Stephen Hunter - Soft target

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.