Monday, January 01, 2007
When Fiction Meets Reality - Pt. 25
Day Seven.
"Jack?"
Jack's eyes shot open at the sound of the voice calling his name and he locked them on Kiefer at once.
He was sitting up in bed and was struggling with the sheets.
"What's wrong?"
"I thought I heard something in the hall."
"I've got 2 agents posted outside your door," Jack said as he pushed up and went over to the bed, "don't worry, you're safe here."
"Can you check it out anyway?"
"Sure, but I'd like for you to stay in bed, you're in no condition to get up."
Kiefer sagged back against the raised mattress, careful to not touch the wounded side of his head to the pillow. Jack waited another second to make sure he was all right, drew his gun and silently made his way over to the door. He opened it just a crack and looked out into the hallway, meeting the agent's eyes as he turned at the movement behind him.
"Are you guys ok?" Jack asked quietly.
"Yes sir, everything's fine."
"What was that noise?"
"What noise sir?"
"We thought we heard something."
"Nothing out here sir." the agent replied, gesturing to the empty hall.
"Okay, keep your eyes open."
"Yes sir."
Jack backed away from the door with his gun in hand. His gut had warned him and he was waiting for hell to break loose.
A split second later, the door flew open and two men stormed into the room. They were expecting Jack to have his back turned and to be easily sprung, but instead, the first one ran straight into his elbow, the impact of it flung him to the side and he slammed into the bathroom wall and tumbled to the ground, blocking the other one's path, giving Jack plenty of time to raise his gun on him.
"Move and I'll blow your head off." Jack growled.
"Close the door."
The man did and Jack took a step back.
"Call security."
Kiefer was already on the phone.
"Turn to face the wall and don't try anything."
The man turned slowly, eyeing Jack angrily. But his buddy was down and he was staring down the barrel of a damn powerful handgun, held by a federal agent whose unorthodox manners had been well documented. Jack Bauer was the kind of man who shot you first and asked questions later.
"Hands up against the door." Jack ordered.
"And you," he continued, addressing the downed man, "get on your feet and join your friend."
The man slowly pushed up, shaking his head and wiping at the blood trickling down from his nose. Jack's elbow had caught him squarely in the nose, leaving him teary eyed and disoriented, but now his vision was clearing and he tried to stall until his balance was back.
"Move." Jack snapped.
The man did.
But not the way one would've expected with a gun pointed at his head.
He moved against Jack, lunging forward and ducking under the aim, slamming into Jack's chest and driving him back into the room. Jack's elbow came crashing down on the man's neck but his momentum carried him and when he fell, he took Jack down with him. They tumbled to the ground with the assailant on top and he quickly pushed up and landed his elbow in Jack's ribs before he had a chance to react. Jack had braced against the impact and pulled his knee up in response; it caught the man in the groin as he tried to scramble to his feet and he crashed down on top of Jack again, pinning him long enough for his buddy to join in and land a vicious kick which Jack managed to block more or less. He lost his grip on his gun though and the weapon flew from his hand, slid under the bed and came to a rest against the far wall, well beyond his reach; leaving him unarmed against two men.
The second man started to circle the bed but Jack grabbed his pants and yanked hard enough on them to make the other stagger after what his hand flew up, colliding with the back of the man's knee, throwing him off balance. It bought him some time to get back to his feet.
He shrugged the first guy off him, landing a hard blow to the back of his neck to keep him down and went after the second one who was closing in on Kiefer again. He was struggling to get out from under his sheets, but the IV bothered him and he couldn't move as quickly as he could've without it, but then Jack was all over the assailant, stopping him dead in his tracks with a fierce punch to the kidneys, followed by a powerful kick to the ribs, which threw the man across the bed. Jack grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him off, pulling him straight into his rising knee, kicking the wind out of him and his hand came down again, catching the big man at the base of his neck, knocking him out cold.
The heavy body dropped to the ground and Jack turned just in time to block a punch from the first guy. The power of it still threw him to the side, giving the man time to draw his gun, but not enough to bring it around on Kiefer. Jack's boot collided heavily with the man's ribcage and the squeal it brought forth told both Jack and Kiefer at least one of his ribs had given under the power of the kick.
