Чак Хоган - The Standoff

Banish turned and entered the holding tent. Perkins followed soon after but remained out of sight behind. One of the two arrestees from the bridge disturbance sat alone at the heavy table before the empty cell, two agents standing behind him on either side. He was a white male in his mid-to-late thirties, with a shaved head that was strangely pockmarked, probably the result of a childhood disease, hidden sores idly picked off a then-covered scalp. He wore raw black skinhead tattoos on each of his hairless arms, a sleeveless black T-shirt to feature them, blue jeans, black boots. Handcuffs hung empty on the iron bar behind him and he was rubbing his chafed wrists. A thin line of fresh cherry-red blood ran from a half-inch gash over his right temple down to below his bruised right cheek.

Banish brought out his ID. “Banish,” he said. “FBI.”

The arrestee squirmed, shifting often and shooting side glances up at the agents on either side of him. The bones supporting his face were jagged. A wiry little weasel. “A little rough,” he said, dabbing at his face with a tissue, “don’t you think?”

Banish said, “You received our message.”

“Got myself arrested, didn’t I?”

One of the agents beside him said, “He punched a black SA in the mouth, sir.”

The arrestee said, “Now listen — I need a plane ticket this time and some seed money. I want outta here for good.”

Banish said, “We’ll get to that. What are they planning for us?”

The man shifted in his seat, shrugging. “Lots of talk down there. You know — little action. Some kind of presentation, they’re calling it.”

“Nonviolent?”

“A presentation, ” the man stressed, then shrugged again. “For now anyway. That’s all I know.”

“Who?” Banish said. “Locals? WAR? Truth? What?”

“The Aryans,” the man said. He was impatient. “Who else, how would I know? They all feed off each other, wackos and patriots alike. Kremmer is supposedly visiting the front tomorrow.”

Franklin Kremmer was the sixty-eight-year-old minister of the WAR church. “That’s it?” Banish said. “Nothing else being planned?”

“If it is, they don’t tell anybody who don’t need to know until they need to know. There’s no newsletter or nothing. But Kremmer ain’t gonna be near no real violence. His shit, it don’t stink. Trucks coming in, though, past two days. Ammunition off-loaded.”

“Ammunition,” Banish said.

“Large caliber, and shells. All legal,” the man said. “Just in big amounts, and pricey. Supplies like flashlights, batteries, sleeping bags, first-aid kits.”

“What does it mean?”

The man shrugged. “It means they’re laying off a lot of money on this shit, how the hell would I know? A lot of Truth boys driving off with it.”

“Members of The Truth.”

“Hanging around the place the past couple of days. So there. That’s something for you, ain’t it? That ought to be worth something to you.”

Banish held his official gaze. “What about Ables?” he said. “You know him?”

“Seen him around. He’s known.”

“For selling guns?”

“Yeah, for selling guns. Wants to be an Aryan arms merchant worldwide, that’s his kick.”

“Everybody has a dream,” Banish said. “What did the others think of him?”

“Some laughed. But most were more afraid. Weird fucking guy. If they laughed, it wasn’t when he was around.”

“What did you think?”

The man scoffed and looked off a moment. “A nut. Like a lot of them, believes in UFOs and shit. Drove a nice truck, though. Until I bought it off him after he got pinched. Said he wouldn’t be needing it no more. Now look, man — that’s all I know.” He sat up straighter, opening his hands on the table as though he were presenting something. “So how about it?”

Banish said, “How about what?”

“A plane ticket, man. Get me the fuck outta here.”

“A plane? Where would you go?”

“Somewheres south. Then east. Too many kooks around here.”

Banish nodded, pretending to deliberate a moment. “No,” he said, shaking his head. “We need you here.” He said to one of the agents, “Give him a hundred dollars.”

“Whoa, hey,” said the man, raising his arms, looking around, stopping things. “The fuck is this?”

“We need an informant inside the WAR camp,” Banish said. “You’re it.”

“Informer?” The man’s small eyes flared suddenly. “Hey, man. Hey, hold it right there. Get one thing straight. I ain’t no informer.”

Banish looked at him, looked around the holding tent. “What do you call this, then?”

“This?” he said. “This is nothing. This is a weirdo and a couple of nut cases. But I ain’t no twist, man. I never turned out my friends. Those ATF fucks stood me up under a drug rap and rolled me — OK, fine, so I’m fucked, good. But that’s that.”

Banish nodded and said again, “One hundred dollars.”

“Wait, wait, wait,” the man said, swallowing his aggression. “Listen to me. Just listen, OK? You know what they’ll do to me, they find out I was in here? They’ll slice my fucking tongue out, man.”

Banish shook his head. “You know as well as I do you’ll walk off this mountain with more respect than ever before. You assaulted an FBI agent. You and your unwitting friend in the other tent will be great heroes once we let you go free.”

“Fuck that, man.” He was excited again, belligerent. Pleading his case. “They know. Someone’s talking and they fucking know. I know they know. So I’m up against it here. I’m fucked everywhere I turn. But I ain’t no twist, man. I ain’t nobody’s whore. You do what you gotta do in life, right? You do what’s gotta be done. But I ain’t spreading for no one, man.”

Banish said again, “One hundred dollars.”

The man’s face washed white and he almost made it to his feet before the agents shoved him back down in the chair. “Fuck you!” he screamed, nearly crying. “I ain’t nobody’s whore, you fucking pansy-ass, nigger-loving, federal fucking faggot!”

Banish stood still and looked closely at the man, watching his dark eyes stare out from inside his face, his thin chest huffing great breaths. Banish looked at the agent behind him.

“Seventy-five dollars,” he said.

“Oh, man,” the informant whined, deflating. “Fuck you, man!”

Banish said, “Fifty.”

“Fucking wait,” said the man, hands thrust out now, eyes closed. “Wait. Wait a fucking minute here, all right?” He opened his eyes again, looked around. “The fuck happened here, man? What the fuck is going on? ATF said you’d set me up good, like they did before.”

“What was that?”

“Three hundred bucks.”

“No,” Banish said. “What did you give them?”

“Ables, man,” he said, still bitter and unsure, but now fishing around for more money. “They were looking for somebody else they could roll. You know, roll me, roll him, moving higher up.”

“But Ables wouldn’t buckle.”

“And look what it got him. I told you, man, they got me like a motherfucker—”

“Why Ables?”

“How would I know? Somebody who was outside, but inside. They had a hard-on for him, I guess.”

“What do you mean?”

“They were pissed at him. They wanted him — I don’t know. I said I could get to his truck and they gave me a gun to plant.”

Banish was silent a moment. “A Beretta submachine gun.”

The man nodded. “And they said it would be my last job. That was two fucking jobs ago, including this bullshit one right here. So they got me by the balls, all right? So I’m in it up to my eyes, all right? So fuck you, assholes! I ain’t your fucking whore, man!”