Death Angel (13 page)

“Morrow figured different. Battaglia was one of the guards on duty outside the Pit when Romberg was killed. Could be he saw or heard something that could prove that it was no accident but murder. Maybe even point back to the killer.”

“Why didn’t he report it, Kling?”

“Maybe he didn’t know the significance of what he’d seen. Maybe he hadn’t seen anything at all but the killer thought he had. Another promising lead turned dead end. But Battaglia was the tipping point. I don’t know about Lewis but Sabito was starting to come around. He wanted
to get into it but his Bureau bosses wouldn’t let him. They’d already gotten burned from Sayeed and didn’t want to play with fire again.

“The kills had one positive effect. They narrowed the list of Big Mole suspects down to three. Nordquist, Carlson, and McCoy.”

“The last ones left alive,” Jack said.

“Then we got a break in the case. A new lead, a hot one. We didn’t have to go looking for it, it came to us. A walk-in. Phone-in, actually. Pete Rhee took the initial complaint but he had an idea it might be something so he kept it out of official channels and took it straight to Morrow. Morrow had Pete and me handle the investigation unofficially,” Kling said.

He went on. “That was about a month ago. Our new lead was starting to pan out. Then—disaster. Rhodes Morrow was killed. This time there was no attempt to frame it so it looked like anything but what it was: murder. You know the official story. Morrow was driving home late from work one night when he got a flat tire on a lonely stretch of road. Some crook or crooks came along and sized him up as an easy mark. Shot him dead and robbed him. His wallet and wristwatch were lifted to make it look good.

“Rhee and I knew better. Morrow’s death cut the heart out of our investigation. It cut the guts out of me. What little I had left. The one person who could tie it all together was silenced. Only Morrow could have proved that we were working for him on an official investigation and not just freelancing.

“Hell, I was scared. We both were. If they could knock off the head of OCI, where did that leave me and Pete? Sitting ducks. We didn’t know who to go to because we didn’t know who to trust. Surfacing the mole hunt might mean signing our own death warrants.

“And they were on to us. Somebody broke into my place
and tore it apart. Looking for notes or files on the hunt. Waste of time. Morrow had them all. Where I don’t know, but either Big Mole found them or Morrow hid them so good they haven’t turned up yet.

“Pete thought he was being followed. I started seeing shadows everywhere I looked. I didn’t know if I was actually being tailed or just seeing things. Spooking myself. And then I saw Pete Rhee with his head damned near blown off—”

Kling was working himself up. The fear was on him. Jack needed to keep him thinking straight. He’d left things untold—important things.

“Kling! The hot lead you were talking about, the one you and Rhee were following up—what is it?”

Kling opened his mouth to speak but before he could get the words out his face fell. His startled expression was the tip-off. He’d seen something behind Jack that jolted him.

Jack wasted no time in asking questions. He threw himself out of the chair sideways, diving to the floor. Gunfire boomed behind him. Bullets passed harmlessly over him, tearing into the curtained front window.

Jack rolled over toward the rear of the apartment. Two shooters stood there, handguns blazing. Filling the space with gun smoke.

One was a gray-haired, horse-faced man; the other was young with a rooster tail haircut and thin, wispy mustache. The young one looked barely out of his teens. Horse Face stood at the fore, the other was behind him and to the side.

Jack fired from the floor, placing two shots into Horse Face’s middle. Horse Face crumpled up, backpedaling like he was bowing his way out of the room. He staggered into his partner’s line of fire. A round from the young one’s gun lanced into his back.

The young one shouted an obscenity.

Horse Face’s back bowed, thrusting his shattered torso
forward. He stood with legs spread wide, swaying. Blocking Jack’s shot at his partner.

The young one retreated into the kitchen, gun barking, not scoring. He ducked behind a kitchen counter in time to avoid Jack’s shot; the round whizzed by so close that its passage ruffled his hair.

