Чак Хоган - The Standoff

He left the lamp, turning in the room, and found himself facing himself in the dark trailer, and suddenly the answer was plain. The mirror he had earlier pulled down off the wall. It had been replaced for Mellis’s brief occupancy. Banish moved to it, silently, buzzing inside, running his fingers down along the smooth plastic frame, then raising the mirror gently an inch or two off the wall.

The homemade device was no larger than his thumbnail, no thicker than three or four coins. It was black and beetle-shaped and attached to the mirror backing with a small patch of regular adhesive tape, its thin, bare antenna wire rising vertically to the top of the frame.

Banish eased the mirror back against the paneled wall and moved to stand in front of it. The prescience of his actions charged him. Everything was falling together now. Ables’s military electronics background. It was the only way the cabin could have known when they were coming.

Banish examined and touched lightly the black powder burn coloring the right side of his face. He ran his fingers through his thick tangle of hair, smoothing it back, then stared deeply into the glass. He recognized that game look, his true command presence. After two long years of slumber. He was his old self once again, full of confidence and cleverness and cold capability; but of self-doubt, and caution, and the cancer of fear — void.

All of a sudden Brian was in the FBI command tent. It was one in the morning but the place was full of activity still, certainly having to do with the shooting that had gone on up at the ridge. The crowd below was worked up, what with the gunshots going off and the helicopters spinning overhead. All Sheriff Blood said when he came down was that Mellis had somehow escaped.

Agent Banish had sent for him specifically. Brian couldn’t think of anything he had done wrong and so was going in blind. The command tent inside was exactly the kind of highly charged place he expected it to be. He went in past the agents behind desks, past a glowing wall-sized diagram map that had to be seen to be believed, and past Agent Perkins, sitting on the edge of a desk, staring up at the tent ceiling and speaking into a telephone. Agent Perkins called his wife “honey.” He was telling her that he was going to be gone a few more days at least.

Brian reached the dark rear of the tent where there was light coming from under a section of canvas fold. He set himself and straightened up. There was nothing on the canvas door, no name and no bell to push or solid place to knock, so he edged the flap open a bit and stuck his head in.

Agent Banish was sitting back in his chair behind a desk across the small office. He was talking into a speaker telephone, one of those “hands-off” jobs. He saw Brian and nodded and motioned for him to come inside.

It looked as though there had been a fight. Brian moved ahead, nudging aside some important-looking papers with his shoe toe to make a clear space of floor to stand on. The upper right side of Agent Banish’s face was singed black, as though he had been burned with something. Still, though, he seemed to be at ease talking to the man on the other end of the telephone.

Agent Banish was saying, “No, Sal. Nothing from the cabin since.”

“Damn shame, Jack,” said Sal, the volume low, his voice sounding mechanical through the speaker box. “What would you say, then? Would you say we got a Rambo on our hands?”

“I would say we need to be ready for anything here, Sal. Hostage Rescue airborne yet?”

“They’ll be there, ready for deploy, by oh-nine-hundred your time. Get them in tight around the cabin and fast. Keep those trigger-happy marshals away. It’s big now, Jack — but you know that. Just get him on the phone. Get him talking. We’re all rooting for you back here.”

Agent Banish nodded and said, “I know you are.”

He sat forward and punched a button and hung up. “Kearney,” he said, standing and coming around his desk. “Come ahead.”

Brian nodded politely but couldn’t go any farther without clearing himself a path first. Agent Banish crossed to him instead, stepping boldly over the papers.

“What happened to your face?” said Brian.

Agent Banish waved at his own cheek. “Should work itself out of the skin in a couple of days. How’s the situation down at the bridge?”

“Edgy, sir. Tense. They want to know what happened up there.”

He nodded. “A mix-up,” he said, “but no time to go into it right now.” Whatever did happen seemed not very important. Agent Banish got right to the point. “I called you up here because there’s something I need you to do.”

Brian nodded. “Yes, sir,” he said, buoyed.

“Something I need you to do for me.”

Brian strengthened his posture. “Whatever you say, sir.”

Agent Banish studied his face, then nodded once with a dry kind of satisfied certainty. “Good,” he said. He reached into his pants pocket and pulled out a twenty-dollar bill. “A bottle of whiskey. Whatever brand you can find around here. Royal Canadian, I guess.”

He pressed the bill into Brian’s hand. Brian stood there, looking at the twenty, then looking at Agent Banish again. Brian saw that he was different now somehow. His composure, his expression, the way he was talking. The sharp blue eyes he was holding Brian with.

“It’s the middle of the night, sir,” Brian said.

Agent Banish nodded coldly. “I figured you would know the area.”

This was why he had called Brian in. To run an errand. Brian looked into the agent’s eyes, watching him trying to act official and uncaring. Brian realized that those marshals had been right. Agent Banish’s face held the pose, but there was clear, devious desperation in his eyes. He was starting to sweat a little.

“Agent Banish, I don’t think—”

“Take one of the government cars,” he said, talking over Brian. “You’ll get through the crowd more easily.”

Brian was trapped. He tried to come up with something to say, but Agent Banish sucked the will right out of him.

“When you get back,” the agent continued, “we may be needing another man up here in the command tent. Someone who’s proven himself to be responsible.”

Brian felt a draft run over him. It was like a chill feeling of collapse. Those marshals had been dead-on right and it was killing Brian, standing there in front of Agent Banish. He knew what was being said. Agent Banish was dangling everything he wanted right in front of his face. Either the agent had guessed it somehow, or he was able to open Brian up like a rotten ear of corn and look right into him and see it. Brian couldn’t even look Agent Banish in the eye, but the agent didn’t seem to care. When Brian swallowed and felt himself wince, he knew that Agent Banish could see whatever sour ambition there was to see in his crushed face. Here was the secret of this agent’s strange power. Bargaining and manipulation. His treating Brian like a nothing. It made Brian want to do this thing for him and be recognized. There wasn’t anything about it that was fair or right, but it was Brian’s big chance and he was signing off on the dotted line by just nodding to the agent there in his office. Agent Banish wanted a bottle of whiskey. Brian saw a long, cold ride ahead of him.

As directed, Blood entered with Deke, up from the front lines. The leg felt pretty good now and Blood limped only slightly. Banish was already there waiting for them. He was seated at the rectangular table in front, his bent right elbow on the tabletop, cheek and chin resting in his hand. He was in profile, sitting back, looking impassively across the tent at the blank inside of the left canvas wall.