by Matt Lincoln
Wallace had received a call earlier this afternoon from Charlie informing him about the cryptic broadcast that had obviously been targeted toward us. Even if he hadn’t, we would have heard about it anyway since it was all over the news in less than an hour. Someone had very publicly threatened to carry out a terrorist attack on one of the United Kingdom’s most major cities, so it was no surprise that the entire world was tuning in to discuss it.
I rubbed my eyes in an attempt to ward off the drowsiness that was beginning to creep up on me. It had already been six hours since Charlie had called to warn us, which meant we’d lost one-fourth of our allotted time to find and defuse the bomb.
I was still in the hospital when the call had come in. The only reason I even knew about it was that Wallace happened to be in my hospital room at the time. I’d immediately jumped out of bed and insisted I be released. The doctor didn’t want to, but they couldn’t actually keep me there against my will, so I’d left anyway, against medical advice. Fortunately, I didn’t need surgery and would just have to keep my arm in a sling for a few weeks, so I wasn’t too worried about it. Typing was difficult with only one hand, but Charlie and Junior were depending on me.
“I never did get to drink that coffee,” I muttered to myself as I left my office and walked out into the bullpen. The other agents and Wallace had cleaned up the office while I was in the hospital, but the signs of a struggle were still apparent.
Several of the tables were sporting new chips and scratch marks, and Junior’s work computer was entirely gone. It had been smashed to pieces, along with a decorative glass elephant that Naomi had placed on her desk. Then, of course, there were the cracks and splinters all over my office. Wallace said that he’d made an appointment to have them repaired but that it likely wouldn’t get done until after Halloween. I didn’t really mind. They fit the season, and, weirdly, I felt a sense of pride looking at the tiny cracks that had almost buckled under the force of Howard’s assault but managed to weather the storm.
“That’s so lame,” I chuckled to myself as I walked into the break room to make myself another cup of coffee. Wallace was the only other person in the office at the moment. Nelson, Miranda, and Naomi had been sent home so that they’d be rested for tomorrow, and, of course, Howard was still in the hospital. I was relieved when I’d been informed that he was doing alright and would probably make a full recovery, much to Miranda’s consternation.
I understood that she was upset with him for what he’d done, but he was still our fellow agent. I couldn’t understand the level of vitriol she kept directing toward him. She’d searched his office as soon as he and Naomi had left and had found a plethora of drugs inside his personal backpack, including several doses of rush. She’d stormed out of the office and insisted to Nelson that he was a traitor and a liability and demanding that he be fired. Maybe it was her military training, but I had never seen Miranda act that way before. Nelson had tried to calm her, but it hadn’t been until I lied and told her that her yelling was making my headache worse that she’d finally calmed down. She’d been silently storming around ever since, though, and it was clear that she didn’t plan to forgive Howard any time soon.
I sighed as the coffee machine beeped to indicate that the pot was ready. We had enough to deal with without having to worry about infighting, too, especially now that our case had been thrust to the forefront of every major news outlet in the world. It was going to be a lot harder now that all eyes were on us and every whack job with access to a telephone was calling in to confess to being behind the broadcast or to report fake leads.
I walked back through the empty office and plopped into my chair. It was pretty evident now that Junior’s suspicion had been correct, and whoever was behind this was trying their best to get MBLIS’s attention. If all they wanted was to cause fear and chaos, they would have just blown up a building and watched as people scrambled. No, whoever was behind that broadcast had left too many clues that he was directly provoking us.
First, there was the fact that he’d come right out and addressed the broadcast to “agents” who had disappointed him. He’d also mentioned something about hacking and Japan and the remarkably unsubtle reference to the bomb that had been sent to me just a few months ago. This person couldn’t have known about that unless he was intimately familiar with us and our cases.
I stared at the audio files I’d ripped from the news station’s online systems. The message had only been broadcast through a local station in the northern part of Dublin, which narrowed down the area where the original broadcast had aired, but that didn’t actually tell me anything about how he had hacked the transmission. It could very well have been someone from outside Ireland, for all I knew. It wouldn’t have taken top-notch hacking skills either, as the station was still using the same network security it had been using since the seventies. Which was to say practically none.
The hacker had probably done that because it would be much easier to break into a small, local station’s network than a larger corporation. Even if Junior and Charlie didn’t see the broadcast right away, there was no doubt they would have seen it soon enough as it exploded and went viral.
I pulled my headphones on and played the audio clip again, listening closely to every word.
“After those hacking skills I observed in Japan, I’m certain this won’t be a problem for you,” the voice taunted.
“Why did he say that?” I muttered to myself as I slipped my headphones back off. Obviously, he was trying to intimidate us by proving he knew about our past cases, but I had a hunch there was something more to it. He could have chosen plenty of ways to demonstrate his power to us, yet he’d specifically mentioned that we’d be able to find the bomb via “hacking skills.”
