A Maiden's Grave

10:35 A.M.

As always, an element of circus.

Arthur Potter stood beside the FBI resident agency's best car, a Ford Taurus, and surveyed the scene. Police cars drawn into a circle like pioneers' wagons, press minivans, the reporters holding their chunky cameras like rocket launchers. There were fire trucks everywhere (Waco was on everyone's mind).

Three more government-issue sedans arrived in caravan, bringing the total FBI count to eleven. Half the men were in navy-blue tactical outfits, the rest in their pseudo Brooks Brothers.

The military jet bearing Potter, reserved for civilian government transport, had touched down in Wichita twenty minutes before and he'd transferred to a helicopter for the eighty-mile flight northwest to the tiny town of Crow Ridge.

Kansas was just as flat as he'd expected, though the chopper's route took them along a wide river surrounded by trees, and much of the ground here was hilly. This, the pilot told him, was where the mid-high-grass and short-grass prairies met. To the west had been buffalo country. He pointed toward a dot that was Larned, where a hundred years ago a herd of four million had been sighted. The pilot reported this fact with unmistakable pride.

They'd sped over huge farms, one- and two-thousand-acre spreads. July seemed early for harvest but hundreds of red and green-and-yellow combines were shaving the countryside of the wheat crop.

Now, standing in the chill wind beneath a dense overcast sky, Potter was struck by the relentless bleakness of this place, which he would have traded in an instant to be back amid the Windy City tenements he'd left not long before. A hundred yards away was a red brick industrial building, like a castle, probably a hundred years old. In front of it sat a small school bus and a battered gray car.

"What's the building?" Potter asked Henderson, special agent in charge of the FBI's Wichita resident agency.

"An old slaughterhouse," the SAC responded. "They'd drive herds from western Kansas and Texas up here, slaughter 'em, then barge the carcasses down to Wichita."

The wind slapped them hard, a one-two punch. Potter wasn't expecting it and stepped back to keep his balance.

"They've lent us that, the state boys." The large, handsome man was nodding at a van that resembled a UPS delivery truck, painted olive drab. It was on a rise overlooking the plant. "For a command post." They walked toward it.

"Too much of a target," Potter objected. Even an amateur sportsman could easily make the hundred-yard rifle shot.

"No," Henderson explained. "It's armored. Windows're an inch thick."

"That a fact?"

With another fast look at the grim slaughterhouse he pulled open the door of the command post and stepped inside. The darkened van was spacious. Lit with the glow from faint yellow overhead lights, video monitors, and LED indicators. Potter shook the hand of a young state trooper, who'd stood to attention before the agent was all the way inside.

"Your name?"

"Derek Elb, sir. Sergeant." The red-haired trooper, in a perfectly pressed uniform, explained that he was a mobile command post technician. He knew SAC Henderson and had volunteered to remain here and help if he could. Potter looked helplessly over the elaborate panels and screens and banks of switches and thanked him earnestly. In the center of the van was a large desk, surrounded by four chairs. Potter sat in one while Derek, like a salesman, enthusiastically pointed out the surveillance and communications features. "We also have a small arms locker."

"Let's hope we won't be needing it," said Arthur Potter, who in thirty years as a federal agent had never fired his pistol in the line of duty.

"You can receive satellite transmissions?"

"Yessir, we have a dish. Any analog, digitized or microwaved signal."

Potter wrote a series of numbers on a card and handed it to Derek. "Call that number, ask for Jim Kwo. Tell him you're calling for me and give him that code right there."

"There?"

"That one. Tell him we want a SatSurv scan fed into -" he waved his hand at the bank of monitors – "one of those. He'll coordinate the tech stuff with you. All that loses me, frankly. Give him the longitude and latitude of the slaughterhouse."

"Yessir," Derek said, jotting notes excitedly. In seventh heaven, techie that he was. "What is that, exactly? SatSurv?"

"The CIA's satellite surveillance system. It'll give us a visual and infrared scan of the grounds."

"Hey, I heard about that. Popular Science, I think." Derek turned away to make the call.

Potter bent down and trained his Leica field glasses through the thick windows. He studied the slaughterhouse. A skull of a building. Stark against the sun-bleached grass, like dried blood on yellow bone. That was the assessment of Arthur Potter English lit major. Then, in an instant, he was Arthur Potter the Federal Bureau of Investigation's senior hostage negotiator and assistant director of the Bureau's Special Operations and Research Unit, whose quick eyes noted relevant details: thick brick wall, small windows, the location of the power lines, the absence of telephone lines, the cleared land around the building, and stands of trees, clusters of grass, and hills that might provide cover for snipers – both friend and foe.

The rear of the slaughterhouse backed right onto the river.

The river, Potter mused. Can we use it somehow?

Can they?

The roof was studded with parapets, a medieval castle. There was a tall, thin smokestack and a bulky elevator hut that would make a helicopter landing difficult, at least in this choppy wind. Still, a copter could hover and a dozen tactical officers could rappel onto the building with little difficulty. He could make out no skylights.

The long-defunct Webber amp; Stoltz Processing Company, Inc., he decided, resembled nothing so much as a crematorium.

"Pete, you have a bullhorn?"

"Sure." Henderson stepped outside and, crouching, jogged to his car to get it.

"Say, you wouldn't have a bathroom here, would you?" Potter asked Derek.

" 'Deed we do, sir," said Derek, immensely proud of Kansas technology. The trooper pointed to a small door. Potter stepped inside and put on an armor vest beneath his dress shirt, which he then replaced. He knotted his tie carefully and pulled on his navy-blue sports coat once again. He noted that there was very little slack on the draw strap of the Second Chance vest but in his present state of mind his weight had virtually ceased to trouble him.

Stepping outside into the cool afternoon, he took the black megaphone from Henderson and, crouching, hurried through a winding path between hills and squad cars, telling the troopers, eager and young most of them, to holster their pistols and stay under cover. When he was about sixty yards from the slaughterhouse he lay on a hilltop and peered at it through the Leica glasses. There was no motion from inside. No lights in the windows. Nothing. He noted that the glass was missing from the front-facing windows but he didn't know if the men inside had knocked it out for better aim or if local schoolboys had been practicing with rocks and.22s.

He turned on the bullhorn and, reminding himself not to shout and thus distort the message, said, "This is Arthur Potter. I'm with the Federal Bureau of Investigation. I'd like to talk to you men in there. I'm having a cellular telephone brought up. I'll be getting it to you in about ten or fifteen minutes. We are not planning an assault. You're in no danger. I repeat: We are not planning an assault."

He expected no response and received none. In a crouch he hurriedback to the van and asked Henderson, "Who's in charge locally? I want to talk to them."

"Him, there."

Crouching beside a tree was a tall, sandy-haired man in a pale blue suit. His posture was perfect.

"Who is he?" Potter asked, polishing his glasses on his lapel.

"Charles Budd. State police captain. He's got investigative and tactical experience. No negotiating. Spit-shined record."

"How long on the force?" To Potter, Budd looked young and callow. You expected to see him ambling over the linoleum in the Sears appliance department to shyly pitch an extended warranty.

"Eight years. Flew upstream fast to get the ribbons."

Potter called, "Captain?"

The man turned his blue eyes to Potter and walked behind the van. They shook firm hands and made introductions.

"Hey, Peter," Budd said.

"Charlie."

To Potter he said, "So you're the big gun from Washington, that right? Pleasure to meet you, sir. Real honor."

Potter smiled.

"Okay, sir, near as I can tell, here's the situation." He pointed to the slaughterhouse. "There's been movement in those two windows there. A glint, maybe a gun barrel. Or a scope. I'm not sure. Then they -"

"We'll get to that, Captain Budd."

"Oh, hey, call me Charlie, why don't you?"

"Okay, Charlie. How many people you have here?"

"Thirty-seven troopers, five local deputies. Plus Pete's boys. Yours, I mean."

Potter recorded this in a small black notebook.

"Any of your men or women have hostage experience?"

"The troopers? A few of them probably've been involved in your typical bank robbery or convenience store situations. The local cops, I'm sure they never have. Most of the work round here's DWI and farm workers playing mumbledypeg on each other Saturday night."

"What's the chain of command?"

"I'm supervisor. I've got four commanders – three lieutenants and one sergeant waiting for rank – overseeing those thirty-seven, pretty evenly split. Two squads of ten, one nine, one eight. You're writing all this down, huh?"

Potter smiled again. "Where are they deployed?"

Like the civil war general Budd would one day resemble he pointed out the clusters of troopers in the field.

"Weapons? Yours, I mean."

"We issue Glocks here, sir, as sidearms. We've got about fifteen riot guns between us. Twelve-gauge, eighteen-inch barrels. I've got six men and a woman with M-16s, in those trees there and over there. Scopes on all of 'em."

"Night scopes?"

He chuckled. "Not round here."

"Who's in charge of the local men?"

"That'd be the sheriff of Crow Ridge. Dean Stillwell. He's over yonder."

He pointed to a lanky, mop-haired man, whose head was down as he talked to one of his deputies.

Another car pulled up and braked to a quick stop. Potter was greatly pleased to see who was behind the wheel.

Short Henry LeBow climbed from the car and immediately pulled on a rumpled tweed businessman's hat; his bald crown had offered a glistening target more than once during the two hundred hostage negotiations he and Potter had worked together. LeBow trudged forward, a pudgy, shy man, and the one hostage-incident intelligence officer Potter would rather work with than anyone else in the world.

LeBow listed under the weight of two huge shoulder bags.

The men shook hands warmly and Potter introduced him to Henderson and Budd.

"Look what we have here, Henry. An Airstream trailer to call our very own."

"My. And a river to catch fish in. What is that?"

"The river? The Arkansas," Budd said, with the emphasis on the second syllable.

"Takes me back to my youth," LeBow offered.

At Potter's request Henderson returned to his car to radio the FBI resident agency in Wichita and find out when Tobe Geller and Angie Scapello would arrive. Potter, LeBow, and Budd climbed into the van. LeBow shook Derek's hand then opened his satchels, extracting two laptop computers. He turned them on, plugged them into a wall socket, and then connected a small laser printer.

"Dedicated line?" LeBow asked Derek.

"Right there."

LeBow plugged in and no sooner had he gotten all his equipment on line than the printer started to groan.

