Soft target

5:48 P. M-5:55 P.M

It was like being hit in the head by a snow shovel. The shock was more disconcerting than the pain, as the world went to crazed fractionality, his memory purged, the eternal sensation best described as What the fuck? commandeered his entire mind, and it seemed to take minutes before clarity finally restored itself, to the effect that I’ve just been shot in the head. The next logical question, Why am I not dead? somehow didn’t follow. Instead, his knees gone all Jell-O-y, Ray threw himself back in primal panic and slipped into some kind of notch in the wall, where he shared a few square feet with a water fountain.

He fought for cognizance. First he remembered who he was, then he remembered squeezing Lisa Fong’s left tit thirty-one years ago in the cloakroom of the Subic Bay Naval Base Elementary School No. 2, then he remembered that he was in a shopping mall taken over by the Huns, and only then did it occur to him that a sniper was shooting at him! At him! The nerve of some people! He sucked in his chest, just in case an inch or so of it extended beyond the edge of his little water fountain niche and invited another shot. But he also realized he was trapped.

He could risk a run but even now the guy was on him from wherever, his reticle greedily massaging the edge of wall that shielded Ray from death. He tried to think: Can these guys have brought snipers along and salted them all over the mall in case there’s some movement from the people hiding in the stores on the upper floors? But that seemed a little far-fetched. Yes, possible, but… also insane and therefore unlikely.

So, who the fuck was shooting at him? And why did he miss?

It didn’t take a genius to make the next leap. Sure, it was a law enforcement sniper, maybe directly across the atrium, on the other second-floor expanse of balcony, maybe a part of a team the cops had somehow gotten into the mall who were even now moving into position for the assault. He’s on his scope, he sees a guy with an AK and a head scarf and he figures he’s got a target, he gets his authorization (or maybe not?). And then he puts a bullet in Ray’s head, only for some reason, he misses.

Fuck you, Jack, Ray thought.

But telling Jack to fuck himself did nothing to solve his immediate problem. And the more he thought about it, the more he realized the guy probably wasn’t across the way or even higher, on the third or fourth levels, but even higher than that. He had to be firing through or from the skylight. If he’d been right on Ray, he couldn’t have missed, but the higher he was, the more extreme the angle was. If you’re shooting downhill, the rule was you always hold low because the bullet’s point of impact will be higher. He’d forgotten while putting the hairs on Ray’s forehead, and the bullet had instead hit high, blitzing Ray’s head right through the scarf and the crew cut, spilling red but not gray stuff. But fuck, it hurt.

Ray could feel blood sliding down through his hair. His ears rang still and he couldn’t stop shaking. Man, that was a close sucker, that was as close as close gets without death being involved.

He tried to work out a move. Hmm, maybe a feint, to draw a shot, then a quick dash during the cocking sequence. But suppose Jack isn’t shooting a bolt gun but is on some state-of-the-art semiauto rig, so the gun reloads itself in a one-hundredth of a second, and after his feint Ray steps out and catches the spine breaker.

The bastard has me dead-zero, he thought.

“Sniper Five, Sniper Five, come in,” McElroy heard through his earphones.

Shit!

“Sniper Five, have you engaged, Sniper Five? Goddammit, McElroy, what the fuck is going on?”

McElroy recognized the voice of his immediate supervisor. He couldn’t hide anymore.

“I have engaged,” he said. “One shot.”

“Can you confirm a kill?”

“Uh-”

“Oh, fuck, McElroy, you missed? Jesus Christ, I am going to have your ass for sure.”

“No, I hit him, I saw his scarf blow up as the bullet impacted in the rear quadrant of the head, but he didn’t prone out. I think I damaged him badly, but he slipped back in this niche in the wall. That’s where he is now.”

“You have him zeroed.”

