Чак Хоган - The Standoff

“No.”

“Then why don’t you just release her, Mr. Ables? Let your wife go.”

“Release her to the men that want to murder her? The men that slaughtered her daughter? You listen to me, Watson. I want bandages. I’m run out. Gauze and disinfectant and antiseptic and tape. And Percocet, something for the pain. And fresh water. Or do you want more blood on your hands?”

Banish removed his thumb from the handset. Fagin was already moving toward the tent exit. He did not need to be told where to go. The protesters down below were getting this word for word.

Banish resituated himself, fighting for concentration. It was still a negotiation like any other. He asked himself what he wanted most.

“Mr. Ables,” he said, “first of all, for your own protection, until and unless you are ready to come out for good, I would advise you and your family not to leave the cabin again under any circumstances. Now, I am most certainly willing to provide your wife with the medical attention she requires, right away.”

“No doctors,” Ables said. “Just supplies.”

“Whatever you want. But it has to be a two-way street. Mr. Ables, I know you know that I cannot simply give you something for nothing.”

Another short pause. “Sons of bitches,” he said.

“Perhaps through a fair and equitable exchange, Mr. Ables, we can begin on a course of reestablishing trust. Why don’t you release one of your daughters?”

“No.”

“The youngest, Esther. She can be properly cared for out here. We have a nurse standing by, and food, toys.”

“No.”

“Your infant son, then. Amos. His grandparents are here.”

Ables said, “You will never tear this family apart.”

Banish released the handset then, instituting a pause of his own. He waited deliberately. Behind him Perkins swallowed and cleared his throat noisily, small sounds of impatience and doubt. Banish turned the handset on again.

“The telephone, then, Mr. Ables,” he said. “I want to privatize our conversations in the interest of public safety. If you can give me your word that you will use it to communicate with me, rather than this broadcast channel—”

“I told you, Watson. No men on my porch.”

“Your word, Mr. Ables.”

“No men on my porch!”

Banish nodded, satisfied. “Mr. Ables,” he said, “I think we can work around that.”

Fagin took a Humvee and drove himself right up the side of the mountain. The dirt road was cleared and completed, but blocked near the top by a traffic jam of ambulances and fire equipment, mainly caused by a Bradley fighting vehicle being loaded off a flatbed truck. The one vehicle that Fagin could not ID was a small white unmarked van, open in back, a metal ramp leading down and footprints and other tracks in the wet ground around it.

He parked and stepped out into the mud. The rain had let up after midday, leaving a hanging dampness that brought out the fucking bugs again. Fagin crossed the short distance to the no-man’s-land through the thinning tree cover, swatting flies.

No music now, no recorded messages. Just the hushed voices of agents hiding in the trees. He found them spread out along the edge of the no-man’s-land, crouching behind tall, folding bulletproof shields set up like bedroom screens people dress behind. Banish was peering over one, looking through the shredded tree cover across thirty short yards to the cabin.

A robot, maybe three feet in height, a six-tractor-wheel base supporting a raised metal spine and a long, jointed mechanical arm, was wandering through the trees toward the phone. A remote console was set on the ground next to Banish, operated by a pale-looking agent with a dark crew cut. A monitor showed the machine’s camera-eye view.

“The fuck is this?” Fagin said, though he knew full well. He was a practical man with a natural aversion to technology.

Banish did not answer. He wanted to know what had happened down below.

“We took away some guns and rifles, then stumbled onto something big. A cache of plastic explosives and egg cartons of hand grenades, souvenirs from the jungle.”

Banish turned. “Veterans?”

“A counteroffensive. They were planning on taking out our microwave communications equipment. They see another brother being screwed by the government all over again. We were very fucking lucky this time, practically falling over them. Sixteen total arrests. But it raises a major concern.”

“Post guards around the generators,” Banish said. “If an attack comes, it will come there first.”

Fagin nodded. “Already done.”

It was too crowded behind the shield, so Fagin stepped out into the open and looked on with arms crossed. Severed tree limbs lay dead on the ground, the woods ripped apart, trunk bark scarred with ivory and greenish-white wood showing through. That had been a serious demonstration of artillery.

The robot had the phone case handle in its claw now and was grinding toward the cabin. Two containers were strapped to its base. “He’s getting everything he wanted?” Fagin said.

“Except the painkillers. Could be fatal if administered improperly. He didn’t ask for blood or plasma, so maybe it’s not too serious.”

“Water?”

“It’s clean,” Banish said.

“You can’t mickey him?”

“Unreliable. Could be fatal if taken by a child.”

The robot pulled up alongside the slanted front porch, its spine straightening hydraulically, arm extending out. Banish said to the pale agent working the controls, “A little closer.”

Fagin watched the robot roll back and forth into position. “Hope he doesn’t kidnap your robot too.”

Banish said to the pale agent, “Not too close.”

Fagin grinned briefly. Bureaucrats with their toys. He went and watched on the black-and-white monitor as the robot dumped its gifts on a stack of logs piled underneath a boarded-up window, then pulled back slowly. They watched and waited, Fagin growing impatient. Banish sent someone off to get his bullhorn. Then the boards moved, swinging open a few inches. A sleeveless male arm appeared. It snatched up the first-aid kit, then the satchel of water, then finally the telephone. Then the boards swung shut again.

The pale agent let out a long, gusty breath. In Fagin’s experience, whether on bomb squad or crisis intervention teams, these robot controllers were all a little fucking fruity. Talking to themselves while they worked, calling their machines little names, like Buddy or Hal. Fucking ventriloquists without an act. This one mumbled to himself as he worked the slide gears up and down, easing the robot back to him.

Banish peered over the top of the shield again, probably waiting for something to go wrong. After all their waltzing back and forth, the actual exchange itself had been nothing. Secure communication had finally been established, but at a great goddamn cost.

Fagin stepped away from the screen, watching Buddy the Robot return home through the slaughtered woods. “That fucking telephone better be miked,” he said.

Banish waved off a mosquito. “Don’t worry.”

Banish pulled the sliding door open. The sound man was at his console, dials and recorders along the van walls all up and running. Banish said, “Anything?”

The sound man flipped a switch and a hollow sound came on over the speakers inside the van. Vague, distant noises, echoes reflected off walls, sounds of people moving around. “Mainly footsteps,” he said. “Different sets. Some chatter about bandages. Not clear enough, though. He must have left the phone in front and gone into one of the rooms in the rear, possibly the kitchen.”

“We’re in,” Banish said. It was all that mattered.