Chapter 21

The Following Takes Place Between 2:00 A.M. and 3:00 A.M.

When Jack Bauer had told Sydney's father he was sending a team out, he had neglected to mention that he would be leading it. He was effectively leaving CTU leaderless, but at this point he didn't give a shit. Let Division complain, let the President have him fired. The woman he loved and her sister were in mortal danger, and he couldn't sit around the base, waiting for Vaughn and Mr. Bristow to do the hard stuff.

Jack marched along the main floor of CTU, body armor strapped on, and enough spare ammunition to kill Sloane's men twice over.

Marcus looked up from a computer monitor to see Jack with that look in his eye—the first time he saw it, Julian Sark had escaped after helping to capture Anna Espinoza. That was a day that Dixon was pure and truly frightened that Jack Bauer would kill someone. This day, he knew someone would be dying within the hour.

Dixon stepped away from the monitor to incept Jack, only Bauer kept moving, and Marcus moved to keep stride. Before the APO many could open his mouth, Jack said, "Marcus, you're in charge. Michelle's in no condition to take command right now, and we have a lead on Sydney's location."

"Jack, we need you here right now. Vaughn can handle it, and Sydney's father is already on site. He can—"

Bauer wheeled around, blocking Dixon's path, forcing him to backpedal as Jack spoke in a calm, even, and deadly voice. "Listen to me very carefully. I am going to be there when Sydney is rescued, and I am going to make any survivors tell me where Nadia is. I don't want you to get in my way—that just means I'll have to put Kim in charge."

Jack turned on his heel and kept moving briskly. Kim caught sight of him and joined him on his walk to the elevator. "Dad. I made certain that a full combat package is on the helicopter, and the engine is already hot. From the Satphotos, we think there could be as many a dozen men on site, and I think they have assault rifles."

"Okay," he acknowledge, hitting the elevator button. The doors opened immediately and he stepped inside, stabbing the button to the roof. "Dixon is in command, and I want you to look in on Michelle every now and then. If she's able, I want her back in charge at once. We need everyone we can get."

Kim nodded. "And, and dad...bring Nadia back."

"I will."

Now, as the helicopter circled in the middle of finding a place to land, Jack had heard gunfire, which meant that either Mr. Bristow had jumped the gun (unlikely) or that something had gone wrong. He grabbed the radio and yelled, "This is Bauer, what's happening?"

"Jack, it's me," Mr. Bristow said.

"What the hell's going on?"

"I'm not certain. None of our people have engaged the target. From my position, the shots sound rather frantic"

Bauer smiled. "Sounds like your daughter got loose."

"There may be another problem. Couple of minutes ago, I saw someone to do cannonball in the Pacific. We'd better hurry before she becomes a fish in a barrel," Mr. Bristow said. "How far out are you?"

"Less than two minutes."

Despite what her would-be assassins might have thought, Sydney had not gone into the drink on a whim. She had only gotten a brief look at her surroundings, but it was long enough to get a lay of the land. On the far western side of the pier was a strip of the road. She knew she could hold her breath five minutes, which was long enough to get from one side of the docks to the other., and if she stayed under the pier, whatever goons Sloane had wouldn't be able to get a shot off. There was a possibility that they would have boats, of course, but it would take them a couple of minutes to get into a position where they'd be able to fire at her. She also figured that given Sloane's orders, they wouldn't be shooting to kill, which would give her the slightest of edges.

This didn't encourage her much, when from her extreme right, she heard the sound of an outboard motor being revved up. Trying not think of what might happen if things continued to deteriorate, she tried to lengthen her stroke.

2:03:36/2:03:37/2:03:38

Because of his previous location and the satellite pictures, he was getting from CTU, Jack Bristow had a much better idea of what Lamont's Point looked like then his daughter did, and right now he was seeing that the body of troops Sloane had assembled was heading out to cover the waterfront. From the radio, he knew that Bauer was approaching by air, he was going to have to handle things by land.

