Чак Хоган: The Standoff

Kearney’s expression flattened out in gradual realization. His mouth opened and he came closer.

“It might not even help you,” Banish said.

“Sir, I—” Kearney looked to the ground with a blinking expression. He shook his head slightly. “Sir — that means the world to me.”

Banish shook his head.

Kearney went on haltingly. “When all this happened,” he said, “I was excited to be here for it, I was just — just ready. I was ready. I watched you. Throughout this whole thing, whenever I could, sir — Agent Banish. And I feel that I have a sense for it now. For what it is to do what you do here, and to be what you are. And you giving me a chance, in the command tent—” He stopped himself and looked down at Banish. “But when I think of Leslie — Leslie is my wife. And the baby we’re having.”

Banish saw him with clearer eyes then. He watched the expression on Kearney’s face. He realized he was being turned down.

Kearney said, “I see what this job can take out of someone. What this life can do to a man. And I think we’ve got to get our start together first, Leslie and me. I can’t let go of that, sir. I’ve got to think of her at this point. Which is why I’m thinking maybe I’m not quite cut out for this, at least not right now. I don’t really know, I guess.”

Banish nodded. Kearney came closer still.

“But sir,” he said. Kearney raised his arm and extended his open hand out toward Banish. Banish looked at the palm, creased but unscarred, young, then up at Kearney standing there behind it and the expression on the kid’s face. He grasped Kearney’s hand and shook it firmly.

“Thank you, sir,” Kearney said. “Thank you.”

He went off then. Banish did not watch him walk away. Another pair of eyes he had opened and then plucked out. Banish smiled bitterly at the dirt. How many years was he removed from Kearney? Was it thirty? Christ. He wondered what it would take to have it all over again. To have the chance, to not make the mistakes. How many chances do you get, he wondered, beyond the one you’re issued? And how many had he already wasted? And exactly how many did he have left?

“Watson.”

Banish’s heart fell with the breathy voice calling to him from behind. He stood and went back into the van, past Fagin, to his chair.

“Mr. Ables,” Banish said. “Are you coming down now?”

“Where do you find God, Watson?”

Banish stopped. “Mr. Ables,” he said, “there is no time for that now. Are you coming down?”

“Where do you find God, Watson?”

“What?”

“Where you tremble. That is where you find Him, Watson. That is where He finds you. Where your flesh crawls and the hairs on the back of your neck sting. Where you go slack. Where you howl and are struck to your knees.”

“Mr. Ables,” Banish said, rubbing his face. “Mr. Ables, you do not sound well at all. I am being honest with you here.”

“I’ll let you in on a little secret, Watson. That bullet that hit my wife through the door. The one your assassins fired. I don’t like to give you the satisfaction, but... it hit me too.”

Urgency surpassed caution in Banish’s voice. “Mr. Ables,” he said, “you require immediate medical attention. How badly are you wounded?”

“Is Banish there now?”

“No— Mr. Ables—”

“He was the one who set me up, Watson. I know that now. Him and your whole corrupt government machine.”

“Mr. Ables—” Banish was desperate. He felt as though he were melting into the chair. “All right,” he said finally. “All right, Mr. Ables. Maybe you did get a raw deal here. So maybe you did. You got screwed, all right? We all did. Now come down peacefully and resolve it.”

“What did they do with my daughter’s corpse?”

Banish was thrown again, scrambling. “She is being turned over to your relatives, Mr. Ables.”

“They won’t even let me attend the funeral, Watson. Will they. I will miss my own daughter’s funeral.”

It was there in his voice. Banish could feel the tension in the men moving behind him. He gripped the handset. “Mr. Ables,” he said, “I insist that you come down from there immediately.”

“I have prayed with my children, Watson. For guidance and forgiveness. But who will hear your confession? You, Watson, who have waged wars of the flesh—”

“Mr. Ables” — Banish was nearly yelling — “will you come down now?”

The sound of Ables’s breathing filled the van. Heavy, labored, Banish hanging on every sound.

“Watson.”

“Yes, Mr. Ables?”

Ables let out a long, hollow sigh and said, in a voice closer to a gasp than a whisper, “Maybe this tragedy will end in a greater glory.”

There was a click. Banish looked at the microphone. People started to scramble behind him in the van. He hit the broadcast switch again, hard. “Ables!” he said. “Mr. Ables!”

Perkins, moving behind him, said, “I better get up there.”

Fagin said into his radio, “Go to alert—”

Banish squeezed the handset switch and called after him. “Ables!”

“You lost him,” Fagin was saying. “We gotta get in there now. We gotta go in.”

“No,” Banish said. He stood dizzily and turned and put his arms up to stop time and everything else that was clamoring around him. He was trying to think. His head was ringing. He said to all of them running around him, “JUST LET ME THINK—”

Marshal Orton stood quietly just before the bridge. From the enormous public gathering on the other side, formerly silent and still, he detected now a buzzing. Glimmers of excitement crackling through the people like electrical charges, growing.

He was not the first to look at the trees. The thick woods riding high on either side. It was nighttime now and he couldn’t see well into them. He didn’t have to. Movement. Like animals in the trees, where there had been no animals before. The realization of this came gradually. The huge crowd beyond the creek bed, buzzing. Other marshals coming off the bridge now too — standing before and looking deep into the towering woods as though the trees themselves were about to rush out roaring and overtake them. There were people in the trees. It was certain now. They were scurrying and moving up past the marshals.

Orton clicked on his radio. “Deputy Fagin,” he said quickly. “Agent Banish—”

There were people running up through the trees.

“Agent Banish—”

Banish leapt out of the sound truck in a swirl. Here was an outlet for his frenzy. He yelled into the Motorola, “I ordered radio silence!”

An explosion from across the staging area knocked him off his feet. He looked up from where he lay on the ground and watched a black-orange cough of flame rise and expand, then puff out like a popped balloon, turning to black smoke. The sound rang in his ears as the ground rumbled beneath him. He registered the general direction of the blast and realized that one or more of the generators had blown.

As he got to his knees, a flaming arrow streaked in a strangely beautiful arc over the staging area. It landed in the ground at the tree line along the low end of the clearing. Banish heard the cracking of low-caliber gunfire to his left and at first thought it was his own men, then he heard the pop-popping of the security lights high above in the trees.

As Banish got to his feet, Fagin came crashing out of the van behind him. He surveyed the clearing and drew his gun, working the radio. “Tactical support, staging area, locked and loaded—”

Banish found his own radio in his hand. He said into it, “Scattering fire only—”

Another flaming arrow streaked out of the woods and whipped gracefully over the staging area, biting into the roof of one of the holding tents. The fire spread quickly.