The group had all the markings of a street gang— the same style clothing, the same color bandanas and tattoos. Jack’s stint with LAPD SWAT had given him enough of a primer on the basics: the hand signals, the postures, the tags, the colors. From his proximity to JFK, Jack knew he was still in Queens. The Latin Kings were known to be the most active gang in that borough. But this crew approaching Dante Arete wasn’t sporting the trademark five-pointed crown on their body tattoos or clothing.
Los Angeles had been awash in gang activity for decades. The Bloods and Crips alone had made the city the drive-by shooting capital of the world. Still, those drug-dealing gang-bangers had active “sets” or chapters in almost every state in the country; and although they were predominantly black gangs, many other ethnic groups had adopted their names and colors out of sheer recognition if not direct affiliation.
Jack might have guessed these young men were part of a Crips crew from the blue bandanas, but Crips didn’t favor tattoos, and the identical tattoos around their throats looked more like something out of the Mexican Mafia — a group that had begun in the California prison system decades ago and had since claimed members all over the country. That gang also favored the color blue, but its symbols of MM, La Eme, a “13” and three dots, were nowhere in sight.
Four of the group were also wearing long dark blue dusters, unbuttoned and flapping in the night breeze. The coats were out of place on a warm night in late spring, unless one wanted to hide something — like an automatic weapon. Suddenly one of the group, a stocky, powerfully built man with a shaved head, called out to Dante using his gang tag—
“Apache, mi hermano!”
He moved forward, catching Dante in a bear hug. The two men slapped each other under the glow of a streetlight as the other young men formed a protective circle around them.
“Ese, Apache! Ese!”
“Hasta la muerte, guerrero!”
That’s when Jack knew. These men were members of the Columbia Street Posse, Dante’s nonaligned Brooklyn-based gang. Jack darted across the street, slipped into the parking lot, and dived behind the first car he could reach — a Z28 Camaro Coupe repainted a metallic green with a white racing stripe. Quietly he stepped between vehicles until he was less than a dozen feet away from Arete, near enough to hear their conversation clearly.
“I’m lucky to be here at all, guerreros,” Arete said. “I thought I was gonna die in that stinking airplane.”
Shaved Head laughed. “It wasn’t luck, Apache. The Paddies really came through for you tonight.”
Cautiously, Jack raised his head to peer through the car’s spotless windows. Two men stepped into the light. Respectfully, the Posse parted. The newcomers were impeccably dressed in tailored summer-weight suits. Jack guessed the younger of the two — a fiery redhead with the florid face of a drinker — was in his mid-thirties. The other man was at least a decade older, broad-shouldered, with sharp features and steel-gray hair.
Dante Arete eyed the pair. “You bastards shoot good,” he said.
The redhead grinned. When he spoke, his Irish brogue was thick. “Got a present for you, Apache. For all yer troubles.”
The redhead popped the trunk of a black Mercedes with an electronic key. The older man reached inside, pulled out an attaché case. Rising cautiously from behind the car, Jack traded the risk of being seen for a better look inside the trunk. In the dull white glow of the boot light, Jack saw a missile launcher, its twin steel launch tubes gleaming dully. Then the trunk closed, and Jack ducked down again, breathing in the humid night air.
“You know what to do,” said the silver-haired older man, his brogue less pronounced. “After tonight, don’t contact us again.”
Arete took the attaché case, turned his back on the pair to confer with his crew. The two men strolled away, to lean against the Mercedes while they observed the discussion. Jack thrust the Glock in his belt, then reached into his charcoal-gray jacket to retrieve his CDD communicator.
10:41:14 P.M.EDT CTU Headquarters, Los Angeles
The speaker at Nina Myers’s workstation crackled. “It’s Jamey. I’ve got Jack Bauer on the line.”
“Put Jack through my speakerphone. I want you to listen in, too, and patch Milo in if you can.”
Nina waved Tony Almeida and Ryan Chappelle over to her cubicle. “It’s Jack.”
“Jack? What happened? Are you all right?” Ryan asked with practiced sincerity. In an urgent whisper, Jack summarized the events of the past hour. He told them about Hensley murdering the marshals, the shoot-down of the airliner, Arete’s escape, the rendezvous in Tatiana’s parking lot, the two Irishmen and the missile launcher inside the trunk of their car.
“That’s… well, that’s quite a story Jack,” Ryan said doubtfully. “Can you back any of this up.”
“Not yet,” Jack replied. “But I intend to secure a vehicle and follow the Mercedes wherever it goes. Once I have the missile launcher and the men in custody, we can sort this out.”
“What about your prisoner?” said Ryan. “You can’t just let Dante Arete get away.”
“I’m sending CTU a positioning signal so Jamey can pinpoint my location.”
After a few seconds, Jamey spoke. “Okay, I’ve got Jack on my monitor. I’m overlaying a grid map of the area now.”
“Forget about me, Jamey,” said Jack. “I want you to activate the tracker.”
“Are you sure you want to do that, Jack?” Tony protested. “The chemical battery is only good for about twelve hours.”
“Hopefully that’s all the time we’ll need. Do it, Jamey. I need to know that the tracker is functioning properly.”
A moment passed while Jamey transmitted the signal. Jack risked a peek at the gang revival meeting. It was breaking up. Dante Arete and the tattooed man climbed into a white SUV, lingered for some further conversation. “Hurry, Jamey. I need that tracker now.”
“I have him. He’s less than twenty meters from your position,” said Jamey after too long a pause. “But we have a problem, Jack. The distance between here and New York is causing a twenty-two-second real-time delay in the satellite relay.”
“We’ll have to live with that,” said Jack. Next he read off the license numbers on the Mercedes, then on Dante’s SUV to Jamey. “See if you can dig up any useful information from those plate numbers. The SUV is probably stolen. But we might find out something useful about the other vehicle.”
Ryan spoke up. “What are you going to do, Jack?”
“I’m going after the missile launcher inside that Mercedes.”
“Jack! Wait,” cried Chappelle. “What about your prisoner? What about the FBI? They’re going to be asking a lot of questions soon—”
But the line was dead. Bauer had ended the conversation.
Face flushed, Chappelle turned on Nina. “What the hell is going on here?” he demanded. “If we lose Arete we lose any chance we have of cracking this case.”
“We’re not going to lose Arete,” Nina assured him. “The medical team that examined Dante Arete after capture embedded a sub-epidermal tracker under his flesh. We can trace every move he makes for the next twelve hours.”
“That’s fine,” said Ryan. “But right now Dante Arete is only part of the equation. We need to know more, so I want you to find out everything you can about FBI Special Agent Frank Hensley. And I want that information on my desk in one hour.”
10:59:26 P.M.EDT The parking lot of Tatiana’s