"Goodies already?" Potter asked.

LeBow read the incoming fax, saying, "Prison department profiles, probation reports, yellow sheets and indictments. Very preliminary, Arthur. Very raw." Potter handed him the material delivered by the agents in Chicago and the voluminous notes he'd begun jotting on the plane. In terse words they described the escape of Lou Handy and two other inmates from a federal prison in southern Kansas, their murder of a couple in a wheat field several miles from the slaughterhouse and the taking of the hostages. The intelligence officer looked over the hard copies and then began typing the data into one of his computers.

The door opened and Peter Henderson entered. He announced that Tobe Geller would be here momentarily and Angie Scapello would be arriving within the hour. Tobe had been flown in via Air Force F-16 from Boston, where he'd been teaching a course in computer-programming profiling as a way to establish the identity of criminal hackers. He should arrive any minute. Angie was taking a Marine DomTran jet from Quantico.

"Angie?" LeBow said. "I'm pleased about that. Very pleased."

Agent Scapello resembled Geena Davis and had huge, brown eyes that no amount of failing to wear makeup could make less seductive. Still, LeBow's excitement had nothing to do with her appearance and everything to do with her specialty – hostage psychology.

En route to the barricade Angie would stop at the Laurent Clerc School and gather as much information about the hostages as she could. If Potter knew her at all he guessed she was already on the horn to the school, writing up profiles of the girls.

LeBow taped a large sheet of blank paper on the wall above the desk and hung a black marker by a string from it. The sheet was divided in half. The left was headed "Promises," the right, "Deceptions." On it LeBow would record everything Potter offered to Handy and every lie he told the man. This was standard procedure in hostage negotiations. The use of the crib sheet could be explained best by Mark Twain, who'd said that a man needs a good memory to be an effective liar. Surprised, Budd asked, "You really going to lie to him?" LeBow smiled.

"But what exactly is a lie, Charlie?" Potter asked. "The truth's a pretty slippery thing. Are any words ever one hundred percent honest?" He tore pages from his notebook and handed them to LeBow, who took the small sheets, along with the faxes that were spewing from the printer, and began typing on the keyboard of the computer that was labeled "Profiles," the word written long ago on a piece of now dirty masking tape. The label on the second computer read "Chronology." The latter screen contained only two entries:

0840 hours. Hostages taken.

1050 hours. Threat Management Team – Potter, LeBow – in place.

The backlit liquid-crystal screens poured eerie blue light onto the man's round face; he looked like an Arthur Rackham rendering of the man in the moon. Charlie Budd gazed at the man's fingers, flying invisibly over the keys. "Lookit that. He's worn off half the letters."

LeBow grumbled to Potter, "Saw the building. Lousy situation. Too well shielded for SatSurv and not enough windows for infrared or mikes. The wind's a problem too."

As in most barricades the bulk of information here would have to come from traditional sources – released or escaped hostages and the troopers who took food and drinks to the HTs and stole a glance inside. LeBow tapped computer buttons and created a small window on the chronology computer. Two digital stopwatches appeared. One was headed "Elapsed"; the other, "Deadline."

LeBow set the elapsed time clock to two hours, ten minutes and pushed a button. It began moving. He glanced at Potter with a raised eyebrow.

"I know, Henry." If you don't contact the hostage taker soon after the taking they get nervous and begin to wonder if you're planning an assault. The negotiator added, "We'll give Tobe a few minutes then have the briefing." He looked out over the fields behind them, the tall pale blanket of grass waving in the chill breeze. A half-mile away the combines moved in gentle, symmetrical patterns, cropping the wheat fields like a new recruit's scalp.

Potter examined a map of the area. "All these roads sealed off?"

"Yessir," Budd said. "And they're the only way in."

"Set up a rear staging area there, Charlie." He pointed to the bend in the road a mile south of the slaughterhouse. "I want a press tent set up near there. Out of sight of the barricade. Do you have a press officer?"

"Nup," Budd said. "I usually give statements 'bout incidents around here if somebody's got to. Suppose I'll have to here."

"No. I want you with me. Delegate it. Find a low-ranking officer."

Henderson interrupted. "This is a federal operation, Arthur. I think I should make any statements."

"No, I want somebody state and without much rank. That way we'll keep the press in the tent, waiting. They'll be expecting somebody with the answers to show up. And they'll be less likely to go poking around where they shouldn't."

"Well, I don't exactly know who'd be good at it," Budd said uncertainly, looking out the window, as if a trooper resembling Dan Rather might just wander past.

"They won't have to be good," Potter muttered. "All they have to do is say that I'll make a statement later. Period. Nothing else. Pick somebody who's not afraid to say 'No comment.' "

"They won't like that. The press boys and gals. I mean, there's a fender-bender over on Route 14 and reporters here're all over the scene. Something like this, I'll bet they'll be coming in from Kansas City even."

SAC Henderson, who'd served a stint in the District, laughed.

"Charlie -" Potter controlled his own smile – "CNN and ABC networks are already here. So's the New York Times, the Washington Post, and the L.A. Times. Sky TV from Europe, the BBC, and Reuters. The rest of the big boys're on their way. We're sitting in the middle of the week's media big bang."

"No kidding. Brokaw, too, you think? Man, I'd like to meet him."

"And set up a press-free perimeter one mile around the slaughterhouse, both sides of the river." "What?"

"Put five or six officers in four-by-fours and start cruising. You find any reporter in that zone – anybody with a camera – you arrest them and confiscate the camera."

"Arrest a reporter? We can't do that. Can we? I mean, look at 'em all out there now. Look at 'em."

"Really, Arthur," Henderson began, "we don't want to do that, do we? Remember Waco."

Potter smiled blandly at the SAC. He was thinking of a hundred other matters, sorting, calculating. "And no press choppers. Pete, could you get a couple Hueys down here from McConnell in Wichita? Set up a no-fly zone for a three-mile radius."

"Are you serious, Arthur?"

LeBow said, "Time's awasting. Inside for two hours, seventeen." Potter said to Budd, "Oh, and we need a block of rooms at the nearest hotel. What'd that be?"

"Days Inn. It's up the road four miles. In Crow Ridge. Downtown, as much as they've got a downtown. How many?"

"Ten."

"Okay. What's the rooms for?"

"The parents of the hostages. Get a priest and a doctor over there too."

"Maybe they should be closer. If we need them to talk to their kids, or -"

"No, they shouldn't be. And station four or five troopers there. The families are not to be disturbed by reporters. I want anybody harassing them -"

"Arrested," Budd muttered. "Oh, brother."

"What's the matter, Trooper?" LeBow asked brightly.

"Well, sir, the Kansas state song is 'Home on the Range.' "

"Is that a fact?" Henderson asked. "And?"

"I know reporters, and you're gonna be hearing some pretty discouraging words 'fore this thing's over."

Potter laughed. Then he pointed to the fields. "Look there, Charlie – those troopers're all exposed. I told them to stay down. They're not paying attention. Keep them down behind the cars. Tell them Handy's killed officers before. What's his relationship with weapons, Henry?"

LeBow typed and read the screen. He said, "All indictments have involved at least one firearms count. He's shot four individuals, killed two of them. Fort Dix, M-16 training, he consistently shot low nineties on the range. No record of sidearm scores."

"There you have it," Potter told Budd. "Tell them to keep their heads down."

A light flashed toward them. Potter blinked and saw, in the distance, a combine had just turned on its lights. It was early of course but the overcast was oppressive. He gazed at the line of trees to the right and left of the slaughterhouse.

"One other thing, Charlie – I want you to leave the snipers in position but give them orders not to shoot unless the HTs make a break."

"HTs – that's the hostage takers, right?"

"Even if they have a clear shot. Those troopers you were telling me about, with the rifles, are they SWAT?"

"No," he said, "just damn fine shots. Even the girl. She started practicing on squirrels when she was -"

"And I want them and everybody else to unchamber their weapons. Everybody."

"What?"

"Loaded but not chambered."

"Oh, I don't know 'bout that, sir."

Potter turned to him with an inquiring look.

"I just mean," Budd said quickly, "not the snipers too?"

"You can pull the bolt of an M-16 and shoot in under one second."

"Not and steady a scope you can't. An HT could get off three shots in a second." The initials sat awkwardly in his mouth, as if he were trying raw oysters for the first time.

He's so eager and talented and correct, Potter mused.

What a day this is going to be.

"The takers aren't going to come out and shoot a hostage in front of us before we can react. If it comes to that, the whole thing'll turn into a firefight anyway."

"But -"

"Unchambered," Potter said firmly. "Appreciate it, Charlie."

Budd nodded reluctantly and reiterated his assignment: "Okay, I'm gonna send somebody down to give a statement to the press – or not to give a statement to the press, I should say. I'll round up reporters and push 'em back a mile or so, I'll get us a block of rooms, and tell everybody to keep their heads down. And deliver your message about not loading and locking."

"Good."

"Brother." Budd ducked out of the van. Potter watched him crouching and running down to a cluster of troopers. They listened, laughed, and then started herding the reporters out of the area.

In five minutes the captain returned to the command van. "That's done. Those reporters're about as unhappy as I thought they'd be. I told ' em a Feebie'd ordered it. You don't mind me calling you that, I hope." There was an edge to his voice.

"You can call me whatever you like, Charlie. Now, I want a field hospital set up here."

"Medevac?"

"No, not evacuation. Trauma-team medics and triage specialists. Just out of clear range of the slaughterhouse. No more than sixty seconds away. Prepped for everything from third-degree burns to gunshot wounds to pepper spray. Full operating suites."

"Yessir. But, you know, there's a big hospital not but fifteen miles from here."

"That may be, but I don't want the HTs to even hear the sound of a medevac chopper. Same reason I want the press copters and our Hueys out of earshot."

"Why?"

"Because I don't want to remind them of something they might not think of themselves. And even if they do ask for a chopper I want the option to tell them that it's too windy to fly one in."

"Will do."

"Then come back here with your commanders. Sheriff Stillwell too. I'm going to hold a briefing."

Just then the door opened and a tanned, handsome young man with black curly hair bounded inside.

Before he greeted anyone he looked at the control panels and muttered, "Excellent."

"Tobe, welcome."

Tobe Geller said to Potter, " Boston girls are beautiful and they all have pointy tits, Arthur. This better be important."

