The hoards of commuters moving both up and down the stairs showed them that
the public hadn't taken much notice of the bomb threat. Nina made her way
down the stairs much easier than Jack did, and they approached one of the
unformed officers who seemed to be making his way towards them.
"Explosion was at 6:43, the train had left the station thirty seconds before. It blew out just as it had entered the tunnel." Jack nodded, and the cop trotted down to platform three with them.
"The passengers that got off at this stop?" Jack enquired. Nina was jumping down onto the rails with several other agents. Pieces of metal and burnt flesh were on the track and she was quickly disappearing into the tunnel.
"Many had already started or left for their next trains or taxi's." the cop admitted, "I haven't detained anyone."
"Any guess how many passengers were on that shuttle?" In the distance, police officers were rolling yellow tape around the platform entrance and pushing back the rubber-neckers.
"It's the beginning of rush hour, sir." the cop stated, "My guess is that train was standing room only like most of the others at this time."
Jack sighed. "Thanks for your help, officer." he said and walked towards the edge of the tracks. He jumped down onto the track and pulled his miniflash light out of his back pocket, and turned it on as he started down the dark tunnel.
The explosion had probably been in the latter part of the train as the back was blown wide open. The seats were charred, and sickeningly burnt flesh was embedded into them. Maybe seven agents were down on the track, the rest had had the intelligence to keep off the tracks and control the crowd. Four or so were bent over bodies, checking for pulses with gloved hands. Jack carefully made his way to Copell and Nina taking care to walk in a straight line to them, stepping over several charred bodies.
"We're going to need to get some powerful lights in here." he ventured. "We can't conduct an investigation by torch light."
Nina nodded, "I'm going to get someone at CTU to call in Fred Carrey, he's our best explosives expert." She slid through the narrow gap between Jack and Copell to walk back to the light at the end of the tunnel, using her flashlight to find her footing.
Jack decided to walk in the opposite direction, further into the train, where the next carriage began. The train had been parted here too, and the next carriage was a less mangled version of the previous one. At this end of the carriage more of the seats were intact, although the windows were blown out.
Jack noticed a little girl in private school uniform under a bench, there was blood seeping from a massive wound on her head, and one of her arms and legs were twisted at a terrible angle. On an impulse, Jack knelt down beside her, and placed two fingers gently on her neck. He couldn't find a pulse, but as he moved his fingers away she moaned.
"Mommy!" the tiny blonde whispered.
He heard footsteps behind him, and looked up as Copell approached, "John, she's alive." he told him. John leaned down and looked at the little girl. She whimpered, and tried to move her head, screaming in pain.
"It's okay, kiddo, we'll get you some help." he said, and ran back down the other end of the carriage.
Jack heard his heavy footsteps and then his urgent pleas for someone to find a paramedic while he carefully repositioned his flashlight so he could see all her injuries. "You're going to be okay, they're calling an ambulance for you." Jack placed a hand on her forehead, and moved the looser parts of her hair, taking care not to disturb any dried blood.
"Mommy..." she whispered again.
Jack continued stroking her hair, he didn't want to say anything about her parents and give her false hope. The urge to reassure her was strong, though. In his mind's eye she looked so similar to Kimberley, he could easily overlook the different eyes, the nose shape; it was the vulnerability that struck him, and he wasn't going to try and brush it off - for the moment, it was the little girl's best hope.
-24-
Jack followed the paramedics out with the little girl, awkwardly hoisting himself up onto the platform. The little girl had lapsed into unconsciousness when they'd been moving her onto the stretcher, her body's way of protecting her from the pain, and Jack was thankful for it. Once they'd maneuvered her onto the backboard, he'd checked the other passengers for pulses, movement, warmth, and found luckily that many were still alive, simply knocked into blissful unconsciousness by the blast.
Jack finally slung his second leg over, onto the platform when Copell approached from behind him. "The paramedics are calling for more ambulances, there's a good chance that the people in the front carriage are alive." Jack nodded, brushing himself off before extending a hand to Copell.