His backup, however, was still getting into position, and the only person in the car with him was Erin Driscoll, who despite having spilled her guts less than half an hour ago, he wouldn't trust with a slingshot, much less a P7 pistol.

Come to think of it, I wouldn't have trusted her with either even before she turned traitor.

Then he got an idea. He knew that there was an excellent chance it could get both of them killed, but he also knew that he didn't have much in the way of options right now. He took out his service weapon, and trained it on Driscoll.

"Please tell me than in all your years of middle management, you at least know how to drive a stick shift," he told her sternly.

It took Driscoll a few seconds to understand the question. "What are you thinking?"

"I don't know if there's a chance your daughter can be saved," Mr. Bristow told her bluntly. "However, I'm appealing to that perversion that you consider motherly love to help me save my own daughter. It might end up saving the world, too, but since that's a concept I don't believe you can get your head around, focus on saving my daughter." He unlocked her cuffs. "Get into the front seat."

Driscoll seemed to be getting the picture. "You're serious?"

"Do I look like I'm capable of joking?" Sydney's father said as he cuffed her left hand to the steering wheel. "Keep in mind, if you fuck this up, we're both dead."

He then focused his attention on removing Uzi and a clip from the weapons section in the front of the car. He worked the slide and his eyes focused on the target so hard, he might have tunnel visioned on it.

"Go," he ordered.

The helicopter ended up circling a stretch of highway less than fifty feet away from the target area.

"Tell all ground units that we'll converge on the waterfront," Jack yelled as he got out of the helicopter. "Prepare to take out any targets approaching by sea."

The second he started to order his men forward, a stream of automatic weapon fire came in their direction. Jack hit the dirt, and returned fire in the direction of the muzzle flashes.

He got a big hint, however, when he saw a speedboat tearing ass in his direction. "All units, converge on my location!" Jack shouted into the radio.

For the space of half a minute, nothing could be heard but the exchange of fire of automatic weapons. One body from the boat fell into the water, one of Jack's agents fell on the ground. Neither side could close the distance.

Then suddenly, a Land Rover appeared on the eastern side of the beach, its left window open, and a stream of bullets flew into the men on the boat.

Jack didn't bother to ask questions. Instead, he ran for the river, looking for air bubbles, hoping that he hadn't come too late.

"Sydney!" he yelled out.

For another long ten seconds, nothing happened. The suddenly, there was a huge splash, and Syd emerged from the water. Jack had no idea how long she'd been under, but she still had enough adrenaline to swim over to the dock.

She wrapped both arms around the pillars of the pier and looked up at Jack Bauer. "Little help?"

Jack ran over and pulled her out of the water. As he did so, the Land Rover came to a stop, and Sydney's father ran out.

"Sydney!"

"Dad!"

Jack knew the Bristow's well enough to know how restrained both of them were—Jack Bristow's face usually having the composure of a mannequin. So when Sydney's father pulled her into a hug, he had an excellent idea of how worried he had really been.

"Thank you, all of you," she said quietly.

"You might want to rethink that," Mr. Bristow told her.

"What do you mean?"

"In order to lead the final attack, I had to have my hands free," Sydney's father told her.

"Wait a minute," Jack said. "Are you saying…."

The driver's side window came down, revealing a whey-faced Erin Driscoll...who actually looked worse than Sydney, and she had only been driving for an intense thirty seconds.

"The gods just like to fuck with us sometimes," Sydney muttered.

"You have no idea." Jack countered.

"Actually, Jack, I do...you see, there's something about Sloane."

2:11:18/2:11:19/2:11:20/2:11:21

What nobody at the pier knew, but shouldn't have come as a surprise to anyone there, was that Sloane had main damn sure that his hideout's were maintained with an excellent security system, which he was tapped into from a radius of five miles away. The second that bullets had started flying, he had been alerted. Thus, by the time Sydney had done a swan dive into the Pacific, he was well aware of the situation.

This was a pretty serious blow, but still not a fatal one--- there were enough of the vials of the virus still in play that he could pull of his solution before time ran out. Unfortunately, it also meant that Stephen Saunders had even more leverage over him.