Potter shook his hand, noting that the dot of earring hole was particular prominent today. He recalled that Tobe had explained the earring to his superiors in the Bureau by saying he'd done undercover work as a cop. He never had; he simply liked earrings and had quite a collection of them. The MIT graduate and adjunct professor of computer science at American University and Georgetown shook everyone's hand. He then looked down at LeBow's laptops, sneered, and muttered something about their being antiquated. Then he dropped into the chair of the communications control panel. He and Derek introduced themselves and were immediately submerged in a world of shielded analog signals, subnets, packet driver NDIS shims, digital tripartite scrambling, and oscillation detection systems in multiple landline chains.

"Just about to brief, Tobe," Potter told him and sent Budd to run his errands. To LeBow he said, "Let me see what you've got so far."

LeBow turned the profile computer to Potter.

The intelligence officer said. "We don't have much time."

But Potter continued to read, lost in the glowing type of the blue screen.

11:02 A.M.

The jackrabbit – not a rabbit at all but a hare – is nature's least likely fighter.

This is an animal made for defense – with a camouflaging coat (gray and buff in the warm months, white in the winter), ears that rotate like antennae to home in on threatening sounds, and eyes that afford a three-hundred-and-sixty-degree view of the terrain. It has a herbivore's chiseling teeth and its claws are intended for tugging at leafy plants and – in males – gripping the shoulders of its mate when creating future generations of jackrabbits.

But when it's cornered, when there's no chance for flight, it will attack its adversary with a shocking ferocity. Hunters have found the bodies of blinded or gutted foxes and wildcats that had the bad judgment to trap a jackrabbit in a cave and attack it with the overconfidence of sassy predators.

Confinement is our worst fear, Arthur Potter continues during his lectures on barricades, and hostage takers are the most deadly and determined of adversaries.

Today, in the command van at the Crow Ridge barricade, he dispensed with his Wild Kingdom introduction and told his audience simply, "Above all, you have to appreciate how dangerous those men in there are."

Potter looked over the group: Henderson, LeBow, and Tobe were the federal officers. On the state side there was Budd and his second-in-command, Philip Molto, a short, taciturn officer in the state police, who seemed no older than a high-school student. He was one of the tactical unit commanders. The others – two men and a woman – were solemn, with humorless eyes. They wore full combat gear and were eager for a fight.

Dean Stillwell, the sheriff of Crow Ridge, looked pure hayseed. His lengthy arms stretched from suit coat sleeves far too short and his mop of hair could have been styled from the early Beatles.

When they had assembled, Charlie Budd had introduced Potter. "I'd like you to meet Arthur Potter of the Federal Bureau of Investigation. He's a famous hostage negotiator and we're pretty lucky to have him with us today."

"Thank you, Captain," Potter had jumped in, worried that Budd was going to begin a round of applause.

"Just one more thing," the young captain had continued. He glanced at Potter. "I forgot to say this before. I've been in touch with the attorney general. And he's mobilizing the state Hostage Rescue Unit. So it's our job -"

Keeping an equable face, Potter had stepped forward. "Actually, Charlie, if you don't mind…" He'd nodded toward the assembled officers. Budd had fallen silent and grinned. "There'll be no state HRT involvement here. A federal rescue team is being assembled now and should be here later this afternoon or early this evening."

"Oh," Budd began. "But I think the attorney general -"

Potter glanced at him with a firm smile. "I've already spoken to him and the governor on the plane here."

Budd nodded, still grinning, and the negotiator proceeded with the briefing.

Early that morning, he explained, three men had murdered a guard and escaped from Callana maximum-security federal penitentiary outside Winfield, Kansas, near the Oklahoma border. Louis Jeremiah Handy, Shepard Wilcox, and Ray "Sonny" Bonner. As they drove north their car was struck by a Cadillac. Handy and the escapees murdered the couple inside and got as far as the slaughterhouse before a state trooper caught up with them.

"Handy, thirty-five, was serving a life sentence for robbery, arson, and murder. Seven months ago he, Wilcox, Handy's girlfriend, and another perp robbed the Farmers amp; Merchants S amp;L in Wichita. Handy locked two tellers in the cash cage and set the place on fire. It burned to the ground, killing them both. During the getaway the fourth robber was killed, Handy's girlfriend escaped, and Handy and Wilcox were arrested. Visual aids, Henry?"

With an optical scanner LeBow had digitized mug shots of the three HTs and assembled them onto a single sheet of paper, showing front, side, and three-quarter views, highlighting distinguishing scars and characteristics. These were now spewing out of his laser printer. He distributed stacks to the people assembled in the van.

"Keep one of those and pass them out to the officers under you," Potter said. "I want everybody in the field to get one and memorize those pictures. If it comes down to a surrender things may get confusing and we've got too many plainclothesmen here to risk misidentifica-tion of the HTs. I want everybody to know exactly what the bad guys look like.

"That's Handy on top. The second one is Shep Wilcox. He's the closest thing Handy has to a friend. They've worked together on three or four jobs. The last fellow, the fat one with the beard, is Bonner. Handy apparently's known him for some time but they've never worked together. Bonner's got armed robbery on his sheet but he was in Callana for interstate flight. He's a suspected serial rapist though they only got him for his last assault. Stabbed the victim repeatedly – while he was in flagrante. She lived. She was seventeen years old and had to change her eleventh plastic surgery appointment to testify against him. Henry, what can you tell us about the hostages?"

LeBow said, "Very sketchy so far. Inside we have a total of ten hostages. Eight students, two teachers from the Laurent Clerc School for the Deaf in Hebron, Kansas, about fifteen miles west of here. They were on their way to a Theater of the Deaf performance in Topeka.

They're all female. The students range in age from seven to seventeen. I'll be receiving more data soon. We do know that they're all deaf except the older teacher, who can speak and hear normally."

Potter had arranged for a sign language interpreter but even so he knew the problems they could anticipate; he'd negotiated in foreign countries many times and negotiated with many foreigners in the United States. He knew the danger – and the frustration – of having to translate information precisely and quickly when lives hung in the balance.

He said, "Now, we've established a threat management team, consisting of myself; Henry LeBow, my intelligence officer and record keeper; Tobe Geller, my communications officer, and Captain Budd, who'll serve as a state liaison and my right-hand man. I'm the incident commander. There'll also be a containment officer, who I haven't picked yet.

"The TMT has two jobs. The primary one is to effect the surrender of the HTs and the release of the hostages. The secondary job is to assist in a tactical resolution if an assault is called for. This includes gathering intelligence for the hostage rescue team, distracting the HTs, manipulating them however we can to keep casualties to an acceptable level."

In barricade incidents everybody wants to be the hero and talk the bad guys out with their hands up. But even the most peace-loving negotiator has to keep in mind that sometimes the only solution is to go in shooting. When he taught the FBI's course in hostage negotiation one of the first things Potter told the class was, "Every hostage situation is essentially a homicide in progress."

He saw the looks in the eyes of the men and women in the van, and recalled that "cold fish" was among the kinder terms that had been used to describe him.

"Any information you learn about the takers, the hostages, the premises, anything, is to be delivered immediately to Agent LeBow. Before me if necessary. I mean any information. If you find out one of the HTs has a runny nose, don't assume it isn't important." Potter glanced at two hip young troopers rolling their eyes at one another. Looking directly at them, the agent said, "It might mean, for instance, that we could slip knockout drops in cold medicine. Or it might indicate a cocaine addiction we could use to our advantage."

The young men were above contrition but they reined in their sarcasm.

"Now I need that containment officer. Lieutenant Budd here thought that perhaps some of you have had hostage experience." He looked out over the group of cocky young law enforcers. "Who has?"

The woman state trooper spoke up quickly. "Yessir, I have. I took the NLEA hostage rescue course. And I've had negotiating skills training."

"Have you negotiated a release?"

"No. But I backed up the negotiator in a convenience store robbery a few months ago."

"That's right," Budd said. "Sally led the tactical team. Did a fine job too."

She continued, "We got a sniper inside the store, up in the acoustic tile. He had all of the perps acquired in his sights. They surrendered before we had to drop any of them."

"I've had some experience too," a trooper of about thirty-five offered, his hand on the butt of his service automatic. "And I was part of the team that rescued the teller in the Midwest S amp;L robbery last year in Topeka. We iced the perps, nailed 'em cold, not an injury to a single hostage."

One other trooper had trained in the army and had been part of two successful hostage rescue assault teams. "Saved them without a single shot being fired."

Peter Henderson had been listening with some dismay. He piped up. "Maybe I better take that job, Art. I've had the standard course and the refresher." He grinned. "And I read your book. Couple times. Should've been a best-seller. Like Tom Clancy." His face went somber and he added softly, "I think I really ought to. Being federal and all."

Dean Stillwell lifted his head then glanced at the troopers, decked out in flak jackets and dark gray ammunition belts. The movement of his moplike hair gave Potter the chance to avoid answering Henderson and he asked Stillwell, "You going to say something, Sheriff?"

"Naw, I wasn't really."

"Go ahead," Potter encouraged.

"Well, I never took any courses, or never shot any – what do you call them? – hostage takers. HTs, heh. But I guess we have had us a coupla situations down here in Crow Ridge."

Two of the troopers smiled.

"Tell me," Potter said.

"Well, there was that thing a couple months ago, with Abe Whitman and his wife. Emma. Out on Patchin Lane? Just past Badger Hollow Road?"

The smiles became soft laughter.

Stillwell laughed good-naturedly. "I guess that does sound funny. Not like the terrorists you all are used to."

Budd glanced at the troopers and they went straight-lipped again.

"What happened?" Potter asked.

Stillwell, looking down, said, "What it was, Abe's a farmer, pig farmer born and bred, and none better."

Now Peter Henderson, SAC though he was, struggled to stifle his own smile. Budd was silent. Potter gestured for Stillwell to continue and, as always, Henry LeBow listened, listened, listened.

"He took a bad hit when the pork belly market went to heck and gone last spring."

"Pork belly?" the woman trooper asked incredulously.

"Just tumbled." Stillwell missed, or ignored, the mockery. "So what happens but the bank calls his loans and he kind of cracks up. Always been a little bit of a nut case but this time he goes off the deep end and holes up in his barn with a shotgun and the knife he used for dressing the pigs he kept for his own table."

