Stephen Hunter - Soft target

Then he relented. His fingers came slightly out of her throat, and he let a desperately sought gush of air into her throat. But his fingers did not come off her neck. He spoke in Somali, not that she understood anything but the emotional gist.

“Hah, girl, see what Asad does to you! Hah, now I send you to the fiery noplace of infidel hell you who stand against Allah must go. I am your killer, your ruler. You defy me and die as do all peoples everywhere soon to know the power of Islam.”

What bullshit! He was all lit up, so proud of his mighty victory, unwilling to let the moment go, savoring the kill. She whacked him again, but he blinked only a bit, shook his head, and said, “Now, die, bitch.”

The thumbs went hard into her, and her air supply drained quickly and she sucked at dry nothingness, bucking against him but feeling her will vanish and wishing she’d been able to save the babies, she tried so hard to save the babies and And someone broke his neck.

Broke it clean and hard, and she heard the snap as the vertebrae cracked into two pieces, and his tongue came into his skinny-ass lips and his eyes went all cue ball on him and his head hung at a broken-spring angle and his thumbs lost their power and he was lifted from her like a sack of potatoes and laid on a floor from which he would never again rise.

Some Asian-like dude looked down at her.

“You okay?” he said.

“Man, he like to choke the fuck out of me.”

“Just relax, rest. He’s not going to choke anybody ever again, okay?”

The guy, she now saw, was some kind of thin, hardball type, had warrior written all over him in the leanness under his sweatshirt and the veins thick with blood on his wrists. He turned and quickly began to loot the fallen Somali, separating first the AK from the boy, then quickly unbuckling the bandolier of ammunition-the clips were all weird orange, you know, like popsicles-then slipped the kid’s belt with knife and pistol off. He checked the pistol expertly, pinching back the slide to see if it held a chambered round, and then he began to reassemble himself in the image of the man he’d just killed. Finally, finished, he turned back to her.

“Feeling better? You’ll be bruised for a month, but I think you’ll be all right. Sweetie, I can’t believe you cracked him with that shiv. You can play ball on my team anytime, the guts you must have.”

“Who you?” she asked.

“The name’s Ray. Spent some time in the Marines, that’s why I’m all going-to-war now. Nobody else is. Anyhow, I saw this joker slide in here as I was stalking him. Sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”

She looked at the dead boy. She’d seen the gaze before, on the streets. That I’m-asleep look, the eyes blank, seeing nothing, the I-ain’t-nothing-no-more look of extinction. Someone run into a bullet or a blade with his name on it, down he go, his face come all moony nothingness, like this sucker. She could still gut him, cut his slimy insides out and hang ’em up to dry. But no. He dead.

She turned back to see the Chinese marine studying a mall pamphlet, which must have come from Mr. Dead Ass.

“You have kids here?”

“Seventeen of them. In back. That boy said he’d come to get the babies.”

“Yeah, the place is marked. So they want children, they need ’em as hostages, and they sent this joker. Okay, we’re going to move the kids a little ways down the hall into the ladies’ underwear place. There are some women in there and they can help you take care of them. Does that seem like a good idea?”

“It does.”

“You want them in a single file, hugging the walls, make it a game. See, that way those TV cameras can’t pick them out of the shadow. You get that?”

“I do.”

“Let’s get this done fast. I don’t know how long it’ll be before they notice war hero here didn’t come back with the babies.”

It made as much sense as anything. It was the first positive thing that had happened since the shooting started.

“I also want to hide this guy,” he said. “If they find him, it may piss them off and they may take it out on the hostages. They have about a thousand people down in the amusement park.”

“Yes sir,” she said.

“Hey, what is your name?”

“I am Lavelva Oates.”

“Well, Miss Lavelva. I say again, you did real good. If I had it, I’d give you a medal. Stand up to the killer with the gun. Not many have the sand.”

“Yes sir,” she said, secretly so very pleased.

Next she went back, got the kids out of the bathroom on the pretext of a new game: Creep down the hall. Be a kitty cat or a doggy. All fours.

By the time she got them organized, the body was gone, and so was the Chinese marine. And so was the AK rifle.

Bet he know how to run that, she thought.

It took a while before anyone at the Red Cross tent paid attention to Mr. and Mrs. Girardi, and it was not their personality type, either as individuals or as a couple, to demand notice. They simply stood there and watched while nurses bandaged the odd escapees from the mall who’d fallen and cut themselves, bruised, torn, twisted something, and handed out glasses of juice and cookies. Meanwhile, uniformed policemen moved among those on the cots or waiting to see a physician or a nurse to interview the escapees, hoping to pick up that one new piece of information that might matter. But it was a sloppy process, the cops were under great pressure to produce, and when witnesses turned out to have nothing, they were quickly abandoned, raising hard feelings and complaints. All this frenzy took place under the open-walled canvas structure lit by fluorescents, and enough insects remained to buzz and hum around the lights, which themselves were so harsh they showed everything in vivid clarity, the red of the many Red Cross insignias, the blue and gray of the police uniforms, the white smocks of the doctors.

Finally, a woman came to them.

“Have you been helped?”

“No, ma’am,” said Mr. Girardi. He was fifty-two, stooped, balding. He was an unimpressive man by any standards and in no crowd would he stand out.

“What’s the problem?”

“The policeman over there suggested you might have some information. Our son Jimmy, he’s fourteen, he went to the mall today by himself for the first time. We haven’t heard from him.”

“Ah,” said the woman.

“We wondered if there was any information. We thought they might have released a list or something. They might know who had escaped and where they were.”

“He’s small for his age,” said Mrs. Girardi. “I never let him go alone, but he was so insistent that he wanted to get his shopping done early.”

“Gosh,” the woman, a volunteer from an upscale suburb, said, “that’s a tough one. But no, I’m sorry, they haven’t released any information or names. We just really got set up a little while ago, and we’re really here to deal with seriously hurt people if and when there’s a battle and people need fast medical help. I can’t help you. I can get you a cookie and a juice. Does that interest you?”

“No, ma’am. Thank you very much.”

“You might try the media tent. It’s where all the reporters and TV people are. That’s probably where they’d release information.”

“Thank you,” said Mrs. Girardi. “You’ve been very kind.”

The Geeks had spoken. That is, the first Behavioral Sciences report had come in, BeSci being the forensic psychology unit of the Bureau tasked with inferring personality of perpetrator from evidence, originally begun in response to various colorful serial killers of depraved sexual impulse, then glorified in novel, film, and TV. However, despite their glory, the boys seldom got out of the office, a bunker in a nondescript building on the FBI campus at Quantico. Since their duty was basically riding the net 24/7, putting together personalities from what they uncovered, and then offering their work product to whomever was interested, and not many were, they were known as the Geeks. They looked mostly like the excitable guys who try and sell you televisions at RealDeal.