He tried not to let any of this show, as he prepared a small syringe of the serum that he had only used twice before --- once on himself, and once on Li Chen Wang.

"How do I know that you're not just preparing a vial of some fast-acting poison?" Saunders demanded.

"Unfortunately, Stephen, right now I'm a little strapped for help," Sloane admitted. "I can't afford to kill any more of my allies, even if they have proven themselves to be Judases."

"That makes me feel all warm inside." Saunders said sarcastically. "And just to be clear this little concoction will give me is a composite of the Rimbaldi solution?"

"If it were as easy as preparing a syringe, I wouldn't be going through all these acrobatics," Sloane told him. "What you're getting is a modified dosage of a chemical mixture based on a composite of what I currently have in my veins. It won't give you immortality, it will just enhance your healing and other biology. It will also affect your body in such a way to prepare you when the final solution goes into effect, your body will be prepared to accept it."

"So I'll be immortal by the time this is finished?" It was clear by the tone in Saunders voice that he really didn't believe that this was going to happen.

"Believe or don't believe it, I don't much care right now," Sloane told him. "Of course, if you don't take it, you can go the way of the dodo like the rest of the human race is about to."

Reluctantly, Saunders took the syringe and held it for a moment, before injecting it into a vein in his wrist.

"And now that I've lived up to my end of the bargain, I want Irina Derevko and my daughter turned over to me now." A slight note of irritation entered his voice.

Saunders picked up the radio. "Bring him Derevko."

"Sir, she's starting to look a bit pale. Do you really think she's safe…"

"Bring her to my last known coordinate. And, might I add, this is not a good time to fuck around with me."

Much like Sloane, Saunders' last words brooked no refusal. Less than twenty seconds later, the van that had been carrying both women drove over to the side of the road. Two men got out of the vehicle, open the side door, and began to carry Irina over to Sloane.

"What about Nadia?" Sloane demanded.

Saunders walked back over to his car, and pressed the release on the trunk. "Ask and ye shall receive," he told him bluntly.

If looks could kill, Saunders would have been dead before the trunk swung open For that matter, Sloane might have followed through had he not just given Saunders a formula that would enable him to shrug off a bullet to the brain.

What neither man knew was that Nadia had been working her way loose for the last twenty minutes, and the second Saunders reached into the trunk, she leaned up and hit him with a vicious head butt.

As Sydney could have told them , immortality and invulnerability didn't go hand in hand; Saunders fell backward which gave Nadia the impetus to leap out the car. Before she could go any further, though, there were three weapons trained on her.

"Don't move," Sloane ordered. His gun was out, but he hadn't raised it at her.

"Or what?" Nadia countered. "Don't you still need me in case something goes wrong with my sister? It can't be that you're worried about my well-being, because everybody here knows that's a lie."

Sloane was quiet for a few seconds. "I don't expect you to understand," he told her. "I don't expect forgiveness. But you knew who I was, and you know that I will not let anybody stand in the way of accomplish my goals. And you know that I can easily demonstrate my wrath against your niece. So stand still, and do not fight."

She stepped out of the car, and raised her hands. "By the way, Dad," she said bitterly, "it's great to see you again."

2:18:25/2:18:26/2:18:27

"Arvin Sloane is immortal? Are you fucking kidding me?"

"I wish I were," Syd replied. "But I saw it myself. Come'on Jack, with all the shit that Rimbaldi's pulled, are you really that surprised that he could do this? We've done nothing but chase down toys from the darkside of the moon for the past five years, and this shocks you?"

The speaker phone on the cell in Jack's hand piped through the voice of Marshall Flinkman. "Yeah, Syd, we know, but even this sounds like it's coming out of left-field, if it were thrown by Rod Serling."

