Soft Target by Stephen Hunter
“Tell me, where’s Major Jefferson?” the colonel asked loudly.
“Sir, I haven’t seen him.”
“Commo, get me Major Jefferson.”
“Yes sir.”
The colonel put on his earphones and throat mike, just in time to hear the channel one request, “All personnel, this is Command, where is Major Jefferson? Major Jefferson, please report in, ten-four.”
The silence was ominous.
As the colonel watched, the jet began the pirouette that would place it on the proper vector for takeoff.
“Ah, Command, sorry, Jefferson here, checking in.”
“Major, where are you, please?” asked the colonel.
“Sir, I’m with the Mendota Heights SWAT commander, trying to adjudicate an argument he is having with Roseville in regards to the coffee situation. Nothing I’d thought to trouble you with, though if you want, I can return ASAP when I get it settled and brief you.”
“No, no, you handle it, Mike, I trust your judgment, you know that. If you can, get yourself to a TV and watch these bastards fly away home. Then get ready to receive the hostages.”
“Yes sir,” said Jefferson. “I’ll do that.”
“Okay,” said Cruz, “you are the wizard of America, the Mall. You know games, I don’t. You get to be the intelligence officer; I’m just the grunt. I’ll find another way.”
“Thank you, Ray,” she said.
He thought quickly.
“You got a cell?”
Of her age and generation and culture, who didn’t have a cell?
“Sure.” She took out her Nokia.
“Write the number down on my wrist.”
She did, with a Bic she had in her jeans pocket.
“I’m going back. I’ll get up there by some other way. I’ll figure it, don’t know how yet.”
But she knew how. There was only one way. He had to get back to the atrium overlooking the amusement park and risk climbing from the third-floor balcony to the fourth. Somehow, some superhero USMC goddamned way.
“When I’m ready, you go to the door and fire five or six rounds into the door jamb next to the lock, like we did before, push it open. If Geniusboy has his gunners out there waiting, they’ll run to the door to pop you coming out. Only you won’t be coming out. I will be, from some other place. I will do the popping. Then we move on to the store where he’s running this game and we get ready to deal with him. Got it?”
“I won’t let you down, Ray.”
“That’s the one thing I know for a fact.”
“So, the plane is at the runway,” Marty told Nikki over the radio. “It’ll be off in a few seconds, a minute or so at the most.”
“Got it. I don’t like it. To me, we’re trusting these guys to keep their word like, I don’t know, they’re bridge club ladies or something.”
“The Frabjous Obobo has decided. Anyhow, I have a great shot in mind. Oh, you’ll like this. This’ll get me to New York too, Mary Tyler Moore.”
“Mary Tyler Moore doesn’t have room for moochers or slackers in her organization, Marty,” said Nikki. “What’s this shot you want?”
“Well, it’ll get me a local Emmy, that’s for sure.”
“You want an Emmy, Marty? Buy some more tables at the banquet.”
“So young, so cynical.”
“Go ahead with your Gone with the Wind shot.”
“When the planes take off, I want you to have Cap’n Tom, assuming he’s still sober—”
“Hey, Marty,” cut in Tom, “I haven’t had a drink in at least three minutes.”
“Tom drops down and hovers over the big entrance there on the east side.”
“Got it.”
“You should get dramatic shots of hostages pouring out and heading toward the buses and climbing aboard. Some’ll be limping, some’ll be being helped, there’ll be crowding, but also joy and thankfulness.”
“Got it.”
“Get me faces, I want faces.”
“Faces.”
“Then the camera op pulls back, comes in tight as he cranks focus way in, and sitting in the doorwell of the WUFFchopper is new star Nikki Swagger. Ms. Scoops-R-Us herself, reporting on the hostage release. In one continuous shot. It’ll be terrific, and maybe it’ll go national.”
It was a good idea.
“Gee, you’re wonderful, Mr. Grant,” she said.
Cruz made it out the doorway and slid down the Rio Grande hallway toward the balcony over the atrium. He went prone, slithered to the metalwork, and saw, two stories down and through the screening of possibly artificial trees, the spread of hostages on the walkways of the amusement park, and the gunmen standing all around. He got a good look, through a hole in the trees, of Santa. Still dead.
He picked up his phone.
“Sniper Five, go ahead, Cruz.”
“They’ve set an ambush at the stairwell, we think. I’m going to go around it, but there’s no easy way. No nearby escalators, all the stairwells are locked. So I have to climb in plain sight from this level to the next. Can you see me?”
A pause, as McElroy worked his binoculars, and then found the marine lying on his back just off the balcony.
“Got you.”
“I need a recon. See any bad guys?”
“No, they’re all downstairs, I have no movement on any of the upper levels. Are you sure this is a good idea?”
“Do you have a better one?”
“Man, I don’t have any. But that’s a long exposure and, if they see you, an easy shot, and if the bullet doesn’t kill you, you land on your back or head and break something important and permanent. And maybe that queers the hostage deal.”
“You forget the best part. I’m scared to death of heights.”
“All right, I’d relocate about fifty feet to your left. There’s a support beam between the balconies. Looks like it’s decorated with some kind of phony turn-of-the-century-according-to-Disney shit. Maybe it has enough hand- and footholds.”
