06:00am – 07:00am

LA Docks, California
06:00:59

Jack Bauer felt the cool sea breeze rushing in from the Pacific blow through his hair as he and the rest of his hastily-assembled team moved into position behind large cargo crates, preventing anyone on the nearby boat from seeing them. The three other members of his team were the usual armed response division of the Counter-Terrorist Unit for which Jack was the Director of Field Operations – looking very similar to US SWAT forces, they wore reinforced body armour and were armed with M5K Deutsches and TAG-17 pistols. Straight from headquarters, Jack was dressed in plain casual clothing with a CTU jacket – his weapons were virtually identical to the men around him save for the Elite pistol in place of the TAG-17 model.

Despite the gentle breeze and the somehow peaceful sound of the waves crashing into the dock Jack and his men were tense and alert – as they always were in the circumstances. He stealthily looked out around the edge of the crate to observe the surface of the ship dominating their area of the harbour. Quickly spotting two figures, he spoke into his communicator, and at the same time decided to reiterate the group's objectives, reinforcing the seriousness of the mission at hand.

"This is Beta leader – I have two armed guards patrolling the above decks, I don't know how many below. You're clear to continue in but I want each and every position called. There are illegal arms shipments aboard and at least 200 kilos of the bio-toxin Ricin. Everything points to these people being on the defensive. If they even find out that we're in the area they'll blow the holds and release the toxin into the water system. Are we clear?"

The reply came a moment later from the leader of Alpha Team - "We copy you, Beta Leader." Alpha Leader and his team had taken their positions at the other end of the ship and with their superior's permission they quickly ascended the nearby steps to the top deck. Still moving speedily, they began to 'sweep' the far side of the ship, searching for a way in to the lower levels.

All might have gone well, but Alpha Team was completely unprepared for hidden traps of any sort. About halfway along the side of the ship Alpha Leader accidently walked through a thin laser sensor stretching across their side of the ship. The line bleeped as it registered their presence and sent a signal down to the computers in the ship's control room below – a bleep which Alpha leader easily heard. He immediately looked down to view the source of the noise, stopping dead in his tracks as he realised what he had done. Thinking fast, he communicated with Jack.

"Beta leader, they've got the ship rigged. We've tripped a switch. If they don't know we're here yet they will soon."

Jack immediately felt his heart plummet as he realised things were about to become much harder. Quickly, he considered his options, acknowledging that no possible decision could lead to their operation being as easy as it would have been moments before. He cursed at the added difficulty.

"Damn it! We're heading in." He turned to the rest of Beta Team, who were already waiting for instructions after seeing the look on their commander's face.

"We have to get on board and stop the detonation of the Ricin cargo. Maintain positions, we cannot afford to make any mistakes. Let's go!" There was a succession of loud clacks as Beta Team checked their weapons were ready for use and then they were off, moving with Jack towards the ship. As one, the team moved almost silently up the ship's staircases to the top deck in a matter of seconds – all present knew that time was against them. As they moved across the deck a voice sounded clearly nearby, causing Jack and two other members of his team to conceal themselves behind more crates, while the remaining team member stood guard at the top of the stairs. As the majority of the team watched, the two guards Jack had spotted earlier strolled out into the open from opposite sides of the bridge to talk to each other. Neither of them spotted the armed men hiding nearby. After a few moments of silence from Beta Team, Jack whispered "weapons free" into his comm. A second later, shots rang out across the dock as Beta Team dropped both terrorists with perfect shots to the head. With the threat neutralised, the entire team moved on, quickly locating an open doorway showing a flight of stairs leading down into the ship. Jack braced himself for the inevitable firefights that would follow.

06:12:25

At the bottom of the staircase was a locked door. A member of the team checked it, assessing the situation. "Door locked," he stated. "Explosive breach needed." As he spoke, he extracted a small amount of plastic explosive from one of the many pouches on his belt. "Placing breach charge." Sticking the explosive firmly to the door's lock, he moved back to the minimum safe distance while the rest of the team watched the door, weapons cocked and ready.

