Read Soft Target for Free Online

sniperswould 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, andin 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!”