Jack didn't hesitate for half a second and followed in with a series of punches to the face and gut, forcing the man back and down, disarming him quickly and putting him out of action.
Moments later, three security guards busted through the door, guns drawn, aiming them at Jack who raised his hands at once, not wanting either of those guys to panic and squeeze off a shot.
"Freeze!" one of the guards yelled, stopping and taking on a totally hilarious shooting position.
"Put your hands where I can see them!" he continued even though Jack had his hands up already.
Jack couldn't help but smile at the guy's attempt to impress him. His feet were too far apart and he had an impossible grip on his weapon, holding it in a two-handed grip with his hands overlapping in an awkward way, if he ever fired the gun, he'd probably drop it and fall flat on his ass.
"I'm a federal agent," Jack started, "these are the men you need to take into custody."
He didn't lower his hands though, these cowboys were so freaked out they could shoot him without further warning.
One of them came forward and closed in on him. This one seemed more in control of himself than the other.
"Put your hands on your head and lace your fingers."
Jack did as the man asked.
"Do you have any ID on you."
"In my jacket." Jack replied, nodding towards the lazy chair where his jacket hung, "Right pocket."
The man retrieved his badge and picture ID.
"Agent Bauer?"
"That's right."
"What is CTU?"
"Counter Terrorist Unit."
"It's okay sir."
Jack finally dropped his hands and the cowboy across the room holstered his gun. The situation was under control.
He turned to Kiefer and much to his surprise, he found no fear in his eyes, only anger.
The guards secured the two hostiles and Jack gave them clear instructions on how to deal with them while retrieving his cell phone from his jacket. He called CTU to request a team to come pick the hostiles up and take them in for questioning.
"And find out what the hell happened here." Jack snapped angrily.
"These guys were posing as agents, I want to know how they got this close without being detected."
…
"I don't care what you do, just do it! Put Milo on it if you can't handle it yourself."
He hung up without wasting more time, he was mad as hell at the breach in security and if Kiefer's sixth sense hadn't alarmed him, this could've turned into a disaster, he needed to know how this happened.
Next he called Tony back in. It didn't take him any trouble to get Tony moving, the sound of his voice was enough to convince him this was urgent and he promised to be there in less than half an hour. He tossed his phone on the small table and took a deep breath, taking a moment to calm down and let the adrenaline level fall back to normal.
He turned back to Kiefer.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"Are you?"
"Yeah."
"I'm not so sure, it looked like you took a pretty mean kick there."
"I blocked it, he kicked me in the arm."
"Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'll admit I freaked out when they barged in here."
"What put you on edge?"
"Shift change isn't until eight so those should've been the same agents that were here last night. And there was something in the way he called me ‘sir' that bugged me."
"But what put you on edge?"
"Bad karma."
"Right. Gut feelings are usually right."
"I know."
"How are you feeling anyway?"
"Better, the headache's gone and my eyes don't hurt anymore."
"Good, we'll probably be able to get out of here."
"I'd hope so."
"We'll see about that when your doctor comes in."
"Let's keep our fingers crossed."
…
"Thank you."
"What for?"
"For not letting me get killed."
"It'll take more than that to get to you."
The arrest team arrived fifteen minutes later and Jack showed them where the hostiles were being held, the men took them over from hospital security and transferred them to CTU for processing. Three minutes later, Tony walked in.
Jack briefed him in short about what had happened but in the middle of it, his cell phone rang.
"Bauer."
"Yeah boss, it's Milo."
"Tell me you found something."
"I found something all right. CTU's mainframe's been hacked overnight."
"What?" Jack exclaimed.
"CTU's mainframe hacked?"
"Yeah, but they didn't bother to cover their tracks, or didn't have time to do that. The signal originates at the place you're staking out."
"Dammit!"
"Patch me through to Nina."
"Why?"
"Milo just do it!" Jack snapped.
He got some music, then a short ring and then Nina picked up her extension.
"Yes Jack?"
"Nina I need you to check on the surveillance teams, make sure nobody's been pulled off before the end of their shift."
"Which ones Jack?"
