Чак Хоган: The Standoff

He wasn’t supposed to wonder what they were doing here. They were watching a cabin. They were watching a cabin in the woods on top of a mountain. There was a man inside the cabin who was a wanted fugitive. They were waiting for him to come out. The woods were filled with armed marshals hiding out behind trees. The marshals were dirty and tired and hungry. When not on watch, they worked down below to make the base area livable, erecting tents, building picnic tables, digging toilet trenches. They had run two weeks of TAO prep drills for this in northern New Hampshire because of the similar terrain. And then there was everything they had gone through just to get into the Special Operations Group itself, the elite tactical unit of the U.S. Marshals Service. The training, the written exams, the psychological evaluations, the endless procedural drills. They were skilled in crowd and riot control, semiautomatic weapons handling, rappelling, land navigation, felony car approach. They were experts in the apprehension of dangerous fugitives, including U.S. fugitives abroad. Like going after Noriega in Panama. That was war — gunfire in the distance, rockets shooting overhead, flares lighting up the night sky. This was a man in a cabin in the woods.

The going-through-the-motions surveillance runs brought back basic training at Camp Beauregard in the bayous of Pineville, and the insects there. The marshlands alive day and night with animal chatter and bird cries. The sweat he swept off his forehead with a full hand, having to billow his T-shirt for ventilation during the drills. The tickle of swamp leaves against his face, and faint, steamy Louisiana music through the trees.

All of which brought him back to the grilled Cajun swordfish at Samo’s. His stomach again. He had eaten at Samo’s only twice in his lifetime, but some places stay with you. The fat maître d’. The nautical decor, the dark tables with red bulb lighting. The swordfish there — steak of the sea, the waiter called it. Christ, it was delicious. The inside of Bascombe’s mouth started to flow, more like sweat than pure saliva. For the first time that shift, he even started to feel a little warm.

He was moving. Lobach flanked his right, crouched near dead tree roots spilling in tangles out of the hard dirt wall. Bascombe shuffled over, bent low, drawing up beside him. He saw himself there in Lobach, a cold man hunched down in a camouflage jumpsuit, bulky black Kevlar vest strapped over his shoulders and around his sides, black helmet on his head, a gun belt with a thigh-strapped holster, knee and elbow pads and black gloves, and the white radio wire running from his shoulder up into his ear.

There were few mirrors down at camp, so before each watch the men would pair off and greasepaint each other’s faces in camouflaging swirls of olive, vine-green, and brown. Bascombe had painted the word pussy onto Lobach’s forehead without his knowing it. This was their sport. God only knew what he looked like himself.

Bascombe said, “I can get closer.”

Lobach was a Texan with close-set eyes. Other than that and the two inches he had on Bascombe, they could have been brothers. In full tactical gear, every marshal looked alike.

“What’s to see?” Lobach said with something less than a drawl. “S’all boarded up.”

“There’s a nice fat tree up there, some fifteen yards.”

Lobach was settled back against the sloping dirt. “We have orders,” he said.

“I know that. I’m going nut so though, I gotta do something.”

Lobach swatted at the air. “Ain’t nothing to see.”

“Screw it, then. So maybe I’ll ring his doorbell and run.”

Lobach’s eyes brightened. “You do and you can have my Red Cross rations tonight.”

Bascombe was being taunted. “Fuck you,” he said.

“What, you want a back rub instead?”

“Fuck you. Texas shithead.”

“Baltimore pussy.”

“I wouldn’t say that.”

Bascombe had to look away or else he’d laugh. He looked up at the high branches and the brightening blue sky above. He loved being a U.S. Marshal. He loved the two-hundred-year heritage of the service and the images it brought to people’s minds — Gary Cooper, the Wild West — and he loved the respect his gold star garnered. But something else told him he was different from all the others. It was what had driven him to volunteer for the Special Ops team against the wishes of his wife, Laura. This sense of wanting to belong. He was more thoughtful, perhaps, but basically irregular, not of the same fit as the others. He envied their easy camaraderie.

“Hey,” he said, turning back. “Remember Samo’s?”

Lobach squinted at him in confusion.

Bascombe said, “The blackened swordfish. The dinner special, six ninety-five?”

Lobach just looked at him funny. Bascombe pointed. “That tree right there,” he said. “Where the rise starts to level off. Maybe I can get more of the layout.”

Lobach swatted again. “Goddamned bugs.”

Bascombe got up on his haunches. “I’m going.”

He rose, stooping, patted his 9mm, looked over the top of the dirt embankment to make certain the coast was clear, then swung one leg up and over.

He came back down again just as quickly, landing on both feet. “Hey,” he said. “Is this a gully or a ravine?”

“Gully,” said Lobach. “You can float a boat in a ravine.”

Bascombe nodded, satisfied. He pulled tighter on the heel of each of his gloves, then went back over the top.

He straightened up at the first tree, stilling a disturbed branch, and drew his weapon, muzzle down, his gloved index finger extended along the barrel. Lobach showed him nothing, so Bascombe spun off and cross-stepped to the second tree, then diagonally again up the dirt rise to his intended post.

Nothing from Lobach. Bascombe was clear. He took a deep breath, warmed from all the motion, and suddenly smelled pine. Bark bristled against the back of his shoulders.

Arms straight, gun pointed away, he twisted and peered out from behind the fat trunk. He was closer to the cabin than he had thought. It was about twenty-by-twenty feet, a patchwork mishmash of wood grades, mostly plywood. The roof was obtuse and unshingled, windows boarded fast, and a lopsided porch on three uneven steps ran the length of the front. The land fell off beyond, the middle and rear of the cabin standing on graded lengths of wood posts to stay level. Treetops showed behind the roof; there was known to be an outhouse and some small wooden shacks among them. Then rocky cliffs beyond. The only sign of life was a lazy thread of smoke rising out of the stone chimney.

Bascombe stood back against the tree. He relaxed his arms a little and looked around, stamping his feet. He realized then that he could get just as stiff and cold and hungry and bored standing out here. He watched a dead leaf drift to the ground, then looked down the length of the mountain to where the thickening tree trunks ran together into a black wall that eventually blocked his view.

A noise behind him. Something like a thick snap or a click, and he pictured a bird or a squirrel settling on a weak branch. He turned and leaned out again to look.

The front door of the cabin was open. Two men were exiting with automatic weapons, one of them a definite match for Ables’s mug shot. Then, behind them, a young girl who looked to be about twelve or thirteen, one of Ables’s daughters. The girl had a top-handled rifle slung over her shoulder that was too heavy for her, maybe an AR-15, and was holding on to rope leashes tied to three thin gray dogs.

Bascombe stood back quickly, arms stiff. The blood pulsing now in his temples messed with his hearing, but there was nothing on the marshals’ radio net. He looked down land toward the gully, saw no one.