Soft Target (33 page)

“Damn,” said Andrew. “I hate it when that happens.”

Suddenly, FBI people were all around Ray, and someone had
grabbed him and pulled him out of the theater as medics squadded on Andrew to perform services too late to matter.

“How did you know? How did you know?” someone in a helmet and goggles was yelling into his ear, incomprehensibly.

“I don’t—”

“Which theater?” the fed demanded. “He could have been in any of them.”

Ray gestured upward, as more emergency personnel and other SWAT people ran by him.

The marquee on Theater 5 read:

The Minneapolis Film Society presents
One night only
Hits of the Eighties
Die Hard
Yippie-ki-yay, M*****-F******!

Finally, someone threw a sheet over dead Santa.

Mr. Renfro understood: aggression is the key.

“All right,” he said, “I am speaking for the colonel. No officer is allowed to speak directly to media. All media contacts will be cleared through this office. I say again, no media contact except through the superintendent’s office. Now get me this Major Jefferson, fast.”

“Excuse me, sir, who are you?” asked Kemp. “I think I will control press access to FBI personnel in this instance.”

“No, Special Agent. This is a Minnesota State Police initiative. I speak for the colonel on media relations, and if need be, I will get on the phone and get a court gag order on you in three minutes’ time, and if you don’t believe me, you just watch it happen.”

Thus in time, the official hero of the event, Mike Jefferson, was brought into Renfro’s corner of the Incident Command trailer. Renfro cleared the room out before speaking to him.

“Congratulations,” he said. “Now, let’s get to it. Here’s the bargain. You and I know that the colonel didn’t exactly distinguish himself today. So I am going to give you what you want. I am going to get him the hell out of here. That was always the plan anyhow; this just accelerates it.”

“Sir, I—”

“Shut up, Major. I don’t have time to argue. I speak with the full authority of the colonel’s office. Here is the reality. The media love him. You know why as well as I do. They yearn to credit him with a brilliant operation. Thus we will give them what they want. He came up with the idea of these secret assaults, and you followed it. His plan worked out brilliantly. He outthought and outfought this nutcase kid and all the Somali gunmen. That’s the narrative, get it?”

“He froze like a popsicle,” said Jefferson. “If it weren’t for that sniper and some marine Superman cutting their firepower in half, and some genius kid in DC out-cyberpunching that nasty little punk, you’re looking at a thousand dead citizens.”

“The colonel came up with a brilliant plan. If you go to the media with another narrative, they will destroy you and it’ll do you no good. I’ll even tell you what the countermove is. The colonel is so brilliant, he knew that if he let you work up an assault plan, it would be too compromised by ego, turf, overthinking, politics, grudges, and PC considerations. So he played you perfectly, and when you had to act, you didn’t have time for any of that bullshit and so what you came up with was simple, direct, and effective, a SWAT classic, the ideal. He wouldn’t let you fail; he put you in a position to succeed, which is all any manager can do. You’re just not smart enough to see the nuance of the great one’s genius.”

“Are you trying to be funny?”

“And don’t you think the race card will fall out of heaven and land on your skull: you’ll be one of those jealous, envious underlings who cannot stand that a black man outperformed them. They will hound you until you are disgraced and your professional life is over. My way, he gets a big DC job and is gone, he thanks and decorates and recommends you, and you are golden forever, whatever it is you choose to do.”

“You fucking spin guys, you are the fucking ruination of the world. You take everything that’s real and decent and you twist it to some end in some game nobody even knew was on the table,” said Jefferson.

“Nicely said, but it is what it is. Welcome to the world we live in, not the world we want to live in. It’s a pretty good world for you, Jefferson, don’t forget that. You’ll get a promotion and the sincere gratitude of Colonel Obobo. It’s the best deal anyone will ever offer you.”

Nobody had stopped them from approaching, and now they just stood there, as hundreds of people raced by, each with a call to make, a story to tell, a wound to be bound, a loved one to contact. Nobody paid any attention to Mr. and Mrs. Girardi.

They stood there as escapees from the mall flooded toward them.

“Okay,” said Mr. Girardi, “showtime.”

He threw off his lumpy overcoat to reveal a nicely tailored double-breasted coat, reached into his pocket, and pulled out a stack of business cards.

“Folks,” he said, “Jack Scheister, of the law firm Scheister & Jackell. Folks, you’ve gone through an ordeal, and somebody should pay for it.”

He started handing out cards to people, most of whom were in such a state of shock they took them.

Scheister & Jackell
Attorneys at Law
309-555-2132
24-Hour Law Line
“We sue, they rue.”

“Folks,” his wife was saying as she handed out the cards, “I’m Monica Jackell. You should be compensated for your time, your pain, your anguish, and we’re here to see you get your justice and your cash.”