Did he ever, even if the weight was racking him. He’d now been in this awkward half-hunch offhand standing for a good seven minutes, sweat was everywhere on him despite the forty-degree temp, the small of his back felt like it had taken the bullet, his arms and wrists were fighting those oncoming yips, and he kept squirming a little this way and that to find a more comfortable position even as the crosshairs had begun to widen in their tremble circle. He wasn’t sure how much longer he could hold it and still have the confidence to squeeze one off if the guy made a sudden move.

On the other hand, he did not want to lose this. I will not let up. I am strong enough. I will stay on this guy no matter what.

“I have him zeroed,” he said.

“Sitrep?”

“He’s stuck in there. He’s out of the fight. I’m guessing he’s bleeding out. He’ll be gone soon. You know, brain shots aren’t always instantaneous, sometimes not even fatal. But he’s not going to do much more today, that I guarantee you.”

“Yeah, but while you’re on him, who’s on your window, sending us dope?”

“There is no dope, nothing’s happening.”

“You stay on him for a little while longer, but if I have to, I’m pulling you off and sending you back to general intelligence reporting.”

“I will get him for you,” said McElroy, thinking, I will get him for me.

The phone vibrated. Great. Trapped by a sniper, shot in the head, men with guns all over the joint, and the phone vibes.

Somehow Ray got the little rectangle of plastic genius out of his pocket, careful not to extend an elbow past the edge of the niche and invite a bullet into it, slid the answer icon to the right, and saw Molly’s name announced as the caller.

“Are you all right?” she asked. “Not really,” he said. “Sort of stuck here.”

“I heard from my sister. Ray, she’s in with the hostages. My mother too.”

“I can’t do anything for them now.”

“Ray, what should I tell her?”

“If there’s an assault, get down. Don’t run. Most of the firing will be at waist to chest level or higher. If they’re down, they’ll be much safer. Crawl slowly away from the area but be willing to play dead at any second. It’ll be over quickly. There’ll be a lot of firing, a lot of confusion, and they should be as innocuous as possible. If they panic and run, someone may target them as movers, our guys, their guys.”

“Okay, I’ll tell her.”

“Did those kids get there?”

“Yes, the place is now crawling with them. All the women are helping. That day care girl is something.”

“She’d make a hell of a marine. Meanwhile, I’ve just had an idea. I have to get off the phone.”

“Okay. Be careful.”

Tell him, Ray thought.

But now that he had the phone out, he went quickly to his contacts screen and touched the call icon for the one man who might be able to help him, the strange, remote, laconic guy who was, they had both so recently learned, his biological father.

“This is Swagger,” came the message. “Leave a number and maybe I’ll call you back. But I probably won’t.”

Ha ha. Great for the dry humor the old bastard was known for, almost as much as his shooting, but it did his son no good now.

Ray swept his contacts and at last came upon another possibility.

Nick Memphis, FBI, the entry read.

Only a few people had his private number, so Nick was somewhat surprised to feel the phone tingling in his jacket. He picked it open, saw Ray’s number, thought it odd that the man should be calling him at all, particularly now, today.

“Cruz, how are you? Long time no hear, nice to get a call. Actually, Ray, I’m kind of busy-”

“I am too. I’m betting you’re watching reports come in of a terrorist deal in Minnesota. Well, I’m in the middle of it.”

Memphis was stunned. He was indeed sitting in the FBI Incident Command Center in the Hoover Building in DC, actually not doing much except pitching in his comments on dealing not with the gunmen but with the phenomenon known as Douglas Obobo, a tricky character. On another floor, theoretically brilliant people on computer terminals tried to hack into the closed-off mall system; up here, others worked the phones, trying desperately to find some clue as to who was behind this, and others ran logistics, helping coordinate the problems by which law enforcement units continued to pour into Indian Falls, particularly the now airborne FBI HRT from Quantico, while still others were on the phone constantly to Will Kemp, the SAIC in Minnesota, giving him advice and handling his inquiries while also monitoring the situation and evaluating his performance.

Ray explained what was happening to him.

“Jesus,” said Nick, thinking instantly how ugly a fate it would be for Cruz, after his legendary service, to get nailed by an FBI sniper in a bullshit friendly-fire incident.

