Stephen Hunter - Soft target

“Bring him along. Maybe he knows the back way in.”

Meanwhile, Obobo and Renfro conferred briefly in the corner.

“You handled that well,” said Renfro. “Decent, smooth, no macho bullshit.”

“That goddamned Jefferson, though. He has been a pain since the start. I can tell, he doesn’t buy me, never has, never will. The tough guys hate me, think I’m too fine a lady. I’d love to push him up to International Falls, in charge of taking the temperature.”

“You were fine with him, Colonel. Yes, he’s a pain, all the SWAT people are. Kill ’em all, let God sort ’em out. But you handled him. Here’s my advice: Keep him busy. Keep him running around, making reports, checking this way and that. You don’t want him here at Command, sowing doubts, collecting allies. Make him your little errand boy and bury him in praise. That’s a weapon he can’t overcome.”

Saalim had his eye on the Somali girl in the crowd. “Fuck you,” she had said in English to him, the two words he knew. Ha ha. She was spirited. She was proud. She had bright eyes and fine, straight white teeth and a rich crop of hair. She would make a good wife. He wondered how many goats her father would charge. Probably many.

Sitting there in the mall, his baby Kalashnikov across his lap, his pistol dangling from his holster, the shemagh tight around his face, he had a brief fantasy that reflected on a childhood he never had. He was the son of the tribal chief in the high desert. He was a fierce warrior, a killer of men and lions. He was favored by Allah, and the mullahs agreed he was destined for greatness. He would have many wives and many concubines and many goats. He would lead his people in many battles and that one, that proud African girl, she would be his.

Actually, he had been born in a slum of Mogadishu; his mother was a whore. He lived the life of an unclean, wild pig for some years, scrapping and fighting for survival. Finally, when he was big enough to hold a Kalashnikov, General Hassan Dahir Aweys’s Hizbul Islam militia took him in. That was his family, boy soldiers and brutal leaders, and enemies to be slain in the name of Allah.

“Fuck you,” she said! What spirit, what “Saalim, I can tell by the glaze in your eyes you are dreaming,” said Asad, next to him. “If the imam catches you with a faraway look on your face, he’ll cane you and make you sleep with the goats.”

“There are no goats here,” said Saalim. “This is America. They keep the goats outside. No goats, no goatshit in a fine American place.”

“That is why we came so far. To destroy it and spread the will of Allah-”

“And to bring the goats inside, where they belong!”

Both boys laughed. They were lounging on a park bench on the southeast side of the Silli-Land Park, near the ticket office for the Ride-a-Log flume shoot, a twisty tube of water that enabled Americans the thrill of a downward thunder of a splashing ride, now vacant and unattended. From where they were, they were spared the disagreeable sight of Dead Man in Red upon His Throne. But they did see, everywhere, desultory Americans sitting crunched together, supposedly with their hands on their heads, though this imposed discipline had soon disappeared.

They were teenaged boys: their own discipline was not superb. They were supposed to keep iron eyes on their captives, to make certain little cliques didn’t form and plot some kind of revolution. But the Americans seemed to have no spirit for that kind of work and mostly just sat there, in a kind of stupor that both Saalim and Asad had seen among the struggling citizens of Wabra. Thus, Saalim and Asad found themselves occupied with chitchat, petty teasing, attraction to various girls, shows of adolescent bravado, and hunger for fast food, which was abundant in the now largely empty mall. That sometime soon soldiers or police officers would surely crash the place, guns firing, and probably kill them was of utterly no concern. Given the toughness of their lives, death held little sting.

But suddenly a crackle came over the earphones they wore under their shemaghs. It was the imam.

“You, Asad, that is your name, correct?”

“Yes, Imam,” said Asad, jumping alert.

“You remember what we discussed, you and I?”

It was true. He had a special mission.

“I do, Imam,” he said into the throat mike.

“Well, it’s time. You can find this place?”

He remembered. Second floor, NW Colorado, C-2-145. That was the destination. The imam had shown him on the bright-colored brochures with maps that guided them through the mall.

“I can, Imam,” he said.

“Good,” said the imam. “It’s time to go and get the babies.”

Humbly, Mr. and Mrs. Girardi approached the police officer at the farthest extreme from the mall. In fact, they could see it almost a mile away in the twilight, looking like a big tub upside down, surrounded by police cars and fire engines.

“Folks,” said the cop, “sorry, I can’t let you in any closer.”

“Sir,” said Mr. Girardi, “we’re looking for our son. He’s fourteen.”

“It’s the first time I’ve ever let him go to the mall alone,” said Mrs. Girardi. “I usually take him or he goes with friends. But he wanted to do his Christmas shopping.”

“Yes ma’am.”

“We haven’t heard from him. Should we call him?”

“He hasn’t called you?”

“We haven’t heard anything. We just know what’s on the TV.”

“No I wouldn’t advise that,” said the officer. “He may be hiding or something, or hurt or-well, you just don’t know what his circumstance is and it’s probably better to wait until he reaches out to you.”

“Is there any information available?”

“No, sir. We’re trying to get a command structure set up and get organized. It’s a terrible problem and nobody is clear on what to do. To be honest, it’ll be several hours before we really get what’s going on, and even longer before we have information. I’m sure your son is okay. He’s young, he’s strong, he’s quick.”

“He’s not really. He has asthma. He’s very thin and frail.”

“Well,” said the cop, stuck for an answer. “Maybe the best thing for you to do is find the Red Cross tent. I think they’re set up on the western side. You can rest there and you’ll get information there sooner.”

“I never should have let him come to the mall by himself,” said Mrs. Girardi, as her husband led her away.

Lavelva Oates shushed the redheaded one. He was a handful. Maybe it was because he was a redhead, he seemed to want a lot of attention and had tendencies toward disruption. He kept picking on a little Asian girl who would do nothing but sit and weep when he addressed her. Smack him hard on his burry little pipsqueak head? That’s what Lavelva wanted to do, but she knew it was a mistake. Jobs were hard enough to come by these days and no one went around hitting damn babies.

“Okay, boys and girls, now let’s play a new game,” she said brightly. “In this game, I want you all to be playing Hide from the monster. When I say go, you go hide. We’ll pretend the bad monsters are here. But they won’t see you, and you’ll be all right. We can hide from the monsters together.”

“That’s a scary game,” said Robert. She knew he was named Robert because he had a big name tag pinned on: ROBERT 3–4. But it was past four o’clock and Robert’s mom hadn’t shown up. Maybe she was dead.

“I want to go home. Where’s my mom?” asked Robert.

“I’m sure she’s on her way,” Lavelva said.

“I have to go to the bathroom,” Linda said.

“Peepee or the other?” asked Lavelva.

“Both,” said the child.

“All right,” said Lavelva. “Anybody else?”