"Cooked up that pork belly, did he?" a trooper asked.

"Oh, not just bacon," Stillwell explained earnestly, "That's the thing about pigs. You know that expression, don't you? 'You can use everything but the squeal.' "

Two troopers lost it at this point. The negotiator smiled encouragingly.

"Anyway, I get a call that something's going on out at his farm and go out there and find Emma in front of the barn. His wife of ten years. He'd slit her from groin to breastbone with that knife and cut her hands off. Abe had his two sons in there, saying he was going to do the same to them. That'd be Brian, age eight, and Stuart, age four. Sweet youngsters, both of 'em."

The troopers' smiles were gone.

"Was about to cut off little Stu's fingers one by one just as I got there."

"Jesus," the woman trooper whispered.

"What'd you do, Sheriff?"

The lanky shoulders shrugged. "Nothing fancy. In fact, I didn't really know what to do. I just talked him up. I got close but not too close 'cause I've been hunting with Abe and he's a heck of a shot. Hunkered down behind a slop trough. And we just talked. Saw him inside of the barn there, not but fifty feet in front of me. Just sitting there, holding the knife and his boy."

"How long did you talk for?"

"A spell."

"How long a spell?"

"Must've been close to eighteen, twenty hours. We both got hoarse from shouting, so I had one of my boys go out and get a couple of those cellular phones." He laughed. "I had to read the instructions to figure out mine. See, I didn't want to drive the cruiser up and use the radio or a bullhorn. I figured the less he saw of cops, the better."

"You stayed with it the whole time?"

"Sure. In for a penny, in for a pound, is what I say. Well, twice I stepped away for, you know, natural functions. And once to fetch a cup of coffee. Always kept my head down."

"What happened?"

Another shrug. "He came out. Gave himself up."

Potter asked, "The boys?"

"They were okay. Aside from seeing their mother that way, course. But there wasn't much we could do about that."

"Let me ask you one question, Sheriff. Did you ever think of exchanging yourself for the boys?"

Stillwell looked perplexed. "Nope. Never did."

"Why not?"

"Seemed to me that'd draw his attention to the youngsters. I wanted him to forget about them and concentrate just on him and me."

"And you never tried to shoot him? Didn't you have a clear target?"

"Sure I did. Dozens of times. But, I don't know, I just felt that was the last thing I wanted to have happen – anybody to get hurt. Him, or me, or the boys."

"Correct answers, Sheriff. You're my containment officer. Is that all right with you?"

"Well, yessir, whatever I can do to help, I'd be proud to."

Potter glanced at the displeased state commanders. "You and your officers will report to the sheriff here."

"Say, hold up here, sir," Budd began, but didn't quite know where to take it from there. "The sheriff's a fine man. We're friends and everything. We've gone hunting too. But… well, it's like a technical thing. See, he's local, municipal, you know. These're mostly state troopers. You can't put them under his command. That'd need, I don't know, authorization or something."

"Well, I'm authorizing it. You can consider Sheriff Stillwell federal now," Potter said reasonably. "He's been deputized."

LeBow looked quizzically at Potter, who shrugged. There was no procedure that either of them knew about for field-deputizing federal agents.

Peter Henderson's face, alone among the crowd at the briefing, was still smiling. Potter said to him, "You too, Pete. I want any agents not involved in intelligence gathering, forensics, or liaising with HRT under Sheriff Stillwell's direction."

Henderson nodded slowly, then said, "Could I talk to you for a minute, Art?"

"We don't have much time."

"Just take a minute."

Potter knew what was coming and understood that it was important for it not to happen in front of the other commanders. He said, "Let's step outside, what do you say?"

In the shadow of the van Henderson said in a harsh whisper, "I'm sorry, Arthur. I know your reputation but I'm not putting my people under some hick."

"Well, Pete, my reputation's irrelevant. What counts is my authority."

Again Henderson nodded reasonably, this man in a white shirt immaculately starched and a gray suit that would gain him entrance into any restaurant within a mile of Capitol Hill.

"Arthur, I ought to be more involved in this thing. I mean, I know Handy. I -"

"How do you know him?" Potter interrupted. This was news to him.

"I had agents on the scene at apprehension. At the S amp;L. I interviewed him after the collar. I helped the U.S. Attorney make the case. It was our forensics that put him away."

Since Handy'd been caught in the act and there were direct eyewitnesses, forensics would be a mere technicality. On the DomTran flight Potter had read the interview conducted by, apparently, Henderson. The prisoner had said virtually nothing except "Fuck you."

"Anything you can tell us about him would be appreciated," Potter said. "But you don't have the sort of experience we need for containment."

"And Stillwell does?"

"He has a containment officer's temperament. And judgment. He's not a cowboy."

Or, thought Potter, a bureaucrat, which was just as bad, if not worse.

Finally Henderson looked down at the muddy ground. He growled, "No fucking way, Potter. I've been stuck in this hellhole plenty long enough. Not a damn thing happens down here except copping applesauce and Dictaphones from the Air Force base. And Indians pissing into fucking Minuteman silos. I want a piece of this."

"You don't have any barricade experience, Pete. I read your sheet on the way here."

"I have more law enforcement experience than that Corner Pyle you've picked. For chrissake, I've got a law degree from Georgetown."

"I'm putting you in charge of the rear staging area. Coordinating medical, press liaison, the facilities for the hostages' families, and supplies for the containment troopers and hostage rescue when they get here."

There was a pause as Henderson gazed at his fellow agent – only a few years older – with shocked amusement then, suddenly, pure contempt, which was sealed with an abrupt nod and a chill grin. "Fuck you, Potter. I know the other part of your reputation. Grandstanding."

"It's an important job, rear staging," Potter continued, as if Henderson hadn't spoken. "It's where you'll be the most valuable."

"Fucking holier than thou… You've gotta have the limelight, don't you? Afraid somebody a little showier, with a little more class might play better on camera?"

"I think you know that's not my motive."

"Know? What do I know? Except that you breeze into town with the Admiral's blessing, send us off to get your fucking coffee. After the shootout – where, who knows, a dozen troopers and a hostage or two're killed – you give your press conference, take credit for the good stuff, blame us for the fuckups. And then you're gone. Who's left to deal with the shit you leave behind? Me, that's who."

"If there's nothing else -"

Henderson buttoned his suit jacket. "Oh, there'll be something else. Don't you worry." He stalked off, ignoring Potter's matter-of-fact suggestion not to present too much of a target to snipers in the slaughterhouse.

11:31 A.M.

Arthur Potter stepped back into the van, the eyes of the assembled troopers following him cautiously. He wondered if they'd overheard the exchange between him and Henderson.

"Now," the agent continued, "the rules of engagement."

Potter dug a fax from his jacket pocket.

On the jet from Glenview, Potter had spoken via conference call with the Bureau's director, its assistant director of criminal investigations, and Frank D'Angelo, commander of the Bureau's HRT, and had written the rules of engagement for the Crow Ridge barricade. This had taken much of the flight and the result was a single-spaced two-page document that covered every eventuality and gave Potter specific orders about handling the situation. It had been written with much circumspection. Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and the FBI had taken serious flak for the handling of the Koresh standoff in Waco and the Bureau itself had been vilified for the Randall Weaver barricade in ' 92, in which the rules of engagement had been written so broadly that sharpshooters believed that they had orders to shoot any armed adults if they had clear shots. Weaver's wife was mistakenly killed by an FBI sniper.

Potter was looking mostly at Stillwell when he said, "Your job is to contain the HTs. Containment is a tactical function but it's purely passive. There'll be no rescue attempts whatsoever."

"Yessir."

"You'll keep the takers inside whatever perimeter I decide is active. It might be the building itself, it might be a line a hundred yards around the building. Whatever it is, they are not to cross that boundary alive. If any one of them does, whether or not they have a hostage with them, your troops're green-lighted. You know what that means?"

"They're cleared to shoot."

"That's correct. And you shoot to kill. No attempts to wound. No threats. No warning shots. Lethal fire or no fire at all."

"Yessir."

"There are to be no shots through open windows or doorways, even if you see a hostage threatened, without express authorization from someone on the threat management team."

Potter noticed that Budd's face grew dark when he heard this.

"Understood," Stillwell said. The commanders nodded reluctantly.

"If you're fired upon, you'll take defensive positions and wait until you have the okay to return fire. If at any time you or another officer are actually threatened with deadly force, you may use deadly force to protect yourself or that person. But only if you're convinced that there is a true present danger."

"A present danger," a trooper muttered sarcastically.

They're hoping for a turkey shoot, Potter thought. He glanced at the clock on LeBow's computer. "We're going to establish contact in about five minutes. I'm going to warn the takers about the perimeter and I'll let you know, Sheriff, that they've been so notified. From that moment on you're instructed to contain them as I've outlined."

"Yessir," the sheriff answered calmly, and brushed his mop of hair, mussing it further.

"For the time being, the kill zone will be any area outside the building itself. After they send somebody out to get the phone,nobody comes outside unless it's under a flag of truce."

Stillwell nodded.

Potter continued. "Henry here will be feeding you data that's tactically relevant. Types of weapons, location of hostage takers and hostages, possible exits, and so on. There's to be no contact directly between you and the HTs. And don't listen in on my conversations with Handy."

"Right. Why not?"

"Because I'm going to be establishing rapport with him and trying to be reasonable. You can't afford to have any sympathy for him. You have to be able to green-light him instantly."

"Fine by me."

"Now, I don't want any accidents," Potter said. "Lieutenant Budd has already told all the troopers to unchamber weapons. That correct? Snipers included?"

Budd nodded. His mouth tightened. Potter wondered just how angry the captain was. Thinking: He'll be angrier yet before this is over.

"My men," one of the troopers said stiffly, "don't have itchy trigger fingers."

"Not now they don't. But they will. In ten hours you'll be drawing down on your own shadow. Now, Dean, you might see reflections from inside. You'll be thinking rifle scopes. But they'll probably just be mirrors, like periscopes. Takers who've done time learned that trick inside prison. So tell your people not to panic if they see a flash."

"Yessir," Stillwell said slowly, the way he seemed to say everything.