He looked over, saw Ron Fields, head of the FBI’s sniper school and a leading tactical guru within the institution, on the phone.

“Okay,” he said. “Cruz, you stay put. I’m going to try and get you out of the kill zone.”

He went over and said, “Ronnie, I have a situation.”

Fields had the usual deadpan SWAT response to anything, even the fact that a Marine sniper was being targeted by an FBI sniper inside a terrorist takeover of a replica of America in the heart of the actual America on prime-time televison and that someone had shot Santa Claus. If anything in the fix seemed ironic or ridiculous or even unfortunate, he didn’t register it. He solved it. He nodded, pushed some buttons, and handed a hardwired receiver to Nick, saying, “Webley, Kemp’s number two, on site and helping Kemp.”

“Webley,” came a voice. “Webley, this is Nick Memphis.”

“Yes, Mr. Memphis.”

Nick heard Webley pop to immediately, aware that he was on the phone with a big DC player, probably for the first time in his life.

“Webley, you have snipers on the roof?”

“Yes sir,” answered Webley. “One of them is engaging even as we-”

“That’s the problem,” said Nick. “The guy he’s shooting at is a good guy. Ex-marine, sniper himself. Call him off.”

“Yes sir.”

“And put me on the line.”

“Yes sir.”

Nick listened as someone did more connecting, and heard in a few seconds “Sniper Five, this is Command. Disengage, that is an order, disengage.”

“Goddammit, I have him. He’s going to break out of there and I will nail him-”

“Sniper Five, I am advised you are firing on a friendly.”

“What? He has an AK and a head scarf and-”

“Sniper Five, this is Assistant Director Memphis in DC. The man you are firing on is an ex-marine with sniper experience himself. Do not engage. He could be our asset inside.”

“Can he signal? Three fingers?”

Nick put down the phone, picked up his cell.

“Ray, hold out three fingers. I’ve got the guy on the line, actually.”

“He’s not some fucking kid who’ll shoot ’em off, is he?”

“He sounds excited, yes, but he’s under control.”

There was a pause.

Then Sniper Five said, “I have acknowledgment. I see three. I am stepping down.”

“Good, good,” said Webley.

“Okay, Ray, you’re clear now. At least Sniper Five won’t be-”

It seemed to occur to all of them at once, and the jabber was impenetrable until finally all shut up and let Nick say what all had figured out.

“Webley, I’m going to give you Ray’s number. His name is Ray Cruz, twenty-two years USMC, maybe their number one sniper, five tours in the sand, great, great operator. I don’t know what he’s doing there, but he’s there and we’re fools if we don’t use him. Have Sniper Five contact him. Maybe the two of them can work together and deal with these guys in a way no one else is in position to.”

“Got you, AD. Wilco.”

Nick went back to Ray.

“The guy on the roof is going to call you. Sniper Five, don’t know his name, but maybe you and he can see things we can’t and help us.”

“Got it,” said Ray, clicking off to wait.

“Sir,” said Webley, “should I alert SAIC Kemp about this contact?”

“You know Kemp, I don’t. You make the call.”

“Ah… he’s not too anxious to get heavy into this one. It looks like it’s going down bad for all involved and there could be big repercussions.”

The Bureau culture. It was, as often as not, the true enemy. SAs learned that the route to promotion and retirement plus lucrative security industry positions afterward was a spotless run through their twenty years on the street, and that had the inevitable effect of drying out initiative. Nobody wanted to make the big mistake and get creamed. And no one seemed to notice that Nick had mavericked himself aloft, but even Nick knew he was the exception and that his connection to the even more maverick Bob Lee Swagger had been a fantastic aid. So these guys always played it cautious, and somehow career considerations came into play in command decisions in ways that couldn’t be anticipated. It was nobody’s fault, it was the culture.