Copell gripped his hand and nearly pulled him back down to the rails as he climbed onto the platform. "It's a good job the train wasn't longer, or that he didn't place it any further up." Jack commented, turning off his flashlight and stowing it in his back pocket for the meantime. He began scanning the platform for Nina.
"It's a good job we're not expecting much forensic evidence from that wreckage." Copell commented.
"Are your guys photographing the scene just...." Jack was cut off as a camera charged and the tunnel flashed.
"Any guys with no first aid training." Copell commented. Copell was willing to save the human life on that train at any cost, even if it meant completely destroying any evidence. Fortunately or unfortunately they weren't expecting to be able to tell much from the flash burns, so having paramedics traipsing back and forth didn't bother them. Copell was also donating part of his force to help them.
Jack watched Nina approached from behind a corner at the far end of the platform. She walked slowly over to them, fiddling with her phone as she approached. Jack idly wondered how she managed to get herself back onto the platform in her skirt.
He was still staring at her when she got to them, and she followed his line of vision to her skirt and brushed it down self-consciously before talking. "Carrey's on his way, we'll have to let him past the rope line though." she informed him, sliding her phone into her pocket. She looked past her two colleagues to the stretcher wheeling it's way past the crowd and early press-photographers it went. "A survivor?"
"Some of the frontal carriages are intact." Jack turned and surveyed the crowd. He was trying to make out how many reporters were in the crowd, not many, but then it was only twenty minutes since the explosion.
"You going to set up a hotline?" he asked Copell.
Copell rubbed his hand across his chin, "Yeah."
"We have no affiliation for our bomber yet." Jack commented, "We're gonna have to sniff him out."
Nina was getting curious. "How?"
Copell was the one that answered, "We could misinform the media, see who calls the hotline and claims responsibility."
Jack shrugged, it was as good a plan as any. He nodded to himself, he didn't want Nina or himself to do it, as he preferred that the faces of his CTU agents remained off the television. Jack preferred that his agents didn't discuss their professions with anyone who wasn't a government employee, a policy that had doomed his own marriage. It certainly wouldn't help him right now to appear on television as, 'CTU agent, Jack Bauer, had the following to say'.
Both Copell and Nina were watching him with curious concern, which he felt perhaps Nina didn't exactly have the right to do, he'd been silent for a little too long. "We should call the phone company - have one of the FBI hotlines rerouted to San Amelia road."
Copell agreed with him, "I'll call for a few extra agents to man the phones, and I'll have Johnson do a press release."
-24-
"This is it" Nina tossed him the remote, and he raised the volume. The wide-screen tv they'd had brought over from CTU sat on a desk a metre or two away, and as he raised the volume, the staffers began to listen up to Agent Johnson giving their carefully worded press release.
"At ten minutes to seven this morning, a..." Jack pressed the top of the remote to his chin. Nina perched herself onto the desk next to him. She pushed her hair away from her face.
"It's a believable lie." she whispered, not sure on how focused he was on hearing the news report.
Nina drained the second half of her cup, and set it on the desk behind her. "If we hadn't been calculating it, I'd probably have said that was the time." Jack whispered back, reaching a hand behind her to support herself on the desk.
"Good call on that." She nodded slowly, she pushed back her hair again. It was a sign that she was tired. "You holding up?" Once again, a slow nod, her eyes transfixed on the screen.
Jack diverted his attention, Johnson was reading off the number for families to contact, next would be the number of the FBI hotline they'd set up. He listened to check the number was correct, and then eyed the row of telephone clerks they'd stolen off of the FBI switchboard for LA, there were no immediate calls.
Maureen Kingsley's face returned to the screen, and he turned the volume back down to an optional listening level. He reached behind Nina and put it down next to her coffee mug, near his hand. They showed footage of some of the survivors being wheeled to hospital, the less sensitive reporters trying to talk to them on their way to the hospital. Jack was reminded of the little girl.
Nina must have been too "Do you know how the little girl you found is doing?"