Horse Face was still on his feet. His gun hand fell to his side. He convulsively jerked the trigger, pumping a few rounds into the floor. He cried out, toppling.

The back door through which the gunmen had entered was wide open. The young one made a break for it, reaching behind him to throw more lead in Jack’s direction. Gun smoke hung in mid-air.

The young one went out the door, clattering downstairs. Jack rose, starting after him. Horse Face lay on his back on the floor, not dead yet. He raised his gun, straining as if it weighed fifty pounds. Jack shot him in the head, finishing him.

He glanced back. Kling lay flat on the floor belly-down, hugging the carpet. “You hit?”

“I’m okay, Bauer! Give me my gun!”

Jack wasn’t minded to have Harvey Kling at his back with a loaded gun. Kling was unharmed and would keep. Jack crossed to the rear of the flat. The stairwell was empty, the young one was already out the ground-floor door.

Jack went to the rear window, tore aside the red-and-white checked curtains. The young one was racing across the grassy strip between the two rows of buildings. Jack knocked out the glass pane with the gun barrel, reached outside, and fired at the fleeing form. Two shots, two misses. Though the second kicked up a tuft of grass and dirt at the young one’s heel.

The hammer clicked on empty; all the rounds in the cylinder had been fired. The young one halted, turned, and pointed the gun at the window. Jack dodged to one side,
sheltering behind the wall. A couple of rounds tore through the window, ripping into the ceiling. Shards of glass fell out of the window frame.

Jack placed Kling’s empty .38 on the kitchen counter. He went out the door and down the stairs, taking them two at a time. He drew his gun and ran outside. The young one had reached the far side of the grassy strip. He darted between two buildings toward the street beyond.

Jack ran after him, rushing through the space between two buildings, breaking out into the open. The street was a duplicate of the one housing Rhee’s apartment. Parked cars lined the curb. Jack halted, crouching, trying to look everywhere at once. The young one was nowhere to be seen.

A car engine roared into life; a sleek silver coupe catapulted out of a parking slot, the young one hunched over a wheel. Tires shrieked as he whipped the car into a hard right-hand turn, wheeling it around a corner.

Jack ran after it, squeezing off a few rounds at the fleeing car. Its rear window shattered but the car kept moving, swinging behind the cover of a building at the end of the block.

A yellow station wagon stood at the curb with its engine running. Its rear hatch was open. Behind it stood a suburban matron who’d been unloading groceries from it. She was deathly pale; only her eyes were alive.

Jack holstered his gun and flung open the driver’s side door. The motor was running, the keys in the ignition. He gave the interior a quick onceover to make sure no kids were inside; no baby tucked in a safety seat in the rear. That would be all he needed, to pirate a car with an infant inside. The car was unoccupied.

Jack locked eyes with the car’s owner. “Sorry, ma’am,” he said.

He jumped into the driver’s seat, adjusting it to get some leg room. He threw the car into gear and drove away, a
sudden right turn throwing several bags of groceries out of the open rear hatch to the pavement. Spilling melons and apples on the pavement. A quart container of milk broke open and splattered onto the street.

Glancing in the rearview mirror he saw the woman still standing frozen in place, gaping openmouthed at her stolen car dwindling in the distance. It was a hell of a note when he had to carjack a housewife, but you did what you had to get the job done.

Jack followed the course the young one had taken; ahead he saw a flashing glint of silver as the coupe rounded another turn onto the main drive out of the condo complex. He took off after it.

6:07
P.M
. MDT
Skycrest Drive, Los Alamos County

The silver coupe exited Ponderosa Pines, heading west across the mesa. The coupe moved out fast, the yellow station wagon following in hot pursuit.

Jack Bauer was pleasantly surprised to find that the wagon was a pretty zippy model with good pickup and handling. It had a tall body mounted on a compact car platform, with automatic transmission and all-wheel drive.

The chase picked up speed when the silver car broke onto the open road, the long flat straightaways and banked curves of the highway. Jack finally had an instant’s breathing room to fasten the safety harness seat belt. He sat leaning forward hunched over the wheel.

