Chapter 13

Chapter 13

The Following Takes Place Between 6:00 P.M. and 7:00 P.M.

"Yes, sir, I do realize that." Tony did the mental five count he had to give himself when dealing with the people at Division. "As far as I know, the interrogation may have just gotten started."

Michelle looked at her husband, and remembered him saying that if had the people running Division leading him on a battlefield back when he was a marine, Tony would have felt fully justified to frag them. One at a time or wholesale, it really didn't matter.

Dixon slid in next to her on the landing leading to Tony's office. "What asshole from Division did we get the privilege of harassing us this time?"

"Right now, it's Alberta Green," Michelle told him. "But given the size of the mess were in, I imagine they'll all be calling at five minute intervals, each one just giving a slight variation of whatever the last one said."

"This is why I'm back in field work," Dixon told her. "The bureaucracy above me seemed to be full of arrogant pricks always waiting to tell me the things that I or my people had done wrong. I don't envy the headache Tony's going to have before we have the rest of these people are in custody."

"I'm pretty sure that they're saying that possibility would involve a lot of unvarnished optimism on your part," Michelle reminded him, "especially considering the time and manpower that were diverted to get a hold of Anna in the first place."

"And right now, I imagine there's at least one Division head telling Sydney and Jack basically the exact same thing they're telling Tony right now." Dixon said regretfully. "For these people, saving the world is secondary to keeping their asses covered."

Michelle cocked her head at him, "Syd doesn't talk about her time at APO...but between her and Jack Bauer, how many times have they saved the world by now?"

Dixon paused, and his eyes drifted to the side, just staring off into space. "Operation Hellgate, Chaos Theory, Trinity, the Area 51 mess, the little thing with that piddling drug cartel, Bauer's psycho ex-partner from MI6, the Russian incident, Rimbaldi super weapons..." he paused a moment. "Between the two of them, it's hard to keep track."

"You'd think that Division would clue into the fact that we have the right people running this op."

Just then, Tony hung up the phone and looked up. He waved to them through the glass box that was his office. Dixon just had the door open when he asked, "Dixon, you've been involved in these kinds of operations with Anna. How much effort do you thing it will take the break her?"

"That's new territory for us," Dixon admitted. "In all our clashes with this woman, we only had her in custody once before this, and interrogating her was a secondary protocol at best."

"Given Jack and Sydney's skills, do you thing they'll be able to get the information out of her without..." Tony left the implication hanging.

"Tony, I'd like to tell you that if anyone could do it, they could, but right now Anna thinks that she holds all the cards, which is going to make her less inclined to listen to anyone" Dixon told him grimly. "And this woman isn't Nina Myers, at least not in the ways that matter. Given how little we know about her, she'll probably smile while they start tuning her up."

Tony considered this. "Did we pull anything off the PDA we got off her?" he asked.

"We've got Chloe going over it with a fine tooth comb," Michelle told them. "None of the information leads to anyone we have already got in custody. "

"And I'm assuming that APO's in the process of going over whatever other technology they managed to pull off her at Harbor?"

"Doing it as we speak," Dixon told him. "You did make this clear to Green, didn't you?"

"Yeah, but they're not interested in hearing it at the moment," Tony responded. "Green made it pretty clear that she's holding both of them responsible for botching the original capture of Anna in the first place."

Given the reputation of Division of having hearts of stone, this didn't surprise either of them in the least. "I suppose the fact that Anna managed to get out of government custody in the first place doesn't enter into the equation at all?" Michelle pointed out.

"I imagine that Jack and Sydney will be making just that argument when Hammond or whoever calls them in a couple of minutes," Tony pointed out. "Their complaints will be filed away and forgotten seconds after they're made."

"Talk about fiddling while LA burns," Dixon said darkly. "I just hope Division doesn't do anything else that stupid before they get anything out of Anna."