Bauer sighed, then shook his head. "You know what, it doesn't matter." His eyes flicked from Sydney, to her father and back again. "No matter what condition Sloane is in, the only thing we can do is focus on stopping his vials from getting out. We don't need to kill him to do that." He smiled tightly and unpleasantly. "When we catch him, we can see how he enjoys life in the electric chair for as long as the charge holds out."

*

Now that Sydney was getting a closer look at the base of operations Sloane had been maintaining for the past couple of hours, she was willing to upgrade her opinion on it. Stripped down to its core essentials, Lamont's Point had everything that he needed to maintain this operation Which is why she was somewhat upset that she didn't think Sloane was going to come back.

"Everything Sloane needs to pull his mission off is right here," Jack reminded her.

"All he needs to pull off his operation is three generations of my family," Sydney told him. "And he's got them all now. I have no doubt that a dozen different alarms went off once things started to go to hell, I sincerely doubt he'll come within a mile of here."

Jack was inclined to agree. "And you don't think he'll be anywhere near the meeting point he set up an hour ago."

"He's spent the last four hours ago jumping from place to place," Sydney told him. "There's no reason why he can't have another couple of locations set up. No, our best bet at finding Nadia and Isabelle is to try and use whatever information Sloane left for us to find."

Jack glanced to Sydney's father. "What have you got off the laptops?"

"I'm streaming the files to APO and CTU," Mr. Bristow told them. "Based on what we got off the first couple of computers, it looks like they're real time satellite projections of the locations the virus was going to be activated in. So far, three of them match up to the locations that we pulled off of Sark's computer earlier. Based on that, and what Sydney overheard earlier, we've already intercepted them."

"Yeah, but Sloane also said that after a certain point, it wouldn't matter how many of them we intercepted," Sydney said grimly. "He's got some other game plan here, and we need to figure…"

She trailed off. "Do any of the monitors match up to someplace local?" she said walking over to her father.

"Not so far," Jack Bristow told her "but we haven't gone through all of them. What are you thinking?"

"Sark made contact with Sloane an hour ago, I can only assume after he helped break Anna out of prison," Sydney told him. "Sloane said he was going to text him something involving the location of one of the remaining vials, with orders to wait for further instructions."

"Which means he's probably still in LA somewhere" Jack reasoned.

"You getting this, Marshall?" Mr. Bristow said into his radio.

"I'm on it," Marshall said, "but I'm still going to need a few minutes to sift through the data."

"Are we now in the position that we can hunt down and kill Sark at last?" Sydney asked, "Considering that it's pretty clear he's switched back to the enemy again?"

"He probably still knows where Sloane is," Jack reminded him, "and we wouldn't have been able to find this place without data that he made sure we got."

"He's covering all his bases," Sydney said bluntly. "On the off chance that I escaped, he made sure he gave the barest minimum of help while he was gloating. It doesn't change the fact that he's now betrayed us several times over. He knew how big a problem we'd have if Anna got out of custody; he helped break her out anyway."

Jack was inclined to agree, but now was a lousy time to get bent out of shape about it. "How about we focus on finding the bastard first?" he argued.

"And how exactly do we do that?"

"Sydney," Marshall broke in, "do you know where Sloane was standing when he sent the message?"

"What are you thinking?"

"I'm using a method the FBI worked out a couple years back," Marshall said. "I've already isolated the cell tower Sloane had to use to make some of his phone call. If I know the exact time and position Sloane was when he sent his message, I can isolate it and scan it. I've already got the time through the cell tower, so if you can give me the position---"

"--- the machine does the rest." Sydney was standing in the approximate area, and turned on her cell. "I'm sending you the GPS coordinates."

"Hold on," There was a long pause. "'Vial is in a strongbox at 300 Crescent Way in Culver City.'"

"We've got him," Jack said. "Good work, Marshall."

"But Sark sent that message almost an hour ago," Mr. Bristow pointed out. "What makes you think he'll still be there?"

"Sloane told him and Anna to wait for further instructions," Sydney told him. "And according to where the transport was when they broke Anna out, it probably took them some time to get there. The timing fits."

