24: Deadline (24 Series) (7 page)

Agent Hadley was already up and leaning out of the passenger side window, a weapon in his hand. He returned fire, putting shots into the sedan’s trunk. Then the SUV put on a surge of power and closed the distance as the Ninth Avenue intersection came up at the end of the block.

Ahead of them, a pair of water trucks filled the westbound lanes from one side to the other. Kilner moved to hit the brakes, but Jack had other ideas. At the last moment, he reached forward and yanked the steering wheel to the left, throwing the car across and into the path of oncoming traffic.

“
Shit!
” Kilner veered to avoid a head-on collision with a people-carrier and shot across the intersection. Markinson was still with them, however. The female agent nimbly powered the tall-sided SUV through the same maneuver, rocking it dangerously on its higher suspension as both pursued and pursuer wove back and forth across Twenty-Third Street. “Are you trying to kill us?”

“Turn off at Tenth,” Jack demanded. He paused for a second. “You said you have a kid, right?”

“What?” The question seemed to come out of nowhere, but then he remembered. Years earlier when they had first met, Jorge had talked to Bauer back in DC after the FBI had him in lockdown. Just the two of them in the car, talking about what they believed was true, about their families and their jobs. “Yes. A daughter.
Fiona
.” Now it was happening all over again, but the circumstances were markedly different.

“You just do what I tell you and you’ll see her again.” The next intersection was coming up fast. “Make the turn.”

Kilner swallowed. It wasn’t like he had a lot of options. As they came up on the junction, he swung around a car rolling along in front of them, and tires screeched as the Fusion left a black streak on the asphalt, the rear end fishtailing into the turn.

More gunfire lanced after them as they bounced onto Tenth Avenue and raced north. Jack shot back. Kilner guessed he was keeping his aim low, trying to put rounds into the wheels or the engine block of the SUV.

Hadley didn’t seem to be extending them the same courtesy, however. A bullet barely missed Bauer and blasted a fist-sized hole in the windshield, and in the moment that followed Kilner heard a grumbling crackle issue out of the tactical radio laying were he had left it on the front passenger seat.

“
Stop the vehicle,
” barked Hadley over the open channel. “
Kilner, are you hearing me? Pull over, man!
”

“That guy the one in charge?” said Jack, as they passed Twenty-Sixth Street and continued on through the encroaching traffic.

Kilner nodded. “Agent Hadley. Yeah. He’s got a real hate on for you.”

“He can take a number and get in line. I don’t even know him.”

“He was Pillar’s guy…”

“Jason Pillar?” Jack scowled. “I’m not responsible for what happened to him.” He reached forward and grabbed the radio, squeezing the push-to-talk switch. “Hadley. Back off before someone gets hurt.”

*   *   *

“That’s not going to happen, Bauer.” Hadley shot a look at Markinson, releasing the transmitter switch so his next words wouldn’t be broadcast. “Where does he think he’s going?”

“Gotta be making a break for the Lincoln Tunnel,” she told him. “All he needs to do is ditch the car halfway and get into the service passages. It’s a rat’s nest down there, we’d never find him.”

Hadley glanced at Dell, who was hunched over a laptop in the backseat. “Converge any units we have on Thirtieth Street. If he
is
going for the tunnel, he’s going to have a nasty surprise.”

“Air support is unavailable,” she told him. “We have two more cars and another tactical team.”

“That’ll be enough.” He spoke into the radio again. “Last chance, Bauer. Because if I have to blast that vehicle off the street to take you out, I will do it.”

“
I have a hostage. I’ll kill him if you don’t pull back.
”

“No, you won’t.” Hadley dropped the radio and held out his hand to Dell. “Give me the M4.”

*   *   *

Kilner blinked at the exchange he had just overheard.

“He’s right,” said Jack. “I won’t kill you.” Then he pressed the muzzle of the M1911 against Kilner’s kneecap. “But I will put a hole in your leg that’ll mean you’ll never be able to take a walk with your kid again.”

“Understood…” His hands were sweating and he kneaded the grip of the steering wheel. As they crossed Twenty-Eighth Street Kilner saw a blur of white and blue, and an NYPD patrol car swerved out to meet them.

The two cars slammed into one another, running parallel as they bumped, trading paint and sending flashes of sparks out across the roadway.

