Chaos Theory John Whitman

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.Jack glared back at them as he passed.He hadn’t met this corrections officer yet.He was a big man, with the broken nose and lumpy eyebrows of a former boxer now gone to fat.He pointed to an unoccupied cubicle.Jack sat down in another molded plastic seat and picked up the phone.“Yeah,” he said.“Jack, you okay?”Peter Jiminez.Jack was surprised he hadn’t called days ago.“Considering,” Jack said with a shrug.He had no interest in long conversations with Jiminez.No good would come of it.CTU didn’t recruit the naïve, but if anyone in the Counter Terrorist Unit could be called wet behind the ears, it was Peter.Somehow his three years in Diplomatic Security Services and five years in the CIA had failed to stamp out the young man’s quixotic notions.“You’re going to beat this, Jack, I know it,” Peter said.“It’s bullshit what they’re doing, it’s bullshit that they didn’t back you about Tintfass in the first place, and I’m saying it to their faces right now.”Right now.So Henderson was in the room, and probably Chappelle.That was fine with Jack.He was happy to have Henderson listen to the conversation, and as for Chappelle, well, he was what he was.“It’s all going to be fine, Peter,” Jack said into the phone.“I did my job and I’d do it the same again.”“Chappelle says they have a witness.”Jack thought of the man with the paunch.His name was Arguello.“That doesn’t matter.No one’s arguing about me pulling the trigger.We’re talking about cause.”“You had cause,” Jiminez said.“I know you did.Two months on the job and I already know that about how you work.They shouldn’t let bureaucrats judge field agents.”Jack heard a squeak in the background and recognized the familiar note of Regional Director Ryan Chappelle’s disapproval.“Tell Chappelle I’m having a good time.I wish he was here.”“Jack, is there anything.?”Bauer cut him off.“I’ll be fine.” He heard a voice behind him calling time.“I have to go.” He hung up.“Showers!” the broken-nosed guard said.“Let’s go.”“Let’s do it tomorrow!” an inmate yelled.“Screw that.You stink,” called another.Jack knew they wouldn’t wait until tomorrow.The prison had a schedule to keep, even if overcrowding had pushed the schedule back.Showers, meals, everything was late due to the number of inmates packed into the jail.He moved away from the phone and fell into line with the other prisoners.* * *8:11 P.M.PSTCTU Headquarters, Los AngelesPeter Jiminez put the phone down and glared at his superiors.Regional Director Ryan Chappelle was accustomed to receiving those looks from everyone, and his pinched face remained impassive.Christopher Henderson, Director of Field Operations and Peter’s direct boss, shifted uncomfortably.“He okay?” Henderson asked.“He’s in jail, sir,” Jiminez replied, biting down hard on the sir.Two months under Jack Bauer’s wing had taught him a lot, but the forced politeness of the Diplomatic Security Services remained.“Where he belongs,” Chappelle sniffed.No one, not even Jack, denied what he had done.Jack had barged in on a poker game in the back room of Winston’s, a dive bar in the Fairfax District, and shot Adrian Tintfass in the chest.There were witnesses; there was video.Those facts were not in dispute.But the why of it was everything.Tintfass was a connector, a middleman who made his cut by putting together people who could use one another.Three months earlier, the CIA’s listening stations had plucked his name out of the air in a conversation between a Ukrainian arms dealer and a known terrorist named Hassan, recently escaped from an Afghan prison.Tintfass, it seemed, had put the two men together, and since Hassan had publicly promised to “turn the streets of America into rivers of blood,” or something like that, Tintfass immediately graduated to the Counter Terrorist Unit’s A-list.Jack tracked him down and brought him in for questioning.Tintfass broke easily under interrogation, but most of CTU became quickly convinced that he had little or nothing to do with Hassan.He’d had some semi-legitimate business dealings with the Ukrainian, and everyone was convinced that he’d never met or spoken with Hassan.Everyone, that is, except Jack Bauer.He’d continued to push the investigation, insisting that Tintfass was not only complicit, but pivotal to Hassan’s next plot.When no one at CTU would listen, Jack did what Jack was known for: he solved the problem on his own.The problem was, no one at CTU could back him up.As far as Ryan Chappelle was concerned, Jack had murdered an innocent man in cold blood.He’d been handed over to Federal agents immediately, and he’d been stuck in a Federal jail for the past two weeks.No judge in his right mind would give bail to a suspect with Jack Bauer’s skills and resources, so there he sat, waiting for his trial.“Did he say anything?” Henderson asked.Peter looked at the Ops Director.Henderson had a hard face, but blue eyes that softened when he was truly concerned.They were soft now.Peter knew that Henderson had helped recruit Jack into CTU, and that the two men had been friends.“No, he wanted off the phone.”“That’s Jack.” Henderson nodded.“He’ll shut it all off.Undercover inside his own skin.”Chappelle smirked.“You sound sorry for him.He’s a murderer.”Peter stiffened.“From everything I’ve heard he’s saved our asses more than once.” He walked out.Chappelle’s little eyes watched Jiminez’s tense shoulders as he left the room.“Hero worship,” he said as if the words tasted bad in his mouth.Henderson considered Chappelle.He didn’t share Jack’s visceral dislike of the Regional Director, but there was no love lost between them.Chappelle was a cog in the machinery, no more or less than he or Jack.“You’re just as committed the other way.You’ve already tried and convicted him.”Chappelle shrugged.“I know exactly what Jack Bauer did.”Henderson checked his watch, looking for a way out of the conversation.“Threat assessment meeting at eight-thirty, I need to prep.I’m going to need coffee for this [ Pobierz całość w formacie PDF ]

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