National Security

The police came, as they often do. The wreck on the street was cordoned off and traffic was restored.

"I won't be able to cover this up," Rubino said as the first sounds of sirens began to echo off of the buildings. "You'll have to make a statement, and I'll have a mess of paperwork."

I nodded, silently, and walked back to the hotel parking lot. I sat down on the edge of the sidewalk, rested my arms on my knees, and let the fully loaded Glock hang from my hand while I tried my best to keep the tidal wave of questions, feelings, and memories inside my mind at bay.

Behind the police came ambulances to take away the injured, but finding only the dead. The shooter, with fresh bandaging on his right leg under his pants -- making him and the Irishman one and the same, was dead. The cop, splayed out across the pavement, was dead. Special Agent Bremer, his back to the sidewalk, was dead. Rubino took the news with a slow nod and glazed eyes. Crime scene workers came in and floated around the parking lot like bees, placing numbered cards near spent ammo casings on the cracked pavement and taking meticulous photos. Everybody seemed to ignore me.

I set the gun down and walked back to the white panel van. The discarded assault rifle in the back was an XM8, the same carried by the men who had stormed my house and seemingly blown it up, only with the proper modifications to make it a full automatic rifle. I recognized the heavy 20-inch barrel, folding bi-pod, and 100-round drum magazine from the pictures I'd seen online when I first looked the gun up. As I recalled, the XM8 was a prototype project that was canceled before completion and the prototype units were very rare. This Irish guy and the men at my house having the same rare prototype weapon and them not being connected would be a phenomenally huge coincidence.

This means that, on top of the Irishman somehow knowing Dingan, he either works with, or gets his guns from the same person as, the guys from my house. It all comes back to the Marines, back to Schumer.

There was no other way to look at it. Schumer came up with the plan to train kids to be killers, Schumer had my dad killed when he tried to report the program to the Feds, Schumer had Comstock cover up my outburst at school, Schumer had Comstock killed, tried to have me killed, almost got Amy killed. Because of Schumer's affinity for reckless hitmen, two police officers were dead now, and one FBI Special Agent.

My life had boiled down to a series of unanswered questions interspersed with situations of danger, my dad was dead, and my only friend was in the hospital, all because of Lt. Colonel Schumer. That was all I needed now, no more mysteries to solve. No more bullets to dodge. Schumer was behind all of it, and he was going to pay.

My blood pumped with a newfound resolve. At last I had a clear purpose.

"Mr. Baker?" came a voice from behind me. There was a police officer, a detective from the look of him, standing just a few feet from me. "I'd like you to come down to the station with us to help fill out a report while they finish things up here."
I looked around the parking lot for Rubino, saw him over by the swarm of police cars, talking to another officer. He looked over at me, glanced at the officer staring me down, and nodded at me.
This would be interesting.

Four hours. I was there for four hours. Nobody seemed happy with my answer that I was assisting the FBI with an investigation, an investigation I could not talk about because of national security. They seemed to be missing the part of the story where I became so interesting to the FBI, but that too I could write off to national security. The key, it seemed, is to keep a straight face when you say, "national security." That's when they start taking you seriously.

The lead detective, an early-balding man with bags under his eyes, pulled out a file with my name on it, circled in red, and underlined four times in black. I thought they would have been using computers for these things by now, but that wasn't the case. The file was full of unanswered mysteries that all lead to me. A Martin Escamile's parents had tried to press charges against me for assaulting him in school, but school administration reported that I wasn't even involved. There was a dead Lorton police officer in the trunk of his own cruiser, which was split down the middle by a tree, and was practically fused with my old car; the FBI blocked their investigation. My passport was logged leaving the country and entering Austria, but not returning, and I was somehow sitting right there. Someone called saying to come to my house, and when the police arrived the house was effectively gone; the FBI blocked that investigation. I'd come into the hospital with a girl suffering a rare type of poisoning and I'd known exactly how to treat it at the scene; the FBI blocked that investigation. Now, I was in the middle of a shootout in the middle of Fredericksburg which resulted in the deaths of the assailant, a police officer, an FBI agent, and the injury of one female driver whose car was struck by a van; no FBI block this time.

My answer to all of the above: national security. With a straight face, of course.

The fact was, it was easier to answer no questions than to try to explain the real answers, especially without incriminating myself in the process. I couldn't imagine the police would be too receptive of any claims that I was in the center of a conspiracy headed by a corrupt member of the Marine Corps.

The detective was in the middle of explaining that I could be held for up to 24 hours without charge when Rubino came through the metal, windowless door into the interrogation room I'd been sitting in for the last four hours. Seeing him, the lead detective threw his arms up in disgust and the other detective tried to block Rubino's path but he slipped right past him.

"Officers, I assume you've had sufficient time to take necessary statements and file a report on today's incident," Rubino said in one breath as he placed a crisp, type document onto the table and slid it over to the detective, saying, "This is a formal statement from the FBI Assistant Director declaring that Christopher Baker is not to be held nor any charges be placed against him until such a time that the investigation he is currently assisting us with has been brought to an end. Presuming you have enough to file your reports, I will be taking Mr. Baker now so he can get some rest and be moved to a more secure lodging."

The whole monologue was delivered smoothly and without a break to allow any interjection. I was lead by the shoulder out of the room and the door was closed before the officers had even time enough to open their mouths.

As we walked out of the building, Rubino asked me, "What'd you tell them?"
"That I couldn't tell them anything," I said.
"Fifth amendment?" he asked.
"National security."
"Even better."
"Was that letter real?" I asked.
"Not even a little bit," Rubino said casually.

Rubino drove me, in the black sedan, back to the hotel and parked just next to my car. The bodies were gone, the van was gone, the spent casings were gone. But for some destroyed cars and a few bullet holes in the wall, it looked like any other hotel parking lot now. The morning's chaos just a memory, a news story, a police report, and something a few business travelers can go home and tell their friends about.

After a few seconds of sitting in silence, Rubino said, "We can see if that guy's face or prints match anything we have on file, maybe give him a name."
"Will that help you get any evidence, about who hired him?" I asked.
"Probably not," he said, flatly.
From a legal standpoint, there would probably be no way to move from here to Schumer. We both knew it. He would have funded the hits with an offshore account or gone through a proxy.

Rubino turned and pulled a small cardboard box from the back seat of the car and set it on my lap. Inside it was a piece of paper, below that were the two Beretta 92 pistols from the dresser drawer of my hotel room, a roll of white medical adhesive, and a few other things. On the paper was a single address, an apartment in downtown Washington DC.

Rubino turned and looked out the windshield, thoughtfully. "I think I've taken you as far as I can," he said. The sun was setting and long shadows were cast across his face, exaggerating the otherwise-subtle sorrowful look he'd worn since I'd looked at him over the body of our only remaining lead.
"I, Bremer and I," he continued, "have broken a lot of rules and laws to get this far, because of what your father did, or tried to do. If you want to end this, you'll have to take the last step. I have to do some explaining, take care of all of the paperwork required after discharging a weapon in the field, and call Bremer's wife.

I pulled a small, black gadget from the bottom of the box and asked, "What's this for?"
Rubino turned back to me and said, "You'll figure it out."