“Doesn’t this mall have an emergency generator?”
“It does, on the roof,” said Webley. “Now the issue is, what does he know about power? Has he anticipated action in the dark? Do they have night vision? If so, and we think we’re all state-of-the-art with our night goggles, we could be walking into a killer ambush. Or has it just not crossed his mind? Or maybe he’s aware of that vulnerability and the vulnerability of the emergency generator. We can shut down the power and light in thirty seconds, or so we think. But this guy has tech chops, this guy has the profile of a bomber. He likes to express himself through his mastery of tech. I’m surprised he hasn’t planted explosives. The little fucks at Columbine did, maybe it’s the same mentality. When we go to blow the emergency gen, it may be booby-trapped. Maybe we ought to get a team on that now.”
“Good idea. Make it happen.”
“I will. But what I’m seeing doesn’t sound like a terrorist of the turban-wearing, Koran-spouting kind. You know, that guy. Nothing in this whatsoever suggests Islam or international terrorism. Despite the reports of the scarves. Fuck, anybody can buy those scarves mail order. You see ’em on chicks these days. No, I see another guy: some twisted computer freak with a hard-on against authority,” said Webley.
“I agree. And yet-”
“And yet?”
“And yet there’s still another component that doesn’t really fit with this first diagram,” said Kemp, as if it was his turn to be the brilliant one. “What is wrong with the picture? I’ll tell you: how does this guy, bitter techie, the IT man from hell, how does he of all people round up hard-core gunmen and send them down hallways machine-gunning little girls?”
“Good question.”
“He needs manpower, firepower, fire-and-move small-unit training, communications setup, all the sorts of things a Green Beret or some kind of SEAL pro could handle. Not the president of the chess club who’s angry because he got fired from Computers-R-Us.”
“So maybe it’s a partnership. Two of ’em. The bright kid, somehow the seasoned combat operator. Highly unlikely, I know.”
“Those aren’t types that hang together, no way.”
“Okay,” said Kemp, “maybe you ought to put people in DC on professional soldiers, contractors, Graywolf vets, ex-Berets, or SEALs in the greater Minneapolis area. Also, maybe get somebody local digging into very smart but screwed-up kids. Arsonists, bomb threateners, maybe commies or socialists, you know, ‘activists’ they call them. I’m thinking University of Minnesota would be a good place to start looking, plus if there are any ‘gifted and talented’ high schools in the area, and I’m guessing there are.”
“I’ll get right on it,” said Webley. “If we could find a convergence, we might find our guy, or our guys.”
“I’ll bring this to Obobo. Maybe he’s got state police investigators to toss in, plus we ought to be able to get metros from Saint Paul and Minneapolis.”
“That’s a good idea, Will,” said Webley. “But the thing is, even if we figure out who is doing this, how does that help us stop him? I mean if we put his crying mommy on the bullhorn, it could just as easily set him off as break him down.”
“I know,” said Kemp disconsolately. “I have a terrible feeling we’re going to lose a lot more civilians on this one and I don’t think there’s a goddamn thing we can do about it.”
McElroy found something. He found it by tracing with his fingers around the joinery of glass to stucco of the entire loop of lower Lake Michigan, from Milwaukee, past Chicago and Gary, on up into Michigan, halfway to Canada. It was a subtle thing, a sort of give in the surface as though the stucco wasn’t quite set.
He pulled out his SureFire, put a bright beam on it, and decided that what he saw revealed under the harshness of the illumination was a subtly different coloration in the stucco, the concrete, the whatever it was that comprised the window well. Next he took out the wicked long Spyderco he carried clipped into his thigh cargo pocket, flicked it open to reveal a blade bad enough for killing, for getting deep into blood-bearing organs if the need arose. The need was not present now, but the sharpness of point and blade certainly looked promising, and he set at the patch of whatever it was and began to chip and dig away. The surface yielded swiftly, and McElroy realized that this zone here must have been somehow damaged, water damage maybe, a broken pipe or something, maybe a lightning strike, but anyway the mall’s engineering staff had done a quick repair, not with hard-set concrete or whatever but with putty, and had then painted over it. A cheap repair, cost-saving-the recession, remember.
That’s what he wanted. Just what the doctor ordered, he thought, and began to dig aggressively, soon revealing the heavy metal of the window frame itself. Couldn’t get through that with a knife blade, of course, but beneath it, more of the soft stuff, and he was so heated with energy over the enormity of his discovery, he worked with renewed dedication, feeling himself a Superman. The sniper god had answered his prayer.
He lost track of time, but it seemed to be only seconds. In that period he scooped out an actual channel through the material, being sure as he dug to draw the stuff toward him so that debris didn’t fall upon the crowd and the gunmen five stories below. But it was gloppy, somehow, and the moisture provided an adhesive factor; the knife scraped off not particles of dust but gobbets of mucus, clay, something unpleasant.
It wasn’t much, but he had opened an oblong gap alongside a section of the steel frame of the sky light. He peered through it, and no glass obstructed his view. He fished out his binocs and saw what he could see, now jacked up by an optical factor of ten.
He had an angle onto a few feet of major corridor leading to the balcony overlooking the amusement park, about two hundred feet away at roughly 135 degrees. Not a lot of range, not a lot of elevation or windage, but he had the view into one of the corridors-Colorado, it had to be, based on his familiarity with the place-with nothing but air between him and his theoretical target. Could he get a shot? That was the first issue, and it had to be solved before What would the target be? even came up.
He picked the rifle up, eased the suppressor through the hole he’d opened, found a shooting position, his spotweld, and went to the scope and saw… nothing.
Goddamn.
There was clearance for the muzzle, but the scope was mounted higher than the muzzle by about an inch and it looked squarely into the metal frame.
He began to grind downward, trying to torque the suppressor deeper into the putty to lower the muzzle another inch or so, which would afford him the vantage of the Leupold tactical 10? he carried.
Nah. Couldn’t get enough leverage. He withdrew the rifle, went back to the knife. He hoped he didn’t have to cut any throats or cut open any tin cans, because he was blunting the crap out of the murderous sharpness of the blade, but he could afford a new knife.
Ugh. He ground, he scraped, he rubbed, he spit, he thought about pissing, anything to wear down the resistance of what opposed him, for it seemed he was beyond putty now and fighting the higher tensile strength of something hardened. It seemed to take hours, he felt the sweat running down his sides, he felt the ache in his wrists and fingers from the steady pressure he was applying to the structure through the medium of the blade.
He sat back at last, and it seemed he’d opened a loophole in the building material under the frame of the window. Would it be enough? Was he done?
He reacquired the rifle, repeated the shouldering and inserting process, tried to gauge how far he’d come, how far he’d have to go, and finally peeked through the scope and saw lightness, blur, whatever, realized he was focused at two hundred yards and this was much shorter, just seventy-five, and his finger flew to the focus knob, and he found himself staring with surprise into the face of a terrorist edging down the corridor. He looked up, through the window, and confirmed. It was a man, stealing his way toward the balcony, and that was an AK in his grip, his head was blanketed in an Arabic tribal scarf, and a boom microphone came around to cover his lips from earphones inside the headgear.