"You two go," Mr. Bristow told them. " Someone needs to help coordinate the search for whatever vials are left, and this is the place to do it from."

Jack turned to Sydney. "You sure you're in shape enough to go after them?"

"I owe both Sark and Anna," Sydney reminded him. "I'm going to pay them back with interest."

2:27:45/2:27:46/2:27:47/2:27:48

Vaughn knew that CTU had suffered a major blow little more than ninety minutes ago, which meant that Marshall's already full plate was going to be overloaded. And the last person that he wanted to talk to right now was someone from Division. But he had to make a report to somebody, so he called Sydney's father.

"Jack Bristow."

"Please tell me that you have something on Sydney or Nadia," Vaughn said with no preamble.

"I was just about to call you," Mr. Bristow said. "We found another of Sloane's hideouts. This time we found Sydney there."

The iron weight that had been on Vaughn's chest for the last three hours lifted a bit. "She's alive?"

"And kicking. She and Jack are out in the field following up on a lead."

"They have a location on Sloane?"

"Not quite," Mr. Bristow said, "But they think that they can find Sark and Espinoza."

"And you thought it was safe to send Sydney and Jack after them?" Vaughn asked rhetorically. "They'll kill those people ten times over before either of them can open their mouths."

"You're arguing for their lives?" Sydney's father said with the barest hint of doubt in his voice.

"I just want us find my daughter and Nadia. After that, I'll freely help dismember them."

There was a pause. "Maybe we don't have to even go that far," Mr. Bristow said.

"What are you talking about?"

"If we can locate one of the people Sloane used earlier---"

"If you're talking about that mercenary Mandy, forget it," Vaughn said. "We spent the last forty minutes chasing her, and we got almost nothing."

"What's the almost?"

"At one point she changed vehicles. The car didn't have much in it, save for the body of Maya Driscoll," Vaughn shook his head. "I had Kim go through whatever we found in the car, so far she's turned up squat."

"Erin's not going to be that happy," Jack Bristow said.

"My heart would bleed if she hadn't been willing to sacrifice my daughter and yours in order to protect her own," Vaughn countered.

"Her feelings are the least of my concerns right now," Mr. Bristow said. "However, Mandy wasn't the person I was thinking of."

"I'm listening."

"The people who executed the raid on CTU that killed Tony," Sydney's father said. "they were apparently being led by a man named Stephen Saunders."

Vaughn considered this. "I've heard that name before."

"Only it's from Jack's past, not ours," Mr. Bristow told him. "He's ex MI-5, and he was one of the men on the team who was killed in Operation Nightfall."

"Death just doesn't seem to carry the same weight it once did," Vaughn reflected with the barest amount of irony. "How did Saunders get mixed up with Sloane?"

"Jack doesn't know," Sydney's father admitted. "He's not the kind of man who would go along with the whole Rimbaldi mission. According to Sydney, Sloane left to meet with him over an hour ago. But he never returned from that meeting."

"I don't suppose there's any chance that the two of them could've killed each other," Vaughn asked.

"Unfortunately, there's no possibility of that."

There was something in Jack Bristow's voice that Vaughn didn't like. "What now?"

A moment later, Vaughn was hoping he hadn't heard right. "Sloane is immortal? Are you fucking kidding me?"

"We seem to be dealing with Agent Bauer too much. That's what he said."

Vaughn ground his teeth. Despite everything he'd gone through with Sydney while they were taking down Sloane the first time, he had still considered much of the Rimbaldi stuff to be bullshit. "Once we find Sloane, how the fuck do we stop him?"

"I don't know," Jack Bristow admitted. "We may have to shift our priorities as to stopping this plague on our own. What's your current location.

"I'm just outside of Santa Monica. What are you thinking?"

"According to Sydney, Sloane and Saunders were scheduled to meet in Redondo Beach. I've been getting satellite photos of the area, and I've backtracked some of the vehicles movement. We track the vehicles down, we might be able to get a lead on Saunders and Sloane."

"And the outbreak?"

