24 Declassified: 10 - Head Shot Read online

  Neal killed the pickup’s headlights, a zone of darkness springing into being where the twin beams had been. He turned off the engine, dropping the keys into his right front pants pocket.

  Jack gave the scene a quick visual scan. Lighting the compound didn’t help much. It added to the air of unreality, making it look like a stage set. Shadows were weird, elongated.

  He found himself reaching under his jacket, adjusting the way his gun sat in the speed- rig shoulder harness under his left arm so that it settled the way he liked it.

  Neal caught what he was doing and grinned. “Kind of gets to you, doesn’t it?”

  Jack said feelingly, “It looks like a prison camp on Mars.”

  Neal said, “Come on, I’ll give you the grand tour.”

  Jack had been in his office in CTU’s Los Angeles Domestic Unit headquarters twelve hours earlier on Thursday afternoon, meeting with Ryan Chappelle. Jack was the SAC, the Special Agent in Charge of the site. Chappelle was the Regional Division Director. That made him Jack’s boss.

  Jack regarded a meeting with Chappelle as something akin to having root canal work done. It was sure to be not only unpleasant but costly. The fact that Chappelle had come there to see Jack rather than summoning Jack to see him was a portent that Chappelle meant to hand him the dirty end of a stick. What remained to be seen was the size and shape of the problem he was about to dump in Jack’s lap.

  Chappelle began by saying, “What do you know about put options?”

  Jack said, “Not much, except that it’s the kind of tricky financial manipulation that casual investors like me would do well to steer clear of.”

  It was typical of Chappelle to come at him sideways, rather than just coming out and saying what it was he wanted. Jack sat back and decided to let Chappelle carry the conversational ball. It was an old interrogator’s trick. You find out more when you let the subject tell the story in his own way, while at the same time committing yourself to nothing.

  Chappelle looked mildly irked. “I didn’t come down here to rope you into some stock deal. This is official CTU business and it could be an important lead.”

  Jack was all open- faced earnestness. “I know. You’re a busy man who doesn’t waste time on nonessentials. You wouldn’t be here if it weren’t important.”

  Chappelle nodded, accepting the other’s remark at face value. He went back into his pitch. “I’ll keep it simple. A put option is a financial instrument for short selling. Essentially, the investor is betting that certain stocks are about to experience a sudden drop in price. An extreme drop in price. By selling those stocks in advance of the drop, selling short as the term goes, the investor stands to make a steep profi t—a killing.

  “That’s as long as the investor has guessed right, of course. In most cases, no guesswork is involved. The short seller is acting on the basis of inside information. Which is illegal, but easily gotten around by anybody who knows their stuff.”

  Jack nodded to show Chappelle he was with him so far. Chappelle continued, “The unit of fiscal analysts which I set up has detected a disturbing pattern of recent shorting on the market.”

  There was no denying that Chappelle was a wizard with numbers. Today’s intelligence professionals tend to specialize in one of two areas: HUMINT and ELINT. HUMINT stands for human intelligence; that is, data collected by human sources. This is the side of the trade that concentrates on cultivating informants with access to data desired in a targeted area, including but not restricted to military personnel, government officials, scientists, technicians, diplomats and consular attachés, and members of other intelligence services—usually, but not always, citizens of other countries. Such informants may be motivated by altruism, greed, or extortionary pressures, depending on the individual. It is, in the words of former CIA counter- intelligence expert James J. Angleton, a “wilderness of mirrors,” a shadowy world of spies and counterspies, defectors and double agents.

  ELINT—electronic intelligence—is the other side of the coin. Here murky human ambiguities are replaced by hard data acquired by hardware. This is the arena of spy satellites, sonar and radar networks, signal traffic, telephone intercepts, and the myriad communications of cyber sphere and Internet. A vast array of electronic eavesdropping devices are deployed globally to monitor transactions in private and public sectors, vacuuming up mountains of data daily in all areas where information is a commodity. It is a realm of technicians, collectors, analysts, and data miners.

