Jack knew the answer to the next question, but asked anyway. “Have you tried to locate Foy using the GPS chip in her cell?”
The comm tech frowned. “She deactivated it, sir. I can’t imagine why.”
“I can.” Jack glanced at Layla. “She didn’t want CTU to know where she was.”
“I think I’ve got something,” said Morris.
Jack peered over his shoulder, at the high-definition monitor. Morris tapped a few keys and a map of New Jersey appeared, the telecommunications grid superim-posed over it.
“Deputy Director Foy’s call came through a forwarding station in this little town here.” Morris tapped the screen.
“Pissant. Pissant, New Jersey.”
Peter Randall cleared his throat. “That’s Passaic, O’Brian.
Passaic, New Jersey. It’s an American Indian word.”
Morris squinted theatrically. “I must be going goggle-eyed. I swear it says Pissant.”
“Get on with it, Morris,” Jack said tightly.
“Anyway, from the forwarding station in Passaic, I traced the signal back to communications grid A — NE 8804.
That’s right here—” Morris tapped the screen again.
“Newark,” Jack whispered. He faced Layla.
“Retrieve the patient admission records from all the hospitals around Newark, see if anyone fitting Agent Foy’s description has been treated in the past hour. Contact the Newark Police Department and the city morgue, too…”
“On it,” Layla said, punching keys.
Jack laid a hand on Morris’s shoulder. “I’m leaving for an hour, to check on that other matter,” he said quietly.
“The one that delayed us this morning.”
“Bugger,” Morris murmured. “Don’t you want backup?”
Jack shook his head. “Not from this office. You and Tony hold down the fort until I get back. I’ll be in touch if I run into problems.”
Morris frowned. “Careful, Jack. I understand New York can be a very rough town.”
“Agent Almeida? I have the system schematics that you requested.”
Tony nodded, his gaze fixed on the monitor. “Yeah, thanks,” he muttered. “Put them on the desk.”
“Agent Almeida?”
It took a moment for the voice to penetrate his concentration. Finally, Tony looked up, to find a young woman with dark, curly hair and wide, oval eyes standing over him. She offered Tony a nervous smile.
“I just wanted to say… if you need anything… anything at all, I’ll be in the next cubicle.” She pointed to her workstation with a thumb over her shoulder. “My name’s Delgado, Rachel Delgado. Like I said, call me. If you need me.”
The woman wore black slacks and platform shoes. Her tight, white blouse had a low neckline, showing more than ample cleavage. Tony shifted uncomfortably in his chair.
“Ah… thanks.”
As she walked away, Tony watched her swaying hips—
until Rachel Delgado glanced over her shoulder and caught him peeking.
Tony quickly shifted his gaze — then the computer beeped, and it was back to work. He grabbed the schematics that Ms. Delgado had brought him and looked them over. In a few minutes, he’d isolated the problem, which turned out to be a glitch with the physical system and not a software issue.
Tony stood, hung his jacket over the back of the desk chair, along with his shoulder holster and the Glock inside it. Then he rolled up his sleeves and used a screwdriver from the console kit to open the access panel behind the computer.
The guts of the system revealed, Tony began to physically reroute the entire network through a different set of servers by reconnecting several dozen ports to ultrahigh bandwidth links.
After a short cab ride, Jack Bauer exited the taxi on the corner of Canal and Mulberry. At the teeming intersection, he considered his next move.
It was clear to Jack that someone at CTU New York had tipped off De Salvo and his crew. They knew about Jack’s arrival in the city, and enough of his schedule to set up an ambush in the middle of Hudson Street in broad daylight.
Or did the leak originate somewhere else, out of the Tacoma office, perhaps? Jack decided to have a long talk with George Mason after this was over.
Angelo De Salvo had harbored a deep grudge against Jack — for good reason. Jack had led the siege in L.A. that had ended with the deaths of De Salvo’s father and two brothers.
Angelo hadn’t been with his family during that take-down, but he was a career criminal with a long rap sheet.
He was also a hunted man, and according to O’Brian’s research, De Salvo’s alias — Angel Salinas — never had more than nine hundred dollars in his bank account. So there was no way he could have paid for the services of professional hit men.
So who had helped him mount this morning’s ambush?
De Salvo was dead now, but whoever had helped him was still very much alive. Jack intended to find the source of the payoff money. He would start with the dead man’s employer, Fredo Mangella.
Jack walked down Mulberry Street, the main drag of New York’s shrunken Little Italy. The street was narrow but clean and colorful, with century-old brick buildings of six and eight stories, housing Italian restaurants, cafés, and gourmet pastry shops at street level. There were iron streetlamps and sidewalk tables with Campari umbrellas, but few tourists were around at this hour of the morning.
Most of the pedestrians were Asian, heading toward the streets around Mulberry, which belonged to Chinatown, a large area of Lower Manhattan that had grown even larger over the years with the influx of Asian immigrants, reduc-ing Little Italy to no more than a few blocks.
Morris had provided an exact address for Mangella’s chic new eatery, but Jack found the place difficult to miss.
Volaré sat halfway down Mulberry, inside an old building that obviously had been gutted and reconstructed with a two-story-high facade of glass framed by gleaming chrome.
The restaurant wasn’t open, but Jack spotted a tall man entering through the front door. He wore sunglasses and a dark suit, had a pallid complexion, and wore his white-blond hair long, just past his shoulders.
Jack watched the place a few more minutes from across the street. Then he moved to enter the restaurant.
Volaré’s interior was large and airy, with a ceiling high enough for an authentic Italian racing plane from the 1930s to be suspended above the perfectly placed tables.
On the ground floor, double doors to the kitchen were set in a shiny chrome wall beside an Art Deco chrome-plated bar. Jack spied an upper balcony with silver rails and a spiral staircase that flowed down to the main dining area.
There were no tables on the balcony, only a single door at the end of it.
For a moment no one appeared. Then a smiling woman exited the kitchen. “How can I help you?” she asked.
Elegant and waiflike, the thirty-something woman spoke with an unidentifiable European accent.
Jack forced a smile. “My name’s Jack Bello, of Gardenia Cheese in Vermont. I was wondering if I could speak with Mr. Mangella about sampling our excellent product?”
For the briefest second the woman glanced at the door on the balcony. “I’m afraid Mr. Mangella is quite busy.
Perhaps—”
“I’m only in town for the day, and I just need a moment of his time,” Jack insisted.
The woman’s smile faded, but she relented. “I’ll see what I can do. Wait here, Mr. Bello.”
She turned on her heels and walked through the kitchen doors. Jack immediately moved through the dining room and ascended the spiral staircase. He crossed the narrow balcony and paused at the door. Carefully he tried the knob, but it was locked. Then Jack pressed his ear against the door. He heard voices inside.