“Was he talking to me?” I muttered as I followed my hunch and opened the clip in an audio editing program. I really didn’t like the idea that whoever this was had thought far ahead enough to know that I’d hack into the station’s network and analyze the audio clip.
My eyes widened as I searched through the audio files and realized my hunch had been correct. There was something encrypted in the files.
I quickly ran the file through a decryption program and tapped my foot anxiously as I waited for the result. I was glad to have finally found something, but I was annoyed that the perp had clearly expected this to happen. We were playing right into his hands, but we didn’t really have any other choice at the moment.
“Yes,” I smirked triumphantly as the program produced the decrypted file. To my surprise, it was another audio file. I yanked my headphones back into place and quickly played it.
At first, I didn’t hear anything, but then, gradually, a repetitive chiming noise began to play through my headphone speakers.
“Is that a railroad crossing?” I murmured out loud. There was no doubt about it. It was definitely the melodic sound of a train crossing coming through my headphones. “Is he going to bomb a train station?”
I ripped the headphones back off my head and rushed out of my office and toward Wallace’s. This clip hadn’t been embedded into the audio file accidentally. I wasn’t completely certain what it meant, but this was the most significant lead we had so far, and we couldn’t afford to lose any time.
24
Charlie
I woke with a start from an unrestful sleep. I was lying on a hard metal bench, and harsh fluorescent lights were bearing down on me unforgivably from above.
“Get up,” Junior shook my arm again. “I just got a call from Wallace. We may have a lead about where the bomb is.”
It took me a minute to regain my bearings and remember exactly where I was and what was happening. Junior and I had come back to the castle police station immediately after watching the broadcast, and we’d been collaborating with the police in an attempt to figure out where the bomb might be. A few hours in, I’d laid down on a bench to rest my eyes, and I guess I’d been more tired than I realized.
The back of my head ach
ed where it had been pressed against the cold metal, and my back felt stiff.
“How long was I out?” I asked as I rubbed the grogginess from my eyes.
“A few hours,” Junior replied. “The sun’s about to come out.”
“What?” I snapped my eyes open and looked out the window. Sure enough, the sky was beginning to turn purple as the sun peeked out from below the horizon. “How much time do we have left?”
“Seventeen,” Junior answered. “Assuming the perp was being honest and isn’t planning on just setting it off anyway.” There was an irritable bite to his voice, and I could tell the fatigue was getting to him.
“Agents!” a voice boomed from down the hall. I looked up and smiled automatically when I saw it was Seamus. “Good to see you again!”
“Good to see you, too,” I nodded.
“You look like death warmed over, boys.” Seamus glanced between Junior and me. “Although I suppose I can’t be blaming you. Anyway, I just got a call from your director. We’re getting ready to mobilize now. Are you heading to Connolly, then?”
“What?” I answered dumbly.
“Sorry,” Junior sighed. “I didn’t get to that, did I? Fiona found an audio clip of a railway crossing hidden in the original broadcast file. It was obviously added after the recording had been created, which means the broadcaster must have put it there deliberately. She thinks that’s a hint that he’s planning to target a train station.”
“And Connolly’s the biggest station in Dublin,” Seamus added. “Of course, we’re sending men to all the stations in the area, but if someone wanted to cause destruction, they’d be better off choosing the biggest and busiest station, right?”
“Makes sense to me,” I agreed.
“Let’s hurry, then,” Junior urged. “He told us we’d have twenty-four hours, but I’m not sure it would be wise to trust him. The last time he sent us somewhere, we were met with an ambush.”
Seamus’s smile fell a little, most likely remembering what had happened to Callahan.
“I’m going to find this brute,” Seamus huffed. “And boot him out of my beloved country.”
I smiled at his vigor as we headed off toward the entrance of the police station. We weren’t the only ones rushing out, and there was a clamor outside the station as officers loaded into their cars and took off toward their respective posts.
“Buckle up, gentlemen,” Seamus advised as we climbed into the car. He turned on his lights and sirens before taking off down the street.
By this point, I had gone several days without more than a few hours of sleep at a time, and my head was throbbing painfully. Still, I felt wide awake as adrenaline coursed through my veins. The closer we got to the train station, the more palpably I could feel the excitement of an impending adventure.
Seamus pulled up to the station just as a cavalry of other police cars arrived as well. We climbed out of the car and joined the other officers spilling through the entrance into the train station.
The inside of the station was large, with a high, vaulted ceiling and a long row of turnstiles that led toward the platforms. There wasn’t a soul in sight apart from the Garda, so the whole place felt eerily too cavernous and empty. It gave me a foreboding feeling before we’d even begun.
“Alright, listen up!” a uniformed officer standing by the front of the turnstiles yelled. “Remain with your teams and don’t go wandering off. If you find something, keep your hands off it! Call in Bomb Disposal immediately. I will say that again. Do not touch anything! If you find something that you believe might be an explosive device, step away and call for Bomb Disposal. Do I make myself clear?”
