24: Deadline (24 Series) by James Swallow Page A

me!” Abruptly, he realized that Roker was storming across the garage toward him, his face like thunder. “Talk on the phone on your own dime, shithead!”
    He looked at the other man, and it was as if he was seeing him for the first time. He saw every little flaw in Big Mike Roker, saw everything he loathed and detested about this small, venial man. “You’re going to wind up dead, you know that?”
    “What did you say?!” Roker bellowed. “Are you threatening me? Did deSalvo say something?”
    “Mike…” he began, climbing into the 300. “I’m done. Take your crappy job and shove it. I quit.”
    “Hey, that’s my car!” Roker came at him as he hit the gas and peeled off into the darkness. “Who the hell do you think you are, Charlie?”
    “Not that guy,” said Chase Edmunds.
    *   *   *
    Jack looked down at the cell phone he had stolen from Agent Kilner, the inner workings of the device exposed where he had used a table knife to open the back and disconnect the tracking chip. Nobody bothered him in the roadside diner’s corner booth, the sparse clientele of the twenty-four-hour rest stop intent on their own meals and conversations. There was what appeared to be a cheap plastic security camera in a bubble over the doorway, but it was pointing the wrong way to capture a look at his face.
    The diner was one of those faux-authentic 1950s places with a swooping roof and a neon sign out on a pole in the parking lot, all jet-age architecture and old tin signs—but it was too shabby to be considered retro, the fake-wood veneer peeling and the tired seats patched with duct tape. A line of semitrucks concealed Jack from the sight of any passing cars on the highway, and he glanced out of the window as a state police patrol car sped past at a clip, vanishing into the evening as quickly as it had appeared.
    Beyond the oasis of light cast by the diner there was darkness, and nothing but fields, woodland and pockets of suburbia for miles around. The waitress who had poured him a generous mug of tarry coffee hadn’t remarked on the fact that Jack had walked in from off the road without a vehicle. He wondered if anyone had heard him bringing the Long Ranger down in a clearing a couple of miles back down the turnpike. If luck was on his side, the helicopter wouldn’t be found until daylight tomorrow.
    The coffee was strong and good, and it helped him focus. He turned the phone over again, taking care not to nudge the SIM card protruding from the memory slot, and erased the record of the call he had just made. For a moment, Jack felt a flash of guilt. He knew from the tone of Chase’s voice that his contact had struck like a lightning bolt, coming out of nowhere to disrupt whatever kind of new life his former partner had set up for himself in Pittsburgh.
    It gnawed at him, the sense that he could roll in and break open one man’s attempt to find a fresh start—but it wasn’t like Jack had any other options open to him at this point. His associates, his friends and his family would all be under close observation. To get what he needed, Jack’s only hope was to reach out to somebody whom the rest of the world thought was dead and gone.
    Jack Bauer and Chase Edmunds had first crossed paths several years earlier, during an incident that had brought CTU’s Washington, DC, and Los Angeles branches together. A complex plot to kill thousands of innocents in California had been thwarted largely due to the work of the two agents. Edmunds had transferred to CTU LA soon afterward and the two of them became an effective team. Months later, when the whole Cordilla virus attack blew up and Jack was undercover infiltrating the Salazar cartel, it had been Chase who had his back. But it had not gone well for either man during those deadly hours, and when it was all over things between the two agents had changed forever. Jack had made choices that still weighed heavily on him, and it was Chase who’d paid the price.
    He wondered