Potter said, "Now a few final words. Generally, criminal hostage takers are the easiest to deal with. They're not like terrorists. Their purpose isn't to kill anyone. It's to escape. Given enough time they're going to realize that the hostages are more of a liability than anything and dead hostages mean nothing but trouble. But the psychology of what's going on now is that they're not thinking rationally. They're pumped up on adrenaline. They're scared and confused.

"We have to defuse the situation. Make Handy believe that he'll survive the incident through rational action. Time works in our favor. We don't establish any deadlines. We want to stretch this out longer than any of us can stand. And then longer. And then longer still.

"When HRT gets here we'll prepare for a tactical resolution but that'll still be our last resort. As long as Handy is still talking to us there won't be any rescue attempt. We'll call it the pork belly approach to hostage rescue." Potter smiled toward Stillwell, then continued, "Delay is the name of the game. It wears down the HTs, makes them bored, brings them and the hostages closer together."

"Stockholm syndrome," one of the commanders said.

"Exactly."

"What's that?" another one asked.

Potter nodded to LeBow, who said, "It's the psychoanalytic process of transference as applied to a hostage taking. The term comes from a bank robbery in Stockholm about twenty years ago. The robber forced four employees into the bank vault. They were later joined by a former prison-mate of the taker. They all stayed together for over five days and when they finally gave up, several of the hostages were madly in love with their captors. They'd come to feel that it was the police who were the bad guys. The robber and his cellmate had formed strong feelings of affection for the hostages too and wouldn't think of hurting them."

"Time to get to work," Potter announced. "Sheriff, you'll proceed with containment. I'll make initial contact with the takers."

Bashful Dean Stillwell motioned to the commanders. "If you all'd come outside, maybe we'll move some of those troopers of yours around a bit. If that's all right with you. What do you say?"

"Pork belly" was the only response, but it was said very softly. Potter believed he was the only one who heard.

The water poured like a shower, a silver stream falling through gaps in the ceiling high above them, probably from rank pools of old rainwater on the roof.

It dripped onto rusting meat hooks and chains and rubber conveyor belts and disintegrating machinery, just outside the killing room, where Melanie Charrol sat, looking over the girls. The seven-year-old twins, Anna and Suzie, huddled against her. Beverly Klemper brushed her short blond hair from her face – round with baby fat still, though she was fourteen – and struggled to breathe. The others were clustered together at the far side of the killing room. Ten-year-old Emily Stoddard rubbed frantically at a rust stain on her white tights, tears running down her face.

Melanie glanced at Mrs. Harstrawn and Susan Phillips, crouching together, speaking in abrupt sign. The teenage girl's pale face, framed by her stark hair, was still filled with anger. Her dark eyes were the eyes of a resistance fighter, Melanie thought suddenly. Their conversation had to do with the students.

"I'm worried they'll panic," Susan said to the older teacher. "Have to keep them together. If somebody runs, those assholes will hurt them."

With the audacity of an eight-year-old, Kielle Stone signed, "We have to run! There're more of us than them. We can get away!"

Susan and Mrs. Harstrawn ignored her, and the little girl's gray eyes flashed with anger.

All the while Melanie agonized: I don't know what to do. I don't know.

The men weren't paying much attention to the girls at the moment. Melanie rose and walked to the doorway. She watched them pull clothes out of canvas bags. Brutus stripped off his T-shirt and with a glance at her walked under the stream of water, letting it cascade over him as he gazed up at the murky ceiling, eyes closed. She saw his sinewy muscles, his hairless body, marred by a dozen pink scars. The other two men looked at him uncertainly and continued to change clothes. When they pulled off their workshirts she could read the names stenciled on their T-shirts. Stoat's said S. Wilcox. Bear's, R. Banner. But still, seeing Bear's fat, hairy body and Stoat's lean one, his slippery eyes, she thought of them only by the animal names that had instinctively occurred to her.

And, seeing the look of amused malice on his face as he stood under the cascading water, arms outstretched like Christ's, she understood that Brutus was a far better name for him than L. Handy.

He now stepped from the stream of water, dried off with his old shirt, and pulled on a new one, dark green flannel. He picked the pistol up from the oil drum and gazed at his captives, that curious smile on his face. He joined the other men. They looked cautiously out one of the front windows.

This can't be happening, Melanie said to herself. It's impossible. People were expecting her. Her parents. Danny, going into surgery tomorrow. She'd been in her brother's recovery rooms after every one of his half-dozen operations in the past year. She felt the absurd urge to tell these men that they had to let them go; she couldn't disappoint her brother.

Then there was her performance in Topeka.

And of course her plans afterwards.

Go say something to him. Now. Plead with him to release the little girls. The twins, at least. Or Kielle and Shannon. Emily.

Beverly, racked with asthma.

Go. Do it.

Melanie started forward then looked back. The others in the killing room – all nine of them – were staring at her.

Susan held her eyes for a moment then gestured for her to return. She did.

"Don't worry," Susan signed to the girls, then pulled the tiny, chestnut-haired twins to her. Smiling. "They're going to leave soon, let us out. We'll be in Topeka late, that's all. What do you want to do after Melanie's recital? Everybody tell me. Come on!"

Is she crazy? Melanie thought. We're not going to… Then realized that Susan was saying this to put them at ease. The girl was right. The truth didn't matter. Keeping the younger girls comforted did. Making sure there was no excuse for the men to get close to them; the memory of Bear gripping Susan's breasts, holding Shannon tight to his fat body came starkly to mind.

But no one wanted to play the game. Until Melanie signed, "Go out for dinner?"

" Arcade!" Shannon signed suddenly. "Mortal Kombat!"

Kielle sat up. "I want to go to real restaurant. I want steak medium rare and potatoes and pie -"

"Whole pie?" Susan asked, mock astonishment on her face.

Choking back tears, Melanie couldn't think of anything to say. Feebly she signed, "Yes. Whole pies for everyone!"

The girls glanced at her but their eyes returned immediately to Susan.

"Might get bellyaches." Mrs. Harstrawn gave an exaggerated frown.

"No," Kielle responded. "Whole pie would be crass." She gave an indignant glance to Susan. "Only Philistines eat whole pies. We'll order one piece each. And I'm going to have coffee."

"They don't let us drink coffee," Jocylyn stopped rubbing her tearful eyes long enough to sign.

"I'm having coffee. Black coffee," Shannon the knee-kicker signed.

"With cream," Kielle continued. "When my mother makes coffee she puts it in glass cup and pours cream in. It swirls like cloud. I'm going to have coffee in real restaurant."

"Coffee ice cream maybe." Beverly struggled to suck air into her lungs.

"With sprinkles," Suzie offered.

"With sprinkles and Reese's Pieces," echoed Anna, her junior by thirty-some seconds. "Like at Friendly's!"

And, once again, Melanie could think of nothing to say.

"Not that kind of restaurant. I mean fancy restaurant." Kielle didn't understand why nobody else was excited at the prospect.

A huge smile on Susan's face. "We're all decided. Fancy restaurant. Steak, pie, and coffee for everybody. No Philistines allowed!"

Suddenly twelve-year-old Jocylyn broke into hysterical tears and leapt to her feet. Mrs. Harstrawn was up in an instant, cradling the rotund girl, pulling her close. Slowly she calmed down. Melanie lifted her hands to say something comforting and witty. Finally she signed, "Whipped cream on everyone's pie."

Susan turned to Melanie. "You still ready to go on stage?"

The young teacher stared back at her student for a moment then smiled, nodding.

Mrs. Harstrawn, eyes flitting nervously to the main room of the slaughterhouse, where the men stood talking, their heads down, signed, "Maybe Melanie can recite her poems again."

Melanie nodded and her mind went blank. She had a repertoire of two dozen poems she'd been planning on performing. Now she could remember nothing but the first stanza of her "Birds on a Wire." Melanie lifted her hands, signed:

"Eight gray birds, sitting in dark.

"Cold wind blows, it isn't kind.

"Sitting on wire, they lift their wings

"and sail off into billowy clouds."

"Pretty, isn't it?" Susan asked, looking directly at Jocylyn. The girl wiped her face on the sleeve of her bulky blouse and nodded.

"I wrote some poems," Kielle signed emphatically. "Fifty of them.

No, more. They're about Wonder Woman and Spider-Man. And X-Men too. Jean Grey and Cyclops. Shannon's read them!"

Shannon nodded. On the girl's left forearm was a faux tattoo of another X-Man, Gambit, which she'd drawn with Pentel marker.

"Why don't you tell us one?" Susan asked her.

Kielle thought for a minute then confessed that her poems still needed some work.

"Why are birds gray in your poem?" Beverly asked Melanie. Her signing was abrupt, as if she had to finish every conversation before one of her wrenching asthma attacks.

"Because we all have a little gray in us," Melanie answered, amazed that the girls were actually rallying, distracted from the horror unfolding around them.

"If it's about us I'd rather be pretty bird," Suzie said, and her twin nodded.

"You could have made us red," suggested Emily, who was dressed in a Laura Ashley floral. She was more feminine than all the rest of the students combined.

Then Susan – who knew facts that even Melanie did not; Susan, who was going to attend Gallaudet College next year with straight A's – explained to the other girls' fascination that only male cardinals were red. The females were brownish gray.

"So, they're cardinals?" Kielle asked.

When Melanie didn't respond the little girl tapped her shoulder and repeated the question.

"Yes," Melanie answered. "Sure. It's about cardinals. You're all flock of pretty cardinals."

"Not archbishops?" Mrs. Harstrawn signed, and rolled her eyes. Susan laughed. Jocylyn nodded but seemed stymied that someone had once again beaten her to a punch line.

Tomboy Shannon, devourer of Christopher Pike books, asked why Melanie didn't make the birds hawks, with long silver beaks and claws that dripped blood.

"It is about us then?" Kielle asked. "The poem?"

"Maybe."

"But there are nine, including you," Susan pointed out to her teacher with the logic of a teenager. "And ten with Mrs. Harstrawn."

"So there are," Melanie responded. "I can change it." Then thought to herself: Do something. Whipped cream on pie? Bullshit. Take charge!

Do something!

Go talk to Brutus.

Melanie rose suddenly, walked to the doorway. Looked out. Then back at Susan, who signed, "What are you doing?"

