The Terrorist's Daughter
A 24 fanfic
Part 3
Despite everything, Gette still managed to be excited about being in a helicopter for the first time. Wanting to be able to look out, she tried to slide in across from Agent Edmunds, who had taken the window seat of the forwards-facing bench, but he indicated that she should sit next to him. Disgruntled, she did, and was immediately hemmed in on her left-hand side by Agent Bauer. The door slammed shut and they lifted off almost immediately.
The ride to CTU was not what Gette had expected. Whenever she wanted to look out the window and see something besides blue sky, she had to lean forward and peer around Agent Edmunds. Agent Bauer had gotten a helmet with a microphone and was busy with the cell phone that he'd picked up, shouting telephone numbers to someone named Chloe. After he'd finished with that, they all sat in silence, and Gette was relieved when the helicopter began to descend.
They landed. Gette didn't have time to see much of anything except surrounding buildings as she was hustled inside, down a corridor, and into a large open space where there were lots of workstations, separated by screens, and lots of people working on computers.
"Jack, he's just called back." A tall woman came towards them, and Gette could see a mix of Asian and Occidental ancestry in her face. "In the situation room."
"We'll be right there." Agent Bauer stopped and turned to Gette. "We'll let you talk to him for a few minutes. Ask him what he's doing and why."
"Okay," Gette said slowly, feeling confused and excited. Was it really her father?
Agent Bauer led the way into the situation room, where there was a huge conference table and many chairs around it. Three computer screens formed a triangle in the middle of the table, and Gette could see someone on screen wearing a veil that convered everything except the eyes. He or she must have just been speaking, but the voice had stopped. Making a signal to the Latino man who was sitting at the head of the table, Agent Bauer caught his attention. The man leaned forward and said, "Hey--"
All the screens went blue, and the Latino man swore. "He's cut the connection!"
Agent Bauer swore, too. "We should have been here by now! Is he releasing the drugs?"
"Yeah. Here, I'll let you listen for yourself."
The Latino man hit some controls, and the screen flickered to life again, showing the veiled figure again. At first, Gette thought it might be a Muslim woman, but then he spoke with a distinctly masculine voice. "What have you got for us?"
"We're still working on finding this Craig Holcomb," said a voice that Gette recognized as belonging to the Latino man. "According to our intelligence, he doesn't exist."
"Oh, he exists all right," the veiled man said, and Gette listened closer. Was it her father? The voice was so close to what she remembered, but she couldn't be sure. After all, he was supposed to be dead, and she couldn't see his face.
"What about his assistant, Tammy Smoot? Have you got anything on her?"
"We're pursuing every lead that we have." That was the Latino man again. "It would help if you'd let us bring you in so that we could work together."
"No way." Hearing that, Gette almost smiled. It was exactly the way her father said it. But then the voice went on. "Too many of us have already been killed."
"We'd keep you safe. I give you my word."
"What's to keep them from killing you, too?"
Convinced by now that it was her father, Gette let herself smile.
"Okay, I've got my men in position at the next school, and I'm giving the orders for them to release the drug. I'll contact you again in an hour."
"Hey --" The screen froze then, and Gette groaned at having been cut off. The three men turned to stare at her, and Agent Bauer asked, "That's your father, right?"
"Yeah," she said, still smiling. "That's him. I don't understand what he's doing, or why he's wearing that stupid veil, but I can hear that it's him."
"How?" Agent Edmunds asked.
"Can't you hear how he says the letter "r"?" she asked. "It's close to a "w" sound without actually being one. Dad said he had a lot of trouble saying it properly when he was a kid."
The Latino man nodded slightly in assent.
"What was he talking about?" Gette asked. "What did he mean, he had men at the next school and he'd release the drugs?"
Without answering her, Agent Bauer turned to his younger partner. "Chase, take her to Medical."
Agent Edmunds walked back towards Gette, and Agent Bauer went on, "Tony, how are we coming with the traces?"
"They're always one step ahead of us, Jack," Tony said. "Every time we think we've got it pinned down, it moves. It's like they're switching relays with every call."
As Gette walked towards the door of the conference room, it opened and a tall woman with shoulder-length blonde hair came inside. "Tony, I ran a check on all the numbers that Jack gave me from that cell phone, and I found one that was dialled eight times in the last twenty four hours."
