Stephen Hunter - Soft target

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.