Soft Targets

by Dean Ing

  Then the woman pivoted, her right elbow ramming deep into the youth's midriff as she forced the weapon muzzle down with her left hand. The Schmeisser loosed a brief hail of slugs, some smashing into a meter-thick bronze cuboid sculpture nearby. The blonde continued her move, the youth holding onto his weapon, providing her with a lever as she spun him crashing against the metal cube. Her own mass added to the impact as the youth faltered face-forward into sharp-edged bronze.

  The woman was a flailing, snarling puma, clutching the Schmeisser as she kicked the youth repeatedly in the groin, her free hand a hatchet against his face and neck. She hammered him until he slumped, leaving a sticky splotch crimson against the golden sheen of bronze.

  She leaped away with the weapon, kicked her shoes off, fumbled with her prize before scudding it across the floor. "Take him," she cried, snatched up her bag, and sprinted down the rotunda away from the exit.

  The screen went blank in the FCC chamber. Wills cut through the excited murmur of his colleagues with, "Those were the segments pro­hibited by the injunction."

  "Je-zus, who's the Amazon," breathed David Engels. "I know some people who could use her."

  "So does she, Mr. Engels," was Wills's amused reply.

  Then Engels fingers popped again, and this time everyone jumped. "Vercours? That was Vercours?" He was grinning incredulously at the chairman.

  A single stately nod.

  "Now that Mr. Engels has identified our mys­tery challenger," said John Rooker with malici­ous humor, "perhaps he can inform the audi­ence."

  "The tapes that were made public are on this reel, if I may go on," Wills put in.

  Engels nodded to Rooker. "Then you'll see." "Roll the tape, roll the tape," Everett demanded, irked.

  Wills complied. The new scene was from near ground level, just outside the rotunda in the open air. A half-dozen men had taken up posi­tions behind outcroppings of the adobe brown walls of the Convention Center. All were peering down the broad walk. Fifty meters away a uni­formed policeman sprawled unmoving, his serv­ice revolver glinting just beyond him. The bearded man writhed some distance further, his Luger forgotten. He knelt on the paving, tearing at his belly, then rolled onto his back and tried to stand erect again. The policeman's fragmenting Glaser slug had gut-shot the man. Effectively, he was dead when the slug burst in his peritoneum; but this death was merciless. "Fri-i-itz," the man screamed, thrusting bloody hands aloft.

  A second policeman risked a shot: dust spanged from the concrete lip of a shallow pool beyond the dying man. The German, protected by his hostage, reached the pool and tumbled with Conklin into the water. Even at maximum zoom the details were fuzzy, but it seemed that the German hoped for protection in the pool. The water was too near the lip, but slowly whirring near one end of the pool were elements of a monumental sculpture in steel and aluminum.

  Jerome Kirk's "Tiered Orbits" was already a noted piece of mobile sculpture, its concentric metal circles glittering red on stainless steel axes as they turned. The piece would have fresh celebrity now. The German wrestled his hostage to the two-story mobile, seemed to be arguing. A faint, "Schnell! Schnell!" sounded among the shouts that punctuated the scene.

  The Colt now in his stomach, Wallace Conklin reached up to grasp the outermost of the great metal circles. The German, head twisting furi­ously around to check the terrain, followed. At the edge of the screen, then, a honey-gold flash heralded the young woman from the rotunda, who had doubled back through the building in a flanking maneuver.

  She dived crabwise and rolled twice, cradling her shoulder bag, coming to rest behind a con­crete tube that surrounded a small tree near the pool. The earth-filled concrete tube was easily a meter high and two broad; the woman, evidently shaken from impact against the concrete, lay for a moment on her back. Then she pulled the bag onto her abdomen and peered inside it.

  The policeman began to curse the crazy reporter, waving helplessly until he saw the German aim in his direction. The .45 is not one of your quicker slugs, but it hits like Reggie Jackson. The cop sought cover.

  The bearded man lay flopping and twitching, a fleshy sackful of aimless synapses. Conklin, at gestured orders from the German, managed to climb astride the great metal arc, then hugged it and lay horizontal. The German, too, straddled the metal, the Colt again only centimeters from Conklin's expensive head. For moments the scene appeared frozen, the kidnapper vulnera­ble to a sniper yet with a peculiar advantage: the slowly rotating sculpture constantly changed his position and his cover while he scanned the area, working out some new strategy. He seemed intent on the busy street beyond.