“Good work.”
“Do you have buds for your phone?”
“Yeah. In the box at home.”
“Okay, I can’t talk you up. I’ll watch and—”
And what? There was nothing McElroy could do but watch.
“Good luck, Marine. Semper Fi, all that.”
Ray put the phone away and low-crawled the fifty. He knew he didn’t have much time. He knew he couldn’t make any noise. He knew he couldn’t sweat, grunt, breathe heavy, swallow, anything. This was just pure acrobatics against a lethal height in front of an audience of killers, who, he hoped, weren’t in the habit of looking up. Fortunately, since the happy architects of Silli-Land had planted the grounds with those interfering trees, direct vision across or up was always impeded by the fluffy weaving of artificial leaves. One word: plastics. That might help.
He pulled himself up, made a last check.
None of the Somali guards was in a particularly alert status. They lounged, gathering in little groups—probably against their general orders—and seemed somehow quite happy. If any wondered where pals A through D had gone to, they weren’t showing it.
Okay, he told himself, go.
I don’t want to go, his self answered.
What was it Molly always said with a smile on her face? Too bad for you.
First he pulled himself up to the balcony railing, securing himself by hand to the pillar, which was itself about six inches wide, the same sage green as everything else in this green metal universe. Then he planted his foot on a nub of scrollwork, a filigree to the conceit of New Orleans balcony wrought iron overlooking Bourbon Street, and indeed, it held, and he hoisted himself up, aware at the same time that his entire weight was supported by just a stub of fake wrought iron. He rose by pulling, felt secure enough to free his off arm, and reached up. Once a tremor came to his foot; he slipped but somehow managed to check himself before he went by getting ahead of the slippage and jamming the foot in hard. He stabilized, holding tight, then brought his o
Where the fuck was it? God, there wasn’t one. Meanwhile, his twisted fingers, all that were between him and the serious intentions of gravity, began to cramp in pain. They slipped too, costing him a little purchase, so that if he wasn’t on by fingertips quite, it was only the last joints of one hand that secured him.
Don’t look down. Don’t look down.
Ray stabbed again with his free leg, like a show horse stomping out its age in the dirt, one-two-three, higher each time, until almost at full extension, it lit on something just big enough to hold him, and he hoisted again.
Very quickly this turned into a bad career move; he was supported in his two-hundred-pound entirety by the leverage of about a toe and a half, wedged against the meekest of protrusions, and with a hand he reached high, searching for a grab-on, aware that his purchase was slipping, slipping, slipping, and in the second before he knew he’d go, swing inward, and torque his support hand free and send himself into outer space, his fingers closed on some kind of steel tube, clamped hard upon it, and this stretched him a little further into extension and his foot also found a mooring point, and up he shot.
He rested, still, feeling the tracks of sweat running from hairline to eyes and nose, down from his armpits, the breath coming in hard gusts, even as his primal fears of falling expressed themselves vividly and he saw himself as in a ’60s movie’s crummy special effect, spinning laterally, getting further from the lens as he descended until at last he plunked hard to earth, broken, like a doll or a toy. And then he heard a scream.
That’s it, he thought. I’m dead. He tensed against the shot that would hit him and bring him down.
It cannot be discovered who first saw him. But it is known that Esther Greenberg, sixty-nine, stockbroker, mother of none, mentor of many, supporter of dozens, was the only one who figured out what had to be done and had the stone guts to do it.
Someone poked her and leaned close.
“They’re here,” came the whisper. “Commandos. Cops. Somebody.”
She nodded, frozen, suddenly overwhelmed by this new reality.
“Up above,” came the whisper.
Slowly, as if she were merely stretching, she elevated her head, and she saw him. At first she thought, It’s one of them. But then she thought, No, it can’t be. He’s trying to move slowly, he’s not black, he’s one of us.
She looked over and saw two of the gunmen jabbering, until they grew uninterested in each other. The tall one was the dangerous one. He disengaged from his buddy and began to look around innocently, the way a young guy will let his eyes roam out of boredom. He looked left, right, and then began to look up and—
“Noooooooo!” she screamed. She stood up. “I can’t take it anymore,” she yelled as if there were one thing on earth that frightened her. “Please, please, let me go.”
She ran at the tall boy with the gun, who watched her come with lightless eyes, even as other hostages tried to grab her to stop her from suicide. But she made it to him, and he smashed her in the head with his AK-74 between puffs of his cigarette.
Crazy American bitch, he thought. What was that all about?
No shot came. He heard turmoil and scuffling below but was in no position to check it out. Instead he waited a second, the panic passed, again he reminded himself to not look down, and he hoisted one foot up, up, up, found a toehold, God knew what, and again launched himself upward, feeling the pain of exhaustion sizzle through his arms and the yearning of his fingers to cease their death grip.
And then it occurred to him that he was there, he had made it. He was now resting on the solidity of the fourth floor, except on the wrong side of the balcony, and it just took an adroit but controlled roll and spin, and he was over and landed on the floor of the next story. He sucked at air, waited for his racing heartbeat to diminish, and finally, sliding next to a wall, stood, got himself up.
