Soft Targets

Guerrero's van combined a short wheelbase with all-terrain tires under a long cargo com­partment. At Hakim's acid comment on the garish paint, Guerrero pointed out that, by California standards, it was subdued. The van culture, springing from the recreational vehicles of the seventies, was invading the west coast to such an extent that one could purchase, direct from Detroit, vans covered with tinted plastic bubbles and fantastic painted panoramas. While he enthused over the uses of a van, Guerrero was proving his point.

With Chaim's help, dark green dacron and black-painted aluminum tubing from the van soon became a spidery frame topped by fabric. In places the fabric was taut over the slender tub­ing; across most of its span it draped limp. The vehicle had no tail surfaces but featured two swept wings, the lower wing staggered behind. Guerrero boasted that the dual wing gave his craft such a low stall speed that, unlike earlier parafoils, it could fly at the pace of a trotting man. Despite the darkness, Hakim could see that Guerrero's perch was a padded bike seat, mounted above the enclosed driveshaft. Ahead of the rider was the little rotary engine; behind him, the shrouded impeller. It started quickly with the rasping whirr of a big lawnmower.

A loaded pack frame leaning against his knee, Hakim cupped one hand to his cheek and leaned forward. 'If your landing is not gentle, Guerrero, your cargo will dig your grave.'

'I can land in any clearing,' Guerrero joked, 'with the landing gear I was born with.' He flexed his knees and gestured for the pack.

Guerrero settled the pack straps over his shoulders, adjusting the twenty-kilo mass, test­ing the freedom of his arms. Hakim realized that, as Guerrero straddled the machine and lifted it clear of the ground, he was momentarily supporting over fifty kilos of dead weight. His takeoff seemed ludicrous for only a moment, a bow- legged trot down the smooth slope of clear­ing. Then the whirr of the rotary engine was lost in the rush of high- pressure air as Guerrero opened the valve of his air bottle. The great advantage of the air rocket, Hakim saw, lay in the fact that it had no visible exhaust. If it was a relatively low-impulse power unit, it was cer­tainly more than enough for the parafoil.

In twenty meters Guerrero was running in space, then bending forward to lie semi-prone as the parafoil wafted upward. A sprinter could have outrun him. The cold-gas rocket abruptly ceased its hiss and Hakim saw the parafoil gently accelerate, now climbing at a shallower angle. Guerrero claimed that the thing could exceed legal highway speeds but only now did Hakim believe him. Guerrero might see by the glow of the city, but his own craft was invisible to Hakim, even its exhaust glow hidden from below.

A whistle from Chaim brought the pickets back, Chaim taking Talith's carbine with a swift check of its safety. 'You will kill one of us yet, Leah,' he said as the mechanism clicked. They followed Hakim into the bungalow.

Hakim forced his thoughts away from Guer­rero, who was gliding above the starlit ravines somewhere to the west. The parafoil was a technology he deeply mistrusted, but once he had felt the same way about microprocessors. He strode to the living room, determined to hide his delight with the new media center, genuinely concerned that it might not be adequate.

Despite himself: 'Ah,' he breathed, jubilant as he surveyed the media center Talith had as­sembled at his orders, with the help of Rashid. Four small TV sets half-encircled a desk which also faced an expanse of window. Four mul­tiband radios were ranged to one side. All sets had earplugs. Three telephones were within reach. Note pads, blank card files, colored pens, typewriter, videotape recorder and two audio tape cassette machines filled much of the work­ing space. The squat table underfoot was almost hidden beneath stacks of directories; Bay Area numbers, Los Angeles numbers, Washington numbers, precisely as he had specified. Hakim knew the dangers of heavy dependence on help supplied by the various telephone companies. There were ways to trace one from his patterns of inquiry. Unless, of course, one mastered the sys­tem.

Talith stood near, gnawing a full underlip, watching him assess the media center. 'Rashid; Chaim,' he rapped suddenly. 'Are you prepared to spend the night as pickets?'

Both straightened. 'We are Fat'ah,' said Chaim. Rashid only nodded.

'Rashid, could you fly that thing?' Hakim was staring out the window toward the mountains again.