"Chase, wait." Agent Bauer called out. "Chloe, set up a trace."
"In here?" the blonde woman asked.
"Yes, Chloe, in here," Tony told her with forced patience.
"This is gonna take a minute." Chloe leaned over Tony's shoulder and did something on the computer, then went out again and brought in some equipment. While she finished setting everything up, Agent Bauer said, "Georgette, come here. We think this is the number of your father, and we want you to call it. No matter who answers, try to keep them talking as long as possible."
"Okay," Gette said slowly, sitting down two seats away from Tony.
Chloe attached a cable to the cell phone, then handed it to Agent Bauer. He dialled, then placed it back on the table, in front of Gette. As it rang, he said, "It's on speakerphone. Ask for him by name --"
At that moment, the ringing stopped, and a familiar voice snapped, "Yeah!"
"Dad?" she asked.
"Gette?" That was her father, there was no doubt.
"Dad!" she said again, grinning openly. "How come you're not dead?"
"Gette, it's a long story," he said. "How'd you get this number? Who's there with you?"
Gette glanced over to Agent Bauer, who was shaking his head vigorously, and ignored the question.
"No, dad, tell me," she urged him instead. "Tell me what you're doing and why the government thinks you're a terrorist."
Agent Bauer's face fell so dramatically that Gette realized she'd said the wrong thing. Her father was silent for a long moment, and then he asked, "Have they hurt you or threatened you, Gette?"
"No," Gette said. "Why do you ask? Do you expect them to?"
"Yes," her father said bluntly. "I'm sorry, Gette, I really am. I sent someone to pick you up so that this wouldn't happen, but it did, and I'm sorry. I knew I'd made mistakes somewhere, but I didn't know that this was going to be one of them. I'm sorry. I'm so sorry."
"Dad, what do you mean?" Gette asked, a sick feeling of dread starting to grow in the pit of her stomach. "Why is it a mistake that I'm here?"
"Gette, I love you, I love you so much. I just --"
"Dad--" But the connection went dead then, and Gette stared disbelievingly at the phone, hearing the loud dial tone.
"Chloe, tell me we got a trace on this," Agent Bauer demanded, leaning over and clicking the phone off.
Chloe hesitated for a moment before shaking her head. "Sorry, Jack."
Agent Bauer swore with such fervor that Gette cringed. If she hadn't said the wrong thing, her father might have spoken longer, and they would have been able to trace him. She'd always been stupid like that, but now she felt worse than she'd ever felt after one of her mistakes. Although she wanted to apologize, she didn't want to bring Agent Bauer's attention to herself, and so she slid down a little in the chair, hoping not to be noticed.
"I thought she spoke longer than a minute," Tony said.
"She did, but the trace still didn't work. I think his cell phone might have had one of those sub-channel chips in it," Chloe said. "They're impossible to trace, even with passive triangulation."
"Okay, we've got, what, forty five minutes until he calls back? We'll have to do what we can until then," Agent Bauer was saying, then he turned to his partner. "Chase, take her to Medical, and tell them to make it quick. When you're done there, put her in an interrogation room."
"You don't have to interrogate me," Gette exclaimed. "I don't know anything, I swear it!"
"We just need to talk to you," Agent Bauer said. "I'll be there as soon as I can."
"You'll be fine." Agent Edmunds led Gette across the open workspace and down a corridor. Decor-wise, Medical looked exactly the same as the rest of CTU, and it was strange for Gette to see hospital beds and other equipment in rooms that seemed more suited for office furniture. An Asian woman with a long braid of black hair hanging down the center of her back looked up from typing into a computer as they came in.
"Hi, Tanya, this is Georgette Kaminsky," Agent Edmunds introduced her. "Jack wants her checked out as soon as possible."
Tanya smiled. "Jack always thinks the world is about to end in the next five minutes. Hi, Georgette, I'm Tanya Wang. Hop up here and tell me where it hurts."
Gette explained about her nose and the knife cut, and watched with interest as Tanya unpeeled the bandages and inspected her arm. "That's gonna need a few stitches. I'll get Dr. Burrows over here."
She picked up the phone, but Gette couldn't tell if she were talking to a real person or an answering machine, because all she said was, "Noah, we need you in Med Three, thanks."
