Soft target rc-1

by Stephen Hunter

  He drove about thirty miles through the early-fall Minnesota night and at last turned off the highway to follow the signs to his destination, a freakishly large building in the center of a vast plain

  of now-empty parking lots. The sign read, WELCOME TO AMERICA, THE MALL.

  6:55 P.M.-7:20 P.M

  Ray got off the X first, leaping, driving his crown into the man’s nose, feeling it crush flat and spew blood. But where that would put most men out of the fight in an instant, this tough little skinny simply took it, took the pounding thrust of Ray’s full body weight and went to the floor under him, but upon hitting it hard, he became a squirming dervish, his small but leanly powerful muscles twisting desperately for leverage. He was faster than Ray, who was faster than most; he was clearly a guy who’d done a lot of close-quarter combat, and somehow he found enough leverage to slip from underneath Ray so that the bigger man couldn’t use his weight as an advantage, and the two knitted limbs and tried to break each other’s backs, faces about an inch apart.

  Ray saw insane strength in the wide black pupils, ignored the bloody snot and saliva that flew from the flattened nose and the rancid breath contained in the gaseous, propulsive exhalations through the mouth, and tried to get enough floor contact under him to move the guy back down to the submissive position, but the bastard was too active. Ray had one of his arms by the wrist, which also meant that the enemy had one of Ray’s hands by the arm, and the other arms were tangled like fighting snakes as each tried to find a path to the throat. Ray head-butted again, hard, but didn’t have enough neck to get the torque to deliver a disabling strike, and all he did was knock stars into both men’s eyes.

  Then the guy got a leg free and kneed Ray hard in the balls, and as his breath was driven from his body sharply, Ray’s grip loosened and the guy snatched his arm free and got it to his bayonet and got that blade out before Ray caught up and snatched the wrist again. But now the blade was in play, and both men, in wrestling stalemate of enmeshed body on body, put all their focus and strength into controlling the blade, with the ultimate hope of driving it deep into the other’s body and piercing a blood-bearing organ. But then Ray, formally trained in hand-to-hand and the owner of six black belts in six disciplines, yielded suddenly, knowing that the man’s strength would overextend him, and when that happened, he reasserted control; now the Somali’s arm was straight and lacked space to set up for a plunge, and Ray bent it back, back, and back, and that’s when the guy managed to bite him hard in the ear. The pain wasn’t so bad as the surprise and the intimacy of it, and Ray lost concentration; the man, who’d lost the knife-hand battle, came quickly to victory on the nonknife side, snaking his arm through a brief hole in Ray’s defense and getting his wrist crossways across Ray’s throat. He just had to press the windpipe closed and hold it so for three minutes and he’d get the kill.

  The fight sounded like six pigs in a pen built for three, all grunting and yelping and gulping. Their lungs pumped in-out; the breath came and went like waves on a beach; oxygen, fuel of battle, was as precious as gold, and they sucked for it whenever possible, in a medium lubricated by copious sweat outflow that slimed their pushing, sliding musculature like some kind of battle grease. Not a conscious thought formed in either mind; it was just instinct for the geometry of bodies, strength, will, and survival.

  Ray risked his leverage contact with the floor, and with one leg pried loose, he got an ankle-wrap around his enemy’s leg and began to torque it hard, perhaps to loosen the body from the clamp it had on Ray. It seemed to be working too, but then the guy did an incredibly creative thing. He dropped the knife and Ray took the bait, releasing the arm to grope for the knife, and the tough Somali shot his hand through the opening and clenched Ray’s throat with his thumb driving into Ray’s larynx. Ray blinked, some bloody snot rained into his face, and suddenly the guy, quick as a snake, regripped his left wrist, pulling it from the neck, then plunging back in supertime to wrap that wrist around Ray’s windpipe, rising enough for enough play to get his arm strength factored into the equation, and then had both thumbs on Ray’s Adam’s apple and was driving in. Ray could only force him to an upward posture so that he couldn’t get the fullness of his power into the dynamic, but now, really, it was a matter of time, for he’d cut Ray’s oxygen intake by a good 70 percent.

