Чак Хоган - The Standoff

“That’s not half of it. He did time in a fucking hospital. That’s right — but not just any hospital either.”

Kearney’s eyes were burning right through Blood.

Reactions now. Another voice. “The fuck you talking about?”

“I’m telling you, this guy’s three bricks short, he’s crazy—”

Kearney shot upright. Before Blood could stop him, he had turned and stepped over the seat bench and was now facing the wide double row of U.S. Marshals. Blood rose behind him.

“Who said that?” Kearney said. His fists were at his sides.

The marshals all stopped and looked over at him. Nobody said anything, but Kearney must have picked out the ringleader right off, probably by the slant of the man’s grin.

“Get up,” Kearney said.

The marshal just kept grinning at first and looking around at all the others. None of them grinned back. Most were still looking over at Kearney. The marshal sat a bit straighter then, his grin leveling out as he met Kearney’s stare, but still he said nothing.

“Get up,” Kearney said, voice louder now, nearly menacing.

Blood could tell that Kearney was shaking, but not from fear. He had never seen him like this. This happy-go-lucky kid. Built like a baseball player, and tall, summoning shoulders to fill out his police uniform, and the marshal was seeing this now too.

Blood looked again over at Perkins. He was pretending to be unaware of what was happening. Fagin had entered the bench area from the side, looking on with interest.

The ringleader shrugged up at Kearney. “What’s your problem?” he said.

Kearney said, “Get up.”

The marshal stood then. He had no other choice. He was grinning at being called out, making as much a joke of it as he could. “What?” he continued, half-mocking. Only the marshals’ table now separated them. “What’s it to you?”

The men sitting near him pulled gradually away, to get a better view and also to distance themselves. They were going to let this happen. The marshal sensed this and looked around.

“What do you think this here is?” he said to Kearney.

Kearney said, “I’m calling you a liar.”

“Brian,” Blood said behind him.

“I mean, what the hell do you care,” the marshal continued, “what FBI agent drinks and which one don’t? What the hell are you? Some hick-town traffic cop.”

Kearney’s breath was swirling around his head. His voice was somebody else’s now. “Take back what you said, or I’ll take it back from you.”

The marshal tried to rally his mates. “What the hell is this Okie talking about?”

Kearney was remarkably fast crashing over the table to get to the marshal. The others all leapt to their feet but not one interfered. Kearney grabbed the man by the front of his uniform and in one rough move propelled him back against the next parallel table, where the FBI agents quickly cleared out of the way. Blood hurried up and over his own table after them.

Kearney had stopped there, leaning over the marshal bent backward and flat across the tabletop.

“You take it back,” he said, breathing hard.

Blood saw the marshal reaching behind him for a glass bottle of ketchup. Blood started toward them fast, but before he could get there Fagin was standing between the two men.

Fagin backed Kearney off with one flat hand and allowed his marshal to get to his feet. The bottle remained on the table. “I like a good fucking brawl as much as the next guy,” Fagin announced. “But not here, and not now.”

The marshal said, “Sir, you—”

Fagin cut him off. “Dinner’s over. Everybody break it up, and I want my over nights up and reporting for duty ASAP.”

Kearney started away then, fast. Fagin turned and watched him go. Then he noticed Blood looking across at him. “What the fuck was that all about?” Fagin said. But Blood looked into the man’s eyes and saw that he knew.

Brian Kearney walked for a while, and finally when he knew where he was, the high lamps were on and cutting into the twilight falling over the clearing, and he was standing in front of the command tent. He didn’t think he’d planned on going there, but now that he was there he realized he probably had. He wanted to warn Agent Banish somehow. He wanted to warn him that lies were being spread. But as soon as Brian reached the tent, he realized that he had nothing to say. And then he felt even worse. He looked around at the lit clearing and had to ask himself what it was all for. He felt about two inches tall and half as powerful. Right about then, Agent Banish stepped out of the tent in front of him.

Agent Banish was wearing a blue FBI jacket and had a radio in his hand. He looked at Brian strangely, as though he didn’t know where he had come from, or maybe Brian had interrupted a train of thought. “What is it?” Agent Banish said.

Brian couldn’t even shake his head. He stood there kind of searching Agent Banish’s face, studying it for imperfections. It was deep-creased and shadowed, and bruised-looking under the eyes, and his lips were chapped. His shirt collar was sagged and rumpled, and he looked pale, even old. But his chin and cheeks were shaved, and the eyes themselves seemed clear. He was about to say something else, because Brian was paralyzed and simply could not speak, but then like a cat hearing something in the walls, Agent Banish became distracted. He started to glance around the clearing.

Brian looked too. He picked up on the nearby agents touching their ears and moving around, reacting. People starting to scatter throughout the gloomy clearing. Voices being raised.

Agent Banish turned on his radio. “Fagin,” he said into it.

After a moment the radio crackled with Marshal Fagin’s voice. “We have movement.”

Agent Banish’s mouth tightened. “The phone?”

“Negative. Southeast side of the compound. Escapees. Three.”

Agent Banish said, “Presume complicity. Get up there and bring them in separately and quietly.”

He switched off the radio and started away at a brisk pace across the clearing. Brian stood there just long enough to watch him disappear, striding hard into the shadows falling between two high lights, then hurried over to a Jeep to get back down as fast as he could to his assigned post. Things were finally starting to happen, and he knew now that Agent Banish was in full control.

Perkins was already at the sound truck when Banish arrived. The sound man was seated in front of the monitor bank. Banish climbed inside. His blood was pumping again.

On the monitor showing the artificially bright eastern angle of the mountaintop, a team of marshals was rough-searching three people lying prone on the ground.

Perkins said, “The Newlands and Charles Mellis.”

“Escaped or released?”

The sound man said with a shrug, “They just walked out.”

Banish watched the monitor a moment longer. “Keep all three separated,” he said to Perkins. “Debrief them before you feed them. Read them their rights, then get everything down on tape. Cover it with your 302 and see me after. I want observations and impressions. Then call the U.S. Attorneys. They’ll need statements and so on.”

Perkins was nodding, taking it all in. “Wait,” he said. “We have only two holding tents.”

Banish acknowledged this with a frown. “All right,” he said. “Clear the personal effects out of my trailer. Put Mellis in there and assign two marshals to guard it full-time.” He raised his radio then. “Fagin. Anything?”

Fagin’s voice came back from the mountaintop. “Negative.”

Banish nodded. He said, “Keep watching.”