Brian Mcgrory - Dead Line

And probably not the last, either, the way this night was going. I replied, “Understood. Now tell me what you mean by the FBI is trying to kill you.”

“They want me dead because of what I know,” he said, low and hoarse, nervous.

I was about to ask the obvious follow-up question, when a voice magnified by a megahorn called out, “Federal agents with a warrant. Drop all your weapons, turn on all lights, and proceed into the clearing.”

It was familiar, that voice, though maybe it’s because it sounded like every other magnified police voice I’ve ever heard on TV. Still, I believed it was Tom Jankle. I’ll admit with a slight amount of shame that I was feeling slightly torn. Yes, Jankle would make an arrest, and I’d still be at the forefront of a fantastic story, but then I’d never properly hear what it was that Toby Harkins wanted to say.

So I asked the question, in something just north of a whisper, “What do you know?”

His eyes peered out across the expanse, looking, wondering, calculating. That’s when a spotlight that had been probing through the trees paused on us. Someone yelled something indecipherable, and gunfire tore through the air.

Toby dove for the base of a nearby boulder, and so did I. We were shoulder to shoulder, pushing against each other for cover behind the rock, with the sound of bullets tearing at leaves, exploding against the wood of nearby trees, blazing past us through the night air.

After a few seconds of gunfire, silence, followed by Jankle’s voice on the bullhorn again saying, “We have your location. We have you cornered. We’re coming in behind you. Come out, immediately, with your hands well over your head.”

“I’m going,” I whispered to Toby.

“One step and you’re dead,” he said. And he held his gun against my neck, pressing my face against the boulder. Forgive the obvious, but someday, somewhere, a kid is going to ask his father what the phrase “Between a rock and a hard place” means, and my name is going to come up.

“Come out, immediately. We have thirty armed federal agents. We have killed or captured all of your accomplices. Surrender or face the consequences.”

These are not the normal decisions of everyday newspaper reporters, this do-I-want-to-be-shot-in-the-head-while-I-hide-or-in-the-back-when-I-bolt thing.

Do I get the soup or the pasta? Do I take the train to work or drive? Do I go to the gym or head straight home? What I wouldn’t give to be sitting in the University Club bar with Hank and Vinny at this very moment ordering hamburgers and swilling cold beer, and not giving half a damn that it’s all going on my tab. Lou, another round of drinks for all my friends, please.

“Get the fuck out here!”

That was still Jankle, or his soundalike, growing impatient, and obviously profane. I looked at Toby in the dark. We were so close together that I could feel his breath on my skin. We were so close together that I could hear one of our hearts beating, and I wasn’t sure whether it was his or mine.

I nodded to him, as in, now what? He stared back at me, but I couldn’t read the expression, didn’t know what it meant, had no idea where he was going to take this. I was only sure of one true thing: in his mind, he had nothing to lose. He already thought the Feds, for an as still yet unexplained reason, wanted to kill him. All of which put me very far into harm’s way.

Harkins grazed his hand along the gravelly ground and picked up a sizable rock. I braced myself, wondering if he was about to slam it into my head. Instead, he scouted a distant spot on the other side of the clearing and fired the stone in that direction. I mean, come on. That’s the oldest trick in the book—“Look over there,” and they all really do, like something that Sgt. O’Rourke might have tried on F Troop.

But sure enough, the rock plunked against something hard, and immediately, there were multiple bursts of gunfire in that exact direction, the roar filling the air and spreading out amid the black sky and the trees. Toby yanked at my arm, virtually lifting me up off the ground, and the two of us scampered from the edge of the grove of trees to deep within it, running furiously among the sturdy trunks, pounding across the uneven ground, pushing farther and farther into the dark depths.

I’m going to make a confession here. As we ran, his grip loosened, naturally so. His trigger hand was no longer pointed directly at me, because to have done so would have slowed us down considerably. At any point, I believe I could have given his arm something of a karate chop and disappeared into the trees on my own, circled back, and escaped. Risky? Yes. He might have regained composure. He very well may have caught a long look at me before I vanished. He could have shot me. But more likely, not.

And yet I stayed. I stayed because of my curiosity. I stayed out of a sense of duty, not to Toby Harkins or to the FBI or even Hilary Kane, though certainly her more than anyone else. No, I stayed out of duty to the Record’s readers, the good people of Boston, who might never have a better chance to know where the nation’s most wanted fugitive was and what had become his fate. I stayed because I wanted to know, and needed, in turn, to inform.

And a good thing, too, because as we pounded through the forest, our arms in front of our eyes to push back dangling branches, our gaze glued ahead to avoid the thicket of trees, we suddenly found ourselves face-to-face with the law.

Tom Jankle stepped out from behind a tree on the edge of a new clearing. He flicked on a high-powered spotlight and shone it in our eyes. He said, calmly and collectedly, “Freeze and drop your guns or I blow your fucking brains out.”

Toby screeched to a halt. His arm tightened around mine. We were about ten yards away from Jankle, who could see us from behind the light that he was holding far better than we could see him.

Harkins held fast to his gun. He yelled back, “I have a hostage.” First thing I thought was, Jesus Christ, he’s got a hostage. And then it occurred to me in an increasingly uncharacteristic moment of clarity: I was the hostage.

And with that, I went from between that rock and a hard place to quite literally staring down the barrel of my own demise.

I got to thinking, standing there on the edge of that dark forest with Toby Harkins’s sinewy arm wrapped around my neck and his gun pointed at my head, and Tom Jankle standing but ten yards away, his gun pointed in the general direction of my head, that there wasn’t a whole lot of good that was about to come out of this situation.

Suppose, for example, that Harkins shot and killed Jankle. I was the only witness to that act, and I would surely be next on his hit list, and since Toby goes through bullets like Hugh Hefner goes through Viagra, that would probably mark me as an immediate victim. And suppose Toby was right, that the FBI wanted him dead, and that Jankle shot him right there, right then. Again, I would be the only witness, and Jankle might well kill me on the spot, then blame the whole thing on a confused shoot-out obscured by the dark.

I felt little streams of sweat running down my back, chilly in the autumn air. Cool perspiration formed along my forehead. I stood there silently, a little bit frightened, but oddly, far more fascinated, about how this standoff would end. We grow up in this reporting business believing we are always detached, and over the years, having seen colleagues killed and corrupted, I’ve learned otherwise. But even here, with a pair of guns aimed in my general vicinity, I had a naïve, if diminishing air of invincibility.

So I stood and I watched and I wondered.

“Toby, we go back way too far, you and me, to have any bullshit happen now. Put the gun down, and let’s figure out what we’re going to do about this.”