Melanie's eyes returned to the men. Thinking: Oh, don't rely on me, girls. That's a mistake. I'm not the one to do it. Mrs. Harstrawn's older. Susan's stronger. When she says something, people – hearing or deaf – always listen.

I can't -

Yes, you can.

Melanie took a step into the main room, feeling the spatter of water that dripped from the ceiling. She dodged a swinging meat hook, walked closer to the men. Just the twins. And Beverly. Who wouldn't let seven-year-old girls go? Who wouldn't have compassion for a teenager racked by asthma?

Bear looked up and saw her, grinned. Crew-cut Stoat was slipping batteries into a portable TV and paid no attention. Brutus, who had wandered away from the other two, was gazing out the window.

Melanie paused, looked back into the killing room. Susan was frowning. Again she signed, "What are you doing?" Melanie sensed criticism in her expression; she felt like a high-school student herself.

Just ask him. Write the words out. Please let little ones go.

Her hands were shaking, her heart was a huge, raw lump. She felt the vibrations as Bear called something. Slowly Brutus turned.

He looked at her, tossed his wet hair.

Melanie froze, feeling his eyes on her. She pantomimed writing something. He walked up to her. She was frozen. He took her hand, looked at her nails, a small silver ring on her right index finger. Released it. Looked into her face and laughed. Then he walked back to the other two men, leaving her alone, his back to her, as if she posed no threat whatsoever, as if she were younger than the youngest of her students, as if she were not there at all.

She felt more devastated than if he'd slapped her.

Too frightened to approach him again, too ashamed to return to the killing room, Melanie remained where she was, gazing out the window at the row of police cars, the crouching forms of the policemen, and the scruffy grass bending in the wind.

Potter gazed at the slaughterhouse through the bulletproof window in the truck.

They'd have to talk soon. Already Lou Handy was looming too large in his mind. There were two dangers inherent in negotiating. First, making the hostage taker bigger than life before you begin and therefore starting out on the defensive – what Potter was beginning to feel now. (The other – his own Stockholming – would come later. He'd deal with it then. And he knew he would have to.)

"Throw phone ready?"

"Just about." Tobe was programming numbers into a scanner on the console. "Should I put an omni in it?"

Throw phones were lightweight, rugged cellular phones containing a duplicate transmitting circuit that sent to the command post any conversations on the phone and a readout of the numbers called. Usually the HTs spoke only to the negotiators but sometimes they called accomplices or friends. These conversations sometimes helped the threat management team in bargaining or getting a tactical advantage.

Occasionally a tiny omnidirectional microphone was hidden in the phone. It'd pick up conversations even when the phone wasn't being used by the HTs. It was every negotiator's dream to know exactly what was said inside a barricade. But if the microphone was found, it might mean reprisals and would certainly damage the negotiator's credibility – his only real asset at this stage of the situation.

"Henry?" Potter asked. "Your opinion. Could he find it?"

Henry LeBow tapped computer keys and called up Handy's rapidly growing file. He scrolled through it. "Never went to college, got A's in science and math in high school. Wait, here we go… Studied electronics in the service for a while. He didn't last long in the army. He knifed his sergeant. That's neither here nor there… No, I'd say don't put the mike in. He could spot it. He excelled in engineering."

Potter sighed. "Leave it out, Tobe."

"Hurts."

"Does."

The phone buzzed and Potter took the call. Special Agent Angie Scapello had arrived in Wichita and was being choppered directly to the Laurent Clerc School in Hebron. She and the Hebron PD officer who'd be acting as interpreter would be arriving in a half-hour.

He relayed this information to LeBow, who typed it in. The intelligence officer added, "I'll have CAD schematics of the interior in ten minutes." LeBow had sent a field agent to dig up architectural or engineering drawings of the slaughterhouse. These would be transmitted to the command post and printed out through computer-assisted drafting software.

Potter said to Budd, "Charlie, I'm thinking we've got to consolidate them. The hostages. The takers're going to want power in there but I don't want to do that. I want to get them a single electric lantern. Battery powered. Weak. So they'll all have to be in the same room."

"Why?"

LeBow spoke. "Keep the takers and the hostages together. Let Handy talk to them, get to know them."

"I don't know, sir," the captain said. "Those girls're deaf. That's gonna be a spooky place. If they're in a room that's lit with just one lantern, they'll… well, the way my daughter'd say, they'll freak."

"We can't be worried much about their feelings," Potter said absently, watching LeBow transcribe notes into his electronic tablet of stone.

"I don't really agree with you there, sir," Budd said.

Silence.

Tobe was assembling the cellular phone, while he simultaneously gazed at six TV stations on a single monitor, the screen split miraculously by Derek Elb. All the local news was about the incident. CBS was doing a special report, as was CNN. Sprayed-haired beauties, men and women, held microphones like ice cream cones and spoke into them fervently. Potter noticed that Tobe'd taken to the control panel of the command van as if he'd designed it himself, and then reflected that perhaps he had. He and red-haired Derek had become fast friends.

"Think about it, though," Budd persisted. "That's a scary place at high noon. At night? Brother, it'll be awful."

"Whatever happens," Potter replied, "these next twenty-four hours aren't going to be very pleasant for those girls. They'll just have to live with it. We need to bunch them up. A single lantern'll do that."

Budd grimaced in frustration. "There's a practical matter too. I'm thinking if it's too dark they might panic. Try to run. And get hurt."

Potter looked at the brick walls of the old processing plant, as dark as dried blood.

"You don't want them to get shot, do you?" Budd asked in exasperation, drawing LeBow's glance, though not Potter's.

"But if we turn the power on," the agent said, "they'll have the whole slaughterhouse to hide themselves in. Handy could put them in ten different rooms." Potter pressed his cupped hands together absently as if making a snowball. "We have to keep them together."

Budd said, "What we could do is get a generator truck here. Feed in a line. Four or five auto repair lights – you know, those caged lights on hooks. Just enough current to light up the main room. And that way if you ordered an assault we could shut down the juice any time we wanted. Which you couldn't do with a battery unit. And, look, at some point we're gonna have to communicate with those girls. Remember, they're deaf. If it's dark, how're we gonna do that?"

That was a good point, one that Potter hadn't considered. In an assault someone would have to issue sign language evacuation instructions to the girls.

Potter nodded. "Okay."

"I'll get on it."

"Delegate it, Charlie."

"I aim to."

Tobe pushed buttons. A hiss of static filled the van. "Shit," he muttered. He added to LeBow, "Got two men with Big Ears closer than they ought to be," referring to small parabolic microphones that under good conditions could pick up a whisper at a hundred yards. Today they were useless.

"Damn wind," LeBow muttered.

'Throw phone's ready," Tobe announced, pushing a small olive-drab backpack toward Potter. "Both downlink circuits're ready to receive."

"We'll -"

A phone buzzed. Potter grabbed it.

"Potter here."

"Agent Potter? We haven't met." A pleasant baritone boomed out of the speaker. "I'm Roland Marks, the assistant attorney general of the state."

"Yes?" Potter asked coolly.

"I'd like to share some thoughts with you, sir." Potter's impatience surged. There's no time for this, he thought to himself.

"I'm very busy right now."

"Some thoughts about state involvement. Just my two cents' worth."

Potter had Charlie Budd, he had his containment troops, he had his command van. He needed nothing else from the state of Kansas. "This isn't a good time, I'm afraid."

"Is it true that they've kidnaped eight young girls?"

Potter sighed. "And two teachers. From the deaf school in Hebron. Yes, that's right. We're just about to establish contact and we're on a very tight schedule. I don't -"

"How many takers are there?"

"I'm afraid I don't have time to discuss the situation with you. The governor's been briefed and you can call our special agent in charge, Peter Henderson. I assume you know him."

"I know Pete. Sure." The hesitant voice suggested he had little confidence in the man. "This could be a real tragedy, sir."

"Well, Mr. Marks, my job is to make sure it doesn't turn out that way. I hope you'll let me get on with it."

"I was thinking, maybe a counselor or priest could help out. In Topeka we've got ourselves this state employee assistance department. Some top-notch -"

"I'm hanging up now," Potter said rather cheerfully. "Pete Henderson can keep you informed of our progress."

"Wait a minute -"

Click.

"Henry, pull some files. Roland Marks's. Assistant AG. Find out if he can make trouble. See if he's filed to run in any elections, got his eye on any appointments."

"Just sounds like some do-good, knee-jerk, bleeding-heart liberal to me," scowled Henry LeBow, who'd voted Democratic all his life, Eugene McCarthy included.

"All right," Potter said, forgetting immediately about the attorney general's call, "let's get a volunteer with a good arm. Oh, one more thing." Potter buttoned his navy jacket and lifted a finger to Budd. He motioned to the door. "Step out here, would you please, Charlie?"

Outside they stood in the faint shadow of the van. "Captain," Potter said, "you better tell me what's eating you. That I stepped on your toes back there?"

"Nope," came the chilly response. "You're federal. I'm state. It's in the Constitution. Preeminence, they call it."

"Listen," Potter said firmly, "we don't have time for delicacies. Get it off your chest now. Or live with it, whatever it is."

"What're we doing? Taking off our insignias and going at it?" Budd laughed without much humor.

Potter said nothing but lifted an eyebrow.

"All right, how's this? What's eating me is I know you're supposed to be good at this and I've never done a negotiation before. I hear you barking orders right and left like you know exactly what you're doing but don't you think there's one thing you neglected to mention?"

"What?"

"You didn't say hardly three words about those girls in there."

"What about them?"

"I just thought you should've reminded everybody that our number-one priority is getting those girls out alive."

"Oh," Potter said, his mind elsewhere as he scanned the battlefield. "But that's not our number-one priority at all, Charlie. The rules of engagement are real clear. I'm here to get the takers to surrender and, if they don't, to help Hostage Rescue engage and neutralize them. I'll do everything in my power to save the people inside. That's why it's me, not HRT, running the show. But those men in there aren't leaving Crow Ridge except in body bags or handcuffs. And if that means those hostages have to die, then they're going to die. Now if you could find me that volunteer – a fellow with a good arm to pitch the phone. And hand me that bullhorn too, if you'd be so kind."

NOON

As he walked through a shallow gully that eventually ran into the south side of the slaughterhouse, Arthur Potter said to Henry LeBow, "We'll want engineer reports on any modifications to the building. EPA too. I want to know if there're any tunnels."