It was early Saturday night, before most revelers had
taken to the road in search of the evening’s entertainment. Traffic was light and there wasn’t a highway patrol car in sight. The silver car was leading him away from the suburbs, into the hills.

Ahead, west, the Jemez Mountains bulked against the horizon. An orange-red sun grazed the peaks. Long shadows fell across the land. The mountains’ eastern slopes were purple. Blue-gray shadows pooled around the foothills, extending long fingers creeping east across the land. The sky was still blue; the spectral white half-moon floated in the west. Few cars had their lights on yet.

Jack was aware of the airstream rushing past over the car; it forced the rear hatch down, slamming it shut. The engine whine shrilled higher as the motor wound out more RPMs, tires thrumming along the road. He was conscious of the weight of the gun holstered under his arm. He longed to get it into play but was unable to close the distance between his vehicle and the silver car.

The coupe was the quicker machine. Jack had the station wagon crowding its upper limit. Over seventy miles per hour it started to shake. He regretted the absence of the Expedition. The SUV had muscle that would have allowed him to speedily overtake his quarry.

The silver coupe was in a hurry. When a car was in its way it crossed the yellow centerline and passed in the opposite lane, forcing oncoming cars to get out of its way. It left a track of near-misses and narrowly averted collisions in its wake.

Jack did no less; he was determined not to let the other get away. He changed up the routine by passing cars on the right, driving on the shoulder when he had to overtake them.

The highway now ran through empty land. The pall softened the sharp edges of mountain peaks, blurred the open vistas, and deepened the gloom of oncoming dusk.

A distinct smell of burning hung in the air: smoke from
the fire in the canyon south of the Hill. It had thickened since Jack had earlier driven to Ponderosa Pines.

The flat straightaway atop the mesa gave way to a series of foothills, the road curving and twisting between them. That was good. The station wagon couldn’t beat the faster silver coupe on the long stretches but could regain some of its lost lead in the curves.

The jumbled hills and knobs featured many blind curves, causing Jack to frequently lose sight of the coupe. He always managed to catch up with it, though. The road forked; the silver car took the left-hand branch, the road curving hard to the southwest. The hills thinned and gave way on Jack’s left, opening a view looking south across the mesa’s edge to the canyon beyond.

Churning, roiling smoke clouds poured skyward as if the canyon was a vent to infernal regions below. Gray-black smoke poured out of it ceaselessly. It formed a curtain across the southern horizon, veiling South Mesa from view. Lurid red and yellow glare underlit it. The flames were invisible, hidden in the depths of the valley below, but their glow suffused the towering piles of smoke.

Sparks and embers rained upward, yellow-red-orange flakes of flame, a blizzard of them soaring up the thermals. Air flickered and rippled from heat waves.

The silver car slowed as it neared a crossroads. It flicked its headlights on and off several times as it went through. The station wagon flashed through the intersection.

A dark sedan sat waiting at the mouth of a thin dirt road coming down from the north. It was filled with men with guns. It powered out of its lurking place, churning up a plume of dirt and loose gravel. It slewed on to the paved road, tires yelping, biting as they gripped pavement.

The sedan arrowed after the station wagon, coming up fast, coming on strong.

Uh-oh
, Jack said to himself.
The old squeeze play
.

He got the picture. While he was chasing the silver car, it had been leading him into an ambush. With its greater speed and maneuverability it could have shaken the wagon’s pursuit. Instead it had lured him into a trap. The driver had played cat and mouse with him, staying out of reach but not losing Jack. He must have used his cell to call for help. Backup.

Here it was in the form of a sedan filled with hostiles. The newcomer was big, powerful; it ate up the distance between itself and the station wagon.

The silver car was slowing, looking to box Jack in. That was okay, there was plenty of highway for maneuvering. Red brake lights flashed on as the coupe suddenly braked hard, sliding sideways into a controlled drift, laying down curved rubber streaks on pavement.