The door blew open to reveal a canteen of some sort. Two shocked guards sat across the room at a small table playing cards. They quickly recovered from their surprise and despite shouts from Jack and his men to surrender, the table they sat at was flung to the side as in one movement they stood and drew their weapons, shouting as they did so. Beta Team quickly took down the men before they could fire, and moved on. Moving through a set of medical rooms, they came under fire in another canteen area. After a brief duck-and-cover period these terrorists were also neutralised, however each battle was slowing Jack's team down – every second they wasted was a second closer to the release of the Ricin. Quickly moving through a set of sleeping quarters the team arrived at the top of a staircase descending to the second floor. Thinking fast, Jack ordered one of his men to hold at the top of the stairs, in case anyone the team had missed managed to ambush them. The man complied and the remaining members of Beta Team hurried down the stairs to find another locked door, requiring a breach charge again. The charge was quickly set and the door was blown open. Jack moved through between the two other men into the silent room filled with machinery. Just as he felt something wasn't right, the man on his left cried out, "It's an ambush!"

06:24:24

Explosions rocked the room as hidden terrorists suddenly appeared, shooting through and destroying propane gas tanks. Beta Team dived for cover as the terrorists revealed themselves in order to open fire on their enemies with micro-SMGs and shotguns. Bullets whizzed through the air above Jack's head as he covertly moved to flank the shooters while the others in the team distracted them. One terrorist saw him appear suddenly on the edge of his vision and attempted to turn to face him but it was no use. He and much of the others were mowed down in the hail of bullets from Jack's SMG while the other members of Beta Team took down those he missed. The team paused a moment to reload their weapons before moving on. Moving through an adjacent hallway, another staircase down to the third floor was located, and Beta Team descended quickly.

"Do we know where the Ricin will be stored?" asked one of Jack's team members.

"Probably in one of the forward cargo holds," Jack replied, refusing to tire.

06:34:24

Beta Team entered the next room atop a raised catwalk, curving around the top of what was obviously the ship's engine room. A terrorist attempted a solitary ambush as the catwalk curved but he was taken down before he could even fire. As they headed towards a flight of stairs leading down to the main floor of the room several terrorists came storming up to fight off the intruders. Beta Team quickly shot them before they could advance any further and continued into the centre of the room. Terrorists appeared on both sides but Beta Team moved for cover, the enemy's bullets ricocheting off of the metallic engines. After a few minutes the team managed to outgun their opponents and moved towards a doorway where sunlight beamed in – an open-air cargo hold was evidently nearby.

"How long before the Ricin is released?" inquired the same team member who had previously spoken. He sounded worried.

"Could be any minute now, we've got to keep moving." Jack was extremely tense – he had no idea when the bio-toxin would be released.

As Beta Team emerged into the sunlight of the large cargo hold they immediately came under fire from a terrorist crouched in position on top of another catwalk extending across the hold. A member of Beta Team fired instinctively back, accidently blowing up another group of gas tanks beside his target. A large explosion followed, destroying the catwalk and the team's assailant and sending a large group of crates crashing down into the centre of the hold, blocking it off. The other terrorists in hiding chose this moment to emerge from their hiding places and open fire on Beta Team. After a few more time-draining minutes these enemies were also neutralised. Beta Team quickly surveyed the situation, realised that much of the hold was impassable, and improvised by scaling a stack of crates at the side of the blockage. Descending on the other side, the team were fired on by terrorists taking cover behind nearby cargo. Beta Team took cover, routinely popping out to shoot at their attackers.

Finally, after excruciatingly long minutes had passed, Beta Team gained the upper hand in the battle by taking out a terrorist shooting wildly at them from their flank. Without this advantage, the others were taken down as well, refusing to surrender to the CTU forces. As the rest of his team set another breaching charge in place on the cargo hold's other door, a voice Jack knew spoke from his earpiece.

