Death Angel (29 page)

8:05
A.M
. MDT
Bluecoat Bluff, Los Alamos County

Jack Bauer and Lassiter stood face-to-face. “My gun,” Jack said, holding out his hand palm-up. Lassiter hauled the pistol out of a hip pocket and put it in Jack’s hand.

“Thanks,” Jack said, holstering the weapon. “Looks like it’s time for Lassiter to retire.”

Lassiter nodded. “That’s what Torreon had in mind. A forcible retirement.” He indicated Brazos’s corpse. “Thanks, Jack.”

“One good turn deserves another.”

“Hope those two shots I fired into you didn’t hurt too much.”

“Not much. With the vest on it only feels like I got hit with a sledgehammer. Twice.”

“Oh—were you wearing a vest?”

“Very funny,” Jack said. “Now Lassiter goes back on the shelf and Tony Almeida comes back online.”

Lassiter was Tony Almeida, a CTU/L.A. agent working under Jack’s command.

Jack Bauer had approached the problem of the Ironwood kills with a two-pronged attack: from the inside and the outside. Jack was the outside man, operating more or less in the open. It made him a target, but that was one way to get fast action. The enemy knew who he was and they could take their best shot at him. He made himself a lure to flush them out from their hiding places behind the black curtain of secrecy. It was a great technique as long as he didn’t get killed.

That was only one-half his strategy. Tony Almeida was the other half. He had been working undercover, from the inside. “Lassiter” was an assumed identity, one that Tony Almeida had used to great effect in the past. Lassiter had a well-earned reputation in underworld circles as a professional gun, a killer for hire. A cover identity that had proved extremely useful in penetrating that shadowy interzone where the secret worlds of terrorism and organized crime met and mingled.

As Lassiter, Tony was able to circulate freely among gun-runners, drug gangs, underworld enforcers, mercenaries, and similar members of the phantom legions of the subterranean half world.

Jack Bauer knew that Annihilax preferred to recruit local talent from the area where he was operating: thugs, thieves, whores, safecrackers, hackers, killers, and so on.

Expendables all. Once the job was done, Annihilax eliminated the underlings, leaving a clean slate. No witnesses, no accomplices able to furnish incriminating evidence or testimony. Annihilax’s true identity would be safe from exposure.

Lassiter was another kind of lure. The hired killer with a solid gold reputation was dangled in the overheated gangland milieu of the Southwest underworld to see which big fish would go for the bait. And wind up hooked and netted. With Varrin and the Blancos at war, a stone killer such as Lassiter would not be a free agent for long. Nor had he been.

Lassiter made the rounds, frequenting the dives and gangland haunts where such criminal enterprise was conducted. Making moves, making waves. It had not been long before Varrin had approached him to undertake some contract “work.” From there things had taken their inexorably murderous, treacherous course.

Tony Almeida explained, “I was playing both ends against the middle. Varrin hired me. Once I learned that his enemy was the Blancos, I contacted them to make a deal to double cross Varrin and his masters. It wasn’t until today that I learned that Varrin’s boss was Max Scourby, the celebrated criminal lawyer.”

“In his case, the term
criminal lawyer
couldn’t have been more appropriate,” Jack said. “Think Torreon got wise that Lassiter was more than just a hired gun?”

“I doubt it,” Tony said. “He figured that if I’d sell out Varrin, I’d do the same to him. Besides, I’d served my purpose. Varrin and his gang were wiped out. This way, Torreon didn’t have to pay me. He doesn’t need Annihilax to tell him to be a vicious SOB.”

“Too bad you didn’t put a bullet in Carlson’s brain during the shooting.”

“Things were kind of frantic at the time. Besides, I know where they’re taking Carlson and Zane: Mission Hill. It’s a mansion Scourby set up. Filled with all kinds of computer hardware and transceivers where Carlson can do his thing.

“Adam Zane wants a demo before he buys. Scourby’s dead, but that won’t change a thing as far as Zane’s con
cerned. He’ll still want a demo. Marta Blanco and some of the gang went there earlier today to take it over. That’s where we’ll find Carlson and Zane.”

“That’s where we’ll go, too,” Jack said.

“We can take the car they left behind for Brazos.”

“I’ve got a better idea.” Jack Bauer took out the cell phone he’d taken from Ferney. “Why ride when you can fly?”