"This is the nerve center of Sloane's operation. By going through the data here, we've made some progress locating some of the other vials. Another hour or so, we might be able to stop Sloane's operation without having to touch him."

*

Kim Bauer glared at the computer screen, then smacked the monitor. "Work, darn you."

Her cell phone rang, Marshall's tone: Mission Impossible. She muttered again and answered, "Yes?"

"Hey, Kim, how're you doing?"

"I'd feel a lot better if our equipment was working, half the building wasn't blown up, and Tony was still alive."

There was a moment of silence. Marshall would have sworn he had heard that tone of voice before, but whether it was from her father, Syd's or Nadia's, he wasn't sure. "Um, okay...listen, have you been updated on everything?"

"Define everything."

Marshall did.

Kim: "Arvin Sloane is immortal, are you fucking kidding me?"

"You know, I would swear there was an echo on this line."

"Marshall, I'm serious, are you kidding me?"

"Nope. Arvin Sloane is now a Highlander. There can only be one."

"God, I hope so, one Arvin Sloane is more than we really need right now."

"How's Michelle?"

Kim winced, and looked around the floor to make sure no one was paying attention. "Not good. She's been almost totally unresponsive since Tony died. I can't say I blame her."

"What are you doing now?"

"Helping Vaughn track one of Sloane's mercs. Someone named Mandy."

2:36:31/2:36:32/2:36:33

"I realize that there's a problem," Sark said over the phone, "What I don't understand is why, knowing that CTU had probably set up roots there, you decided to come back to your hideout at all."

"I needed to collect data off the hard drives," Sloane told him from the vehicle he was waiting in.

"You're telling me you're actually under-equipped for this operation?"

"It's hard to keep hands on my equipment when my hideouts keep getting raided," Sloane said pointedly.

"Maybe you should accept that you trained people who are chasing you a little too well," Sark countered.

"This isn't the time to get bogged down on minor details."

If Sloane was saying things like this, he was really pissed and intended to deliver some kind of payback in a non-distant future. Unfortunately, Sark couldn't afford to worry about this now.

"Are you and Anna where I told you to be?"

"We're there. We have the vial. Are you ready to give us instructions?"

"We're going to have to adjust the plans according to the circumstances," Sloane ordered. " Head out towards to the Santa Monica mountains, and get ready to go climbing. The machinery that you'll need to get the virus airborne will be waiting at the summit. If you can manage to get this done without screwing up, be at the final rendezvous point at 5 AM."

"What about the government?"

"I'm about to put a major obstacle in their catching us," Sloane told them.

He took out a small remote.

*

Mr. Bristow was about to contact Kim when suddenly one of the monitors began to flash. "What the---" Jack Bristow turned to the others—Arvin Sloane always covered his tracks. "Out! Everybody out now!"

No one dared hesitate. Sydney's father didn't shout unless he absolutely had to.

Though none of them knew this, there was a fifteen second time delay between the activation of Sloane's booby trap and its actual detonation. That was long enough for Jack Bristow to get to the Land Rover he'd been driving.

Unfortunately for him and many of the other agents, that wasn't quite far enough.

The explosion was considerable.

2:40:29/2:40:30/2:40:31/2:40:32

"All of the servers uploading data from Sloane's hideout just went dead," Marshall told Chloe over their connection.

"That's not surprising, " Chloe said in an oddly detached voice. "According to our satellites, so did Lamont's Point."'

"Are you telling me…"

"The whole place just went boom," Chloe told him. "We're trying to reestablish contact, but it's looking a lot like there were no survivors."

Marshall knew that Jack Bristow was one of those people, but for some reason he was starting to having trouble processing this. "How did this happen?" he asked instead.

"What do you mean, how? Obviously, your ex-boss covered all his contingencies, and made sure that there was some kind of booby trap to keep us from getting data off the servers."

Marshall thought this over. "But that doesn't make any sense," he said "I know better than anyone how careful Sloane is. Given the kind of technology he obviously has access to, there were at least a dozen ways he could have made sure that data was gone by the time we set foot in Lamont's Point. To do otherwise would be, well, really sloppy of him."

