Soft Target Read Free Page A

“California,” the higher-end, more sophisticated men’s and women’s shops in the NE, in “Manhattan.” “Florida” contained vacationware shops; around the “Midwestern” amusement park had been clustered most of the many, many food stalls, snack bars, and restaurants; and so on and so on.
    Most hellish was the amusement park. It sported not only the WildMouse but a batch of other thrill rides, one that whirled seats about at the end of tethered wires, another that replicated somebody’s idea of a log waterway that shunted screamers down aquamarine, chlorine-infused liquid, more like Scope than actual H 2 O. The yells of the riders, the clack of the vehicles on their tracks, the blur of motion, the whoosh of disturbed currents filling the air of the huge place, all amplified under a roof of skylights designed to let in the wan November Minnesota sun and combined with the din of shoppers, made the place pretty much unbearable. It was all there, the two great things that befit a place calling itself America, the Mall: shopping and speed.
    “Okay,” she said. “Then let’s get out of here.”
    “I am so gone,” he said.
    “Oh wait,” she said. “Now, if you really want to make Molly happy, let me point you in the proper direction,” and she twisted him forty-five degrees until he came to bear on a place called Boardwalk Fries.
    “I smell potato,” she said. “Potato is good. Potato, grease, salt, crispy exterior.”
    “Well,” he said, “I have to say, they smell good.”
    “They do, but that’s probably not the actual frying-potato odor but rather some chemical product from Monsanto. It probably comes out of an aerosol can.”
    “Well, it worked on me. Let’s get some french fries and—”
    That was a sound he knew. One, loud.
    Then lots of them. Percussions, sharp and hurtful, flashing back among the corridors and crannies, too loud, earsplittingly loud, replicating themselves in the echo unto multiplicity, and drawing the crowd into silence in a frozen instant before panic, screams, and chaos.
    “Somebody’s shooting,” Ray said.
    The man who shot Santa Claus was named Maahir; he was an unusually large Somali soldier from the militia Hizbul Islam, undercommand of General Hassan Dahir Aweys, opposed to the brigands and false believers of the militia al Shbaab. The policy differences between them were immense, and one could list them easily if given a year and a half to do so. The shot was about 150 feet, but for him it was nothing. Maahir had taken many other long shots in his time, making most; he’d also taken many close shots, and the spectacle of death as released upon a body by bullet wound was nothing new to him.
    But everything else was new. This place, this strange structure, these people in their comfort, their wealth, their fear, the unbearable smells of food, the beauty of the young girls, the data so overwhelmed him he had almost fallen into enchantment.
    But Allah had kept him rigorously devoted to mission.
    After the shot, which signaled the beginning of this great martyrdom operation, one that would see him happily arrived in paradise before the day finished, he looked around as people fled him in horror. It was so funny. Ha ha, the look of terror on their faces. In wars, you seldom saw such fear because you were always moving. Not so here.
    He stood in the center of the collection of crazed speed apparatuses and listened as the gunshots arose from his brothers, as they engaged the infidels for the first time. Before him panic and fear but mostly collision as some ran this way and some that and many went sprawling in the crack-ups that ensued.
    He edged backward a bit, to get out of the rush of the masses, and knew that if he wanted, he could fire and fire and kill and kill, but after all, there was no hurry, and there would be ample time for those pleasures.
    On the large video screen displaying the SCADA icons, MEMTAC 6.2 purred away placidly, cybertestimony to the fact