Soft target

THREE MONTHS LATER

Ray and Molly sat in the bar of a restaurant in Washington DC. They were going to get married shortly and would be flying back to Saint Paul for the ceremony, to which every Hmong in America had been invited. Even old Bob Lee was flying in for this one. McElroy and his wife were coming, as were Nick Memphis, Jake Webley, and Will Kemp. Lavelva would make it if she could get leave, but she was in her third week of Marine Basic, so it was doubtful. But tonight, before the week of marriage craziness started, was just for them.

The order of the night was martinis, vodka variant, slightly dirty, Absolut, no bullshit about shaking or stirring, just whatever the bartender preferred, Ray didn’t even know. It was Friday, pretty late, since she worked hard, as did he-recently appointed head instructor of sniper tactics for the FBI under Ron Fields out in Quantico-and she in the legal department of the Department of Energy. If you saw them, you’d see two Asian American yuppies, well preserved, representing diversity, on secure career paths, but not unusual in the cosmopolitan DC restaurant scene.

“Look,” said Molly, “it’s your sister!”

Indeed it was, on the television. The strikingly pretty girl’s face filled the screen over a network insignia and she earnestly reported, “The president today appointed Colonel Douglas Obobo”-and a cutaway showed the handsome police executive shaking hands with the president in the White House media room-“superintendent of the Minnesota State Police, as the new, and first black, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The colonel received nationwide attention on Black Friday last November when he led the response to the terrorist attack at America, the Mall, in suburban Minneapolis”-and the camera showed footage that Nikki’s cameraman had actually shot, the vast America-shaped building bleeding smoke and fire into the night as an ocean of ambulances and other emergency vehicles blinked lights around it-“and devised a daring secret assault plan that was credited with minimizing casualties in that horrible event. Only thirty-seven died and fewer than two hundred were wounded, against figures that could have been vastly higher.”

Then the president spoke.

“I know of no American who has served his country better in time of crisis-and in time without crisis, in the ordinary ebb and flow of law enforcement duties-than Doug Obobo. He is one of the finest police officials in the nation, without a doubt, and I fully expect him to bring those attributes of courage, intelligence, and creativity-but most of all, empathy and compassion-to our premier federal law enforcement agency.”

The two men shook hands as flashbulbs popped.

“That’s not quite the way I heard it,” said Ray.

“Well, gosh,” she said, “what do you know? I mean it’s not like you were there or anything,” and they both laughed richly, not the first laugh they had shared by any means but far, far from the last.