6:05:27/6:05:28/6:05:29

What no one at CTU knew was that at that moment, Syd's thoughts were on the exact same subject. The one thing she missed about being in the field at APO as opposed to working a desk in CTU was that APO didn't have quite so much paperwork and chain of command. The entire chain of command could fit around her dinner table—if she really wanted to have Vaughn, Nadia, Kim, Marshall, Dixon, her father, and Jack Bauer all at the same table.

At CTU, there was the gigantic monolithic, nameless, shapeless entity known only as Division. The current in the long line of shifting faces of Division was a man named Hammond, a good friend of Ryan Chappelle, which should have clued her into the man's nature from minute one.

She did manage one interesting piece of information—the Chinese were still being themselves. It wasn't good enough to have proof of who did it, the Chinese wanted the people who did it. All of them.

Sydney shook her head and looked over to Jack, who looked just as happy. "You dealing with Division?"

Bauer flipped the phone closed. "No, just politics. I was talking with Vaughn. You know about the Chinese?"

"I heard. We've got the evidence of who's involved, what's next? They want us to kill the assassins for them too?"

Jack sighed. "There's a reason Marshall calls them the Evil Empire."

"Yes, because he keeps watching Star Wars."

Jack didn't even comment. He glanced towards the dock, where Curtis and his team were dealing with Anna's "preparation." He blinked as Curtis started walking towards them. "That was fast."

Curtis raised a gloved hand. He was holding a knotted condom. "We found something."

Sydney blinked. "She swallowed something?"

Curtis shook his head. "No, too risky. There's a reason drug smugglers occasionally die—condoms break. This we found in a cavity search."

Sydney winced. "My apologies."

Manning smiled tightly. "No need. I didn't do it. He did."

Curtis nodded over to someone who looked more like a longshoreman than an agent—and given the way he was dressed, he had probably been drafted from the peer. He was taller than most of the crates, and appeared to be heavier. He was big and black and had hands like Andre the Giant.

"I explained that this woman was involved in starting the new Watts riot and the breakout. Thankfully, we had a set of gloves in his size...he was very thorough. Don't worry, she won't bleed to death—we cauterized the bleeding."

Bristow had to keep from flinching in sympathy with Anna for an instant. A very brief instant. "She say anything?"

Curtis shook his head. "Didn't even wince as she was being mauled."

The flash disappeared. "Well?"

Curtis looked at the ballooned condom, then to Sydney. "Syd, if you think I'm going to open this one, you're crazier than Jack."

Jack rolled his eyes slid on gloves, and opened it, dropping the object onto the top of a CTU van's weapons kit. It was a simple, small bronze key.

"I don't know what it unlocks, but I have a goddamn good idea where we find it."

Jack nodded. "A storage locker at Torrance Municipal Airport. You want odd on what it is?"

Sydney nodded. "Knowing her, life insurance."

"Exactly." Jack's phone rang. He held onto it a moment. "Start working on that." He stepped away and opened his phone. "Bauer."

"Dad, I think we've got something off Anna's phone," Kim said. "The encryption that Anna put on this thing turned out to be cake and ice cream for us, and we managed to crack the last ten calls she made."

"What did you find?"

"The majority of the calls are the ones that Anna used posing as Julia Milliken to people at Congressman Palmer's and her house staff. But she made three calls in the last hour that lead to cell contacts we don't know about."

"Anything that gives us a lead on Sark or Wang?" Jack asked.

"These cells have some high-level firewalls that'll take some time to crack," Kim said apologetically. "But the reason I called was because Marshall was able to triangulate a location on one of the other calls that she made prior to her meeting with the Congressman. It's a biotech lab in the Dominguez Hills."

Jack pondered this. "That must have been where she was having the virus engineered to assassinate the President," he figured. "They must have needed a fallback when we took their lab earlier this afternoon.

