Extrapolation
Chapter
9
She remembered hearing birds. And she remembered noises, like people moving things. But she could never get her bearings. Every way was up and no way seemed to get her to her feet.
Feeling hands on her arms, she tried to struggle, but they were much stronger.
"You've lasted, but this is goodbye." Or had they said: "You're wasted, time to skydive"? It was tricky. She didn't want to go skydiving...
She felt something stick her and then a white hot flash of pain which didn't go away. She didn't know if she screamed. She may have, but after a minute it wouldn't matter... It was done...
If the saying was true and time flew by when you were having fun, then the past three days proved that the opposite was also true. Time fell to a crawl when you were waiting for something...or searching for someone.
After countless hours of searching with satellites and on foot, the staff of CTU had turned up nothing. Although no one had said anything specifically (especially not to those who knew her the best) there were questions among some of the staff with lower clearance as to if this was an efficient use of time. The murmurings of these individuals were ignored and the search continued.
Today was the third day. And they were no closer. No leads had panned out. Nothing.
Milo had taken it upon himself to compile all the information in the database into another file. It was a hard copy and there were too many gaps to name. The folder was sitting in front of Chase as he sat in the briefing room. It had everything from the events surrounding the Barringer takedown till now.
Chase had sent Angela home with Maggie that first night and the little girl had stayed with the Kesslers for two days; the family in mourning had understood that it was an emergency and Ellen had practically ordered him to send her to them. He'd been up for two days before he was ordered by Bill down into the dungeon (as he called the crib) for some rest. Edgar had commented that he'd never seen so much traffic to and from the sub-basement before. It seemed that almost everyone was refusing to give up on this...except those interns who didn't know anything anyway.
Chase looked up from the file and saw Angela sitting by Field Ops. She was a smart kid, he'd always said it. She knew something was wrong, and that her Mama C was in trouble. She'd found a photo album in her travels and had been carrying around her favorite photo ever since. She'd heard the banter of the interns; they tended to speak freely around her. And when they did she'd whip out the photo and stick it in their faces with a glare that she could only have picked up from Chloe. The photo had been taken on one of their vacations. Chase had the same picture in his wallet. Right now the photo was sitting on the desktop next to the little girl as she pretended not to watch Jack and Edgar work on their joint search grid.
Chase knew she was more worried than she let on... She was trying to be brave, if Chloe had been here she would have said she was trying to emulate her daddy, but she wasn't and it went unspoken.
Chase stood and closed the door to the briefing room. The buzz of people and computers seemed to become more distant as he returned to the table. He closed his eyes for a moment, trying to think of what else might help. Three days and the only lead had been a false hit on a credit card belonging to Vincent Turner. In this day and age one might think it impossible not to leave some sort of footprint, electronic or otherwise; some might say that it was impossible to not have some sort of record somewhere. If that were the case than the possible had been done...
Three days had been wasted on a wild goose chase and Division was not happy.
Turner had escaped during the chaos of the explosion, Chloe had been taken during the explosion... There were too many threads to this. Everything looked like it could be fit together like a puzzle, but they were missing the one piece that held all the others in place. His gut told him that they had to keep looking, but it had become increasingly clear that Division didn't see the same way he did.
Division wasn't worried about Chloe Agatha O'Brian. No. Their concern was that Turner was out there somewhere and the LA branch of CTU seemed to be chasing their tails.
They didn't care about the possibility that there was a connection to the Barringer Takedown, to them that operation was closed. It had been made very clear to Bill, and by proxy to Chase, that the resources being used to find Chloe were needed elsewhere. Four hours ago, Buchanan had been given a five hour deadline; after that the search would be ordered to stop. Bill had been able to negotiate it to six hours, but here they were with two hours left and still nothing...
If Chase had to say anything about this job, it was that working at CTU reinforced just how important a minute could be. And right now every second counted.
Thinking about it made it even harder to concentrate. And he needed to stay focused right now. Chloe was counting on them to find her. Chase knew that if she'd had the ability to she would have gotten them a message by now. If she'd escaped, at the very least she would have called someone here... That was a best case scenario, but he refused to think any thing ill had befallen her.
Chase had taken point on this operation. He didn't work in LA anymore, but he was an active agent and clearances transferred from one branch to the other...at least they did when someone cleared the proper paperwork; it had been the first thing Bill had done after giving him access to the system three days before.
Frustration and worry, he knew, wouldn't help the situation. Especially not right now.
They needed help...he needed help. And the best way to get it was to...
The telephone console on the table rang and he pressed a button.
"Edmunds."
"Chase, we've got everything set up and they should be online in a few minutes."
Chase pursed his lips and nodded. He was pretty sure that Milo could see him from the desk.
"Great. Thanks for the heads up."
The call was broken and he pushed the button again, turning the phone off.
They were ready.
CTU Division had strict rules about what different branch offices were able to discuss with one another. Usually these rules meant that information could be shared, but anything that might be sensitive had to be crosschecked and approved by Division.