"I called the hospital ten minutes ago. She's stable, but they think she might loose her right leg." Jack swallowed hard, scratching the side of his face, he was getting tired and the phones still hadn't rung yet. "I hope she had some family that weren't on that train." he muttered quietly.
"Yeah, I..." Nina's cell rang and the entire room jumped. She looked at the terse faces around her and slid it out of her pocket, flicking it open as she did. "Myers."
Jack turned his attention back to the tv screen and the white house briefing on the president's physical. CJ Cregg was talking about a slight bout of the flu he was getting over, and Jack couldn't help but laugh at what was considered national news.
Nina took her hand away from her second ear, "Jack, it's Fred Carrey, he says he's ready to brief us on the bomb, do you want him to come here, or do you want to go to the station?"
He licked his lips. "Let's meet him there." Jack commented, picking his wrist up off the table to check the time. Coming up on half eleven.
"Fred?" Nina confirmed her caller was still on the line, "We're on our way."
Jack motioned John Copell to come over and picked his coat up off of the desk. "Our guy's nearly finished down at the site, he's going to brief us." Jack tossed Nina her coat and they started for the door, Copell told his troops to call the second anything popped up on the hotline, and trace all calls with the correct time. Johnson was in charge until they got back.
-24-
Fred Carrey had obviously brought as many explosives experts in as he could on such short notice. There was a narrow walkway he'd established that lead from the entrance to the tracks, and other than that the platform was covered in ashes and debris from the train. Officers were sifting through every last piece of the dust, and then packing up and passing it along to another officer to recheck their work. It was a painstaking, tiring and back-braking process - but it needed to be done.
They moved aside to allow a stretcher to carry a black sheeted body off the rails. Jack made his way over to the tracks, jumping down quickly, and then extending a hand to help Nina down, partially curious about how she managed it in her skirt.
Nina spotted Fred Carrey quickly, and made her way over to him. Carrey had certainly made himself a forensics' palace amongst the pain and death in the tunnel. He'd set up fluorescent lights on the walls, and several tech's were taking photographs and examining items with tweezers down here too.
He stood up from his spot on the floor when they approached, offering his glove-less hand for a handshake. He introduced himself, and Nina introduced the others. Carrey knelt back on the floor and shone his flashlight onto a piece of the train wall. "You see those holes." the extra light illuminated thousands of little holes in the metallic sheet.
Nina knelt down beside him as Jack responded. "They almost look like they've been melted into the sheet - and there's little debris." He shone his light across the paneling where a charred brown layer covered the metal, also potted with holes, "that must have been an add." He moved the flashlight back to the hole. "That type of blast, the melted potting, the residue, or lack of it....indicative of C4." Carrey stood up.
He moved back towards the centre of the train, pulling the others away from his evidence. "I'd need to do some chemical tests on the sheet, the very fine layer of residue, but I'd presume it's C4 until I tell you anything else."
He shone his light a little further into the carriage pin pointing a spot that would have been slightly in from the aisle. "I think that's were it would have been placed. In order to observe the pattern I've seen, I'm estimating a couple of pounds of C4, and we've uncovered close to eighty percent of the device."
"Can we see it?" Jack asked, although he knew only the basics about explosives, he wanted to get a vague idea of what the device looked like, it would give him an idea of what to expect of their guy.
Carrey pushed his glasses further up his aged nose and seemed to be considering his suggestion for a moment. He led them back onto the platform. They hadn't noticed a table that been set up along the wall from the entrance, out of the view of the public. Carrey snapped on a second latex glove. "Understandably there were quite a few briefcases in this morning's blast, but we found this one that had been blown apart, rather than incinerated." He passed Nina a pair of gloves that she snapped on, favouring someone he knew handling his evidence, he then passed her a chunk of briefcase corner, the rest of which was laid out on the table as though it had been opened.