So Nick said, “You know, he’s got a lot on his mind, Webley. And I don’t want him trying to conceal anything from Obobo. So until we see how this is going to work out, we’ll keep it to ourselves, okay? If Ray moves, he may have to move fast, and I don’t want him fighting Bureau culture and Command doubt among his many enemies.”

“I am on board, sir,” said Webley.

Nothing scared Mom. Her wrinkled old face had knitted up tight and now showed nothing but fighting rage. And she knew a little about fighting rage: she’d been born into the tribal mountain zones of a country that had been destroyed, into a war culture, and had grown up to the smell of aviation fuel from the coming and going of the American helicopters, the fluttery lights of illumination flares parachuting down outside the wire in the night, the far-off and sometimes not so far-off popping of small-arms fire. She knew how to fieldstrip both an AK-47 and a carbine. She knew how to lay a mine, cut a man’s throat, read sign, and stay dead still when the northerners, in their ridiculous uniforms (were they monkeys? she thought they looked like monkeys) stalked her. She’d lost three brothers by the time she was fifteen, and her father, Gua-Mo Chan, had worked with a variety of young American commandos on missions against the same hated northerners. She married at seventeen to a fighter named Jang, the bravest of the brave. Then one day he didn’t come back, and so she mourned for a year and a day, and at eighteen married another fighter, her current husband, Dang Yan, called Danny, now a travel agency owner on Central Avenue in Saint Paul.

She remembered the day when the world ended, and it was foretold that the northerners would win. The Americans were not cruel; they did not abandon their loyal allies. But they were not gentle either, and in truth, what followed next was a mess coming close in its sloppiness to a tragedy. In a confusion of camps and helicopters and ships and more camps, she ended up with those of her family who still survived in the belly of a cold, far city. She began a new life and raised five daughters and nothing ever scared her.

This filth didn’t scare her. Boys with guns, black boys with guns, just like the ones you sometimes saw in Saint Paul, with no respect for ancestors, for family or clan, no warrior ethic, not even an ability to read or write. They were nothing. She spat on creatures so low.

What scared her was her daughter Sally, who sat next to her under the blaze of windows in the roof high above, in an ocean of victims, somewhat like the camps where she had spent too many months. They sat, hands folded on heads, driven here by the panic of the crowd at the gunfire. Some had already died. Some were crying, some were breaking down, some sat with the dullness of the soon-to-be-dead, most prayed for deliverance or tried to hush frightened children, but all of them just hoped not to be noticed.

But someone had noticed Sally, Mom saw. He was the shooter, the one who’d killed the five. He was maybe a little bigger than the others, and there was something surly about him. He alone was-the Hmong word was khav, meaning “proud” or possibly “self-important,” although she didn’t know English well at all, even after these many years-in the way he carried his weapon with a certain deliberate coolness and disdain. The other filth saw nothing. Their eyes were blank, they had no appreciation for what lay in front of them, as if other lives had no meaning and other places had none either. They had no depth. Whatever had formed them-war, poverty, whatever-it had left them empty, incapable of paying attention to or feeling anything. They would take what was before them, life or death, beauty or ugliness, fate or luck, and do what they had been instructed. But they would not select. They would not consider, they did not winnow, they did not decide. This one had decided.

Sally, her youngest, was a fragrant blossom on a spring day, before the wet season arrived. She smelled of delicacy, sweetness, not-yet-ripeness. She was too young to have developed but you could tell from the way men looked at her that she had a rare, almost ethereal beauty. Molly, the eldest, so smart, went away to school and now was a lawyer for the Americans in their capital; Annie had married a Japanese dentist with a practice in the suburbs; Ginger was a softball coach and nationally ranked player who had almost made the Olympics and might still; and Jeannie was in first-year med at Bloomington. But Sally, a latecomer, a final surprise from God, was the baby of the family, with ears of porcelain and a perfect little nose and bright eyes and thick, lustrous hair gathered in a ponytail. She was her mother’s prize.

