They'd listened to the tape of the last call more than ten times. The
sound guys had been in, taken the tape apart, but there was no
distinguishable background noise, and they'd given up and gone home. Jack
wanted to scream when Copell reached for the play button on the digital
recorder.
Nina's head snapped up to look at him.
"What?" he quizzed, reaching for the coffee jug.
She smiled, "You just..." She paused and eyed the coffee mug, Jack stopped pouring into his own cup, and moved the mug to refill hers, just as she tilted her mug to accept it.
"First tell me what." Jack beamed at her, clearly enjoying his moment of fun.
"This is blackmail," Nina joked back, testing ground for some banter, "You're withholding coffee from me now? I'm on my thirty-first hour awake and you're withholding coffee?"
Jack put down his mug and folded his arms with the jug in his hand.
"You made a strange moan sound. You happy?" Nina held out her mug expectantly. Jack smiled at her and poured. One full cup of coffee. She tossed back her hair again and rubbed the corner of her eye with her free hand, as soon as the cup was full, she raised it to her lips.
The hair refused to stay put, and she tossed it away again. Other than the six or seven gallons of coffee she'd drunk, the agents around her wouldn't have had any indication that she was tired. The only reason he knew was because he knew her shifts, and he knew her habits. He snorted.
Her turn to be confused, "What?" Her fringe strayed across her forehead again.
"You only do that when you're tired." he muttered, rubbing the elbows of his folded arms.
"What?" she asked, a quiet conspiratorial tone in her voice, "what?" she raised her eyebrows at him.
"Fiddle." Nina tossed her hair back again, arching her eyebrows and pleading him for more information with her eyes. "With your hair, with your face." Nina pulled her hand out of her hair, trying to be inconspicuous, and used it to support her coffee cup. The free strands flopped forward, and even Jack could see them as irritating, so he brushed them back for her, and held them in place.
Both of them looked curiously up at his hand. He withdrew it quickly, as though her hair had burnt him, and scratched his own head. Before either of them had a chance to say anything awkward the phone at the far end of the room rung.
-24-
The entire room went tense as the senior members of the investigative team crowded around the young man at the phone. Johnson pressed a button and the tape started recording, whilst another agent with a wired up briefcase began the trace signal. Jack placed a hand on the young man's shoulder and he picked up the phone.
"FBI investigative unit LA..."
The young man stopped speaking as five tones, the ones that everyone had heard several times over sounded over the speaker. 'Hello' in telephone tones.
Jack rubbed and hand across his chin, and took the receiver off the younger man. "Jack Bauer, I'm in charge of this investigation." Nina pressed a hand to her head, he may have been tense, but he was taking leaps she'd just as soon avoid.
A voice on the tape laughed, and then spoke. "Did you like my work?" The entire conversation was being played over a speaker on the switchboard computer. Everyone in the team needed to hear and analyse the conversation for themselves.
"You did a good job of destroying innocent people's lives." Jack deadpanned.
"I don't like you." The voice on the other end told him.
"Well that's a good job," he quipped back, "because I don't like you either."
"Get me a woman."
"What?" Jack looked across the assembled group at Nina, whose brow was furrowed.
"I've got a soft spot for a woman at the other end of the phone - get me a woman." The voice had softened a little, it wasn't really a gruff order.
"This isn't a chat-line I can't just..."
The phone line went dead. Jack passed the phone to the young man at the desk. "I needed at least two minutes, that conversation was only forty two seconds long." the agent running the tracer said, and reset his timer.
"He wants to speak to a woman." Nina commented.
"Yeah I heard." Jack didn't want anyone talking to this guy, not Nina, he didn't like his staff talking to murderers on the phone, there were enough twisted terrorist problems they had to deal with, without domestic terrors plaguing their minds too.
"I'm the only senior female agent..."
"No." he told her firmly. The crowd of agents, including Copell, dispersed, sensing an argument in process.