Jack acted without hesitation, blowing out the Fusion’s side window and the toughened glass of the police car’s rear compartment. Kilner heard the familiar
tink
sound of an arming pin being pulled and a faint whiff of sulfur. Jack lobbed a smoke grenade into the backseat of the cruiser and ducked back down.

There was a thudding discharge and white haze filled the cruiser’s interior. The police car wavered before it skidded to a halt and the officers inside scrambled out, but the FBI SUV was still coming, and Kilner saw Markinson use the heavier vehicle to shove the stalled cruiser out of its way. The Expedition’s moon roof slipped open and Hadley’s head and shoulders emerged.

The special agent had decided to trade up from his handgun. Now he was armed with a Colt M4 carbine, a weapon of higher caliber and faster rate of fire. Hadley opened up, putting 7.62mm rounds into the trunk of the Fusion. Kilner felt one of the rear tires blow and the car’s traction became mushy. He fought to compensate.

“Guess he meant what he said,” Jack muttered, pausing to reload the Springfield. “Gloves off, then.” He popped up over the rear seat and fired off a salvo of rapid shots that whined off the hood of the SUV in bright ricochets, others cracking but not penetrating the armored windscreen. Still, it was enough to make Hadley retreat back inside the vehicle for a moment.

“Sooner or later we’re gonna run out of road, Jack!” shouted Kilner, as the stress and the fear pressed him into his seat. It was hard to keep the sedan from drifting into the oncoming lane. “What are you doing?”

“Getting out of this city,” he retorted. Ahead of them, the intersection with Thirtieth Street was coming up fast. They could both see it, the crossroads capped by a black iron structure like the legs of an oil rig; it was the remains of the old elevated train system, now repurposed as a ribbon of urban parkland. “Make the turn there.”

Kilner blinked. “They’re never going to let you get into the tunnel, Jack. It’ll be a kill-box!”

“I know.” He leaned forward again and pointed in the wrong direction as they came up on the intersection. “Go down there.”

“It’s a one-way street!”

“We’re only gonna go one way.”

Jack did the same trick as he had before, grabbing the wheel and turning it so that the Fusion spun the opposite way and lurched against the flow of the traffic. Kilner hung on for dear life as they charged straight into the path of other cars and vans, sending them skidding away to mount the sidewalk rather than crash. The agent banged on the horn bar in the middle of the steering wheel, shouting for the other drivers to veer off. They were no more than two or three blocks away from the edge of Manhattan now, and the river beyond. They were quite literally running out of road.

The driver’s-side mirror exploded as a shot blasted it apart, and Kilner flinched. The bigger SUV, hemmed in on the smaller street, was still lumbering after them, but once more the turn had allowed the car to extend the distance between them. Racing past the Hudson Yards on the right, Kilner glimpsed the bulky shapes of garbage trucks moving back and forth on the courtyard of the Sanitation Department parking lot. He mashed the accelerator to push the Fusion past the front of one of the big white trucks as it nosed out into the street, and somewhere behind there was a screech of tires as the SUV had to throw on the anchors to avoid plowing into it.

Now they were almost at the junction with the Lincoln Highway and Kilner’s heart was pounding in his chest. Hadley had shown he was more than willing to risk the agent’s life to get his quarry—and Bauer, a man that Jorge respected, seemed just as determined never to let that happen.

The hot muzzle of the pistol jabbed him in the leg. “Get out,” Jack snapped. “Do it now!”

“But we’re—”

“
Now!
”

Kilner thought about Fiona and a gunshot that could cripple him, and he snapped off his seat belt and opened the door, even as the car was still rolling at a swift pace. He pushed against the frame of the vehicle and launched himself into the air.

The agent landed hard against the asphalt and he tumbled, bouncing to the curb, the rough roadway ripping at his hands and shredding his jacket. Dazed, he came to a halt against the base of a light pole in time to see the sedan bolt forward again as Jack slipped into the driver’s seat and stamped on the accelerator. The car careened over the lanes of busy highway, causing shunts and collisions as other vehicles tried and failed to get out of the way in time.

Kilner pulled himself to his feet, every joint in his body aching like hell. He watched the Ford skid to a halt in a small parking lot on a concrete pier bordering the Hudson River.

It was only then that he realized exactly how Jack Bauer intended to flee the city.