"All of them Nina! The ones at Heyes' apartment in the first place. And the ones covering Sarah, Princeton, Kiefer's place and get in touch with Henderson to make sure we still have that juvenile agent active."
"Okay Jack, I'll get right on it."
"Okay, put Milo back on."
More music.
"Yeah boss?"
"Can you tell me what files were accessed?"
"Yeah, I can follow the trail this guy left. Oh and by the way, Heyes is our man. I got confirmation less than ten minutes ago."
"Heyes is the hacker?"
"Yeah."
"Good job Milo."
"Can you make sure he can't get back into our mainframe?"
"Already did boss, he was still logged in and I made sure to redirect him and block access. You'll need to upgrade on your security though, coz this really is a joke. I know a guy who could-"
"Not now Milo, we'll talk about that later. Right now I need for you to tell me what Heyes was doing in our mainframe."
"Well the first thing he did was change the running orders for the hospital surveillance, he dismissed the team that was supposed to take over at 8 and created a new shift change about half an hour ago. We've got two bogus files here."
"I'm sure the men who are on their way will look exactly like the pictures on those files."
"Probably."
"What else Milo?"
"He was nosing around in Kendrick's file when I found him, so I shut him out of there before he could do anything at all."
"So they know we know about Kendrick." Jack mused aloud.
"Looks like it. He didn't access anything else related to the investigation, I suppose he was looking around for what he needed and didn't know exactly where he would find it."
"I want you to upload a list of all the files he accessed to my PDA, I want to know exactly what he looked at, whether or not it is related to this case."
"Okay, I'll send you that in a minute."
"Thanks Milo."
"No problem boss."
He hung up and met Tony's eyes.
"Heyes is our hacker. He pulled the team off and replaced them with two of his men."
"I'll find out what else he's been poking around in as soon as Milo sends me the data."
"This is getting wild Jack."
"I know."
"We'll have to move in as soon as possible."
"Even if we don't know who the brains are?"
"If we can cut off his legs, he won't be able to run. I'm sure Bonney or Heyes will break if we put enough pressure on them. They'll give us what we need."
"Jack?"
Jack's eyes shot open at the sound of the voice calling his name and he locked them on Kiefer at once.
He was sitting up in bed and was struggling with the sheets.
"What's wrong?"
"I thought I heard something in the hall."
"I've got 2 agents posted outside your door," Jack said as he pushed up and went over to the bed, "don't worry, you're safe here."
"Can you check it out anyway?"
"Sure, but I'd like for you to stay in bed, you're in no condition to get up."
Kiefer sagged back against the raised mattress, careful to not touch the wounded side of his head to the pillow. Jack waited another second to make sure he was all right, drew his gun and silently made his way over to the door. He opened it just a crack and looked out into the hallway, meeting the agent's eyes as he turned at the movement behind him.
"Are you guys ok?" Jack asked quietly.
"Yes sir, everything's fine."
"What was that noise?"
"What noise sir?"
"We thought we heard something."
"Nothing out here sir." the agent replied, gesturing to the empty hall.
"Okay, keep your eyes open."
"Yes sir."
Jack backed away from the door with his gun in hand. His gut had warned him and he was waiting for hell to break loose.
A split second later, the door flew open and two men stormed into the room. They were expecting Jack to have his back turned and to be easily sprung, but instead, the first one ran straight into his elbow, the impact of it flung him to the side and he slammed into the bathroom wall and tumbled to the ground, blocking the other one's path, giving Jack plenty of time to raise his gun on him.
"Move and I'll blow your head off." Jack growled.
"Close the door."
The man did and Jack took a step back.
"Call security."
Kiefer was already on the phone.
"Turn to face the wall and don't try anything."
The man turned slowly, eyeing Jack angrily. But his buddy was down and he was staring down the barrel of a damn powerful handgun, held by a federal agent whose unorthodox manners had been well documented. Jack Bauer was the kind of man who shot you first and asked questions later.
"Hands up against the door." Jack ordered.
"And you," he continued, addressing the downed man, "get on your feet and join your friend."
