Andrew Britton - The Operative

“President Brenneman, introducing assistant director of the FBI Joseph Ferrara,” said the watch officer.

Brenneman looked at the display. “Joe, let’s get right to it. What’s the latest?”

“Sir, in the last twenty minutes the Maryland state police have gotten an AW139 helicopter into the air over the center,” Ferrara said in his thick voice. “It’s streaming video, including thermal infrared imagery.” The SIOC chief glanced at a laptop. “The feed is being sent to you, File Code CC-A.”

That was the first feed from the convention center. The group all looked at their laptops. They clicked on the box in the center of the screen to access the image. It showed mostly smoke and chunks of concrete, moving from left to right, with batches of red and yellow shapes scattered throughout.

The shifting red shapes were people. The stationary yellow shapes were also people-those who were losing heat.

Dead bodies.

“Our field units from Baltimore have established a perimeter control and have agents outside the building-”

“What about the hostage situation?” Andrews asked. “Our I-eleven has intercepted tweets from several sources.”

“I was getting to that,” Ferrara said with a trace of annoyance. “We’ve seen those in the database, forwarded them to the agent in charge. She tells us that patterns of ongoing gunfire suggest people are being herded and executed.”

“Jesus,” Secretary Dryfoos said.

“They have six SWAT teams ready to go in, three from the FBI, two from the Baltimore PD, and one from the state police. They’re organizing now so they don’t shoot each other or innocents, with a T-minus of four minutes.”

Andrews sighed and Harper knew why. A lot of people could die in that time period. But the team leaders also had to make sure that they had a single protocol for shoot-to-kill, surrender, explosive vests, wounded civilians, and anything else they might encounter.

Brenneman thanked Ferrara politely, though Harper knew him well enough to know that the president would have liked to hear that units were inside the convention center already and collecting data and video.

“Is there any surveillance footage?” Harper asked Ferrara.

“We’ve got a streaming video from emergency vehicles, and we’re just starting to look at data from the convention center’s computers,” Ferrara said. “They have twenty-four discrete cameras, and we’re running the footage backward.”

That made sense. It would bring up the actionable images first and would leave the forensic images for later.

“Show us what we’re dealing with,” the president said. “Start with the ballroom and food area.”

It was the logical choice, the place where a large percentage of high-value targets from D.C. had been gathered. It was also the place where a great deal of yellow had showed up on the thermal imaging.

“Yes, sir,” Ferrara said and sent over CC-B and C. Each file had images from four separate cameras.

The president glanced at Harper. “Jon, you don’t need to do this.”

“It’s okay, sir,” he said. “I may see something.”

Harper reached for a glass of water as he opened the files on his laptop, his eyes fixed on the carnage.

The video images were arrayed in two rows of four. Clicking on any panel would give the viewer a full-screen view of that particular video.

Seven of the videos were virtually static. Even the particulate matter hanging in the air barely moved. Because the cameras were all at an angle, they were looking through more of it than if they were at ground level and facing straight ahead.

Everyone seemed to react as something moved.

“Camera eight,” Dryfoos said. “Did you all see that?”

Most of the others had already clicked and maximized the image. Harper set the water glass aside and leaned closer to the screen.

There were two people, a male and a female. There were occasional glints of light from the floor, like luminous algae in moving water.

“There’s glass from the barricade beside them,” Andrews said. “Three separate blast patterns.”

“They were shot out, not blown out,” Mathis added needlessly.

It was the first comment from the head of the FBI’s Behavioral Analysis Bureau. The psychiatrist was a college friend of the Speaker of the House, an archrival of Brenneman’s. Mathis’s reliance on “cloud profiling”-identifying potential terrorists based on geographical and socioeconomic data rather than on actual affiliations-had taxed his allotment of FBI resources without providing any tangible results. While dismissing him would be easy, getting a replacement through the House would be impossible.

“Who is in charge of this footage?” Andrews asked.

“An outfit called Steel Guard Solutions provides building and event security to the center,” Ferrara said. “A couple of rental cops reported a CIA presence in the Pratt Street lobby. These two fit the report.”

“When was that?” Harper asked, squinting at the image. He was ignoring the backward motion, concentrating on the faces.

“About fifteen minutes ago-”

“It can’t be,” Harper said suddenly.

“What, Jon?” the president asked.

Harper froze the image, clicked on the drop-down menu, kicked the size up to 150 percent, and hit the auto-enhance button. Most of the smoke seemed to vanish as the contrast in the figures was pumped up.

He glanced at the time stamp. “Frame 5:28:02,” he said. “Go fifty percent up and enhance.”

Everyone did as he’d instructed. Dumbstruck, Harper sat hunched in front of the screen, just staring. There was no mistaking the identities of the two people on-screen. The man with the coal-black shock of hair, the tall blond woman with him. Harper knew them as well as anybody in the entire world.

“Good get, Jon,” Andrews said.

“Thanks.”

Neither Ferrara nor Mathis had any idea what they were talking about, but neither man would have admitted his ignorance. Fortunately, Secretary of State Dryfoos asked the question for them.

“Who are we looking at?”

“Incredibly,” Harper said, “that’s former Company man Ryan Kealey with CIA psychotherapist Allison Dearborn.”

Harper clicked back to the backward feed. There were gun flashes from the couple’s position.

“Yeah,” Andrews said, sitting back. “That’s definitely Ryan Kealey.”

BALTIMORE, MARYLAND

Crouched beside Allison Dearborn in the walkway, Kealey read her nephew’s latest update off her phone:

Split into 2 grps. Conf. rms 224–256. Am in 224. 3 guards in rm w/us. Dn’t know h/many in hall.

“Maybe we should phone for help,” Allison suggested.

“I’d love to, but we don’t know who’s in on this or where the cavalry is,” he said. “I’m sure there are also jurisdictional turf wars that have to be settled before any boots hit the ground.”

Gunfire echoed through the main exhibition hall, a single burst of unusual duration. The sounds prickled the fine hairs at the back of Kealey’s neck; Allison breathed through clenched teeth. There had been no return volleys. They were listening to a bloodbath being carried out.

“Why are they doing this?” she asked. “They have to know the police are coming.”

“They may be counting on that,” Kealey said.

“Murder-suicide?”

“Worse.” He rose, bending low, the 9-millimeter held straight in front of him. “A dozen or more blue funerals buy a lot of airtime. Exposure advances terror.”

Allison seemed to want to say something. She couldn’t find the words, but the horror was there, in her eyes. Kealey didn’t bother to remind her that an hour ago she had said craziness kept her in business. What she meant, of course, was the benign kinds of disorders that comprised the bulk of her practice and affected only the individual: PTSD, depression, schizophrenia. The rational evil they were facing here was a very different kind of animal. It did not believe it was sick.