24 Declassified: Head Shot (2009) (10 page)

“Those killers were pros. They wouldn’t use their own car. The license plates were probably lifted from another car to further muddy up their tracks.”

A mile went by. Anne Armstrong said with a touch of frostiness, “What was the purpose of that macho display at the station?”

Jack said, “Equilibrium.”

Her face tightened, a network of fine lines showing around her eyes. “I don’t follow.”

He said, “Hardin’s boy pistol-whipped me when I was handcuffed. Can’t let him get away with that kind of thing. This is an aggressive business with a lot of high-testosterone characters who’re always testing the limits to see what they can get away with—and that’s just the ones who’re supposed to be on our side. You don’t want the word to get around that a CTU agent can be roughed up without any consequences. Otherwise our guys lose respect with the other agencies we have to work with. It’s bad for morale. By paying that thug cop back in kind, proper balance is restored. The word gets out that our guys can’t be pushed around without some kind of comeback.”

Her pursed lips parted to speak. “I see. So it was all for the benefit of CTU. There wasn’t any personal animosity involved.” She didn’t bother to mask the disbelief in her tone.

Jack said, “Personal feelings aside, I did it for the good of the service.”

Anne Armstrong said a dirty word. “You’ll be going back to Los Angeles in a few days but the rest of us will be staying here. Try to remember that we have to work with the local authorities.”

“Hardin will get the message. I used to be on the LAPD. I know how cops think because I used to be one myself. By the way, what’s the story on the MRT?”

“Bryce Hardin is a power in state law enforcement circles.
He’s a highly decorated officer with numerous commendations for valor and high- profile busts. He’s got a lot of pull with the governor’s office at the capital.
The MRT is his and the governor’s way of injecting themselves in Sky Mount doings and increasing their profile and political prestige.”

The cliff wall on the west ended, opening into a box canyon whose centerpiece was a lens-shaped lake. The lake was the color of the sky. The picturesque landscape had a gravel parking lot and was dotted with picnic tables scattered among the trees surrounding the lake.

A metal signpost identified the area: mountain lake state park. A chain barred the entrance. A printed cardboard sign fixed to it said, temporarily closed.

Jack said, “So that’s Mountain Lake. I was wondering where they were hiding it.”

Armstrong said, “It’s closed for the duration of the Round Table. The authorities don’t want a lot of unauthorized civilians up here during the conference. It’s one less variable for them to have to deal with.”

They drove past the space and the cliff walls returned. Jack said, “Something else has been bothering me, something that might be a possible lead. It’s a long shot but it could be worth following up. The compound at Red Notch should be checked for traces of chemical weapons.”

Armstrong’s cool demeanor gave way to outright surprise. “Chemical weapons? Where do you get that?”

“Something Lobo said about the compound being covered by a green cloud. It could have been some kind of CW, a toxic gas attack. Or maybe only a smoke bomb.”

“Or the demented ravings of a half-mad homeless drunk.”

“Somebody was worried about Lobo enough to have him killed by a team of assassins. Cultists and CW isn’t so much of a stretch, either. Look at the Aum Shunrikyo doomsday cult that set off sarin nerve gas bombs in the Tokyo subways some years ago.”

Anne Armstrong looked worried. “The Zealots and chemical weapons—the idea alone could set off a panic.”

Jack said, “There could be traces of residue remaining in the compound. For that matter, it might be worthwhile to have Lobo checked for the same in a postmortem. He might have been exposed to some of the stuff, and it’s possible that whatever it is could be retained in organic matter.”

Armstrong used her in-car comm system to contact Central. She relayed the message that Red Notch and Lobo should both be examined for possible exposure to airborne chemical weapons. She also noted that this was the suggestion of her colleague, Agent Bauer.

A nice touch, thought Jack. That way she got it on the record that the idea had originated with him. If it failed to pan out, it was his bad idea, not hers. He held no resentment against her for the gambit. That was how the game was played.

Several miles of mountain scenery unrolled in silence. The throbbing in Jack’s head worsened as the car continued to climb. He said, “You wouldn’t happen to have any aspirin on you, would you?”

She said, “Headache?”

“A little bit.”

“You should get checked out by a medic, make sure you’re not suffering from a concussion.”

“I’m fine. Just a touch of altitude.” Jack didn’t want to provide any pretext, medical or otherwise, that might result in him getting pulled off this duty. The violent deaths of Frank Neal and that strange hermit Lobo had given him a personal stake in the mission. It wasn’t about keeping Chappelle happy, it was about cracking the case, finding the killers, and solving the mystery of the Zealots’ disappearance.
He now felt that there was a direct and legitimate threat to the Round Table and its array of high- powered, high-finance invitees.

Armstrong said, “Yes, the height can get to you flatlanders, can’t it? That’s what happens when you’re out of your element.”

That could have been a veiled crack about his being an outsider who’d been forced on CTU/DENV through power politics. Jack couldn’t blame her for feeling that way, but it didn’t stop him from saying, “I haven’t done too badly so far.”

She said, “You’re still alive.”

A long pause followed, then she said, “I think there’s some aspirin in my pocketbook.” Her pocketbook was on the transmission hump between their seats. She steered with one hand and opened the pocketbook with the other. She reached inside it, rummaging around.

The road was no longer straight but twisty, winding around a succession of blind curves. Armstrong drove at a quick pace with no reduction in speed, glancing alternately at the road ahead and the interior of her pocketbook. It made Jack a shade anxious, since the road on his side had only a few feet of shoulder and a knee- high metal guardrail standing between him and a thousand- foot drop.

She said, “I know it’s in here somewhere . . .”

