24 Declassified: Storm Force 2d-7 Read online

  Jack and Pete had guns, too. Everybody was packing.

  It had been a long night for the Colonel's protectors. There wasn't much for them to do but chat, smoke, and eyeball their surroundings, watching for signs of threat or trouble.

  They were completely oblivious and unsuspecting of the presence of Jack and Pete in the dark, shuttered shop across the street and remained so as the hours passed, night giving way to gray, misty predawn.

  * * *

  Now was the slack time, the ebb tide, the hour when Bourbon Street is as quiet and deserted as it ever gets. Not that quiet, though, thanks to the rumbling hum of countless air conditioners mounted in the windows of buildings throughout the neighborhood.

  Still, the late night revelers had all gone home and the early morning lushes had not yet appeared, the bars and gin mills remaining as yet unopened for the day.

  A figure appeared, emerging from the square, entering the south end of Fairview and walking north. A teenager, possibly Latino, small and slight, with thick, straight black hair hanging down to his jawline, covering much of his beardless face. He wore wire-rimmed glasses with oval lenses, a loose-fitting, short-sleeved shirt, baggy blue jeans, and sneakers. He walked with head down and hands jammed in the front pockets of his pants as he made his way, trudging along, minding his own business.

  He couldn't have looked more inconsequential and inoffensive; bodyguards Baca and Espinosa barely gave him a second glance. He walked north to the next block, turning left at the corner and vanishing from sight.

  The bodybuilder, Espinosa, lit up a little chocolate-brown cigarillo. Clamped between his massive jaws, it looked like a toothpick.

  Aldo Baca spat, stretched, yawned. His jacket fell open, revealing a gun worn butt-out in a leather shoulder holster under his left arm. He crossed his arms over his chest and resumed leaning against the side of the limo.

  Jack Bauer said, " Something's happening." He was looking at the second floor, at Vikki Valence's flat, where a light had just come on, showing behind a curtained window as a pale, yellow light.

  "Looks like Paz is ready to call it a night," he said.

  Baca and Espinosa saw it, too. They perked up — the long wait was over and soon they'd be on the move. The big man, Espinosa, glanced downward at the side door at street level, a tell indicating that that was where he expected his boss to emerge.

  Aldo Baca straightened up from where he'd been leaning against the car's right rear fender. A smudged patch marred the finish of the machine's curved, gleaming black carapace. He took out a dirty handkerchief and rubbed the smudge, succeeding only in spreading it. He quickly pocketed the handkerchief and stepped away from the car, sticking his hands in his pockets and trying to look like he'd had nothing to do with soiling the finish of the car.

  * * *

  At the north end of Fairview Street, a utility truck rounded the corner and came into view, proceeding slowly southbound toward the Bourbon Street square.

  Its cab fronted an oblong-shaped container box. Mounted on the roof of the box was a collapsible sectioned ladder. Blazoned on its sides was the logo of the local electric power company.

  It rolled up alongside the limo, halted, and stood there in the street, idling. A heavy idle; the dirty gray exhaust clouds pouring from its tailpipe showed that it was long overdue for a much-needed tune-up. The cab windows were open on the driver's side and the passenger's side. Maybe the air conditioner was out of order.

  It stood in place, not going anywhere. In the cab were two riders, a driver and a passenger. Both wore identical outfits of drab gray-green overalls.

  The driver was in his mid-fifties, bareheaded, crew cut, with a pink, pear-shaped face and walrus mustache. Hands the size of oven mitts gripped the steering wheel. He was chomping on something, a piece of gum or a wad of chewing tobacco that made a walnut-sized lump in his cheek. He looked bored.

  His partner, seated on the passenger side, wore a duckbilled baseball cap the same gray-green color as his overalls. He was slight, wiry, deeply tanned, his clean-shaven, wedge-shaped face a mass of fine lines and wrinkles set in a mask of perpetual irritation.

  He rolled down his window, cupped a hand at the side of his mouth, and called to the men on the sidewalk, "Hey! Hey y'all!"

  Baca and Espinosa turned to look at the speaker. The man in the baseball cap said, "That your car?"