"We also pulled an address off that's probably the place: Faraday Laboratories, 508 Ehrlich Drive. Anna made a series of visits to that lab over the past few days, the last one less than two hours ago. Next to the address are the letters SC. Dad, I think this could be one of Scarlet Circle's hideouts. "

Jack saw that Sydney was walking up to him. "You sent this information to CTU?"

"Yeah, they're waiting for your orders."

"Then I'd better contact them," Jack paused. "Great job, Kim."

"I have good teachers," Kim said modestly. "I'll get back to you if we pull any more relevant data from the phone."

Jack hung up, looked to Sydney. "Something else?"

"Yes. This is one of those rare cases where the dead are of more help to us then the living," Sydney told Jack. "Chloe got an ID of the Bad Samaritan who was trying to get Anna out of the country—a Polish national named Vladimir Weiskopf, who worked for a military base in Warsaw before the Iron Curtain fell."

"He didn't handle himself like a soldier," Jack reminded her.

"That's because he wasn't one," Sydney told him "He was a chemist, who has a doctorate in Medicine."

Jack winced. That couldn't be good. "What was his connection to the Pushkin?"

"According to the shipping manifest, he was only a passenger. But that's not why I think Anna dispatched him so violently," Sydney paused. "According to Chloe, he was supposed to be an expert on viruses."

"Of course he was. Did he have any vials on him?"

"No," Sydney told him. "But he had only come over on this ship, he wasn't scheduled to leave." Sydney pulled out a pager. "Curtis's men found this on his body. I've had Chloe check the last two numbers. One of them leads to a lab of the California State College."

Suddenly things were getting much clearer. "In Dominguez Hills?"

"Yeah. Why?"

"Kim pulled an address off the Palm Pilot we found—Anna's last stop was Faraday Laboratories. She must have gone there to get the virus altered for use on the President."

"We need to send somebody out there right now," Sydney told him.

"We're the closest field team, and I'm sure we can borrow a helicopter from the Coast Guard."

"What about the airport?" Sydney asked. "Anna wouldn't have gone to all that effort if there wasn't something very important in that locker."

Jack looked at his watch. "If you leave now, you can get there in less than fifteen minutes," he told her.. "Of course, that leaves us with one minor obstacle."

They both looked towards Anna.

"I don't suppose you'd trust her to be under my supervision," Sydney asked rhetorically

"About as much as you'd trust me, given the circumstances," Jack countered.

With a sigh, Sydney took out her cell, and hit autodial.

"Jack Bristow."

"Dad, it's me. I take it Kim and Marshall have told us about the most recent leads that have come up?"

"We know about the biotech lab in Dominguez Hills," her father told her. "You get anything out of Anna?"

Sydney thought of the key she had retrieved. "In a manner of speaking," she said. "When Anna was causing her little rain of destruction at Torrance Airport, she also left something important. I'm headed out to pick it up, but it means I'd have to leave our dear lady under less than adequate supervision."

"You don't think the Coast Guard, CTU and APO agents, are more than sufficient to…" Mr. Bristow trailed off, remembering who he was talking about. "I'll have a squad there in ten minutes."

"Good," Sydney told her.

"Nadia came out of surgery about ten minutes ago. Turns out the wounds were mostly superficial. She needed the blood drained from her lungs, the hole patched up and the lung reinflated. She should be fine."

Inwardly, Sydney breathed a sigh of relief. "Finally, some good news," she told Jack. "Nadia's going to be okay."

For once, Jack didn't bother to hide a release of emotion, and smiled.

"I don't suppose that means she'd be any safer if you transported her with you," her father asked.

"I'm glad she's going to be all right," Sydney said, and made no effort to lower her voice. "But trust me, the only way to guarantee Anna's safety would be if she stopped breathing."

Sydney didn't bother to add that she was certain it would come to that.

6:21:18/6:21:19/6:21:20/6:21:21

"There are conflicting rumors as to who or what started the chaos here in Watts, but the ripple effect is being felt across the city. Similar race riots have broken out in Inglewood, South Gate and Compton within the past hour, and so far, neither the presence of the LAPD or the National Guard have been able to staunch the bleeding so far."

