Soft Target

by Rachel Brune

  Wright stepped up to the table. He was a fluid, stocky man with a cauliflower ear and a thick Queens accent.

  “There are three points of entry into this structure.” He highlighted the pertinent locations with a laser pointer. “Here, here and here. As you can see, two of these are accessible to the street, and the last one opens back into the yard. The second story has a fire escape that comes down to the street—we’ll have to cover that as well. Slide.”

  Wright pointed to one of the men. “Mike, you and your FBI pukes are going to cover the points of exit. Stop anything from entering or exiting the building.” He gestured along the fuzzy gray line of the street. “We’re going to come in from this approach. Set up in positions here, here and here. Any questions?”

  Dan Sanchez raised his hand. “Who’s taking entry this time?”

  Wright pointed to him. “I’m leading the first team with you, Len and Davis.” He pointed to Mabry. “Scott will lead the second entry team with Marcus, Rivera and McLeon. We’re going in fast and hard.”

  Morris frowned.

  “Ma’am?” Wright waited for her reaction.

  “I’m uncomfortable with Detective Mabry leading the second team.”

  “You don’t think it’s a little late to change the team around?” Wright asked the question rhetorically, ignoring the hint.

  “It’s your team. I just wanted to let you know what I’m thinking.”

  “Noted.” Wright looked at Scott, but there was no reaction. “We’ve pulled back on our surveillance. Don’t want to spook them. But our eyes-on indicate about a three- to five-man team. Heaviest firepower they have is a couple of AKs; mostly small arms, semi-automatic, shitload of handguns. That and whatever is going to their little project.”

  “Booby traps?” Scott asked the question without raising his hand.

  “Not that we know of, but I wouldn’t rule it out.”

  “Are we going with a door breach or do you want to head in through an alternative entry?”

  “Door breach. Less time we spend dicking around outside the building, the less chance they have of figuring out we’re there.” Mabry nodded. Wright hit his next slide, bringing up a blueprint of the warehouse. “This is the layout of the first floor.”

  Mabry stared at the glowing screen, committing the structure to memory, letting Wright’s operational explanations sink in. He felt vaguely pleased that Wright was entrusting him with his team, although he was suspicious that the NYPD veteran was pressing the issue with his FBI boss, seeing how far he could push her without getting slapped down. All things being equal, he could stand to be left out of whatever intrigues Morris’ team members felt like indulging in. If he was going to be risking his and other people’s lives, he didn’t need to be playing amateur games.

  Wright finished his briefing by displaying a series of photographs taken by the surveillance team. “Let me reiterate, people. Tonight we’re going to get in there fast and hard, and we’re going to come out with five dead terrorists.”

  “Unless you actually want this to go somewhere,” said Morris, “in which case, you’ll leave one or two of them in some condition to tell us where our next warrant should be for.”

  “Yeah, like the boss said,” said Wright. “So we can go kill some more wannabes.”

  On that note, the briefing broke up. MacAllister caught Scott’s eye, nodding. The room was crowded and the momentum carried him out the door.

  As Mabry headed out after him, Morris spoke up. “Scott, can you wait a minute?”

  “Sure.”

  “Hey Scott, meet us downstairs, we’re going to run through this a few more times,” said Wright on his way out the door.

  “See you.” Scott and Nina waited for the room to clear.

  “Take a seat.” Morris gestured for him to sit, then perched herself on a corner of the table. “I know this question is going to piss you off, but I’m going to ask it anyway.”

  “Fire away, boss,” said Mabry.

  “Are you sure you’re up to this?”

  “Up to what?”

  “Cut the crap, Scott. I knew Sergeant Wright was planning on putting you in second lead. Listen, I’m not going to second guess him.”

  Mabry shifted in his chair. He crossed his arms.

  “But I am going to ask you again, do you feel up to running your team?”

  Mabry didn’t answer immediately.

  “You’re pissed off?”

  “Nah. I get it,” said Mabry. Although he was, a little. “You’re in charge. You gotta make sure all the pieces are working.”

  “Especially some of the pieces that haven’t been out in the field in a while.” Morris held her hand up to forestall the inevitable. “Iraq was a totally different field.”

  “I have more street experience than any man on this team.” Mabry kept his tone even.

  “So I’ve heard.” Morris shrugged. “I hear it almost took an act of God to get you in off the street and into investigations.”

  “My career is my business.”

  “My team is mine.”

  “And I should be downstairs right now running through this with them.”

  Morris gave up. “Fine. Go. Don’t screw up.”

  Scott kept his mouth shut and headed downstairs. The Joint Terrorism Task Force’s offices adjoined an NYPD facility that included an indoor range as well as a small urban training facility. Scott changed out of his suit jacket and tie, and put on something more conducive to running rehearsals with his team. Under the layer of numb, he almost felt pissed off to find that he was asking himself the same questions Morris had asked.

  Chapter Three

  Alan, the name he was going by at the moment, loved marbled spaces—not the infantile splendor typical of his former life, but the shadowy, spacious intellect of the wood and archway of the New York Public Library. The information he needed could have been easily accessed via the internet, but here in this bastion of culture and history, he could enjoy a few hours away. Also, the combination of austere surroundings, artifacts and the hushed voices of the odd mix of tourists and researchers, and he was virtually sure that his reading and other activities would mostly go unnoticed.