  The blonde kept down, rummaging in her equipment. A pocket mirror gleamed in the sun before she slid it upward, a makeshift periscope trained on tiered orbits. The German shouted threats, intent on the men who had taken cover in his wake. At that instant the mobile began to shift, its metal circles now moving at varying speeds in accord with some preprogrammed sequence. Very soon, now, it would scissor its occupants in a blind embrace.

  The blonde began to search her equipment bag, working quickly as she lay on her side. Presently she slid the bag out to provide a rest for the mirror, then eased up into a squat, her feet a full unladylike pace apart. She held several loops of power cord in her left hand, and some-thing that bulked larger than a microphone in her right. The German craned his neck to study the street again, and apparently caught sight of the woman. But as he swung the .45 to this new menace, he could not see that his perch was closing the gap on the next concentric circle.

  The metal scissors closed inexorably, nudging nearer, pressing the German's shoulder so that his shot went wide. Conklin, his hair in the Ger­man's grip, slid lower as he saw the scissors closing. Then the thick metal circles swung into the same ecliptic. The German, his thigh pinioned, screamed and swept his gun arm back toward Conklin who stared helplessly upward.

  The blonde was five meters from the pool, ten from the German, and one second from an assas­sination.

  She spurted up from her cover, vaulted to the pool lip, and sprang toward the German, hurling the battery pack she had tied to the power cord. The heavy battery pack sailed overhead but she passed beneath to splash barefooted into the pool, yanking the cord like a lariat. The cord passed across the German's extended arm, taut from the battery pack's mass, snapping the arm hard enough to wrest the heavy automatic from any normal man.

  The German was not a normal man. Fighting free of the cord, he swung the Colt again toward Conklin, now single-minded on killing. The blonde shouted and flung the cord at his face, so that the German missed Conklin's head at one-meter range.

  A heavy Conklin fist swung upward then in a roundhouse right to match any monument. The German's head flicked up and back, rebounding from the metal sculpture. His arms went limp, Conklin tumbling into the knee-deep water as the German slumped half conscious. Now both Conklin and the blonde were beyond arm's reach. A fusillade from the building wrenched and shook the German's torso, and a ragged cheer spread across the plaza.

  Faintly, above the cheering, there came a shriek of tires on pavement from somewhere beyond the camera's view. Wally Conklin was not cheering. He was embracing the blonde.

  The screen went blank in Anaheim. "Now," David Engels breathed in awe, "you've met Gina Vercours."

  It took the Commission a few moments to recover from the videotape; a thousand Hollywood scenarios and ten thousand stage killings were poor preparation for the shuddering, flopping reality of violent death.

  Everett saw that John Rooker cradled his face behind hands that shook. Costigan was pale, rubbing her arms to banish gooseflesh. "Pretty strong stuff, Thomas," Everett said to Wills. "You might have warned us."

  "My apologies. The Phoenix stations, I'm told, showed only brief clips. For obvious reasons."

  Leon Cole waved his hands, mystified. "But why no injunction on this? The footage outside in the plaza was much more horrifying. Why prohibit only the inside footage?"

  Wills le
t one eyebrow rise. "Because, Mr. Cole, the inside footage included closeups."

  Everett: "But that wasn't the stated reason."

  Wills: "No. But it was Ms. Vercours's real reason. I have this orally from Conklin."

  "Ah; so the Vercours woman got the injunc­tion," Cole said. "But that doesn't make sense. I'd think that, as an ENG reporter herself, she'd enjoy all that coverage. It could have made her reputation overnight—and she's, um, a strik­ingly handsome lady."

  "Her status changed appreciably between her sack lunch that day, and her dinner in the Hyatt House with Wally Conklin," said Thomas Wills. "Conklin had her on a retainer within ten min­utes. The next time you see Wally in a place where it's tough to maintain tight security, take a close look around. You'll probably find Vercours among the ENG people roaming around him."

  "She was my tennis instructor, you know," Costigan chirped.

  "In Chicago?"

  "No, a vacation in Phoenix. Gina had ideas of making it on the Phoenix Racquets, but she wasn't quite that good. I got her interested in ENG. God, I'm glad I did."

