Quantico, Virginia, February, 2078, Thursday…

It was late afternoon when a military truck rolled into Quantico. The truck had not seemed completely out of the ordinary on the Virginia highways and even less so at Quantico. The driver of the truck, a Marine sergeant, had all the proper IDs. One of the guards took a look in the back. Since he was also a sergeant and all the men in the back were lance corporals, they saluted him. He gave them thumbs up.

After passing through the gate, the truck kept going, all the way to the heart of the base where the FBI Academy and research center could be found.

Refurbished many times over the years, the FBI area still consisted of the original three sprawling brick buildings from the previous century connected by a network of glassed walkways above ground, as well as a relatively new eighteen story office tower. While the tower had some similarities to the DHS tower in Falls Church, it was less of an architectural icon and more utilitarian, floor space on high adding to the labyrinth of labs and ops centers below ground. Even with all the new space, there was still crowding. The people that worked there now far outnumbered the military personnel present on the base, testimony to the many years of homeland security buildup to counter terrorism as well as other crimes.

The fake marines knew exactly where to go. Carrying both Berettas and H & K 53 submachine guns plus knives and grenades, they were armed to the teeth. All of them took one of the tower elevators down. The eleven lance corporals got off on level S5 where a particular lab was located. The sergeant continued on to level S9 where the FBI had some interrogation rooms.

The lab was used for general forensics, but mostly on documents and computer media. The eleven men approached it running quietly. They fully expected lab personnel to be inside, so they had guns raised and safeties off.

They hadn't counted on Caitlin Murphy being there, though. As the lab door slammed open from the blast force of a grenade, she was in the middle of looking at one of the documents found in one of Sandy Clark's data cubes.

As she wrote in her report later, it was fairly obvious that someone blowing a door away was not exactly a common everyday occurrence. The normal occurrence would be that the person outside would either have clearance and thereby could pass their badge through the reader beside the door and enter or he would ring the bell. The grenade eliminated both security measures.

Temporarily deafened by the blast, Caitlin acted instinctively, taking out the two lead intruders before diving for cover. Fortunately everyone else in the lab dove for cover too. No one was hurt from the immediate attack.