"Jack, it's Michelle," said Jack's friend, the Head of Agent Assistance. "We have a bomb squad on the way, they're following you in."

"I copy," Jack replied. Any normal man would have been breathing heavily under the circumstances, but Jack had been trained not to.

The door in front of him blew inwards. Beta Team hurried through the short corridor into another, much smaller open cargo hold – and stopped dead in their tracks.

A large pile of bodies lay in the corner of the hold, dressed in blue overalls. While one member of the team remembered their mission and crouched in the centre of the room, surveying it, the other checked on the pile of men.

"They're all dead, sir," he stated in a kind of wondrous horror, and then thought aloud, "What's going on here?"

Jack thought a moment before realising the answer. He replied grimly, "It's the ship's original crew. They must have been killed when the ship was taken over." Secretly, Jack was worried. If the people they were up against could so ruthlessly execute an entire crew, what else would they be prepared to do?

However he was quickly jolted from his thoughts when his other teammate cried, "Up there! It's the bomb!"

Jack immediately swivelled round. He looked at where the man was pointing, to a raised observation room. In it he saw a large machine with many wires sprouting out from it only to return at different locations. In the centre stood a large yellow cylinder – a Ricin chamber.

Beta Team hurriedly ran up to the room to ensure the bomb was intact, just as the bomb defusal team arrived behind them. The two men, clad in the large clumsy-looking protective suits and safety visors, set down their gear and began to unpack almost straight away. Jack paced nearby, restless due to the bomb's proximity. Past experience had proved to him what he already knew – bombs were always extremely bad news.

The leader of the defusal team did a quick check of the bomb. "Can you defuse it?" Jack asked impatiently. "If not, I need to know right now."

The leader finished his check and replied – "I can defuse it."

"What do you need from me?"

"Nothing," replied the leader. "Once I'm set up we'll be good to go."

Jack hoped he was right.

04:46:33

CTU (Counter Terrorist Unit), Washington DC Branch

Chloe answered the phone immediately, as she always did. She had only been working in the DC Branch for less than a year but it had left her quite agitated. "CTU, O'Brien."

"Chloe."

She recognized the voice. "Chase?" she said, surprised. She thought he was still in Carr's base.

"I've been given a job by Carr," he told her. Another surprise. The DC Operations Agent had shown special skill in his undercover work, but for some reason Carr had never chosen him to perform any major tasks. Apparently he had changed his mind.

"Do you think they're on to you?" she wondered.

"No, if they were on to me I'd be dead by now – these guys don't mess around." Chloe knew that. Another of their undercover agents had been found dead on a riverbank a mile downstream of the terrorist leader's base, with two bullets in his head.

"Whatever these guys are working on, it's something big, and I'm going to get to the bottom of it," continued Chase. He hung up and continued driving along the small dirt track towards Carr's base.

LA Docks, California

"Jack, what's your status?" Jack's friend and Special Agent In Charge Tony Almeida spoke clearly from CTU, his voice transmitted to Jack's earpiece.

"How much longer?" Jack asked the defusal team.

"We're starting now," replied the leader.

"Standby," Jack said, speaking to Tony. "Starting bomb defusal."

"With this type of bomb it should be a case of following the master signal back through its relay paths and shorting out the trigger circuitry," said the defusal leader. Such words were only an attempt to calm himself before the defusal began, but yet again, they failed.

Sweating profusely in his bulky suit, he identified the hand-sized metal box as the housing for the trigger workings – its connection ensured that the bomb would detonate after a set time. In this case, the defusal leader knew that shorting out the timer itself would be too risky, as it was likely that the terrorists had designed the bomb so that it would detonate if separated from the timer.

"Clippers," he said. Almost instantly a hand appeared at his side holding 'clippers', a tool that looked much like sharpened pliers and was used to cut wires in such circumstances.