The man slowly pushed up, shaking his head and wiping at the blood trickling down from his nose. Jack's elbow had caught him squarely in the nose, leaving him teary eyed and disoriented, but now his vision was clearing and he tried to stall until his balance was back.
"Move." Jack snapped.
The man did.
But not the way one would've expected with a gun pointed at his head.
He moved against Jack, lunging forward and ducking under the aim, slamming into Jack's chest and driving him back into the room. Jack's elbow came crashing down on the man's neck but his momentum carried him and when he fell, he took Jack down with him. They tumbled to the ground with the assailant on top and he quickly pushed up and landed his elbow in Jack's ribs before he had a chance to react. Jack had braced against the impact and pulled his knee up in response; it caught the man in the groin as he tried to scramble to his feet and he crashed down on top of Jack again, pinning him long enough for his buddy to join in and land a vicious kick which Jack managed to block more or less. He lost his grip on his gun though and the weapon flew from his hand, slid under the bed and came to a rest against the far wall, well beyond his reach; leaving him unarmed against two men.
The second man started to circle the bed but Jack grabbed his pants and yanked hard enough on them to make the other stagger after what his hand flew up, colliding with the back of the man's knee, throwing him off balance. It bought him some time to get back to his feet.
He shrugged the first guy off him, landing a hard blow to the back of his neck to keep him down and went after the second one who was closing in on Kiefer again. He was struggling to get out from under his sheets, but the IV bothered him and he couldn't move as quickly as he could've without it, but then Jack was all over the assailant, stopping him dead in his tracks with a fierce punch to the kidneys, followed by a powerful kick to the ribs, which threw the man across the bed. Jack grabbed him by the shoulders and pulled him off, pulling him straight into his rising knee, kicking the wind out of him and his hand came down again, catching the big man at the base of his neck, knocking him out cold.
The heavy body dropped to the ground and Jack turned just in time to block a punch from the first guy. The power of it still threw him to the side, giving the man time to draw his gun, but not enough to bring it around on Kiefer. Jack's boot collided heavily with the man's ribcage and the squeal it brought forth told both Jack and Kiefer at least one of his ribs had given under the power of the kick.
Jack didn't hesitate for half a second and followed in with a series of punches to the face and gut, forcing the man back and down, disarming him quickly and putting him out of action.
Moments later, three security guards busted through the door, guns drawn, aiming them at Jack who raised his hands at once, not wanting either of those guys to panic and squeeze off a shot.
"Freeze!" one of the guards yelled, stopping and taking on a totally hilarious shooting position.
"Put your hands where I can see them!" he continued even though Jack had his hands up already.
Jack couldn't help but smile at the guy's attempt to impress him. His feet were too far apart and he had an impossible grip on his weapon, holding it in a two-handed grip with his hands overlapping in an awkward way, if he ever fired the gun, he'd probably drop it and fall flat on his ass.
"I'm a federal agent," Jack started, "these are the men you need to take into custody."
He didn't lower his hands though, these cowboys were so freaked out they could shoot him without further warning.
One of them came forward and closed in on him. This one seemed more in control of himself than the other.
"Put your hands on your head and lace your fingers."
Jack did as the man asked.
"Do you have any ID on you."
"In my jacket." Jack replied, nodding towards the lazy chair where his jacket hung, "Right pocket."
The man retrieved his badge and picture ID.
"Agent Bauer?"
"That's right."
"What is CTU?"
"Counter Terrorist Unit."
"It's okay sir."
Jack finally dropped his hands and the cowboy across the room holstered his gun. The situation was under control.
He turned to Kiefer and much to his surprise, he found no fear in his eyes, only anger.
The guards secured the two hostiles and Jack gave them clear instructions on how to deal with them while retrieving his cell phone from his jacket. He called CTU to request a team to come pick the hostiles up and take them in for questioning.
"And find out what the hell happened here." Jack snapped angrily.
"These guys were posing as agents, I want to know how they got this close without being detected."
…
"I don't care what you do, just do it! Put Milo on it if you can't handle it yourself."
He hung up without wasting more time, he was mad as hell at the breach in security and if Kiefer's sixth sense hadn't alarmed him, this could've turned into a disaster, he needed to know how this happened.
