To her surprise, she saw a uniformed officer walk out the front door carrying a plastic bag. He scanned the crowd until his eyes fell on her, and he hurried forward.
“Ms. Weiss, this is for you. Jack Bauer left it.”
Amy took the parcel, plastic bag and all. It appeared to be a journal of some kind. She just barely made out the name scribbled childishly along the spine. It read “Aaron Biehn.”
Jack should have waited for a backup team. That was just common sense. But he had been chasing this killer for twenty-three hours without stopping, and he felt that if he stopped now he would simply fall apart.
So he jumped out of the car before Nina had a chance to stop completely and charged the house on Reina Avenue. He just had time to glimpse Nina run around to the back before he kicked open the door with a violent crash.
Yasin moved faster than Jack expected. Before the door hit the wall, Yasin was rolling over the back of his couch while Jack fired rounds that vanished into the pillows and couch frame. Gelson practically screamed. Michael, too, rolled out of Jack’s line of fire. The last man rose to a squat and aimed, but by that time Jack had pumped three rounds into his chest and face, and he crumpled.
Jack dove to his right, into a hallway, as both Michael and Yasin fired back, shattering the door’s small plate-glass window. No more shots came, and Jack knew that both men were on the move. He heard footsteps thump upward. Yasin, or Michael? Jack decided he didn’t care, and gave chase.
Fourteen steps went up to the second floor. Jack leaned around a corner and then pulled back as rounds discharged and four holes popped into the wall at his back. Jack stuck his hand around the corner and fired without looking. Then he rolled into the hallway and sprinted forward as a door slammed shut at the end of the hall.
Nothing for it now but to finish, he thought, kicking that door inward. Suddenly, there was Michael, his semi-automatic in Jack’s face. Michael pulled the trigger as Jack grabbed the gun and moved it. The round discharged and Jack felt heat blossom under his hand, but he held on, and the sting was already fading as Jack jammed his own gun into Michael’s neck.
Michael’s eyes went suddenly wide, and strangely sad. He whispered in disbelief, “I thought God was on my side.”
Jack said, “Everybody thinks that.” Michael tried to grab for the gun, and Jack pulled the trigger.
Nina jammed her knee into Yasin’s crotch and felt his grip on her gun loosen. He’d surprised her as she came in through the back. She had grabbed his gun and he had grabbed hers, and for a moment they had been locked in a silent struggle, until her knee struck him and she was able to tear her gun free.
She backed up a step, tapped, racked, and cleared as she’d been taught… but the jammed round wouldn’t clear. Yasin stood straight up, so Nina kicked him again. Instead of trying to clear her weapon, she punched it, muzzle first, into Yasin’s face. She grabbed his gun from his hand just as he lunged forward to put her in a bear hug. She braced herself with one foot back to stop him from going down on her, then calmly put the muzzle of her confiscated gun in his side and fired twice. The gun clicked dry on the third trigger pull.
She was just pushing Yasin’s now lifeless body away from her when she saw Gelson stick a gun in her face.
Jack swept down the stairs, his muzzle leading the way, then pulled up short. Mark Gelson was there, standing behind Nina Myers, who looked much more pissed than terrified. Gelson was behind her, holding a gun to her head with his right hand, with his left arm wrapped around her neck.
“I’ll kill her,” Gelson said. He was panicked, out of his league, and he knew it. “I put a fucking bomb in my arm, you think I won’t shoot her?”
“I think you’d probably miss,” Jack said. “You’re a screwup, Gelson. You got talked into paying for this debacle. You even got talked into blowing yourself up.”
“I didn’t get talked into it. I volunteered. I’m willing to die if I have to.”
“Then you won’t mind blowing up in a minute. We took the receiver out of Collins. It had a fail-safe. It was going to blow up at five-thirty whether it received a signal or not. It’s probably the same with you.”
This caught Gelson by surprise. At the same moment, Nina snatched at the gun, pulling the muzzle away from her head. Her other hand came up and caught it as well, and she snapped it out of his grip. Before he could react, she elbowed him in the stomach, then in the face, and the former Future Fighter dropped like a rock.
“He’s not really going to explode, is he?”
“I don’t think so,” Jack said. “I don’t even know if he has one. And I think Jamey can jam it now that she has the signal. But let’s stand over here just in case.”
Other cars were arriving, and Christopher Henderson walked in behind a flood of uniformed officers.
“Yasin is dead,” Jack said.
“Nice work,” Henderson replied.
“You can thank Nina for that. She got him.”
Jack felt the heaviness return to his limbs. He hadn’t slept in forever. Had he been going nonstop for twenty-four hours? He walked outside to the sidewalk and sat down on the curb. He put his head in his hands and heaved a huge sigh.
He was, in fact, sitting in the same position he’d been the night before, when Christopher Henderson met him at Ramin’s devastated house. Henderson sat down next to him, not talking for a while. Finally, he said, “After a day like this, Jack, I get it if you don’t want to sign on.”
“I’m signing on.”
“What?”
Jack lifted his head and rubbed his eyes. He didn’t look at Henderson, though; he looked down the
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street at the row of suburban houses. “We weren’t ready for this, Christopher. Any of it. Not your organization, not the CIA. They had it all planned out and we were nearly blind.”
Henderson nodded his head yes and then no. “We did all right in the end. You did.”
Jack disagreed. “No offense, but CTU would have quit a day ago. I probably would have figured we were done after Castaic. You know the only reason we kept going? Don Biehn. His vendetta made the connection between Yasin and the church. We would have been blind without it. We need to do better.”
“You ready to help us?” Christopher said. Jack stood up and stretched. “Yeah. Just promise me I’m not going to have any more days like this.”
About the Author
JOHN WHITMAN is the author of numerous books and projects, including the “Star Wars: Galaxy of Fear” series, Zorro and the Witch’s Curse, and, most recently, the trading cards for “24 Day 3.” He is a 4th-degree black belt and defensive tactics instructor in Krav Maga, the official hand-to-hand combat system of the Israeli military, has trained in protective services and defensive tactics in both the United States and in Israel, and has served as an instructor for U.S. law enforcement agencies and military anti-terrorist units.