I look at Chambers, taking control of the situation with ease.
I sigh.
This is going to need a beer.
9
It didn’t take long for Chambers to explain what had happened. Content to leave it in the hands of hospital security and local PD, we made our way downstairs and out of the hospital.
We’re standing outside the main entrance. The temperature’s dropped and there’s a chilly breeze. She’d spoken to Wallis and Johnson, and they were on their way to pick us up. I’d promised her the truth and I made her promise me I could have a beer while I tell it to her.
A few minutes pass with a somewhat awkward silence before the car pulls up in front of us. We climb in the back and Johnson, who’s driving, sets off again. We travel in silence for about five minutes before coming to a stop outside a bar. We get out, and I stand looking at the place. It looks very run down, with a faded green theme to it. The three agents walk in like they’re going home, so I’m guessing they come here a lot.
I follow them inside and stand in the doorway, looking across the bar. The interior keeps with the green from outside and has an old-fashioned Irish theme to it. It’s more long than it is wide, with the bar talking up most of the right hand side. It’s reasonably busy, but not packed. There are no empty tables, and each one is occupied by a group no larger than three. A few singles are propping up the bar on worn stools. There are neon blue signs dotted around the walls.
A few of the patrons glance over with a look of vague recognition at my companions. I eye each of them for a moment.
All cops.
They’ve brought me to a goddamn cop bar…
Well, this makes me feel much more comfortable about spilling my guts to these people!
We order our drinks at the bar. The barman’s slightly overweight and losing his hair on top. I’m guessing he’s been here half his life — probably owns the place and knows all the local cops and G-men.
We take our drinks and sit in a booth at the back of the room. Wallis is next to me, against the wall. Johnson’s opposite him with Chambers adjacent, facing me.
I’m nursing my two fingers of single malt. My mind is racing, trying to figure out what I can and can’t say. I need to give them enough that they’ll agree to work with me, but not too much that they’ll place me under arrest on the spot.
What would Josh do?
I smile to myself. I think he’d be pleased that he’s had such a positive impact on me. Not that I’ll ever admit that to him.
“So,” begins Chambers, talking to the table as a whole. “Where are we?”
There’s silence for a minute. I look at Wallis and Johnson, who look like they’re trying to decide what information’s worth sharing.
“We’re still getting details through from the forensic teams working the scene,” says Wallis, finally. “We know the bomb under the school bus was a decoy.”
“Clearly he wanted something authentic to get us there,” chimes in Johnson.
“Exactly. They’ve found traces of C4 on the SWAT truck. It was remotely detonated, probably using a cellular signal. God knows how he got close enough to plant it. Nothing yet from the chopper. It was a local media station covering the scene.”
“He had the whole thing planned meticulously…” says Chambers. “He knew which vehicles to rig, and clearly had line of sight, as he knew exactly when to detonate.”
“What about the bullets?” I ask.
It goes quiet again, with both agents exchanging glances.
“Nothing’s come back yet from the ballistic tests we’re running on the bullets they removed from your friend,” says Johnson regretfully. “Once we know what the bullets are, we can work backward and find the rifle, then hopefully where it came from and who bought it.”
I sip my whiskey, feeling the comforting tangy burn slide down my throat.
“Well,” I say. “There’s no way he was within eight hundred meters of the Academy, which rules out anything smaller than a .300 caliber bullet. Which, in turn, narrows down the list of possible rifles. He’d also have needed to be close enough to get a decent view of what was going on, so I’d put him within twelve hundred meters, which narrows things down even further. I heard the gunshots, and there was enough of a delay between them that they had to have come from a bolt-action rifle, which means he was probably using a Remington XM2010. It fires .300 caliber Winchester Magnum rounds. The weapon basically replaced the old M24, and is currently the weapon of choice for the U.S. Army. It wouldn’t be too hard to get your hands on one, if you knew where to look.”
Everyone exchanges wide-eyed glances with each other before looking back at me.
“What?” I shrug. “I know things…”
“You clearly know quite a bit,” remarks Chambers, still unimpressed. “You’ve admitted you know who’s behind all this, so spill. Help us, Adrian.”
I sigh.
What am I meant to say?
I sit in silence for a few moments, weighing up the best approach. Judging what their reaction would be to every level of detail I choose to divulge.
I’m going to have to go for full disclosure. I reckon I’ve done too much to help them already that they’ll at least postpone any pursuit of an arrest. If I don’t tell them everything, I can’t see any way of them giving me the freedom or the help I need to go after The Shark. They have to know everything.
“This whole thing stems from Heaven’s Valley, twelve months ago,” I say, finally.
“You figured that from when you and Josh worked out the clues from the first two attacks,” replies Chambers.
I take a deep breath. “Tell me what you know about what happened in Nevada.”
“It was a military operation,” she says, shrugging. “So all us lowly government employees officially know is what was on the news at the time: an extremist group called Dark Rain were operating out of an old military base in the Nevada desert. The compound was ultimately blown up, taking their operation with it.”
“Okay. What about unofficially?”
“Unofficially, your name was all over whatever happened there. No one really knows why you were there, but everyone suspects what your involvement entailed. Hence why you’re on everyone’s watch list.”
“You have to understand that I’m telling you what I know because I genuinely want this whole thing to end, and I don’t want any more innocent people getting hurt. Think of me what you will, but I’m not a bad guy and I’m not a monster.”
“You wanna know what I think?” asks Chambers. “I think you have a good heart, but have made some seriously bad career choices.”
“Like the old saying: the road to hell is paved with good intentions,” I say with a tired smile. “But by telling you what I know and why it’s happening, I’ll be giving you details of situations that may cause you to re-think my involvement in all this, and I don’t want that. I have to help and I have to be the one to stop him.”
Wallis eventually breaks the silence.
“Look, I might be way out of line here, but if it wasn’t for you, we’d have forty-three dead kids on top of everything else. Regardless of the fact this guy is doing this specifically to get at you, you’re as much in the line of fire as we are. And you’ve suffered casualties like the rest of us. All due respect,” he turns briefly to Chambers before looking back at me, “I don’t care what you may or may not have done in the past. Right now, I only care about what you’ve done here, and as far as I’m concerned, you’ve proven yourself an asset.”
He turns to Johnson and Chambers in turn.
“Am I right?”
They both shrug and nod; I notice Johnson seems more reluctant to agree than Chambers does.