Чак Хоган: The Standoff

A strange glow caught Banish’s eye. He turned left to follow it and watched in amazement as a red laser dot slid down the black side of the sound truck to its right front tire. A bang then, separate from the other cracking noises, and the big black tire deflated with a whine.

Another explosion across the way. Banish was jerked but not thrown this time, the mountain rumbling beneath him. The staging area was being pounded like a bass drum from all sides. Gunfire took out more overhead lights. Fagin seemed anxious to start shooting.

“No killing!” Banish said, as if he could be heard amid the gunfire. “They want to draw us in!”

Fagin glared at him. A smaller explosion then, and Fagin turned. A second propane tank from the kitchen had gone up.

A brushfire burned across the clearing in the tree line where the first arrow had landed. Banish caught sight of the red beam again, now floating over the right rear tire of the van. The tire broke open and air steamed out and the sound truck sank lopsided, hobbled.

Fagin swore into his radio. Personnel were spilling out of the soft tents and running across the besieged clearing for the shelter of heavier equipment. Banish picked up the laser beam, now slinking down the flattened tire of the van and onto the ground. It was skimming along the dark dirt toward him. It came and skirted the weeds at his feet, crossing his left shoe, then starting up his leg. He did not feel a thing. It traveled along the folds of material at his waist to where his jacket was zipped over his stomach. Banish looked out across the dark clearing and could see the bright source of the beam shining small and steady within the tree cover down land beyond the spreading brushfire. He looked back down at his midsection as the beam floated up from his stomach. He did not feel a thing. It drifted upward and stopped, vibrating slightly at the center of his chest.

Fagin looked at Banish. Banish was staring down at a red laser dot dead center in his chest. His eyes were vague.

Fagin brought his left arm straight out and grabbed Banish back-handedly, clothes-lining him across the front of his chest and spinning him backward and down to the ground. The intended round cut whispering through the air past them and thumped into a tree trunk some meters behind. Fagin held Banish down with one hand and quickly traced the beam back to its source, raising his gun arm and wasting rounds across the clearing, blasting away at the ground before the guilty tree and the trunk and the low branches above. The laser sight quickly vanished — some Bubba’s birthday present getting a dry run.

Fagin pulled at Banish to get up. “The fuck is wrong with you?” he yelled at him over the noise.

Chatter from the front right and wide left, the open clearing a shooting gallery of crossfire. Potshots from fucking everywhere, guns constantly moving. They had decent cover where they were, near the van, with the mountain rising behind them. Fagin would have to hold the place down himself until his troops arrived.

He saw a small flame moving in the trees wide left and the dark figure of a man behind it, crouching by a tree on the edge of the clearing. He was pulling back a flaming arrow. He was raising a curved bow and aiming across the clearing, and Fagin looked past the tents and vehicles to the one Huey remaining there. It had just refueled and was starting up its rotors and making to get off the ground in a hurry. A fat gas pump sat right next to it.

Fagin turned left. He raised and aimed.

Banish said, “Don’t shoot him.”

Fucking crazy. It was fucking nuts. Fagin pulled off, grimacing, standing there and watching the archer take aim. Banish did the same. The flame-lit fucker in the trees poised his bow.

The arrow was away. Fagin lost it for a moment, behind a tent, then saw it streaking over the staging area, climbing, the orange flame of its head whipping back in a loping up-arc.

Blood stepped out quickly in front of him. He raised his Browning and pulled back on it twice in quick succession, two blasts ripping into the air.

Incredibly, one scored. Part of the pellet shot caught the arrow just as it was beginning its descent, knocking it off its trajectory, and the arrow flailed in the air and fishtailed back behind the Huey, disappearing into the trees.

Fagin turned fast left and blasted the bark off the tree shielding the guerrilla archer, the cowardly fuck, emptying his gun while the figure ducked away wildly and retreated fast into the woods.

Fagin turned and reloaded. Banish stood there, stricken, Blood reloading also. “This is one hopping fucking town!” Fagin said.

Then Jeeps rolled down off the mountain road into the clearing. Fagin’s men swept in from the surrounding trees as well, quickly taking back the staging area, guns and rifles forward. “Round ’em up!” Fagin yelled into his radio. “I want every last fucker tracked down and arrested — weapons offenses and assault on federal agents.” He looked at Banish then and decided he could afford a little grace. “But no shooting,” he added. “Not worth the bullets. Repeat, do not get drawn in.”

The cavalry was overrunning the fort. Fagin pulled Banish back with him beside the crippled van, wondering if Banish realized that he had saved his life.

Then the ruckus started on the radio net. Disciplined preliminary reports escalating quickly to shouts and high-pitched yelling overlapping back and forth. Banish could tell that Fagin had something and he pressed him for it, but Fagin wanted all the facts first — head down, finger pressed hard against his ear. Banish turned on his own radio, but by then it was pure emotion on the line, men overcome with adrenaline, voices over voices over voices.

Fagin looked at Banish and didn’t want to be the one to have to tell him. “Shots fired in the cabin,” he said.

Banish’s face went white. It seemed to collapse. He said, “No,” a small word.

Fagin said, “I’m getting up there.” He started off at a run past the small fires toward the Huey.

Banish rushed inside. Only the sound man remained, hands on his headphones, monitoring the chaos.

“Shots fired,” he said excitedly. “Movement. Possible escapees.”

Banish whirled around to look at the monitors. They were dark.

“Flood it!” he said.

The sound man flipped all the switches and the stadium lights came on and brightness blared for an instant into the monitors, like irises opening too widely, then gradually they settled into focus from white-out haziness to abject black-and-white clarity.

Three different angles of the cabin. Black smoke seeping through the cracks of the boarded windows.

Banish stared at it and for a few scrambling moments could not comprehend what ‘he was seeing. He was like a man watching his nightmares broadcast on television. Thick black smoke rolled out of the stone chimney and puffed through small bullet holes in the roof. The cabin was ablaze.

Banish’s voice was not his own. “It’s going down!” he said, grabbing at the back of the sound man’s chair. “It’s going down! Go! Go!”

The sound man reached for his handset and stammeringly repeated Banish’s commands into it. Banish stood there staring at the unflinching monitors.

Blood said, “I’m going.”

Banish stood there frozen. He could not go. The negotiator did not go. The negotiator stayed behind. He stood shaking and watched for the Ables children to come out. It was all falling apart. As hard as he stared at the monitors, no doors or windows opened and the smoke poured out blacker and heavier. Small flames appeared then along the roof.

Banish said “No, no, no” over and over again. He had to stay. He was caught there. He had to remain behind and watch it all slowly burn. Then men came into the black-and-white picture, agents and marshals, guns and rifles drawn as they slowly approached the cabin.