*   *   *

“Hadley.” Jack spoke into the radio handset as he scrambled out of the stalled car. “Don’t make this personal.”

His words got exactly the response he thought they would. “
Too late for that, Bauer. You’re done.
”

He sighed. “Listen to me. Stay out of my way, and I will be gone within twenty-four hours. I’ll fall off the face of the world and you will never hear from me again.” Jack paused, throwing a glance back across the highway to where the SUV had halted. “But if you come after me … you’ll regret it.”

Hadley’s reply was low and loaded with menace. “
I will personally put you down before this day is out, do you hear me? Your only choice will be handcuffs or a body bag.
”

There wasn’t anything else to say. Jack tossed the radio and shifted the heavy gym bag on his shoulder, bringing up his pistol as he ran full tilt at the door of a small prefabricated office hut. He came through it like a freight train, shouting at the top of his lungs.

“Hands in the air!”

Inside, the hut was divided into an open reception area and waiting room on one side, and a set of office cubicles on the other. Maps, aeronautical charts and pictures of the city skyline taken from the air decorated the walls. In the reception, two men in dark business suits who had been in the middle of a spirited conversation about the performance of the Mets were shocked into silence by the sudden arrival of a furious armed invader.

A woman screamed as Jack’s line of sight swung over her, and she dropped the sheaf of papers she was carrying in fright. At her side, an older man who had the looks of a former wrestler gone to seed scrambled back and away, grabbing for something hidden beneath one of the desks.

The old guy was a veteran, Jack saw it in his eyes, the way he reacted as a trained soldier would, not with panic but with something like defiance. He would be going for a weapon, an alarm, or both.

Jack didn’t hesitate. He fired a single .45 ACP round into the face of a large analog clock on the wall behind the older man, blasting it to pieces with a noisy, showy display of force. “Don’t be a hero,” he said.

“Screw you!” spat the veteran, hesitating.

Jack advanced, pushing through a waist-high gate that allowed access to the office proper. He could hear the deep droning of rotor blades, and out through the windows that looked across the rest of the pier, he could see the shark-shaped aerodynamic bodies of a pair of helicopters.

The heliport at West Thirtieth Street had not only the benefit of being closest to the Hotel Chelsea, but also of being a base for aircraft that Jack was fully rated on. New York had a number of helicopter terminals, but they were all too far away for him to risk making a play for. Hadley’s FBI colleagues had bought the fake trail that Jack had laid for them, wrongly assuming that he was making for the Lincoln Tunnel. Now he had to make the opportunity he had created work for him.

“Move!” He jerked the muzzle of the Springfield back toward the door. “Get out, all of you.”

“Why?” demanded the old man. “So you can shoot us in the back as we run?” He jabbed a finger toward Jack. “Are you one of them rats who killed that poor ay-rab fella? You bring their war here, did ya?”

I tried to save Omar Hassan’s life
. He wanted to say it, but the words died in his throat. Instead Jack fired again into the ceiling. “I said
go
!”

It was enough for the businessmen, and they sprinted for the door, the woman following on their heels. The veteran gave Jack a sour, disgusted glare and walked out after them. “You’re going to spend the rest of your life dead, son,” he told him.

“No doubt,” Jack replied, and pushed through a second door on the far side of the hut, spilling out onto the helipad.

The first helo was immobile, the rotors tied down with straps to stop them from catching the wind off the river, but the second—a brown-and-green Bell 206 Long Ranger model—was already running at idle. The blades made lazy sweeps overhead as the pilot ran the engine at low power. Jack guessed he was performing a preflight test of some kind, maybe a check after maintenance on one of the chopper’s systems. It also explained how the pilot had missed the noise of the gunshots under the whistling whine of the motor.

The passengers and staff he had forced out into the street would be enough to cause some interference with Hadley and the FBI team coming after him, but Jack guessed he would have only moments before armed federal agents came storming across the helipad toward him.

He ran for the Long Ranger and ripped open the pilot’s door with a single sharp motion.

“Hey, what the—?” Before he could finish his sentence, Jack grabbed a handful of the pilot’s jacket and wrenched him out of his seat. The man hadn’t bothered to secure himself with a belt for a simple engine test, and he went wheeling down to the concrete, the headset over his ears ripped off where the coiled cable caught on the door frame.