The Killing Hour (3 page)

“Yes, it all happened so fast. Epitaph of the dead and untrained. Look—being aware of the suspect is good. Being conscious of your role is good. But you also have to be aware of what’s right beside you. Your partner overlooked something. That’s her mistake. But you didn’t catch it for her, and that was
your
mistake. Then she got hit, now you’re down a man, and that mistake is getting bigger all the time. Plus, what were you doing just leaving her there on the pavement?”

“Lehane was yelling for rifle support—”

“You left a fellow agent exposed! If she wasn’t already dead, she certainly was after that! You couldn’t drag her back into the car?”

Kimberly opened her mouth. Shut her mouth. Wished bitterly, selfishly, that Alissa could’ve taken care of herself for a change, then gave up the argument once and for all.

“Third mistake,” Watson demanded crisply.

“They never controlled the car,” another classmate offered up.

“Exactly. You stopped the suspect’s car, but never controlled it.” His gaze went to Lehane. “When things first went wrong, what should you have done?”

Lehane visibly squirmed. He fingered the collar of his brown leisure suit, cut two sizes too big and now bearing hot-pink and mustard-yellow paint on the left shoulder. The paint guns used by the actors in the drills—aka the bad guys—stained everything in sight, hence their Salvation Army wardrobe. The exploding shells also hurt like the dickens, which was why Lehane was holding his left arm protectively against his ribs. For the record, the FBI Academy trainees weren’t allowed paint guns but used their real weapons loaded with blanks. The official explanation was that their instructors wanted the trainees to get a feel for their firearms. Likewise, they all wore vests to get used to the weight of body armor. That all sounded well and good, but why not have the actors shoot blanks as well?

The students had their theories. The brightly exploding paint shells made getting hit all the more embarrassing. And the pain wasn’t something you forgot about anytime soon. As Steven, the class psychologist, dryly pointed out, the Hogan Alley live-action drills were basically classic shock therapy on a whole new scale.

“Shot out the tires,” Lehane said now.

“Yes, at least Kimberly eventually thought of that. Which brings us to the Deadly Deed of the Day.”

Watson’s gaze swung to Kimberly. She met his look, knew what it meant, and stuck her chin up.

“She abandoned the cover of her vehicle,” the first person said.

“Put down her weapon.”

“Went after one suspect before she finished securing the scene.”

“Stopped providing cover fire—”

“Got killed—”

“Maybe she missed her partner.”

Laughter. Kimberly shot the commentator a thanks-for-nothing glare. Whistler, a big burly former Marine—who sounded like he was whistling every time he breathed—smiled back. He’d won Deadly Deed of the Day yesterday when, during a bank robbery of the Bank of Hogan, he went to shoot a robber and hit the teller instead.

“I got a little lost in the moment,” Kimberly said curtly.

“You got killed,” Watson corrected flatly.

“Merely paralyzed!”

That earned her another droll look. “Secure the vehicle first. Control the situation. Then give pursuit.”

“He’d be gone—”

“But you would have the car, which is evidence, you’d have his cohorts to flip on him, and best of all, you’d still be alive. A bird in the hand, Kimberly. A bird in the hand.” Watson gave her one last stern look, then opened up his lecture to the rest of the class. “Remember, people, in the heat of the moment, you have to stay in control. That means falling back on your training and the endless drills we’re making you do here. Hogan’s Alley is about learning good judgment. Taking the high-risk shot in the middle of a bank holdup is not good judgment.” Whistler got a look. “And leaving the cover of your vehicle, and your fellow agents, to pursue one suspect on foot is not good judgment.” A fresh glance at Kimberly. Like she needed it.

“Remember your training. Be smart. Stay controlled. That will keep you alive.” He glanced at his watch, then clapped his hands. “All right, people, five o’clock, that’s a wrap. For God’s sake, go wash all that paint off. And remember, folks—as long as it remains this hot, drink plenty of water.”

CHAPTER 2

Quantico, Virginia
5:22
P
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Temperature: 94 degrees

TWENTY MINUTES LATER,
Kimberly stood blessedly alone in her small Washington Hall dorm room. Given this afternoon’s debacle, she’d thought she’d have a good cry. She now discovered that as of week nine of the Academy’s sixteen-week program, she was officially too tired for tears.

