Чак Хоган: The Standoff

Banish moved. It was a mistake, he knew it was a mistake, but knowing it did not matter. He could not stand there and watch. He could not ignore it and walk away. It was all falling down around him. He grabbed his radio and started after Blood.

It happened so fast there was nothing they could do. Giving uniformed men guns and not letting them shoot was worse than giving them no guns at all. After they entered the woods on both sides and stopped the bleeding there, cutting off the last of the trespassing protesters and making a number of arrests, the marshals gathered back out on the road. Orton’s head turned with all the rest when the reports started up at the staging area. The enormous crowd rocked with that, making noise. Orton shared their feeling of hearing something, of knowing that there was real trouble close by and not being able to move to it.

So he held fast with his fellow marshals, waiting for reinforcements or some word of explanation or a direct order from above. The crowd saw the black smoke first. Before any of the marshals did, noise spreading through the mob like an avalanche and voices yelling and bodies starting to move. Orton saw their heads upturned and arms outstretched and fingers pointing upward, and then he turned and looked himself and saw the heavy stream of black smoke rising off the mountaintop, lit brightly from below. It looked like a bonfire up there. He heard a voice cry “They’re burning Glenn out!” and that was all it took.

The mob turned. They pushed onto the bridge before Orton knew what was happening, the yellow police ribbons snapping across their chests as they surged ahead. Orton and a number of other marshals rushed onto the bridge and took up positions, setting themselves against the vast crowd. They issued verbal warnings and drew and pointed their guns and the people up front held back a moment, but then a blind surge from behind propelled them all forward and the iron bridge was pummeled under the fury of advancing feet. Orton did not fire his weapon. They were quickly upon him, five or six pairs of hands, and he was upended over the side railing, tumbling downward. Falling. He landed smack on his front side, winded, lying facedown in the cold mud. Hundreds of pairs of boots stamped past him on either side, racing across the dribbling creek now, the bridge too narrow to hold them all, running, jumping, charging, bodies scrambling past him in a mad rush. Orton did not fire his weapon. It was still in his hand but he did not fire it. If they gave him a commendation for not firing his weapon, he would hand it right back to them or mail it to Agent Banish.

All he had for a target was their backs. He got his radio working and yelled into it, watching the rear of the mob running up the beginning of the incline of the mountain road. Media trucks pulled rumbling over the bridge above him, following. It was a free-for-all, pure bedlam. Orton’s stunned and excited voice joined the shouting match in his ear and the marshals getting to their feet around him. Whatever he was yelling, he yelled it again and again. He was hoping they could head them off at the staging area.

They had to abandon the Jeep halfway up the road. They jumped out and ran the rest of the way, up past all the service vehicles and the Jeeps and ambulances jammed together. Blood could see the black smoke up ahead spilling into the sky and glowing strangely.

They came at the spotlit, flaming cabin from the left, crossing the great divide of shredded trees that had once been the no-man’s-land, now everyman’s land, firemen, agents, marshals — just chaos. Men running this way and that, holding guns, axes. The wind carrying the stench of smoke and rotting dogs. Blood had to slow down, his leg wound starting to bite again. From where he was he could see the darkly lit rear of the cabin: smaller sheds standing in light tree cover, boulders half-buried in the earth, trash and scrap boards and weedy ground leading out to the cliffs. Blood looked for bodies fleeing but saw nothing he could be certain of. The flames gave everything the illusion of shifty movement.

The front of the cabin was already burned out. The porch had broken full off its frame and slumped forward like an early casualty, charred and dead. Flames darted fast along the roof, fueling the rising stream of black smoke and producing a hollow sucking noise like whipping gusts of wind.

Men in fire suits stood in front. They were entering the cabin in teams of two, charging through ragged pennants of flame as the previous team exited with suits blackened, stumbling out and pulling off their helmets and face masks and seizing mouthfuls of air. Fire trucks were pulled up, hoses partially unrolled but lying flaccid on the ground. The water truck was unable to get through. A spotlight grazed the area and a helicopter ran overhead, grabbing the pluming smoke in its rotors and twisting it and throwing it higher.

Banish stood before the engulfed cabin as though it were his own mortgaged house. His burnt face was flushed with the reflection of the red-orange flames as they surged, his expression and the underpinnings of his face faltering along with the foundation of the dying wood cabin.

Perkins came quickly across to them. His hands were dark with ash and his sandy hair was tossed. He came over from the right side of the cabin in a high state of anxiety.

“There’s a body in the rear of the cabin,” he said all at once. “Badly burned. Gross head trauma, gun in hand.” He gathered his breath, looking pained. “They think it’s Ables,” he said.

Banish’s head pitched a bit and his eyes went tight and sharp. There was a long moment when it seemed as though he were examining the air before his face for something vital. Then he choked on a swallow, or maybe just the smoke. Blood looked down and away.

Beyond the weight of his disappointment, Blood found himself even more worried about Banish. He looked up again and saw Banish still searching, body bent slightly forward. “The children,” he said, short of breath. It was issued to Perkins like a final appeal, the answer to which would either loose the steel blade hanging over his neck or pardon him.

“Nothing yet,” Perkins told him. He looked to his left, Blood and Banish’s right. “Mrs. Ables got out OK, though.”

Blood looked. She was away from the side of the cabin near a pair of paramedics, doubled up, coughing. Her arm was in a scarf sling and her clothes were sooty and darkened and some of her hair was burnt.

“She’s refusing treatment,” Perkins said. “We’re trying to get her into the medical helicopter now.”

Seeing her alive seemed to lift Banish. He turned back. “Sew up the mountain tight,” he said quickly. “Get some order here and forget about the fire. Let it burn to the ground. Just find those kids—”

He looked around in desperation, specifically to the left side of the cabin. He started off after them himself.

Brian Kearney stayed at his post long after everyone else was gone. First the explosions and the gunfire, ripping holes in the canvas and dropping everyone to the floor. Then the generators blowing up outside. Then immediately after that the gunshots up at the cabin and all the shouting over the radio. He was still at the switchboard now solely because he had not been relieved. Even Agent Coyle had left for the mountaintop after the staging-area shooting ended and the cabin fire had been reported. Brian was still in his chair at the outside switchboard line, punching in the numbers again, hearing the long-distance connection, the first, slow ring, then waiting through five more before starting all over again.

There was a great noise gathering outside, which he figured must have been the agents returning to the staging area. They sounded triumphant. Brian’s mood lifted and he fought the impulse to run out there and look. It was more relief on his part than anything — sweet relief. But he stayed dialing, and got halfway through the numbers again before realizing that there was no sound coming out through the earpiece now. He clicked the plunger down once, then a number of times. The receiver did nothing in his hands. The phone was dead.