8:40
A.M
. MDT
Mission Hill, Los Alamos County

Mission Hill was a modern-day mansion done in Spanish colonial style. It occupied a splendid sprawling estate in the western heights of the Hill. Its neighbors were also mansions and none too close. The grounds were bordered by a ten-foot-high whitewashed adobe wall. Landscaped grounds featured patios, pavilions, gardens, hedges, lawns, and flower beds, all honeycombed with flagged paths and walkways.

At the center of the estate was a mansion three stories tall. Its roof was covered with orange ceramic tiles. They were overlapping, creating the impression of the scales of a fish or reptile. The structure was made of thick whitewashed stone walls. The second-floor windows had balconies. Ground-floor windows were caged with elaborate black wrought-iron grillwork.

An anomalous note was the rooftop ridgeline. The rooftop bristled with an elaborate array of antennas. In the center of the roofline was an old-fashioned bell tower. It was flat-roofed and square-sided, with arches opening in all four sides. The bell tower’s flat roof was crowned with a massive satellite dish aimed at a forty-five-degree angle to the sky.

What had been a drawing room on the ground floor had
been transformed into an electronic nerve nexus. It was equipped with massive computer consoles, instrument boards, oscilloscopes, beam shapers, modulators, wideband signal frequency generators, amplifiers, resonators, transmitters, and the like. A cockpit of sophisticated electronic hardware.

Consoles and equipment cabinets lined the walls. Heavy-duty electric cables had been laid down, connecting to trunk lines that extended outside the lab room. The hardware pulled so much power that it required a special generator all its own to meet the demand. The generator was located outside on the patio, housed in a special outbuilding.

Torreon Blanco, Stan Rull, and two pistoleros escorted their “guests” into the hardware room. The pistoleros exited. Dr. Hugh Carlson was a prisoner. A valuable catch but a captive all the same. He’d been relieved of the metal attaché case containing the all-important PALO codes. Torreon Blanco was now in possession of them.

Adam Zane’s status was somewhat more equivocal. He was a man with a vast store of funds at his disposal and a powerful organization at his command. He preferred to travel light and fast, but that massive organization was behind him and could wreak tremendous havoc should any harm befall him.

Adam Zane radiated a distinct aura of displeasure. He carried himself stiffly. His thin lips were tightly pressed. Knots of muscle the size of walnuts stood at the hinges of his jaws.

He’d submitted earlier to the indignity of a personal search that yielded no weapons. He carried none, except for the most potent weapon of all, the mass of gray matter housed inside his skull.

Torreon Blanco said, “Allow me to introduce you to our hostess. Senor Adam Zane, this is my sister, Marta Blanco.”

Marta Blanco wore a red blouse, black slacks, red boots,
and a gun. Her top was a short-sleeved, military-style tunic, scarlet, with epaulets and gold buttons. High-waisted matte-black slacks that were tight in the hips with wide-cut, flaring legs tapering at the ankles, where she wore high-heeled ankle boots the same shade of red as her blouse.

A holstered gun was belted around her waist. No small-caliber lady’s gun, this sidearm, but a big-caliber, long-barreled revolver.

“How do you do, Senor Zane. A pleasure to make your acquaintance,” she said.

Zane took one of her red-nailed hands and kissed it Continental style—an air kiss in the traditional manner, his lips not quite touching her flesh. “I wish I could say the same, Senorita—or is it Senora?”

“Why not Marta?”

“Marta it shall be. I must express my regrets regarding the nature of our meeting, which somewhat undercuts the pleasure of your company. I’m sure you understand. An employee of mine has been senselessly murdered, I have been hijacked…”

“Deeply regrettable to be sure. You have my apologies. But it was the only way to ensure our getting together for a meeting which is bound to be profitable to both of us.”

“That remains to be seen.”

“It will be. You are a man of the world, so you will understand that sometimes one’s plans are subject to sudden and dramatic reversals. That’s business.

“I welcome you to my house. Not my house, not really. It belonged to the late Max Scourby. As you can see, he spared no expense in arranging the equipment necessary for your—our—transaction. Nothing has changed, except that instead of doing business with Senors Scourby and Lewis, you will be dealing with myself and my brother.”