Instead, she stood naked in the middle of the tiny dorm room. She was staring at her reflection in a full-length mirror, not quite believing what she saw.

The sound of running water came from her right; her roommate, Lucy, fresh off the PT course, was showering in the bathroom they shared with two other classmates. Behind her, came the sounds of gunfire and the occasional exploding artillery. The FBI Academy and National Academy classes were done for the day, but Quantico remained a busy place. The Marines conducted basic training just down the road. The DEA ran various exercises. At any given time on the sprawling 385-acre grounds, someone was probably shooting something.

When Kimberly had first arrived here back in May, first stepped off the Dafre shuttle bus, she’d inhaled the scent of cordite mixed with fresh-cut lawn and thought she’d never smelled anything quite so nice. The Academy seemed beautiful to her. And surprisingly inconspicuous. The sprawling collection of thirteen oversized beige brick buildings looked like any kind of 1970s institution. A community college maybe. Or government offices. The buildings were ordinary.

Inside wasn’t much different. A serviceable, blue-gray carpet ran as far as the eye could see. Walls were painted bone-white. Furniture was sparse and functional—low-slung orange chairs, short, easily assembled oak tables and desks. The Academy had officially opened its doors in 1972, and the joke was the decorating hadn’t changed much since.

The complex, however, was inviting. The Jefferson Dormitory, where visitors checked in, boasted beautiful wood trim as well as a glass-enclosed atrium, perfect for indoor barbecues. Over a dozen long, smoked-glass corridors connected each building and made it seem as if you were walking through the lush, green grounds, instead of remaining indoors. Courtyards popped up everywhere, complete with flowering trees, wrought-iron benches, and flagstone patios. On sunny days, trainees could race woodchucks, rabbits, and squirrels to class as the animals bounded across the rolling lawns. At dusk, the glowing amber eyes of deer, foxes, and raccoons appeared in the fringes of the forest, peering at the buildings with the same intensity the students used to stare back. One day, around week three, as Kimberly was strolling down a glass-enclosed corridor, she turned her head to admire a white flowering dogwood, and a thick black snake suddenly appeared among the branches and dropped to the patio below.

In the good news department, she hadn’t screamed. One of her classmates, a former Navy man, however, had. Just startled, he told them all sheepishly. Honestly, just startled.

Of course, they had all screamed a time or two since. The instructors would’ve been disappointed otherwise.

Kimberly returned her attention to the full-length mirror, and the mess that was her body now reflected there. Her right shoulder was dark purple. Her left thigh yellow and green. Her rib cage was bruised, both her shins were black and blue, and the right side of her face—from yesterday’s shotgun training—looked like someone had gone after her with a meat mallet. She turned around and gazed at the fresh bruise already forming on her lower back. It would go nicely with the giant red mat burn running up the back of her right thigh.

Nine weeks ago, her five-six frame had been one hundred and fifteen pounds of muscle and sinew. As a lifelong workout junkie, she’d been fit, trim, and ready to breeze through physical training. Armed with a master’s degree in criminology, shooting since she was twelve, and hanging out with FBI agents—basically her father—all of her life, she’d strode through the Academy’s broad glass doors like she owned the joint. Kimberly Quincy has arrived and she’s still pissed off about September 11. So all you bad people out there, drop your weapons and cower.

That had been nine weeks ago. Now, on the other hand . . .

She’d definitely lost badly needed weight. Her eyes held dark shadows, her cheeks were hollowed out, her limbs looked too thin to bear her own weight. She looked like a washed-out version of her former self. Bruises on the outside to match the bruises on the inside.

She couldn’t stand the sight of her own body. She couldn’t seem to look away.

Inside the bathroom, the water shut off with a rusty clank. Lucy would be out soon.

Kimberly raised her hand to the mirror. She traced the line of her bruised shoulder, the glass cool and hard against her fingertips.

