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A nearby window shattered and rounds from the gun battle outside raked his chest. Falling, he gasped Marta’s name and landed motionless.

Hugh Carlson ran outside on to the rear patio. The back grounds were filled with Blanco men in retreat, running toward the rear wall. A few of them had reached it and were trying to scale it. It was smooth and ten feet tall and they were meeting with little success. Hugh Carlson ran across the patio to join them.

Ahead, a Blanco gunman had turned to fire at some FBI men who appeared rounding the corner of the house on his right. He glimpsed Carlson in the corner of his eye and saw a stranger charging toward him. He opened fire, cutting him down.

The helicopter zoomed low over the back grounds, Tony Almeida strafing Blanco gunmen with his M–4. Galvez pulled up, made a wide, swooping curve, and came in for another run. Tony looked like he was having a hell of a time.

* * *

Jack Bauer reached the bottom of the bell tower just in time to hear a dull booming blast like the sound made by a shotgun. He flattened against the wall beside the doorway opening into the drawing room turned electronics installation. He peeked out cautiously.

On the other side of the room he saw Carrie Carlson standing alone. He went to her. As he neared her, he saw the body of Torreon Blanco sprawled on the floor, shot twice in the back, dead.

Coming closer, he got a good look at Carrie Carlson. Her face was a wide-eyed, staring, openmouthed mask of fear. She stood leaning against a computer console for support. She leaned heavily on the cane that supported her bad left leg.

Nearby lay Marta Blanco, or what was left of her. She didn’t have much of a face.

Most of it had been blown away. Jack Bauer was able to recognize her mostly from her gorgeous mane of hair, now gore-streaked, flecked, and splattered.

Her face was a mess, a red bubbling wreck. Somehow the damage had managed to spare one long, slanted green eye. It glittered like an emerald sliver. The extent of the devastation reminded Jack of the death of Peter Rhee. He’d been slaughtered in similar fashion.

No gunshot wound that, which had destroyed Marta Blanco’s face, not even from a big-caliber gun. A shotgun blast had done the damage. At close range. Only — where was the shotgun? Jack saw no shotgun nearby, not a conventional model or a sawed-off job. Not in Torreon’s hand, or Marta’s, either.

“Thank god you’ve come,” Carrie Carlson said. “It’s been a nightmare! They kidnapped me, swore they’d kill me—”

Jack Bauer looked her up and down. A thin line of smoke was rising from the bottom of her cane. Smoke?

He got it then. It all came together:

The way Peter Rhee had died — the pair of curious round holes that had been pocked in the sand beside the car where he’d been killed — the nagging feeling that had irked him at the Carlson house when he’d seen the umbrella holder with the three canes in it—

Most of all, that telltale line of smoke, thin, straight, rising from the base of the cane that Carrie Carlson was now leaning on.

He swung the M–16 to cover her. “I wondered how anyone could have gotten close enough to Peter Rhee to take him out with a shotgun blast. He was on his guard against assassins. But you, Dr. Carlson’s wife, the well-respected humanitarian and do-gooder — you could have got close enough to him,” Jack said.

“How did you set him up? Did you tell him in confidence that you’d discovered something shocking about your husband that threw his loyalty into question and that you had to meet him in private to tell him the awful truth? Rhee would have bought that. He expected danger and treachery from all sides, but not from you.

“The African artifacts in your house were a tip-off, too. Or they should have been, if I’d been paying attention at the time. I’m sure when the dates are checked they’ll show that you were in Africa at the same time and place as Annihilax.”

“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” Carrie Carlson said.

“The fatal clue is the hardware itself, lady. Another minute or two and you would have been in the clear. But you blasted Marta right before I came in and that’s what tripped you up.

“Gun smoke is coming out of the bottom of your cane, smoke from the shotgun blast you discharged into Marta’s face, just like you did to Peter Rhee. It’s a trick cane, a single-barreled shotgun disguised as a cane. I’m betting the trigger is concealed somewhere in the handle. It’ll make a hell of an exhibit at your court case,” Jack said.

“No court case — no court case for Annihilax,” Carrie Carlson said.

She leaned back against the console, taking her weight off the cane so she could swing it freely, raising it up to level against Jack Bauer to deliver another killing shot.

He squeezed the trigger of the M–16 unleashing a quick short burst into her middle. She fought to raise the cane higher and he tilted the M–16 upward and shot her between the eyes.

She fell and lay there with her eyes open. Jack pried the cane from her hand and examined it. The base where the rubber tip had been was a black empty bore with traces and flecks of rubber around the edges that the shotgun blast hadn’t entirely dislodged.

The curved handle had a decorative metal band where it met the shaft. When he twisted it, the curved handle came off, revealing the breech where a fresh shotgun shell had been loaded and was waiting for use. The trigger and firing pin were built into the curved handle.

Somewhere in the distance, church bells started ringing, reminding Jack Bauer that it was Sunday morning, about time for services to be letting out.

The church bells tolled, sounding a requiem for she who had been Annihilax.

Annihilax, the Death Angel — dead.

About the Author

DAVID JACOBS is the author of over three dozen works of fiction and nonfiction, including most recently the nonfiction titles The Mafia’s Greatest Hits and Snakes on a Plane: The Complete Quote Book. Other nonfiction titles include Notes from The Barn, the companion volume to The Shield TV series; Best of Court TV Volumes I–IV; and The Complete Idiot’s Guide to the FBI. David is a longtime member of the Mystery Writers of America.