But he had noticed her. She sat beside Mom, huddling, trying to comfort both Mom and herself. She wore Ugg boots in suede, black tights, a little blue jean skirt, a hoodie sweatshirt with ST. PAUL TRINITY stenciled on it, and a blue jean jacket, much too light for the weather, though Sally was a native Minnesotan, far hardier than her tropically raised mom, and normally shrugged off the cold, like the white people did.

The crowd parted as he bullied his way to them. About ten feet away, he stopped, bent down, and snatched up a woman’s purse roughly. Opening it, he grabbed the wallet and pulled out a wad of bills. Then he tossed the purse and strode forcefully to Sally through the crowd of cowed hostages. He stood above her, looking down on her imperially, like the conqueror he believed himself to be. He smiled, showing broad white teeth. Then he took a step to Mom, bent down, and said, “I have no goats. Here, take this,” and he threw the money at her.

“I buy her from you. Now she is mine. She will be my bride this day.” He laughed heartily. Then he reached down, forced his hand inside her sweatshirt and bra, and enjoyed a fondle of her small left breast. Mom saw the pain and shame cross her daughter’s face and the girl, violated, seemed to diminish before her. The large man laughed, winked at Mom, and stomped away.

Mom watched him go. She knew what she must do. She reached back, over a low stone arrangement that separated grass from garden in this mock outdoors, and surreptitiously, she snatched up a fistful of black soil. She dumped it into her purse. Then she did it again and again and again.

It seemed to take forever, setting up the phone connections, finding a special agent fluent in German, getting numbers from someone at a Siemens branch in New York, reaching finally a Siemens PR gal in Stuttgart, then finally a vice president, getting an authenticating call from the German Federal Police (they were so goddamned careful!), and now finally, Hans Jochim, fifty-four.

Yet it was not like talking to someone named Hans Jochim, fifty-four. It was like talking to someone named Holly Burbridge, thirty-two, who sat next to him. She was the translator and eventually the rhythms of the time lags seemed to disappear.

“Sir, I understand you were the design team leader on the MEMTAC 6.2 program that runs the SCADA system at several big malls in America.”

“Well, not exactly team leader,” Holly responded. “I was more of a coordinator. Policy is set by the executive branch, and, alas, vetted by marketing; then an environmental committee and a labor union committee have to file action reports, which of course must be responded to, in detail, and then there’s the hearing where the arguments are made orally in front of a board composed of-”

Jesus Christ! How long would this take!

“Sir, we’re in an emergency mode here. May I proceed, with all due respect, Herr Doktor Ingenieur?” the last a flourish he’d picked up from some World War II novel or something.

Grumpily-grumpiness came even into Holly’s voice-Herr Jochim said, “I am not a Doktor Ingenieur, I am an Ingenieur. I may go back to Hamburg-”

“Sir, our perpetrator has taken the whole system off line and we can’t penetrate. It is necessary, lives are at stake, for us to penetrate the system and regain control of the building’s security system. I’m sure with your brilliance, sir, you can suggest another route in, a back door or something.”

Wrong word.

“Back door!” exploded Holly in rage. “I do not forget things! I have no back doors. This is not a parlor game, it is one of the most sophisticated programs in the world. It controls everything. We wrote a million kilometers of code just for the cooling system. And-”

Neal took his headset off, waiting for the Teutonic typhoon to blow out to sea. Finally, hearing a pause, he jumped in with “I did not mean to imply accidental openings or sloppiness in any professional discipline. Obviously, you’re smarter than I am because I can’t get in and I need your help and-”

“The fire control system,” said the German.

“The fire control system? It has guns?”

“No, no, as in fires, fire engines, firemen. We had to interface with another firm, very delicate business. Japanese. Very arrogant people. You cannot tell them anything.”

“Can you be more specific?”

“They do have the best fire control hard- and software in the world, and they maintain their very high standard by retaining direct access to their system from Tokyo. They can monitor and troubleshoot anyplace in the world from their headquarters in Tokyo. All by nothing more sophisticated than-perhaps you have heard of this? — a telephone.”

“My God,” said Neal.