  Espinosa, shrugging his massive shoulders, said, "I don't know."

  The newcomer was incredulous. "You don't know? You look like you belong to it. Y'all ain't standing around here waiting for no bus, that's for sure."

  Baca spat, sneered, and said, "So what?"

  "You got to move it, that's what," the man in the baseball cap said.

  Baca's only reply was a widening of his sneer. Espinosa's gaze was mild, bovine, as he continued to puff away on his cigarillo. Neither moved to comply.

  The truck driver turned to his companion. "Show them the work order, Dixie." He had a heavy Teutonic accent.

  "Okay, Herm," Dixie said. He reached into the glove compartment, pulled out a sheaf of official-looking papers, and held them out the window toward the others.

  "See this? I'm a power company repairman and I've got a work order to fix that lamppost," Dixie said, indicating the streetlight standing on the corner.

  The lamp globe was still lit, pale and wan in the gray predawn gloom. Espinosa said, "It looks okay to me."

  "We still got to inspect it. Orders," Dixie said, as if that were the definitive last word on the subject.

  Espinosa said, "Who's stopping you?"

  "You are. We got to use the ladder and we can't because your car's in the way," the repairman said. He stuck his head further out the window, cording his neck muscles. The veins standing out on the sides of his forehead were thick as pencils. He said, "You're parked in a no-parking area, or can't you read?"

  Baca rose to the bait. "What do you care? You're no cop!"

  The driver, Herm, remained facing front, staring straight ahead through the windshield at nothing, as though the conversation didn't concern him.

  Dixie said, "You better haul ass and get that car out of here before I call a cop to come and have it towed away."

  Baca, smug, played his trump card, gesturing toward the limo's license plates. "You blind? It says 'Diplomat.' That means we park where we like and to hell with your cops."

  Dixie, stubborn, shook his head. "That don't cut no ice with me or the power company, neither. Get it in gear and haul ass out of here."

  * * *

  The building's side door swung open, outward, revealing a man standing framed in the doorway. Behind him, a long, steep flight of stairs slanted upward, quickly becoming lost in the gloomy dark of the stairwell.

  Pete Malo nudged Jack, murmured, "Colonel Paz." Jack nodded, not taking his eyes off the scene playing out before him.

  Paz stepped down to the sidewalk, a spring mechanism pulling the door shut behind him. A short, squat, bull-necked individual built like a fireplug, he had a head the shape of a pineapple, with a pockmarked complexion to match. His eyes were long, narrow slits. He sported a neatly trimmed little eyebrow mustache.

  He wore a woven straw Borsalino-style hat; a dark blue blazer with gold buttons; a loud, floral print-patterned sport shirt; wide-cut khaki pants; and two-toned brown-and-white loafers with tasseled uppers. His right arm hung down at his side, holding an executive-style attache case.

  An unlit cigar jutted from the side of his mouth, clamped in place between steel-trap jaws. He glanced quizzically at the interplay between his bodyguards and the repairman.

  Baca told the repairman, "Okay, we go now. Happy?"

  "That's more like it," Dixie said. The hand holding the work orders refracted back into the cab, dropping out of sight below the top of the passenger side door. It flashed into view again, this time holding a gun, a semi-automatic pistol with what looked like a silver hot dog screwed onto the end of the barrel.

  He squeezed the trigger
, shooting Baca in the throat. The silver hot dog was a silencer, muffling the report to a sound like that of a piece of cloth tearing.

  Baca lurched back a few steps, then folded at the knees, sitting down hard on the sidewalk. He clutched with both hands the hole in his neck that was jetting out blood. Streams of blood, so dark they looked black. Lots of it, geysering.

  Baca choked, making sputtering noises. He went horizontal, writhing on the pavement, still holding his throat with both hands.

  Dixie shot Espinosa in the eye, the bullet emerging out the back of his head. The big man toppled, smacking the concrete with a meaty thud.

  Dixie's primary target was Paz, but the bodyguards had stood between him and the Colonel. He'd had to clear them away to get Paz in the firing line. Espinosa now lay stone dead, but Baca was still flopping around on the sidewalk. Dixie shot him in the chest, stilling him.