It jerked to a halt, standing at right angles in the middle of the road. The driver scrambled over the seat and jumped out of the passenger side. The young one. He put the car between himself and the oncoming station wagon. He rested his gun on the roof of his car and pointed it at Jack, opening fire. The shots went wild except for one that went through the windshield. It passed through the car, punching an exit hole through the rear window. The windshield was ventilated by a half dollar–sized hole but otherwise remained intact.

Jack whipped the station wagon to the right onto the shoulder, around the rear of the silver car, and away. The young one kept firing; some slugs tore into the car’s left rear fender.

The sedan followed, threading through the slot. The young one jumped into the coupe and took off after it.

Spear points of flame rimmed gun muzzles that jutted through the sedan’s open windows. The station wagon’s rear window totally disintegrated, spraying the back of Jack’s head, neck, and shoulders with broken glass. Safety glass,
fragmenting into cubes. They stung like being peppered with rock salt from a shotgun—but it beat being sliced to ribbons by jagged-edged shards.

Jack ducked down lower in his seat, working the wheel so the station wagon wove a bullet-dodging course on the roadway ahead. Slaloming back and forth across the centerline. Sharp curves in the road forced him to change tactics to stay on course.

The sedan crowded up from behind. Jack was in a tight spot. The smaller-engined station wagon’s slim lead was fast melting.

A hundred yards ahead on the left loomed a dirt road. A farm road or ranch road. It was secured by a triple-barred gate. Jack worked the brake, feathering it, turning the wheel to put the wagon in a controlled slide.
Controlled
being a relative term.

He had a heart-in-mouth moment as the scenery rushed up sideways on the right side of the car. Tires squealed, laying rubber. If one of them burst it was all over. The sharklike sedan came at him on his left side.

With a bump and a jerk the wagon slid to a halt, pointing at the three-barred gate. Jack stomped the gas, charging the barrier. It was secured by a padlocked chain fastened to the gatepost and posted with a
NO TRESPASSING
sign.

The station wagon crashed the gate. There was an instant’s gut-churning resistance. The wagon front’s leading edge crumpled, headlights shattering, hood buckling.

The machine darted downhill along a rutted dirt path. The dirt track ran down a wooded hillside covered with pine trees. Trees on both sides of the road interlaced overhead, forming a canopy. Beneath them was premature dusk. Pine-scented gloom. The road ran through it like a tunnel.

The way was not straight but curved to follow the contours of the slope. It bent right, then left, then right again. Jack had to slow his descent due to the many blind corners.
A smashup against the trees and his run was over. Sometimes the grade was so steep that he all but stood on the brake pedal.

He was not alone. The sedan full of gunmen had also taken the plunge. The silver car followed behind.

The sedan’s headlights flashed on, glaring high beams. Jack kept his lights dark. Despite the smoky murk there was enough daylight to see by.

The road wound into a series of S-curves. Sometimes its loops brought the station wagon in close proximity to the sedan, with only a belt of timber between them. That timber was his lifeline. The dense-packed trees screened him from the bullets sprayed at him by the sedan’s occupants.

As he descended the gloom deepened. Banks of smoke rose through the trees, stinging his eyes, smelling of burning. Jack steered as much by intuition and instinct as by sight. He had to slow down to guard against crashing.

The station wagon was taking a beating on the rough road. Its all-wheel drive helped maintain traction, but the machine was not designed for too-rugged off-road motoring. The same applied to the sedan and the silver coupe, though. The wagon was slightly better suited to the terrain than its pursuers.

Stones thrown up by the wheels cracked against the undercarriage. The rutted road made the car feel like it was shaking itself apart. The steering wheel shuddered in his hands, fighting him, trying to break his grip.

Low-hanging branches beat against the wagon’s roof and sides. Jack was tossed around by the rigors of the road. If not for the seat belt he would have been pitched headfirst through the windshield.

