Chapter 6
Roark looked at my rifle case. He looked at the folded photograph on the bench beside where I had fired from. He looked at the center-mass confirmation still posted on the range board.
"The candidate just hit a cold-bore 800-meter shot with field conditions and no preparation window," he said, "after three weeks of your course. In what world does that represent a disqualification concern?"
Harland did not answer.
Roark turned to me. "Voss."
"Sir."
"My office. Twenty minutes."
He walked back toward the command building without speaking to anyone else on the range. The sound of his boots on gravel was the only sound for a long moment after he had gone.
I picked up my rifle case. I picked up the folded photograph from beside the bench and put it back in my cargo pocket, not because I needed it anymore but because the paper was evidence and evidence belonged in the permanent record.
Bishop was still standing at the safety line with his phone at his side and no expression on his face that corresponded to any of the expressions he had been carrying for the previous three weeks.
I did not say anything to him.
I did not say anything to Harland.
I walked off the range in the direction Roark had gone.
May you like
The twenty-minute conversation in Roark's office covered things I will not reproduce in full here because some of it remains above the clearance of everyone at Fort Camden, including Harland, including Bishop, and including the people who would spend the next several weeks processing the formal inquiry into the course environment. What I will say is that Roark had been the operations officer on Red Line. He had signed twelve letters. He had known Gabriel Carter, he had known the woman who became Specter, and he had known who BV-12 meant before the operation concluded.
He had not known that one of the twelve had survived.
