But clearly five shots would not signify a head-on assault; the only conclusion was hostage execution, and this drama held a particularly ugly fascination for the reporters. Americans put on their knees and shot in the head in a mall in middle America on the opening of the Christmas season, the day after Thanksgiving, the most family-some might say, too much family-of family days.
“I cannot confirm or deny reports that hostages have been shot,” was all that Obobo could say. But he was extremely annoyed at the abruptness and the hostility with which the question had been launched at him. It was not the sort of treatment he was used to.
“But there was shooting in the mall?”
It was a thin line, but he stuck to it.
“I cannot confirm or deny there has been shooting in the mall. Obviously, we prefer to keep tactical details to ourselves as we deal with this situation.”
“If they start executing hostages, don’t you have to attack?”
“We don’t have to do anything,” said the colonel. “It’s when we permit ourselves to be locked into ‘have to’ situations that tragedy ensues.”
Hmm. No, he didn’t like this tone of hostility. In fact, all of a sudden, he decided he was sick of them. He looked out on a hundred faces. Where was the love? Where had it gone? It began to needle him. He would have to discuss this with Renfro.
“I did not say they were killing hostages. I will not be announcing any tactical plans here. Presumably, these folks are monitoring our public announcements.”
“Who are they?”
“We do not know yet. As I said, they have yet to make contact or issue demands. I can say we have secured the mall and nobody is going anywhere. At this time we are studying various options. As you might suspect, this is a tremendously complex undertaking, and we don’t want to do anything hasty and stupid.”
“At Columbine, didn’t they decide they should have moved immediately on the shooters? All they did was set up guard posts outside while people bled to death. Is that what you’re doing?”
Another ridiculous question! Who did these assholes think they were? Where was Renfro?
“This is not Columbine. This is an entity that is far more than a high school, the number of gunmen is as yet unknown, thought to be ten or more, extremely well informed, working with a well-thought-out plan, heavily armed with professional-quality weapons. As Special Agent Kemp said, we do have Army and Navy commando types inbound, and they are far better suited to this kind of tactical work than we are. I have at least twenty teams ready to go in, but I have to get them coordinated, I have to get them inside, I have to get them moving in step with each other, and they have to have clear targets guided by intelligence. None of those conditions exist at this time, so we are in a wait-and-see mode.”
“Ladies and gentlemen,” interrupted the governor, “although it’s true that shots were fired, we have no evidence that people were executed. It could have been just some kid shooting his gun.”
Great! The stupid bastard had just put the shots on the table.
“Colonel Obobo, Tom Kiefaver, NBC News.” Handsome national haircut, sometimes anchored the big show. “Are you comfortable in established positions while people may be a few dozen feet away dying?”
“I think we all need to get back to work, folks. You’ll forgive us,” and he turned manfully and walked back toward the trailer. As he went back to the van, Obobo saw the governor giving one-on-ones to the national news and the big Minneapolis channels, each team waiting patiently. The governor seemed to be enjoying himself.
It went all fuzzy on Lavelva. The Somali pressed his thumbs into her larynx, grinning wildly, his gashed face bleeding, the blood falling into her face. She bucked and fought and twice again swacked him hard with the steel spine of the notebook, but each time he saw it coming and turned, flinching down, and the blade bit into his hairline and across his ear, cutting shallowly but not hurting him bad enough. He had her now. It was over. She felt herself in the whirlpool as the oxygen debt turned her lungs into broken balloons.
Then he relented. His fingers came slightly out of her throat, and he let a desperately sought gush of air into her throat. But his fingers did not come off her neck. He spoke in Somali, not that she understood anything but the emotional gist.
“Hah, girl, see what Asad does to you! Hah, now I send you to the fiery noplace of infidel hell you who stand against Allah must go. I am your killer, your ruler. You defy me and die as do all peoples everywhere soon to know the power of Islam.”
What bullshit! He was all lit up, so proud of his mighty victory, unwilling to let the moment go, savoring the kill. She whacked him again, but he blinked only a bit, shook his head, and said, “Now, die, bitch.”
The thumbs went hard into her, and her air supply drained quickly and she sucked at dry nothingness, bucking against him but feeling her will vanish and wishing she’d been able to save the babies, she tried so hard to save the babies and And someone broke his neck.
Broke it clean and hard, and she heard the snap as the vertebrae cracked into two pieces, and his tongue came into his skinny-ass lips and his eyes went all cue ball on him and his head hung at a broken-spring angle and his thumbs lost their power and he was lifted from her like a sack of potatoes and laid on a floor from which he would never again rise.
Some Asian-like dude looked down at her.
“You okay?” he said.
“Man, he like to choke the fuck out of me.”
“Just relax, rest. He’s not going to choke anybody ever again, okay?”
The guy, she now saw, was some kind of thin, hardball type, had warrior written all over him in the leanness under his sweatshirt and the veins thick with blood on his wrists. He turned and quickly began to loot the fallen Somali, separating first the AK from the boy, then quickly unbuckling the bandolier of ammunition-the clips were all weird orange, you know, like popsicles-then slipped the kid’s belt with knife and pistol off. He checked the pistol expertly, pinching back the slide to see if it held a chambered round, and then he began to reassemble himself in the image of the man he’d just killed. Finally, finished, he turned back to her.
“Feeling better? You’ll be bruised for a month, but I think you’ll be all right. Sweetie, I can’t believe you cracked him with that shiv. You can play ball on my team anytime, the guts you must have.”
“Who you?” she asked.
“The name’s Ray. Spent some time in the Marines, that’s why I’m all going-to-war now. Nobody else is. Anyhow, I saw this joker slide in here as I was stalking him. Sorry I didn’t get here sooner.”
She looked at the dead boy. She’d seen the gaze before, on the streets. That I’m-asleep look, the eyes blank, seeing nothing, the I-ain’t-nothing-no-more look of extinction. Someone run into a bullet or a blade with his name on it, down he go, his face come all moony nothingness, like this sucker. She could still gut him, cut his slimy insides out and hang ’em up to dry. But no. He dead.
She turned back to see the Chinese marine studying a mall pamphlet, which must have come from Mr. Dead Ass.
“You have kids here?”
“Seventeen of them. In back. That boy said he’d come to get the babies.”
“Yeah, the place is marked. So they want children, they need ’em as hostages, and they sent this joker. Okay, we’re going to move the kids a little ways down the hall into the ladies’ underwear place. There are some women in there and they can help you take care of them. Does that seem like a good idea?”
“It does.”
“You want them in a single file, hugging the walls, make it a game. See, that way those TV cameras can’t pick them out of the shadow. You get that?”
“I do.”
“Let’s get this done fast. I don’t know how long it’ll be before they notice war hero here didn’t come back with the babies.”