Stephen Hunter - Soft target

“How do you know?”

“I’ve hacked into their computer net and examined their operating orders and their technical capacities. To get the car bugged, they hacked into the new MyFord Touch wireless connection. This lets them hear everything in the car, see out the rear window, track via GPS, turn it on and off, everything. I wrote an iPhone app to control the car and switched the FBI views to another vehicle. Currently, they’re watching a soccer mom deliver her kids to practice. They think it’s some kind of anomaly. So I will talk while you drive. You will park in your garage. Now listen hard and well and remember what I tell you.”

“Are you of the Faith?”

“Shut up. Listen. My faith is of no importance and you would not understand it anyway. Accept my aid, consider me a messenger from your God, but for now, shut up and listen.”

The imam swallowed again and kept his eyes straight ahead.

“I want to hurt them. Badly. Why? None of your beeswax, holy man. Maybe just because I love rock and roll. But I need gunmen. I want twelve Somali jihadis smuggled into Canada and held in a safe house near the border in mid-November. They should be true believers of low intelligence and profound impulses toward religious obedience. True believers, the seventy-two virgins, all that horseshit. If blooded, so much the better.”

“It’s impossible,” said the imam.

“I told you, nothing’s impossible. You have connections with half a dozen refugee organizations. As well, you have contacts with Hizbul Islam in Mogadishu, and the general will provide you what you need if you can convince him. And you will convince him.”

“What is this all about?”

“America, that is, America, the Mall. You know the place? A hideous vulgarity a dozen or so miles out of town in Indian Falls. Busy, busy, busy. It will be jammed on the day after Thanksgiving. Your gunmen will unjam it.”

“That’s impossible.”

“Nothing is impossible. I will provide weapons and access and plans. I will take over the mall security system. We will give them a lesson they will never forget to the glory of your God and mine. Your job is to get the men, hold them, and deliver them at a certain moment. The plan is not sophisticated and will require no rehearsal. These fellows will simply walk down a hallway, shooting. Then they will hold hostages for a short while. That’s all. None of them will survive; it is a martyr’s mission. I invite you to join me in death and glory. Together, we will punish them for their sins, and for the murder of the Holy Warrior in his bed.”

“It costs money and permission. You cannot do such a thing without finances and a judgment from higher councils. We must examine to make sure such a course is correct and consider the political consequences. Ours is not simple nihilism but political policy.”

“Bullshit. Listen to these rules and commit to them, or this will all go away and you will burn in your hell for eternity. No e-mails. E-mail has been penetrated. No phone calls, also penetrated. Nothing written. No Facebook or Twitter or any stupid teenaged thing that you guys always give yourself away on. Nothing amateur. There must be no physical or electronic acknowledgment of the planned event, no records. Everything recorded can be recovered. The imam himself must not deviate from his routine of the past few months except to handle communications with the great General Hassan Dahir Aweys in Somalia, solely by satellite phone, which will be provided. But he should contact no other units, no Al-Qaeda cells, nothing, as all communications must be presumed penetrated. He must never ask permission. Everything must be local and person to person, guaranteed by a handshake and mutual obedience to your faith.”

The imam hardly knew what to say. Was this a dream, a phantom, a movie? But then he had an image of America, the Mall, consumed in flame, riven with blood, heaped with bodies of dogs, the smoke blowing its acrid perfume, an American blazing in the heart of middle America, and he was profoundly moved. The Holy Warrior avenged.

The imam arrived at his prosaic two-bedroom house in his prosaic neighborhood.

He pulled into his garage.

“Get out quickly, go inside, and say or write nothing. Cling exactly to your routine. Here is an envelope with ten thousand cash, to support your activities. It must never be banked because banks raise alarms. They are not on your side. Make plans to go to Somalia within the month to find and arrange for the boys. Nothing on paper, nothing by phone, nothing by e-mail. Be hard, disciplined, focused, and I will give you glory you haven’t even dreamed of.”

“Is this a trick? Are you an agent provocateur? Have you been sent here to gull me into a mistake? What is-”

“You want proof, is that it? You don’t trust the white kid? You think I’m on some kind of prank or working for the assholes of five-oh? Hmm, what can I do to convince you?”

“You must convert to-”

“Not hardly. Oh, I know. I’ll give you a nice present. That will convince you. Would you like some delicious candy? What about a gift certificate for Walmart? Possibly a new clock radio, one that goes ding-dong five times a day.”

The imam said nothing in the face of such blasphemy.

“Okay, my friend. Reach down under the dashboard in front of the seat to your right. There’s your present. Enjoy it in good health.”

The imam thought this was another joke. But he looked and, indeed, in the darkness of the space beneath the dashboard thought he made out a shape. He bent, and his fingers closed around some kind of green plastic garbage bag. He pulled it up to the seat, feeling its four pounds of weight. He set it down, studied the drawstrings of bright yellow plastic, and pulled it open.

It was the large, florid, and quite excited head of the Reverend Reed Hobart.

“Won’t that look great on the mantel?” said the boy as he slipped out the back and disappeared into the darkness. Then, suddenly, the dashboard display came alive and the radio blared.

Stones. “Paint It Black.”

Ray slid the answer icon to the right and put the phone to his ear.

“This is Special Agent McElroy,” he heard.

“No,” he said, “it’s Chucklehead McElroy. Dumbbell and dope. You ever shoot down-angle, McElroy?”

“I guess not,” said McElroy.

“You have to hold low. If you hold straight on, you hit high. You owe me fifty.”

“Dollars?”

“Push-ups.”

“I’m a little busy now,” said McElroy.

“And you’re going to get busier. Put that rifle down, you’re too dangerous with it. You find me isolated targets out of visual contact with their main force and I will put them down. We’ll reduce their team one by one before they even notice it.”

“Uh, Sergeant, that’s against policy. I’d have to get some sort of higher approval on that, and to be honest, I don’t think an agent has ever acted under such a wide license. It would definitely be against our policy.”

“It’s against your policy. It’s not against my policy. My policy is stalk and kill, one-shot variety. It’s what I do. It’s all I do. I can shoot suppressed, so noise isn’t an issue. Now I am going to move out and try and take these people down. Having you bird-dog for me from on high like my private satellite would be very helpful. Or I can do it on my own. Either way, it will happen, McElroy. You decide right now who you are with.”

He heard McElroy pause and even imagined that the phone picked up the vibrations of a dry swallow. But then McElroy said, “Okay. I’m in. Nothing’s happening here anyway.” Then he said, “First, maybe you have some intel I can forward to Command. You got your gear from one of them, right?”