“Damn,” Jack grunted.
He flattened himself against the air conditioner, snatched up his phone again. “Talk to me, Tony—”
“He’s moving, Jack. He’s headed to an access hatch on the northwest corner.”
Fixated on his target, Jack closed the phone, raised his head over the edge of the air-conditioning unit. Looking to the northwest, he spotted a slight African-American man with black-framed glasses, wearing a blue uniform, walking toward an outhouse-sized structure projecting from the flat roof. The man carried two metal toolboxes in his hand, a bundle of wire over his narrow shoulders.
Jack took off at a run, circling power units and a sky-light to reach a point where he could intercept the intruder.
Then, lifting his Glock, Jack stepped into view.
“Halt,” he cried. “You are in a restricted area. Drop the boxes and get down on the ground now.”
The man’s eyes were wide behind his thick glasses. He immediately dropped the boxes — then he took off, sprint-ing to the fire escape twenty yards away.
“Stop or I will shoot,” Jack warned, stepping forward.
The man sped up. Jack dropped to one knee and aimed.
At the last second he lowered his Glock, firing at the man’s moving legs.
But just as Jack pulled the trigger, the man stumbled.
Instead of hitting his knee, the 9mm bullet caught him squarely in the back of the head. The man went limp, his shattered lenses tumbled over the edge of the building as his corpse hit the roof with a muffled thump, his head inches from the ledge of the fire escape.
Bauer cursed.
Glock pointed at his victim, he cautiously approached.
Jack didn’t need to check the man’s pulse to know he was dead. The back of his head was blown out, blood and brain matter splattered on the roof. Jack holstered his weapon, bent down, went through the man’s pockets, but found nothing — not even a wallet.
Still crouched, he turned the dead man onto his back.
On the man’s forearm, Jack noticed a tattoo of a stylized number 13. He searched the front pockets of the man’s uniform, frowned when he came up empty again.
Then he remembered the steel boxes. Jack rose and turned, his back to the fire escape. He took one step, and a bright flash exploded in his head. He never saw the blow coming. His legs buckled and he crashed to his knees.
Despite the sharp stab of agony that rattled his skull, Jack fought to stay conscious, until a vicious kick to the side of his head sent him sprawling.
A blond man in the Con Edison uniform stepped off the fire escape, rubbing his fist. He glanced at his dead partner, then drew his weapon. The silencer was still attached to the muzzle, and he placed it against Jack’s bloodied temple.
Moaning, Jack coughed. “If you kill me, you’ll never get off this roof alive.”
The blond man chuckled, pushed the silencer until it gouged Jack’s flesh.
“Shut up and die,” he said.
5. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 11:00 A.M. AND 12:00 P.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
On the ground, the silencer digging into his temple, Jack had no time to make a move before the final gunshot.
When it came, Jack felt no pain. Instead, the pressure against his skull simply fell away.
Jack instantly realized he hadn’t been shot. The blond man lurched backward, onto the fire escape, one limp hand brushing at the quickly spreading red stain on his blue shirt.
As Jack pulled his weapon, a second bullet caught the blond man in the throat. The blond dropped his gun, and his body pitched against the metal railing. Limply, without a sound, he fell headfirst into the street below.
Glancing around, Jack saw Tony Almeida, Glock still in hand. Tony walked over, helped Jack to his feet.
“Jack, are you—”
“I’m fine,” Jack said hoarsely.
Tony stepped back, holstered his weapon.
Jack closed his eyes, took a breath. With every move, he was battered by waves of dizziness. Ignoring the pain, he opened his eyes, reholstered his own Glock.
Tony stepped to the fire escape and peered over the railing. “Sorry, Jack. I know you wanted one of them alive.”
“Forget it,” Jack rasped. “Let’s find out what they were up to.”
It took them less than a minute to find the bomb. It was planted at the base of the microwave communications array — a digital clock connected to a two-pound bundle of C–4.
Jack crouched low, fighting a wave of nausea. “I can defuse this,” he said.
Tony pulled him away. “You’re in no condition to do this. Let me handle it.”
Before Jack could protest, the cell phone went off in his pocket. He answered, “Bauer.”
“It’s me, Jack-o,” Morris said. “Where have you run off to?”
“I’ve been… busy,” Jack said.
“I have news,” Morris continued. “Both good and bad.”
“Okay,” Jack said while he watched Tony use a gravity knife to sever the wire that led from the explosive charge to the timer. Tony then opened the back of the clock and removed a small battery. Immediately, the numbers stopped flashing and the digital face went dark.
Jack quietly exhaled.
“Are you there, Jack?” Morris demanded. “It’s not polite to ignore a man who’s called you.”
“I’m here,” Jack replied wearily. “What have you got for me? The good news.”
“I’ve broken through Brice Holman’s security firewall,”
Morris declared with a hint of pride. “The contents of the Director’s computer are yours to peruse.”
“Good work, Morris. What’s the downside?”
The memory’s been wiped clean. Holman’s cache is empty. And get this… According to the computer log, the memory was wiped this morning at six twenty-one a.m.”
“Then there’s a mole in CTU New York. Maybe more than one. We checked the entry logs. We know Brice Holman was never here today. That means somebody else deleted those files.” Jack paused, rubbed his aching temple. “How about the laptop I brought you?”
“I’m afraid all Fredo Mangella was doing was convert-ing currency. Dollars into euros. Millions of them. It was all on the up-and-up.” Morris frowned. “Might be a dead end, Jack.”
“No,” Jack insisted. “It’s important, but I don’t know why. Not yet. We’re still missing a piece of the puzzle.”
“I’ll keep looking, but all I see are recipes and payroll records. You won’t believe what an executive chef earns!”
“Listen, Morris. One more thing. Tony Almeida has a device for you to check out.”
Morris sighed. “Now what would that be, boss? A computer? Another laptop?”
“A bomb,” Jack replied.
After swallowing two cups of black coffee and three Advils, Jack felt considerably better. Tony had gone back to finishing his work on the security system, and Morris had taken the explosive device to the blast-proof room for further examination.
Now Jack was sitting behind Brice Holman’s desk, waking his computer out of hibernation. The firewalls were down and Holman’s computer cache was empty, as Morris had said.
Jack moved to the nonsecured files Holman kept, and ran a search using keywords FBI, DEA, and ATF. At first dozens of interagency alerts came up — practically all of them were Most Wanted List updates, Amber Alerts, or government releases. Jack filtered them out.
Then he found the draft of an e-mail to Judith Foy.
Holman had never finished or sent the message, but the e-mail mentioned “our friends at the FBI” and “Jello and Rollo,” obviously code names.