove, the steady calm of a snowboarder hurtling downhill, but completely under control. She acquired the first man and put one bullet into him, then swiveled to the next. Bullets ricocheted off the ground around her. She felt one pass through the cloth of her shirt between her arm and her ribs. She laid her muzzle over the chest of the second man and squeezed. She was about to shoot the third when Jack landed on him heavily. The man crumpled under Jack’s weight. Bauer smashed him in the face three times with the muzzle of his SigSauer. Jack turned toward the doors. A short, thick chain had been looped through the handles, locking the doors in place. Jack pointed his own gun at the lock and fired four times, shielding his eyes from the blast and hoping no ricochets killed him. When he was done, smoke rose up from his gun as the chain fell down.
“Help them!” Jack commanded. Mercy helped Ted shove the doors inward, against the pressing crowd.
Ozersky appeared in the crowd, yelling “Move, move, goddamn it!” The crowd inside managed to make enough space, and the next moment they were streaming out of the building.
Jack ignored it all. He knelt down beside the man he’d struck. Finally, he had one of them alive. “What’s al-Libbi’s plan?”
The man grinned at him with broken teeth. “Who’s al-Libbi?”
Jack lifted the man’s left hand, placed the muzzle of his gun against the palm, and fired. The man screamed.
“Jesus!” Mercy screamed at him. Jack ignored her.
“What’s his plan?” Jack said. He didn’t know if he’d gone mad or if he was thinking with perfect clarity. But he did know that time was running out, he was low on leads, and important people would die if he didn’t find a solution.
“I…I don’t know,” the man said, his voice suddenly pleading and desperate.
“Tell me something,” Jack threatened. “Tell me something worth knowing right now or I’ll get some of that napalm you made and pour it down your throat.”
The man started to speak. What he said brought Jack no closer to finding Sarah Kalmijn, but it was valuable nonetheless.
Henderson and his squad divided the rescued papers into five charred piles and began to sort through them. Many of the pages were in Arabic and would need to be translated later.
“Do we know what we’re looking for?” Patterson asked in a low voice. He had gone down earlier when a bullet had punched him through the vest he wore. The Kevlar had stopped the round, but the force had bruised his sternum.
“No,” Henderson conceded. “But anything with American names on it. Santiago, Romond, Kalmijn…”
“Kalmij-n?” one of the operators said, holding up a burned scrap and mispronouncing the name.
“Kal-mane,” Henderson corrected. “Give me that, please.”
It was a sheet of notepaper written in English, the words hastily scribbled. Under Sarah Kalmijn’s name Henderson saw the addresses of two clubs or bars, and also the phrase “Marina del Rey At Last.” He guessed it was another bar.
“Call Jack Bauer,” Henderson said.
Bauer’s recovered cell phone rang again, and this time Ryan Chappelle answered.
“To whom am I speaking now?” Ayman al-Libbi asked. Chappelle signaled for the trace to begin.
“This is Regional Division Director Ryan Chappelle.”
“That sounds important,” al-Libbi said patronizingly. “That’s good, because my message is also important. Tell the President of the United States that he is holding five men prisoner in a secret holding facility just outside Los Angeles. You know who they are. These five men are to be allowed to go free. If this is not done within one hour, I will destroy the antiviral medicine. If it is done, I will give you the antidote. I will call again in forty-five minutes.”
He hung up. Chappelle looked at Jamey Farrell, who shook her head and slapped the table in frustration. “He had some kind of router. We can beat it, but he needs to be on the phone longer.”
Chappelle ran a hand over his balding head. He knew of the men al-Libbi wanted. They were Iranians the CIA and CTU were sure belonged to Iran’s terrorist network; all three had history with Hezbollah. They’d been plucked out of various European countries using methods some would call illegal. They’d been bounced around from secret bases in Europe to Guantanamo Bay, but as those facilities came under scrutiny they’d been moved, so they ended up in a secret holding facility CTU maintained out in the high desert region above Los Angeles along the Pear Blossom Highway.
“I have to take this to the President,” he said.
21. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 3 A.M. AND 4 A.M. PACIFIC STANDARD TIME
Jack hurtled down the 405 Freeway chasing the last lead they had. Tony had called him with the news about a boat in Marina del Rey. He had no more information, so Jack had jumped in the car, barely giving Mercy and Ted time to climb in, before he peeled off.
“Call Jamey and have her search the harbormaster’s records. Sarah’s name is bound to be there somewhere.” He hung up and drove.
There was silence in the car again, but this time Mercy broke it. “You shot that man through the hand,” she said at last.
Jack nodded. “That man knows how to keep you from dying sometime in the next few hours.”
“I don’t have any sympathy for him,” Mercy said. “But. but do you ever wonder if what you’re doing is okay? What if sometimes they’re right and you’re wrong?”
Jack looked at her, his eyes steady and his face like stone. “Sometimes I’m wrong,” he said. “But they are never right.”