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24: Deadline
By James Swallow Tom Doherty Associates
Copyright © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation
All rights reserved.
ISBN: 978-1-4668-5826-8
CHAPTER 1
Chet Reagan emerged from the staff room, pulling the top of his scrubs straight and working to stifle a yawn. As he crossed to the front desk, he noted that the waiting room was unusually empty for a weekday. Typically, the evening shift was when things started to get busy at the clinic. People coming off a hard workday would filter into the drop-in medical center, maybe looking for an excuse not to have to go back in the office tomorrow—those, or the folks who couldn't get time off to make a doctor's appointment in the a.m.
Not tonight, though. He saw a couple of people waiting their turn, East Village trendy types rather than the usual locals who lived in the clinic's Lower East Side neighborhood. They looked a little out of their element, and he amused himself wondering what they had wrong with them. A little STD action, maybe? Something they didn't want their regular doctor to know about? He suppressed a grin. The clinic got a lot of that sort of trade.
As he approached the desk, he saw Lindee on duty and he couldn't help but scowl as she made a face and tapped her wristwatch with a long, manicured finger. Chet's gaze flicked up to the TV screen on the waiting room wall, forever tuned to CNB's main news feed, and he saw the time stamp in the corner. Five o'clock. That was the time his shift started and that was the time he was here. Sure, he knew full well that their supervisor liked the medical technicians to be in ten, even twenty minutes early, but Chet wasn't about to spend any more of his day at the clinic than he had to. They didn't pay him enough to go above and beyond.
"What?" he asked Lindee. "I'm not late."
"Not early, either," she retorted. "You're lucky there's not a rush on. Could be, though, any second. Did you get the text?" Her eyes narrowed, her dark, oval face tightening in an expression of annoyance.
"No." His phone battery had died the night before and he had neglected to recharge it. "Look, I got in on time, didn't I? No thanks to the cops, though. Damn police are all over the place today ..."
"The text message," Lindee insisted. "City Hall put all the hospitals and clinics on alert ..." She trailed off. "Have you, like, been in a cave for the last day? Haven't you seen the news?"
"No," he repeated. "What, did someone famous die?" Chet scowled. One of the most inconvenient things about living and working in Manhattan was that it was also home to foreign dignitaries, embassies and the United Nations—and whenever they were in town in force, every ordinary New Yorker had to deal with the disruption their presence caused. Chet recalled something he had seen in the papers about a big political deal going on with people from one of those Arab countries, but he was disinterested in the details. "I never watch the news," he said. "It's a damn cartoon, is what it is."
Lindee rolled her eyes. She'd had this conversation with Reagan more than once before and long since grown tired of it. Instead, she picked up the remote control for the TV and aimed it at the screen, thumbing the volume control. "Well, you might wanna pay attention to this part."
Chet looked back at the screen as the voice of CNB's anchorwoman grew louder. Over the shoulder of the blond-haired announcer were inset images of the UN building and then a roll of footage showing President Allison Taylor standing before a lectern. "I never voted for her." Chet sniffed.
" ... as circumstances continue to be fluid," the anchor was saying. "What CNB can confirm at this time is that President Taylor, in a shock announcement to the world press, has walked out of the peace treaty talks between the United States, the Russian Federation and the Islamic Republic of Kamistan. The president spoke of a conspiracy behind the treaty and of criminal activity that she herself has played a role in. The White House has promised that a full formal statement is imminent, but on a day where rumors abound regarding possible terrorist activity in New York City, a day that has also seen the assassination of IRK leader Omar Hassan on American soil, we can only guess at what revelations the next hours will bring."
"Huh," said Chet, taking it in. "So a politician lied about something. What a surprise."
Lindee glared at him. "Don't you get it? This is a big deal! People will get angry ... People could get hurt!"
But Chet was already walking away. "This is the kinda crap that happens when we mess around with other countries. Wouldn't be anything if those Kami-whatever guys stayed at home, yeah?" He gathered up a clipboard and threaded his way down the corridor toward the examination rooms at the rear of the building. The first job he was going to do this shift was the inventory for rooms ten and eleven—and if he took his time about it, Chet knew he'd be able to stay off his supervisor's radar for at least a couple of hours.
He was two steps into examination room ten when he realized the light switch wasn't working. Chet flipped it up and down twice and grimaced, but in the next second his shoe crunched on a piece of broken glass and he realized that the fluorescent tube overhead had been deliberately smashed. Cold air touched his face and he saw the wired-glass window across the room was open, letting in the breeze.
Lit only by the fading day, the room was all shades of gloomy, and Chet's heart leapt into his mouth as he belatedly sensed the presence of someone else in there with him.
A man in a torn, slate-colored sweatshirt emerged from behind a privacy curtain near the examination bed, and in one hand he held the metallic shape of a gun.
