Others took up the call, their loud voices followed by the stabbing beams from a half-dozen flashlights, columns of light that cut through the smoky darkness. Deep inside the wreckage of the aircraft, someone coughed.
“Over there! He’s alive,” yelled a firefighter.
A stocky man in a gray pinstriped suit pushed past the emergency workers swathed in asbestos, splashed through the fire-retardant foam that surrounded the shattered fuselage. Feet slipping, he climbed onto the broken wing and crawled through the emergency hatch, into the cabin. “Frank! Is that you? Are you in here?”
“Over here,” a voice called weakly.
“You can’t go back there,” a fireman called. “There still fuel in those wings. It’s a miracle this aircraft didn’t explode on impact.”
Special Agent Ray Goodman ignored the man. “Frank! Talk to me, Frank,” he yelled again.
One of the firemen pointed. “I think someone’s moving over there.”
Minutes later, Goodman and the firefighter carried Frank Hensley out of the wreckage. Hensley hung limply between the two men until they reached an ambulance. Immediately, paramedics placed Hensley on a stretcher, slipped an oxygen mask over his face. The FBI agent swallowed air in great gulps. Agent Goodman loomed over him.
“What the hell happened, Frank?”
Hensley shook his head. “Don’t know…A missile, I think. ”
“It was a missile, all right,” Goodman interrupted. “What happened to Dante Arete? The marshals, they looked like they’d both been shot.”
Hensley nodded. “It was that CTU agent, Jack Bauer. Somehow he…he must have smuggled a Glock aboard. As the pilot was making the final approach, Bauer just started shooting. Killed the marshals. ”
Hensley gasped like a fish out of water. A paramedic steadied him but he pushed the emergency worker away, struggled to rise. “When the plane hit the ground, Bauer shot the pilot, too. Then he helped Arete escape…”
“Steady, Frank.”
“You don’t understand,” Hensley moaned behind the oxygen mask. “That man has got to be stopped— caught. Dead or alive. Jack Bauer is a traitor and a murderer and he’s got to be stopped. ”
2. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 10 P.M. AND 11 P.M. EASTERN DAYLIGHT TIME
“The FBI aircraft ferrying Jack Bauer and suspect Dante Arete to New York City crashed upon landing thirty minutes ago.”
Shocked, disbelieving voices erupted in the command center. Nina Myers had just descended the metal staircase leading to Jack’s glass-enclosed office. She’d gathered personnel to update the Crisis Management Team on their boss’s situation. Among the group stood Tony Almeida, Jamey Farrell, and Milo Pressman. Doris and Captain Schneider stood on the sidelines listening.
“As yet,” continued Nina Myers over the chatter, “there has been no official word on what occurred. Unofficially, I believe the airliner was shot down as it landed at JFK, perhaps to prevent Dante Arete from talking to authorities. Firefighters and emergency service personnel have only just reached the crash site. Burning debris started a major fire inside a nearby hangar, which impeded rescuers from reaching the scene—”
Jamey’s face turned ashen. “So we don’t know if there are any survivors.”
“No word yet. ”
“Jack is carrying that new CDD satellite communicator. I can try to raise him,” Jamey offered.
“Let’s give it a little time. We’re supposed to be observing radio silence. Let’s follow protocol. Jack’s in the field. Let him contact us.”
Jamey chewed her lip. “Maybe I should activate the tracker.”
Nina nodded. “Start the protocols, but don’t transmit the signal until you get the order. For the rest of us — be advised that the Threat Clock has been pushed ahead three hours to Eastern Daylight Time.” She glanced at her watch. “That makes it 10:05:52. Synchronize your chronometers, station clocks, and personal timepieces.”
“What do we do until we hear from Jack?” Tony asked.
“If we hear from Jack?” whispered Milo.
“For starters, I want everyone to monitor all the communications coming out of New York City,” said Nina. “That means emergency radio, police bands, fire and medical services, the traffic bureau, city and county government security frequencies — the works.”
The staffers began to return to their stations. Milo heard his cell go off in his pocket. He checked the caller ID, groaned inwardly. No doubt another tearful voice message from Tina.
“One more thing,” called Nina. “CTU is now in an official lockdown. No one leaves this building until the current crisis has been resolved…No exceptions.”
Milo cursed, opened his cell phone, and began to toggle to Tina’s stored number. Jamey Farrell reached out and snapped the lid closed.
“We have a situation on our hands, Milo. Get busy. You and your girlfriend can kiss and make up some other night.”
The tavern was called Tatiana’s — a seedy dive situated at the end of a dead end street in an industrial section of Queens. A cinder-block building with thick, glass-brick windows, Tatiana’s was trimmed with electric-blue neon and topped by a skylight and a satellite dish. Its litter-strewn parking lot was crammed with a mixture of pimped-up SUVs, tricked out high-performance cars, Harley-Davidson hogs, and, oddly, a late-model black Mercedes with New York plates.
Tatiana’s was the epicenter of activity in this lonely area of urban blight, and it was Dante Arete’s destination after escaping Federal custody. Running from the chaos at the airport, Arete had slipped through JFK’s perimeter fence, crossed a busy highway, and passed through a neighborhood of run-down two-story row houses. Finally he entered a forsaken industrial area of concrete, grime, and graffiti — the last of which appeared to be gang tags. Small factories and automotive repair shops lined either side of the potholed street, occasionally interrupted by a long stretch of chain-link fence capped by barbed wire or an abandoned building shuttered tight.
An unseen shadow in the warm, close night, Jack Bauer had stalked the fugitive’s every step. Though he wasn’t certain where he was in relation to Manhattan, Jack knew he was still close to JFK because, every two minutes or so, airplanes roared low overhead as they made their final approach. Soon Jack would activate the GPS system embedded in his CDD communicator and determine his exact location. But Jack couldn’t risk stopping for any reason. Dante Arete was moving fast, and Jack was determined to shadow him until he reached his final destination.
Shells of abandoned cars littered this stretch of road, along with various parts from a variety of models — seats, bumpers, slashed tires, steering columns. Chop shop heaven, he assumed, which explained the clientele when he finally reached Tatiana’s. Jack watched his fugitive walk down the middle of the deserted street, toward the neon brilliance of the bustling tavern. Old-school rap music spilled through the door as a young olive-skinned man with strong Italian features stumbled outside wearing baggy jeans and a muscle T-shirt, climbed aboard a Harley, and revved it up. In a cloud of dust the chopper roared out of the parking lot, past Dante Arete and up the street.
Jack was forced to duck behind the skeletal remains of a gutted Lexus to avoid the headlights. Next to the automobile shell, a cracked, rusty engine block sprouted weeds. Dante Arete’s gaze followed the motorcycle, his eyes lingering on the darkened street long after the chopper was out of sight. Finally, Arete turned when shouts came from the shadows. Out of the mass of parked cars, a group emerged. Jack counted five Hispanic men, all in their early to mid-twenties, all clad in baggy denim and loose blue buttoned-down shirts worn open over white muscle Ts. Blue bandanas were worn in various styles — as headbands and kerchiefs. And each had a coil of bloody thorns tattooed around his neck.