Чак Хоган - The Standoff

The shot echoed sharply off the surrounding mountains. Nice goddamn effect. Fagin watched a phosphorescent green lake spread beneath the drum.

He worked the bolt and sighted the second tank and squeezed again. This one ruptured with a distant hiss and squeal and emptied fast.

Fagin stayed with the Remington, running his sight slowly over the property. A similar piece, a .30–06 Model 70 Winchester, had been his main tour guide in Vietnam. But this new bull barrel was thicker, and floated heavier, cutting down on the kick and holding sight after the shot. A nice solid piece of wood. He liked it. He re gripped the smooth forearm. Worked the bolt. Settled into the cheek piece Banish giving him orders, he thought. He squeezed twice and double-tapped the outhouse door. Two gaping black chunks appeared, reports kicking off and ripping back into the mountains. Banish leaning on small-town police chiefs for intimidation. Cutting down the head man to show how in control he was, the oldest trick in the book. Fucking FBI taking over.

Then he was sighting the cabin itself, the boarded windows and the front door made plain in varying shades of green and black. So fucking easy, he thought. The old mastery coming over him again. In the jungle he had earned the nickname “Spider” because he was the sniper king, ice-cold and patient and super fucking stealthy. His web was whatever range he elected to zero his weapon to, cast out from his camouflaged promontory nest high atop a numbered hill, a rice paddy kill zone of unseen, whispering fucking death. Fifty-six confirmed kills in two tours of duty. A fucking game to him back then, because he was young and had been top-to-bottom reinvented, forever leaving behind the skinny black kid from Arkansas who begged his mother to sign him over to the U.S. Marines on his seventeenth birthday. The dead-on patience and bold stealth of a young black man having to prove himself in a white world burned within him no more. He was fucking proven. People snapped to his attention now.

He squeezed off one more round, ripping a large chuck of stone from the chimney top. He hoped it dropped into their fireplace, freaking out the kids, and Ables heard it rattling down and fucking choked on whatever White Power bullshit he was preaching in there. He hoped it scared them all fucking shitless.

He knew Banish would be counting shots down below. Fagin wanted to be called on the carpet for this. Fucking Banish, he thought, slinging the Remington back over his shoulder and taking up the soaked rope line harness again in the chill mountain night. Fucking Montana.

Banish squeezed the trigger and blew into the bullhorn, testing it. He was kneeling by a thick, wet-smelling pine. The rain had ended overnight and the predawn fog was just now rising off the mountaintop, the sun coming up and cutting through the haze. More than fifty marshals and agents in camouflage jumpsuits and flak vests stood, crouched, or knelt in the trees around him, all heavily armed, all aiming across the forty-yard no-man’s-land of stumps and scattered trees at the dewy mountain cabin.

“Glenn Alien Ables.” Banish’s trained voice sounded robotic through the bullhorn. “This is Special Agent Bob Watson of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. Your cabin is completely surrounded. There is no chance for escape. Listen carefully to my instructions and no one will be hurt. Lay down your weapons and come out one at a time through the front door with your hands empty and up.”

He lowered the bullhorn and eased out the trigger, and waited. The BOLO marshal posted behind him aimed noiselessly. The silence on the mountaintop was profound. Banish pictured the family holed up inside, crouched on the floor beneath the windows, backs to the walls, weapons in hands, hanging on his every word.

The opening speech was very much a formality. Familiar words, recalled like a song lyric from his youth. The past favorite of some forgotten sweetheart. The old routine. He glanced to his right. Fagin was ready in the trees, squatting behind a five-man team of marshals dressed in full riot gear. Banish returned to the bullhorn.

“Occupants of the cabin. Agents of the United States Marshals Service are prepared to deliver to you a telephone. This is not, repeat, not an act of aggression. Any movement or activity from your cabin will be regarded and responded to as a hostile gesture.”

Another moment of pure silence, then Banish lowered the bullhorn and nodded across to Fagin, who hand-signaled his group to go. The five-man procedure was brief and efficient. A pair of marshals in black fatigues fronted the team with riot shields, concussion grenades held at the ready in their free hands. A second pair crouch-walked directly behind, M-21s braced against their shoulders, sighting the cabin through the plexi face shields hanging off their helmets. The point man himself was obscured in the middle.

The team advanced in fits and starts. The drop target was fifteen yards before the porch steps. Banish saw Fagin moving ahead to the edge of the no-man’s-land, his .44 down at his side. His lips were moving, issuing orders through the radio on his shoulder. Even at that distance, Banish could see the thin black ribbon stripe across Fagin’s chest badge, the same as on the BOLO sharpshooter positioned above Banish’s head. The sharpshooter was stiffening now, and reaiming.

The team had stopped at the target and were beginning their withdrawal. The cabin showed no sign of life as the ten-legged creature backed away through the trees as slowly and as cautiously as it had approached, past the first twisted dog carcass, past the second, finally reentering the thickened wood where Fagin stood covering them from behind. Banish felt the shoulder of the sharpshooter above him drop ever so slightly.

The throw phone, contained in a plain-looking, hard black plastic carrying case, waterproof and temperature-resistant, sat quietly fifteen yards before the porch.

Banish took up the bullhorn again. “Glenn Alien Ables. The telephone has been delivered to you. Your physical safety and the safety of your wife and family and relatives are our primary concern. You have my word that you will be allowed to retrieve this portable telephone without harm.” He paused a moment, taking a preliminary read of the situation, considering his final words. “I know we can reach an acceptable and mutually dignified solution.”

He lowered the bullhorn. Again the woods waited for the cabin.

Nothing. The front door remained shut. No movement or reaction or acknowledgment.

It flashed through Banish’s head then that they were already dead in there. That Ables had taken a knife or whatever was handiest and had already massacred the entire family. He saw the death masks of the slaughtered children and the slumped arrangement of their bodies and the bloody defensive marks on their hands and the staring eyes and the gore.

It was a while before Banish released his grip on the bullhorn. He stood then and said to the BOLO behind the tree next to him, “Tell your CO to clear everyone back another ten yards. I want to make it easy for the suspect. Let’s give him some room.”

Sheriff Blood was leaning against his Bronco holding a Styro-foam cup of Red Cross coffee, which was serviceable in a caffeinated way but lacked the sweetness and texture of Marylene’s time-honored brew. He had called her on the police radio first thing that morning and invited her to take a few days off, as he did not think he would be coming in at all the rest of the week. This forecast had required no special divining on his part.

A military tank rolled past him across the clearing. A full-blown U.S. Army tank. It had been brought in on a rumbling flatbed trailer, backed down off a ramp, and loosed to the feds. It lumbered past him now, toward the two National Guard helicopters in the rear. The feds pointed these things around the clearing like Tarzan with his elephants.