Stephen Hunter - Soft target

“I really don’t care if anyone else gets hurt,” said the voice. “I have no objection to other people getting hurt. I have the hostages, ergo I have the power. You sit there and shut up and I will tell you what must be done, at what timetable, and what you can expect from us. Any more proffers of ‘advice,’ and I shoot a child. If you ever call me ‘son’ or ‘young man,’ I’ll shoot another child. If you say, ‘I want to be clear’ again, I will kill ten. Now, if you want to save lives, you have to do exactly what I’m telling you very quickly. You don’t have a lot of time. Do you understand?”

“I don’t think anything is accomplished by belligerence. We must have a calm, clear, measured-”

“Shoot the little girl, holy man,” the voice said.

“ No! No! Please, you can’t-”

“Actually, I can. I’ve seen you on TV, I know you’re an ambitious political asshole who thinks he can talk himself into anything. Put it on the shelf or people die, do you get me loud and clear? I am not rational, I am not clear, I am not bartering. I will kill a lot of people. Do what I say and shut the fuck up, Time magazine cover boy.”

Obobo swallowed.

“Please proceed,” he said tightly.

“Excellent. Hmm, it’s almost six. At six, I shoot six more. Unless you pay attention and I see action.”

“You can’t-”

“I can. Anything I want. Let me say this whole plan is predicated on speed. You will have to work like hell to make my demands happen in the short time frame I specify. But it can be done. I will enforce my demands with hostage executions if I don’t see alacrity. I want you to have no time to counterplot, to plan reversals or assaults, to get cute, to hold meetings. You won’t have time to discuss or consider or make counteroffers. This whole thing will be done in four hours or everybody dies and you go into the history books as the biggest fool in America. You do what I say, you do it at high speed, low drag, and most of these assholes will make it out alive. You care about them; frankly, I don’t. They’re the herd, and any herd can be thinned, that’s the law of nature.”

Get to it, the colonel thought.

“Go ahead,” he said.

“There are three young men doing ten to fifteen in the Minnesota State Penitentiary for bank robbery. You remember the case, it was famous. Yusuf, Jaheel, and Khalid Kaafi. They got far more for their crimes because of the black-guy penalty, which nobody will admit to but which everybody acknowledges. Anyway, their crime was political, to raise money for the brigades back home. My friends here are very upset that you treated them like common criminals. It seems so unfair. Do you not understand that no infidel law can be applied to those of the Faith? This is the lesson they must teach you. The Kaafi boys, heroes and geniuses all, are to be immediately released and ferried to Minneapolis International, where they are to be flown to Yemen by an Air Saudi Super 747-8 ready to take that flight at seven fifty-five p.m. You should have just enough time. If the flight is full, kick three people off. Moreover, if I do not see visual confirmation on CNN of the prisoners boarding buses by seven p.m., I will execute seven more hostages. If they are not on that plane at seven fifty-five, I will order the massacre that you fear so much. Say, wouldn’t that be a career black eye. You might not even make Eagle Scout or get into Princeton. As for the next batch I shoot, the six at six, I will begin with Jews. Then, if I am not pleased, I may break my own rules, though I hate to do that, and shoot seven and a half children at seven thirty. At a certain point, I will allow each of my men to rape any woman they choose, and if you know the Muslim mind, you know the women will be preteens. If there is any assault, I will order all my gunners to open fire on hostages. You must comply. Hostages will be released when I see the plane has safely taken off for Yemen and has crossed into Canadian airspace a few minutes later. When the hostages have been released, we will not surrender. We will take cover. You may assault. We will have a nice gun battle. We do not fear death. The narrative demands a climax, and we will give it one. America will enjoy it mightily. I would say to your assault troops that though you might ultimately prevail, bring many, many body bags. I know in those circumstances, the thing to do would be to destroy us with a smart bomb. But you won’t do that. You’d destroy too many shoe stores. Allahu akbar, motherfucker.”

He broke the contact.

Ray decided not to try to find a stairwell for the down-angle shot, which would cost him time as well as the effort to somehow get through the locked door. Instead he low-crawled as fast as he could along the shadows where the floor and walls joined, sliding under the retail windows. Good thing he was a gym rat still and did hard cardiovascular every day. Stamina is the essence of victory, he knew, and he was able to move at a high rate of speed, not really in the classical low crawl, with that squirming, swimming wiggle that pulls you along, but on all fours, like some kind of sniper rat, scurrying along. He thought, When they make the movie, they’ll cut this bullshit out.

It was a long transit, and he fought the fatigue and particularly the neck strain, for he had to keep his neck pried back so that he could use his eyes to scan ahead for threat. Whoever was monitoring the hall cameras was not paying much attention; no call came from McElroy indicating a reaction from the gunmen, and ahead of him, he saw nothing, though as he passed each store, he could hear scurrying, breathing, shifting, as people sought security deep inside. It took six minutes, down the length of Colorado to the outer ring, down the outer ring, then back down Rio Grande, until he came to rest at the balcony overlooking the atrium, though one quarter of a turn to the left.

He set up not at but a little behind the railing. Peering between its steel struts, he saw his targets. Now there were two, as one had departed for destinations unknown. Ray uncorked his iPhone.

“Okay, I’m here. Where’d the third guy go?”

“He kind of casually left a few minutes ago and took the elevator down. I guess that one central elevator is working. I’ve seen him; he’s rejoined the downstairs bunch.”

“Okay, two. This’ll take some tricky work.”

“What are you doing?”

“My secret weapon: the deadly potato.”

Ray had a shirtful of the starchy tubers with him. He’d dipped into the Boardwalk Fries outlet near the Frederick’s of Hollywood, picked seven or eight of the biggest, gnarliest, grossest spuds.

“A potato!” said McElroy.

“Potatoes make excellent field-expedient suppressors. You watch, bud.”

He selected the biggest, unslung the AK, and wedged the vegetable over the muzzle, feeling the flash hider and sight blade cut into the crunchy fiber of the thing as he slid it over, until a good two inches of potato embraced the weapon. The potato was stoutly mounted.

He set himself up in prone, brought rifle to shoulder, slipped the big prong safety off by pressing it down on the right side of the receiver. Ancient memories came back, associated with the weapon. Some firefight in the sand-Afghanistan, Iraq? who could remember? — he and a mixed force of Marine infantry and Army rangers in a house in some godawful ville. He’d gone to a captured AK and fired and fired and fired, the whole night through. He must have killed thirty men that night, and in the morning, when the Bradleys got to them, nobody in the house was dead, though several were badly hit. That gun was crude, rattly, unclean, but baby, it had done its work hard and well over the long night’s ordeal.

“But won’t the first one blow the potato? Are you going to have time to get a second one on the muzzle?”