'With practice, sire,' was the whispery reply. 'My experience is all in fixed-wing craft.'

'Learn,' Hakim ordered, and knew it would be done. He dismissed them both.

Behind him, Leah Talith coughed. He turned, waiting. 'Shall I take picket duty?'

'Stay,' he said, toying with the HP from his new briefcase. After a moment he continued, 'How long have you known Guerrero?'

'Since El-Hamma,' naming a Syrian training base. El-Hamma was near enough to Damascus to suit Hakim's purposes—and the purposes of the Syrian army as well. Syrian regular army units, Al-Sa'iqa, the PLO, and the alphabet-soup of irregular terrorist armies all over the world boasted graduates of this ghastly seminary. But Talith seemed to think something more was re­quired and added, 'I was with him on a border raid last year. His night vision is supernatural; he always sees things the rest of us miss.'

'Or would like us to think so,' Hakim coun­tered.

Talith did not speak again for a moment. 'He is in awe of you,' she said then, sensing a guarded stance in Hakim's attitude. The lie might set the Fat'ah leader at ease. 'For one thing, the man is not of our blood. He does not understand all of our customs even yet. For example, he does not know how to address you.' Her hesitancy suggested that Talith shared Guerrero's concern.

Hakim had not risen this far by allowing cyni­cism to show in his voice. 'Do we fight for democracy? Is my name Hakim? Then Hakim it is!' His face softened, faint lines around his jaw the only sign that Hakim was entertaining a pri­vate amusement. 'If you can conceive of a Chris­tian Trinity, you can hold the dual concept that I am Fat'ah—but also Hakim.'

Talith, deeply ingrained with religious im­ponderables, accepted this self-assessment by Hakim as a god, yet an equal of his followers. She knew how this attitude would be identified by her psychology professors: mad as a March hare. It had not occurred to her that Hakim was simply cynical. Her professors had psychology as their religion, and Talith had Fat'ah as hers.

Hakim began to play with his new equipment, not waiting for Guerrero's call, half-expecting to see a brief new starbloom on the silhouetted peaks to the west. It was nearly an hour before the news programs, but the girl flicked a finger toward the videotape. He fumbled it into opera­tion and saw that she had edited earlier newscasts into a television festival of the Pueblo hor­ror. Hakim settled back into a chair, note pad ready, and watched his favorite show.

TUESDAY, 28 OCTOBER, 1980:

Like a dry bearing in his head, a thin pure tone pierced Everett's awareness. 'When will I quit hearing that whistle,' he demanded.

The white smock shrugged. 'It goes with the injury,' the physician replied. 'With luck, another day or so. No, don^'t try to sit up, you'll disturb the tubes. Follow orders and you'll be up in a few days, Mr. Everett. You're a big healthy animal; give your system a chance.^'

Everett glanced out the window of the Denver hospital. The fine cloudless day was lost to him, and he to the Rockies. 'Hell of a day to be down.'

'But a very good day to be alive,' the doctor insisted. 'You were blown ten meters, mister. Some others weren't so lucky, including a whole handful of TV people. You have no idea how much outcry the networks are making over those five particular fatalities.'

Thanks to the drugs, Everett did not feel his bruised kidney, the hairline fracture, and other modest rearrangements of his middle-aged anatomy. The Denver people had done very well by him. But there were things they could not do.

Curbing impatience, he said, 'Let's assume I stay put, don't hassle my nurse, and take lunch in approved fashion,' with a glance at the in­travenous feeding apparatus.

The surgeon folded his arms. 'If,' he promp­ted.

'If I can trade the nurse for a staff member in here to—'

'Contraindicated. We're trying to excite regrowth around that flap torn in your tympanum, Mr. Everett. At your age, a blown eardrum is tough to repair. The nurse stays, the FCC goes.'

'My left ear's okay, though. And even a felon gets one telephone call.'

After a judicious pause: 'You've got it.' He spoke to the nurse for a moment, stopped with his hands on the door. 'We're starting you on solid foods, provided you make that one call and no more. We can haggle, too. Agreed?'

'Agreed.' More or less, his tone implied.