Zombieland, a clarification
Sleep. Dreams utterly incoherent, full of odd scenes, outliers, and rogues. Aches of old wounds and new—the cracked ribs, the spells of dizziness, for example—came and went at random. Sometimes his phantom hip screamed in pain, though in his wakefulness it was perfect. Old man, pins wobbly, struts bent, needs oil, lube, and some adjustments.
But worse: every so often, the face of one of the lost ones—there were so many—and things that went along with them. Regret, isolation, despair, nihilism, memories of pain, memories of the comforting blur of the bottle, memories always of folly, stupidity, cowardice, ugly words, once issued, never recalled, all the times the obvious had been missed and the impossible selected as a goal, the center not holding, all systems exposed, in their illusory nature, the cheapness of their fraud, the tawdriness of their window dressing—a night, really, without much actual rest. Then, almost a mercy, the phone.
He swam toward it.
“Swagger.”
It was Nick. “I want everybody in. We’ve got something.”
That got his attention. “Has it broken?”
“Well, I’m hoping the breaking process has started. Get in here.”
“On my way.”
He struggled through a shower that semi-restored him, and a cup of bad residence hotel coffee, and drove his rental down to Hoover. It was almost five in the morning, but by the time he arrived, most of his functions were functioning, his hands weren’t shaking, and the surrealism of the dream world had helpfully erased itself.
The building operated at about ten percent hum in the off hours, and halls, usually so bustling, were ghost tunnels. Security was sparse, and each individual noise seemed to carry an echo and its reecho with it. Perhaps in the op center things were jumping. Everywhere else, there was too much room, not enough people. He elevatored to the sixth floor and turned in to the deserted hall that led to the task force office, entered, and saw they were all in, except for Gold. Someone had put a pot of coffee on, and Swagger took a cupful, his second of the day.
Finally, Nick looked up.
“Should we wait for Mr. Gold?” asked Neill.
“No, he’s here. Going over his notes.”
“This is his party?”
“The whole way.”
“Is it his clarification?” groggy, gorgeous Chandler, in jeans and sweatshirt, Glock on hip, had to know.
“He’ll explain. Mr. Gold!” he called.
The Israeli entered. Unusually for him, he was not in his daily wear, the jeweler’s black suit and tie. His shoes weren’t even black. The shirt was wide open, there was no jacket, and the slacks were radically gray. He was wearing burgundy loafers.
“Good morning,” he said. “Sorry to drag you all here, but if you agree with me, I think we have to get going on this.”
He sat.
“What has happened is that two unrelated pieces of information—one from Mr. Neill, one from Sergeant Swagger—have suddenly become related. Apart, they are nothing; together, perhaps something. I believe it at least demands a serious effort.”
“Please proceed,” said Neill. “I love it when I’m a genius.”
“You had said that the kind of aerial or drone reconnaissance that led us to Juba in Syria, keyed to the attributes that would identify a long-range shooting venue, were useless in the United States without some kind of limiting or defining function. Not even knowing the region, we were looking for a rowboat in an ocean.”
“True,” said Neill.
“And Sergeant Swagger had said that Juba almost certainly will shoot at living targets, first to acclimate himself to the spontaneous motion of life at that distance through that magnification system, and second—and equally important—to test the killing power of his rounds at that distance, in search of one that causes potentially more damage.”
“Yep,” said Bob.
“Now, I assume that, as a true believer—you never said as much, but I believe the inference was there—I assume that he would use human targets at some time in his journey. He believes them to be infidels, has no scruples against using them, and it is easily within the capacity of the Menendez apparatus to arrange such a thing. Everybody with me?”
Nods and mumbles of assent.
“So a question that can be asked is this: who would he shoot? Where could he get living bodies to hit at long range? It’s not the sort of thing you advertise for, nobody’s going to volunteer for it, not even for a large sum to be left to the volunteers’ benefactors. Those selected would almost have to be of a sort who would not be noticed in their absence, perhaps not even reported. They would have to be from a victim pool about which even the police, in reality, wouldn’t care much.”