  HUMINT and ELINT, the twin-chambered heart of the modern espionage apparatus. A built-in tension exists between practitioners of the two disciplines. The HUMINT crowd tends to view the other half as board operators and number crunchers, overly reliant on technology and tone- deaf to the human element. The ELINT crowd too often regard their counterparts as outdated relics of a bygone cloak and dagger age, trapped in a confusing labyrinth of deceitful and unreliable informants. Yet neither branch can operate successfully without the other.

  Jack Bauer was an adept of HUMINT, a superb field operative who was equally skilled at the command level.

  Ryan Chappelle was a disciple of ELINT, a technocrat supreme with a gift for selecting out significant data from signal noise, separating the wheat from the chaff. One human element he had not neglected, though, was the art of office politics and bureaucratic infighting. He’d risen far fast, and it was no secret that his goal was to win a berth on the seventh floor of CIA headquarters at Langley, the coveted precinct of the agency’s intelligence mandarins.

  The Fiduciary Special Investigative Unit was a pet project of Chappelle’s. The SIU was a team of specialists who monitored the financial sphere, tracking the fluctuations of the global marketplace to detect patterns, profitable motives, and forecast actions of private institutions and foreign governments. It had proved to be particularly useful in charting and deciphering the clandestine money movements and funding of both independent and state-sponsored terrorist groups.

  Chappelle went on, “In the last few weeks, several million dollars’ worth of put options have been bought in the marketplace. The stocks selected were all those of leading American companies and corporations. We’re not talking about any failing, fly- by-night market dogs; these are all solid blue-chippers. Media conglomerates, software titans, genetic engineering, pharmaceuticals, even energy- related combines. Representative of the healthiest sector of the national economy—such as it is nowadays. These stocks have been bucking global recessionary trends by continuing to turn a profit.”

  Jack said, “But somebody is betting that they’ll take a fall. Betting big.”

  Chappelle said, “Exactly.”

  “Who?”

  “I don’t know; not yet, that is. Our mystery shorter has taken great pains to disguise himself. He’s covered his tracks by using a variety of shell companies, dummy corporations, and similar cut-outs . It’s like an onion. Peel back one layer and you fi nd another, peel away that and there’s another underneath. He’s also been careful to spread out his operations in a variety of exchanges, foreign and domestic.”

  Chappelle’s expression was like a clenched fist as he added, “But we’ll get him. We’ll peel back that onion to get to the heart of it, no matter how clever he thinks he is. It’s just a matter of time.”

  Jack said, “Where do I come in?”

  Chappelle’s features relaxed, a crafty look coming into his eyes. “The catch is we may be running out of time. One pattern stands out: all of the stocks our mystery man is betting against are those of companies whose owners and CEOs are attending the Sky Mount Round Table.”

  The Round Table was a prestigious annual conclave of the movers and shakers of the U.S. economy. It was held each July in the luxurious and scenic splendor of the Sky Mount estate in the Colorado Rockies. Its invited guests were the elite of American business, members not of the Fortune 500 but of the Fortune 50. They occupied the apex of the national socioeconomic pyramid. It was a domestic counterpart to the periodic Bilderberger mee
tings of Europe’s corporate masters.

  Jack’s bailiwick was the Los Angeles area, but he and his outfit had been much concerned lately with the imminent Sky Mount gathering. CTU/L.A. had increased its surveillance of local hate groups, militant foreign and domestic anti- American organizations, and the far wider pool of their sympathizers, fellow travelers, and enablers, monitoring them for any credible evidence of a plot aimed at this year’s Round Table. Two hundred leading lights of big business gathered in one spot at the same time presented an attractive target to the nation’s enemies. Or to any crackpot or group of crackpots who happened to hate rich people and wanted to strike a blow at the corporate empire.

  No such plot had been detected by CTU/L.A. Which didn’t mean that none existed. Such a conspiracy might have evaded their notice, or could be hatching somewhere in a different jurisdiction.

  Chappelle’s information certainly put a new and sinister slant to the possibility.