  The instant it took him to finish off Baca was the margin of life or death for Paz, giving him time to counter with a secret weapon.

  The attache case had nagged at Jack Bauer from the instant he saw it, since it seemed out of character with the rest of Paz's leisure time outfit. But for all he knew, it could have held a couple bottles of booze and some sex toys to spice up the hours spent in Vikki's boudoir.

  Now Jack realized that his first impression was right, and that the attache case was more than it seemed.

  Colonel Paz raised it at a tilted angle, pointing its narrow front side at Dixie. He made some quick, tricky little hand movement, fingers writhing, pulling at something on the handle.

  Gunfire erupted from the side of the attache case, sending a burst of rounds ripping up the side of the truck cab's passenger door and then ripping up Dixie, who jerked and flopped around in his seat as he was shot to pieces.

  He looked outraged, as though indignant that Paz had committed some sort of unsportsmanlike conduct in not letting himself be slaughtered on the spot but instead terminating the assassin.

  Herm the driver no longer looked bored. He flung open the door and jackknifed out of the cab, flopping heavily on the asphalt. The truck now screened him from Colonel Paz. He reached into the cab and hauled out a long-barreled.44.

  Paz ducked down on the sidewalk, covering behind the bulk of his armored limousine. Hunkering down, he popped open the attache case, flinging back the lid and revealing the gimmick that had let him shoot as if by magic.

  Inside the shell of the gimmicked case was an Uzi-style machine pistol secured in a wooden frame. One end of a length of baling wire had been looped around the trigger, leaving a fraction of an inch or so of play in it. The wire was threaded through a set of eyelet screws mounted in the frame, emerging through a hole in the top of the case, where the opposite end was secured to the handle.

  All he'd had to do was reach down around the underside of the handle, wrap his fingertips around the wire, and pull, tightening the wire noose around the trigger and firing the gun.

  It was a neat little trick that had served him well in the past, back in the early years when he'd been a drug gang enforcer and executioner.

  Paz now craved more direct action. The machine pistol's trigger guard had been removed, allowing him to slip the wire noose free and loose the weapon from its mounting in the case.

  Herm had now regained his feet and stood crouching behind the truck cab, reaching around it to shoot at Paz, the big.44 reports booming like artillery fire.

  * * *

  It had all gone down like lightning: Dixie gunning down the bodyguards, Paz shredding Dixie with his attache case gun, Herm the driver now taking potshots at Paz while the latter sheltered behind the armored limo, cradling a machine pistol.

  Suddenly the situation was dealt another wild card, as the truck's back doors popped open and a new shooter popped out.

  Jack recognized him as the long-haired youth in glasses who'd strolled down the street earlier, right before the advent of the utility truck. He must have been the spotter, casing the scene in advance of the other assassins. He now had a gun in each hand, shiny, chrome-plated.32 pistols, and he came out with both barrels blazing.

  He hit the pavement running on sneakered feet, dashing behind the back of a car parked several lengths behind the limo and taking cover.

  He blasted away in Paz's direction, not hitting him, but making plenty of noise.

  Bullets spanged the limo's armor plating, turning into lead smears. Other rounds tagged the bulletproof windows, starring but not shattering them.

  In his wake, the truck box yielded two more shooters, one a chunky guy and another wearing a red bandana knotted around the top of his head, pirate style.

  The chunky guy featured an Elvis-style pompadour, sunglasses, and a goatee, and wielded a 9mm Beretta semi-automatic pistol. Hopping down to the asphalt, he dodged around the left rear corner of the truck, putting him on the same side as Herm the driver.

  The third man, the bandana wearer, was reluctant to leave the cover of the truck box. Remaining inside, he peeped around the edge of the right rear of the door frame, reached around it with his gun, and snapped off shots at Paz.

  He fired deliberately, methodically, mechanically. Bullets hit the club building, pecking out craters in the stone wall.

  * * *

  Jack Bauer and Pete Malo recovered quickly from the surprise, drawing their handguns and going into action like the professionals they were.

  There was a stall for several heartbeats as the store's front door, sealed for months, balked at Jack's efforts to open it. Jack put a shoulder to it, popping it open and rushing outside, crouching low and dodging to the left. Pete followed, breaking right.

