Чак Хоган - The Standoff

Banish thought he could discern the small dark blot the throw phone made on the wavy ground in the trees before the cabin. When the sound man looked up again, Banish caught his eye with a head nod. The sound man pulled off his headphones. “What about the external microphones?” Banish said.

The sound man shook his head. “Nothing between the music. Except once around three in the morning, a marshal taking a piss against a tree.”

“My men don’t piss on duty,” Fagin said.

Banish turned slowly, unimpressed by theatrics. Fagin was standing outside the open van door in full uniform minus his ball cap a camouflage bandanna wrapped tightly around his hard black head.

“Mighty big squirrels, then,” said the sound man in his Virginian accent.

Fagin nodded. “Must fucking be.” He stood with his big arms crossed, sizing up both of them. He looked as though he had had a shower. “Beautiful Montana morning,” he said, eyes cool and bright. There was something about Fagin that was always coiled.

“Actually,” the sound man said, turning more in his chair, “there was one strange thing overnight. A growling sound.”

Banish said, “What do you mean?”

“Not from inside the cabin — out there in the no-man’s-land. Every once in a while. Guttural noises, deep and fierce.”

“Coyotes,” Fagin said. “Bloodthirsty sons of bitches. My men see them stalking the perimeter at night through the trees. Yellow fucking eyes, and stealthy. It’s the dog meat. Music doesn’t scare them anymore.”

Fagin’s voice trailed off slightly at the end, and then his entire countenance gradually changed, his sharp eyes showing just a touch of vacancy. Then he frowned. He was receiving a transmission in his ear.

He looked up. “Where the fuck’s Perkins?”

“With the press,” Banish said. “Up there.” He motioned toward the adjoining peak.

Fagin said, “Fuck.” Then he moved off fast.

Banish turned back around. The sound man was looking at him, but Banish shrugged mildly. Delegation was another part of command “Put me through,” Banish said, lifting the handset off its hook.

The sound man readjusted his headphones, then cut the music with a flip of a switch, cueing Banish to begin.

Banish said flatly, “This is Special Agent Bob Watson.” He was watching the cabin on the wavy monitor, the dark blot of the orphan telephone. “Your cabin is completely surrounded. There is no chance for escape...”

HUDDLESTON Mont.” Aug. 7 — Federal authorities obtained a murder warrant yesterday against fugitive Glenn Alien Ables in the shooting death of Deputy U.S. Marshal Stanley Bascombe.

FBI agents yesterday continued to surround Ables’s remote mountaintop cabin in a tense standoff, wary that a full-scale assault could endanger the lives of the five children living inside.

Ables was indicted two years ago on federal weapons charges. Bascombe was killed during a gun battle touched off when a family dog picked up the scent of four U.S. Marshals conducting what has been described as a routine surveillance in a ravine below Ables’s cabin, according to authorities.

Bascombe’s body was flown home to Maryland two days ago. He will be eulogized at a service today at St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore by E. Walter Leveralt, Director of the U.S. Marshals Service.

Ables, a notorious white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klansman, has been charged with firing the shot that killed Bascombe. Charles Mellis, 29, Ables’s brother-in-law and one of four other relatives also hiding out in the cabin, faces a lesser charge of assault on a federal agent.

Authorities reportedly have received no response from the cabin since the initial shooting. They continued yesterday the tense and prolonged process of attempting to lure Ables out of the cabin. “This is not a routine arrest,” said Frank Spona, spokesman for the FBI in Washington, D.C. “We will exhaust every possible means we believe will effect a peaceful resolution.”

Ables has vowed not to be taken alive.

[The fifth day of the standoff was marked by mounting tension and swirling rumors, according to the Associated Press.

[A bizarre scene unfolded early yesterday as members of the elite U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group arrested five heavily armed men on a mountain road leading to a high ridge overlooking both Ables’s secluded cabin and the federal command post. Marshals, who described the young men as members of a neo-Nazi skinhead sect known as The Truth, stopped the Jeep and confiscated at least eight semiautomatic rifles without incident.

[The five men had swastikas painted on their faces, according to eyewitnesses. A banner proclaiming “Great White Revolution” was also recovered.

[Also yesterday, a Helena television station, without identifying its sources, reported that authorities had previously cut the eleven-member family’s water supply. Authorities have said that such action would be routine, although they have denied several other media reports, including one broadcast that tear gas canisters had been launched at Ables’s cabin.

[“We have purposefully and patiently taken no aggressive action,” said Reginald Perkins, Special Agent in Charge of the Butte, Montana, FBI Field Office, in the first FBI briefing at Paradise Ridge. “The critical factor in this situation is that there are juveniles in the residence.”

[Authorities denied that Ables’s continued lawlessness showed ineptitude on their part.

[“I see no embarrassment,” said Perkins. “This whole prolonged procedure shows only caring on the part of the government. The situation right now is that we care more about the children than Mr. Ables does, and this is a shame.”

[Authorities have said they are unsure how many weapons Ables may have stockpiled in the cabin, though it is widely known that his wife and children, ranging in age from 18 months to 14 years, regularly practice target shooting in the area.

[“We are prepared to face an arsenal,” Perkins said.

[Perkins also said he has no way of knowing how long the standoff will continue. According to the Associated Press, it was not immediately clear whether he was acting as the government’s chief negotiator.]

Authorities have established a federal command post on the mountain consisting of at least nine tents, a fleet of military vehicles, several U-Haul trucks, a fire truck, helicopters, and hundreds of police and support personnel. The standoff includes agents of the FBI and the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, U.S. Marshals Service deputies, the Montana State Police, the local Border County Sheriff’s Department, and members of the Huddleston town police.

The duration of the siege has done nothing to abate the groundswell of support for Ables in and around this tiny Northwestern hamlet. Local residents, members of various Christian Identity sects, neo-Nazis from neighboring states, and thrill-seekers from all across the country continue to gather daily at the police barricade, heckling vehicles leaving the scene and local police officers posted on the bridge, and occasionally making racist remarks or chanting pro-Aryan slogans.

Ables and his family moved to this remote northern Montana community from Chicago several years ago. The area is not far from the headquarters of the Church of Christian White Aryan Resistance (WAR), considered to be one of the largest and most active white supremacist organizations in the United States. A delegation of that group late yesterday delivered hate literature to the police barricade at the foot of Paradise Mountain.

Ables has previously denied any association with WAR.

Through it all, Ables, 41, has gone from being a religious and racial extremist to a folk hero among his neighbors. Residents help by delivering mail and groceries up to the fugitive’s cabin, which has no electricity or telephone service.