“Yes. Now I am going to give you a number to call and an engineer to talk to. They are very careful too, so I advise you to have your State Department run interference. You want to get into the system? This is how you get into the system.”

Decisions. Obobo, with Mr. Renfro’s shrewd advice, had a superb gift for making the right one. His confidence, only a little shaken by the hostility of the press conference, had reassembled itself, and now various people put various issues to him for disposition. But there were so many of them. Some could be put off or safely ignored.

Jefferson, the SWAT hotshot, wouldn’t go anywhere, he was so desperate to get the nod from Obobo to go in shooting. Of course, shoot, shoot everyone, that’s a good idea, a mall full of bodies with lakes of blood on the floor. But Jefferson, like other men of his ilk, was basically so obsessed he was stupid. He could be manipulated with flattery and attention and easily disposed of.

Other decisions: Should we leave food at the doors and pull back, in hopes that the gunmen, whoever they are, will take it in and distribute it? What about medical supplies, antidepressants or antianxiety drugs? Renfro agreed the answer to both: yes. Why not? The stress on the hostages must be godawful, not that anyone could do anything about it.

Then there was the pressure of the media. National correspondents were hammering Renfro for more info, and Renfro pointed out that if you let them feel like insiders, maybe they won’t be so rough on you. But Renfro also knew it would be ill-considered and play to the strength of the colonel’s enemies if he were seen giving one-on-ones in the crisis. So it was a thin line to be walked, and Renfro advised giving the networks brief one-on-ones but against a dynamic situation, all in standup so that it didn’t have that public relations feel to it and was more cinema verite in nature. Renfro had also arranged for the colonel to suit up in tactical gear, and the man was now resplendent in a black jumpsuit with his Beretta in a midthigh tactical holster, as well as radio gear, flashbangs, cuffs, and Danner tac boots. Now he looked the part as well.

And the frustrations! Why was he getting no meaningful intelligence? Where was the FBI on this? To get him some leverage, they had been tasked with running an investigation. They had the access to the various federal databases, and so far what had they come up with? A little something from the Geeks that Kemp had thrown at him but really constituted nothing but a big yawn, obvious stuff. So disappointing. They were supposed to set up an information central under command of a major, by which data from records, interviews of witnesses (many grabbed on the run), advice from other departments and police executives would all be collated, evaluated, prioritized, and then-the most important-brought to him, and of course it was an utter fiasco: too much information too fast, too much of it unreliable or hearsay or interpretation. So that enterprise had yet to produce anything.

Meanwhile, he was aware of the clock, spinning its inevitable way toward 6 p.m. That would make three hours since the thing had begun. Three long hours. Suppose the man inside shot six more people. Then he’d have to go before 7 p.m.; he couldn’t stay on the outside for seven at 7 p.m., then eight at 8 p.m. Why didn’t these people talk to him? Tell me what you want. Start a conversation. Let’s see where we are. Nobody does something like this and then goes silent. It doesn’t make any sense. He knew that if he could only start a dialogue, he could ultimately bring them to his side. That was one of his greatest gifts and it always served him well. His intellect, his humanity, his empathy, his compassion: those were his secret weapons; those would win the day.

“Sir,” came another voice, one of many, and he said, “Yes, yes, what is it?” then turned, his attention caught because he saw Jefferson outside talking to a TV reporter and he didn’t want to be criticized from within the command during the incident, and at the same time, he saw his PA hustling in, possibly with some new directive from the governor, and outside the window in the falling dark he saw reporters laughing and knew they were having a good one at his expense and “He wants to talk.”

— and he himself had to go to the bathroom and he hadn’t had dinner and couldn’t stay sharp without food and “Who wants to talk?”

“Him,” said the tech.

Suddenly it got very quiet.

“The fellow inside?”

“Sir, it’s a call from Mall Security Command. I’ve verified it, it’s the right number, it’s from inside all right. It’s from somebody who says he represents an outfit called Brigade Mumbai. He wants to talk, he says, or at six p.m. he’ll kill six more people.”