"It's complex," Carrey's finger hovered over a tangled mass of wires in the centre of the briefcase. "We think he packed the case out with C4 and placed the detonator in the middle. Unnecessarily complex. These are Pentamax wires, millisecond delay - he set it by timer - top of the line, there's a couple of failsafe loops incase the signal is sent too early." Nina looped her pinky finger under a wire, and raised it a little, she pulled her hand away after a second. A thin layer of grease had coated her gloved finger.
"What is that?" Jack asked, holding her wrist up to get a better look.
"My guess is engine oil, may even be WD40. He wanted the entire thing to go up." Carrey explained. An agent came over with another inch worth of wire, Carrey congratulated him and tried to assemble it into his model. "The bag was probably placed in plain sight, in the aisle, in front of a seat, something like that - I doubt it was in a compartment or under a seat, looking at the blast pattern."
None of them had anymore questions. After a few seconds of silence, Carrey excused himself and went back to work.
-24-
Jack was just turning onto the very end of San Amelia road when his phone rung. He glanced at it on the dash of the car and was about to pull over when Nina reached for it, she turned it over so she could read the display. "It's FBI switch board." She informed him, "do you want me to answer it?"
Jack nodded trying to keep his eyes on the road. Nina pushed the cover of his phone down and pressed a button she hoped would answer the call, and it did. "Agent Bauer?" asked the voice on the end of the phone.
"Nina Myers," she informed the caller, "what have you got?"
"Oh, Ms Myers -it's agent Johnson," the voice sounded a little familiar, "We got a call on the switch board a couple of minutes ago - a sequence of beeps, they correspond to the numbers 43446." Nina pulled her own cell phone out of her pocket, went into the message area and turned it onto predictive text. "It was literally a second ago, they're just about to tell me what it spells, uh..." Nina had already keyed in the numbers.
"'hello'." Nina clarified and looked out the windscreen at the road. "We'll be there in ten." she said, and closed his phone.
"What did they want?" he asked, watching out of the corner of his eye as she plugged the charger back in. "Was that CTU, or.."
She cut him off, "Johnson - he says someone called the hotline, a sequence of tones, corresponding to the numbers 43446. It translates to 'hello'." she informed him, slotting his phone back into the holder.
"He's playing with us." Jack growled, he slowed the car to a stop behind another car
-24-
"Explosion was at 6:43, the train had left the station thirty seconds before. It blew out just as it had entered the tunnel." Jack nodded, and the cop trotted down to platform three with them.
"The passengers that got off at this stop?" Jack enquired. Nina was jumping down onto the rails with several other agents. Pieces of metal and burnt flesh were on the track and she was quickly disappearing into the tunnel.
"Many had already started or left for their next trains or taxi's." the cop admitted, "I haven't detained anyone."
"Any guess how many passengers were on that shuttle?" In the distance, police officers were rolling yellow tape around the platform entrance and pushing back the rubber-neckers.
"It's the beginning of rush hour, sir." the cop stated, "My guess is that train was standing room only like most of the others at this time."
Jack sighed. "Thanks for your help, officer." he said and walked towards the edge of the tracks. He jumped down onto the track and pulled his miniflash light out of his back pocket, and turned it on as he started down the dark tunnel.
The explosion had probably been in the latter part of the train as the back was blown wide open. The seats were charred, and sickeningly burnt flesh was embedded into them. Maybe seven agents were down on the track, the rest had had the intelligence to keep off the tracks and control the crowd. Four or so were bent over bodies, checking for pulses with gloved hands. Jack carefully made his way to Copell and Nina taking care to walk in a straight line to them, stepping over several charred bodies.
"We're going to need to get some powerful lights in here." he ventured. "We can't conduct an investigation by torch light."
Nina nodded, "I'm going to get someone at CTU to call in Fred Carrey, he's our best explosives expert." She slid through the narrow gap between Jack and Copell to walk back to the light at the end of the tunnel, using her flashlight to find her footing.
Jack decided to walk in the opposite direction, further into the train, where the next carriage began. The train had been parted here too, and the next carriage was a less mangled version of the previous one. At this end of the carriage more of the seats were intact, although the windows were blown out.