He looked up at the skylight, not nearly so far away now, and waved, and the figure that must have been McElroy waved back. Ray got out his phone, pressed the button.
“Jesus, I thought you were going there for a second,” said McElroy.
“God looks after fools, I guess,” Ray said. “Do you have an angle to the corridor?”
“Not enough of one. I can only see about fifteen feet down it.”
“Okay, I’m going to move down there, set up. If something happens and they start shooting hostages, I’ll step out and drop the ambushers and move into that First Person Shooter place.”
“It’s on the left, about halfway down.”
He then called Lavelva.
“Okay,” he said, “I made it up, somehow. I’m just inside the balcony, to the right of the corridor. What have you got?”
“Nothing. I’m just waiting here.”
“Good. If I give the signal, you shoot the door frame, not the lock. You have to blow away the lockwork, which is only buried in wood and plasterboard, then you kick in the door, then you drop back. That should draw them, and I’ll put them down and go to the store. When you hear my shots, you’re clear to follow. Sweetie, are you up for this? You don’t have to go. You can just back on down the stairwell.”
“I am so up for this.”
“You are a true warrior princess, bravest of the brave. Okay, in just a few, it’ll be our turn for some first person shooting.”
The snipers huddled at, roughly, Racine.
“The only thing we have is flashbangs,” one of them said.
“And they don’t go boom, they go pop.”
“Fuck,” said McElroy, who’d just returned from scouting for Ray and hoped they’d solved their problem but was disappointed to discover they had not.
“I have two red smokers,” someone said.
“Forget the smokers.”
“Maybe if in concert, all of us whacked a certain small area with our butts.”
“A, probably doesn’t work, B, throws the scopes out of zero. No go.”
“I’m just thinking out loud.”
“That’s good, that’s good,” said McElroy, “think out loud, everybody, maybe we’ll come up with something.”
“Hey,” said a state trooper sniper, “we have Kevlar tactical helmets.” He snapped his finger against the hard tactical shell. “Maybe smash with them, open the hole, and that way we don’t throw the zeros out.”
“You’ll never get through that shit with plastic helmets,” someone else said.
“Hey, this shit is hard,” said the trooper.
“Any entrenching tools?”
“This isn’t World War Two.”
“What about with our knives we chip away at that groove FBI opened. All of us working hard, maybe we get it loosened, then smash it with our helmets.”
“That seems about the best. I mean it’s all we can do, right, FBI?”
“I guess,” said McElroy, reaching for his knife. But as he did, his wrist passed over the smooth cylinder that was the flashbang grenade, more a pyrotechnic than anything else, meant to produce a loud percussion and a disorienting flash. But not enough junk in it to—
“Okay,” he said. “How many flashbangs?”
A quick survey produced the answer: twelve.
“Twelve. I’m wondering, what happens if they all go off at once?”
“You’d have to contain it,” said somebody. “Direct it. They can bring down a huge building with a few pointed charges.”
“Use the helmets and—”
“But it has to go simo. You’d need wiring, dets, a whole tech kit that the Army has but we don’t. I don’t—”
McElroy saw it then.
“Here’s what we’re going to do. We take one of those helmets. We load it with flashbangs. Hmm, let’s see, they work just like grenades, right?”
“Yes.”
“Okay, we wrap, I don’t know, gauze, bandages, duct tape, something soft and malleable around the levers on the flashbangs, got it? That secures the levers. Then we pull the pi
“Is this a game you’re playing? Are you MacGyver or something?”
“Why not just run the tape through the rings on the flashers?” someone said. “Simpler.”
“Simpler, yeah, but those pins take a lot of pull to free up, and I can see the tape or whatever breaking or getting hung up,” McElroy said.
“He’s right,” said the trooper.
“So if this thing goes bad and the bastards downstairs start shooting, we pull the tape line, which pulls the tape loose, and all the flashbang levers go ping, and three seconds later all twelve of them go off more or less simo, and the helmet directs the considerable force of their detonation downward, I’m betting you blow a nice big hole in that glass. Then we go to war, and we shoot every gunman we see in the head. Do you get it?”
“Yes, I do.”
“And if the hostages are released, all we have to do is replace the pins and give everybody their toys back. Okay. Have you got it?”
“It’s a plan, Stan.”
No, no, no, no, no.
He’d made the jumps from Bruce Wyatt to RealDeal Opsys to RealDeal Secsys to RealDeal Secsys Linkage to—
A wilderness.
Deployed in front of him on the screen were nearly four hundred—more than three screens’ worth of scrolling—coded units, each representing some kind of RealDeal franchise or outlet. One of them had to be the RealDeal on the fourth floor at America, the Mall, in Indian Falls, Minnesota. But which?
The geniuses at RealDeal Opsys so knew their empire that they didn’t bother to split the list by category as any sane outfit would do. It wasn’t broken down by store profit levels, major markets, region, or state. No, just an endless column of bullshit listings like RD/OPSYS5509-3.4X. What? What the hell was that?
“Someone call RealDeal Corporate,” said Dr. Benson. “We’ll get an engineer on the phone and we’ll—”