Death Angel (27 page)

It came on strong and quick and had to hit the brakes hard. It skidded, slid, tires squealing, laying down rubber. It bounced to a halt.

The back door flung open and armed men began pouring out of the back of the vehicle.

Lewis was caught between two fires. He circled around the rear of the patrol car. Crouching low to put the car between himself and the newcomers. There must have been
a half-dozen gunmen, not counting the driver and the passenger in the cab.

Lewis crouched on the driver’s side of the patrol car. He snapped a few shots at the SUV. One drilled the windshield high on the driver’s side. Not hitting the driver.

The gunmen fanned out. One ran to Lewis’s right. Lewis shot him and he fell down. Lewis shot him again.

While the shooters were occupied with Lewis, Jack crawled backward away from the car. He rolled across the east shoulder of Highway 5 and dropped into a ditch.

Lewis tried to make a break for it in the patrol car. He tore open the driver’s side door. Tripping the interior dome light, which shone on him in the gloomy dawn light.

Bullets stitched the side of the patrol car. The shooter aimed high—the rounds blew out the side windows. On both sides.

“Careful, you idiots! You’ll shoot Carlson!”—a familiar voice.

The shooting stopped.

“Sorry, Pardee,” one of the shooters said.

“Shoot out the tires so he can’t get away,” Pardee said.

More than one gunman responded. Shooting crackled as the tires were targeted. Shredding them. The tires flattened, causing the car to settle lower.

Lewis jumped out, running toward his car. Gunfire stitched him, shooting his legs out from under him.

“Got him!”

“You better hope he ain’t dead, asshole!”—Pardee again.

A gunman with an assault rifle hustled forward toward Lewis, who lay flat on his back on the pavement moaning and groaning. He shot the rifleman.

The rifleman dropped to his knees with a grunt, weapon falling from his hands to clatter to the pavement. Lewis pulled the trigger again. The gun clicked, hammer falling on an empty chamber. He was out of bullets. The man he’d
shot stood on his knees, hugging himself, shrinking into himself, his middle leaking.

“He’s empty,” Pardee said. Other gunmen moved in, circling Lewis, guns pointed at him. Huddled low in the ditch, Jack still couldn’t see Pardee’s face. The gunmen checked out the scene.

“Hey look, two dead cops!”

“We didn’t kill them.”

“Who did?”

“They were dead before we got here.”

“This joker must’ve offed ’em. Thanks, pal. You saved us the trouble,” Pardee said.

“No Carlson here, boss. He’s gone.”

“Probably in that car we passed along the way.” Pardee indicated Lewis. “He’s a hijacker. Must be one of Varrin’s crowd.” He stepped on Lewis’s wounded leg and put his weight on it.

Lewis shrieked. One of the gunmen giggled.

Pardee said, “The dispatcher on the police band said they might have grabbed Carlson. I guess this guy had the same idea.”

“Let me live and I’ll tell you,” Lewis gritted out through clenched teeth.

“I don’t need you. I know where Carlson went. To the big meeting up on that bluff. The big secret meeting. So-called. No secret to me. I guess you know where that leaves you, huh?”

“No!—”

Pardee shot Lewis, opening up his chest.

“Trash the cars. Light ’em up. It’ll keep the cops guessing,” Pardee said.

A man with a machine gun went around behind Lewis’s car. Jack Bauer flattened himself even further, hugging the bottom of the ditch. The gunner opened up, spraying the rear of the car with lead.

Tough break for Dennison, who was tied up and locked in the trunk, Jack thought.

The gas tank was bullet-sieved; gas ran streaming to the pavement. Hot rounds touched off the gas; it caught fire. The gas tank blew.

Another shooter did the same to the patrol car. Lewis, still alive, barely, was sprayed with burning gasoline and set afire.

The gang got back in the Suburban and drove north on Highway 5.

6:27
A.M
. MDT
Intersection of Highway 5 and
Ridgefoot Drive, Los Alamos County

A gray sedan halted near the crossroads.

Lewis’s car and the patrol car were smoldering, burned-out hulks. They’d sprayed flaming gasoline off-road, but the fiery patches had failed to get a purchase on the barren, hard-packed red dirt and played out.

