Soft Target

by Rachel Brune

“You ain’t got shit, man,” said Eddie. He put his head back down on the table.

  Mabry didn’t answer. Instead, he sat down and spread his hands on the desk, as if laying out an imaginary file.

  “Your name is Eddie Lopes, 28, no known employer, no known address,” said Mabry. “Mother unknown, grandmother is Mary…Buena. You used to have an older brother, Staff Sergeant Marc Lopes.”

  Eddie didn’t answer.

  “You may not think I know anything about you,” said Mabry. He slowly drummed his fingers on the imaginary papers. “And you’re right, I don’t know much.”

  Eddie said nothing. Scott let the silence stretch. Finally, Eddie lifted his head back up and looked at Scott.

  “I do know your type,” said Scott. “You’re always the lieutenant, always the number two guy.”

  Eddie shrugged.

  “And that’s fine,” said Scott, continuing. “Because I don’t give a shit about the number two guy.”

  Scott dug in his pocket and pulled out the folded copies of the e-mails Mark had received. He had numbered and labeled them with the date.

  “What I give a shit about,” said Scott, pushing the papers towards Eddie, “is the guy who wrote these.”

  Eddie ignored the papers, looking away. Scott used his spread hand to turn the papers to face him, and pushed them closer to his face. He half stood, looming over the table.

  “Read it.”

  Slowly, Eddie used the hand that wasn’t manacled to the table to pick up the papers. He glanced at each one in turn. As he finished each paper, he tossed it to the side. Scott held himself in his chair as he watched the papers leaf to the floor.

  Eddie finished and sat back in his chair. He looked back at Scott, not saying anything.

  “You know that guy?” asked Scott. He allowed the slightest edge of anger to begin creeping into his voice. “The one who wrote that?”

  Eddie stared through him. Scott had an inkling there might be a light shuttered in the back of his eyes, but all he could see was a darkness his words could not penetrate.

  Scott had used violence, or the threat of violence, during interviews before. It was not something he was proud of, but he knew how close to the line he could venture without crossing over. He never acted the television interrogation scenario, scenes which showed cops smacking around suspects with impunity until they confessed, but he was a large man who knew how to use his presence.

  He wouldn’t do that this time. Mabry’s experience brought him to understand violence only as a threat to those to whom it came as a surprise. Once violence was expected, people could steel themselves to the ordeal, using righteous anger or simple acceptance to ride it out. To be faced with the threat of physical harm was most frightening to those people whose worldview held no prior place for it.

  Eddie was not one of the lucky citizens. He was no stranger to the threat of force. It wasn’t immediately obvious, but Mabry could see the slight off-center kink where his nose had been broken before Mabry’s own blow had re-broken it further up the bridge. Eddie was young, but already his right ear had begun to crumple into a cauliflower.

  Mabry stood up abruptly. Eddie did not flinch. Mabry stalked out of the room. Eddie turned his head away down to the floor.

  “Getting anywhere?” asked Marisa as Scott entered the observation room.

  “No,” said Scott. “Do you have a computer and a printer I could borrow?”

  Eddie looked up again as Mabry came back into the room. He flinched involuntarily as the detective stopped next to him. Mabry rested a gentle hand on the back of his neck as he placed a file on the table in front of Eddie.

  Eddie looked down and then away from his dead brother’s face. The printer Marisa found was a crappy black and white machine that blurred the contrast, but Marc Lopes still smiled out from under the arms of his buddies. The picture was taken right before they went out on patrol, and the four men grinned under the weight of their battle rattle, sitting on the back ramp of their Stryker vehicle.

  Eddie went to push this paper to the floor as well, but Scott planted his hand on the picture. Eddie continued to pull on the paper. Scott resisted. The paper tore. Half of the page drifted to the floor.

  Mabry sat down across from Eddie, still holding the half of the paper with his brother’s photo.

  “It doesn’t bother you?” asked Scott. “That your brother could give his life for something that you’re willing to kill other people for?’

  Eddie shrugged.

  Scott asked: “Don’t you feel any allegiance to anything?”

  Eddie stayed silent.

