Чак Хоган - The Standoff

Again, SA Banish’s judgment and competence were called into question. The near success of a terrorist assault on the federal staging area went all but ignored, while overworked agents accused of minor logistic transgressions were promptly and publicly disciplined.

Following the extremist incident on the adjoining mountain, SA Banish received a local county sheriff in private conference, then placed a long-distance telephone call which, per SA Banish’s order, went unmonitored. This accounts for the three-minute tape lapse as reported by investigators. Directly following that conversation, SA Banish departed the command tent without informing SA Coyle of his destination. It is presumed that he withdrew to his private trailer. He did not return to the command tent for a matter of hours.

At dinnertime Sheriff Blood was eating his tin plate serving of meatloaf and rice at a picnic table set apart from the long bench rows of off-duty marshals and agents hungrily chowing down. He was closer to the marshals’ row, and the men’s displeasure there was apparent. They looked ragged, first of all, as four days of mountain living will do to men accustomed to the city. Even their short-clipped haircuts looked bushy. There are itches you get from mountains that bugs are only a part of, to the point where even Blood himself was feeling a little dusty. He had been living out of the overnight pack he regularly kept with his fishing gear in the back of his Bronco.

So there was that, the griminess settling into pores used to regular and thorough washing, which is why mountain men always rub their arms as though to stay warm. Then there was the aggravation of it all: a prolonged staring match with a man who wouldn’t blink, who wouldn’t even open his eyes, a criminal who was so close they could just about spit on him without taking a running start. The feeling that they were being shown up, that this man, this criminal, was enjoying some dark chuckling in his cabin at their expense. It was obvious to any that these were proud men who did not take affronts kindly. These were men not normally thumbed at. In this you could see the reason that the object of their animosity was starting, like five-day-old cream, to turn.

The top ranks were growing antsy too. Blood was near enough to the black van earlier in the day to hear Banish and Fagin and the sound man entertaining potential strategies. The sound man suggested “insinuating” a listening device into the cabin by way of the chimney, but Banish dismissed it, citing Ables’s background in electronics. Then Fagin pushed hard for some sort of gas attack, which Banish rejected as well, saying that the Ables family might have gas masks themselves and, if so, the agents and marshals going in would be facing a slaughter. Banish shot down each proposal similarly, with stubborn reason, and there was nothing Fagin or the sound man could do to change his mind.

Now it was that guard-changing time of day, the period just before dusk when the moon rises high and fat across from the setting sun and things don’t seem quite as they should. There was a nip in the air, but it was humid enough still and the bugs came fierce. Brian Kearney appeared with a tin plate and plunked it down across from Blood, his back to the marshals’ bench, the rookie unusually quiet and even serious, not saying hello, not given to his normal idle chatter. He ate purposefully and glumly, as though he had deep troubles. He likely was stewing about the way the Mellis family was being treated down below. Blood drew him out only once, about bees, after shooing a yellow jacket off his food.

“I saw a man stung to death once,” Kearney said. “In basic training. He was on grounds keeping duty, up on a cherry picker pruning trees, and I guess he must have hit on a hive, because by the time he got down he was completely covered in them. It was a swarm. He was thrashing around and running, I think even trying to scream, and there was that mad droning noise you’d expect. None of us knew what to do. We went and kind of pushed him with poles into a pond right by there, thinking the water would help, but it didn’t. I thought a lot about that afterward. What it must have been like to be covered with those bees — they were frenzied — all yellow and black and furry, driving their stingers into him one after the other, and then him going like that into the water. I wonder if he even knew what was happening to him. If he knew why we were all pushing and kicking at him and being so rough.”

Blood said, “That’s some ugly death.”

Kearney was looking down at the table. “Stung more than a thousand times. I never killed a bee since. I know they don’t hold grudges, but at the time it seemed like payback, it truly did.”

“You mean to say, nature took a hand.”

Kearney barely nodded. “And he was a good kid too, he didn’t deserve it. A skinny kid. No one deserved that.”

Blood was surprised by the hue of Kearney’s thoughts. Then they were both distracted by a thick round of laughter from the marshals’ bench. A minor uproar, but it was dark laughter, the kind that conics at someone else’s expense. The kind that sets you off listening for more. Part of it is the curiosity, the way a barking dog makes you turn on the lights at night. And part of it is the little kid inside that wants to know whether or not they’re laughing at you. Blood consciously ignored their comments and monitored them at the same time.

“The man is incompetent,” he heard one of them say behind Kearney.

“He’s a screw up, I think. He don’t know what the hell he’s doing.”

“He’s just stalling for time is all.”

“I heard his last negotiation went bad.”

Blood watched Kearney stiffen across the table. The rookie’s shoulders broadened and thin mists of breath curled out of his mouth. Blood looked him in the eye and there was an acknowledgment without gesture, and then they were both looking at each other and plainly listening.

Another marshal said, “What do you mean?”

“I mean deaths. Hostage deaths. Him blowing the whole thing.”

“You gotta be shitting.”

Then something Blood couldn’t quite hear. Then:

“I hear he drinks.”

“Get the fuck out.”

“No, wait,” said a new voice, indignant. “I seen him taking brew away from some state troopers today.”

Kearney’s eyes started to glow.

“Probably got into his private cabinet.”

“Son of a bitch.”

“The selfish bastard.”

Kearney put down his fork. He placed his hands flat on the tabletop and made as though he was going to stand. Blood rose just slightly ahead of him, grasping his wrist.

“Let it go,” Blood told him. “Not your fight.”

It was just a few marshals talking. All were listening, but most of them probably only because they had to, because it was their necks on the line, not because they enjoyed gossip or wanted to hear. There was one talker who seemed to be the ringleader and Blood picked him out from among the others, set back from the bench, holding court. Blood looked around and saw Perkins too, hanging off to one side but well within listening range, not busying himself, not even moving, not doing a damn thing.

Kearney was glowering. To him it was something more than blatant disrespect, beyond outright offense.

“I heard they couldn’t can him, so they stuck him out in some dry prairie town where he wouldn’t hurt no one. They buried the fucking guy.”

“Then what the hell’s he doing mixed up in this?”

“Good question. A good fucking question.”

Another new voice, doubting. “How do you say you know all this?”

But over him, someone else snapping his fingers in emphasis, rising to the emotion. “This guy could go at any minute—”