24: Deadline (24 Series) (12 page)

“And the other one, Roker? He’s connected to them?” Jack watched the other man, considering him. He couldn’t help but wonder how the path of Chase Edmunds’s life had pushed him into the orbit of an organized crime family.

“He wishes. Mike Roker is small fry trying to make big. Hex does some work for him too, mostly massaging DMV records to make stolen cars seem kosher.”

“Right. So how is this Hex guy going to help me?”

Chase turned the steering wheel as the dirt track opened out into a clearing. “You want to make it to Los Angeles under the radar, he’ll have a solution.” He brought the car to a halt. “This is it.”

Jack pulled a Maglite torch from his bag and stepped out of the vehicle. Keeping one hand close to the pistol in his waistband, he panned the beam of the flashlight around to get his bearings.

They were standing before the remains of an abandoned trailer park. A half-dozen mobile homes stood atop crumbling wooden foundations, all of them dark with rain, dirt and disuse. There were no signs of habitation anywhere, nothing that would indicate the presence of another human being in this place. It looked as if it had been this way for years, perhaps even decades.

He aimed the torch up at the roof of the nearest trailer. There were no visible telephone cables or power lines running from any of the double-wides. It was as if they had been dumped here in two orderly rows and left to slowly rot. A mulch of windblown leaves had gathered at the bases of the trailers.

“Your man lives here?” Jack frowned.

“The thing you have to realize about Hex,” said Chase, producing a flashlight of his own, “is that he’s what you might call
eccentric
.”

“How do you know him?”

“He owes me a favor.” The tone of Chase’s answer told Jack that was all he was willing to say for the moment, and so he didn’t press the issue any further.

Chase took the lead, walking between the dead trailers, counting them off until he reached the fifth one. He pulled at the latch of the door and it came open with a metallic snap. He beckoned Jack and the two men entered.

Inside, the trailer was devoid of all decoration, furniture and fittings except for a waist-high chest refrigerator that Jack caught in the glow of his torch beam. Chase fumbled at the wall and found a light switch. Over their heads, a fluorescent tube flickered on and drenched the interior space with greenish illumination.

Jack cast around. The inside of the trailer had been refitted with heavy gray panels, a second interior wall that showed no features other than the seams where each panel had been bonded to the next. He’d seen this kind of thing before; the trailer had been shielded with the same sort of counter-spectrum materials the US military used to hide forward bases in battle zones from the eyes of drones and satellites.

He squinted past the overhead lamp and saw what appeared to be a camera rig in the far corner. “He’s watching us.”

“
Listening, too,
” came a sharp reply, broadcast from a hidden speaker. “
Charlie, is that you? I told you never to come here without calling first. And I definitely told you not to bring strangers.
”

Chase gave the camera a wave. “Hey, Hex. Yeah, sorry about that. But I had to move quick, y’know? Didn’t have the time to call.” He nodded to Jack. “This is an old friend of mine. I’ll vouch for him. He’s got a situation that requires your unique skills.”

“
That so?
”

Jack approached the camera. “I need transportation.”

“
Right. And what about you, Charlie?
”

“Just helping out a friend.”

“
Are you? Because that dickhead Big Mike has already been on the line to me, trying to get me to track you down. I told him I couldn’t help. He swore at me a lot
.”

Chase gave a faint smile. “Thanks.”

“
I don’t like him. I don’t like you, either, but I don’t like Roker a lot more.
”

“So, are we going to deal, here?” said Jack.

There was an overly long pause, and for a moment Jack thought that Hex had decided to dismiss them. But then the voice returned. “
Okay. Take any weapons you got—guns, knives, sharp sticks, whatever—and put them in the ice chest. Your cell phones too.
”

Chase opened the refrigerator lid. There was no power going to the chest, but the walls of it were thick enough to trap any outgoing signal. “Hex is a little paranoid,” Chase noted, and did as he had been told.

“
I heard that,
” snapped Hex. “
Don’t try anything clever. I got two Claymore antipersonnel mines buried in the walls of that trailer. I flick a switch and they’ll turn the pair of you into chunky salsa.
”

“Is that true?” Jack asked in a low voice.