Chet's gut tightened and he felt a cold sweat break out on his neck. "Oh shit." He threw up his hands. "Hey. Hey, wait. Don't shoot me, okay? I ... I have a family. Just ... Look, take whatever you want, okay? I won't stop you." They had warned him about this kind of thing when he took the job at the clinic. Strung-out junkies or street criminals looking to make a fast buck by robbing walk-in clinics of painkillers or whatever drugs they could sell.
"Lock the door," said the man with the gun.
"What?"
"Lock it." The second time he spoke, Chet found himself obeying without hesitation. Hands shaking, he turned the latch and then retreated into a corner, eyes darting around the room in search of some means of escape. There was only the open window, and the gunman was between him and it.
The guy looked like he had been in an argument with a Mack truck and come off worse. He sported cuts on his forehead and chin, and through tears in the sweatshirt Chet could see other wounds and contusions of varying seriousness.
"You're going to help me," said the gunman. He eyed the technician's name badge. "Chet. I need to clean up. I need fresh dressings. Medicine."
"Are you going to kill me?" Questions fell from Chet's lips before he was even aware of them forming in his thoughts. "That thing on the news, is that you? Are you ... a terrorist?"
"No." The gunman let the barrel of the pistol drop until it was aimed at a point somewhere near Chet's right kneecap. "But what I am is a very good shot. And I will cripple you if you try anything stupid, understand?"
"Yes." It was the most emphatic answer Chet had ever given for anything.
"Good." The man switched on a bedside lamp before picking up a scalpel and using it to slice open the sweatshirt, shrugging it off to reveal his bare chest beneath.
Chet's breath caught in his throat as he glimpsed the patchwork of scars across the gunman's torso. He knew the healed pucker marks of bullet wounds when he saw them, and the severe lines of stabbings and old knife cuts. But there were other blemishes there, things he couldn't even begin to guess at. The man's flesh was a map of violence done and violence survived. The most recent was a field dressing over a grazing gunshot, and the cloth patch taped over the wound was black-brown and soaked through. Gingerly, Chet peeled the old bandage away and set to work applying a new one.
* * *
Jack Bauer watched as the technician did as he was told. The man's hands were shaking, but that was to be expected.
"You said you've got a family." The man tensed when Jack spoke.
"Yes?" he said, his voice thick with fear.
"Tell me about them."
Chet swallowed hard. "A ... A son. Petey. He's six. Wife. Jane."
"Here, in New York?"
"Right. Yes."
Jack weighed the stolen Sig Sauer pistol in his hand. "You should take them out of town for a few days. Get away." He couldn't stop himself from seeing Kim's face in his mind's eye, his daughter smiling up at him and promising him that things were going to be better for them. At this moment, Jack wanted that to be true more than anything in the world.
But fate had a habit of getting in the way of what Jack Bauer wanted, of dragging him into one bloody mess after another. He looked at the man before him, this ordinary guy with his ordinary job and his ordinary life, and for a split second Jack hated him for it.
Chet must have seen that flash of fury in his eyes, because he backed away, the color draining from his face. "Wh-what?"
Jack shook off the moment. "Keep working." The impulse had faded as quickly as it had come, but the burn of it lingered. On some level, Jack resented the fact that whatever chance at a normal life he might have had was long gone. He could feel the weight of it all pressing down on him, not just the hours of fighting and running and battling to stay alive, but the ache in his soul. The consequence of all the choices he had made and the things he had done.
Once upon a time he had been a soldier for his nation, for an ideal that he believed was right and good. Somewhere along the line, that loyalty had blurred and slipped away. He turned his gaze inward and found a question waiting there: What are you going to fight for now, Jack?
"I have family," he said in a low mutter. "They're all I have."
"Are they ... here?"
Jack didn't answer. Anything he said to this man would eventually end up in the hands of the people who were hunting him. "I'm getting out," he said after a moment. "Far from here. Hong Kong." It was the first place he thought of, and a good enough lie to leave behind him.
Chet paused, the bandage over the gunshot wound replaced and the other cuts dressed as well as they could be. He turned, pointing toward one of the medicine cabinets. "Look, I can ..."
"No need." Jack slipped off the examination bed and snaked his hands around the medical technician's neck before he could stop him. Drawing his grip tight, he pulled Chet into a sleeper hold and regarded the man as he gasped and struggled. "Don't fight it."
In a couple of seconds, the technician went limp and Jack settled him gently to the floor. He pulled Chet's keys from the loop on his belt and plundered the cabinets for doses of antibiotics and painkillers. The other man was narrower across the chest than Jack, but the shirt he wore beneath the scrubs was a passable fit. He helped himself to what little cash the other man had on him and slipped away, back through the window he had used to gain access.
Outside, clouds were drawing in and the sun had already dropped out of sight below the tenement buildings that ranged down the avenue.