Chloe would have snapped back something about Sloane getting sloppy in his declining years, when she realized that it didn't fit in with how Sloane had operated today. "So what are you saying, he had somebody else trigger the bomb?"

"I'm saying that you've got aerial footage of Lamont's point for the past half-hour," Marshall said. "I'd start going over it with a fine tooth comb, because I think someone triggered it remotely, and whoever it was wasn't that far away when he did it."

Just then Dixon ran over to her. "How far out are the nearest medical teams?"

"Um, I'm pretty sure the explosion took out anybody who was within walking distance of the place," Chloe argued. "Nearest teams are at the San Pedro Harbor."

"Well, then get them there ASAP," Dixon said. "Kim just picked up a radio signal from the site. Looks like someone survived."

But even though he was alive, Jack Bristow wasn't a hundred percent sure how much longer he would be a survivor.

Because he had made it to the Land Rover, he had been protected from taking the brunt of the explosion. Unfortunately, the vehicle, while formidable, could not emerge unscathed. Huge chunks of glass and pieces of debris had flown off, and several of them had cut into him. While most of these were minor flesh wounds, he was injured and bleeding and couldn't be sure whether he'd also incurred some kind of internal damage.

However, right now, he couldn't afford to focus on this. He had to check and see if anyone else had survived this attack, and get in touch with CTU, not necessarily in that order.

As he managed to regain his footing--- not easy for their was a shard of glass in his leg--- he saw immediately that. one person already dead --- Erin Driscoll's head had nearly been torn from its neck, when the driver sides window had flown into it.

Somehow, Mr. Bristow couldn't find much sympathy for the woman.

There were also at least three other bodies that had been floating in the water that definitely weren't getting up. More interesting was the fact that there was an intact radio floating in the water. Grimacing as he crawled forward, Sydney's father managed to pull it from the water. "Somebody.. pick up… " Mr. Bristow said. "This is Jack Bristow. . Is.. anybody… out there…?"

There was a very long pause. "Jack… that... you?" finally came over the speaker. "Dixon….. you… hurt…."

"Dixon, we've been hit… hard…." Mr. Bristow managed to raise himself, slowly, to his feet, and he started staggering to the nearest vehicle as he glanced around. "I don't… see… any other survivors…."

"We'll get a— chopper—your location. "— you see Sloane?" Dixon asked.

"No," Mr. Bristow admitted. "But he's close… or was."

"What makes you so sure?"

"Because… he likes to make sure…. Something's dead…. when he kills it."

2:46:51/2:46:52/2:46:53

Sydney's father had no way of knowing this, but Vaughn, who had followed his advice and, with Kim's assistance, had backtracked Sloane from the meeting point almost to exactly the same route back to the waterfront. Unfortunately, things were going to go downhill for them.

"After he makes it back to Lamont's Point, the satellite feed was knocked out by the force of the explosion," Kim told him. "We managed to reestablish it in less than a minute, but that was more than long enough for Sloane to disappear off our radar."

"How many people are dead?"

"We're still checking, but right now it looks like Mr. Bristow was the only one to survive the attack," Kim told him grimly.

Naturally, Vaughn was concerned, but one of them that he'd been taught by both Sydney's father and Kim's was that sometime you need to turn off your feelings for the greater good. "What about the data stream?" he asked slowly.

"Marshall and I haven't had much of a chance to verify this, but he managed to get half of the data saved to a hard copy," Kim told him. "Good news, we can stop about half the vials with the information; bad news, there's nothing there to give us on Sloane or on Nadia and Isabelle."

Vaughn considered this. "That's not entirely true," he said. "How long would it take you to recalibrate the satellite to backtrack Stephen Saunders' route?"

Kim got at once. "Less than two minutes," she told him.

"Contact Jack Bristow and tell him to meet me at the entrance," he told him. "We've got another target to chase, and I'm betting this one isn't as good covering his tracks as Sloane is."