"I'm trained in hostage negotiations, undercover operations, I think I can handle this.." Nina protested, she wasn't sure yet whether or not he even intended to call in a female communications agent from the FBI, but she couldn't see why he would need to when she was right here.
"No." he was even firmer this time, he shouted his response at her. Nina glared back at him, wondering where the easy banter, even casual flirtation they'd had a few hours ago had gone. Jack raked a hand through his hair and refused to look at her.
Both of them were tense, Nina fixed her gaze at a point on the wall opposite and tried to ignore the questing looks of the agents around them who'd heard Jack's entire outburst. They were standing face to face, inches apart, and neither of them refused to move or even look at each other for fear of conceding their points.
The phone rung, and they walked the five foot they'd strayed from the phone during their argument. Jack didn't bother with the switchboard agent, leaning over the kid's seat so he couldn't answer the call. "Try to keep him talking for the two minutes." Copell suggested.
"Don't let him piss you off." Nina supported. Jack glanced at her, expressionless but she could tell he was thankful for her support.
Jack picked up the phone. "Jack Bauer." The familiar tones sounded over the phone again.
"I said I wouldn't talk to you again. I want to talk to a woman." The voice was once again aggravated.
"Okay." Jack passed the phone to Nina.
"You sure?" she whispered to him.
He nodded and took her once again empty and ever-present coffee mug from her hand as she raised the receiver to her ear. "Hello?" she spoke into it. Nina glanced over at the digital clock on the tracing equipment inside the briefcase. The clock was counting down, at the moment it was reading 1:39:42 and counting down quickly. She didn't have to keep him on the line long.
"Hello." The tone of the voice changed again, it was a little softer. "Who are you?"
"Nina Myers." she told the disembodied voice, as Jack pushed another cup of coffee into her free hand. She gave him a thank you glance, and continued her conversation. "Do you have a name?" She said it in a happy tone, trying to put him at ease, she was mentally running down the negotiating tactics checklist.
"You think I'd actually tell you?" They guy on the other end of the phone sounded a little agitated, possibly angry at her. Nina glanced at the clock, she'd only been talking with him for a few seconds, she didn't want him hanging up on her this quick - the technician still needed a minute and a half before he'd be able to get a trace.
She tried to sound friendly, "I just wanted something to call you - at the moment I'm referring to you in my head as disembodied voice."
The voice laughed, and Nina let herself breathe. "Or maybe a nickname - something we could call the case, Buffalo? Snake? Mongoose?" Again the guy on the other end of the line laughed. Everything depended on keeping him on the line.
"Alright, why don't you call me...." she heard him 'hmm'ing, he was thinking about a name for himself, a few seconds of silence ensued, and she hoped he would realise her tactics. "...Dave."
"Dave?" Nina queried.
"Yeah, simple, normal-sounding." The voice explained.
"Okay, then Dave." Filler conversation, the smallest of small talk.
"Listen, Nina..."
"Dave?" Again she earned a chuckle, and she glanced over at the sound tech guy, he was tapping buttons inside his case, pressing his ear piece to his head, she checked his screen, 45 seconds till they'd have a trace. Nina caught Jack's eye, he was smiling softly at her. He was perched on a table in the middle of the room, arms folded, slightly amused.
"I don't like talking to the switchboard number - it feels so impersonal talking to a number I got off of the television."
He paused for a second, Nina realised he was waiting for her to talk. "Yeah." she wasn't sure what he was getting at.
"See what you can do about getting me another number to call, I'll ring back in a little while to get it." He certainly seemed cordial, and as soon as he finished his sentence, he hung up. Nina held the phone, angry at herself for not saying anything quick enough to keep him on the line.
"How much time did she need?" Jack asked, getting up from his perch halfway across the room.
"Twenty-six seconds." The tech told him, resetting the counter.
Jack walked over to Nina and rubbed her forearm, "Better than I did."
"Yeah." she muttered, she took solace in that fact, and began making a mental list of things to say to keep him on the phone, tactics she'd been taught in training. Jack's hand kept rubbing, only reminding her that she wanted to crawl into bed and get some sleep.
