“Just be alert.” The advice of law enforcement as it wrestles
with a sniper that has roamed the region of the capital of the
United States for more than a week and kills at will.
Alert to an invisible chunk of lead the size of a 22-caliber
bullet traveling at supersonic speed and arriving well before the
sound of its explosive launching? A missile whose launch point may
be a hundred or more yards distant, in a truck, a van, or under
yonder bushes? Sent by persons entirely unknown and, despite
appeals from authorities elected and appointed, unknowable?
Well, okay. Now about that additional advice. To keep in motion
while out in the open, a zig zag gait would be good, throwing the
sniping scope off. So what if the neighbors think you are drinking
during the day? What are they looking at, anyway? And at the gas
pump (four victims have been slain at service stations) don’t stand
there. If the catch on the pump works, click it and move off. NBC
Correspondent Bob Faw advises going into the station while the
pumping proceeds. He says he does.
While you are zig zagging into the service station, check the
time. If Code Blue remains in effect, you may need I.D. to pick up
the kids who have been locked in their classroom all day. They’ll
be antsy, having been denied any outside recess time. Next PTA
meeting, ask if it is necessary to have all those trees around the
playground. Hell, call the principal on that tonight. Hurry home in
time to catch the next news alert from Chief Moose in Rockville.
Don’t rush. It’ll be fifteen minutes late.
Nothing new? And if there were, he wouldn’t say? It is still a
white box truck. But it is also a white Chevy van with a ladder
rack on top. You saw five white vans on the way home, two with
ladders on top? So did everybody else in the metropolitan area
today and so will they tomorrow. Does motor vehicle registration
have numbers on how many white vans and/or box trucks are
registered in Maryland, Virginia, and the District?
Theories abound. If the perpetrators are two in number, that
shoots the single psychopath theory, but the criminologists are
coming up with some pair killers in our past. Terrorists? They are
that, whatever the cause. But if it is those terrorists
then somehow the implications are more sinister. How about a couple
of guys with regular jobs whose normal business day takes them
around the region in a white truck and they just happen to have an
AR-15 tucked under the back seat and when the opportunity presents
itself … But why? It rivals who in the ruminations of
literally millions. What if there is no white truck, that they are
so numerous that there is always one or two somewhere in the
vicinity of a crime and the eye of a stunned witness records and
remembers it better than the dark sedan that slowly pulls away?
We are counselled to remain calm. Calm, but alert. Ever see a
deer in the woods being calm but alert? To go about our normal
routine, but zig zagging while in the open and taking cover while
pumping gas, and figuring out a substitute for the weekend football
game that won’t be played.
I will be especially alert to that moment when Chief Moose
arrives at the microphones on time and says, “I have good news
…”