The President knew that watching the crisis on cable news was probably the last thing he should be doing right now, especially considering that their intelligence was a few hours behind the facts, but he had just completed two very difficult phone conversations, and listening to the veiled criticism of the networks was a distraction.

The first had been with the Governor of California in which he had told him that, despite the spread of the violence to other parts of California, he probably shouldn't mobilize the military. The reason he had given was not wanting to violate 'Posse Comitatus', the legal action which forbids the use of the military on American soil, and which could lead to even worse strife when other Black Americans learned he was using the Armed forces for just that purpose. The reason he had held back from the Governor was that he thought was going to need to utilize them on foreign soil much sooner than that.

The second call had been a very politely worded argument between the President and the Chinese ambassador from the Los Angeles embassy. The Ambassador had stopped just short of blaming the American government for the death of their Premier, and the President had stopped just short of claiming the Chinese government supported the attack on Americans, but that was about the only positive thing that came out of it The President had managed to persuade the Chinese of holding off any military action for the immediate future, but he knew that the mood in Beijing was probably explosive right now, and unless there was some kind of miracle, they could be at war in a matter of hours.

Compared to these rather significant obstacles, hearing the talking heads on the networks claiming his incompetence in leadership should lead to his impeachment was almost amusing. He knew that this would lead to fallout of a different kind, but right now, his political future was the last thing he was worried about. He needed to lead America through this, and he hated not being the guardian of his fate. There had to be something that he could do.

It was with that in mind that he picked up the phone, and instructed the operator to connect him with CTU.

"Mr. President," Tony Almeida said. "What can I do for you?"

"Mr. Almeida," he said without mincing words, "Premier En Lai has died. I have just talked with the Chinese Ambassador, and he has informed me that the people in his government are preparing to go before the U.N. with an ultimatum to my administration."

"I take it they will be making the same demands you told us about earlier," Tony said.

"That's correct," the President said. "Tony, I talked with our own ambassador a couple of hours ago. He's taken the temperature of the general assembly, and he says unless we can preempt this ultimatum before they are gaveled back into session tomorrow morning, as many as half the nations could vote with them."

"Sir, how much time do we have?'

"The session is scheduled for 6 AM Eastern Standard time," the President said.

"And I take it that the people we have in custody are not important enough to satisfy the Chinese?"

"No, it has to be Wang or Sark," the President told him "Are we any closer than we were a half hour ago? The woman Espinoza, have Jack and Sydney made any progress with her?"

"Sir, as we speak, they're both headed to locations that will probably give us a critical lead."

"But you can't say anything definitely." President Palmer hesitated. "If I were to give shadow asylum to this woman, do you believe she'd give us either of the people we're looking for?"

Tony hesitated a long time before answering. "Not unless we guaranteed her safety from our own people," he finally said.

"I heard about what she did to Agent Santos."

"Sir, in all candor, Jack and Sydney have wanted to see Anna dead long before today," Tony told the President. "They're fully aware of the consequences of Espinoza's culpability, but they are doing everything in their power to make sure you don't have to offer her a deal. Anna knows this, and will use what she has as leverage."

The President knew that he had been lucky in regard to Nina Myers nearly two years ago, but now that the stakes were as high as they could get, he knew he couldn't indulge either agent much longer. "Bottom line it for me, Mr. Almeida, do you think Espinoza knows where to find either of our targets?" he demanded.

"Yes," Tony said without hesitation.

"And only complete immunity would be enough to persuade her to talk?"

"She's a survivor, Mr. President," Tony replied. "She won't give us a thing, unless she's convinced of it."

David Palmer knew he'd made some decisions that weren't very popular, and this one might cost him the friendship of the man who had saved his life twice. He also knew making this kind of decision was what had he'd been elected to do. So he made one.