Jack noticed a little girl in private school uniform under a bench, there was blood seeping from a massive wound on her head, and one of her arms and legs were twisted at a terrible angle. On an impulse, Jack knelt down beside her, and placed two fingers gently on her neck. He couldn't find a pulse, but as he moved his fingers away she moaned.
"Mommy!" the tiny blonde whispered.
He heard footsteps behind him, and looked up as Copell approached, "John, she's alive." he told him. John leaned down and looked at the little girl. She whimpered, and tried to move her head, screaming in pain.
"It's okay, kiddo, we'll get you some help." he said, and ran back down the other end of the carriage.
Jack heard his heavy footsteps and then his urgent pleas for someone to find a paramedic while he carefully repositioned his flashlight so he could see all her injuries. "You're going to be okay, they're calling an ambulance for you." Jack placed a hand on her forehead, and moved the looser parts of her hair, taking care not to disturb any dried blood.
"Mommy..." she whispered again.
Jack continued stroking her hair, he didn't want to say anything about her parents and give her false hope. The urge to reassure her was strong, though. In his mind's eye she looked so similar to Kimberley, he could easily overlook the different eyes, the nose shape; it was the vulnerability that struck him, and he wasn't going to try and brush it off - for the moment, it was the little girl's best hope.
-24-
Jack followed the paramedics out with the little girl, awkwardly hoisting himself up onto the platform. The little girl had lapsed into unconsciousness when they'd been moving her onto the stretcher, her body's way of protecting her from the pain, and Jack was thankful for it. Once they'd maneuvered her onto the backboard, he'd checked the other passengers for pulses, movement, warmth, and found luckily that many were still alive, simply knocked into blissful unconsciousness by the blast.
Jack finally slung his second leg over, onto the platform when Copell approached from behind him. "The paramedics are calling for more ambulances, there's a good chance that the people in the front carriage are alive." Jack nodded, brushing himself off before extending a hand to Copell.
Copell gripped his hand and nearly pulled him back down to the rails as he climbed onto the platform. "It's a good job the train wasn't longer, or that he didn't place it any further up." Jack commented, turning off his flashlight and stowing it in his back pocket for the meantime. He began scanning the platform for Nina.
"It's a good job we're not expecting much forensic evidence from that wreckage." Copell commented.
"Are your guys photographing the scene just...." Jack was cut off as a camera charged and the tunnel flashed.
"Any guys with no first aid training." Copell commented. Copell was willing to save the human life on that train at any cost, even if it meant completely destroying any evidence. Fortunately or unfortunately they weren't expecting to be able to tell much from the flash burns, so having paramedics traipsing back and forth didn't bother them. Copell was also donating part of his force to help them.
Jack watched Nina approached from behind a corner at the far end of the platform. She walked slowly over to them, fiddling with her phone as she approached. Jack idly wondered how she managed to get herself back onto the platform in her skirt.
He was still staring at her when she got to them, and she followed his line of vision to her skirt and brushed it down self-consciously before talking. "Carrey's on his way, we'll have to let him past the rope line though." she informed him, sliding her phone into her pocket. She looked past her two colleagues to the stretcher wheeling it's way past the crowd and early press-photographers it went. "A survivor?"
"Some of the frontal carriages are intact." Jack turned and surveyed the crowd. He was trying to make out how many reporters were in the crowd, not many, but then it was only twenty minutes since the explosion.
"You going to set up a hotline?" he asked Copell.
Copell rubbed his hand across his chin, "Yeah."
"We have no affiliation for our bomber yet." Jack commented, "We're gonna have to sniff him out."
Nina was getting curious. "How?"
Copell was the one that answered, "We could misinform the media, see who calls the hotline and claims responsibility."
Jack shrugged, it was as good a plan as any. He nodded to himself, he didn't want Nina or himself to do it, as he preferred that the faces of his CTU agents remained off the television. Jack preferred that his agents didn't discuss their professions with anyone who wasn't a government employee, a policy that had doomed his own marriage. It certainly wouldn't help him right now to appear on television as, 'CTU agent, Jack Bauer, had the following to say'.
