End of chapter now updated!
Doubt Saturday, 06:20 pm LT, Bakersfield
Jack stood before the black SUV of these five men. He was leaning against the side of his and Audrey's jeep. The front passenger's door stood open. She was sitting there, right next to him.
"Do you really want to watch this?", he asked her.
"Absolutely.", she answered, looking at the black car. They had dragged the bodies of the dead soldiers there and had taken a few of their weapons. As they had searched them, they had even found a satellite phone. To their both surprise it was charged and working.
"They're not allowed to find out something's missing. Neither the phone nor the fuel.", he remarked.
"I know.", Audrey answered. She held the phone in her hands while Jack took out a lighter and went over to the other's car. They had drained the rest of the other's fuel to use it for their own car. A few gallons Jack had poured over their car and the dead bodies. He had opened one of the side windows and threw the burning lighter inside.
Soon the spilled diesel fuel and the clothes of these men caught fire.
He and Audrey stayed there and watched it burn for a few moments.
"That's weird.", Audrey remarked
"What's weird?"
"That they are still here. I mean… this place… is contaminated by the fallout all over. I know what they taught us in DOD, Jack. Even if we get out of here we're most likely already contaminated with a harmful radiation dose." She sighed.
Jack understood her every thought. He had had a strange feeling, too, all this time. Something was wrong in the picture. Audrey had dared to speak it out loud. "Go ahead.", he said to her.
"I don't have a clue, Jack. It was just a feeling."
He nodded, understandingly. "Let's get going. We'll discuss this on the way. They'll probably come here when they see the smoke." He got in and they started to travel again.
This time he took a road that lead straight south. West simply didn't seem to be such a good idea any more.
Dark clouds were still hanging over their heads, but they weren't the ones caused by that explosion. It was just a simple bad weather phase.
"Do we have a street map here?", Jack asked Audrey.
She opened the glove compartment and started to rummage through its contents. A few moments later she pulled an old street map out, reading the date. "1996… that's…", she took a deep breath and held it, "going to be funny."
Jack smiled at her black humor. "Let's see where this road leads to."
"We're heading southeast… towards Soda Lake and Taft… you could thereafter join highway 5 again." Audrey sighed and kept her finger at the map, at their actual position. "You know, the other one would have led us directly to San Luis."
Jack looked west again. Behind that little mountain ridge must somewhere be San Luis. He had never driven that road before. Actually he had only been to San Luis once in his life, during his time at CTU, for an on-site inspection of the Diablo Canyon nuclear power plant. He hadn't liked the city back there, he remembered. Nina had been there with him….
He decided to focus on the street again. Today was not the day to get absorbed in strange memories.
But the thought about the nuclear power plant didn't really get out of his mind. What if…?
Jack stopped the car in the middle of the road. It didn't matter anyway, they were all alone out here.
"What is it?", Audrey asked him, concerned.
"You had that strange feeling to…", he began. "What if this was no nuclear attack?", he asked her.
She thought about it for a moment. "You said yourself that you saw a mushroom cloud rising. And there was an EMP."
"That's right, but any strong enough bomb could form such a cloud. An EMP can be triggered without a bomb… but" He let his thoughts wander even further. "What if that a clean fission bomb? Without that loads of fallout?"
Audrey leant back and thought about it, too. "I can't find any sense in that, jack. Not at all. If they really set off this bomb between Bakersfield and Fresno, what could they possible harm with it? They didn't take down the city, did they?"
"No, directly."
"Okay. But they would have taken both cities down if they were using a dirty bomb. We don't know that Jack, but that's the only thing that makes sense to me. Maybe it's that what they want."
He shook his head no. "They wouldn't have stayed then, Audrey. They didn't look suicidal. I can't get rid of the feeling that there's something else behind all this. Give me the map."
She handed him the old street map.
He began to measure distances and bearings.
"What are you looking for?", she curiously asked.
"As you mentioned San Luis before, the nuclear power plant came across my mind…", he murmured, ripped a less important page out of the booklet and used it to measure a straight line distance.
"Go on." Audrey peeked at the map.
"There are two rings around each American nuclear power plant. One at a distance of 25 miles, the other 75. On each ring there are 36 stations, measuring radioactivity. They're part of the safety net, early warning of radiation emissions."
Audrey got even more interested now. "Do they work without electrical power? Or were they even destroyed by the EMP?"
He shook his head no. "No, I think they should be working. They were analogue gauges the last time I saw them."
He kept working on the map, until he finally found the point he had been looking for. "Here's one. Sector 9. We could reach it within one hour if we want to."
Jack looked up from the map, into Audrey's eyes. His view was asking her, if she wanted to go along with this. "We don't have to.", he silently added.
She thought about it for a moment. "Maybe we don't like what we find.", she murmured.
Jack nodded. "Could be. But then at least we know it."
She looked at the point at the map. It was somewhere in the wilderness. "Promise me…", she hesitatingly said, "That you won't tell me…. If it's very bad.", she begged him.
He understood her fear. It was easier to run around in a world that was maybe a bit contaminated. But it was unbearable to run around in a place where one knew it was a death sentence to breathe the air and to touch anything.
"I promise, I won't tell you.", he softly answered.
She was satisfied. "Okay, then let's go."
-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-o-
Chloe sat at her workstation and tried to restore at least some of the data they had lost during the blackout. But her mind was far, far away. Morris and their child were at home. She had still not had time to go back there. The last time she had phoned them had been before the blackout. In the meantime she got more and more worried about them. Another part of her mind was worrying about Jack. She had tried to call him but all the mobile networks were down. The last thing she knew was that he had been together with somebody of CTU Los Angeles. She had tried to call them, twice, but hadn't got through. Phone lines were reserved for national security matters.
She picked up her phone right away as it rang. "O Brian", she said.
"Mrs. O Brian, this is Secretary of Defense Heller.", the other voice said.
"Sir, what can I do for you?", she asked him. It was absolutely strange that he called her. He had never done that before.
"President Taylor informed me about the… pardon for Bauer, that you requested.", he began.
She didn't know what to reply on this, so she said nothing.
Heller was in the bunker, using a secure landline in one of the private offices. He made sure again that nobody was in the room, before he asked her, "Where is Bauer now?"
"I have no idea.", she answered, "The power blackout cut off our last call, yesterday. Actually I was going to ask you what the president did to him afterwards."
Heller was disillusioned. He had really hoped Bauer would have called Chloe for assistance already. He knew that she was the only one who he trusted.
What if he and Audrey hadn't managed to get out of Bakersfield- or even worse, what if Bauer hadn't even managed to get to her?
"Nothing. We didn't hear anything from him ever since. Call me if you hear anything.", he told her.
Chloe sighed, "Alright, Sir."
He hung up and leant back into the chair, drumming his fingers on the table. Another possibility came across his mind. Bauer had no reason to get back with Audrey. He might take her and just leave.
This idea was even worse to him than seeing Audrey dead. O Brian couldn't be trusted. She had helped Bauer too often before.
He took his phone again and called CTU Director Wellington.
"Mr. Secretary?", he answered.
Heller got to the point, straight up. "Did Mrs. O Brian have any contact with Bauer since yesterday?"
"No Sir. That can be ruled out."
"Thank you. Keep monitoring.", Heller answered, ended the call.
He sighed deeply as he put the receiver away. In the end, the calls had been senseless. Bauer hadn't reported back. They were either dead or even gone.
A wave of sadness came over him. Audrey was slipping away from him- again.