Stephen Hunter - Soft target

The black man who’d shot the hostages and who’d bought Sally as his bride stood there, all insolence, pride, glee, his weapon resting casually on his shoulder. He smiled, white teeth showing brightly. Then he knelt down.

“I will have my wedding night,” he said, “when the time is right. You will come to love me, and possibly when you give yourself to Maahir, Maahir will save you. The martyrs are cheering because they know that the killing is near.”

The young man turned to the imam.

“So can you watch the shop for a while?”

“I’m sorry, what do you-”

“Oh, nothing’s going to happen for a while. They’ll be driving the Kaafi boys to the airport, you’ll see, and then there’ll be the TV drama of the boarding and takeoff and all the talking heads will check in, and then we’ll move up to another game level on them. But meanwhile, I’ve got a little something to check. You can hang here. I’ll be back in a second.”

“Yes, of course.”

He reached under his console and took out a plastic bag that could only contain a gas mask. Or another head. But it was a gas mask. He pulled it on carefully, making adjustments. Then he went to the console, armed himself with the mouse, dragged the cursor to SECURITY OFFICE, and clicked. The icon told him it was still remotely locked. He ordered UNLOCK.

Then he rose, snatched up an AK, and left through the front door. It was only a quarter rotation around and there was no pedestrian traffic. A few windows had been broken, a few carriages abandoned, a few shoes lost. It had an after-the-zombie-apocalypse feeling he kind of liked, thank you, George Romero and all your clones. He passed the big, bright, deserted RealDeal that sold more TV sets than any other retail outlet in America, saw more zombie ruin inside but still utter stillness as all the trapped shoppers would presume him a killer and quake in their hiding places, and beyond that he came to the unmarked door that was the security office.

Unlocked by computer fiat, it yielded to his push, admitting him to a tunnel that led to more heavy doors, and they too opened cheerfully.

Inside: not pleasant.

Six dead guys. Wrong place, wrong time, fellows, the way of the universe. He felt not a morsel of pity for them and-this was his gift or something-could not imagine them as men of families, with lives, relatives, kids, histories, contributions. They were just sort of repulsive in their twisted grotesqueness.

He walked to a device of some mystery mounted on a wall. A small green bulb gleamed brightly. Oh, they think they’re so smart. Oh, they think they’ve got it figured. Some boy genius of the FBI or the NSA or the CIA, working away, he’d managed to connect with the system, thinking that Satan had forgotten something. Too bad for him. So it goes with the weak and virtuous.

He smashed the green-lit modem two times with his rifle butt, the second driving the shattered plastic mechanism, its guts of circuits and wires and smashed plastic hanging out, to the floor.

He was doing what he had always dreamed of. He was smashing the machine. In its tangled, ripped wiring, in its shattered plastic, in its broken solenoids, he saw the future.

Ain’t it cool?

Mr. Reilly was baffled. The owner-actually, the FFL was still in his wife’s name, though she’d died three months earlier-of Reilly’s Sporting Goods and Surplus, in far suburban, nearly rural Twin Falls, Minnesota, he stared at the two crates, one quite large, one quite small, that rested on the UPS man’s freight dolly. He bent, saw the return address on the shipping label as WTI, Laredo, Texas, which he knew to be West Texas Imports, his supplier for low-end Eastbloc surplus military weapons, which he sold to working-class hunters and gun folks who couldn’t afford a big-ticket American deer rifle.

About a hundred mounted animals witnessed the somewhat confused transaction between the old fellow and the man in brown, and most of them had horns, though of course a few were badgers, ducks, even, whimsically, a groundhog noted for its sagacity and insight. Also on the cozy, wood-paneled walls: rifles, rifles, rifles, most bolt guns, a few ARs, a few shotguns. In the fluorescent-lit cabinets lay the handguns, gleaming, laid out neatly by someone who took the responsibility for display of merchandise and price, the bedrock of retail, seriously.

“I just don’t see why it’s such a big crate,” he said to Wally, the UPS man.

“Mr. Reilly, do you want to refuse it? No big deal, I’ll just dolly it back to the truck and we’ll return it.”

“Well,” said Mr. Reilly, still a little foggy, “let’s ask Andrew.” He turned and called, “Andrew. Andrew! ”

Andrew stepped from the stockroom. He was a tall, thin young man in his early twenties, and he was the best thing that had come into Mr. Reilly’s life since Flora died. He was punctual, hardworking, entirely trustworthy, good with customers, reliable, and honest. He had a shock of blond hair and a fair complexion. He could have been any neighbor’s son, and it was his compulsion toward tidiness that had turned the store into such a masterpiece of organization.

“He doesn’t understand why the WTI crate is so big,” said Wally.

“Mr. Reilly, I’ll check it. Maybe it’s two or three orders in one.”

“You don’t want to refuse it?” said Wally.

“No, I guess not,” said Mr. Reilly. “Okay, Andrew?”

“Yes sir. I’ll run it down through the computer records. They do make mistakes, but I think we did have an outstanding order on Chinese SKSes, and maybe this is them. Or maybe it’s them plus a duplicate order. Wouldn’t be the first time. I’ll straighten it out, and if it’s wrong, you can pick it up tomorrow, Wally.”

“Sure.”

Carefully, Wally ran his digital reader over the bar codes on each package label, thus recording accurately and in perpetuity the fact that both packages had been delivered to their destination.

Andrew hefted the handles of the dolly, got it unmoored from the floor upon which it rested, and wheeled it back into the stockroom. He returned with the empty dolly and slid it over to Wally, who took control of it from him, turned as Mr. Reilly unlocked the door, as it was well after closing time, and returned to his brown van. Reilly waved good-bye, then looked around his store, part of a decaying strip mall that had been on the downhill since big boys like Cabela’s and Midway USA put everything one click away.

“You’ll get it straightened out, Andrew?” he asked.

“Absolutely. It may take a while, I’ve got to go through the records. I may have to call them. And I haven’t even begun to put the handguns in the safe.”

“Oh, I’ll do that.”

“No, no,” said Andrew. “I know you’re tired. I’ll take care of everything.”

That pleased the old man. There were over seventy handguns on display in the store and, though it had never been robbed, the old man wanted it never to be robbed, which committed him or Andrew to a half hour’s hard labor every night, picking up the guns and carefully stowing them in the two big safes behind the counter, then locking them tight. The rifles he could leave on display; the thieves were mostly black people from the city and they only wanted handguns.

“Okay, Andrew. I think we’re due for an ATF walk-through anytime now and I don’t want any trouble. There was never any trouble with Flora, she kept the records so neatly. It’s not my skill, you know. Not my kind of mind. I’d rather talk hunting with customers. I don’t know what I’d do without you.”

“It’s not a problem. I’ll get to the bottom of this and by the time you get in tomorrow, we’ll be shipshape.”