As planned, news of the shooting was intentionally leaked, and with only immediate law enforcement agencies and FBI aware that it was fake, the campus was put on full lockdown. Reporters flocked to the scene, cameras rolling just outside the police barricades. But inside the school, there was only silence. Smoke hung in the air. Deathly quiet. And yet not dead at all.
“Leigh Ann,” a voice said in the earpiece. “This is the team leader from Valor, Cass. Don’t move. Try to speak without moving your mouth. Are you okay?”
“Yes,” Leigh Ann said, keeping her lips closed like she was told. She turned her head to the side and saw the blurry carpet on the auditorium floor, layered with broken glass. And the stage where children posed dead in front of the heavy velvet curtain. “Where are you?”
“Lying in front of you,” Cass said. “By the podium. Thirty feet ahead.”
Leigh Ann glanced up and saw the redheaded band instructor covered in blood—fake blood.
“Mary Alice … Samy…” Cass began rattling off the names of her team, and each of them responded with an “okay.”
Leigh Ann fought tears as she heard their names. She leaned up slightly, trying to see the faces of the bloodied kids.
“Stay down,” Cass said. “We’ll be outta here in no time. Good work, guys. Let’s just hope they got this guy.”
Frank Henryson had just finished up his eighteenth hole at Congressional in Bethesda. He’d shot an eighty-five—not terrible—especially with his lower back soreness. Toweling off his face, he strode over to the bar where his wife was perched with a chardonnay in front of the TV. Frank squinted, reading the white letters scrolling across the bottom of the screen. Another School Shooting.
“Shit,” Frank sighed. He signaled the bartender, who began filling the cocktail shaker with ice. It was going to be a long day. A long couple of days. Months even. He would be doing press, defending the NFA against all the nuts who blamed the Second Amendment every time a deranged person got hold of a gun. In Frank’s opinion, it was a matter of more and better arms training and arming folks in schools that would solve the problem.
“Hey, turn the TV up,” someone said to the bartender. Frank wanted to turn around and punch the guy. Couldn’t he get one moment of quiet before the storm? Before the press conferences.
“The usual.” The bartender slid the martini glass in front of him.
Frank sat down by his wife and lifted the cold gin to his lips, intentionally avoiding the TV screen. “Honey,” he said, noticing his wife’s pale, blank stare. “Barb?”
Her eyes were glued to the TV, jaw hanging like an epileptic fit. He followed her gaze to the screen where a jerky cameraman showed children crying, fleeing a campus. A campus he knew well, as it was in his neighborhood, Fairfax Middle School. On one hand he was devastated to think of the parents of the children at the school, some of whom he was sure to know. And on the other hand he was relieved—his kids went to a private boarding school. But what confused him is the school was out for the summer, wasn’t it? Why were kids at the school? Thank god his kids were at band camp. And then in a rush of terror and panic he remembered—the rehearsal was moved to today. Suddenly Frank could not pull his eyes and ears away from the TV.
“We don’t know anything for certain,” said CNN’s Mario Bombisuito, “but at this time, it’s believed that the twin son and daughter of Frank Henryson, president of the NFA, were targeted in this attack during a summer camp activity. A band rehearsal.” He paused. “Up to a dozen children are reported dead, the Henryson twins thought to be among the victims.”
A wineglass slipped to the floor, shattering as Barbara Henryson wailed.
The SecDef’s office in the Pentagon was still in utter chaos. While Leigh feigned dead on the video feed, teams frantically tried to track the IP address of the hacker, essentially chasing a white rabbit through a Byzantine network of point-to-point communication, data-packet traveling, satellites, buildings, IP address to IP address, somehow managing to find the thread no matter where it went.
The news played on low in the background and the SecDef sat at her desk, taking a minute to decide what to do. Already, the folks on the left touted that this was to be expected, and folks on the right, while grieving, still doubled down on Second Amendment rights.
The shooting was over, and now it was time to call the parents of the students at Fairfax and tell them their world was not. That their children were actually sitting in a warehouse, perfectly safe, pawns in the game to draw out a terrorist, but no longer innocent in the ways of the world.
The SecDef opened the manila file with the list of numbers, and decided she would call the Henrysons last. Let them feel this, she thought. She lifted the phone from her desk, but then glanced over at the photo of Ming Lu in the gold frame on her desk, in her school uniform plaid, hands crossed in her lap. What if it had been Ming?
She’d hardly had time to contemplate when Mr. Yellow came running over. “There’s a second shooter!”