Чак Хоган - The Standoff

Blood felt much the same. For now, he was in that numb state that followed a thorough beating, the pain that falls over you heavy and starts to settling deep into your muscles and your soul. He went out behind Banish and set off across the clearing by himself.

[PARASIEGE, p. 66]

SA Banish returned to the command tent and instructed SA Coyle to contact the BATF office in Spokane, Washington, for the purpose of ordering the return of Agents Riga and Crimson for further questioning.

Banish paced inside the cramped quarters, head bowed to avoid the van ceiling. He kept his hands busy, folding and unfolding them in front of him, wringing them, wiping them on the hips of his pants. Blood stood leaning against a wall in the corner near the closed door. The sound man sat monitoring.

The tape reels clicked and started another revolution. “He’s coming,” said the sound man, pulling on his headphones and flipping a switch. The sound of footsteps over a wooden floor came on inside the van. The footsteps approached the microphone source and stopped, and there were muffled noises, the sound of a man clearing his throat. Then a click.

“Watson.”

His voice filled the van. The sound man adjusted the broadcast volume as Banish climbed into his chair. He used the hand micro phone only, leaving Ables’s voice on the overhead speaker for Blood to hear.

“Yes, Mr. Ables.”

“You have a family, Watson?”

The very first question threw him. It would have been an easy lie, but since Banish’s aim here was to sympathize with the suspect and establish a rapport, it seemed to him that the best answer in this particular situation was, in fact, “Yes.”

“I want to talk about mine,” Ables said. “In case something happens to me.”

“What do you mean?”

“That was good,” Ables said. “That was convincing.”

Banish squinted, looking blankly at the console in front of him. “Mr. Ables, you’ve lost me here. Are you considering coming out?”

Banish would not say “surrender.” He would not say “give up.” He had to make it Ables’s choice. He waited through a short pause.

“Maybe you don’t know, then,” Ables said. “I figured you were all in this together, but misinformation is legion. Or maybe you’re just not high up enough to know.”

“Know what, Mr. Ables?”

“About the plans they have for me. How this is all going to end.”

Banish pressed him. “Who, Mr. Ables?”

“That I am going to be assassinated when I step outside my house and murdered in cold blood. I know that.”

“That is simply not true, Mr. Ables. No one here will take any hostile action, not unless you were to try something ill-advised again.”

Banish waited through another, longer pause.

“My wife,” Ables said. “If I did come out. She would go free.”

Banish paused, as though carefully considering it. “That is certainly something that could be arranged,” he said.

“Not so fast, Watson. Not so simple. I have other responsibilities. I know they want my house. They want me and they want my land. I built this house up with my own hands, me and my wife and daughters. Do you understand that, Watson?”

“I do understand, Mr. Ables.”

“You damn well should. And I paid for the land on this mountain and have worked it hard.”

“Mr. Ables — we are getting into an area here that I don’t have much control over. Legally, you forfeited your residence to the courts when you refused to appear for trial.”

“It was refused for me. Another slimy sabotage. That letter reached me two months too late.”

Again, Ables was way out ahead of him. “What letter?” Banish said.

“The letter from that courthouse. With the date for my appearance. Delivered by the federal mail, Watson. It’s all a game to you people out there, ain’t it? You sit and act like you don’t know that you’re all in on this together. You know that you have set me up and yet you will not admit it to my face. You will double-talk and triple-talk and try to fill my head with doubts.”

“Mr. Ables, all I am trying to do here is iron out some agreement between us whereby you can come out in cooperation with the proper authorities before it is too late to do so.”

“Who is Banish?” Ables said.

Banish started. His chest went cold. “What?”

“Banish. I hear his name on the radio, more than yours.”

Banish said, “There is no Banish on this mountain,” and immediately knew that it was a wild mistake.

“On the radio news they said he’s in charge.”

“He is not here now. Mr. Ables, we were talking about your home.”

“I want to talk to this Banish.”

“I told you, he is not here.”

“Where is he, then? I’m on the phone now. Who the hell’s in charge out there?”

“Mr. Ables, I think it would be best if we could work this out between the two of us rather than involving the confusion of a third party.”

“He’s Tactical, then,” Ables said. “You’re the mouth, he’s the trigger boy. Right? Sitting out there in the trees somewhere right now. Watching for me. He’s the one, then. He wants me in his crosshairs. He wants me dead so bad he can taste it.”

“Mr. Ables, no one out here, no one, wants you or your family harmed in any way. I am personally assuring you of that. Now, if you will be reasonable, we can continue talking realistically about meeting your immediate needs—”

“Does Banish have a family?”

Banish glanced away. He frowned slightly and looked back. “I wouldn’t know,” he said.

“You, then. If you knew, Watson, that something was going to happen to you in the very near future, if you knew that, wouldn’t you want to arrange things for your family in advance? Isn’t that your responsibility? Wouldn’t you want them to have their house to live in, a house they helped to build, and be allowed to stay together and not be bothered by any shits from the government once you’re good and gone?”

Banish closed his eyes. “Mr. Ables,” he said, “that does sound reasonable.”

A third pause. Banish waited patiently through it. It went on.

Banish opened his eyes. “Mr. Ables,” he said. “Mr. Ables.”

There was a click. Banish looked over at the sound man. The sound man shook his head. There were footsteps in the cabin, walking away.

Banish switched off the microphone. He sat there awhile, staring at the controls. His head was swimming. Then he stood. “Fine,” he said distractedly, without turning, feeling he had to say something before he left. “I’ll be right back,” he said.

He paced in his office. The noise in the command tent outside did not intrude upon the swirling inside his head. Each time he passed his desk he looked at the telephone upon it. He was troubled. Fatigue, an unsettled feeling. A sense of moving frantically in slow motion. His face itched now, where the powder blast shadow remained, but rubbing his cheek and jaw with his dry hands only further aggravated it.

He was thinking about Molly and Nicole. He was looking at the telephone each time he passed it and he was entertaining possible approaches. He was casting off scenarios. Just friendly congratulations to start with. He could say that he heard about Nicole’s engagement from a friend of a friend. Just calling to wish her the best. That would leave the ball in their court. Nothing would happen very quickly, if at all. A few courteous phone conversations over a matter of months. An engagement gift sent by him. An invitation to the wedding. A dance. An embrace.

He quickly walked away from his desk, chastising himself bitterly. Romantic fantasies. They would never take him back. He remembered enough of it to know that. He shook his head. He had terrorized them. He had made them afraid to live in their own house, to sleep in their own beds. He had inspired fear in them. He had wanted them to fear him, to fear everything, that had been his mania. He had never physically abused them. He was nearly certain of that. It was the living environment he had created after his failure at the World Financial Center, after watching that woman and her daughter die. The guilt he felt, manifested in drunken, raving tirades alternating between open threats and manic bouts of over protectiveness He had worked to keep them off-balance. To make them ready for whatever danger might come. To make them see what he had seen and learn from what he had learned so that nothing like that, no death or random act of terror, no pain would ever touch them. Witnessing the end of that family, and bearing responsibility for it, lit off something in him that was impossible to contain. He remembered the last weekend, when he tore up the house: every appliance, fixture, wall hanging, door, room. Nothing was safe and nothing was permanent, he had decreed. That had been demonstrated to him at WFC and he was proving it to them now. He was showing them that anybody and anything — anything — could be destroyed.