Georgi smiled, remembering the surprise on one assassin’s face when the old man who begged for pennies at the door suddenly pulled the assault rifle from its place behind a loose wall panel. Before anyone could react, Yuri stitched a bloody line of holes up the gangster’s chest with an opening burst — hey, not so “toothless” after all. The dead man still lay where he fell, head askew, eyes staring blankly. The Uzi he had brought with him lay just out of Georgi’s reach.
Another Uzi fired, the burst shattering what remained of the mirror, which came crashing down behind the bar. Georgi hugged the dirty floor, cursing his laxity in not wearing a firearm, or fetching one when the four assassins first stepped into his establishment. Instead he trusted his employees to handle things. Now Nicolo was dead and Yuri was cornered, though the old man was still fighting valiantly. Poor Alexi had not fired a shot in a long time, and Georgi feared the worst.
He shifted his position in an effort to reach the Uzi on the floor. His movement elicited a burst of fire that chewed up the floorboards and shattered a chair near his head. Yuri answered the shots with a burst of his own, drawing the assassins’ fire away from his boss with the last of his ammunition.
Georgi Timko cursed. He wanted to protect such loyal men, but feared he’d already cost them their lives. Only luck or a guardian angel could save them all now.
Jack Bauer had slipped to the back of the tavern and used a metal Dumpster to get a boost to the flat tar roof. He waited until he heard shots. Then he peered through the skylight, into the darkened tavern. By the blue light of the neon exterior, he counted three shooters — someone moving right under him was using the AK–47. Arete’s men, the two left standing, fired 9mm Uzis from behind splintered pool tables. Jack saw three other shapes from his vantage point— two on the ground, the third sprawled across a table. A pair of those men were Arete’s; Jack recognized them from their dusters. The third was unknown to Jack, and most likely dead.
Jack ducked away from the skylight, leaned against the satellite dish while he contemplated his next move.
He had to capture at least one of Arete’s men alive. The only way to get information fast was a rough interrogation of the suspects. He was certain he could quickly break any of Arete’s punks — if they had any useful information.
Jack also wanted to speak to the person or persons Dante Arete sent his hit squad to assassinate. Jack didn’t always subscribe to the dictum that the enemy of my enemy is my friend, but right about now he could use an ally on this coast to make up for the deficit of CTU support he was facing. And if Arete wanted someone dead, it was probably because he knew something that could hurt the gang leader. Jack wanted a part of that as well.
In the tavern below, a short burst from the AK–47 was followed by a hollow click on an empty magazine — the shooter was out of ammunition. Arete’s men knew it, too. Like shadows in the blue neon glow, they slipped out from behind the pool tables and moved to flank the defenseless man.
Jack balanced over the skylight, reloaded his weapon. He shot through the glass and dropped into the middle of the tavern. Jack landed in a crouch in front of a startled gunman. The man raised the Uzi and Jack fired, blowing the top of his head off.
Jack ducked under a broken table and rolled as the other man fired on him. The shots kicked up splinters from the floor.
“Give up and I won’t hurt you,” Jack cried. He was answered by another burst — which also ended with an empty click.
Jack leaped to his feet and leveled his weapon. The man in the blue duster looked up fearfully, then let the weapon fall from his grip.
“Step forward and I won’t—”
Suddenly shots filled the tavern as a long burst tore the man in the long coat to bloody pieces. Jack whirled to find a heavy-set man facing him. The man instantly dropped the Uzi and threw up his arms when his eyes met Jack’s.
“You must help me,” Georgi Timko pleaded. “That son of a bitch over there shot my friend. I…I think he’s dying.”
4. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 12 A.M. AND 1 A.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
On his way through the command center, Tony Almeida fell into step beside Captain Jessica Schneider.
“Where are you headed, Captain?”
“The same place as you.”
Tony stopped and faced her. Nina had summoned the CTU Crisis Management Team to Doris’s workstation. As far as he was concerned, the CTU team didn’t — and shouldn’t — include an entity from the DOD.
“But you’re not part of the Crisis Team,” he informed her.
“I am now, Special Agent Almeida. Nina Myers just notified me of the security clearance upgrade.”
Tony looked away. “RHIP,” he muttered.
Captain Schneider fixed her blue eyes on him. “You are correct. Rank does have its privileges. But is it really my rank that bothers you?”
Tony glanced to his right and left. “It’s not your rank,” he said quietly enough to keep their conversation private. “It’s your relationship to a powerful member of the House Ways and Means Committee.”
“A person can’t control the situation she was born into. But let me assure you that no strings were ever pulled for me….I earned the rank and responsibilities I hold.”
She whirled and stalked away before Tony could make his meaning clear. He didn’t give a rat’s ass about the woman’s career trajectory. It was her direct line to another branch of government that gave him indigestion. If Captain Jessica Schneider decided to pass judgment on what and how they did things at CTU Los Angeles, she could pass that judgment on to her father, who wielded plenty of influence via his position on a Capitol Hill oversight committee. So why didn’t Nina get that?
Tony continued on alone across the command center floor. He arrived at the Crisis Team meeting to discover a crowd silently watching the young Korean-American woman stretching in her cubicle. Her back turned to the spectators, Doris — head tilted on her long neck — was balanced on the tips of her toes. With balletic grace, she dipped to one side then the other, blithely unaware she had attracted an audience. When she finally stretched her arms high over her head, spun around, and opened her eyes, she found the others watching. Scattered applause followed. Doris, blushing, put her arms to her sides and dropped back down to the soles of her bare feet.
“Sorry. I was sitting so long I kinda needed to stretch. ”
Nina had watched with arms folded and a look on her face as if she were indulging a child. Now that Tony and Captain Schneider had arrived, she was ready to begin. “Miss Soo Min, apprise the group of what you’ve uncovered.”
“Right,” said Doris. She knocked her shoes off the chair and slid into it, then tapped the keyboard.
“Getting the data off the chip was actually, like, a whole lot easier than I thought it would be. Whoever programmed this used the same algorithm the South Koreans use in their toy computers — the stuff they make for their kids. I worked on this kind of program in my uncle’s toy factory in Oakland, so I recognized the pattern immediately. The encryption overlay that the North Koreans tried to hide the data behind was very basic, too. It was almost too easy to break, even without an encryption protocol, which I brought with me and downloaded from my own PC. ”
While Doris babbled on, the large HDTV monitor sprang to life and a half dozen data windows appeared. In each display box, the digital representation of a different type of aircraft appeared. The image shifted so that each individual aircraft was displayed from various angles, followed by an image composed of its heat signature.