He waited. Nobody had a thing to say.
“It seems to me,” he said, “or, that is, it seemed to me all of a sudden two hours ago, that the one source without fail would be any city’s population of homeless men. Nobody counts them, nobody really looks at them, American legalism is such that they can’t be rounded up in a tank or beaten until they leave town. So they find an out-of-the-way place and fester. Under the viaduct, by the river, out with the dumpsters, in abandoned factories, zombie neighborhoods, that sort of thing. And so it seems to me that Menendez might assign men to visit these places, drug an already sleeping hobo, and drag him off.
“You can imagine the rest. He awakens a day later in unfamiliar circumstances and finds himself pinned or in some fashion imprisoned, and, from a long way off, our good friend Juba conducts his experiments. The bullets come closer and closer, and if the man screams or begs, no one is there to hear, because the site is clearly wilderness of some sort. When Juba strikes, the cadaver is examined for terminal forensics, then buried, burned, or otherwise disposed of by cartel methodology. I have heard of buzzards.”
“They do use buzzards,” said Nick.
“So it seems to me that as of this moment we ought to begin a national canvas for any localities that have experienced a sudden spike in homeless disappearances. I doubt they would abscond with people too far from what is their ultimate disposal site, it simply would complicate logistics. And they would be confident in their operations because the homeless have no champions, save the odd social worker or nun, and are of no interest to anyone in society, perhaps garnering some municipal social service attention, but even that is apt not to be so tightly applied. And if it were, who would care? Suppose you go to the police with fears that a number of homeless men have disappeared? What sort of response would that generate?”
Silence, of course, for the Israeli had focused on a particular weakness in American society, one that no one seemed to have the knowledge, the will, or the funding to do much about.
“Nobody’s going to win a Pulitzer Prize writing about vanished homeless, that’s for sure,” said Neill.
“You see the rest of it,” said Gold. “If we do locate an area of usual activity, we can program a satellite to search for the attributes in that area that might show up from outer space. We winnow further by drone. We can put the tiny whirlybirds over the most promising areas and, in that way, find the location of such an installation literally right down to the bench on the ground in front of it. And, as in Israel, we raid. Six helicopters dropping off forty of Orwell’s rough men—or Gadi Motter’s—at oh-dark-thirty, and your problem is solved.”
“So let’s get on this right away,” said Nick. “We want to circularize all police entities for reports of such a spike in disappearances. Maybe they have undercover sources in these communities. Maybe it’s right in front of them, they just have never had any impetus to look. So they assign a clerk for an afternoon to go through the records. Maybe there’s one town where, for some reason, the number had jumped.”
“Boss,” said Chandler, “I’d also do charity agencies, social work departments, and university sociology departments. The homeless interest researchers, and we’ve got to tap into that.”
“Good, Chandler.”
“Also, I’d be sure to get the info request read at the daily preduty briefing to beat cops. It’s the sort of thing a beat cop might hear and discount or ignore, but suddenly when it’s put before him and been validated by the process, he gets involved.”
“You might try places where illegals congregate to find work,” said Swagger. “Lots of men could go missing from Home Depots all over America, and nobody know.”
“Good, good, I like what I’m hearing. Any other suggestions?”
“Anyplace stoop labor is hired,” said Neill. “Harvesttime, lots of migrants come in to work the fields. Some—too many, no doubt—end up in those fields.”
“Non-union construction,” said Bob.
“Should we prioritize by area?” asked Chandler. “I mean, we have sort of assumed that wherever Juba is training, that would be the west. Lots and lots of land out there. Lots of land where he could have a mile-long shooting range and nobody would know.”
“That makes sense,” said Nick. “I think it’s a good assumption. This is going to be a hell of a workload any way you cut it, so any help is worth it.
“Neill, you and Swagger get that software to guide the birds setup. Okay, let’s get— Oh, wait. Let me say it formally: Mr. Gold, you are the best. Don’t know where we’d be without Mossad.”
“I only want one thing in return,” said Mr. Gold. “A long chat with Juba. I want to hear his thousand and one tales.”