"I'm going to call the Attorney General," he told Tony, "and tell him to draft a deal that she will find acceptable. I will give Jack and Sydney until the time it's drawn up," he said, preempting Tony, "but unless they actually has one or both of the men in custody, I will have no choice but to give this woman what she wants."

Tony paused. "There's no other way?" he finally asked.

"The wolf is at the door, Mr. Almeida," the President said grimly, "and right now, I have to make decisions in the best interest of the country. Even that means dealing with one devil to capture another."

6:29:03/6:29:04/6:29:05/

Vaughn had hoped to see his wife when he arrived with his team to transfer Anna, but when he got there Sydney had already headed for Torrance Airport. Instead, he talked with Jack as he prepared to head out to Dominguez

"You sure that this is the best way to handle her?" he asked Jack.

"As much as it would make me feel better to beat the shit out of this woman, I don't think it would encourage her to give us anything," Jack said reluctantly. "She might even enjoy it."

"I'm not exactly one of her biggest fans either," Vaughn reminded him. He hesitated, then lowered his voice. "I have a lot of links with people in the CIA's detention camps as well as you do. You just say the word, and she could just… disappear into one of them. Her body could never be recovered."

"I've thought about that," Jack admitted, "and maybe at some point, we can even arrange it. But for the immediate future, Anna needs to stay alive."

"Why?"

"Julian Sark isn't capable of planning something like this on his own, and Anna would have just as willingly stuck a knife in him rather than do a job of this magnitude, we both know that. There's a bigger fish involved, responsible for bringing these two together, and that organization's going to make a try to get her, overtly or not."

Vaughn agreed with Jack's theory, but he could see a flaw in his logic. "We tried something like that when we made our first attempt to grab her, and you saw firsthand how badly that failed," he reminded him.

"Which is why we're not going to run that play again," Jack said grimly. "Hopefully, Sydney or I will find some lead that will make any effort irrelevant, but we may need to consider this before too long."

"In that case, Jack, you'd better get moving," Vaughn told him. "Because the more time passes, the better the chance is that someone higher-up the totem pole is going to circumvent both us, and offer Anna the keys to the kingdom if they give us these people."

"Right," Jack headed towards the helicopter, along with Curtis and some other agents.

"Is the prisoner secure?" Vaughn yelled over the roar of the chopper. It was a redundant question, Anna had been shackled when they arrived, and she had been transferred to a bigger vehicle, where she had been chained to the wall, but he knew as well as anybody there that only after encasing the woman in cement would they be relatively sure that she wouldn't be able to get free.

"She's not going anywhere unless we take her there," the agent in charge told him.

Vaughn got into the back seat of the vehicle, pulled the door shut, and double-locked.

"I must be very popular to get this kind of treatment," Anna said quietly. "You must really need to know what I know."

Vaughn fixed the prisoner with a death-stare. "Actually, the main issue is trying to keep you in custody. The official word from on-high is that you are going kept secure until the passing of the crisis. Unofficially--"

He slapped Anna hard across the face. "You nearly killed someone who's family to us," he said in a menacing tone that he was not often capable of producing. "There's no government facility in the world where you would be secure from our wrath. So, for the next few hours, I would be very careful what you say and do, and remember that you're alive only because we give the word. Got it?"

Anna smiled. "I can tell you have been practicing your Jack Bauer voice."

He knocked on the wall in front of him. "Get us out of here," he ordered the driver.

6:36:48/6:36:49/6:38:50/6:38:51

If the chaos at Torrance Municipal Airport had died down since Anna had left little more than an hour ago, it was only by the smallest of margins. Firemen and policeman were still dealing with the carnage from the explosion in the parking lot, passengers were standing in long lines behind police tap, and the airport had grounded all planes departing.

When Sydney approached the head of security inside the terminal, a skinny man named Felton, she was only slightly surprised when he flashed her an evil eye when she identified herself as a CTU agent.