The intelligence officer nodded. "It's being done. And I'm checking on easements too."

"Tunnels?" Budd asked.

Potter told him about the terrorist barricade at the Vanderbilt mansion in Newport, Rhode Island, three years before. The Hostage Rescue Team had completely surprised the HTs by sneaking through a steam tunnel into the basement of the building. The tycoon had ordered the furnace installed away from the house so the noise and smoke wouldn't disturb his guests, never knowing that his sense of social decorum would save the lives of fifteen Israeli tourists a hundred years later.

The agent noticed that Dean Stillwell had reorganized troopers and agents in good defensive positions around the building. Halfway to the slaughterhouse Potter paused suddenly and looked toward the glint of water in the distance.

To Budd, Potter said, "I want all river traffic stopped."

"Well, um, that's the Arkansas River."

"So you told us."

"I mean, it's a big river."

"I can see."

"Well, why? You thinking they'll have accomplices floating in on rafts?"

"No." In the ensuing silence Potter challenged Budd to figure it out. He wanted the man to start thinking.

"You're not afraid they'd try and swim out to a barge? They'd drown for sure. It's a mean current here."

"Ah, but they might want to try. I want to make sure they don't even think of it. Just like keeping the choppers away."

Budd said, "Okay. I'll do it. Only who should I call? The coast guard? I don't think there's any such thing as a coast guard on rivers here." His frustration was evident. "I mean, who should I call?"

"I don't know, Charlie. You'll have to find out." On his cellular phone Budd placed a call to his office and ordered them to find out who had jurisdiction over river traffic. He ended the conversation by saying, "I don't know. You'll have to find out."

SAC Peter Henderson was at the rear staging area, setting up the medical unit and coordinating with other troopers and agents coming into the area, particularly the BATF agents and U.S. marshals, on site because there'd been firearm violations and an escape from a federal prison. The SAC's bitter parting words still echoed in Potter's mind. Oh, there'll be something else. Don't you worry.

He said to LeBow, "Henry, while you're looking up our friend Roland Marks, check out Henderson too."

"Our Henderson?"

"Yep. I don't want it to interfere with working the incident but I need to know if he's got an agenda."

"Sure."

"Arthur," Budd said, "I was thinking, maybe we should get this fellow's mother here. Handy's, I mean. Or his father or brother or somebody."

It was LeBow who shook his head.

"What? I ask something stupid?" Budd asked.

The intelligence officer said, "Just watching too many movies, Captain. A priest or family member's the last person you want here."

"Why's that?"

Potter explained, "Nine times out of ten their family's part of the reason they're in trouble in the first place. And I've never known a priest to do anything more than rile up a taker." He was pleased to notice that Budd took this not as a chastisement but as information; he seemed to store it somewhere in his enthusiastic brain.

"Sir." Sheriff Dean Stillwell's voice floated to them on the breeze. He trooped up and mussed his moppish hair with his fingers. "Got one of my boys gonna make the run with that phone. Come over here, Stevie."

"Officer," Potter said, nodding, "what's your name?"

"Stephen Gates. I go by Stevie mostly." The officer was lanky and tall and would look right at home in white pinstripes, working on a chaw of tobacco out on the pitcher's mound.

"All right, Stevie. Put on that body armor and helmet. I'm going to tell them you're coming. You crawl up to that rise there. See it? By that old livestock pen. I want you to stay down and pitch the knapsack as far as you can toward the front door."

Tobe handed him the small olive-drab satchel. "What if I hit those rocks there, sir?"

"It's a special phone and the bag's padded," Potter said. "Besides, if you hit those rocks, you should get out of law enforcement and try out for the Royals. All right," he announced, "let's get this show on the road."

Potter gripped the bullhorn and crawled to the top of the rise where he'd hailed Handy last time, sixty yards from the black windows of the slaughterhouse. He dropped onto his belly, caught his breath. Lifted the bullhorn to his lips. "This is Agent Potter again. We're sending a telephone in to you. One of our men is going to throw it as close to you as he can. This is not a trick. It's simply a cellular phone. Will you let our man approach?" Nothing.

"You men inside, can you hear me? We want to talk to you. Will you let our man approach?"

After an interminable pause a piece of yellow cloth waved in one window. It was probably a positive response; a "no" would presumably have been a bullet.

"When you come out to get the phone we will not shoot at you. You have my word on that." Again the yellow scrap.

Potter nodded to Gates. "Go on."

The trooper started toward the grassy rise, staying low. Still, Potter noted, a rifleman inside could easily hit him. The helmet was Kevlar but the transparent face mask was not.

Of the eighty people now surrounding the slaughterhouse, not a soul spoke. There was the hiss of the wind, a far-off truck horn. Occasionally the sound of the chugging engines of the big John Deere and Massey-Ferguson combines swam through the thick wheat. It was pleasant and it was unsettling. Gates scrabbled toward the rise. He made it and lay prone, looking up quickly, then down again. Until recently, throw phones were bulky and hard-wired to the negotiator's phone. Even the strongest officer could pitch them only thirty feet or so and often the cords got tangled. Cellular technology had revamped hostage negotiation.

Gates rolled from one clump of tall bluestem to another like a seasoned stuntman. He paused in a bunch of buffalo grass and goldenrod. Then kept going.

Okay, thought Potter. Throw it.

But the trooper didn't throw it.

Oates looked once more at the slaughterhouse then crawled over the knoll, past rotting posts and rails of livestock pens, and continued on, a good twenty yards. Even a bad marksman would have his pick of body parts from that range.

"What's he doing?" Potter whispered, irritated.

"I don't know, sir," Stillwell said. "I was real clear about what to do. I know he's pretty worried about those girls and wants to do everything right."

"Getting himself shot isn't doing anything right."

Oates continued toward the slaughterhouse.

Don't be a hero, Stevie, Potter thought. Though his concern was more than the man's getting killed or wounded. Unlike special forces and intelligence officers, cops aren't trained in anti-interrogation techniques. In the hands of somebody like Lou Handy, armed with only a knife or a safety pin, Oates'd spill everything he knew in two minutes, telling the location of every officer on the field, the fact that HRT wasn't expected for some hours, what types of guns the troopers had, anything else Handy might be curious to know.

Throw the damn phone!

Gates made it to a second rise and quickly looked up at the slaughterhouse door again then ducked. When there was no fire he squinted, drew back, and launched the phone in a low arc. It passed well over the rocks he'd been worried about and rolled to a stop only thirty feet from the arched brick doorway of the Webber amp; Stoltz plant.

"Excellent," Budd muttered, clapping Stillwell on the back. The sheriff smiled with cautious pride.

"Maybe it's a good omen," LeBow suggested.

Gates refused to present his back to the darkened windows of the slaughterhouse and eased backward into the grass until he was lost to sight.

"Now let's see who's the brave one," Potter mumbled.

"What do you mean?" Budd asked.

"I want to know who's the gutsiest and most impulsive of the three in there."

"Maybe they're drawing straws."

"No. My guess is that two of them wouldn't go out there for any money and the third can't wait. I want to see who that third one is. That's why I didn't ask for Handy specifically."

"I bet it's him, though," Budd said.

But it wasn't. The door opened and Shepard Wilcox walked out.

Potter studied him through the binoculars.

Taking a casual stroll. Looking around the field. Wilcox sauntered toward the phone. A pistol butt protruded from the middle of his belt. "Looks like a Glock," Potter said of the gun.

LeBow wrote down the information in a small notebook, the data to be transcribed when he returned to the command post. He then whispered, "Thinks he's the Marlboro man."

"Looks pretty confident," Budd said. "But I suppose he's got all the cards."

"He's got none of the cards," the negotiator said softly. "But either one'll give you all the confidence in the world."

Wilcox snagged the strap of the phone's backpack and gazed again at the line of police cars. He was grinning.

Budd laughed. "It's like -"

The crack of the gunshot echoed through the field and with a soft phump the bullet slapped into the ground ten feet from Wilcox. In an instant he had the pistol in his hand and was firing toward the trees where the shot had come from.

"No!" cried Potter, who leapt up and raced into the field. Through the bullhorn he turned to the cops behind the squad cars, all of whom had drawn their pistols or lifted shotguns and chambered rounds. "Hold your fire!" He waved his hands madly. Wilcox fired twice at Potter. The first shot vanished into the cloudy sky. The second split a rock a yard from Potter's feet.

Stillwell was shouting into his throat mike, "No return fire! All unit commanders, no return fire!"

But there was return fire.

Dirt kicked up around Wilcox as he flung himself to the ground and with carefully placed shots shattered three police car windshields before reloading. Even under these frantic conditions Wilcox was a fine marksman. From a window of the slaughterhouse came the repeated explosions of a semiautomatic shotgun; pellets hissed through the air.

Potter remained standing, in plain view, waving his hands. "Stop your firing!"

Then, suddenly, complete silence fell over the field. The wind vanished for a moment and stillness descended. The hollow cry of a bird filled the gray afternoon; the sound was heartbreaking. The sweet smell of gunpowder and fulminate of mercury, from primers, was thick.

Gripping the phone, Wilcox backed toward the slaughterhouse.

To Stillwell, Potter called, "Find out who fired. Whoever fired the first shot – I want to see him in the van. The ones who fired afterwards – I want them off the field and I want everybody to know why they're being dismissed."

"Yessir." The sheriff nodded and hurried off.

Potter, still standing, turned the binoculars onto the slaughterhouse, hoping to catch a glimpse of the inside when Wilcox entered. He was scanning the ground floor when he observed a young woman looking through the window to the right of the slaughterhouse door. She was blond and seemed to be in her mid-twenties. Looking right at him. She was distracted for a moment, glanced into the bowels of the slaughterhouse then back to the field, terror in her eyes. Her mouth moved in a curious way – very broadly. She was saying something to him. He watched her lips. He couldn't figure out the message.

Potter turned aside and handed LeBow the binoculars. "Henry, fast. Who's that? You have any idea?"

LeBow had been inputting the identities of those hostages they had information about. But by the time he looked, the woman was gone. Potter described her.

"The oldest student's seventeen. It was probably one of the two teachers. I'd guess the younger one. Melanie Charrol. She's twenty-five. No other information on her yet."