But now, with the deadline drawing ever closer and a lack of leads, Chase was taking a risk. Division had made it very clear at the time he'd been captured that nothing pertaining to Vincent Turner was to be shared. Normally, Chase would have followed an order such as this, but today wasn't just any day...
Blatantly disregarding the order, he'd sent messages out and now came the results.
He pushed a button on the video conferencing equipment and watched as several other agents appeared on the view screen. He pulled out his cell phone and made two very quick calls; alerted that they were about to start, Bill, Jack and Edgar entered and took seats at the table.
Finally all invited parties were present and it was time to get started.
Chase knew all of these agents, but decided to start with introductions.
"Hi, my name is Chase Edmunds, CTU New York. I want to thank all of you for taking time to do this...Like I said in my message, it's not by the book, but its necessary." He turned to the side to look at Bill for a moment. "Right now I'm working out of CTU LA. To my left is Bill Buchanan, regional branch director, and Agent Marcus Collier, field specialist, I believe you and he are acquainted, Ms. Wessing; to my right, Jack Bauer and Edgar Stiles, senior analysts." Looking back at the screen he finished this tedious but necessary segment of the call. "Including myself and my three colleagues we have representatives from seven different branch offices on this call: From San Francisco, Walter Ultman; Roger Timmonds, New Orleans; Carla Wessing, Boston; Jimmy Dietrich, Chicago; and Saundra Quriers, Denver... I do hope I pronounced that correctly," it was pronounced 'criers.'
He took a breath before continuing to speak.
"As my message stated, time is of the essence. According to what files are still in the system, each of us were working with one of the 16 agents involved with the takedown just before they died or disappeared. O'Brian's now missing as well we've got no leads... Division put a cap on any outgoing information about the capture of Vincent Turner, but I'm breaking the order. They put us on a deadline before we have to cut off the search and we only have two hours left," he explained.
"When I got the message I checked the files we had here in the office, but you have to know, Chase, that most of them were lost when Katrina hit," Roger said, flipping through some papers. "All we have is what was in the database, but from my recollection, there wasn't anything unusual about Marsha's death...but all the files have been lost. Crime scene reports and the like," he sighed.
"Does anyone remember what they might have said?" Jack. "Someone following them? Weird messages? Feeling eyes watching them? Anything out of the ordinary."
Unfortunately it didn't look like it would be a very helpful conference call. They helped as best they could, but recollections weren't as sharp as they had been and the majority of the disappearances or deaths had taken place over two years ago. It was after everyone had spoken that Carla Wessing's facial expression changed slightly.
"You know... the last time I saw Logan, he mentioned that he'd gotten a call from an old friend of his." Until a few days ago, Logan Wells had been the last of the 16 Barringer agents to be reported missing. "Oh what was the name...? Jonathan? No... Nathan," she remembered. "Nathan something."
And suddenly something clicked into place. Everyone in the briefing room of CTU LA seemed to understand that this was significant.
Marcus was about to speak to his former colleague, but someone beat him to it.
"When?" Chase's voice held only a tinge of the urgency he was currently feeling inside.
"A couple of months ago. Four or five maybe," she said, thinking. "He didn't say what it was about, just said something about missing some... 'Fraid that I don't know what it means," she said with a small frown.
Logan Wells had been reported missing a month and a half after Nathan Chandler had gone undercover... this was exactly what they'd been looking for.
There were more questions asked, but no answers were found, she just didn't have them to give. The conversation was about to continue when Jimmy made a comment.
"Hey, from where I'm sitting it looks like you have a visitor, Edmunds."
Edgar and the rest turned to the side and saw a man opening the door. None of the agents had seen him before, with one exception.
Edgar stood up and tried to intercept the man. If he were with Division they didn't want him hearing the discussion and if he was lost...well they still didn't want him hearing this.
"I'm sorry sir, but I'm afraid the room's busy."
"I can see that," the man said curtly. "But that's alright. I don't mind."
Edgar could see this man wasn't just some random new hire who'd gotten lost. He wore a visitor's badge, but the analyst had seen his face somewhere before. He just couldn't place it.
Chase checked his watch. He didn't have time for this.
"Ladies and gentlemen, Timothy Meyer, director, CTU NY," Chase made the introduction quickly, hoping that the man would disappear if he wished hard enough.
"Hope I'm not interrupting your conference call, Edmunds," he said, it didn't have a specific tone to it, but to all in the room it was clear that he'd done just that. "If you'll excuse me one moment," he spoke to the agents on the monitor, and turned to Bill Buchanan. "I want him on a plane to New York." He indicated Chase. "He didn't give warning before leaving his post and I haven't heard a word in three days. He's on assignment back in the City, I need him there."
"And a phone call wouldn't have sufficed to tell me this?" Bill was skeptical about this man at the moment. He'd submitted the paperwork to Division for the temporary transfer of Agent Chase Edmunds to CTU LA from CTU NY.