Carefully, he extracted a handful of thick wires from the intricate maze of them clustering the floor around the bomb. Out of five wires, he discarded two as they connected the bomb to the timer. Another was dropped as it connected the bomb to its electricity supply – removing this would also prove fatal. With the two final identical wires, the defusal leader weighted them in his hands and realised that the one in his right was a decoy – too light to house the material required in it. With the correct wire found, he cut through it. The timer immediately blinked off. "That's it," he said jubilantly. "I've done it."

As the bomb defusal team began to dismantle the bomb's separate parts and carry them away for transportation to a storage facility, Jack spoke into his comm. "Alpha Team Leader, we have defused the detonator."

"Copy that," came the reply. "Sending in HAZMAT to take care of the payload."

"Any eyes on the arms shipments?" asked Jack. He had been so preoccupied with the bomb situation that he had almost forgotten CTU's other reason for storming the ship.

"Negative," replied Alpha Team Leader. "Nothing here but empty gun containers. Looks like the ship's already been offloaded."

Jack should have been able to relax upon hearing the news. The bomb had been taken care of and the weapons had already been delivered. Even if they located them their capture would be relatively bloodless as they would still be in storage.

So why did he feel so uneasy?

06:57:19

Terrorist Base, Washington DC

Chase kicked the door open and entered the small room to see Carr and his second-in-command, Tarket, hunched over some charts on a table. When he heard the door bang open Tarket whirled round, drawing his gun at the same time and aiming it at Chase. The undercover agent aimed his own gun, an Elite, at Tarket in response.

Tarket was his usual disgusting self – a tank top barely concealed his wrinkled flesh, and what was left of his hair was tied back in a ponytail. However, despite his age, he was just as physically strong as Chase, if not stronger. From the outset of Chase's work with Carr's terrorist cell Tarket had taken a dislike to the recruit, a dislike which quickly turned to hate as he grew to detest Chase's attempts to befriend their leader.

Carr, on the other hand, was younger, about forty years old, but closely resembled a pig – his bulk, his small body, his beady eyes, and his squashed-looking nose. He was also very intelligent, masterminding the creation of his base inside the abandoned missile testing facility on the outskirts of Washington DC. Chase doubted his brains though, as he had already apparently fooled him for a while now into believing that he was not a government agent.

Carr moved round to the side of the table. "Put the guns away," he said tiredly, irritated by Tarket and Chase's hatred of each other. When he looked up and saw that they still aimed their weapons each other, his patience ran thin. "I said, put the guns away!" he shouted. Chase stared back into Tarket's cold eyes. He knew that Carr's lieutenant suspected him of working undercover for the government, but with no evidence to reinforce his claims, he could not convince his friend and leader.

Chase lowered his gun first, holstering it while at the same time throwing a rolled-up piece of paper onto the table Carr stood at. "Those are the blueprints you wanted," he said, a hint of anger in his voice. "Now let's talk about where I stand in this organisation."

Tarket had still not lowered his gun. "We'll tell you where you stand, and if you don't like it you can - "

"I can what?!" exclaimed Chase. "I've been running errands for you for the past year and a half, and I've got nothing to show for it. He turned to Carr. "Now if I don't get cut in – I walk."

Carr walked round the table and picked up the blueprints Chase had given him. "I know how doing these piss-ant jobs kills you," he said, "I...I know you want more." He looked up and turned to Chase. "You're gonna get more."

He began walking around Chase as Tarket finally lowered his gun. "A buddy of ours," he told Chase, "a guy by the name of Ricky Roberts, is going to be pulling a small hit for us later today. He's gotten together with a group of people and they've proven to be...pretty resourceful."

"I thought Ricky Roberts moved out west?" said Chase.

"He did," replied Carr. "The hit's going down in LA."

"So who pissed you off so much that you've hired a surfer-boy convert to kill him?" asked Chase.

Carr allowed himself a rare smile before replying.

"The target is the Vice President."

07:00:00