Jack hung up the phone and rang Chloe's extension.
"Chloe, where's Chase?"
"I don't know, Jack. He's not on today, not that I am either." Chloe had said the last part under her breath.
"Get him on the phone and transfer him to me. And Chloe, how are you making out on that IP trace?"
"We're getting close, Jack."
"Get closer!"
"You don't have to be so rude about it. Jeez!" Jack hadn't heard Chloe's retort because he had already hung up on her. 'And why can't he call Chase himself,' she thought while dialling Chase's number. 'It's not like he doesn't know his number. If he wants me to track down the original signal for the video, I shouldn't be wasting my time tracking down agents.'
Chase answered his phone, interrupting Chloe's mental gripe fest. She transferred him quickly to Jack, returning to her original task.
"Chase, where are you?"
"I'm, uh, just outside of Long Beach. Am I supposed to be at work or something?" Jack's tone had been abrupt, causing Chase to think he had angered him somehow.
Chase's confusion was clear through the phone lines and Jack took a moment to calm his thoughts before bringing the agent up to speed. "No, you're not supposed to be at work, but something's come up and I need your help. You happen to be in the perfect place right now. Well, almost. I need you to go to the prison and pick up Ramon Salazar."
"What's going on, Jack?"
"I don't have much time to explain. Start heading to the prison and I'll call you right back. I've got a couple other things to put in place on my end and then I'll fill you in."
"Okay, Jack. I'm heading that way, now. I should be there in about ten, maybe fifteen minutes."
Jack ended his call with Chase and went to Chloe's work station. "Chloe, I need you to narrow down your search. Hector originally wanted me to meet him at Griffith Park in forty-five minutes. He can't be more than a half hour drive from there. He'd want to make sure that he was there and set up before I could get there."
"Okay, Jack, but I don't think that's going to change things too much. We already have a small area where they could be based on Kim's location when she lost them. That time frame confirms the same area. The problem is that it's an industrial area and there are about fifteen to twenty probable buildings in that area."
Jack was getting frustrated. More so because he couldn't offer anything to speed up the process. He didn't even know if it could be sped up. Chloe's technical expertise far surpassed his and he didn't know what would be a reasonable expectation for the amount of time she would need to isolate Hector's location. All he could do was hope that she would find them and find them in time.
"Chloe, you have about ten, maybe fifteen minutes, before Hector moves out. Then, we have no choice but to go through with the meeting a Griffith Park. I know you don't want the last hour you spent working on this to be wasted any more than I want the time I spent putting Ramon away wasted. I need to know where they're at and I need to know now!"
"Jack, I've got something!" Michelle joined Jack at Chloe's work station. "I've been looking into some of the buildings in the area we isolated. One is an old factory that hasn't been used for about three years. Last week, it was purchased by a company called Ventura. As far as I can see, it's a front company. I haven't had a chance to figure out who really owns it and what it's real business is, but it doesn't have any history of manufacturing, warehousing, delivery or any other type of business that would warrant the purchase of a factory."
"Are you sure about this, Michelle?"
Michelle met Jack's questioning gaze with one of guarded confidence. "I can't be one hundred per cent certain without more time to investigate. I know we don't have that time." She paused before continuing. "Jack, I think this is our best chance. If I'm wrong we can still go ahead with the meeting. We won't lose anything by trying. But, if I'm right, we need to move on the factory in the next fifteen minutes or else Hector will have already left."
Jack weighed her opinions silently and couldn't find any other reasonable alternatives. She was right about the time they had remaining. He had no choice but to trust her instincts.
"You're right, Michelle. This is probably the best chance we're going to get. We can't waste any more time trying to find more evidence to back it up." Turning to Chloe, he added: "Contact LAPD and see if they can get a SWAT team to that location in ten minutes. Have the rest of your team stop what they're working on and get ready to support us with the com and satellite links.
"Michelle, I'm going to talk to Tony and put together a team from here. I need you to have a helicopter ready to leave now. And Michelle," Jack had started to head up to Tony's office, but turned back to Michelle before climbing the stairs. "Thank you." He proceeded up the stairs before she could answer.
Tony walked Jack up to the roof of CTU. He wanted to accompany him and had argued for the right, but Jack had won, reasoning that Tony would help him more by remaining and coordinating the teams through CTU.
Jack was in the air before he took the time to call Chase again. "Are you at the prison yet?" he asked.
"I'm about five minutes away. Are you going to let me know what's going on now or what?"
