Stephen Hunter: Soft target

But… now? Here? He thought he was home free from the suck, but the suck had followed him home and he was not free. Someone had given him another mission, and though his bones ached and his breath came in hard spurts, he had some obligation to… well, he knew the obligation more than he knew the name of the force that had generated it. So he pushed on.

Again, checking the hallway and seeing no signs of movement, he edged out and slithered in the low crawl. He stuck close to the wall, figuring that he was in a zone of shadow, and unless one were looking carefully at the feed from a particular camera, itself mounted a good hundred feet down the corridor at the intersection, he ought to be okay. He got by several stores and became aware that each contained people as well. The smart ones, the lucky ones, the strong ones, the young ones had beat it to the exitways and gotten out to the parking areas.

He could see the balcony ahead and, beyond it, the looming strut-work of various thrill rides, the buttresses of the coaster tracks, the log chute, the top of the whirling two-seat swings. The noise from just beyond had gotten more intense. He had to know what was going on below.

He slid forward just a few feet to the very edge of the balcony, lifted his head, and took a quick scan, then withdrew.

Shit.

First, of course, in the center of the park, dead Santa atop his throne of blood presided, head tilted, inert as the earth itself. He was the king of death. Beneath His Majesty, sitting disconsolately on the pathways that crosscut the amusement park, were at least a thousand people, packed closely, most in a state of shock. He saw what had happened. The gunmen had begun at the outer ring and, shooting wildly, killing enough to compel instant, terrified obedience, had driven shoppers forward to converge in the amusement park in the center. A thousand hostages, under the struts and buttresses of the roller coasters, under the vastness of glass above shaped like Lake Michigan. He hadn’t time to check closely, but he imagined they were now circled by gunmen. That was two gunmen per corridor, eight gunmen at least, a team for each “river,” in the wacky scheme of the mall, the Colorado, the Hudson, the Rio Grande, and the Mississippi.

He scooted low along the balcony railing, out of view from beneath, and popped up again for a look at the shooters. He could see them as if from his own nightmares: the insouciant postures, the raffish shemaghs thrown loosely around the neck in gaudy variations, otherwise in jeans and hoodies and sneaks. All carried some kind of AK, though from the distance and given the time he had, he couldn’t tell if it was a 47 or a 74. They carried the guns with that movie-driven stylishness of the young jihadi, aware how cool and badass they looked, self-consciously modeled on the same figure they had worshipped for years on television. Thin-hipped, sexy, anonymous, deadly: the warrior of the East come to slay in the West.

And he saw what a mess they had crafted. The situation instantly became clear in Ray’s tactical mind. Those on the upper floors will be abandoned there, too terrified to move downward, basically not a part of the equation. The young, the spry, the brave: they had escaped, running crazily past the gunmen, getting out of ground-floor exits, climbing, finding other ways out or secure hides. Who was left? The weakest of the weak, the most defenseless of the defenseless. The old. The very young. Mothers and fathers tethered to children.

At any sign of an assault, the gunmen could open fire. Even with semiautomatics, as his ears told him their weapons were, they could kill hundreds, while at each corridor their brothers held off the assaulters for a few minutes more. Ray looked up, saw the lake-shaped skylights. They appeared deserted, but at any moment snipers would station themselves there. Could they get shots through the heavy glass? Probably not. They’d have to blow the glass to have any effectiveness, and that would give away any surprise element. Military operators, Delta people or SEALs, could blow the glass and rappel down, but they’d be sitting ducks as they descended and they couldn’t fire downward for fear of hitting the innocent. They could, Ray supposed, just keep coming, like the Marines at Iwo, but that kind of dying for an objective was definitely out of fashion. On top of that, operators at that tactical level were mostly deployed overseas; where would the Minnesota authorities, even with FBI assistance, get such men on short notice? And this whole op had the look of something planned for maximum outrage over a short window of time.

He remembered something similar in Russia, with Chechens. Didn’t they take over a theater? Hundreds of hostages, lots of explosives and gunmen, no way in. The Russian authorities had gassed the place. But the gas was tricky, and although it incapacitated the Chechens, it killed half the hostages. There was no way Americans would be willing to run that risk. And with so many hostages children and the elderly, with undeveloped or overworked, inefficient respiratory systems, the gas would be doubly risky, perhaps doubly lethal. And who said the gunmen didn’t have gas masks? They seemed to have everything else.

Fuck, Ray thought. He suddenly felt him. Him? Yes, the one, the guy, what’shisname, Beelzebub, Lucifer, whoever he was, the fellow who’d thought this thing up. In his mind, he saw some Osama variant, possibly with time in America, who knew American vanities and vulnerabilities, a guy with a special, malevolent cunning and a great deal, damn his damned soul, of creativity. He’d thought it through very carefully, for maximum impact, maximum drama, maximum casualties, at a site comprising entirely the innocent, at the start of the West’s most precious holiday. He knew who his hostages would be; he knew where to place his assets for maximum utility; he had both a strategic and a tactical gift. Already, Ray knew, this was worldwide news, and in every department in the world, pointy-heads were trying to figure out its meaning. Nobody anywhere was talking about anything else.

Would I ever like to get that guy in my crosshairs, he thought.

Molly looked up as Ray slid back in the door.

“Did you see my mother and Sally?” she asked.

“No, I didn’t have time. Ladies, listen up, I’m going to tell you what I think is best.”

Quickly he narrated his discoveries, the situation, his estimation of the difficulties law enforcement would face.

“How soon will they come?” one of the women asked.

“Not soon. They have to get their best people in here; they have to acquire detailed plans for the mall; they have to try and penetrate the security system, which these people may already control and which was designed by geniuses to keep people out. They have to decide their best course. On top of that, these invaders, they may have demands, which will put further complications into the situation. They seem professional and this operation appears well planned. And nobody outside wants to make a hasty decision that could get a thousand civilians killed, believe me. So I’m telling you right now, you have to commit to the long haul. You can’t pin your hopes on this being done quickly.”

“So do we just sit here?”

He turned to the young clerk, Rose.

“Rose, what about a back way out?”

“There’s a loading corridor that runs through each of the sections. That’s how we receive our merchandise.”

“Where would that take us?”

“Well, there’s an elevator to the basement, which leads to the subterranean receiving level.”

“First thing they’d do would be to turn off the elevators. What about a stairwell?”

“Yes, there’s a stairwell.”

“We could escape through the stairwell!” someone said joyously.