  Jack said, “The person or persons betting those stocks will take a sudden and dramatic fall may not be gambling at all. It could be a sure thing. A terror strike or other catastrophic event at Sky Mount could send those stocks tumbling. It could wreck the national economy. What’s left of it, that is.”

  Chappelle said, “A logical conclusion. There was a lot of short selling of airline and insurance stocks in the days before 9/11. Somebody knew in advance that those stocks were going to take a big hit and reaped several billions of dollars due to that inside information. We’ve never been able to pinpoint the profiteer but there’s no doubt about the pattern.”

  He’d been pacing back and forth in front of Jack’s desk. He stopped abruptly, turning to face Jack and point a finger at him. “Now couple that with those Colorado cultists suddenly dropping off the board.”

  Reports about the disappearance of Abelson Prewitt and two dozen of his most fanatical followers from the Red Notch compound had already come to Jack’s attention as part of his daily intelligence summary.

  Jack said, “I don’t doubt that Prewitt would like to bring a mountain crashing down on the Round Table’s guests, but I can’t see him playing the market to make a profit off it. That goes against his whole crackbrained ideology, what little I understand of it. His theories are a bit too opaque for me.”

  Chappelle made a hand gesture like he was shooing away gnats. “Maybe he decided that if you can’t beat them, join them. He may be cracked but he knows the financial system inside out. Remember, he used to be an economics professor before he went all political.”

  “Where would he get a couple of million dollars to invest?”

  “Good question. Maybe he’s found a sponsor; a hostile foreign power, say. Interests inimical to the United States could be backing him. Using him for a cat’s-paw to do their dirty work while they turn a big fat profit at the same time.”

  “Possibly.”

  “And I know just the man to find out the answer, too, Jack.”

  “Who?”

  “You.”

  Jack had seen that one coming but there wasn’t much he could do about it. He’d try, though. He said, “That’s CTU/DENV’s turf.”

  Chappelle said, “The SIU’s findings about the short selling gives us an in.”

  “I don’t think Lando Garcia’s going to want us com ing in.” Garcia said

  Chappelle said, “You let me worry about Garcia.”

  Jack said, “I can’t just drop everything here and take off for Colorado— ”

  “Sure you can. Nina Myers can hold down the fort while you’re gone.” Nina Myers was the assistant SAC of CTU/L.A. and Jack’s chief of staff, fully qualified to take over in Jack’s absence.

  Chappelle said, “Things are relatively quiet here. Sky Mount is where the action is. You’re a top field man, Jack. Garcia hasn’t got anybody in your class.”

  “He’s got some good people out there— ”

  “Not like you. You could make a difference. This is important, Jack. Big. I’m surprised you’re not jumping at the chance.”

  “I’ve got a full plate here, Ryan. I don’t like to leave in the middle of things.”

  “Nothing that won’t keep for a few days. And that’s all it’ll take, a few days. The Round Table ends on Sunday, and by Monday the guests will all have gone their separate ways.”

  There was no way out. Jack had to say yes. Chappelle was his superior officer in the chain of command; he could order Jack to take the assignment. It didn’t matter that Jack was in charge of CTU/L.A. with its mountainous workload, awesome responsibilities, and important ongoing projects and investigations. It didn’t matter that Jack had recently ended a long and painful separation from his wife, Teri, and had moved back home with her and his teenage daughter, Kimberly, a delicate situation that was an emotional minefield of raw sensitivities, resentments, and bruised feelings.

  It didn’t matter that Garcia and his whole CTU/ DENV outfit would see Jack as Chappelle’s creature, giving the notoriously ambitious Regional Division Director an opportunity to extend his authority by injecting himself into their operations.

  It was a classic Chappelle ploy. The SIU’s discovery of the money manipulations gave him the opening wedge he needed to put Jack on temporary duty and strap him on Garcia’s CTU/DENV as a consultant. If Jack turned up something at Sky Mount, Chappelle could claim a share of the credit. If things went sour, he could wash his hands of all responsibility and hang it on Jack. And if nothing happened and it all worked out a draw, Chappelle would still have the pleasure of having intruded on the turf of his longtime rival Orlando Garcia.