  With slow, careful motions, Scott crumpled the paper photo into a ball. He threw it on the floor. As Eddie watched, he cleared his throat and spit towards the crumpled photo.

  Outwardly, Scott remained calm. It was a difficult façade to maintain. Adrenaline pumped his heart until he thought it would crack out of his chest. He felt his frustrations gather in his fist.

  “You know why my moms isn’t around?” asked Eddie. His rusty voice almost caused Mabry to jump.

  This time it was Scott’s turn to shrug and not answer.

  “You met my grandmother,” said Eddie. “You know why she raised me? You probably think my mother was a addict or something, like she split and left me with grandma Buena.”

  He looked straight at Mabry, who returned his gaze. Scott stayed silent.

  “My moms came here when she was pregnant with my brother,” said Eddie. “Her and my grandma. I don’t know how she did it, but she was legal—had all her paperwork and everything.”

  Eddie ran a hand through his hair, then rested his hands back on the table, folded in front of him.

  “I grew up thinking we were all American,” said Eddie. “Yeah, we spoke Spanish at home, and my moms cleaned other peoples’ apartments for a living, but that was just what we did.”

  Impatience still burned a hole in Mabry’s throat. He swallowed it back.

  “When I was in the sixth grade, she got real sick,” said Eddie. “We didn’t have insurance or nothing, so she went to the hospital. She left me and my brother with my grandmother. That was the last time I saw her.” He looked at Mabry, to see if he understood.

  “They deported her,” said Mabry.

  “Yeah,” said Eddie. “Even though she was legal and everything. She had all her paperwork, and two sons who were both born right here in Brooklyn, but to the people at the hospital she was just another fucking Mexican.”

  “She still alive?” asked Mabry.

  “I haven’t seen her in fifteen years,” said Eddie. “She won’t let me come visit. She’s afraid they won’t let me back in the country.” He looked down at the floor again. “She couldn’t even come for my brother’s funeral.”

  Mabry waited for him to continue talking.

  “This country…” said Eddie. “This country sent her back, sent me to jail. It sent my brother to Iraq, but didn’t bother to bring him home.” He shook his head. “I’m no terrorist. I don’t give a shit about any religious bullshit. But these people are going to be sending a message, and I want to deliver it.”

  Scott’s face hardened.

  “I have no sympathy for you.” Ice echoed Scott’s words. “At least your brother was serving something bigger than his own self interest.”

  The gulf between the two worldviews stretched dark across the stainless steel table.

  “You’re going to let thousands of innocent people die to avenge your brother,” said Scott. He looked down at Eddie. “You think that’s what he wants?” Mabry shook his head. “You don’t know anything about him.”

  “What the fuck are you talking about?” asked Eddie.

  “I’ve been a soldier for a long time,” said Mabry. “Your brother didn’t sacrifice his life for his country.”

  Eddie stared at him. Scott got up and picked up the pieces of paper from the floor. He smoothed the wrinkles from the ball containing Marc Lopes’ picture. He placed it again in front of Ed
die.

  “Your brother sacrificed his life for his friends,” said Scott. “He didn’t have to—but he did it—not for some abstract ideal, but for his brothers.” He shook his head. “You’re willing to sacrifice all these people for a religious cause you don’t even believe in.”

  Something fluttered behind Eddie’s eyes. The second hand on Scott’s cheap green Timex ticked loudly.

  In the observation room, Marisa saw the change of expression on Scott’s face as Eddie began to speak. Later, when people began asking probing questions, she would find herself unable to explain how Scott was able to coax the words from the man in front of him. She would only describe the moments of controlled panic as she waited out the clock. Each footstep in the hall rang with impatience and dread that someone would arrive to shut them down before the three of them had reached the conclusion of their business. But somewhere in the long, drawn out silences, Eddie made the decision to talk.

  “I don’t know everything,” said Eddie. He paused, as if uncertain himself as to why he was speaking.

  “Start with names,” said Scott.

  “Alan,” said Eddie.

  “Alan?”

  “He gives the orders. I don’t know his last name.”

  “What does he look like?”

  “Ordinary. Looks like a white guy. Got an accent.”