  Ray tried to get his arm inside the vise closing down on his throat, but his opponent half collapsed and there was no space to penetrate, even if it meant the Somali had to reset his hand just slightly, pulling it to the right so that one pressing thumb moved on top of the other one. Ray knuckle-struck him in the ear, hard, feeling tissue rip and more blood spurt, but the little man was too close to victory to let the strike throw him off, and his eyes mad with the killing lust, he drove his thumbs Ray had just the most fleeting impression of something flying horizontally through the air, and whatever it was, it hit his would-be killer in the temple with the force of a heavyweight’s punch, sending a resonant cracking, breaking sound into the atmosphere, and the Somali went semi-limp for a second, relinquishing his control, his hands flying involuntarily to protect his head as fear fought the unconsciousness that threatened to overwhelm him from the power of the blow. Somehow Ray found the bayonet, and at the same time did a power roll, and in a moment achieved position on top of the squirming man. His other hand suffocated any screams in the throat and he fingered the bayonet into a grip strong enough for thrusting, then brought it back and shoved it forward. He felt it penetrate and open the softer flesh between the ribs, slide off of deep, interior objects, then sink point-first in something fibrous. Ray withdrew, placing more strength on the man through the wrist clamp, getting more leverage as he rose to his knees, and drove again and again. The guy bucked through spasms, fighting it, his eyes cue-balling, his tongue writhing like a dying snake, until at last, supersoaked in blood, he went limp.

  Ray rolled off him, feeling close enough to death himself. He lay flat on his back, sucking for oxygen at the effort he’d spent, and it seemed he’d drained the mall of all of it, but then it flooded into his lungs, bringing coolness and clarity. He sucked hard through three or four strong breaths, felt his limbs tremble with salvation at having survived the ordeal, noticed how much blood he now wore on his jeans, and looked up into the eyes of his savior.

  It was the black girl La-something, he couldn’t remember, Lamelba, Lavioletta, Laviva, Lavelva.

  “Jesus Christ, you got here just in time.”

  “I clonked his ass with a eight iron,” she said, holding up the now-bent club. “I hope they ain’t mad I busted it.”

  “When this is over, I will buy you a bagful of clubs, sweetie,” he said. “Now let’s get out of here.”

  Renfro called a press conference, fast, and still had to wait a few minutes for the network cams to set up. Colonel Obobo, flanked by the governor and all his majors except for Jefferson, took to the podium, nodded to a few friendly reporters, pivoting this way and that to accommodate the flash cameras of the print guys, then turned on the microphone. Renfro hoped he wouldn’t overdo the I-did-this, I-did-that shit, but then he always did.

  “I am happy to report that I have achieved success,” he said. “I am happy to announce an end to the killing and the dying. I have been in discussion with a man calling himself the commanding general of Brigade Mumbai-a reference to the terrorist attack on Mumbai, India, in 2008-and I have negotiated an end to the standoff. He has made certain policy demands to which the state has acceded. When those demands have been met, he will release his over one thousand hostages, and we will retake possession of the mall.”

  He left out any information about the man’s threat to have a nice little gunfight after the civilians were out of there. He didn’t want some orgy of recriminations and doubts exploding before his assault teams had even fired a shot.

  The press reacted to this news with muted glee. Yes it was satisfactory, yes it was wonderful, yes this and yes that. But of course a narrative had been set up and a
primal tradition evoked. Evil had attacked from nowhere and spilled blood; it must be punished in blood. Too many movies demanded a big climax. Without any man admitting it, the press as well as the millions worldwide who watched were subtly disappointed; they wanted a gun battle at America, the Mall.

  Not Obobo. He saw this as another triumph of his theories of progressive law enforcement, evidence that if you treated even the most jaded of perps with respect and a view toward their common humanity, then great things could be achieved.

  “What concessions were made?” shouted a dozen voices.

  “For the time being that information is classified. You will be informed when the time is right. Meanwhile, I want to say that the first responders of Minnesota handled this unprecedented crisis with-”

  “Suppose they’re lying. Suppose they just want to kill people but first extracted massive concessions out of-”

  “I, personally,” the colonel said, “handled these negotiations. I listened carefully to this man’s voice and I believe I made human contact with him, and despite the gulf in our cultural systems and political beliefs, we both understood that the killing had to stop. I am extremely proud of the progress that was made here today. Thank you, ladies and gentlemen.”