-24-
Jack was sitting alone in the middle of the room. He was reading a report, scratching his ear as he did so, but he wasn't talking with another agent, and no one was making their way over to talk to him. Nina tapped the remote control against her shoulder and turned the volume up a little, giving her a little cover for her conversation with Jack.
She closed the six or so metres between them quickly and leant on the desk near his elbow.
"Nina." He greeted, acknowledging her was a sign he was willing to be distracted.
"What was that about back there?" She asked him in a hushed tone.
Jack turned in his chair to face her, letting the first few pages of the report rejoin the others. "What?"
"The phone call? Why wouldn't you let me talk to him?" Nina was sure he knew what she was talking about, and just playing dumb to avoid the conversation.
"I don't want these people, these criminals in your head."
"As opposed to the pleasant people we deal with at work?" She was incredulous.
"That's different." No support for his viewpoint, nothing to back it up.
"Different?"
"Yes." He swung back to the memo and began to flick through pages one by one back to where he was. Nina wondered if he was going to tear a page off it's staple.
"Different how?"
"These are psychopaths, murderers, madmen, a product of their environment. At least what we deal with..." He paused, watching the page, not reading, but watching as though it would jump and attack him. "At least they believe what they're doing, they know it's wrong."
Nina was glad she'd turned the volume up on the television, he was getting angry again. "Jack, we don't know if he's connected to any..."
He cut her off, but she had calmed him a little. "He's not connected to any group, he would have claimed culpability already if that were the case." Nina nodded, they agreed on this fact. They both sighed, resigned to the fact that round one of their argument was over, and that they'd had a lot recently with quite a few to come.
"So are you going to tell me what's up with you?" She asked him. "Is everything alright at home? Teri? Kim? Are they okay?" She prodded.
If it were any other one of his subordinates, he would have told them that nothing was wrong, that he was fine, and that his personal life was none of their business. He would have felt on high enough moral ground to feel like he could say that if it hadn't affected his work, but the truth was he was wound up and he knew it - he'd been taking it out on Nina and that wasn't fair. Nina was the only member of his staff he trusted enough to even name his family to, but he'd never spoken to her about anything that had happened between them. His discussion of problems was usually limited to 'Teri and I had a fight' unless something serious happened. This was something serious and he hadn't mentioned it to anyone, he was embarrassed by it.
"Teri and I split up."
Nina gulped, she certainly hadn't expected anything this major to be the cause of his recent attitude changes. Her eyes darted around the room, her superior was normally a very private person, especially around people he didn't know, she didn't want anyone to over hear. "I'm sorry." She admitted, rubbing her fingers across the wood she was sitting on. "How long ago?"
"Beginning of last month." He turned back to look at her. Nina nodded, if she thought carefully, she'd seen changes in him that long ago.
"You okay?" she asked him earnestly, touching his thumb.
"Yeah, I'll be fine." He mumbled, turning another page in the report without moving her hand.
Nina took her hand away and they sat in silence for a few seconds whilst he read the bottom half of the page he'd been reading before the conversation. Jack waited until he'd finished to the bottom before he spoke again. "Part of the reason I didn't want you talking with him was that this isn't a CTU case, but now we're involved, and now we have to stay involved."
"You would have left the FBI to deal with this?" she asked, she'd never seen Jack quit anything until it's finished.
He laughed into the report. "No." he admitted to her.
"The majority of the reason, was that you were being overprotective, Jack." She was forced to soften her voice so nearby agents wouldn't hear, but she was careful to keep the warning tone in her voice. "Just because you don't have Teri to protect anymore, doesn't mean that you should transfer it onto me, especially not when it impedes an investigation."
Jack sighed, considering how to apologise to her, something he certainly wasn't good at. He was saved from having to do anything by his cell phone ringing, as with all calls in and out of the office, the entire room jumped.
-24-
"Bauer." His customary greeting when answering his cell phone.
"Jack, it's Richard Walsh. How's the investigation coming?"