"I certainly hope you've caught the woman who started this madness," Felton said, with a certain amount of aggression. "And maybe now you can tell me what she did to piss the government off."

"Mr. Felton, I'd love to tell you the full story, but…."

"It's not in my job description, I know," Felton said angrily. "She only killed three of my men, and blew the hell out of my security system. It's not like it matters to anybody here."

Sydney knew this was probably a violation of protocol, but at this point she felt the more people who knew how dangerous Anna was, the better they'd all be. "The woman was a hired mercenary who helped conspire to develop a genetic virus that has been used against America at least twice today," she told Felton. "She's also a trained killer."

Felton blanched. "It would have been nice to know that before I sent my people into the jaws of death," he said snarkily.

And this is where I stop humoring local law enforcement, Sydney thought to herself. "Mr. Felton, I believe that Espinoza came to this airport to leave something in one of your storage lockers." She took out a plastic bag with the key in it. "Where would she go to store something?"

Felton looked at the key. "Storage levels for passengers on outgoing flights," Felton told her. "Second right in the terminal."

"You have any idea which one of the lockers these keys unlocks?"

"No, but in order for her to get a key, she'd have to have made a reservation," Felton told her. "She'd pick it up before she left on her plane."

And Sydney had a good idea who had made this reservation. She took out her phone, and dialed Marshall.

"Marshall, it's Sydney. I need you to come up with any plane reservations at Torrance that Julia Milliken made in the last twelve hours.."

"Hang on," It took Marshall less than ten seconds to get into the airport database. "She made a reservation for the 7:15 the Las Vegas about three hours ago,."

"She ask for a locker key?" Sydney asked.

"According to this, yeah. Locker number is 65. You know where to find it?"

"I'm already there."

Sydney went to the locker and opened it. Given all the bullshit that had taken place over the last twelve hours, she half-expected the locker to have nothing in it. But for once, Murphy's Law had decided to haunt the other team for a few minutes.

"What was in there?" Marshall asked.

"A computer disk," Sydney told him.

"You need my help getting into it?"

Sydney shook her head. "There's a laptop in the vehicle I came in.," she told him. "You can probably just talk me through it when I open it there." As she began heading back, she asked: "Has my father picked up Anna yet?"

"Vaughn's already come and gone. Anna's on her way to a detention facility at CTU as we speak."

"That would be more comforting if she hadn't gotten out of a place just like it a year and a half ago," An awful thought occurred to Sydney. "They're not considering offering her some kind of deal, are they?" she asked

"I don't know," Marshall responding. "And, not to be, you know, on your turf, we can't afford to worry about this now. Jack's should be arriving at Dominguez Hills any minute, and I've got half my server concentrating on that, and we have to go through this disk. "

Reluctantly, Sydney put the issue aside. "I'll let you know when I'm ready to connect with your server."

6:43:31/6:43:32/6:43:33

Like Sydney, Jack had been less than thrilled after just handing Anna into less-experienced hands, even if they were under the direction of Sydney's father. But while he had was boarding the helicopter waiting for the pick-up to arrive, he'd gotten a message from Chloe, who'd been rifling through the local terrorist chatter.

"About twenty minutes ago, a call was made originating from one of the cell towers in Dominguez Hills where Weiskopf, the dead scientist's name was mentioned," she told Jack.

"You back-trace the cell it came from?" Jack asked over the roar of the chopper.

"Not so far," Chloe told him reluctantly. "The call originated from a scrambled cell phone with a shifting algorithm that you find on only the most advanced computer networks. But I did back-trace to within one hundred square meters of Faraday Laboratories."

"What was the nature of the call?"

"Someone was coming within the next half-hour to pick up a package," Chloe told him. "The message was that someone high up on the food chain was going to be there."

Jack didn't need a map. "I thought that they'd already had the virus engineered," he said.

"Hey, don't ask me to understand the reasoning of terrorists," Chloe told him detachedly. "I'm just the tech support." She paused. "However, you should probably know that we just got through examining the GPS on Julia Milliken's car. According to this, Faraday Laboratories was her last stop before Redondo Beach."