  As he stepped away, Renfro collared individual reporters with unattributed stories.

  “Actually,” the line went, “you should report that the old-line cops wanted to go in guns blazing, but Colonel Obobo had the guts to stand up to them. He himself worked the phone with this guy and he himself got us out of this jam. That should be your angle.”

  Finally, a payoff. The Bureau tasked ATF to start checking wholesalers for unusually large shipments of surplus Russian or Eastbloc AK-74 rifles or 5.45?39 ammunition, preferably the 56-grain Russian 5S7 bullet, to the Minneapolis-Saint Paul area, and ATF operators got on the phone to wholesalers the nation over. In less than an hour Reilly’s Sporting Goods, Twin Falls, Minnesota, came up, which, according to West Texas Imports, had been steadily receiving a two-case crate-two thousand rounds-a month for six months. Moreover, WTI had shipped them sixteen of the rifles, rebuilt from kits by Century Arms, just a few months ago. ATF agents from Minneapolis got out to Reilly’s house fast, under siren, and rousted the old man from his afternoon nap. It was another ten minutes before the team brought him to the store and he opened the building, which was alarmed to UL-3 level protection.

  He checked his records. No, no, he had no AK-74 kit guns on hand, though he did remember an accidental shipment weeks earlier that was never opened and returned, which is why it had been logged out of the big book beneath the line in which it had been logged in. Possibly it contained AK-74s? You see, the 5.45mm bullet isn’t big enough for a deer, which is why he had no interest in it. Now, the SKS, an earlier-generation Eastbloc assault rifle with a ten-round magazine, it fired a. 30-caliber bullet about the same power range as a. 30–30 so that Agents backchecked with WTI and discovered that they had never received the return and still held the wholesale money; they had assumed Mr. Reilly had taken the shipment. Moreover, the guns were AK-74s, they confirmed. UPS was alerted, and yes, they had a record of a pickup that particular day but none of a delivery. That meant it was probably in their undeliverable warehouse, which would mean some heavy record-searching One agent got the idea to track the ammo. Mr. Reilly opened the storeroom and discovered that he only had one tin of the surplus stuff left. Going to his computerized records, he went through his wholesale expenses and saw that the store had a steady order for a double crate-21,016 rounds-of 5.45 Russian combat ammo for six months. Only one tin of it was in the storeroom, which meant that eleven tins were not there, and he couldn’t believe that he’d sold that much of it in six months. He himself had never sold a box of it, just as he’d never sold anyone an AK-74, because he specialized in hunting rifles, not guerrilla raid and assault weapons. He was baffled, a little hurt, and in the dumps to begin with because his superb clerk Andrew had left a week ago, sadly, and he knew he didn’t have the focus anymore to run a retail business, especially now that the ATF rules had gotten so complicated and What was the name of the clerk? someone wanted to know.

  His name was Andrew Nicks. College boy, very decent, hard worker. He was a fine boy. Mr. Reilly went to look for Andrew’s address. Could Andrew be in trouble?

  Ray dragged the dead terrorist to the nearest store, the Mocha Spectrum chocolate shop, and stuffed him inside. A blood trail led to his body, but that couldn’t be helped now. He stripped him of combat gear and handed the rifle and the magazine bandolier to his new partner. Then he gestured and she followed, and they made their way down the corridor and dipped into a place called Pandora Jewelry, and both collapsed.

  “Thanks,” Ray finally said.

  “It’s okay,” said Lavelva, still wearing her name tag. “I couldn’t just sit up there during all this with all them ladies, yakyakyakyak. Lord, how they talk. I had to get out of there, like to give me a headache. Who are these guys? What do they want?”

  “It seems to be some Islamic paramilitary unit, possibly connected to Somalia by the looks of these guys. There’s a lot of Somalis in the Twin Cities, right?”

  “You got that right. Too many, you ask me.”