Hanging up, Tanya turned back to Gette and smiled again. "I'm going to give you a local anesthetic first, and then I'll take a picture of your nose."
After the shot, Gette settled back on the bed and watched Tanya position a relatively small piece of equipment directly over her head. "What's that?"
"This is a mini X-ray machine," Tanya said, then put her hand to her mouth as though suppressing a burp. "Sorry, bit of heartburn to-day. Anyway, this is portable in case we have to take it out into the field, and we've got it hooked up to the computer like an MRI or a CAT scan, so we don't even have to wait for anything to develop. Say cheese!"
She took three exposures in rapid succession, and was just finishing the last one when the door opened and a small, bald, black man walked in. He gave Gette a cursory glance, then walked over to the computer and clicked through the images without a word. When he'd finished, he came over to Gette, pulled up a chair, then grabbed her arm, probing it in the same silence. Gette had the feeling that she was nothing more than a set of wounds to him, wounds that just happened to have a body attached. It was somewhat annoying to be ignored like that, so she glanced over to Tanya instead, and was relieved to see the woman smiling encouragingly at her.
Dr. Burrows put three stitches in the gash in rapid succession, then stood up again. "Finish up here, Tanya. By the way, kid, your nose isn't broken, so don't worry about it."
"Well, thanks," Gette said sarcastically as he walked out again.
"Don't worry about him," Tanya told her, starting to bandage Gette's arm. "He treats everybody like that, right, Chase?"
"Worse," Agent Edmunds said.
"Oh, you must really have ticked him off." Tanya smiled so broadly that her eyes almost disappeared. "Well, Georgette, your nose may not be broken, but I'll bet it still hurts. I can give you two aspirin for that, and then I have to turn you back over to Chase here."
Gette took the aspirin, and then Agent Edmunds led her into another section of corridor. Seeing a guard fall into place behind them, Gette remembered that they were going to an interrogation room, and felt her apprehension return. The guard opened the door to the room by putting the right code into the keypad on the wall, then turned the knob and motioned for her to go in.
"Jack'll be here soon," Agent Edmunds said.
The room contained a table with one chair on either side of it, two doors opposite each other, and two security cameras just below the ceiling. Interrogation room, Gette thought, and wondered again what they wanted to interrogate her about. She hadn't known that her father was still alive, and she certainly didn't know what he was doing. He'd said something about picking schools and releasing drugs, hadn't he? It almost sounded like he was targeting schoolchildren, but Gette couldn't imagine her father doing that. It was ridiculous. Perhaps he'd meant something else, and she just didn't know what.
If only he'd had time to explain to her why he wasn't dead. If only he'd answered her questions, any of them! If only she'd believed the two men who had come to pick her up! If only he'd come himself! She would have gone with him in an instant, and he wouldn't be sitting there now, worrying that the government was going to hurt her. The way he'd apologized, he'd made it sound as though CTU was the worst thing that could ever happen to her.
Was he right? Gette suddenly remembered when the two men had threatened to blow up the SUV with her inside, and how they'd said that CTU wouldn't be able to use her against them. What if CTU had something like that in mind? Was that what Agent Bauer had meant when he'd said that her father would be able to see her if he called back on the video conference line? What if they were planning to torture her right in front of him? She felt herself break out in an icy sweat as she considered the possibility, and glanced instinctively around the room for any chance of an escape.
The door that she'd come in was made of translucent glass, showing the light from the corridor. The other door also had translucent glass, but there was only darkness behind it. Gette tried the knob, but it refused to move, and even entering the numbers 1-2-3-4 on the keypad didn't produce a result. Looking at her fingers, however, reminded her that they'd promised to let her clean up once she'd got here, and they hadn't kept that promise. A plan formed in her mind, and she marched to the opposite door and banged on it.
"Hey! Anybody there?" she shouted. "I need to go to the bathroom! Please!"
A moment later, the door opened, and the security guard took Gette by the arm. "Come with me."
Pleased that there was only one guard and not two, Gette continued to work on her plan as they went around the corner into another corridor. They stopped in front of a door marked with the universal symbol for ladies' room, and he gestured for her to enter while he stayed out in the hall. She took the chance to use the toilet, then went to the sink to wash up. Gosh, she looked awful! Half her face was covered in blood, and her nose was visibly swollen. She wet some paper towels and used them to gently scrub the dried blood away, then patted her skin dry and turned to the door.