Just then the pilot tapped Jack's shoulder. "We're less than a mile from the site," he told him.

"Set us down here. Backup teams should already be on site."

6:47:19/6:47:20/6:47:21/6:47:22

Under the overhang of the Artesia Freeway, roughly a third of a mile away from the building, Jack was looking at the Laboratories through his binoculars.

A large black vehicle was pulling just outside the front entrance. Two men got out of the back doors, one man got out of the front.

"All right, I have probable confirmation of the target," he said into his walkie-talkie. "Are back-up teams in position?"

"Copy. Teams Alpha and Beta are assembled just outside the southern face of the building." Curtis said into the radio

"Remind all team leaders that Wang is be taken alive at all costs," Jack told them reluctantly. "We need whatever intel this guy has."

Jack put down his radio and reached for the megaphone. "Li Chen Wang!" he yelled "This is Jack Bauer of the Counter Terrorist Unit! We have you surrounded. Drop your weapons, and--"

A barrage of assault weapon fire greeted his response. He ducked as the bullets pinged all around the concrete separating him from the shooters. "All teams, move in now!" Jack shouted into his radio.

Each of Wang's men concentrated their fire on a different direction,-- east towards the freeway, north to another block of buildings, west to the quad immediately around the building. which might have been more effective if they weren't outnumbered three to one. As it was, two of Curtis' men and one of Jack's were cut down before they had closed the distance to the laboratory

In addition to his sidearm, Jack, like three other members of the assault team, was carrying an M4 carbine, an assault weapon whose compact design and rate of automatic fire made it ideal for the close quarters fighting they were in. The second his men started falling, he shouted: "Down!", fell to his knees and concentrated his fire on the center. All three of Wang's men had had on Kevlar vests, so it took the better part of a minute to bring two of the men down.

Jack was about the open fire on the third, when things became a lot more complicated. Wang, who Jack had seen go into the building emerged, with an Uzi in his hand. Slowly, he made a circle, concentrating his fire in a circle. By now, the other teams were close enough to the building so that his stream of fire was doing some damage.

By now, Jack was standing again and had forgotten the last of Wang's gunmen. His attention narrowed to the man responsible for so much of today's carnage. If Wang saw him, he gave no notice of it; all his energy was concentrated on getting back to his truck.

"All units, converge on the vehicle!" Jack shouted into his radio.

By now the last of Wang's associates had been taken out, and the remainder of their teams was center on it. Still, Wang was almost to the door, when two converging streams of fire took him down at the knees.

"Hold your fire!" Jack shouted as he closed the last twenty feet. Wang had been shot three times, but none of the wounds by itself looked fatal.

The terrorist made a last attempt to reach his weapon, only to have it kicked away from him.

"You're not getting away that easily," he muttered. "Curtis, notify CTU that Li Chen Wang is now in custody."

Back at the airport, Sydney as of yet knew nothing of this. She had downloaded the disk on her laptop, and Marshall was currently helping talk her through the decryption process.

"All right, now hit shift-6-shift-A, and you should be in," he told her.

"Marshall, on the level of software encryption where does this rank?" Sydney said as she typed in the last commands.

"Not that high," he said. "But I don't think the goal with this project was to make it impossible to find, considering that she didn't try exceptionally hard to hide it."

Sydney thought there was a flaw in Marshall's thinking, but it died on her lips the second that she typed in the last command, and the first image began to flash. "Holy shit," she muttered weakly.

"What is it, Syd?"

"It's a computer-scanned document of a book," she told Marshall. "There are drawings and formulas here. A lot of old languages and symbols that I've seen far too often."

Marshall's mouth closed. "Syd, are you telling me--"

"I am, Marshall," Sydney swallowed hard. "This is out of Rimbaldi."

6:59:57/6:59:58/6:59:59/7:00:00