Chase shrugged. “I wouldn’t test him.”

Jack frowned and did the same, dropping in his M1911 and Kilner’s doctored cellular next to Chase’s iPhone and Ruger semiautomatic. The lid slammed shut, and in the same moment a slab of the empty trailer’s floor abruptly popped up. As Jack watched, it rose up like an inverted drawbridge, revealing a set of concrete stairs below. The faint odor of cooked food filtered up to them.

“Come on in,” called Hex from below. “And no funny stuff.”

*   *   *

The hidden hatch came down on them as they reached the foot of the staircase and Chase heard it seal with the thud of heavy bolts. Looking back up, he could see the door was made of thick cast iron, like something he would have expected to find on a World War II submarine.

Ahead of them, a wide space stretched away. The ceiling was low and lined with industrial lamps, and everywhere he looked Chase could see skeletal metal shelves piled high with every conceivable kind of supplies.

Jack peered closer at one of the racks, heavy with boxes of canned goods and toilet paper. “Did this guy rip off a supermarket?”

Elsewhere, there were cartons of US Army–issue combat rations and gallon drums of purified water alongside steel boxes that contained various types of ammunition, filter pods for gas masks and emergency medical kits. Every available inch of space had been converted for storage. They moved forward, into an open area that was a cross between a teenager’s basement apartment and a military bunker. In one corner was a state-of-the-art desktop computer with multiple monitors and a radio setup with an antenna that vanished into the ceiling. Chase realized that the underground space they were in was easily the width of the whole false-front trailer park over their heads.

“Keep your hands where I can see them,” said Hex. Of below-average height, Hector Matlow was a little too doughy for the heavy-gauge cargo trousers he was wearing, and the hooded camouflage sweatshirt across his shoulders was dirty and unkempt. Once upon a time, he might have had teak-dark skin but his face had the obvious pallor of someone who didn’t see daylight very often. His pug nose wrinkled as he hefted the nickel-plated .38 snub revolver in his right hand. “Don’t try anything,” he insisted. “And don’t touch my stocks. It’s not for you.”

Chase spread his hands. “We’re not here for your MREs, Hex.”

Jack moved to one wall where stacks of books lay in orderly rows, above them more shelves containing boxes and boxes of complex war games. A folding table nearby was set up with just such a game in mid-play, an abstract map with a hexagonal grid filled with tiny square counters, each one representing a squad of infantrymen or a tank. “The Battle of Stalingrad, am I right?” asked Jack, meeting Hex’s gaze.

That got him a nod. “Couple more turns and I’m gonna win it.”

“Who are you playing against?”

Hex’s brow furrowed. “
Against?
I don’t have any opponents.”

“Okay.” Jack glanced at Chase and gestured at the stockpile around them. “So I guess your friend here is a prepper.”

“Is that what they call it?” Chase had heard of such people, but never come across someone who had embraced the idea as much as Hex clearly had. Forty years ago, someone like Matlow would have been referred to as a “retreater,” someone who had abandoned a normal lifestyle in order to disconnect from a society they saw as flawed and ultimately doomed. In more recent times, technology had paradoxically made it easier to do so, provided you had the money and the resources.

“I prefer to think of myself as a
survivor,
” Hex told him. “Because that’s what I plan on being when the collapse comes.”

“That’s what you do down here?” said Chase. “I always thought you were … I dunno, growing weed or something. You’re waiting for the end of the world? How’s it going to happen?”

Hex snorted. “Look, man, when the crunch comes, people won’t be ready. I will, though. I lived in the city for years, I saw how it is. That’s why I sold up, came out here and dropped off the grid. Me, I’m ready for anything. Invasion. Viral pandemic. Financial meltdown. Supervolcano eruption.
Anything
. I just work for you and your pals to keep the motor ticking over, know what I mean?”

“You really believe that?” asked Jack. “That the end is coming?”