R
ay and Molly sat in the bar of a restaurant in Washington DC. They were going to get married shortly and would be flying back to Saint Paul for the ceremony, to which every Hmong in America had been invited. Even old Bob Lee was flying in for this one. McElroy and his wife were coming, as were Nick Memphis, Jake Webley, and Will Kemp. Lavelva would make it if she could get leave, but she was in her third week of Marine Basic, so it was doubtful. But tonight, before the week of marriage craziness started, was just for them.

The order of the night was martinis, vodka variant, slightly dirty, Absolut, no bullshit about shaking or stirring, just whatever the bartender preferred, Ray didn’t even know. It was Friday, pretty late, since she worked hard, as did he—recently appointed head instructor of sniper tactics for the FBI under Ron Fields out in Quantico—and she in the legal department of the Department of Energy. If you saw them, you’d see two Asian American yuppies, well preserved, representing diversity, on secure career paths, but not unusual in the cosmopolitan DC restaurant scene.

“Look,” said Molly, “it’s your sister!”

Indeed it was, on the television. The strikingly pretty girl’s face filled the screen over a network insignia and she earnestly reported,
“The president today appointed Colonel Douglas Obobo”—and a cutaway showed the handsome police executive shaking hands with the president in the White House media room—“superintendent of the Minnesota State Police, as the new, and first black, director of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. The colonel received nationwide attention on Black Friday last November when he led the response to the terrorist attack at America, the Mall, in suburban Minneapolis”—and the camera showed footage that Nikki’s cameraman had actually shot, the vast America-shaped building bleeding smoke and fire into the night as an ocean of ambulances and other emergency vehicles blinked lights around it—“and devised a daring secret assault plan that was credited with minimizing casualties in that horrible event. Only thirty-seven died and fewer than two hundred were wounded, against figures that could have been vastly higher.”

Then the president spoke.

“I know of no American who has served his country better in time of crisis—and in time without crisis, in the ordinary ebb and flow of law enforcement duties—than Doug Obobo. He is one of the finest police officials in the nation, without a doubt, and I fully expect him to bring those attributes of courage, intelligence, and creativity—but most of all, empathy and compassion—to our premier federal law enforcement agency.”

The two men shook hands as flashbulbs popped.

“That’s not quite the way I heard it,” said Ray.

“Well, gosh,” she said, “what do
you
know? I mean it’s not like you were
there
or anything,” and they both laughed richly, not the first laugh they had shared by any means but far, far from the last.

Most readers will know that there is a mall in Bloomington, MN, similar to the one described here. I indeed visited it for a few days but made no attempt to investigate it and did no actual research there. No inferences should be made regarding that entity’s ability to handle a terrorist crisis.
Soft Target
is meant as apocalyptic allegory, not journalism.

Now on to thanks. The biggest share goes to Gary Goldberg, who’s become the majordomo of the Steve Hunter empire. Gary has one of those technical brains and an indefatigable gift for figuring out systems, mechanics, programs, the whole gestalt of the machine world that is utterly baffling to me. He was super on this one, and I told him he had done so much work, he deserved some of the royalties, but I wasn’t going to give him a cent because it would tarnish the friendship. Hmm, he seemed to swallow that.

Gary thanks Grant Kissel for computer savvy and Dave Bickel for keeping everything plausible.

I have a core of other readers whose responses are always valuable: my friends Lenne P. Miller, Jay Carr, Bill Smart, and Jeff Weber, all of whom pitched in with enthusiasm and suggestions. Needless to say, all failures of nerve, taste, and decorum and all excesses of symbolism, violence, and gore rest with me, not them.

My sister-in-law, Annie Marbella, clued me in on the girl side of the vid game world, for which I am grateful, and my brother-in-law Ken Haas explained the boy side of it to me. BTW, I don’t want this to be taken as an anti–vid game screed. Kids, play all you want, blow up shit left and right; as long as your imaginations are working, you’re part of the human race and you’re not out on the streets robbing old bald guys. Ed De Carlo, the manager of the On Target shooting range and gun shop, talked me through the various intricacies of the trade.

My professional team—superagent Esther Newberg, editor Sarah Knight, and publisher Jon Karp—were as usual supportive and helpful, and Sarah was terrific with her right-on suggestions. Without her, this would be a far dimmer story.

And finally the wife, Jean Marbella: Jeannie, Jeannie, queenie of the martini (once a week, dammit!), brewer of coffee, confidante, laugher (as long as we stay off politics), and reigning zeitgeist of Baltimore journalism, thanks for being there.

Stephen Hunter has written seventeen novels. The retired chief film critic for the
Washington Post,
where he won the 2003 Pulitzer Prize for Distinguished Criticism, he has also published two collections of film criticism and a nonfiction work. He lives in Maryland.