  "We're moving off the point, I'm afraid," Wills murmured.

  "I see the woman's angle," said David Engels. "Vercours realized she'd be compromised if everybody in the country saw her in closeups. With a new job as bodyguard, she wouldn't want those tapes aired. But how'd the little indepen­dent station that hired her get so much clout with a judge, so fast?"

  "It didn't, Mr. Engels. Wally Conklin did."

  Everett laughed, "Wheels within wheels. Conklin asked for the injunction on her behalf then? Conklin is CBS, but Ms. Vercours is strictly a private individual."

  "You can say that again," Barb Costigan gig­gled.

  Rooker, more composed now, put in: "I take it that CBS knows of Wallace Conklin's part in this."

  "To be sure," Wills replied, "but they felt it politic to make their protest along with NBN and ABC. What if the Vercours injunction becomes a common ploy by many people who find themselves in the news in some quasi-private capac­ity?"

  The Commission took up this sobering thought, wrangling through a coffee break toward a solution; perhaps a test case. As always, such gritty questions would take time to resolve and as always, media men would tiptoe over rotten eggs until the FCC, in good time, set out fresh guidelines. The meeting broke up in time for Everett to grab a quick lunch with David Engels before taking the copter shuttle to catch his Denver flight.

  Engels studied his colleague as their order arrived. "Why so subdued, Maury? Still thinking about Phoenix?"

  A brief nod. "Not just the violence, Dave. I saw worse in 'Nam." He paused as Engels forked a bite of his entree, then continued slowly. "Do you realize we've spent the better part of the morning, and much of the conference, grappling with a wave of problems brought on by a bunch of shit-gargling terrorists?"

  Engels stopped chewing, met Everett's glance. He tried twice before he could swallow. "Did you have to say that while I have a mouthful of chicken a la king?"

  "Mea maxima culpa," Everett said in mock contrition.

  "Your mother'll love hearing you've turned Catholic."

  "What I've turned is chicken. This link be­tween terrorism and the media, especially TV, has me worried, Dave." Everett gestured with his spoon, searching for a simile. "It's like—not a link at all. More like an intertwining," he mut­tered.

  Engels tore into a buttered roll. "Emigrate to China," he cracked. "Either China. They don't fuck around with terrorists in police states, of buddy."

  "I hear you," said Everett, picking through his Crab Louis. "A free press means freedom to sell time to some murderous little nit with his head in a sack. At least we bagged that bunch down in Phoenix," he finished.

  "Not all of 'em. Jeez," at Everett's startled glance, "you must spend a lot of time noodling around in the Rockies, Danl. The German with the gee-eye forty-five was Fritz Valken; one of the Baader-Meinhoff gang—and I wish we'd taken him alive. The beard was some guy named Hashem, an Algerian national who was sup-posed to be in class at M.I.T. A grad student in nuclear engineering." He saw Everett blink at the significance of terrorists being trained in nuclear technology. "Yeah," he answered the unspoken comment; "but now he's building bombs in hell. It was the kid with the Schmeisser machine pistol who got away."

  "Christ, after getting smeared by that hysteri­cal miz?"

  "Fanatics take a lot of killing," Engels shrugged. "He apparently ran out while a gaggle of reporters were trying to learn how to pull a trigger, and he had some woman waiting in a getaway car. By the way, the Vercours woman was anything but hysterical. Maybe you haven't seen a tai kwando offense used in anger, but I have. Vercours is foxy."

  "Damn' right," Everett grinned, remembering the way those long legs moved, the strawberry sheen in the honey-blonde hair. "But she's just a trifle butch for my taste."

  "Not foxy looking; foxy smart," Engels said, corraling a speck of chicken. "A pretty hard target. And she'd better be, leaving that Chaim character loose somewhere with his nuts in a splint."

  "I thought that's what I heard." Everett frowned. "Chaim isn't Arabic, it's about as He­braic as you can get. I mean, what the hell?"

  "Some Jew you turned out to be," Engels chuckled, glancing at his watch. "Immigration photo and prints on the weapon checked per­fectly. The young guy was one Chaim Mardor. He's Israeli, all right, from some religious order so strict it doesn't even believe there is an Israel. Even though he was born there. Don't ask me to justify it, pal; I can't."