And, unbidden, she remembered something she hadn’t thought of for six years now. Her mother, Elizabeth Quincy. Dark, softly curling brown hair, fine patrician features, her favorite ivory silk blouse. Her mother was smiling at her, looking troubled, looking sad, looking torn.

“I just want you to be happy, Kimberly. Oh God, if only you weren’t so much like your father . . .”

Kimberly’s fingers remained on the mirrored glass. She closed her eyes, however, for there were some things that even after all these years she still could not take.

Another sound from the bathroom; Lucy raking shut the curtain. Kimberly opened her eyes. She moved hastily to the bed and grabbed her clothes. Her hands were trembling. Her shoulder ached.

She pulled on FBI-issued nylon running shorts and a light blue T-shirt.

Six o’clock. Her classmates would be going to dinner. Kimberly went to train.

Kimberly had arrived at the FBI Academy in Quantico, Virginia, the third week of May as part of NAC 03-05—meaning her class was the fifth new agent class to start in the year 2003.

Like most of her classmates, Kimberly had dreamt about becoming an FBI agent for most of her life. To say she was excited to be accepted would be a little bit of an understatement. The Academy accepted only 6 percent of applicants—a lower acceptance rate than even Harvard’s—so Kimberly had been more like giddy, awestruck, thrilled, flabbergasted, nervous, fearful, and amazed all in various turns. For twenty-four hours, she’d kept the news to herself. Her own special secret, her own special day. After all the years of educating and training and trying and wanting . . .

She’d taken her acceptance letter, gone to Central Park, and just sat there, watching a parade of New Yorkers walk by while wearing a silly grin on her face.

Day two, she’d called her father. He’d said, “That’s wonderful, Kimberly,” in that quiet, controlled voice of his and she’d babbled, for no good reason, “I don’t need anything. I’m all set to go. Really, I’m fine.”

He’d invited her to dinner with him and his partner, Rainie Conner. Kimberly had declined. Instead, she’d sheared off her long, dirty-blond hair and clipped down her fingernails. Then she’d driven five hours to the Arlington National Cemetery, where she sat in silence amid the sea of white crosses.

Arlington always smelled like a freshly mowed lawn. Green, sunny and bright. Not many people knew that, but Kimberly did.

Arriving at the Academy three weeks later was a lot like arriving at summer camp. All new agents were bundled into the Jefferson Dormitory where supervisors rattled off names and crossed off lists, while the new trainees clutched their travel bags and pretended to be much cooler and calmer than they really felt.

Kimberly was summarily handed a bundle of thin white linens and an orange coverlet to serve as her bedding. She also received one threadbare white towel and one equally threadbare washcloth. New agent trainees made their own beds, she was informed, and when she wanted fresh sheets, she was to pack up the old bunch and go to the linen exchange. She was then given a student handbook detailing all the various rules governing life at the Academy. The handbook was twenty-four pages long.

Next stop the PX, where, for the bargain-basement price of $325, Kimberly purchased her new agent uniform—tan cargo pants, tan belt, and a navy blue polo shirt bearing the FBI Academy logo on the left breast. Like the rest of her classmates, Kimberly purchased an official FBI Academy lanyard, from which she hung her ID badge.

ID badges were important at the Academy, she learned. For one thing, wearing ID at all times kept students from being summarily arrested by Security and thrown out. For another thing, it entitled her to free food in the cafeteria.

New agents must be in uniform Monday through Friday from eight
A
.
M
. to four-thirty
P
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M
., they learned. After four-thirty, however, everyone magically returned to being mere mortals and thus could wear street clothes—excluding sandals, tube tops, or tank tops. This was, after all, the Academy.

Handguns were not permitted on Academy grounds. Instead, Kimberly checked her Glock .40 into the Weapons Management Facility vault. In return, she received what the new agents fondly referred to as a “Crayola Gun” or “Red Handle”—a red plastic gun of approximately the same weight and size as a Glock. New agents were required to wear the Crayolas at all times, along with fake handcuffs. In theory, this helped them grow accustomed to the weight and feel of wearing a handgun.

