“Ah,” he said. An issue of jurisdiction was looming. By federal law, the FBI took charge in any situation that was defined as “terrorism” and ran the show. But things at America, the Mall, were still unclear: despite reports of terrorist-like gunmen and terrorist-like tactics and ruthlessness, he thought it could still be some crazed white militia, some NRA offshoot, some screwball Tea Party gone berserk. In his mind, one never could tell about the right in this country, particularly deep in the glowering Midwest, where men clung to guns and religion, cursed bitterly as America changed, and still believed, fundamentally, in the old ways.
Renfro said, “Colonel, you cannot let the FBI people run this show. It can’t be a Washington thing. There are sound policy reasons for it-harder for them to coordinate with the locals, unfamiliarity with the territory, lack of intelligence on the local scene-but the politics count here too. Washington will want in, but you’ve got to hold Washington at bay.”
“I know, I know,” said the colonel. “I’ve got a plan.”
Obobo’s idea was to use the FBI as the primary investigative tool of this operation. They would interview witnesses, run the databases, check the photo IDs and the fingerprint files; they would liaise with ATF on ballistics. That would be plenty for them. But in no way was he prepared to relinquish command. This one was his.
“Negative, negative on any kind of assault,” he announced to his gathered majors. “I am not going to tell the governor that he has presided over the largest bloodbath in American history. Establish the perimeter, hold the medical people and the ambulance in a zone, keep the media in the loop because we do have a responsibility to inform a panicked public, and try and set up some kind of contact with these people. They must want something, and I know I can influence them positively, given the chance.”
“Maybe they just want to kill a lot of folks,” someone said. “Maybe the longer we wait…”
This was Mike Jefferson, another major, head of SWAT and by nature aggressive; he’d won three gunfights and could be a pain in the ass. Obobo mistrusted him, as he mistrusted that kind of man, bodacious, body-proud, thick-armed, tattooed, and a little too hungry to go to guns. If you went to guns, he knew, all kinds of craziness was loosed upon the earth and nobody knew which way the bullets would ricochet. He would never go to guns. On the other hand, it was not his way to crush underlings.
“Major Jefferson, that’s a great point. Therefore I want you to begin to assemble an assault plan and be ready to deploy and implement. At present, I feel we must hold until federal reinforcement arrives, and then we will see where we are and consider our options. But we have to have other options and that’s your job.”
Jefferson understood he’d just gotten a no that sounded like a yes; he muttered something and backed off.
Someone else said, “Mike, the doors are locked from the inside. To even get in for an assault, you’d have to blow fifty doors simultaneously and we don’t have the technology or the explosives to do that. Only the feds have stuff like that.”
“The feds don’t even have it, not in their shop in Minneapolis,” said Jefferson. “Get the governor to authorize the National Guard to the site. Isn’t there a Special Forces unit part of the Minnesota National Guard? Maybe they have the expertise. Also, DOJ, maybe DOD. We may need some Army commandos.”
“Major, it’ll take hours, maybe days, to get commandos in here.”
“I got Minnetonka SWAT incoming. Where should I put them?” asked one of the radio operators.
“I think we’re weak at California,” said the major in charge of logistics. His job was to decide where to place the various units, determine their areas of responsibility, keep them from stumbling into each other or being assigned redundant tasks, and also managing food, coffee, blankets, and other support for the men on the line.
“Dispatch them to holding positions at the California entrance,” said Obobo, once again reiterating his major theme, on the management theory that you tell them, then you tell them again, and when you’re finished, then you tell them again. “No contact, no initiatives, stay off the air unless there’s an emergency. Their job is to help late stragglers get to medical aid, not to be heroes. The last thing we need is a hero. Now let’s have a quick press conference. We have to start putting information out. Mr. Renfro, you’re on top of this?”
“I am, sir,” said Renfro.
It was difficult to determine who died first, Mrs. Goldbine, from her heart attack, or Mr. Graffick, from his lower-back wound. The sixty-seven-year-old woman certainly died the loudest. She gripped her chest and began to breath harshly, coughing now and then. The woman sitting next to her, a Somali waitress who worked in a restaurant in the mall, tried to comfort her and held her hand. The woman turned gray. The waitress stood, raising her hand desperately to attract the attention of one of the gunmen, who pushed his way through the crowd with the familiar arrogance of the armed among the unarmed.
“This lady is very sick,” said the waitress in Somali.
“Too bad for her,” said the boy.
“She will die,” said the girl.
“Then that is what Allah has decreed, sister. Do not take up with these white devils. All are going to die sooner or later. If you are nice to me, maybe I can spare you.”
“Go fuck yourself,” said the young woman in English.
The boy laughed and turned away.
“What did he say, what did he say?” a dozen nearby hostages had to know. She decided not to tell them what he had told her.
“He says he doesn’t care. He thinks he is God. He will find out different.”
She bent over Mrs. Goldbine and saw that it was too late. She had passed.
In another sector of the crowd, Graffick lay in the arms of his wife. He had taken a bullet meant for and aimed at her. It had hit him in the lower back and initially didn’t produce much blood or even pain. He’d stumbled but continued to push her ahead in the mad scramble toward the middle of the mall, not that there was safety there. There was safety nowhere. But the law of least resistance produced the inward rush.
He lay, looking up at the lake-shaped spread of skylights four stories up. He was not a religious man, for driving eight hundred miles a day in the cab of an eighteen-wheeler for forty years does not incline one toward the more spiritual things in life, nor was he ever in any one place long enough for church to present itself as an option. If he worshipped anything, it was a goddess: his wife.
“You must fight,” he told her. He knew about fighting: 1st Marine Division, An Loc, RVN, ’65-’66, Purple Heart, Silver Star.
“Jerry,” she said, “just be still.”
“Sweetie, listen. These bastards, don’t let ’em see you crying. Don’t give ’em nothing. Don’t give ’em no satisfaction at all. When I go, just put on your steel face and don’t show a thing. Remember that time I got busted in that vice sting in Ohio? You didn’t talk to me for a year. Honey, that’s the face. I know you got it. You give it to them and make them fear you.”
“Please, please, Jerry.”
She was sitting in a lake of blood. He was bleeding out, and the warm fluid ran from his wound into her dress and puddled around them on the floor.
“God, I love you so much,” he said, and then went still.
Not far from him a man named Charles Dougan was concerned about a bowel movement he could not prevent from occurring. He was ashamed. It was one thing to die, it was another to die with your pants full of shit. He didn’t realize that incontinence of one sort or another was a crucial feature of hostage situations, because no media ever dealt with it honestly. But the significant commonality among a large number of people held against their will was lack of sanitation for bodily fluids and that was simply an unfortunate biological reality.