  “I don’t know who’s controlling them. Somebody smart, who’s taken over the mall security system from the inside. They’ve got a thousand hostages down in the amusement park area. They’ve already executed five and they’re threatening to kill more. They’ve made demands and, as I understand it, we’ve acceded to them. My last order was to stay still and wait for it to be over.”

  “Nobody told the boy fixing to choke you.”

  “No, he didn’t get the bulletin. Okay, let’s just cool it here and see what happens. I’ve got a phone link to an FBI sniper on the roof. If they need anything, they’ll call us.”

  “You know what?” she said. “This was my first day. I can’t lose this job. I ripped up a notebook, you know, to get a piece of metal that I used on that first guy. Am I going to get in trouble?”

  “So far,” Ray said, “I think you’re doing swell.”

  Fuck!

  That’s the way it goes. It’s there, then it’s not.

  Special Agent Neal had navigated the SCADA diagram and was dragging toward the security functions block, to call it up and open the doors and Nothing. Zip, nothing, nada, zero. The dead blank of unviolated cyberspace.

  “What happened?” yelled Benson.

  The crammed-in audience ignited. Hoots, squeals of anguish, a chorus of profanity. Even luscious Holly Burbridge winced.

  “Goddamn, he knew,” said Neal.

  “What?”

  “Well, that’s a very frail way in. It’s not permanently hardwired. It’s not wireless. It’s old tech, like science fiction rocket ships with clusters of cords everywhere. It’s not in space, cyber or otherwise, it’s there in a gadget, a magic box, something that looks like a climate control gizmo on a wall; it’s not covert. So, whack. He sees it lit up, he smashes it to bits, and we’re totally fucked.”

  Nobody said a thing.

  Finally Neal said, “Dr. Benson, you’re the boss. Can’t you say anything inspiring?”

  “No,” said Dr. Benson.

  “So since this went nowhere,” said Neal, “do you kids want to put on a musical?”

  “Jeff, how can you be so good at pulling perverts out of the woodwork and so goddamned bad at this?”

  “Because perverts are idiots and this sonovabitch is super smart.”

  “Or lucky.”

  “Smart makes luck. Dumb makes bad luck. Too bad he’s not taking pictures of four-year-olds in- Okay, okay, okay.”

  The okays tumbled out of his subconscious like a fluid from a broken bottle, but they did not signify breakage so much as connectivity. He thought he had, he maybe had, there was something, it was so vague, it was just beyond knowing, he had it, it skittered away, he “What?”

  “Just a minute. Let me think something through.”
>
  ONE MONTH EARLIER

  The imam watched his two daughters play in the twilight of an early-fall Minnesota night. It was sixty degrees and clear, the air tranquil, the stars beginning to show in the glow under the elms, which had begun to go red/orange/brown as they dried. The girls, Sari and Ami, were bright, lively, beautiful children, full of gaiety and mischief. They were easy laughers, as if much in the world merited delight, and now they rode the swings in the Twenty-Third Street Park, first Sari pushing Ami, and then Ami pushing Sari.

  “Don’t push too hard,” the imam called to Sari. He was afraid that the older child’s energy and enthusiasm would catapult the younger from the seat and off she would sail, into space. It was an image that came to him in dreams sometimes: his children, falling. He would waken in the dark, drenched in sweat, then go check. No, the girls were all right.

  He saw a figure slide onto the bench beside him but didn’t turn to look. Through his peripheral vision, he saw this fellow-young man-take out a paperback of a huge novel called Crime and Punishment, open the dog-eared copy to a certain page, and pretend to read.

  “You are late,” the imam said.

  “Not really,” said the young man, not looking up. “The FBI was on you on the way here. It was only one agent and he didn’t have listening gear and he didn’t stay long. I think it was just a random checkup. Now he’s gone. I followed him to the expressway to make certain, then doubled back.”

  “Ah,” said the imam. “So we are secure?”

  “Unless you’re a double agent, then yes, we are secure. How was your trip?”

  “It went well. I connected with General Aweys. He selected twelve of his youngest fighters. As you requested, they are unsophisticated in Western ways, uncontaminated by the Internet. They barely know how to operate cell phones.”