"We've made contact with the perp," Jack began, "he's..."
"Perp? Is there a terrorist connection?" Walsh asked.
"No," Jack said, "I don't believe so, several groups have claimed responsibilty for this, but we gave a statement to the media which uses a different time, all the groups, uh - Lambs of God, Arizona White Pride, PFT, they've all claimed they detonated at the time we released."
"But you think you've made contact with the right guy?"
"The bomb threat was made with a touch-tone system, like the IRA used to, and this is the only call we've recieved that contains the same..." Nina patted his shoulder, he covered the reciever and looked up at her. "What?" he mouthed.
"It's him." she said, and Jack recognised the hotline ringing.
"Look, Richard, I'd better call you back." Richard had to tell him okay before Jack could hang up the phone, as his superior, which he did quickly and they sprinted across the room.
-24-
Jack watched his second from a few foot away, safely outside the assembled crowd of technicians. She collected the phone off of Johnson and greeted the caller, almost like he presumed she greeted family members or friends, with a cheerful sounding hello. The five tones sounded, and the man spoke. "Did you manage to get another phone for me to call?" he asked her as soon as they'd finished.
"Yeah." began Nina, Johnson handed her a cell phone the FBI had provided them with for the investigation. They'd figured a cell phone would be better as they could take it out in the field.
"What's the number?" The guy on the other end of the phone line sounded impatient.
Nina turned the phone over to where the techs had taped the number to the battery case, and read it out. "Thank you, Nina." He hung up.
Nina pulled the phone away from her ear. "Time?" she barked at the tracing technician.
"Another minute thirty-five." He replied sounding slightly afraid of Nina.
"Is that phone good to go?" Jack asked, allowing Nina a couple of seconds to be stressed.
"Yeah - charged up, logged in with the network, we've got the frequency so we can trace incoming calls, no passwords set on it..." Johnson reeled off the list, pointing as Nina twirled the phone by it's aerial.
"So now we wait again." Jack resigned, taking a step back towards the centre of the room.
"You were right," Nina grumbled as she walked past him, "he's playing us." She went straight for the coffee machine and poured herself another cup.
Nina's head snapped up to look at him.
"What?" he quizzed, reaching for the coffee jug.
She smiled, "You just..." She paused and eyed the coffee mug, Jack stopped pouring into his own cup, and moved the mug to refill hers, just as she tilted her mug to accept it.
"First tell me what." Jack beamed at her, clearly enjoying his moment of fun.
"This is blackmail," Nina joked back, testing ground for some banter, "You're withholding coffee from me now? I'm on my thirty-first hour awake and you're withholding coffee?"
Jack put down his mug and folded his arms with the jug in his hand.
"You made a strange moan sound. You happy?" Nina held out her mug expectantly. Jack smiled at her and poured. One full cup of coffee. She tossed back her hair again and rubbed the corner of her eye with her free hand, as soon as the cup was full, she raised it to her lips.
The hair refused to stay put, and she tossed it away again. Other than the six or seven gallons of coffee she'd drunk, the agents around her wouldn't have had any indication that she was tired. The only reason he knew was because he knew her shifts, and he knew her habits. He snorted.
Her turn to be confused, "What?" Her fringe strayed across her forehead again.
"You only do that when you're tired." he muttered, rubbing the elbows of his folded arms.
"What?" she asked, a quiet conspiratorial tone in her voice, "what?" she raised her eyebrows at him.
"Fiddle." Nina tossed her hair back again, arching her eyebrows and pleading him for more information with her eyes. "With your hair, with your face." Nina pulled her hand out of her hair, trying to be inconspicuous, and used it to support her coffee cup. The free strands flopped forward, and even Jack could see them as irritating, so he brushed them back for her, and held them in place.
Both of them looked curiously up at his hand. He withdrew it quickly, as though her hair had burnt him, and scratched his own head. Before either of them had a chance to say anything awkward the phone at the far end of the room rung.