  Mabry looked up at the mirror. Inside the observation room, Marisa made a quiet phone call for a police artist.

  “Anyone else?”

  “Some guys I knew from before. Some new guys I didn’t talk to. They were with Alan all the time.”

  “Muslim?”

  “Yeah.” Eddie shrugged. “They used to pray with him on the roof. But I didn’t know their names.”

  “Target?”

  Eddie looked away, but he had already started and there was no point in stopping now.

  “They’re going to explode a truck,” said Eddie. Mabry noticed he was already slipping into the third person. “They’re going to park it outside somewhere and set it off.”

  “How big an explosion?”

  “Not too big,” said Eddie. “Alan wants to scare people, to show them they can still be touched.”

  “Where exactly?” asked Scott.

  “I don’t know,” said Eddie. “I really don’t. He’s had one of my guys running around all over mid-town delivering packages. It might be there, but I don’t know.”

  “What was your part?” asked Scott. “Are you the triggerman?”

  “No,” said Eddie. He grinned, hollow. It slid off his face as quickly as it came. “I’m the PR guy.”

  “What are you talking about?”

  “When it blows, I’m the one posting it online.” Eddie remembered the long process of planning. He wondered if Alan would use his route, or if he would be forced to switch to another. He wondered if Alan even knew where he was. “There’ll be one guy, hidden, taking photos and video. They’ll text it to me, I’ll put it online.”

  “So that’s the big terrorist plot, huh?” asked Scott. “A truck bomb and a cell phone.”

  Eddie shrugged. “It got your attention, didn’t it?”

  Mabry laughed, shortly. “Is that why you went after the reporter? For the attention?”

  “It worked.” Eddie looked at him expectantly.

  Scott thought of, and discarded, more questions. Finally, he said, “What aren’t you telling me?”

  “What do you mean?”

  “There’s something you know that you’re not saying out loud.”

  Eddie rubbed the bridge of his nose with two fingers. It was still sore from the last time he had pissed Alan off.

  Eddie remembered the itinerary and map folded and hidden in Alan’s drawer.

  The airplane was the fact that had tugged at Eddie’s subconscious until the first thread of regret had pulled loose. A truck was a statement. A plane was a line he would have to cross, that he felt maybe he hadn’t yet stepped over. A strange feeling settled in him, and he wasn’t sure whether it was resignation or budding chance of redemption.

  “Do you have a map?” asked Eddie. “Like a subway map or something?”

  “No,” said Scott. “Why?”

  “Alan had a map,” said Eddie. “It had these kind of cone-looking ovals drawn on it.”

  “Ovals?”

  “Yeah.”

  “Like … impact patterns?”

  “I don’t know,” said Eddie. “They were just drawn on the map.”

  “They sound like impact patterns. How big were they?”

  “I don’t know,” said Eddie. “Different sizes.”

  “Like, did they cover a building? Or an entire block?”

  “A couple of blocks.”

  “And you said they had a truck bomb? That would have to be one hell of a bomb.” Scott drifted into the third person as well, conspiratorial.

  “No,” said Eddie.

  “No, they don’t have a bomb?”

  “Yes, they do have a bomb.” Eddie made a decision. “They also have a plane.”

  Chapter Twenty-Two

  “Have you been at a barbecue?” asked Kent.

  The smell rose off of Mark as he entered the small observation room. Kent nodded to the officer escorting the reporter. “I’ve got him, thanks.”

  “No.” Mark had not been at a barbecue. No sooner had he finished at the apartment explosion, than Taggert had sent him chasing fire trucks to another three-story blaze. The light against the darkening sky had made for some dramatic footage. The small bodies of the children who hadn’t made it out of the apartment ensured that the story would enjoy national exposure. Mark rested his hands on the small lip of the window and leaned his head against the glass.

  Scott was about to make the same joke, but stopped when he saw Mark’s face. “You all right?”

  “Yeah, I’m fine,” said Mark. “You find out anything?”

  Scott filled him in. Mark winced. He had let his cameraman go home, and now had a feeling he was going to make a phone call sometime soon.

  Scott finished. He waited, expectant.