The road straightened out for its final descent down the slope. At the bottom lay a flat. The twisty course had worked to his advantage, allowing him to gain some lead on
the pursuit. On the flat the powerful sedan would eat up his lead. Then its guns would eat him up.

The dirt trail went from the tilted vertical to the horizontal. The wagon was on the flat. The sedan swooped down on the level and tore off after him. The silver car was close on the sedan’s tail.

Fifty yards of hurtling forward motion took Jack out of the woods. The wagon broke into bare, open country; a sprawling plain. The road ran straight across it due south through a landscape dotted with boulders and cacti. The flat lay in the immense trough of the valley between the Hill and South Mesa.

Fire from the demolished meth lab had earlier raced south down the arroyo, spreading into Coyote Canyon and beyond. The rugged terrain was choked with masses of dry brush that should have been regularly trimmed and cut back. Such preventive maintenance costs money. The last time the brush had been thinned was almost a decade ago in the disastrous Cerro Grande fires. Years had gone by with no follow-up. Years in which the economy had collapsed into recession and worse. No money could be found in the county budget for brush cutting and clearing, for building firebreaks and firewalls.

Now it was the peak of summer. Brush, grass, weeds, and carpeted pine needles all wrung dry of every drop of moisture had become ideal tinder. Kindling for an overdue conflagration. What man had failed to fix, nature was now remedying.

The blaze was part forest fire, part prairie fire, and all inferno. Of its origins Jack Bauer knew nothing. Its results were in full view as he raced south across the flat. A firestorm raged throughout the valley between the Hill and South Mesa. Its progress was not uniform but diverse, spreading by fits and starts across the terrain.

The valley was a patchwork of fire and unburnt land. Many square miles of the valley’s wooded north slope were a raging hell. Sections were ablaze to the east and west of the flat where the station wagon was harried by its pursuers. Smoke blotted out the low-hanging sun into a ball of blood shrouded by swirling gray-black clouds.

The way south across the flat was open, smoky but free of fire. The ground might have been some rancher’s grazing land, but if so it was bare of cattle now. The fire would have stampeded them elsewhere.

The sedan was closing the gap between it and the wagon. Ahead, the end of the dirt road was in sight. The flat rose in a low slope to a flat-topped ridge bordered by a wire fence strung on fence posts. The road terminated in a three-barred gate similar to the one Jack had crashed at its opposite end.

The station wagon plowed into the gate and smashed it open, batting it back on its hinges. It gave onto a two-lane blacktop road running east-west. Fire and smoke were thicker to the west. Jack made a snap decision and made a left-hand turn. The wagon slewed into a curve on the pavement.

Jack manhandled the wheel, whipping it around, feathering the brakes at the same time. The wagon skidded, the road’s right bank rushing toward the passenger side of the car. The tires bit, digging in. The car straightened out, heading east.

The valley was thick with smoke. Not thick enough for him to hide in, to lose his pursuers. He couldn’t shake them. He fishtailed back and forth over the centerline, abruptly weaving and switching lanes to avoid gunfire from the pursuing sedan.

The road ahead sloped gently upward. At the top of the ridge the ground was dotted with a number of low mounds and hills, the road winding through them. Beyond lay a fork in the road.

The right-hand branch drove a long, straight road through
level ground. The left wound into a cascade of stepped ridges. The left-hand branch offered a better chance of escape, slim though it was.

The station wagon punched through a low-hanging smoke cloud into the hills of the left fork. Fire had found a foothold here, thrusting an arm down from the valley’s burning northern slope.

Jack coughed, choking, eyes tearing. He wiped his forearm across his eyes to clear them. The hillside on his left was on fire. He could feel the heat from it. Yellow sparks like hordes of fireflies spiraled up through churning smoke. Visibility was poor. Trees lining the left side of the road formed a row of torches. Trunks and branches were dark skeletons wreathed in yellow and red flames.