Both Copell and Nina were watching him with curious concern, which he felt perhaps Nina didn't exactly have the right to do, he'd been silent for a little too long. "We should call the phone company - have one of the FBI hotlines rerouted to San Amelia road."
Copell agreed with him, "I'll call for a few extra agents to man the phones, and I'll have Johnson do a press release."
-24-
"This is it" Nina tossed him the remote, and he raised the volume. The wide-screen tv they'd had brought over from CTU sat on a desk a metre or two away, and as he raised the volume, the staffers began to listen up to Agent Johnson giving their carefully worded press release.
"At ten minutes to seven this morning, a..." Jack pressed the top of the remote to his chin. Nina perched herself onto the desk next to him. She pushed her hair away from her face.
"It's a believable lie." she whispered, not sure on how focused he was on hearing the news report.
Nina drained the second half of her cup, and set it on the desk behind her. "If we hadn't been calculating it, I'd probably have said that was the time." Jack whispered back, reaching a hand behind her to support herself on the desk.
"Good call on that." She nodded slowly, she pushed back her hair again. It was a sign that she was tired. "You holding up?" Once again, a slow nod, her eyes transfixed on the screen.
Jack diverted his attention, Johnson was reading off the number for families to contact, next would be the number of the FBI hotline they'd set up. He listened to check the number was correct, and then eyed the row of telephone clerks they'd stolen off of the FBI switchboard for LA, there were no immediate calls.
Maureen Kingsley's face returned to the screen, and he turned the volume back down to an optional listening level. He reached behind Nina and put it down next to her coffee mug, near his hand. They showed footage of some of the survivors being wheeled to hospital, the less sensitive reporters trying to talk to them on their way to the hospital. Jack was reminded of the little girl.
Nina must have been too "Do you know how the little girl you found is doing?"
"I called the hospital ten minutes ago. She's stable, but they think she might loose her right leg." Jack swallowed hard, scratching the side of his face, he was getting tired and the phones still hadn't rung yet. "I hope she had some family that weren't on that train." he muttered quietly.
"Yeah, I..." Nina's cell rang and the entire room jumped. She looked at the terse faces around her and slid it out of her pocket, flicking it open as she did. "Myers."
Jack turned his attention back to the tv screen and the white house briefing on the president's physical. CJ Cregg was talking about a slight bout of the flu he was getting over, and Jack couldn't help but laugh at what was considered national news.
Nina took her hand away from her second ear, "Jack, it's Fred Carrey, he says he's ready to brief us on the bomb, do you want him to come here, or do you want to go to the station?"
He licked his lips. "Let's meet him there." Jack commented, picking his wrist up off the table to check the time. Coming up on half eleven.
"Fred?" Nina confirmed her caller was still on the line, "We're on our way."
Jack motioned John Copell to come over and picked his coat up off of the desk. "Our guy's nearly finished down at the site, he's going to brief us." Jack tossed Nina her coat and they started for the door, Copell told his troops to call the second anything popped up on the hotline, and trace all calls with the correct time. Johnson was in charge until they got back.
-24-
Fred Carrey had obviously brought as many explosives experts in as he could on such short notice. There was a narrow walkway he'd established that lead from the entrance to the tracks, and other than that the platform was covered in ashes and debris from the train. Officers were sifting through every last piece of the dust, and then packing up and passing it along to another officer to recheck their work. It was a painstaking, tiring and back-braking process - but it needed to be done.
They moved aside to allow a stretcher to carry a black sheeted body off the rails. Jack made his way over to the tracks, jumping down quickly, and then extending a hand to help Nina down, partially curious about how she managed it in her skirt.
Nina spotted Fred Carrey quickly, and made her way over to him. Carrey had certainly made himself a forensics' palace amongst the pain and death in the tunnel. He'd set up fluorescent lights on the walls, and several tech's were taking photographs and examining items with tweezers down here too.