Next he called Tony back in. It didn't take him any trouble to get Tony moving, the sound of his voice was enough to convince him this was urgent and he promised to be there in less than half an hour. He tossed his phone on the small table and took a deep breath, taking a moment to calm down and let the adrenaline level fall back to normal.
He turned back to Kiefer.
"You okay?"
"Yeah, I'm fine."
"Are you?"
"Yeah."
"I'm not so sure, it looked like you took a pretty mean kick there."
"I blocked it, he kicked me in the arm."
"Are you sure you're okay?"
"I'll admit I freaked out when they barged in here."
"What put you on edge?"
"Shift change isn't until eight so those should've been the same agents that were here last night. And there was something in the way he called me ‘sir' that bugged me."
"But what put you on edge?"
"Bad karma."
"Right. Gut feelings are usually right."
"I know."
"How are you feeling anyway?"
"Better, the headache's gone and my eyes don't hurt anymore."
"Good, we'll probably be able to get out of here."
"I'd hope so."
"We'll see about that when your doctor comes in."
"Let's keep our fingers crossed."
…
"Thank you."
"What for?"
"For not letting me get killed."
"It'll take more than that to get to you."
The arrest team arrived fifteen minutes later and Jack showed them where the hostiles were being held, the men took them over from hospital security and transferred them to CTU for processing. Three minutes later, Tony walked in.
Jack briefed him in short about what had happened but in the middle of it, his cell phone rang.
"Bauer."
"Yeah boss, it's Milo."
"Tell me you found something."
"I found something all right. CTU's mainframe's been hacked overnight."
"What?" Jack exclaimed.
"CTU's mainframe hacked?"
"Yeah, but they didn't bother to cover their tracks, or didn't have time to do that. The signal originates at the place you're staking out."
"Dammit!"
"Patch me through to Nina."
"Why?"
"Milo just do it!" Jack snapped.
He got some music, then a short ring and then Nina picked up her extension.
"Yes Jack?"
"Nina I need you to check on the surveillance teams, make sure nobody's been pulled off before the end of their shift."
"Which ones Jack?"
"All of them Nina! The ones at Heyes' apartment in the first place. And the ones covering Sarah, Princeton, Kiefer's place and get in touch with Henderson to make sure we still have that juvenile agent active."
"Okay Jack, I'll get right on it."
"Okay, put Milo back on."
More music.
"Yeah boss?"
"Can you tell me what files were accessed?"
"Yeah, I can follow the trail this guy left. Oh and by the way, Heyes is our man. I got confirmation less than ten minutes ago."
"Heyes is the hacker?"
"Yeah."
"Good job Milo."
"Can you make sure he can't get back into our mainframe?"
"Already did boss, he was still logged in and I made sure to redirect him and block access. You'll need to upgrade on your security though, coz this really is a joke. I know a guy who could-"
"Not now Milo, we'll talk about that later. Right now I need for you to tell me what Heyes was doing in our mainframe."
"Well the first thing he did was change the running orders for the hospital surveillance, he dismissed the team that was supposed to take over at 8 and created a new shift change about half an hour ago. We've got two bogus files here."
"I'm sure the men who are on their way will look exactly like the pictures on those files."
"Probably."
"What else Milo?"
"He was nosing around in Kendrick's file when I found him, so I shut him out of there before he could do anything at all."
"So they know we know about Kendrick." Jack mused aloud.
"Looks like it. He didn't access anything else related to the investigation, I suppose he was looking around for what he needed and didn't know exactly where he would find it."
"I want you to upload a list of all the files he accessed to my PDA, I want to know exactly what he looked at, whether or not it is related to this case."
"Okay, I'll send you that in a minute."
"Thanks Milo."
"No problem boss."
He hung up and met Tony's eyes.
"Heyes is our hacker. He pulled the team off and replaced them with two of his men."
"I'll find out what else he's been poking around in as soon as Milo sends me the data."
"This is getting wild Jack."
"I know."
"We'll have to move in as soon as possible."
"Even if we don't know who the brains are?"
"If we can cut off his legs, he won't be able to run. I'm sure Bonney or Heyes will break if we put enough pressure on them. They'll give us what we need."
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