The man’s instructions were met by a chorus of affirmations, and the next moment everyone was breaking off into their groups.
“That was the deputy commissioner,” Seamus informed us as we moved further into the train station. “Don’t worry about what he said about staying in teams. That was for the Garda. You’re free to move around as you please, though I would recommend you heed his warning about not touching anything you happen to notice. The entire station’s been evacuated by now.”
“Has anyone checked the security tapes?” Junior inquired as he stopped in his tracks to look up at a camera mounted on the wall above us.
“I’m not sure,” Seamus replied. “I can find out, though.”
He led us down a hallway and into a back area clearly only meant for staff.
“Lucky for you, I’ve been back here before,” Seamus remarked. “I don’t know what it is about public transportation that brings about the absolute worst behavior in some people. Anyway, if I recall correctly, it should be right through here.”
He pushed open a door marked “security” and stepped inside. To my surprise, there were already a pair of officers in there.
“If it isn’t Seamus,” one of the officers greeted. “What are you doing here?”
“Just giving the agents a little tour,” Seamus responded. “They need to see the security tapes.”
“Ah.” The officer nodded as she looked past Seamus to peer at us. “We were just about to go through them.”
“Perfect,” Seamus replied. “Hopefully, it’ll make locating that bomb easier.”
The small security room was too cramped for all of us to fit comfortably, but I pushed my way toward the screens mounted against the walls, anyway. There were a couple dozen monitors mounted along the front wall of the room, as well as a few sitting on a desktop. Each one displayed a different part of the station, from the hallways to each individual track.
“It’s going to take a while for us to review everything,” Junior frowned. “Even if every person in the room watches a different monitor, that means we’ll each have to go through three or four of them.”
“We’d better get going, then,” I replied. We were nearly down to half of our allotted time, so we needed to take advantage of every moment we had left. “Seamus, which tracks would you say are the busiest?”
“Maybe platform four,” he hummed in response. “That’s one of the DART tracks. There’s a train about every ten minutes, so it’s always pretty busy during the weekdays.”
“I’ll start with that one, then,” I stated. “It would make the most sense for the perp to pick a target that would result in a higher number of casualties.”
The screens on the wall displayed live feeds of the station, but only the four monitors on the desk could be used to review older footage, so we repositioned ourselves in a way that would allow the five of us to review the tapes as efficiently as possible. Seamus watched the first monitor, Junior was on the second, I was on the third, and the two police officers shared the fourth and final one.
I kept my eyes peeled for any suspicious behavior as I rewound and fast-forwarded through the security footage of platform four. Even playing the footage at twice the normal speed was slow going, as there were multiple camera angles to look through, and I didn’t want to go so fast that I accidentally missed something.
My eyes were stinging by the time I got through all the footage of platform four from the day before, and I rubbed my eyes with the back of my hand. We couldn’t be sure exactly how long ago the bomb had been planted. For all we knew, it might have been placed days before the broadcast even aired, so we needed to be as thorough as possible.
“You find anything?” I turned to look at Junior, who was still staring intensely at the screen before him.
“No,” he sighed as he paused the recording. “I’m pretty sure I saw a drug deal go down between a couple of teenagers, but nothing actually related to our case.”
I frowned, disheartened as I turned to my other side to ask the two police officers if they’d noticed anything peculiar. I paused as I caught sight of the footage playing on their screen, which was going so fast I could barely make anything out.
“That’s a little fast, don’t you think?” I remarked as I continued to watch the screen. “Aren’t you worried you might miss something?”
/> “Oh,” the shorter officer said as he looked up at me in surprise. “No, not really. Once you’re used to reviewing these kinds of tapes, you get good at speeding through them.”
That seemed like a dumb response to me. We were trying to find a bomb. Surely this wasn’t the time to be cutting corners.
“Hold on a minute,” I snapped as I saw something dark flash around the corner of the screen for a second. “Rewind the footage. I think I saw something.”
“What?” the taller officer responded, looking affronted at my outburst. “I’m perfectly capable of reviewing the tape. I have over ten years of experience. I know what I’m doing.”
“Yeah, yeah.” I ignored him as I shoved my way past him toward the monitor. I rewound the tape myself before slowing down the speed to its original velocity. I waited with bated breath as I watched the throngs of people milling around the train station, hurrying to rush onto and off trains as they all headed toward their destinations. Just as I thought, just a few seconds in, I noticed a figure in a dark blue hoodie casually make his way onto the tracks. The station was busy enough with people so focused on their own business that no one noticed him quietly ducking behind the edge of a wall and into the train tunnel.
“I have something!” I called to Junior and Seamus as I kept my eyes glued to the monitor. The two huddled around me to peer over my shoulder as the man emerged from the tunnel just a few minutes later and walked out of view of the camera.
“We need another angle,” Junior declared as he jumped to the next monitor. “What platform is that?”