-24-
The entire room went tense as the senior members of the investigative team crowded around the young man at the phone. Johnson pressed a button and the tape started recording, whilst another agent with a wired up briefcase began the trace signal. Jack placed a hand on the young man's shoulder and he picked up the phone.
"FBI investigative unit LA..."
The young man stopped speaking as five tones, the ones that everyone had heard several times over sounded over the speaker. 'Hello' in telephone tones.
Jack rubbed and hand across his chin, and took the receiver off the younger man. "Jack Bauer, I'm in charge of this investigation." Nina pressed a hand to her head, he may have been tense, but he was taking leaps she'd just as soon avoid.
A voice on the tape laughed, and then spoke. "Did you like my work?" The entire conversation was being played over a speaker on the switchboard computer. Everyone in the team needed to hear and analyse the conversation for themselves.
"You did a good job of destroying innocent people's lives." Jack deadpanned.
"I don't like you." The voice on the other end told him.
"Well that's a good job," he quipped back, "because I don't like you either."
"Get me a woman."
"What?" Jack looked across the assembled group at Nina, whose brow was furrowed.
"I've got a soft spot for a woman at the other end of the phone - get me a woman." The voice had softened a little, it wasn't really a gruff order.
"This isn't a chat-line I can't just..."
The phone line went dead. Jack passed the phone to the young man at the desk. "I needed at least two minutes, that conversation was only forty two seconds long." the agent running the tracer said, and reset his timer.
"He wants to speak to a woman." Nina commented.
"Yeah I heard." Jack didn't want anyone talking to this guy, not Nina, he didn't like his staff talking to murderers on the phone, there were enough twisted terrorist problems they had to deal with, without domestic terrors plaguing their minds too.
"I'm the only senior female agent..."
"No." he told her firmly. The crowd of agents, including Copell, dispersed, sensing an argument in process.
"I'm trained in hostage negotiations, undercover operations, I think I can handle this.." Nina protested, she wasn't sure yet whether or not he even intended to call in a female communications agent from the FBI, but she couldn't see why he would need to when she was right here.
"No." he was even firmer this time, he shouted his response at her. Nina glared back at him, wondering where the easy banter, even casual flirtation they'd had a few hours ago had gone. Jack raked a hand through his hair and refused to look at her.
Both of them were tense, Nina fixed her gaze at a point on the wall opposite and tried to ignore the questing looks of the agents around them who'd heard Jack's entire outburst. They were standing face to face, inches apart, and neither of them refused to move or even look at each other for fear of conceding their points.
The phone rung, and they walked the five foot they'd strayed from the phone during their argument. Jack didn't bother with the switchboard agent, leaning over the kid's seat so he couldn't answer the call. "Try to keep him talking for the two minutes." Copell suggested.
"Don't let him piss you off." Nina supported. Jack glanced at her, expressionless but she could tell he was thankful for her support.
Jack picked up the phone. "Jack Bauer." The familiar tones sounded over the phone again.
"I said I wouldn't talk to you again. I want to talk to a woman." The voice was once again aggravated.
"Okay." Jack passed the phone to Nina.
"You sure?" she whispered to him.
He nodded and took her once again empty and ever-present coffee mug from her hand as she raised the receiver to her ear. "Hello?" she spoke into it. Nina glanced over at the digital clock on the tracing equipment inside the briefcase. The clock was counting down, at the moment it was reading 1:39:42 and counting down quickly. She didn't have to keep him on the line long.
"Hello." The tone of the voice changed again, it was a little softer. "Who are you?"
"Nina Myers." she told the disembodied voice, as Jack pushed another cup of coffee into her free hand. She gave him a thank you glance, and continued her conversation. "Do you have a name?" She said it in a happy tone, trying to put him at ease, she was mentally running down the negotiating tactics checklist.
"You think I'd actually tell you?" They guy on the other end of the phone sounded a little agitated, possibly angry at her. Nina glanced at the clock, she'd only been talking with him for a few seconds, she didn't want him hanging up on her this quick - the technician still needed a minute and a half before he'd be able to get a trace.