If the circumstances were different, Jack would have found Chase's frustration amusing, seeing in it traces of himself and his own reactions to random orders he'd received from past superiors. Instead, he ignored his tone and answered his question.
"I don't have a lot of time, so don't ask any questions. Just listen." Pausing to ensure he had the young agent's full attention, he continued: "Hector Salazar has taken Kate and demanded that I give him Ramon in exchange. You're going to bring Ramon to the Greek Theatre at Griffith Park. Go straight there and wait for me to meet you. I'm supposed to meet him there in about fifty minutes and then we'll do the exchange. We're going to be the only ones there, Hector won't allow anyone else, so make sure that Ramon is well-secured when you leave the prison, okay?"
"What do you mean, we're going to let Ramon go free? After all the work we put into putting him behind bars? All the time you sacrificed?"
"Chase!" Jack interrupted. "Yes. If I have to. He has Kate."
He had enunciated these last words sharply and they were followed by silence between the two for a minute. A silence broken only by the sound of the helicopter's blades slicing through the air. Chase quickly ordered the thoughts racing through his mind. "What do you mean 'if I have to'?" he asked.
"Look, I need you to go to the exchange point. In all likelihood, that is the only way I'm going to get Kate back. But Michelle has a lead on a factory that might be where Hector's holding Kate right now. I'm heading there to see if I can get her out and then we won't have to go through with the exchange. But we didn't have enough time to flesh out the lead and this could end up being a big waste of time. So, if you don't hear from me, I'll meet you in the south parking lot outside the theatre."
Jack ended the call with Chase just in time to tell his pilot to set down. He didn't want to get too near to the factory and tip Hector off to their approach. 'At least, I hope I need to worry about tipping him off. That would mean that he's actually in there.' Jack tried not to think too much about what it would mean if Michelle was right. He tried not to think about holding Kate safely in his arms. He tried not to think about the fact that this could be the end of his nightmare. He needed to focus on the task at hand. He needed to gather his thoughts and clear his mind of every distraction. He needed to be at his best or his nightmare might never end.
"Sir, are you okay?" Agent Baker, a long-standing member of the field operations team, broke through his silent musings.
"Yeah, I'm fine," he answered, wiping the sweat from his brow, frowning slightly as he noticed the trembling in his hands. "Let's get our men in position."
He secured his earpiece, linking him to his team and CTU, and took a deep breath. He searched for the place within himself that centered him and allowed him to complete the many missions he had completed over the years.
"Tony, what are we going into?"
"Okay, Jack. I'm sending you an infrared analysis of the building right now. You'll see there's one man patrolling the parking lot. Satellite shows him as a security guard so that doesn't really tell us much there. There are eight heat signatures inside. Two of them haven't moved since we've been watching which means one of them must be Kate. I've highlighted those two, can you see that?"
"Yeah, I've got it. Thanks, Tony." Jack was reassured that he had made the right decision in leaving Tony behind. He would have been a definite asset at his side, but no one else there would have been capable of leading the team at CTU to assemble so much pertinent information in such a short period of time.
"Baker, we need to take out the security guard quickly, but we can't hurt him any more than we have to. We don't know for sure that he isn't really just a security guard. Once he's out, we need to move quickly. They probably have cameras all around.
"I'll take this back entrance and two men with me. This is closest to one of the figures that might be Kate. We'll move to her as quickly as possible. Baker, you and the other two can take out the security guard and move in from the front. Maintain radio silence unless you find Kate, or get into trouble. Any questions?"
Jack regarded the five men around him. He felt in control of a situation for the first time in a long time. Not since before Mexico. He had directed missions in Mexico, but between his constant vigilance to his cover and the choices he had to make to maintain it, he had never felt in control. He had never had more at stake in the outcome of a mission before, but at least the outcome was in his hands. Other than wishing that he had never arrived at this circumstance at all, he couldn't have asked for a better scenario. With an arrogance borne of many years of success, he knew that Kate was inside and that he was going to get her out of there safely.
"Tony?" His tone seemed to question if Tony was still listening, but actually served to let him know that he was addressing him rather than the team. Tony would be listening until the mission was over. "I don't see any sign of SWAT yet. Tell them to hold back and offer back up in case Hector runs. I don't want to wait any longer and give them a chance to start to move."
"Alright, Jack."
"We're going in now. Let us know if anything changes." Turning to the men around him, he directed: "Lewis, Charles, come with me. Anderson, Burns, you go with Baker."
A/N: Don't worry, I'm hoping that the next chapter will be right behind this one. Just a few more chapters to go. My thanks to everyone whose hung in so far.