  Mark blinked back to the present. “So, what do we do now?”

  “We’ve got to be in two places at once,” said Scott. “I don’t know how we’re going to find the truck this guy is talking about, but he had a flight itinerary.”

  “Flight itinerary?” asked Mark, taking out his cell phone.

  “For the secondary impact,” said Mabry. “After the truck goes off. Everybody gathers around to watch it burn in time to see the plane heading straight for midtown.”

  “Sounds complicated.”

  “Not with the internet, it isn’t,” said Scott. “You can pretty much do anything online these days. And it doesn’t help that terrorists love their planes.”

  “Well, yeah, of course they do,” said Mark. Unexpected bitterness underlined his words. “Who cares about a bomb in a container? You can’t see it, it doesn’t make for sexy footage, and it doesn’t have a bunch of screaming, crying relatives you can interview on the six o’clock news.”

  Scott stared at him, thinking. Mark’s words sounded like something he would have said. Somewhere in the past couple of weeks, the reporter had finally been eyewitness to enough violence to develop a sense of gallows humor. He didn’t know if he should feel sorry for Mark, who had sought the violence with the single-mindedness of his ambition.

  “Captain Mabry.” Scott turned. Marisa had come up behind them, unnoticed. “I know what you’re about to do. Listen, I’ve got a police artist in with Lopes right now. In a little while, the Feds will be here. You’re going to have all the help you need with this.”

  Scott started shaking his head.

  “Listen, chief, stay here,” said Kent. “Backup will be right behind you.

  “That’s not close enough,” said Scott.

  “Just wait another hour and we’ll be able to scramble a team,” said Marisa. It was a losing battle, but now she sought a delay.

  “
It took us three months to figure out what these assholes were up to,” said Scott. “Three months of having to listen to people tell me to drop it and mind my own business. If we wait for the alphabets, it’s probably going to take them that long just to verify the information.”

  “You’re going to get yourself fucking killed. Sir.” Marisa didn’t hide her exasperation.

  “We’ve got to go now,” Scott turned and began walking down the hallway toward the staircase.

  “So what do I tell them when they show?” Marisa shouted after his back.

  Mark dug in his pocket and handed her a thumb drive. “Here. This might help. It’s got everything on it that I’ve collected over the past six months.”

  He started after Scott, then hesitated. “If you need us, Kyle MacAllister has my phone number.”

  Marisa watched them leave. The elevator bell rang and the door opened. She turned to face the widening doors. In the corner of her eye, the staircase door closed behind the two men.

  Chapter Twenty-Three

  Alan knew the American military was fond of the saying that no plan ever survived contact with the enemy. He didn’t know who came up with that quote, but had always thought it demonstrated a certain laziness of perspective. After all, if the plan wasn’t expected to be followed, it gave superiors a pass when their orders weren’t carried out, and allowed their subordinates to head off and do whatever they felt like. That way led almost certain disaster when an operation was planned as tightly as his.

  Still, the man was no stranger to contingencies and valued flexibility and adaptability almost more than those same American soldiers who extolled the virtues of being able to execute on the fly.

  For this reason, Alan was infuriated but not desperate at Eddie’s failure to answer any of his calls or texts, and was reluctantly starting to conclude that Eddie was either dead or had been arrested prior to his return to the apartment. In fact, given the police presence at the apartment, he seized on the certainty of Eddie’s arrest.

  Alan glanced around the table at which he and the others sat. Along with a couple of folding chairs, it was the only piece of furniture in the safe house. Dodger and Marcus grumbled about that, but the location wasn’t a long-term residence. In fact, it had always been meant for what Alan was now going to use it—a staging point to launch their attack. He wondered if Eddie was going to say anything to the police. His initial thought was that the man was not loyal enough to hold his silence for long. However, he thought he might have a good deal of time. Every American television show he had seen assured him of the fact that police torture was a prevalent interrogation tactic. He then concluded, given its prevalence onscreen, torture was obviously not utilized in the actual interrogation process. Rather, he figured Eddie would lawyer up and not implicate himself as a terrorist. Americans were unforgiving of involvement in such plots.