Kimberly despised her Red Handle. It seemed childish and silly to her. She wanted her Glock back. On the other hand, the various accountants, lawyers, and psychologists in her class, who had zero firearms experience, loved the things. They could knock them off their belts, drop them in the halls, and sit on them without shooting themselves or anyone else in the ass. One day, Gene Yvves had been gesturing so wildly, he whacked his Crayola halfway across the room, where it hit another new agent on the head. Definitely, the first few weeks, it was a good idea that not everyone in the class was armed.

Kimberly still wanted her Glock back.

Once piled high with linens, uniforms, and toy handguns, the new agent trainees returned to the dorms to meet their roommates. Everyone started out in the Madison and Washington dormitories, two people to a room and two rooms sharing a bath. The rooms were small but functional—two single beds, two small oak desks, one big bookshelf. Each bathroom, painted vivid blue for reasons known only to the janitor, had a small sink and a shower. No tub. By week four, when everyone’s bruised and battered bodies were desperate for a long, hot soak, several agents rented hotel rooms in neighboring Stafford purely for the bathtubs. Seriously.

Kimberly’s roommate, Lucy Dawbers, was a thirty-six-year-old former trial lawyer who’d had her own two-thousand-dollar-a-month Boston brownstone. She’d taken one look at their spartan quarters that first day and groaned, “Oh my God, what have I done?”

Kimberly had the distinct impression that Lucy would kill for a nice glass of Chardonnay at the end of the day. She also missed her five-year-old son horribly.

In the good news department, especially for new agents who didn’t share particularly well—say, perhaps, Kimberly—somewhere around week twelve, new agents became eligible for private rooms in “The Hilton”—the Jefferson Dormitory. These rooms were not only slightly bigger, but entitled you to your very own bathroom. Pure heaven.

Assuming you survived until week twelve.

Three of Kimberly’s classmates already hadn’t.

In theory, the FBI Academy had abandoned its earlier, boot camp ways for a kinder, gentler program. Recognizing how expensive it was to recruit good agents, the Bureau now treated the FBI Academy as the final training stage for selected agents, rather than as a last opportunity to winnow out the weak.

That was in theory. In reality, testing started week one. Can you run two miles in less than sixteen minutes? Can you do fifty push-ups in one minute? Can you do sixty sit-ups? The shuttle run must be completed in twenty-four seconds, the fifty-foot rope must be climbed in forty-five seconds.

The new agent trainees ran, they trained, they suffered through body-fat testing and they prayed to fix their individual weaknesses—whether that was the shuttle run or the rope climb or the fifty push-ups, in order to pass the three cycles of fitness tests.

Then came the academics program—classes in white-collar crime, profiling, civil rights, foreign counterintelligence, organized crime and drug cases; lessons in interrogation, arrest tactics, driving maneuvers, undercover work, and computers; lecture series on criminology, legal rights, forensic science, ethics, and FBI history. Some of it was interesting, some of it was excruciating, and all of it was tested three times over the course of the sixteen weeks. And no mundane high-school scale here—it took a score of 85 percent or higher to pass. Anything less, you failed. Fail once, you had an opportunity for a make-up test. Fail twice, you were “recycled”—dropped back to the next class.

Recycled
. It sounded so innocuous. Like some PC sports program—there are no winners or losers here, you’re just recycled.

Recycling mattered. New agents feared it, dreaded it, had nightmares about it. It was the ominous word whispered in the halls. It was the secret terror that kept them going up over the towering Marine training wall, even now that it was week nine and everyone was sleeping less and less while being pushed more and more and the drills were harder and the expectations higher and each day, every day, someone was going to get awarded the Deadly Deed of the Day . . .

Besides the physical training and academics, new agents worked on firearms. Kimberly had thought she’d have the advantage there. She’d been taking lessons with a Glock .40 for the past ten years. She was comfortable with guns and a damn good shot.

Except firearms training didn’t involve just standing and firing at a paper target. They also practiced firing from the sitting position—as if surprised at a desk. Then there were running drills, belly-crawling drills, night-firing drills, and elaborate rituals where they started out on their bellies, then got up and ran, then dropped down, then ran more, then stood and fired. You fired right-handed. You fired left-handed. You reloaded and reloaded and reloaded.