A blonde girl about her own age burst in, her hand over her mouth, and raced for the nearest stall. Gette could hear her vomit, and the sound made her want to gag. Exiting hastily, Gette let the guard take her back around the corner.
As soon as she was sure that no one was there to see, Gette stopped and tugged at the guard's arm, making him turn around to face her. She kicked him in the solar plexus, sending him staggering backwards, but didn't wait to see him crash into the opposite wall. Instead, she ran, coming to an intersection of corridors and turning left in what she hoped was the direction of the stairs she'd come down from the helicopter pad.
There was nothing but another corridor here, with doors at intervals. She jogged along, looking for a way out, a flight of stairs, or anything at all, but couldn't see anything of the sort. When she came to the next intersection, she stopped. She was lost, so lost that she could no longer tell which way she'd come.
Hearing the sound of a door opening farther along, Gette turned and jogged in the opposite direction. Too late, she saw that there were two people coming towards her, a man and a woman, but because they didn't look like security guards, Gette didn't slow down. At the last moment, the people stepped aside, making room for her so that she didn't have to slam into them. But her momentum carried her farther down the corridor until it suddenly ended, and she realized she was at the edge of the large open space, where all the workstations were.
Cursing under her breath, Gette spun around, retreating back into the corridor she'd come out of. An alarm began to sound through loudspeakers set in the ceiling, and she cursed again. If she couldn't find the way out, she thought in panic, she'd better hide. Without trying to read the lettering on the signs next to each door, she started to try the doorknobs. Most of them were locked, but one turned just as a guard came around the corner on her left, and someone else came around the corner on her right.
"Put your hands up or I'll shoot!" The voice was unmistakeably that of Agent Bauer, and Gette lifted her hands up without hesitating. With the sinking feeling of despair, she turned to face him, and saw that he was approaching with his gun out.
"Get down on your knees!" Agent Bauer shouted. As soon as Gette had knelt down, he shouted, "Lay down flat on the floor! Put your hands behind your head and interlock your fingers!"
She stretched out, feeling ashamed that her plan hadn't worked, and frightened at what the consequences might be. Resting her chin on the floor, she laced her fingers together behind her head, and watched as Agent Bauer came forward until he was standing directly in front of her. She twisted her head a little so that she could look up, and saw that he was still aiming the gun at her.
"Cuff her," he said to the guard, and Gette felt footsteps on either side of her hips. Then a hand gripped her fingers, and the cold metal of a handcuff was snapped around her left wrist. She didn't resist as the guard guided her arms down to her sides, one after the other, then pulled them together behind her back and used the remaining handcuff for her right wrist. Only then did Agent Bauer put his gun away, and the next thing she knew, he was reaching down to help her up.
"Take her back to the interrogation room and put her in restraints this time," he said to the guard on Gette's other side.
From her left, Gette heard someone call out weakly, "Dad?"
Agent Bauer turned, revealing the blonde girl that Gette had seen in the bathroom.
"Kim?" he asked. "What's wrong?"
"Dad, I have to tell you, I'm really sick," the girl said, sounding distinctly miserable. "I've just thrown up, and I--"
A second guard came up, gripping Gette's arm and freeing Agent Bauer to walk over to his daughter. Almost immediately, however, the girl put a hand to her mouth and rushed in the opposite direction. Gette saw her grab a wastepaper basket from the nearest workstation and vomit into it, just as Agent Edmunds came skidding up, putting an arm around the girl and pushing back her hair.
Back in the cell, the guards unlocked the handcuffs and pushed Gette into the chair. One of them held her right arm, and the other fastened it to the arm of the chair with a black velcro strap. They did her left arm, too, disregarding the bandage around it, and then they both went out.
I won't cry, Gette told herself firmly. I won't cry. It was difficult at first; her head still ached, her arm still throbbed faintly, and she was scared. More than once, she had to blink away the tears that kept threatening to come.
The chopper landed in the intersection, bringing a few of the neighbourhood's residents to their doors and more to their windows to see what was going on. Where were they when I was being kidnapped, Gette asked herself sarcastically as Agent Edmunds hurried her down the street. Several men were getting out of the helicopter, holding various pieces of equipment, and one of them stopped to consult with Agent Bauer.