Чак Хоган: The Standoff

Haley looked at him. “I suppose, then,” he said, “you got a plan.”

A mild challenge from Haley, but Blood had no stomach for it. Haley was a fifty-year-old police sergeant who had pretended to be asleep in the backseat of a car in order to encourage a private conversation. He was a patsy for the chief. Blood thought things over, watching Kearney size up the rest of the mountain — a good mile’s hike up a steep grade through high trees.

Blood said, “Maybe something will come to me on the way up.”

Haley nodded and shut the trunk and took the 12-gauge with him, and they started around the car toward the edge of the woods until a voice said, “Hold it.”

At first Blood wasn’t even sure what he had heard. The voice seemed to come from the trees at the foot of the mountain off to their left. It stopped them all, the surprise of it. The tone wasn’t particularly commanding, but it was strange. Only darkness beyond the light shafts of the first few rows of oak, like a throat beyond long brown teeth.

“Ables?” Blood said loudly.

A short pause, then the voice again. Forceful, not low. “Hold it right there.”

Blood said, “Who is that? Identify yourself.”

A second voice then, from their right. “Turn around, get back in your car, and drive on.”

Two voices. Blood saw no one. He half-turned and checked behind him. Haley was holding the shotgun out in front, not aimed, about chest-high. Kearney was glancing right to left, his hand lightly on the butt of his still-holstered gun. There was no cover at all in the clearing except for the cruiser.

Blood turned back. He said to the trees, “Now hold on in there. This is Sheriff Leonard M. Blood. I am here on official county business, but it’s nothing that can’t be talked over civilly. Who is that in there? Am I speaking to Glenn Ables?”

The first voice said, “Get back in your car and drive on.”

Blood took a short step forward, not being brave or foolish, but annoyed now, not used to being ordered. He unfolded the legal notice and held it up so as to be seen. “Just hold on in there now,” he said. “This here is the sheriff and I’ve got two police officers with me. Now there’s two ways of doing this. There’s the hard way, and then there’s—”

The first shot cracked out of nowhere and nearly tore the notice from his hands. The second shot slit the air behind him, and Haley yelped and collapsed.

Blood turned fast. Haley’s left knee was shattered. He was crumpled onto the ground and bleeding. The third shot struck Kearney’s hip radio, propelling the rookie backward and down.

Blood scrambled sliding over the cruiser hood, falling to the hard ground behind. He reached around the front bumper for Kearney, who didn’t know he wasn’t wounded yet, grabbing the fabric over the rookie’s shoulder and dragging him back. Kearney was patting himself frantically all over. Then he saw his gun belt and the cracked-open radio and said, “Holy shit!”

Haley was pulling himself around the rear end of the car by his elbows, on his back. His face was wide with desperation, chin shiny and wet with spit. “Fucking Jesus Christ! Fucking—” He stopped behind the tire and clutched at his knee without actually touching it, blood spilling full out and onto the dry earth like water from a dropped canteen. Haley did not have the shotgun. He was writhing too much for Blood to get at his belt radio.

The woods were silent now except for Haley’s keening. Blood had flashes of being surrounded and taking a shot in the back as he reached up and grabbed at the passenger door latch. He got it open between him and Kearney and went in as low as he could against the blue vinyl passenger seat and reached up for the radio handset and pulled it down, sliding back out.

He was yelling into the radio when the windshield exploded, tires blowing out, light caddy shattering into raining fragments, the hood screaming ricochets. Blood got as low to the ground as he could, pulling Kearney down with him, eyes shut, head covered. Reports ripping like sparks in his ears. The cruiser pitched against them, rocking and staggering like some wounded beast. Kicked-up dust lifted and blew overhead as smoke. Then all at once the firing stopped. Haley ceased cursing and the gunshot echoes rippled all along the ridge, fading away. Then everything was quiet again.

Blood drove the Bronco up over the rise in the mountain road and into the wide-open clearing. The sun was duller now, and falling. Tree shadows were starting their crawl.

The entire Huddleston Police motor pool was pulled up in there, blue lights turning, all parked askew. There was backup from neighboring towns as well, bringing the total police presence on the mountain to about thirty. Blood saw the car trunks open and uniformed men walking around with shotguns on their hips. In the middle of it all, the shot-to-hell cruiser was only then being hauled up onto a wrecker.

Chief Moody stood apart from the scattered fleet of cruisers, halfway between it and two parked Ford sedans with blue government license plates. The sandy-haired man he was facing wore a brown suit jacket and tie, street shoes, and was backed up by three similarly dressed men. It looked’ something like a baseball coach beefing with the head umpire.

Blood parked the Bronco and he and Kearney got out and came around in front. “Uh-oh,” Kearney said, snapping off his orange hospital bracelet. “Chiefs pissed.” He viewed the suited strangers with interest. “Who’s that?”

Blood said measuredly, “Who do you think?”

Kearney smiled broadly and eagerly. He hurried across the clearing to rejoin the ranks.

Blood remained aloof as always, ambling over toward the fracas, back on an even keel now after time out to collect himself at the hospital. He and Kearney had been forced to go in for observation, then stayed long enough for Kearney to donate blood for Haley, who was in the operating room but otherwise OK.

Blood watched things unfold. Chief Moody had his thumbs wedged in the front of his gun belt when he wasn’t pointing and gesturing. It was a jurisdictional dispute. “Maybe you and your boys pulled up on the wrong mountain,” he was saying. “This here’s a local matter.”

The head FBI man with the sandy hair appeared professionally unconcerned. “I carry a UFAP warrant from the U.S. Attorney’s Office in Butte,” he said. “That’s unlawful flight to avoid prosecution.”

Moody nodded and said, “Oh, I see. One of your escapees hauls off and pops two of my men, but now you’re set to take over.”

“He’s not ours,” the FBI man said. “The United States Marshals Service is charged with apprehending federal fugitives. We’re just here to hold the scene for them.”

“Well.” Moody straightened some then. “In these parts,” he said, “in this town, we take care of our own.”

The FBI man nodded. “That’s why we’re here.” He eyed the various officers looking on in anticipation. “Instruct your men to stand down.”

Some shotgun barrels lowered behind Moody, and most of the visiting police holstered their sidearms. But none of the Huddleston force did. They stiffened up behind their chief, a loyalty of posture that made Moody’s barrel chest swell out even more.

“See,” said Moody, sporting a smile that was quaint, “there’s only four of you.”

The FBI man’s half grin passed for wild emotion as he shook his head slowly, looking down. One of the agents behind him said aloud, “Small town, small dicks,” but the lead agent held up his hand, showing displeasure at the name-calling, though not necessarily disagreement.

Moody burned. “The hell you come up here for anyway?” he said. “He ain’t your boy, he ain’t mine.”