  Everett watched Engels signal the waitress, reviewing old tales his mother had spun with friends from Tel Aviv. Natural? Something to do with nature? "Neturay Karta," he blurted; "right?"

  "Something like that," Engels agreed, then switched to his frail imitation of Yiddischer speech: "God forbid I should have to keep all those momzers straight."

  "One of these days you're gonna give offense," Everett beamed at his departing friend. "But not this time."

  "Because I let you beat me at handball," Engels guessed.

  "Let me's rickety ass. No, because you bought lunch." They exchanged grins, like most middle-aged American males unable to say what they felt: our competition is trivial; our affection is not. Everett watched Engels filch mints near the cash register, then let his smile slowly fade as Engels walked out.

  He lingered at his table, reflecting on the irony of an orthodox Jewish sect so conservative it could find common cause with Third-World radicals. `Neturay Karta,' his sabra mother had said, meant 'guardians of the city.' In the or­thodox quarters of some Israeli cities lay houses and attitudes musty with a hundred generations of tradition. Old Testament Hebrew scriptures insisted that ha-messiach, the Messiah, would come one day—but at a time when He was most needed; a time when there was no Israel.

  The strict fundamentalist Neturay Karta sect argued that, since the scriptures were scrupulously exact, the Messiah would not come so long as Israel existed. Therefore, they reasoned, they must abet the Coming of ha-messiach by destroying the State of Israel. If young kibbutz women strayed into Neturay Karta haunts in short sleeves or worse, shorts, they risked being stoned by fundamentalists who would rather have a dog carcass putrefying in the street than have it removed by a girl in such scandalous garb. Everett had heard of retaliatory raids by kibbutzim to break a few heads in the old quar­ter. Until now it had seemed a joke to Everett, albeit a bad one. But Chaim Mardor was no joke; he had shot down a passerby as if eradicating vermin. To Mardor it had to be a sort of holy war; an Arab's jehad. And there could be no greater glory for some than to die in a jehad.

  To a true believer it all made sense. Everett finished his coffee and headed for the heliport, wondering.

  He wondered just how retired David Engels was.

  He wondered how much money Gina Ver­cours made—assuming that money was her motive.

  He wondered if he would ever have time to visit Frontierland.

  Deplaning at Denver, Everett went im­mediately to the Hertz p
eople. His own Mini-Cooper 'S,' a tiny British racing sedan with the look of an unsanforized golf cart, was undergo­ing an operation. In his enthusiasm Everett had permitted a specialist to shave the head too far. Now it was being replaced for reliability. The Mini was a rolling joke, but the laugh was on the other fellow. Despite their boxy shapes the Minis had thrashed Porsches in Alpine road-racing. Like Everett, his Mini was getting older; and like him it had attained scruffiness without losing much stamina.

  Hertz had the compact Zephyrs; nothing smaller. While he waited, Everett idly took note of the little man in the dark jeans and zippered turtleneck who stood nearby. The man's identification did not suit the Hertz girl too well, but she would let him take a big Mercury if he could provide cash plus deposit in advance. The little man paid in Canadian currency and made a notation in his Hewlett-Packard calculator. Everett took the Zephyr's key and his credit card, nodded to the man, and walked away wondering.

  He wondered where he had met the little man's combination of accent and gesture before; the face was wholly unfamiliar.

  MONDAY, 6 OCTOBER, 1980:

  Late on a Monday afternoon, Talith swooped past her mail slot en route from the experimental psych lab to a seminar. Graduate students did not rate locked boxes, but at least they did not have to sort through a stack. She glanced at the cubbyhole above her name, passed on, then abruptly checked her progress and fished out the small perfumed envelope. From a woman?' Probably the letter had been placed in the wrong slot. It was addressed to Leah Talith, Department of Psychology, California State University, San Jose, CA 95101. The letter bore a Denver post-mark.

  Her slender calves aching from several flights of stairs, Talith hurried to the seminar, pausing only at the coffee machine. The class was popu­lar and eighteen students were too many for a seminar, but after Talith slit the envelope with a razor-edged fingernail, she was glad to be one among many. The letter purported to be a partiallisting of towns containing Friends of the Kib­butz members. It was a long list.