The classroom held a hundred students seated in concentric rows around a large screen that could be patched in to a number of audio-visual teaching aids as well as any of the sixty-two security cameras set up around the town. Right now it was showing the basement room of the town house with Shepherd in the middle of it, frozen in his two-handed stance, his gun pointing at the crumpled bodies on the floor. A man in a black suit stood before the screen, head to one side as if studying an exhibit in an art gallery. “You see a ghost in there, Shepherd?” he asked without looking around.
“No, sir, I was just… it was a high-pressure situation.”
The man turned and gave Shepherd the same hard scrutiny he’d been giving the screen. “They’re all high-pressure situations, son — every one of ’em.”
Special Agent Benjamin Franklin was one of two active field counselors permanently attached to Shepherd’s class, there to give a practical dimension to each lesson, answer any questions and tell the new intake how it really was out in the real world. He was one of those solid, square-jawed types seemingly minted in a different time when men still called women ma’am and cars were covered in fins and chrome. His short blond hair was receding and fading to ash above pale blue eyes like chips of ice that somehow still managed to convey warmth whenever he smiled, which he did now. “Might I ask,” he said, “would you fire again, given the same scenario?” His Carolina drawl gave his words a slow courtliness.
Shepherd thought back to the blur of action as he’d squeezed the trigger, the suspect in his sights but the wrong person ending up dead on the floor. “No, sir.”
“How do you figure that?”
“Because… because I hit the hostage.”
Franklin started up the aisle toward him, buttoning the jacket of his suit and flashing an old, steel Timex. “Take off your body armor Shepherd and walk with me awhile.”
The night seemed darker after the brightness of the classroom and the wind had picked up. It was blowing leaves down the street and into Shepherd’s face as he fell into step beside Franklin.
“ ’Bout twelve years back,” Franklin said, peering at the darkening forest ahead as if he could see the lost years among the trees, “I was part of a six-man task force running an investigation into a string of hit-and-run bank jobs across the Ohio-Indiana state line. In each case a lone, masked gunman stormed into a small out-of-the-way bank, grabbed a hostage — always a woman — and threatened to shoot her if anyone tripped an alarm. He was smart to a point because the size of the banks meant security wasn’t top of the line, so we didn’t have any decent security camera footage. Also he never got greedy so was always out and away within a couple of minutes. And he always took the hostage with him, saying if he heard so much as a car alarm he would kill her.
“As you can imagine the local press shook up a hornets’ nest of fear about it all but there was also a bigger concern: none of the hostages were coming forward afterward. For about a week or so we lived in fear of getting a call from some hunter or dog walker who had stumbled upon the silenced corpse of one of our unfortunate bank customers. Then he hit another bank, third in a month, and we got fresh footage.”
Franklin directed Shepherd away from Hogan’s Alley and toward the path through the forest that led to the main building complex beyond.
“This is how it went down. Woman walks into the bank, talks to the door guard; gunman comes in and disarms the guard while he’s distracted, grabs the woman, robbery ensues then perp leaves with a hostage. We could see by comparing the clear images of the new footage with the fuzzy older stuff we had that it was the same woman every time. Turns out she wasn’t a hostage at all, she was one of the crew. That’s why no one was coming forward afterward.
“We quietly spread the word among the state banks, so when they pulled another job ten days later in Des Moines, a teller tripped the alarm and the cops got there in plenty of time to pick ’em up. When he was cornered the gunman tried to pull the same hostage routine, said he was going to kill her if they didn’t give him a car and a free pass. Cops just told him, ‘Go ’head, shoot her.’ All of which brings us back to your little situation. Tell me what you knew about your suspect from the mission brief?”
Shepherd dug his hands deep in his pockets and tried to focus on something other than how cold he was. “The intel said he was on several international watch lists as a known terror suspect. Believed to be a jihadist, trained in Afghanistan by Al-Qaeda.”
“And from your reading and case studies do terrorists and other religiously motivated individuals tend to give themselves up to officers of an enemy state they believe they are conducting a holy war against?”
“No.”
“No they do not.”
The trees parted to reveal the Quantico Hilton rising up in front of them, all square lines, slit windows and concrete. This was where the labs and active-case teams were housed; proper ongoing, messy cases with as-yet-undiscovered solutions, not the clean textbook ones Shepherd was being weaned on. It could easily have passed for a small midwestern high school campus had it not been for the sound of gunfire crackling out of the forest behind them. The next recruit must have made it to the basement. Shepherd hoped he or she was doing better than he had. Hearing the shots reminded him of all the paperwork he needed to fill out back at the briefing room. The forms for discharging your weapon during an exercise were thorough, tedious and in triplicate for very good reason: it stopped the recruits from getting trigger happy.
“Don’t worry about the admin,” Franklin said, apparently reading his mind. “I’ll square it with Agent Williams. You can fill it in and file it after.”
After what? Shepherd wanted to ask, but Franklin was already halfway toward the glass doors of the main building.
“Never forget that you are a highly and expensively trained officer, son. In the currency of law enforcement that makes you an asset to Uncle Sam and a much valued target to a terrorist. If you don’t take the shot, odds are the bomber will push the button anyway and there will be three bodies to scrape out of that basement instead of two. The hostage dies either way. And, given the little story I just told you, how do you know the hostage was even friendly?” They moved from the frigid night into the brightness and heat of the executive building. “You have to wonder what that woman was doing at dusk in a rat-hole basement with a known terrorist in the first place. I can understand you being upset that you shot someone who might be innocent, it’s a credit to you, but don’t lose sleep over it. You made the right choice, Shepherd. Though you do need to work on your marksmanship.”
They passed the honors board that dominated the glass atrium with the name of every top-of-the-class graduate written in gold, dating right back to 1972 when the doors first opened. Shepherd doubted his name would ever grace it. He was a good few years older than the average intake, which showed in his fitness scores, and his shooting was clearly letting him down. The things he really excelled at were not part of the five areas of ability that went toward his final mark; his expertise had not even been thought of when the FBI first came into being.
The elevator door opened and Franklin stepped inside, waited for Shepherd to join him then pushed button number 6. Shepherd’s mouth went dry. The sixth floor was where the most senior personnel lived.