Jack Bauer climbed out of the ditch where he’d been hiding while he checked out the newcomers. He recognized the gray sedan as an FBI car. Out of it came Vince Sabito, his assistant Ferney, and George Coates.

Smoke haze filtered the low sun’s rays, causing the figures to cast long, ghostly shadows across the landscape. Jack went to them. They greeted his appearance with a uniform lack of warmth. Stony faces, unfriendly eyes.

“Well, well. Wandering Boy has come home again,” Coates said.

Sabito drew his pistol and pointed it at Jack.

“What gives?” Jack asked. “We’re supposed to be on the same side, remember?”

“That’s your story,” Sabito said.

“Meaning what?”

“You’re a bright boy, you figure it out,” Coates said.

“Shut up, Coates. I’ll do the talking,” Sabito said. He kept his eyes on Jack and his gun pointed steadily at him. “Where’s Carlson, Bauer?”

“Gone. Lewis shot the deputies and set him free.”

Sabito’s expression was one of outright disbelief. “Where were you when all this was supposed to be happening?”

“Trying to keep from having my tail shot off,” Jack said.

Sabito scanned Jack up and down. “Looks like you did a pretty good job of it. Not a mark on you that I can see.”

“Next time I’ll catch a bullet or two to keep you happy.”

“There won’t be any next time.”

“You might get shot sooner than you expect,” Coates chimed in.

“I told you to shut up.”

“Sorry, Vince.”

“Where’s Lewis?” Sabito asked.

“There.” Jack indicated a charred corpse lying next to the wreck of the patrol car. The body was in that drawn-up crouching position characteristic of incineration. It was blackened, smoking, unrecognizable.

“That could be the man in the moon for all I know,” Sabito said.

“Some Blanco guns came along while Lewis and I were shooting it out. They were looking for Carlson, too. A couple of the bodies lying around are theirs. They shot up the cars and blew them up,” Jack said.

“And you came out of it without so much as a scratch. I’m
not buying it. I’ve been doing some thinking, Bauer. Putting all the facts together until they fit. Here’s how it comes out.

“This whole dirty business went into overdrive from the moment you showed up. All along you’ve been Johnny-on-the-spot. You gave Hickman and Coates the slip so you could meet Peter Rhee unobserved. He was killed while waiting to meet you—with no other living witnesses present. You were the first on the scene of his death.

“You go to Rhee’s apartment—Kling is there—and somebody tries to kill him. Kling arranges to meet you at the Parkhurst place. When you get there he’s dead and so are they. You go to Nordquist’s house just in time to foil a kidnapping.

“Against my better judgment I let you go to INL on condition that Hickman goes along. He’s there as much to keep an eye on you as anything else. What happens? McCoy is carved by a laser beam. You sabotage Medusa, the linchpin of the multibillion-dollar Perseus Project. Hickman is shot dead, allowing Carlson to escape.

“Instead of sticking around, you take off with Lewis. A couple of sheriff’s deputies report that they’re holding a suspect who looks like Carlson. You and Lewis are first on the scene. Now the deputies are dead and Carlson is missing. You say Lewis is dead. You show me a body that could be him or anybody else.”

“You’re thinking too hard, Vince,” Jack Bauer said. “You’ve been in contact with OCI so you know Lewis was dirty. The rest follows from that.”

Sabito shook his head, looking up at Jack from the bottoms of his eyes. “Lewis is the card that’s showing faceup. You’re the one that’s facedown. I’m turning that card over and here’s what I see:

“Lewis was CIA. You’re CIA. CIA, CTU, it’s all one and the same to me, and I say to hell with the whole lousy outfit. You were in it with Lewis. Thick as thieves, the two of you.
Lewis got wind of Rhodes Morrow’s secret investigation—he passed it along to you. Peter Rhee might have been leery of Lewis but you were a fresh face, an outsider.

“He made the mistake of thinking he could trust you. He and Kling both had to go. You set Rhee up for a kill, setting up a meeting in the middle of nowhere. Maybe you did the deed yourself and passed the weapon to an accomplice—Lewis, most likely. Maybe you just put the finger on Rhee and let somebody else do the dirty work. And who better than Lewis to pull the trigger?