  An attractive young woman in a Columbia University sweatshirt leaned over his table. She smiled.

  “Excuse me, sir, can you tell me where to find the photography exhibit?” Her hand slid across the table.

  “Of course.” The woman, like most other people, mistook Alan’s accent for Russian, or some other Eastern European connection. He pointed. “Downstairs in the hallway to your right.”

  “Thank you.” The woman smiled again. Nodding at his laptop, she asked, “So, what’s your major?”

  Alan swallowed back bile. He reminded himself again that this was the price of doing business and forced himself to maintain an even demeanor. “Musical theater.”

  “Oh,” she said, deterred. “Well. Thanks, again.”

  He nodded and returned his attention to the book in front of him, every once in a while making a note on his computer. It was amazing the information Americans served up like a buffet every single day. He shook his head, enthralled again at the notion.

  The woman sitting at the information desk looked up, glancing across the room. Alan was becoming a regular patron. Late thirties, tanned, somewhat well built, as far as she could tell. He was actually kind of good looking, with dirty blond hair and green eyes. She spent a moment trying to place him and his accent until another patron came up to request a book, and she forgot about it.

  A notice appeared on Alan’s computer. He was about to lose the last of his battery power. Sighing, he shut down the laptop. He closed and stacked his books, returning them to the desk. Laptop bag slung over his shoulder, he headed down the wide marble staircase, trailing his hand down the cold stone.

  * * *

  The subway was crowded, and Alan could tell he had finally become accustomed to the city because the stench wasn’t bothering him as much as it used
to. He adjusted his black-rimmed glasses, pretending to check the subway map. Satisfied that no one was following him, he headed to his train. He had brought a book for the ride out to the outer boroughs, and read it hanging on to the pole in the center of the car, buffered by the crowd of humanity.

  “Are you reading that for school?”

  Alan looked around. His interrogator was a woman, about his age. He had grown used to women talking straight to him, but still couldn’t stop the bile from rising in his throat.

  “Uh, no, not for school.” He looked down, then up again.

  “You have a nice accent,” the woman said.

  “Uh, thank you.” Alan as the shy college student.

  “Where are you from?”

  Alan was starting to get annoyed. “Not here.”

  “Oh …” The woman trailed off at his abrupt tone. Her face pursed, as if she was going to say something, but Alan put his face back in his book and she gave up.

  Alan lived out on a block-long stretch of concrete and shops that sold five-dollar shirts and ten-dollar pants. He jogged up the fire escape and entered, dumping a brown bag of Chinese takeout on the table, pushing away the remnants of last night’s Chinese takeout. He put his head around the door and spotted the two men watching television from the ratty couch.

  “Hey.” They greeted him without looking up from some music video.

  “What the fuck is that shit still doing on the table?”

  “Hey man, don’t worry about it, we got it.” The man who spoke was a small, wiry misfit with a buzz cut who insisted on being addressed as Dodger.

  His friend Eddie, tall and lanky with sloppy blue ink tattoos, gestured to one of the bedrooms. “Your package came in. My guy came through. It’s in there.” He spoke with a slight accent, a gift of his Mexican-born mother.

  “Yeah. All right. Just clean up that shit.” Alan headed for the bedroom and closed the door behind him. It was dingy and sparsely furnished with a foldout cot and a small table. On a shelf high up on the wall, a copy of the Quran stood on display. A quote illuminated in cursive Arabic script hung next to it in a plain frame. The package was a small black gym bag on the table. Alan unzipped it and looked inside. Nestled among spare magazines and boxes of nine-millimeter ammunition he saw two Glocks and a Beretta. Alan snorted in disgust. It wasn’t much, but it was a start.

  * * *

  The offices of New York Central News were quiet and spacious, if unfinished. The studio occupied several non-contiguous floors in the building, with the soundstages on the first and third floors, and the executive offices on the fourth. The reporters, editing suites, and various other personnel necessary for the daily operations of one of the city’s most up-and-coming tabloid news shows were all located on the seventh floor.

  Mark’s desk was shoved into the back of a stack of cubicles, affording him a panoramic view of the back wall of the cubicle next to him. His producer took advantage of every blind spot on the floor, prowling like a tiger—if tigers prowled after reporters playing solitaire when they should be out gathering news.

  “I need more, Granger.”

  Mark jumped. He had been in the flow and his producer had pulled him out of it. He blinked. “More what?” asked Mark. His screen was filled with the results of his latest internet search.

  “More,” answered his producer. Fifty-something years old, Jefferson Taggert had been working in tabloids his entire life. “Where were you this morning?”

  “Ground Zero,” said Mark. The remains of his lunch were spread across the desk he shared with two other reporters. The newsroom had downsized until even some of the feature desks had to share, using personal computers and a wireless network to get anything done. His latest Google search blinked at him from his laptop. “It’s 9/11.”

  “Yeah, 9/11,” said Taggert. “9/11/11, not 01. We don’t go to Ground Zero anymore. We go to the families. We go to the task force. We go to where I can get something other than the same shitty headlines everyone else is getting. How many other crews were down at Ground Zero with you?”