Zane’s smile was as meaningless as it was polite. “No offense, but Max Scourby and Orne Lewis had a certain
credibility and track record in matters of this sort. A certain trust existed, if only on the basis of similar transactions successfully carried out by both parties. If they said they could deliver, they did so. Charming though you most certainly are, you and your brother are an unknown quantity as far as I’m concerned.”

“I understand your misgivings,” Marta said. “Trust is so hard to come by in this unhappy world. You would like some sort of a guarantee. A bond of security. I am prepared to offer that to you.

“You smile. Perhaps you doubt me? Quite all right. I am not offended. Your opinion will change when you are made aware of my principal sponsor in this undertaking. The partner of myself and my brother. I give you a name that will mean much to you:

“Annihilax.”

Adam Zane’s sky-blue eyes narrowed; his jaw muscles flexed involuntarily at the naming of the name.

A name that meant nothing to Dr. Hugh Carlson. He was scared, dazed, and confused by the recent violent reversal of fortune. He took a certain comfort in the fact that he’d been neither manhandled nor abused. He knew this:

He was better off in the hands of his murderous captors than he would have been several hours ago in the custody of the two Los Alamos Sheriff’s Department deputies.

Or in the hands of CTU’s Jack Bauer. The late Jack Bauer.

He was, he knew, still a valuable commodity. The question was: Did his captors know it? For now, by conscious choice and nervous temperament, his way was to walk soft and keep a low profile while events shook themselves out and manifested themselves to give him a clearer picture of where he stood.

Annihilax? No, the name meant nothing to him. But it certainly carried weight with Adam Zane, and that meant something to Carlson.

“Annihilax? Yes, that would change things. If true,” Zane said. “I’ll go so far as to admit that rumors have reached me that Annihilax is alive and operating in this theater—but you’ll have to prove it to me.”

Marta Blanco’s green eyes glittered. Her red lips curved upward at the corners in a kind of secret half smile. “You have met Annihilax. That is not a question, but a fact known to me and you. You two have had dealings in the past. You are one of a very few who has seen the true face of Annihilax and lived.”

“Seeing is believing,” Marta Blanco said. She indicated a door at the opposite end of the room. It was arched and made of ironbound wooden planks. It opened, creaking on its hinges. Framed in the doorway stood a figure.

“Meet your true host. Annihilax welcomes you,” Marta said.

The figure started forward, entering the room, moving out of the shadows into the light. Moving slowly, deliberately, though not without a certain dogged stiffness.

Seeing the newcomer, Hugh Carlson was literally rocked on his heels by the shock of revelation. He cried out:

“My god! Carrie!”

Carrie Carlson advanced into the room, walking with a slight but noticeable limp. Favoring her left leg. She walked stiffly, wielding a cane in her left hand.

She wore a lightweight blue blazer, white blouse, gray skirt, and low-heeled blue-black shoes. Her hazel eyes looked yellow in the light; they glowed. She seemed serene, self-possessed. Her rubber-tipped cane made soft thudding noises against the tiled floor as she advanced.

She crossed to the others, stood facing them. A tight smile curved her lips. Her gaze shifted from Zane to her husband and back again.

Zane stared at her, studying her with a furiously intent frown. “My dear Jane, can it really be you?”

“Have I changed so much, Adam?” Carrie Carlson asked.

“Frankly, yes.”

“Perhaps these names will jog your memory: Chen Li Chang. Principessa Senta Loquasto. Einar Saknessum. Count Bozzo-Corona. General Auric Frobe. Sir Percival Pickering—”

“Enough! No need recite a litany of the roster of the dead.”

“They were all alive before you contracted me to liquidate them, Adam.”

He eyed her like a jeweler appraising a valuable gem of dubious provenance. “You’ve had face work.”

“What woman my age hasn’t?” Carrie Carlson countered.

“I suppose it’s the context more than anything else that throws me—you’re the last person I’d suspect of being incarnated as an American suburban matron.”

“Which is why it works, no? Only here I’m not Jane—it’s Carrie. Though not for long.”

She turned her yellow-eyed gaze on Hugh Carlson. “I don’t know which of us is more surprised, you or I. For three years I’ve moved heaven and earth trying to find the mole in INL, and all the time he was living under the same roof with me.

“Of course you don’t understand. It just goes to show that there are no strangers more mysterious and unknown to each other than a husband and wife who share each other’s bed. Not that we’ve been doing much of that lately. Thank god.