Predator
by Henry Charles Mishkoff

The Confrontation I called in for backup, and this time the call actually went through. For all the good it did me. I told Darlene that I didn't want anything heavy, no swat team rappelling down from choppers, I just wanted another agent on hand to watch my back, just in case. "I'll pass it along," Darlene said, sounding none too happy, probably as a result of pulling phone duty on the most profoundly important day of her career. "But I've got to tell you," she added, "it could be a while before anybody frees up." If a situation is troubling enough for you to call for backup, protocol says that, unless there's imminent danger of a suspect inflicting bodily harm, you're supposed to wait for that backup to arrive before you go in. So I parked the car in front of the warehouse and started to delve into Rosenberg's dossier. But that lasted for maybe all of ten minutes before I started to get antsy. For all I knew, backup might not arrive for hours, if at all. And this was certainly an extraordinary time that called for extraordinary measures. At least, that's what I kept telling myself as I opened the unmarked door and slipped back into the warehouse. Rosenberg was alone at the table, sketching furiously. I watched him for a few minutes before he happened to look up and see me. I would describe his reaction as surprised, but not especially concerned. "Detective?" he said, more of a question than a greeting. "You forget something?" "No," I said, "but you did." I might have pointed out that I was an agent, not a detective, but this didn't seem like the time to get hung up on titles. "You forgot to mention that you were a Muslim." He shrugged. "Didn't seem to have anything to do with what we were talking about," he pointed out. He didn't seem to be the slightest bit upset, or even annoyed. He must have understood the implication of what I was saying, but for some reason he had decided to pretend that he didn't. That worried me, because innocent people typically get angry when they can see that you're about to accuse them of something they didn't do, while guilty people act like they don't notice that anything's wrong until you rub their faces in it. I decided to push a little harder to see if I could put a dent in his composure. "Must have been tough on you growing up," I said. "Jewish father. Arab mother. You probably got nothing but flak from both sides." "You got that right," he agreed pleasantly. "It was hell. I don't think you can possibly imagine how bad it was." "And your father skipping out when you were two? Leaving your mother to raise you all by herself?" I grimaced and shook my head sadly. "I guess that taught her that she couldn't rely on anybody but her own people." "Her own people rejected her because she married my father," Rosenberg said, with just enough emphasis so that I could tell that I was starting to annoy him. "She raised me as a Muslim, but she was hardly..." he searched for a word "...she wasn't a fanatic about it." "So here you are, a Muslim," I said, "and yet you spend all your time designing weapons that kill other Muslims." "I design weapons that kill terrorists," he snapped. I seemed to have had scraped a nerve. "I don't care about their religion. These people kill innocent women and children. They're a disgrace to Islam. They don't deserve to live." "Your weapons kill innocent women and children too," I pointed out. "We call it 'collateral damage,' but these are real people, and they're your people, they haven't done anything wrong, they're just sitting around eating dinner, and then, blam, one of your missiles comes crashing through the roof..." "That wasn't my fault!" He leapt to his feet, knocking over his chair, which tumbled a couple of times with a metallic clatter. "I've seen the videos, we circled that house for three days, we didn't see any kids!" He was shaking, almost crying, a sudden and dramatic change that was even more surprising to me because he was obviously referring to some incident that he assumed I was familiar with. But I was clueless, it was just dumb luck on my part. "And why does it have to be a Muslim?" he shouted. "Somebody kills the President, and you automatically assume that it's a Muslim?" I tried to remain impassive, let him interpret my expression any way he wanted to. "What about the birthers?" he screamed. "Those idiots who say that he wasn't even born in the United States? They don't even think that he's an American! Wouldn't you want to kill the President if you thought he was a foreigner? They show up at his speeches with guns," he sputtered. "Why aren't you rounding them up instead of coming out here and accusing me?" Nobody's accused you of anything, I thought, but he was on a roll, and I decided not to interrupt. "I love my country!" he yelled at me. "What do I have to do to prove it you people?" I had the feeling that I was standing in for all the kids who had ever picked on him at school, for all of the coworkers who had ever doubted his patriotism, for all of the bureaucrats who had ever questioned his loyalty. But as far as I was concerned, that was between him and his shrink, I wasn't there to reassure him, I was there to find out what he knew. And, maybe, what he had done. "What do you want from me?" he screamed. He was waving his arms hysterically, I had the feeling that he'd be advancing on me if there hadn't been a table between us. "Just tell me what you want me to do!" Maybe I was a little paranoid at that point, but when I heard the crunch of a footstep behind me, I just knew that it was Parker and that he was pointing a gun at me. I turned slowly so as not to alarm him, and I saw that I was half-right: Parker had indeed come up behind me, but I was relieved to see that he was unarmed. In fact, he wasn't paying any attention to me at all, he was looking right past me at his partner. "Hey," he said, soothingly, "take it easy, man. Don't...Oh, fuck, no," he said, his tone instantly changing from concerned to horrified. "Put that down," he pleaded, holding his hands up as if ordering his partner to stop doing whatever it was that he was doing. "You're going to get yourself in so much trouble..." I turned slowly back to look at Rosenberg, once again certain that I'd find myself staring down the barrel of a gun. And this time, I was right. "I'm in so much trouble already!" Rosenberg said, sobbing and waving the gun, a disconcerting combination when you're on the receiving end. "Don't you see what's happening? They're going to revoke my security clearance. I won't able to work any more. Then what am I supposed to do?" "Nobody's going to take away your clearance," Parker said. "Tell him." This was directed at me, and I suspected that pointing a gun at a federal agent would indeed lead the DOD to reevaluate Rosenberg's security status, but this didn't seem like the appropriate time to point that out. "That's right," I said, nodding, "this is obviously just a misunderstanding. If you'll put the gun down, we can..." "You're a liar," Rosenberg screamed. "My life is over!" And then he screamed once more, and it was the last thing you ever want to hear when a Muslim is pointing a gun at you. "Allahu akbar!" he yelled, a bloodcurdling cry. I dropped to one knee and went for the gun in my shoulder holster, thankful that I had thought to unbuckle it before I walked into the warehouse. I figured that he would probably get off at least one shot anyway, but he wasn't calm enough to aim well, and he was waving what looked like a Beretta Tomcat, not especially accurate, and not necessarily powerful enough to stop me even if he did hit me. And one round from my Glock 23 would ensure that he wouldn't get off another shot. I remember trying to decide if I should shoot him in the head or go for his heart, but Rosenberg made that decision for me. He went for the head shot. Next [ Predator Home Page | Selected Writings ] ©2010 Henry Charles Mishkoff