  There had been five broadcast crews, six print reporters, three photographers, and a blogger with a digital cell phone camera.

  “It’s a national day of remembering and mourning,” said Mark.

  “It’s a national day of excuses for running the same lame story everyone else is covering,” said Taggert. “You had better get out there and find some real pain and suffering I can run in the evening edition.”

  Taggert spotted Mark’s screen. “What are you working on now?”

  Mark hastily brushed away the last crumbs of lunch from his desk. He turned the screen toward his boss.

  “This is the latest traffic from some of the sites I’ve bookmarked,” said Mark. “I’ve been tracking some of the most prominent Middle Eastern newspapers and what they’ve been publishing from Al Qaeda, Hezbollah, that sort of stuff.”

  “And what are you finding?”

  “Well, there’s definitely more traffic than usual,” said Mark. “Some of your typical jihad America editorials, some pieces on supposed American war crimes—”

  “Anything to them?” Taggert interrupted impatiently.

  “I don’t think so,” said Mark. “These come up in batches every once in a while, especially around 9/11. I’ve just been keeping an eye through MEMRI.”

  Blank look. Taggert was in the final stages of boredom.

  “Middle Eastern Media Research Institute?” asked Mark.

  “Nope. Doesn’t ring a bell,” said Taggert.

  “They track news from the Middle East,” said Mark. “I’d like to do a piece.”

  “On what? A news search site? You’ll be searching for work at another news station about five minutes after you finish writing it.”

  “No, on what the terrorists are writing about 9/11.” Mark stood up. “Yes, okay, we’ve done a bunch of pieces on what Americans think about 9/11, and on Al Qaeda and the fact that we can find them anywhere, but look here.” He pointed to the screen. “And here.” He pointed again. “These terrorist groups have their own PR agents, and they’ve been releasing press releases and video clips like crazy.”

  “And you think… what?” Taggert snorted in disgust. “People are going to watch a bunch of dirty terrorists spouting off about the Koran in subtitles? A talking head in a cave is still a talking head.”

  “But—”

  “Forget it.” Taggert shook his head. “Bin Laden’s dead. Nobody cares anymore. People aren’t even going to want to read about that, let alone watch it in between toilet paper commercials.”

  Mark bit back his words and closed his search screen. “Fine. I’ll see if I can get a couple of the families to talk to me.”

  “Families?”

  “Victim families.” He shut his computer off and closed it up, feeling vaguely sickened.

  “Good. That’s a good one.” Taggert was pleased that his protégée was finally getting it. “See if you can get some widows. They’re always good for a close-up or two.”

  “Yes, sir,” said Mark. “On my way.”

  “Good boy,” said Taggert. “Get out there and get me something that will sell cars for Rupert Murdoch.”

  Satisfied, Taggert headed down the row of desks to find another reporter to harass. Mark wondered if his boss stayed up late at night thinking up all these snappy one-liners.

  * * *

  This was the third time Alan had queued up to be a guest in a New York City live television studio audience—this time it was MTV—and the security was now merely annoying rather than the nerve-wracking experience it was the first time. The burly security guards with their metal detectors and peremptory bag checks had sped up his heart rate until he finally figured out that they were more concerned with the possibility that the mouth-gaping tourists were smuggling recording devices rather than incendiary devices. He held up his phone to show them it was off, walked through and was waved into the holding area.

  A woman with a pinc
hed face and power dress fluttered her fingers for silence.

  “Now, ladies and gentlemen, may I have your attention!” Her piercing voice needed no amplification. “There will be three levels of seating within the auditorium. Please pay attention. Make sure your appearance is acceptable before entering, as there will be no fixing or fidgeting once you are in your seats!”

  After the division, Alan found himself seated in the second tier, slightly behind the hot young things that would primarily fill the angles catching the area shortly in front of the stage, but before the rows of matrons chaperoning the young things, safely tucked in the dark recesses of the back of the studio.

  Normally, Alan would bring one or two of his crew with him, but today he needed to concentrate on what the picture he was drawing in his head looked like, rather than acting the part. The time he had spent in prison had provided him with the contacts he needed for the tasks he had in mind, but most of his recruits lacked training in the finer points of operations planning—or things like manners and societally-acceptable personal hygiene.

  The lights dimmed, but not before he had noted the distance and direction of all the emergency exits and security personnel. The crowd began to cheer a high-pitched, girlish teenager cheer. The people around Alan rose, and he rose with them, to cheer the program that was about to start. Apparently it was some sort of dance-off that would determine which group of wannabes would get a chance at becoming backup dancers to some new singing wannabe.

  Next time, Alan was going to check and make sure that the program he would attend would be primarily speaking in nature. In addition, next time he would try to bring one of his recruit’s mothers, in the hopes of being seated in the back, far away from the videotaping eye of the studio cameras. Still, this was his third attempt to breach security, and his third time concluding that trying to plant anything within the studio (and his parameters) would be more trouble than it was worth. The one thing that made this option so attractive were those huge, clear windows, and the beautiful view across Times Square.