“Kling was next in line for the chop. All I have is your word for what happened at Rhee’s apartment. You could have fingered Kling for a kill only he got lucky and shot his way out of it. As for your story about being ambushed by Blanco guns and escaping in the firestorm, all we have to go by is your say-so. No hard proof, no concrete evidence. The whole thing could have been an elaborate setup engineered by you and Lewis to shore up your cover story.

“You’re the only one who knew Kling would be at the Parkhursts’. Kling trusted you and bought your story like Rhee did and wound up the same way. You passed the word and Blanco shooters came in to clean house. That’s where foiling that kidnapping played into your hands. It was a gambit, a false flag to misdirect the rest of us. Carlson was the traitor, not Nordquist. So why snatch Nordquist’s wife and kid? Any chess player could figure that out. It was a sacrifice move. The three kidnappers were pawns. They were there to be taken to establish your bona fides and make you look good.

“And it worked, at least for a while. That’s why I let you fly to Ironwood.

“The Ironwood debacle was the worst. I was suspicious of you. All my instincts had you pegged as a wrongo. But instead of following my gut I let you persuade me to give you a free hand. I figured with Hickman along he’d smell
out anything that wasn’t kosher. The net was closing and you and Lewis had to get Carlson out. Carlson and the PALO codes. He’s invaluable to making them work. He knows them inside and out.

“The codes by themselves are priceless but with Carlson along they’re even better because he can show scientists of a hostile foreign power how to get them up and working fast, save all the time it would take for them to figure it out themselves. Lewis had to be sacrificed, too. It was the only way to get Carlson out of INL. In the process you got rid of McCoy and sabotaged Medusa, too.

“You still had one last card to play. Carlson wasn’t home free yet. The dragnet was out for him. He was alone and he made a rookie blunder, driving right into a police roadblock. You knew where he was going, that’s how you happened to be first on the scene. With some Blanco gunmen for backup. You slaughtered the deputies and freed Carlson to run. Maybe you killed Lewis because his cover was blown and he was of no use to you anymore; maybe not. We’ll know better once the forensics crew examines the body you claim is Lewis.

“Meantime you stayed behind to maintain your cover and mislead the pursuit once again. A walking, talking, two-legged red herring. But it won’t work. This is the end of the line for you, Bauer.”

“You’re adding up two and two and getting five, Vince.”

“Go on, deny it. Prove me wrong. But you can’t—because it’s true.”

Ferney was excited, his eyes shining, face glowing. “You busted this case wide open, Vince,” he said admiringly.

Jack Bauer spoke directly to Sabito. “Hell, I could do the same to you. You’re the one who’s been here on the scene all along, not me. Going back to the Sayeed case and before. You and your people were denying there was a pattern to the Ironwood kills even as the bodies were piling up. What
you’re doing right now is what an enemy agent would do if he wanted to make sure that Carlson gets away.”

Sabito’s toothy grin failed to reach his hard, dark eyes. “The old reverse play, eh Bauer? Accuse the accuser. Too bad it won’t work. I’ve got the goods on you. I’ve got the drop on you, too.

“Get his gun, Coates. No tricks, Bauer. I’m itching to put a slug in you; don’t give me an excuse.”

Coates moved in from the side, so as not to block Sabito’s line of fire. He pulled Jack’s pistol from the shoulder holster. “Chet Hickman was my partner—and my friend,” Coates said. “You dirty son of a bitch!”

Coates slammed the flat of Jack’s pistol against the side of his jaw. Jack saw it coming and rolled with it, turning his head away from the blow, falling backward. It hit with stunning force anyway, numbing him, making him see stars.

Coates had to come in close to deliver the blow. That was the break Jack had been waiting for. He grabbed the wrist of Coates’s gun hand and twisted it away from himself and toward Coates.

Coates was between Sabito and Jack. Sabito couldn’t get a clear shot at Jack. Jack used Coates’s forward motion against him, falling back and to the side and pulling Coates along with him. Coates lurched forward, off-balance.

Sabito lunged forward, gun in hand, angling for a clear shot. Jack used a circular aikido move on Coates’s wrist and arm, turning it in a direction nature hadn’t intended it to go. Coates’s yelp was cut off in a gasp as blinding pain shot through his wrist and shoulder joint, numbing his hand. Blood drained from his florid face.