The other man nodded emphatically. “Do you watch the news?” He went to a wide-screen TV on the far wall and snapped it on. “How many times has this country taken hits from terrorists, enemy combatants, even our own people? Oh, it’s going to all fall apart, man. The only question is
when
.” On the screen, a reporter was standing outside the White House as a text ticker along the bottom of the screen scrolled past. Hex shook his head grimly. “Frankly, I’m surprised it hasn’t happened already.”

The volume was down low, but Chase heard the location reporter talking about President Taylor—no, scratch that,
former President Taylor
—and the shock wave her abrupt resignation had sent through the government. As they watched, the view changed to footage shot earlier that evening, of former Secretary of Defense James Heller arriving with the Taylor administration’s Ethan Kanin for what the anchorwoman called “emergency talks.”

Chase saw a shadow pass over Jack’s face as he saw Heller, but then a moment later it was gone.

“I guess I can’t fault your logic,” admitted Jack. “So why don’t we talk about how I can make a generous contribution to your survival fund?”

*   *   *

The drab green Ford Econoline van that the SVR team had been issued was leaving Hell’s Kitchen when the satellite phone chirped, and Ziminova pulled the handset from the cradle. “Yes?”

“
Let me talk to Arkady,
” said a strange, toneless voice on the other end of the line. It had the genderless neutrality of someone being masked electronically, but still the Russian agent got the instinctual sense that she was speaking to another woman. The display on the phone showed a garbled string of numbers that shifted and changed, indicating that the incoming call was being bounced across multiple voice-over-Internet-protocol servers, effectively rendering it untraceable.

Ziminova glanced across at Bazin. “The contractor,” she explained.

He nodded and tapped his ear, indicating for her to switch on the speaker. “This is Bazin,” he said to the air. “You have had ample time to consider my offer. Will you accept the contract?”

“
It’s an interesting job, I’ll give you that.
”

Ziminova frowned. She disliked the idea of bringing an outsider into the loop on this mission, especially a foreigner, even if they were someone with the talents that Bazin so prized.

“Is that a yes?”

“
Jack Bauer…”
The dulled, mechanical voice sounded out the name. “
He’s a singular target. Many have tried to deal with him before and failed. It’ll be a challenge. Not to mention the time pressure.
”

Bazin smiled thinly. “You are looking to increase your fee, is that it? You want ‘danger money’?”

“
Thirty percent on top of my usual payment, Arkady. That’s my counter.
”

Ziminova’s commander didn’t hesitate. “Done. It does not matter to me how he is dealt with, only that Bauer is terminated with extreme prejudice. And quickly.”

“
What about collateral damage?
”

He shrugged. “I am indifferent to it. The method of execution I leave to you to decide. The only stipulation is that you provide proof after the fact that he is dead.”

There was a soft chuckle. “
You want me to send you his head in a box, is that it?
”

“Whatever is most expedient. The man who has ordered this will wish to be certain that the job was done.”

“
I can arrange that.
” There was a pause. “
A third of the money now, nonrefundable, the rest when you get the proof. Use the Brightstar Cayman Trust account. You know the codes, same as last time.
”

Bazin nodded. “The transfer will be done within the hour. I will have one of our people forward you all the data we have on Bauer’s most recent movements.”

“
I have my own resources,
” said the assassin. “
But go ahead.
”

Ziminova raised an eyebrow but said nothing. Bazin nodded again. “Of course, if we find Bauer first, you understand that the deal is off, yes?”

“
Good luck with that.
”

“A pleasure to be working with you again, my dear.”

“
Likewise, Arkady. I’ll be in touch.
”

The phone went dead and Ziminova cut the line, studying the handset for a moment as if it might give her some clue as to the identity of the mystery “contractor.” “Why do we need this person?” she asked. “Surely that money can be spent in better ways?”

“You don’t trust mercenaries?” said Bazin.

“Loyalty to money is not loyalty,” Ziminova replied. “It is greed. And the greedy can always be manipulated.”

“Perhaps,” Bazin allowed. “Think of this as … an insurance policy. And remember, Bauer is ‘a singular target.’ Our friend there may not even live to collect the rest of the bounty on his head.”

“President Suvarov approved it?” She failed to keep an edge of faint scorn from her tone.

“It is within my authority,” Bazin replied. “You share Ekel’s view of the president.”