Stephen Hunter - Soft target

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.”

The Imam, Nadifa Aba, locked the door of his storefront mosque-Masjid Al-Taqwa-on Bedford Avenue and checked for his enemies before walking to his car.

He had many enemies. Of course the FBI, but at least they kept their distance. Then the young American black men, who thought he was a fool and mocked his dignity and laughed at his prayerfulness and liked to intimidate him with fantasy violence that ended with a blow halted an inch from his nose. When he ducked, they collapsed in laughter.

But worst of all was the Reverend Reed Hobart, of the Minnescola Avenue Baptist Church of the Redeemer, who one day decided that his God had spoken to him and it was his duty to drive the non-Christians from Minnesota. The reverend had a long history of crusades and himself was probably under FBI surveillance for links to a violent antiabortion underground, but he also had a nose for publicity and for two weeks had shown up at ten each morning for four hours of nonviolent but very loud protest outside the imam’s modest mosque.

ISLAM IS THE BUNK one placard read, and GO BACK TO GOATLAND read another, and OSAMA IS TOAST, and the worst was KORAN + MATCHES = HOME COOKIN’. To see the text desecrated like that! It filled him with rage and pain and hatred, pushing him further and further toward the violence that he felt deep in his heart. But he knew if he struck at the Reverend Hobart, with his mane of hair and his big head and his loud voice, he’d only be mocked and ridiculed. How could a believer keep his dignity in such a hellish circumstance?

But the reverend had taken the day off, and no one cursed at the imam as he walked to the car. To his right, as he passed a vacant lot, the vividly lit towers of downtown Minneapolis gleamed in the surprisingly chill August night like a nightmare. Metaphorically, of course, it was the West, hideous and tempting, all gloss, glitter, licentiousness and flesh, insolent black youth, bellowing white false holy men. He sniffed in disrespect, sending a snort of disapproving breath out into the air, purposefully not looking at the skyline of decadence, a Babylon of infidel scum.

He was a bitter man, forty-two, tall and angular like many Somalis, with bright eyes, white teeth, cheekbones like razors, and a froth of beautiful hair. He yearned for dry heat, the solitude of the desert, for quiet brightness, for the path of God’s will to be known to him, for a mission more potent than his current one, which was to enforce the Faith upon an ever-diminishing group of countrymen and observe in desolation as for every new arrival who joined, two older ones wandered off, away from the Faith, captivated by the temptation of America. Since the killing of Osama the Holy Warrior and the barbaric spectacle of celebration that ensued, the imam had been in a state of constant, fiery rage.

He shrugged, drawing his cheap coat tightly about him to keep the chill out. His circumstances might be severe but his spirit was not. He fancied himself a warrior, a mover of worlds and shaker of universes; he burned with zeal and urgency. He glanced about, checking for his FBI monitors. Sometimes they were there, sometimes they were not. Maybe they weren’t even FBI, as he was on every Western terrorist watch list, mainly for his propensity to write angry essays in a small number of Somali-language community newspapers, such as his most recent, “Allah Demands Harshness, Yet Pity, in Attacking Homosexual Deviation,” drawn from several Koranic sources yet given a certain modernistic oomph by the imam’s relentless prose style and his merciful conclusion that the deviates should be defenestrated, not stoned. So much easier on everyone, including the transgressors, for whom he was not without compassion.

Tonight was a rare treat. Not only was the reverend blessedly absent, but as well there appeared to be no federal agents about. You could tell them because their sedans were inevitably dark in color, without American frill, and held two rather doughy-looking white men who appeared wracked with boredom. They followed at a respectful distance and sometimes they accompanied him all the way home and sometimes not, depending on who knew what indicators that suggested tonight would not be the night he blew up America.

So he had a free night. He checked his watch, saw that he still had an hour before his last prayers were expected, thought about this or that temptation-a small glass of wine, a trip through the pages of the latest Hustler, a rerun of the 9-11 video as Al Jazeera had reported it-but decided that tonight would be a pure and consecrated devotion.

He unlocked his Ford Tempo and climbed in, turned on the engine, waited for the moisture to clear from the windshield, and pulled into traffic, checking the mirrors to see if on either side of Bedford anybody pulled out behind him. No one did. However, in his own back seat, someone rose directly behind him and sat back, relaxed.

The imam’s gut clenched. You always had this fear in America that some crazed follower of a maniac like the reverend would take it in hand to blow away Islam in the form of the imam, as if the imam himself were plotting to blow up America, although of course that was on his to-do list. He cursed his stupidity for not checking the back seat. He was at war, he had to be alert. He prayed to Allah that this was not his death. And then he heard an American voice say, “If you’re worried about the FBI, they’re not here tonight. They only come on odd-numbered days in odd-numbered months and even-numbered days in even months. On the odd months, the shift is the last twelve hours of the day, the evens the first twelve hours. It used to be 24/7 but, you know… budget cutbacks.”

The imam swallowed drily.

“Who are you?” he asked, licking his lips. “Are you from the Reverend Hobart?”

“Not exactly.”

“Who, sir? Please.”

“Don’t turn around. Drive to your home, the usual route. The car is bugged, but I’ve momentarily diverted their penetration.”