She tried to sound friendly, "I just wanted something to call you - at the moment I'm referring to you in my head as disembodied voice."
The voice laughed, and Nina let herself breathe. "Or maybe a nickname - something we could call the case, Buffalo? Snake? Mongoose?" Again the guy on the other end of the line laughed. Everything depended on keeping him on the line.
"Alright, why don't you call me...." she heard him 'hmm'ing, he was thinking about a name for himself, a few seconds of silence ensued, and she hoped he would realise her tactics. "...Dave."
"Dave?" Nina queried.
"Yeah, simple, normal-sounding." The voice explained.
"Okay, then Dave." Filler conversation, the smallest of small talk.
"Listen, Nina..."
"Dave?" Again she earned a chuckle, and she glanced over at the sound tech guy, he was tapping buttons inside his case, pressing his ear piece to his head, she checked his screen, 45 seconds till they'd have a trace. Nina caught Jack's eye, he was smiling softly at her. He was perched on a table in the middle of the room, arms folded, slightly amused.
"I don't like talking to the switchboard number - it feels so impersonal talking to a number I got off of the television."
He paused for a second, Nina realised he was waiting for her to talk. "Yeah." she wasn't sure what he was getting at.
"See what you can do about getting me another number to call, I'll ring back in a little while to get it." He certainly seemed cordial, and as soon as he finished his sentence, he hung up. Nina held the phone, angry at herself for not saying anything quick enough to keep him on the line.
"How much time did she need?" Jack asked, getting up from his perch halfway across the room.
"Twenty-six seconds." The tech told him, resetting the counter.
Jack walked over to Nina and rubbed her forearm, "Better than I did."
"Yeah." she muttered, she took solace in that fact, and began making a mental list of things to say to keep him on the phone, tactics she'd been taught in training. Jack's hand kept rubbing, only reminding her that she wanted to crawl into bed and get some sleep.
-24-
Jack was sitting alone in the middle of the room. He was reading a report, scratching his ear as he did so, but he wasn't talking with another agent, and no one was making their way over to talk to him. Nina tapped the remote control against her shoulder and turned the volume up a little, giving her a little cover for her conversation with Jack.
She closed the six or so metres between them quickly and leant on the desk near his elbow.
"Nina." He greeted, acknowledging her was a sign he was willing to be distracted.
"What was that about back there?" She asked him in a hushed tone.
Jack turned in his chair to face her, letting the first few pages of the report rejoin the others. "What?"
"The phone call? Why wouldn't you let me talk to him?" Nina was sure he knew what she was talking about, and just playing dumb to avoid the conversation.
"I don't want these people, these criminals in your head."
"As opposed to the pleasant people we deal with at work?" She was incredulous.
"That's different." No support for his viewpoint, nothing to back it up.
"Different?"
"Yes." He swung back to the memo and began to flick through pages one by one back to where he was. Nina wondered if he was going to tear a page off it's staple.
"Different how?"
"These are psychopaths, murderers, madmen, a product of their environment. At least what we deal with..." He paused, watching the page, not reading, but watching as though it would jump and attack him. "At least they believe what they're doing, they know it's wrong."
Nina was glad she'd turned the volume up on the television, he was getting angry again. "Jack, we don't know if he's connected to any..."
He cut her off, but she had calmed him a little. "He's not connected to any group, he would have claimed culpability already if that were the case." Nina nodded, they agreed on this fact. They both sighed, resigned to the fact that round one of their argument was over, and that they'd had a lot recently with quite a few to come.
"So are you going to tell me what's up with you?" She asked him. "Is everything alright at home? Teri? Kim? Are they okay?" She prodded.
If it were any other one of his subordinates, he would have told them that nothing was wrong, that he was fine, and that his personal life was none of their business. He would have felt on high enough moral ground to feel like he could say that if it hadn't affected his work, but the truth was he was wound up and he knew it - he'd been taking it out on Nina and that wasn't fair. Nina was the only member of his staff he trusted enough to even name his family to, but he'd never spoken to her about anything that had happened between them. His discussion of problems was usually limited to 'Teri and I had a fight' unless something serious happened. This was something serious and he hadn't mentioned it to anyone, he was embarrassed by it.
