Чак Хоган - The Standoff

“Ables is the man you ought to be concerned with,” he said.

The sheriff seemed almost not to care, but Brian realized he had played it badly, and that if he had turned back and looked at the sheriff right off, he’d probably have seen him surprised or curious or worried or whatever. Brian had to believe that was true. This was the Federal Bureau of Investigation taking a personal interest here.

“So,” Sheriff Blood said. “How does it feel being a bachelor again?”

Shit. Brian quickly fished out his ring and pushed it back onto his finger. “You won’t say anything to the feds,” he half-asked.

The sheriff dropped his hands deep into his coat pockets, a stern look on his face. “How’s Leslie getting by?”

Shit again. “To tell the truth,” Brian said, knowing how much it sounded like an excuse, “I haven’t been able to get away to call.”

Now the sheriff was angry. Brian knew that he had lost a wife a few years back, to cancer or something, but it was nothing he had ever spoken of, because they didn’t have that kind of relationship. But maybe that was why it always seemed that Brian’s marriage and Leslie’s pregnant condition were so much on the sheriff’s mind. He drew his hand out of his pocket and handed Brian a small ring of keys.

“You go call her from my car,” he directed.

Brian nodded and went away and did just that.

[PARASIEGE, p. 23]

SA Banish first entered the command tent that day at approximately 11:00 hrs. SA Coyle, operating in her new capacity as directed by SAC Perkins, caught up with SA Banish halfway to his office. The conversation was brief.

SA COYLE: Two more SAs came in from the Bureau overnight, sir. Behavioral Sciences. They’re working up a psychological profile of Ables.

SA BANISH: Fine. Have them chart me his horoscope too.

SA COYLE: And the ATF agents have arrived.

SA Banish became distracted at this point. He was staring at a nearby utility refrigerator stocked with fruit and bottled water for the support personnel. SA Coyle determined that a six-pack of Pabst Blue Ribbon beer set on top of the unit was the focus of SA Banish’s interest. SA Coyle advised that item had been delivered by a local physician. She advised that the beverage containers had been tampered with and a narcotic suppressant introduced. She advised that they were being kept on hand in the event that alcoholic beverages were requested by Ables.

SA Banish directed that the item in question be removed immediately from the command tent. He then proceeded without explanation into his office.

Banish sat behind the bound reports and files stacked on his desk and watched the two casually suited agents of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms seated across from him. The FBI and ATF operated under similar charters and therefore often found themselves bumping into each other. The press frequently billed them as rivals, but that was inaccurate: the FBI’s annual budget far outreached ATF’s $265 million, thereby eliminating any basis for equitable comparison. The real source of interagency contention was procedural. The ATF thought of themselves as cowboys; the FBI, lawmen.

Jurisdictions overlap and frustrate. The FBI and the U.S. Marshals Service are both divisions of the Justice Department. ATF is Treasury. It was ATF that, acting on independent information involving weapons and explosives trafficking, carried out the original sting operation which netted Ables. When Ables defaulted on his scheduled court appearance, he forfeited his surety, the cabin, and was declared a federal fugitive. Responsibility for his recapture then shifted to the Marshals Service. The murder of a federal agent and the development of a siege situation moved the marker a third and final time, to the FBI. There was no higher domestic law enforcement authority.

Both sides were being professionally courteous on this case, and ATF had so far been forthcoming. Banish did not know if the reason was internal pressure, media heat, or quiet influence from the long reach of the U.S. Attorney General’s Office, nor did he care. The Spokane agents seated across his desk, Riga and Crimson, did not immediately impress him. Riga’s broad musculature overcompensated for his short stature. Crimson was quieter, less ethnic, more helpful.

Riga explained that he had shaved off his mustache and all his hair at the time of the sting in order to fill the role. “We were White Aryan Resistance members up from Nevada doing a buy at a road-house just a few miles from here, a skinhead bar called the Bunker. It was a prearranged meet set up by our confidential informant inside the WAR compound. Simple paint-by-numbers. Ables joined us at a booth, we brokered the deal, paid in cash, then followed him out to the parking lot and received the merchandise.”

Banish said, “He had the guns with him?”

“In his truck. Said he was in a rush. It cost him.”

“No explosives?”

“Not this time. You remember Miles City?”

Banish nodded. A few years before, a homemade bomb had exploded overnight in an office building that shared a common wall with the Miles City, Montana, FBI Resident Agency.

Riga said, “They never traced the chemicals, but the detonators were definitely his. He’s an electronics freak.”

Banish said, “Did he resist?”

“No. Grinning, even. Wouldn’t go along with Miranda, though. “Do you understand these rights as I have read them?” Said he didn’t. Wouldn’t comply.” Riga sat back and crossed his legs. “Just being a Nazi prick.”

Banish was jotting this down. “What was the final haul?”

Riga said, “One.”

Banish scribbled his notes. “One crate.”

“One gun.”

Banish stopped writing. He looked at what he had written, looked up at the both of them. “One gun,” he said.

Riga smoothed out his thickly halved mustache. “A Beretta Model 12 submachine gun. Forty-round magazine. Fires two 9-millimeter rounds per second. Effective range of more than two hundred yards.”

Banish said, “You took him down for one piece.”

Crimson leaned forward in his chair. “It’s a terrorist weapon, popular in South America and the Middle East. How he got it is another question, but that’s no cap toy. We know he’s connected. He sold a full gross to The Truth just six months before we nailed him. That’s confirmed.”

“Then why didn’t you get more?”

“It was a virgin meet. He was feeling us out.”

“Why didn’t you ride him?”

“Our informant advised no. Ables only deals with Aryans. Our cover story was too thin to ride out a long relationship.”

Banish just nodded. He was taking a long, burning look around his small office, fighting off some of the same dizziness he had felt when he saw the Pabst. Again he had the sensation, like a farmer stamping out locusts, that things were getting away from him.

So it had been a headline bust. Taking guns away from white hate groups always made the national wires. Must have been nearing budget appropriations time at Treasury. State highway patrolmen refer to it as “getting their period,” the rush to meet citation quotas at the end of each month. Every agency was susceptible. Every branch of law enforcement had numbers to crunch.

Banish wanted to invite Riga and Crimson outside. He wanted to show them how their one-gun pinch was working out. But it was all bullshit. Because the past didn’t matter. A federal marshal was dead. There were criminals and hostages and lawmen all over the mountain, and the welfare of each and every one of them ultimately fell onto Banish’s shoulders. Mitigating circumstances equaled hallway chatter, and Banish put it right out of his mind. He would not allow himself to be dissuaded or distracted from doing his job.