Tim frowned slightly. "I came to collect Chandler's body. Going to bring it back home for a proper burial," he replied.
"There's no body to collect," Jack said speaking up for the first time since the man had entered. "There was a bomb on him and it went off."
Tim was not pleased with this. He wasn't a bad man, but he liked things to be orderly, and this most certainly was not orderly. His agents back in New York were now amiss from their normal schedules. He needed Edmunds back now, and as such repeated his earlier comment. "I want him on the next possible flight back to the City. We need him back."
Bill was about to say that he'd filed the paperwork and that it must have not gotten all the way to New York yet when the telephone console near Chase started to ring.
Chase ignored the conversation going on behind him, as Tim refused to let up and pressed the button, letting the call come through.
"Edmunds."
"It's me. Checking in here... we haven't found anything yet any luck with-"
"Yeah we might have something..." Chase paused as he saw another call coming in. "Tony stay on the line."
The button was pressed and suddenly Milo's voice was coming out of it, not even waiting for a 'hello'.
"We've got something. Just got an email from an account traced to the library over on Fourth. Whoever sent it cleaned up their tracks, I can't get anything off the trace other than it was scheduled to be delivered today... It's GPS coordinates."
Chase momentarily froze. His eyes widening, then narrowing as he steeled himself. "Ladies, gentlemen, thank you for your time, have to cut this short now. We'll be in touch." Without any more delay he slammed the control to turn everything off and ran from the room with the others on his tail, Edgar making a b-line for Field Ops2.
Milo was one step ahead of the game and had started to work the coordinates down with the software, but it was going to take a few minutes. As Chase, Marcus, Bill, and Jack approached he indicated the screen, as if to tell them he was on it already and for them to go, he'd give the address to them the second it was done.
Bill turned to the three men and made a sudden decision. "Chase, Marcus, go," it was a short and sharp. "Jack I need you at Field Ops."
Jack didn't say anything but followed Edgar's example and ran to his station. He would normally have argued, hell he wanted to argue, but this could be it... What if this was what it took to get her home? She was a survivor, Kim had been right. He logged the system up and waited for Milo's information as Bill picked up the phone next to him, speaking briefly to the man waiting on the line.
Chase and Marcus headed for the parking lot, only to be stopped when Tim stepped directly in Chase's way.
"We're leaving," was all that the New York director said.
"No. You're leaving. Get out of my way," Chase practically snapped at the man. He was already at the end of his rope here...
"I said-"
"Forget it. Take the position and shove it! I quit! Now get out of my way!!" he practically shoved the man aside and the two field agents made for the SUV outside.
The New York director would be gone when they got back, and Chase would be looking for a new line of work, but none of that mattered. All he could think of was getting Chloe out of danger.
It hadn't been far. The lot was several miles away from CTU and although not an isolated spot, it was shielded along two sides by a chain link fence overgrown with weeds and ivy.
The tac teams had arrived at the same time as the two field agents, and Jack had gotten the satellite feed up. The reaction for all was the same...
On the ground, lying in a careless pile, were bodies.
There was a silence among those at the site and those watching the feed. Despite the sounds around them, their silence was practically deafening.
Chase kept telling himself that this wasn't happening, and nearly succeeded in convincing himself. It lasted only until the on-site team approached the bodies and, to his own horror, Chase found he recognized two of them. An EMT ran ahead to check for a pulse. There wasn't one...
It was the same for all of them. There were seven bodies. Internally he was shocked, especially as he recognized the other corpses. He found himself just staring. Saying nothing. It was the same back at CTU.
The EMTs brought out stretchers and started to load the bodies onto them. But something was wrong. As one of the medics, a man named Fletcher, removed the sixth body from the pile, he saw something underneath the seventh victim...something shiny, reflecting the light, being held by something.
Chase had made his way back to the SUV to let the EMTs do their job. Seven bodies... there had been sixteen altogether, and eight were accounted for. This meant that there was still one person who-
His thoughts were cut off as one of the medics called for assistance. They needed help to move the last body off of another...
He'd been walking towards them and just as suddenly he froze with a shiver that felt like ice rushing down his spine. His breath caught as he stared, frozen to the spot, unable to make himself move.
The medics were rushing. Jack was intently focused on his computer screen as the scene played out. What the hell was going on down there? He couldn't tell from the feed, so he zoomed in and watched as the picture refocused.
Chase was standing still as a board. Not moving.
Jack suddenly had a bad feeling. His eyes slowly moved from the image of Chase to the group of EMTs who'd congregated around the seventh body.
It was almost as if it was playing out in slow motion. They'd picked the body up, and the shadow obscured the light, temporarily making it impossible to see what the medics were looking at. But as the body was moved to the waiting stretcher he felt a lump form in his throat.
"...no."
Lying on the ground, unmoving, eyes closed, was the bruised and beaten body of Chloe O'Brian...the necklace she always wore, broken and tangled in her hair.