He stood up from his spot on the floor when they approached, offering his glove-less hand for a handshake. He introduced himself, and Nina introduced the others. Carrey knelt back on the floor and shone his flashlight onto a piece of the train wall. "You see those holes." the extra light illuminated thousands of little holes in the metallic sheet.
Nina knelt down beside him as Jack responded. "They almost look like they've been melted into the sheet - and there's little debris." He shone his light across the paneling where a charred brown layer covered the metal, also potted with holes, "that must have been an add." He moved the flashlight back to the hole. "That type of blast, the melted potting, the residue, or lack of it....indicative of C4." Carrey stood up.
He moved back towards the centre of the train, pulling the others away from his evidence. "I'd need to do some chemical tests on the sheet, the very fine layer of residue, but I'd presume it's C4 until I tell you anything else."
He shone his light a little further into the carriage pin pointing a spot that would have been slightly in from the aisle. "I think that's were it would have been placed. In order to observe the pattern I've seen, I'm estimating a couple of pounds of C4, and we've uncovered close to eighty percent of the device."
"Can we see it?" Jack asked, although he knew only the basics about explosives, he wanted to get a vague idea of what the device looked like, it would give him an idea of what to expect of their guy.
Carrey pushed his glasses further up his aged nose and seemed to be considering his suggestion for a moment. He led them back onto the platform. They hadn't noticed a table that been set up along the wall from the entrance, out of the view of the public. Carrey snapped on a second latex glove. "Understandably there were quite a few briefcases in this morning's blast, but we found this one that had been blown apart, rather than incinerated." He passed Nina a pair of gloves that she snapped on, favouring someone he knew handling his evidence, he then passed her a chunk of briefcase corner, the rest of which was laid out on the table as though it had been opened.
"It's complex," Carrey's finger hovered over a tangled mass of wires in the centre of the briefcase. "We think he packed the case out with C4 and placed the detonator in the middle. Unnecessarily complex. These are Pentamax wires, millisecond delay - he set it by timer - top of the line, there's a couple of failsafe loops incase the signal is sent too early." Nina looped her pinky finger under a wire, and raised it a little, she pulled her hand away after a second. A thin layer of grease had coated her gloved finger.
"What is that?" Jack asked, holding her wrist up to get a better look.
"My guess is engine oil, may even be WD40. He wanted the entire thing to go up." Carrey explained. An agent came over with another inch worth of wire, Carrey congratulated him and tried to assemble it into his model. "The bag was probably placed in plain sight, in the aisle, in front of a seat, something like that - I doubt it was in a compartment or under a seat, looking at the blast pattern."
None of them had anymore questions. After a few seconds of silence, Carrey excused himself and went back to work.
-24-
Jack was just turning onto the very end of San Amelia road when his phone rung. He glanced at it on the dash of the car and was about to pull over when Nina reached for it, she turned it over so she could read the display. "It's FBI switch board." She informed him, "do you want me to answer it?"
Jack nodded trying to keep his eyes on the road. Nina pushed the cover of his phone down and pressed a button she hoped would answer the call, and it did. "Agent Bauer?" asked the voice on the end of the phone.
"Nina Myers," she informed the caller, "what have you got?"
"Oh, Ms Myers -it's agent Johnson," the voice sounded a little familiar, "We got a call on the switch board a couple of minutes ago - a sequence of beeps, they correspond to the numbers 43446." Nina pulled her own cell phone out of her pocket, went into the message area and turned it onto predictive text. "It was literally a second ago, they're just about to tell me what it spells, uh..." Nina had already keyed in the numbers.
"'hello'." Nina clarified and looked out the windscreen at the road. "We'll be there in ten." she said, and closed his phone.
"What did they want?" he asked, watching out of the corner of his eye as she plugged the charger back in. "Was that CTU, or.."
She cut him off, "Johnson - he says someone called the hotline, a sequence of tones, corresponding to the numbers 43446. It translates to 'hello'." she informed him, slotting his phone back into the holder.
"He's playing with us." Jack growled, he slowed the car to a stop behind another car
-24-