Jack plucked the gun from the other’s nerveless fingers even as he was spinning Coates around. He rushed forward, sweeping Coates off his feet and slamming him into Sabito. Sabito couldn’t shoot without hitting Coates. He and Coates were tangled up in a mass of flailing limbs.

Jack reached around Coates, slamming his pistol down, knocking the gun from Sabito’s hand. The gun hit hard pavement and went off, loosing a wild shot that hit nobody.

Jack stepped back as Sabito and Coates fell down in a tangle of limbs. He kicked Sabito’s gun out of reach. The encounter had played itself out in a few breathless seconds.

Ferney stood there frozen, his only reaction a blink. Coates rolled over on his back, making grunting noises. He clawed for the gun holstered under his arm, hampered by the fact that his hand and wrist weren’t working too well after the manhandling Jack had applied to the pressure points of the nerves.

Jack placed a short, tight, front snap kick to the point of Coates’s chin. Coates fell back, unconscious.

Ferney remembered he had a gun, glanced at it. Jack pointed his gun at Ferney and shook his head. “Uh-uh,” he said. Ferney remained motionless. Cursing and groaning, Sabito wriggled out from under Coates.

The side of Jack’s face was red and swollen where Coates had clipped it with the gun. It felt numb, except for a throbbing that was like a second heart pounding away there.

Coates was still out. Jack leaned over and pulled Coates’s gun from its holster. To remove temptation so Sabito wouldn’t do something stupid. “Stay down or I’ll put you down, Vince,” he said.

Sabito was furious, so mad he looked like he could spit nails. Jack put Coates’s gun into one of his vest pockets. He crossed to Ferney and relieved him of his gun. “Sit down,” he said. Ferney sat down hard on the pavement.

Jack put Ferney’s gun in another vest pocket. He was getting top-heavy with hardware. He circled around to where Sabito’s gun lay. Jack was running out of pockets. He picked up the gun and took a few steps back.

“You can sit up, Vince. But don’t get up,” he said. He holstered his gun. “My draw can beat your heroics, Vince, so stay put.”

Sabito had a revolver. Jack broke it, spilling the rounds from the cylinder to the pavement. He threw the gun far away into a roadside field. He released the clip from Coates’s pistol, jacked a round out of the chamber, and heaved the weapon way out in the weeds. He defanged Ferney’s weapon and tossed it, too.

He went to Ferney. Jack had dropped his own cell in the road earlier when Lewis had made his play. It had been run over by Carlson’s car or Pardee’s Suburban or both; it was squashed flat. “Give me your cell phone,” he said.

Ferney obeyed, handing it over. Jack switched it off so it couldn’t be used to track him, then pocketed it. He went to Sabito, standing too close. “I wish I had a picture of this. It would make a great CTU Christmas card,” he said.

Sabito muttered a string of obscenities under his breath.

“What’s that, Vince? I didn’t quite get that last—I get the idea, though,” Jack said. “If I was what you think I am, I could have burned down all three of you with your own guns and framed it so I’d be in the clear. Not a breath of suspicion would attach to me. Think about that while you’re waiting for a ride,” he added.

Jack Bauer crossed to the driver’s side of the gray sedan. The keys were in the ignition. He slid in under the steering wheel and started the car.

He drove through the crossroads, circling the car wrecks, corpses, and G-men. He pointed the truck north on Highway 5 and drove away. He beeped the horn jauntily in a farewell salute to Sabito and company.

6:49
A.M
. MDT
Bluecoat Bluff, Los Alamos County

Bluecoat Bluff was a few miles past the crossroads, north on Highway 5 over the top of the hill. So Orne Lewis had said, and in this, at least, he wasn’t lying. The bluff was a low, flat-topped sugarloaf-shaped hill made of reddish-brown stone a mile from the highway.

The bluff commanded a view of the surrounding countryside, an expanse of flatland strewn with jagged landforms. Standing rocks had been eroded into odd angular, twisted shapes that evoked wraiths, flames, battlements, spires, and steeples.

Jack Bauer drove past the unmanned entrance prominently marked with a
CLOSED
sign and kept on going. The car’s springs, chassis, and undercarriage took a beating. Jack piloted it into the lee of a massive tilted land formation that blocked the view of the bluff from the highway and parked behind some dry, scraggly brush that provided some cover, partly screening the gray sedan from the road and any spotters around the bluff.