A block away, he found an aging Toyota with a corroded door lock, and five minutes later he was heading west, hiding in plain sight among the lines of rush-hour traffic.
Jack caught sight of himself in the rearview mirror and those familiar green eyes looked back at him, a memory lurking there. The recall of a promise made; the only promise he still had to keep, the only one he had left.
"I'll see you soon, Kim," he said to the air.
* * *
The elevator doors opened to deposit Special Agent Thomas Hadley on the twenty-third floor of the Jacob K. Javits Building, and he walked out into a kind of controlled chaos. The atmosphere in the Federal Bureau of Investigation's New York field office was strung tight, and he licked his lips unconsciously, almost as if he could taste the urgency in the air. Hadley signed in and was still clipping his ID pass to his jacket pocket when he almost collided with Mike Dwyer, a supervisory agent and his direct superior.
"Tom, good," said Dwyer, pulling him aside. "You're here." In his late forties and stocky with it, Dwyer was a stark contrast to Hadley's trim athlete's build—pale and sandy-haired where the younger man was tawny-skinned and shaven-headed.
Hadley nodded, taking in the sight of a dozen other agents moving back and forth, each intent on urgent tasks he could only guess at. "All hands on deck, huh?"
Dwyer nodded. "And then some."
"I got time to get a cup of coffee?"
"No." The other agent jerked his thumb at a glassed-in office across the room. "ASAC left orders to send you straight in when you got here. He finds out I even let you take your coat off before you talk to him, and my balls will be in a sling."
Hadley's eyes widened. On the long drive in from upstate, he'd gotten piecemeal fragments of what was going on in New York from news radio stations, but nothing concrete. "That bad?"
"Whatever you've heard," Dwyer said, walking away, "it's worse."
Hadley's lip curled and he made his way across the office, catching glimpses of other agents working video feeds or barking into telephones. He'd hoped that the rumors about a terror attack in the city were just hysteria, some overreaction from people who had half the truth and an overactive imagination. But being in the room now told him that wasn't the case.
As he approached the office of Assistant Special Agent-in-Charge Rod O'Leary, he saw the big Irishman was on a call, a handset clamped to his ear. O'Leary caught sight of Hadley through the glass and beckoned him in with a terse jerk of the hand.
"It helps exactly no one if you drag your damn heels," the ASAC was saying. "You want the FBI to do something we can actually call assistance, I suggest you get the people at Homeland Security to kindly pull their heads outta their asses." O'Leary nodded as a tinny voice on the other end of the line replied in the affirmative. "Uh-huh. Right. Do that. Call me back when you get it." He dropped the phone back into its cradle and blew out a breath.
"Sir," began Hadley. "You wanted to see me?"
"Close the door, Tom, and sit down."
Hadley dropped into a chair across the cluttered desk from his boss and watched as the other man gathered his thoughts. O'Leary was uncompromising, he was often crass, but he was direct and that was something that Thomas Hadley could deal with. However, in the months since he had been assigned to the NYC office, he had never really felt that the ASAC had been willing to give him the time of day. He wondered what had changed.
"Long story short ..." O'Leary launched into an explanation before Hadley could ask any questions. "In the past twenty-four hours we've had the head of a foreign government get kidnapped and murdered on our turf by his own people."
"Omar Hassan," said Hadley, with a nod.
"What's not public knowledge is that Hassan's killers had a dirty bomb they were gonna blow right here in New York. Or that apparently, there may be elements inside the Russian government who were involved in making it happen."
Hadley's throat went dry. "That ... That's confirmed?"
"No, it's not damn well confirmed." O'Leary snapped, his annoyance flaring. "We have the mother of all international incidents unfolding right before our eyes on top of a mess that could have made nine-eleven look like a sideshow. FBI, Homeland, Secret Service, NYPD, everyone is right in the thick of this and we're not even on the same page. Counter Terrorist Unit got their asses handed to them, something about an attack on their systems, so they're out of the game. ..." He sighed. "And if that isn't enough, it looks like the president is going to take a career nosedive before the day is out."
"Okay ..." Hadley's mind was racing as he tried to process it all. "So, what's my tasking on this?"
"We'll get to that." O'Leary's manner shifted. "Something else first. I've got some bad news." He paused. "I have to tell you that Jason Pillar was shot dead a little over an hour ago. I'm sorry, I know he was a friend of yours."
"What?" Without conscious thought, Hadley's hand strayed to the spot just above his clavicle, where beneath his shirt there was a tattoo in gothic script that read Semper Fidelis; Always Faithful, the motto of the United States Marine Corps.
(Continues...)
Excerpted from 24: Deadline by James Swallow. Copyright © 2014 Twentieth Century Fox Film Corporation. Excerpted by permission of Tom Doherty Associates.
All rights reserved. No part of this excerpt may be reproduced or reprinted without permission in writing from the publisher.
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