2:51:02/2:51:03/2:51:04/2:51:05

Sydney had been having a sense of déjà vu since they had arrived in Culver City, and now she knew why. "I think Sloane's so low on help, he's going back to some old haunts," she told Jack as they drove down Crescent Way. "We're in the same neighborhood where Alexander Trepkos ran his business, and where we ran into Sherry Palmer the day you and I met."

Jack considered this. "If that's the case, he really is running a risk. Remember? We had eyes on this whole area until we thought we killed Sloane the first time."

This raised a point that Sydney had stringently avoided but that she didn't think that she could hold off any longer. "Speaking of which, since shooting him doesn't do the job, and blowing him into chunks just seems to piss him off, have you come up with an idea as to how were going to stop Sloane when we catch up with him?"

"No," Jack said bluntly. "I've been a little busy concentrating on saving the world, and not having another woman I love killed in the process." The moment the words were out of his mouth, he knew he'd overstepped his bounds. "I'm sorry. Isabelle—."

Sydney nodded, just staring out the window. "It's been another long day," she told him. "We've all been worn to a frazzle."

Jack nodded. "The days don't seem to get shorter. There's nothing on stopping this?"

"Nothing solid, no," Sydney said thoughtfully. "but given how avidly he's tried to get me and Nadia, there's a good chance that one of us might be able to stop him."

"Let's hope that's true," Jack said. "Because I think that the hunt for Sloane's about to start again." He stopped the car.

300 Crescent Way, like many of the surrounding buildings, was an office building, and even though it had once been the property of the Covenant, the background check of the leasers and led back to legitimate owners. This led Jack and Sydney to believe that they didn't know what they were sitting on.

Jack peered through the window. "Don't see any bodies," he told her.

"Yeah, but I don't see any sign of Sark or Anna either," Sydney argued. "Could be they've come and gone."

Jack rattled the door. "They locked the door behind them?" he said doubtfully.

"Maybe Sloane told them to be subtle," Sydney said. "Or maybe they know that they don't have any more room for error."

They were about to break the door open and check inside when a beam shined on their door. Both whirled around, weapons drawn.

"Whoa, whoa!" The light apparently belonged to a middle-aged, portly security guard. "Hey, I don't want any trouble."

Both agents relaxed a little. "Sorry, sir," Jack said

"You two with the police?" the guard asked.

"We work for the government." Sydney took out her identification. "I'm Sydney Bristow, this is Jack Bauer. We work with Counter Terrorist Unit."

"My name's Simon Willis. I work for Anderson Security Service, graveyard shift. " Willis showed Sydney his ID. "Everybody's pretty worked up about what's been happening today. This is the tenth time I've been called out here since I went on duty."

Sydney had taken out her PDA. "We've been looking for these people," she said showing him computerized images of Sark and Anna Espinoza. "Have you seen either of them?"

Willis took a good twenty seconds before Speaking. "That guy looks familiar," he said. "Yeah, I've seen him. I was responding to a complaint about an hour ago, and I saw him walking around this area. Said he was with the police, showed me an LAPD badge and everything."

"What explanation did he give for being here at 2 in the morning?" Jack asked suspiciously..

"You're a cop, you don't need to have an explanation for being around," Willis said, with a quiet chuckle. "But he said that he was there because he was staking out the hideout of a known felon, who he said worked out of that building. Said it was really important that he got inside that building."

"Did he have a warrant?" Sydney asked.

"Said the courts were FUBAR because of the civil unrest that's been going on all day," Willis told him.

"And you let him into the building anyway," Jack said, hostilely.

"Yeah," Willis said a little hostilely. "And as far as I know, he hasn't left, so if you want I'll unlock the door for you too."

Willis was starting to examine his key ring, when three shots rang out. Jack and Sydney hit the ground fast; Willis, older and heavier, was instantly cut down by a bullet. By the time the agents had their weapons out, another round of sniper fire followed.

They were pinned.

2:59:57/2:59:58/2:59:59/3:00:00