  They knew what had to be done. The situation was unexpected, the solution simple.

  Paz was necessary, a living link not only to the machinations of the Venezuelan spy apparatus he headed, but also possibly to the elusive and much-wanted General Beltran, himself the key to uncovering a subversive communist Cuban network that had been operating in the United States for decades.

  Putting the would-be assassins in the expendable column.

  The chunky guy caught a glimpse of the CTU agents coming, his eyebrows rising in surprise over the top of his sunglasses. He shot at Pete, missed.

  Pete fired back, scoring. The chunky guy's knees buckled and he slid down the side of the truck, leaving a bloody smear to mark his descent. He sprawled on the street, motionless.

  Herm the driver turned toward Jack, the two throwing down on each other at the same time. Jack fired first, pumping two slugs into the driver's middle, all but cutting him in two.

  At that, Herm still had enough left to burn off a shot as he folded, firing wildly into the side of a parked car. The impact sounded like the vehicle had been broadsided by a wrecking ball.

  Still sheltering inside the truck box, Bandana Top discovered that it wasn't bulletproof as he thought as Colonel Paz fired a burst through the walls and into him. He spun around in a half turn, falling from the truck into the street.

  The two-gun kid with the glasses was in a tight spot, caught between the twin fires of Paz and the CTU agents. He alternated, firing one gun at Paz and the other at the agents, hitting neither. It was a technique that worked better in the movies than it did in real life.

  Pete Malo threw a couple of shots his way and missed, shooting out a headlight and windshield of a car behind the one where the kid was sheltering.

  The kid sent one Jack's way, coming so close that Jack could feel the passage of the round whizzing past his head. Jack fired back, Pete joining in.

  A round tagged the kid on his left side, spinning him. His feet got tangled with each other and he tripped, falling sideways into the street, shooting away as he toppled.

  He was still jerking the triggers when he caught the slug that finished him.

  * * *

  Absence of gunfire brought a sudden silence to the scene, leaving Jack's ears ringing. He became aware that Colonel Paz's machine pistol had stopped its chattering some se
conds before the finale. He turned and looked just in time to see Paz round the front corner of the Golden Pole building and disappear, the soles of his shoes slapping the pavement as he ran away.

  Jack stayed in place, focused on the immediate scene. It could be fatal to assume that all the downed were dead, rather than playing possum and waiting for the chance to take down one or both of their opponents.

  As it happened, the downed were dead, all of them: Baca, Espinosa, Dixie, Herm, and the backup trio. Seven corpses.

  Jack and Pete stood over the two-gun kid. There was no mistaking a telltale roundness and swelling at the breast and hips of the deceased. The agents exchanged glances.

  "He's a she," Pete said. "A girl. And not so girlish, either. Up close, she looks a lot older than she did from a distance. She could be twenty-five, thirty, maybe."

  Jack said, "That's a break. It narrows the search for her identity. There can't be too many like her on file."

  "I hope not. One was too many," Pete said.

  "Tell me about it. She damned near took the top of my head off with one of her shots."

  Pete looked around at the carnage-littered street. His free hand, the one not holding a gun, rubbed the top of his head, while he frowned, puzzled. "What the hell happened here?"

  "Offhand, I'd say somebody doesn't much like Colonel Paz," Jack said.

  2. THE FOLLOWING TAKES PLACE BETWEEN THE HOURS OF 6 A.M. AND 7 A.M. CENTRAL DAYLIGHT TIME

  The Golden Pole, New Orleans

  Vikki Valence's apartment was like the dancer herself — flamboyant and overstuffed.

  Jack was in the living room, holding his gun in a two-handed shooter's grip, his knees bent in a combat crouch.

  Behind him, the door to the balcony gaped open, hanging halfway off its hinges. It had been locked, compelling him to make a forced entry. A couple of stomp-kicks had done the trick.

  Daylight shone through the open doorway, illuminating the cavelike dimness of the interior. The windows fronting the balcony were screened by both blinds and heavy drapes. Even the wan light of an early, overcast morning was a help.