"Teri and I split up."
Nina gulped, she certainly hadn't expected anything this major to be the cause of his recent attitude changes. Her eyes darted around the room, her superior was normally a very private person, especially around people he didn't know, she didn't want anyone to over hear. "I'm sorry." She admitted, rubbing her fingers across the wood she was sitting on. "How long ago?"
"Beginning of last month." He turned back to look at her. Nina nodded, if she thought carefully, she'd seen changes in him that long ago.
"You okay?" she asked him earnestly, touching his thumb.
"Yeah, I'll be fine." He mumbled, turning another page in the report without moving her hand.
Nina took her hand away and they sat in silence for a few seconds whilst he read the bottom half of the page he'd been reading before the conversation. Jack waited until he'd finished to the bottom before he spoke again. "Part of the reason I didn't want you talking with him was that this isn't a CTU case, but now we're involved, and now we have to stay involved."
"You would have left the FBI to deal with this?" she asked, she'd never seen Jack quit anything until it's finished.
He laughed into the report. "No." he admitted to her.
"The majority of the reason, was that you were being overprotective, Jack." She was forced to soften her voice so nearby agents wouldn't hear, but she was careful to keep the warning tone in her voice. "Just because you don't have Teri to protect anymore, doesn't mean that you should transfer it onto me, especially not when it impedes an investigation."
Jack sighed, considering how to apologise to her, something he certainly wasn't good at. He was saved from having to do anything by his cell phone ringing, as with all calls in and out of the office, the entire room jumped.
-24-
"Bauer." His customary greeting when answering his cell phone.
"Jack, it's Richard Walsh. How's the investigation coming?"
"We've made contact with the perp," Jack began, "he's..."
"Perp? Is there a terrorist connection?" Walsh asked.
"No," Jack said, "I don't believe so, several groups have claimed responsibilty for this, but we gave a statement to the media which uses a different time, all the groups, uh - Lambs of God, Arizona White Pride, PFT, they've all claimed they detonated at the time we released."
"But you think you've made contact with the right guy?"
"The bomb threat was made with a touch-tone system, like the IRA used to, and this is the only call we've recieved that contains the same..." Nina patted his shoulder, he covered the reciever and looked up at her. "What?" he mouthed.
"It's him." she said, and Jack recognised the hotline ringing.
"Look, Richard, I'd better call you back." Richard had to tell him okay before Jack could hang up the phone, as his superior, which he did quickly and they sprinted across the room.
-24-
Jack watched his second from a few foot away, safely outside the assembled crowd of technicians. She collected the phone off of Johnson and greeted the caller, almost like he presumed she greeted family members or friends, with a cheerful sounding hello. The five tones sounded, and the man spoke. "Did you manage to get another phone for me to call?" he asked her as soon as they'd finished.
"Yeah." began Nina, Johnson handed her a cell phone the FBI had provided them with for the investigation. They'd figured a cell phone would be better as they could take it out in the field.
"What's the number?" The guy on the other end of the phone line sounded impatient.
Nina turned the phone over to where the techs had taped the number to the battery case, and read it out. "Thank you, Nina." He hung up.
Nina pulled the phone away from her ear. "Time?" she barked at the tracing technician.
"Another minute thirty-five." He replied sounding slightly afraid of Nina.
"Is that phone good to go?" Jack asked, allowing Nina a couple of seconds to be stressed.
"Yeah - charged up, logged in with the network, we've got the frequency so we can trace incoming calls, no passwords set on it..." Johnson reeled off the list, pointing as Nina twirled the phone by it's aerial.
"So now we wait again." Jack resigned, taking a step back towards the centre of the room.
"You were right," Nina grumbled as she walked past him, "he's playing us." She went straight for the coffee machine and poured herself another cup.