  The hell of it was that Chappelle might just be on to something with the discovery of the suspicious stock manipulations being a warning sign of an anti–Round Table plot. But he couldn’t just pass the information along to CTU/DENV for them to handle in their own way. No, he had to use it as a way to get his foot into Garcia’s door, like a pushy salesman who won’t take no for an answer. He certainly wouldn’t take Jack’s no for an answer.

  Jack accepted the inevitable, stifling the sigh that sought to escape him and keeping a poker face. “When do I leave?”

  Chappelle said, “Immediately.” He rubbed his palms together, a gesture somehow suggestive of a fly anticipating a choice morsel. “I’m counting on you, Jack. They need you out there. I know you’ll make Garcia and his crew look sick.”

  Jack smiled wanly. Chappelle said, “And stay in close contact with me here. Keep me posted on all developments at all times.”

  Chappelle had gotten what he wanted. The interview was over.

  That was the prelude. Jack was now in the center of things, probing the Red Notch compound. The buildings were grouped close together, within walking distance. Neal indicated the central structure, a white, wooden frame two-story building. He said, “That’s the admin building, Prewitt’s headquarters.”

  They crossed toward it. It fronted east, its long axis running north- south. A television satellite receiving dish was mounted on the roof, pointed at a forty-five-degree angle at the sky. Floodlights were mounted at the tops of the building’s southeast and northeast corner posts where they met the front ends of the second-floor balcony. The lights on the northeast post were dark. Lights were on inside the first and second floors, shining through the windows.

  The northeast corner post floodlight hung at a twisted angle. Broken glass littered the ground below it. Jack stood under it, looking up. Neal said, “It was shot out. The lab crew recovered one of the bullets. It’s from a handgun but they haven’t typed it yet.”

  Jack nodded.

  Four wide wooden stairs led to a porch, a veranda that fronted the building on three sides, all but the west side. The second-floor balcony was similarly constructed. It was as if the builders had shunned the rear of the building, its west face. Behind the back of the building, behind the entire cluster, rose a jumble of sandstone formations, pillars and needles and boulders, all eroded into angular, distorted shapes.

  Jack and Nea
l climbed the stairs to the porch. The front door hung at a tilted angle, half torn off its hinges. The second-floor balcony roofed over the veranda.

  A row of tall windows were set in the walls on either side of the doorway. A window to the right of the doorway was broken, leaving a mostly empty frame. Shards of broken glass were strewn on the porch below it. Dark reddish- brown stains, long-dried, mottled the outside of the windowsill and the wall beneath it. The porch planks under the window were stained, too. The stains were pretty big, the largest being bathmat-sized. White chalk markings had been drawn around the stains by the crime lab team. Each marking was tagged with an identifying letter-number combination written in chalk.

  Jack said, “Looks like it was broken from the inside out. Like somebody jumped or was thrown through the window. Whoever it was must’ve been cut up pretty badly. Bad enough to have bled to death, if all that blood came from one person.” He looked at Neal. “No bodies were found?”

  Neal said, “None.”

  Jack took a closer look, while avoiding stepping on the chalked-off bloodstains. The stains went to the front edge of the porch. What looked like bloody handprints showed on the top rail of the waist-high balustrade bordering the edge of the porch.

  He switched on his flashlight, shining it down on the ground below the porch. Bloodstains extended out in dribs and drabs for a dozen yards or so before coming to an abrupt halt. He said, “The injured party managed to get that far before dropping. Then what happened?”

  Neal said, “Your guess.”

  Jack edged north along the porch, carefully picking his way through, trying to avoid treading on the broken glass and bloodstains. Neal followed, saying, “The lab crew’s already photographed and diagrammed everything, so you don’t have to worry about messing up anything or altering the scene.” Jack noticed that Neal, too, despite his words made an effort, conscious or not, to avoid stepping on glass or bloodstains.

  Jack turned left at the corner, following the north branch of the veranda to its end at the building’s no rthwest corner. He shone the fl ashlight around, noticing a cluster of propane gas tanks connected by pipes to the building’s rear.