Jack was on the verge of telling her to forget
it, that he could get along fi
ne without the aspirin. The car rounded a curve, coming face to face with a two
-
and-a-half- ton truck coming in the opposite direction. The truck was a foot or two over the centerline and Armstrong had to swerve to avoid it, the two right-side wheels crunching the loose dirt and stones of the shoulder.

She said, “Jerk!” She passed the truck and swung back into the lane so all four wheels once more gripped solid pavement.

Jack had a hollow feeling in the pit of his stomach. He forced himself to adopt a conversational tone. “That was a catering truck. Must be coming from Sky Mount.”

She said, “Oh, there’s a regular caravan of suppliers going up and down the mountain for the whole time the conference is on. Nothing but the best for the guests, you know. I wish some of those truckers would learn how to drive.”

She went back to rummaging through her pocketbook, finally coming up with a bottle of aspirin. “I knew it was in there.” She handed it to Jack.

Jack said, “Thanks.” He took his time uncapping the container and shaking out two tablets. His mouth was dry from that recent near miss and he needed to work up some saliva. He popped one pill in the back of his mouth, giving his head a toss to get it started down his gullet, then repeated the process.

Armstrong said, “Swallowing them without any

water? My, you are tough.”

He said, “Can you spare a few extra for later?”

“Keep the bottle if you like.”

“No, that’s okay, I just want a couple in reserve.”

He shook four pills into his palm, dropping them into the breast pocket of his jacket. He capped the bottle, handed it back to her.

A gap opened on the west side, revealing a road sloping up a long incline. Armstrong turned left, entering the road. She said, “Masterman Way. That’ll take us up to Sky Mount.”

Jack said, “This is the first CTU vehicle I’ve ever ridden in that was a Mercedes-Benz. How’d you manage to work that with the bean counters?”

“Operational necessity. We needed it for protective coloration to blend in with all the other highline models at Sky Mount. Otherwise we’d have stuck out like a sore thumb.”

They climbed the slope. The road split into two branches at the summit. A checkpoint had been established there, manned by two deputies from the county sheriff’s department. Their car was parked in the middle of the road. Each branch of the road was blocked by a set of wooden sawhorses.

One of the deputies approached the CTU car on the driver’s side. Anne Armstrong presented her credentials, including her ID and a pass to enter Sky Mount. The deputy took the documents to his car and radioed in to Sky Mount to verify them. They must have checked out okay because he returned to the car a moment later and gave Armstrong her paperwork. His partner moved the sawhorse out of the way and waved them through, moving it back to block the road after they had passed.

The road
switch backed
up the side of a mountain, unwinding in a series of hairpin curves that topped out on a plateau. High mountain valleys in the Rockies are known locally as parks. This park was a vast circular meadow that was open on the east and ringed the rest of the way around by three mountains: Mount Nagaii, Mount Zebulon, and Thunder Mountain. It created an
amphitheatre-
like effect, with the park being the floor and the mountains being the semicircular tiers that soared up and up toward the zenith.

An amphitheater of the gods. A fit setting for Sky Mount itself. Sky Mount was the name of both the park estate and the fabulous structure that crowned it. The building was a unique creation, part Gothic castle, part Tudor-style manor house, and part chateau. It was an architectural folly on a grand scale, a magnificent white elephant that could be compared only to such equally monumental efforts as the du Ponts’ Winterthur estate, Hearst’s San Simeon, and the baroque nineteenth-century castles of Ludwig, the Mad King of Bavaria.

The edifice occupied the flattened top of a rise in the park. It fronted south, its long axis running east-west. Its central portion suggested a medieval keep, with a facade loosely modeled after the church of Notre Dame in Paris. Long, multistoried wings extended east and west from it, garnished with balconies and terraces. The spiky roofline bristled with spires, towers, turrets, and battlements. It had been built in the late 1800s, the Gilded Age, and sought to render the intricate architectural “gingerbread” decor of the period not in woodwork but in stone. The mansion stood at the center of intricately landscaped grounds, a complex of gardens, fountains, galleries and arcades, patios and pavilions. The rise on which it sat had been cut into stepped terraces that were hanging gardens. The rest of the estate spread out from it in a pastoral vista of gently rolling green fields, woodland groves, and sylvan ponds, honeycombed with winding paths and decorated with statuary.

It was one of the damnedest things Jack Bauer had ever seen. He said, “Is that really there or is the altitude getting to me?”

Anne Armstrong said, “It is something, isn’t it?”

“It makes Neverland look like a country shack.”

Cresting the edge of the plateau and suddenly coming upon Sky Mount had created a visceral impact.
Now that Jack had had time to process the big picture, he began to pick up on significant details, the telltale signs of modernity.

The mansion’s roofline was studded with satellite dishes, looking like white toadstools that had sprouted out of the crevices of a gnarly rock formation. A helicopter landing pad stood on the flat south of the rise, toward the west end of the park. Two helicopters sat there. A large field in the southeast sector had been turned into a parking lot. It was filled with scores of luxury cars, high-end SUVs, and limousines, all arranged in neat, orderly rows. A line of trucks and delivery vans stretched along a driveway that curved around to the rear of the mansion.

Big black limos and shiny new cars followed the main drive up the rise to the front of the building, disgorging passengers and their luggage. Groups of people, guests, swarmed the grounds, wandering among the arcades, galleries, and gardens. The scene was alive with activity, vibrant color, motion.

The site was well covered by a large number of security personnel, some in uniforms, others in civilian clothes. Groups of guards patrolled the estate in golf carts. Jack thought that was a nice touch.

The open, eastern end of the park was ringed by a black iron spear fence ten feet tall. The sections of fence were interspersed with stone pillars. The park had a single entrance, a double-gated portal that controlled access to a two-lane drive into and out of the estate. The guardhouse inside the gates looked like a Tudor mini-mansion. Jack noted with a pang that it was bigger than his own house back home.