Wilcox backed into the slaughterhouse. Potter saw nothing inside except blackness. The door slammed shut. Potter scanned the windows again, hoping to catch another glimpse of the young woman. But he saw nothing. He was silently duplicating the motion of her mouth. Lips pursed together, lower teeth touching the upper lips; lips pursed again, though differently, like in a kiss.

"We should make the call." LeBow touched Potter's elbow.

Potter nodded and the men hurried back to the van in silence, Budd behind them, glaring at one of the troopers who'd returned fire at Wilcox. Stillwell was reading the man the riot act.

Lips, teeth, lips. What were you trying to say? he wondered.

"Henry," Potter said. "Mark down: 'First contact with a hostage.' "

"Contact?"

"With Melanie Charrol."

"What was the communication?"

"I don't know yet. I just saw her lips move."

"Well -"

"Write it down. 'Message unknown.' "

"Okay."

"And add, 'Subject was removed from view before the threat management team leader could respond.' "

"Will do," replied meticulous Henry LeBow.

Inside the van Derek asked what happened but Potter ignored him. He snatched the phone from Tobe Geller and set it on the desk in front of him, cradled it between his hands.

He looked out through the thick window over the field, where the flurry of activity after the shooting had stopped completely. The front was now quiet; the errant officers – three of them – had been led off by Dean Still-well, and on the field the remaining troopers and agents stood with dense anticipation and fear and joy at the prospect of battle – a joy possible because there're thirty of you for each of them, because you're standing behind a half-ton Detroit picket line and wearing an Owens-Corning body vest, a heavy gun at your side, and because your spouse awaits you in a cozy bungalow with a beer and hot casserole.

Arthur Potter looked out over this cool and windy afternoon, an afternoon with the taste of Halloween in the air despite the midsummer month.

It was about to begin.

He turned away from the window, pushed a rapid-dial button on the phone. Tobe flipped a switch and began the recording. He hit another button and the sound of the ringing crackled through a speaker above their heads.

The phone rang five times, ten, twenty.

Potter felt LeBow's head turn toward him.

Tobe crossed his fingers.

Then: Click.

"We've got an uplink," Tobe whispered.

"Yeah?" The voice rang through the speaker.

Potter took a deep breath.

"Lou Handy?"

"Yeah."

"This is Arthur Potter. I'm with the FBI. I'd like to talk to you."

"Lou, that shot, it was a mistake."

"Was it now?"

Potter listened carefully to the voice, laced with a slight accent, mountain, West Virginian. He heard self-confidence, derision, weariness. All three combined to scare him considerably.

"We had a man in a tree. He slipped. His weapon discharged accidentally. He'll be disciplined."

"You gonna shoot him?"

"It was purely an accident."

"Accidents're funny things." Handy chuckled. "I was in Leavenworth a few years back and this asshole worked in the laundry room choked to death on a half-dozen socks. Had to've been a accident. He wouldn't go chewing on socks on purpose. Who'd do that?"

Cool as ice, Potter thought.

"Maybe this was that kinda accident."

"This was a run-of-the-mill, U.S.-certified accident, Lou."

"Don't much care what it was. I'm shooting one of 'em. Eenie meenie miney…"

"Listen to me, Lou…"

No answer.

"Can I call you Lou?"

"You got us surrounded, don'tcha? You got assholes in the trees with guns even if they can't sit on branches without falling. Guess you can call me what you fucking well like."

"Listen to me, Lou. This's a real tense situation here."

"Not for me it ain't. I ain't tense at all. Here's a pretty little blond one. No tits to speak of. Think I'll pick her."

He's playing with us. Eighty percent he's bluffing.

"Lou, Wilcox was in clear view. Our man was only eighty yards away, M-16 with a scope. Those troopers can drop a man at a thousand yards if they have to."

"But it's awful windy out there. Maybe your boy didn't compensate."

"If we'd've wanted your man dead he'd be dead."

"That don't matter. I keep telling you. Accident or not," he snarled, "gotta teach you people some manners." The bluff factor dropped to sixty percent.

Stay calm, Potter warned himself. Out of the corner of his eye he watched young Derek Elb wipe his palms on his pants and stuff a piece of gum into his mouth. Budd paced irritatingly, looking out the window.

"Let's just put it down to a mishap, Lou, and get on with what we have to talk about."

"Talk about?" He sounded surprised. "Whatta we gotta talk about?"

"Oh, lots," Potter said cheerfully. "First of all, is everybody doing okay in there? You have any injuries? Anybody hurt?"

His instinct was to ask specifically about the girls but negotiators try never to talk about the hostages if possible. You have to make the HT think that the captives have no bargaining value.

"Shep's a little bent outta shape, as you'd imagine, but otherwise everybody's right as rain. Course, ask again in five minutes. One of 'em ain't gonna be feeling so good."

Potter wondered: What did she say to me? He pictured Melanie's face again. Lips, teeth, lips…

"You need any first-aid supplies?"

"Yeah."

"What?"

"A medevac chopper."

"That's kind of a tall order, Lou. I was thinking more bandages or morphine, something like that. Antiseptic."

"Morphine? That wouldn't be to make us all dopey, would it? You'd like that, bet."

"Oh, we wouldn't give you enough to dope you up, Lou. You need anything at all?"

"Yeah, I need to shoot somebody's what I need. Little blondie here. Put a bullet 'tween the tits she don't have."

"That wouldn't do anybody any good now, would it?"

Potter was thinking: He likes to talk. He's unstable but he likes to talk. That's always the first hurdle, sometimes insurmountable. The quiet ones are the most dangerous. The agent cocked his head and prepared to listen carefully. He had to get into Handy's mind. Fall into his speech patterns, guess what the man is going to say, how he's going to say it. Potter would play this game all night until, by the time things were resolved one way or another, part of him would be Louis Jeremiah Handy.

"What's your name again?" Handy asked.

"Arthur Potter."

"You go by Art?"

"Arthur, actually."

"Ain't you got the info on me?"

"Some. Not much."

Potter thought spontaneously: I killed a guard escaping.

"I killed me a guard when we were escaping. Didn't you know that?"

"Yes, I did."

Potter thought: So the girl without any tits don't mean shit to me.

"So killing this girl, little blondie here, it don't mean nothing to me."

Potter pushed a mute button – a special device on the phone, which cut off his voice without a click on the other end. "Who's he talking about?" he asked LeBow. "Which hostage? Blond, twelve or under?"

"I don't know yet," the intelligence officer responded. "We can't get a clear look inside and don't have enough information."

Into the phone he said, "Why d'you want to hurt anybody, Lou?"

He'll change the subject, Potter guessed.

But Handy said, "Why not?"

Theoretically Potter knew he should be talking about frivolous things, stretching out the conversation, winning the man over, making him laugh. Food, sports, the weather, conditions inside the slaughterhouse, soft drinks. You never talked to the HTs about the incident itself at first. But he was assessing the risk that Handy was about to kill the girl and the bluff ratio was down to thirty percent; he couldn't afford to chat about hamburgers and the White Sox.

"Lou, I don't think you want to kill anybody."

"How d'you figure?"

Potter managed a chuckle. "Well, if you start killing hostages I'll have to conclude that you're planning to kill them all anyway. That's when I send in our hostage rescue team to take you all out."

Handy was laughing softly, "If them boys was there."

Potter and LeBow frowned at each other. "Oh, they're here," Potter said. He nodded at the "Deceptions" side of the bulletin board and LeBow jotted, Handy told that HRT is in place.

"You're asking me to hold off killing her?"

"I'm asking you not to kill anyone."

"I don't know. Should I, shouldn't I? You know how that happens sometimes, you just don't know what you want? Pizza or a Big Mac? Just can't fucking decide."

Potter's heart stuttered for a moment, for it seemed to him that Handy was being honest: that he really couldn't decide what to do, and that if he spared the girl it wouldn't be Potter's reasoned talk that saved her but whim, pure and simple, on Handy's part.

"I'll tell you what, Lou. I'm apologizing to you for the gunshot. I'll give you my word it won't happen again. In exchange for that, will you agree not to shoot that girl?"

He's smart, calculating, always thinking, the agent concluded. There wasn't a thing psychotic about Handy that Potter could identify. He wrote on a sheet of paper IQ? and pushed it toward LeBow.

Don't have it.

Handy's humming came through the phone. It was a song that Potter had heard a long time ago. He couldn't place it. Then through the speaker the man's amplified voice said, "Maybe I'll wait."

Potter sighed. LeBow gave him a thumbs-up and Budd smiled.

"I appreciate that, Lou. I really do. How's your food situation?"

Are you for real? Potter speculated.

"What're you, first you play cop, then you play nurse, now you're a fucking caterer?"

"I just want to keep everybody real calm and comfortable. Get you some sandwiches and sodas if you want. What do you say?"

"We're not hungry."

"Could be a long night."

Either: silence or Won't be that long at all.

"Don't think it's gonna be that long. Listen here, Art, you can chat me up 'bout food and medicine and any other crap you can think of. But the fact is we've got some things we're gonna want and we better have 'em without no hassles or I start killing. One by one."

"Okay, Lou. Tell me what they are."

"We'll do some talking here between us. And get back to you."

"Who's 'us,' Lou?"

"Aw, shit, you know, Art. There's me and Shep and my two brothers."

LeBow tapped Potter's arm. He was pointing to the screen. It read:

Handy is one of three brothers. Bench warrant out on Robert, 27. LKA, Seattle; failed to appear for grand larceny trial, fled jurisdiction. Eldest brother, Rudy, 40, was killed five years ago. Shot six times in the back of head by unknown assailant. Handy was suspected; never charged.

Potter thought of the delicate lines on his genealogy charts. What would Handy's look like; from whom did his blood descend? "Your brothers, Lou?" he said. "Is that right? They're inside with you?"

A pause.

"And Shep's four cousins."

"That's a lot of folk you got there. Anybody else?"

"Doc Holliday and Bonnie 'n' Clyde and Ted Bundy and a shitload of the gang from Mortal Kombat, and Luke Skywalker. And Jeffrey Dahmer's hungry ghost."

"Maybe we better surrender to you, Lou."

Handy laughed again. Potter was pleased at the sliver of rapport. Pleased too that he managed to say the magic word "surrender," plant it in Handy's thoughts.

"My nephew collects superhero comics," the agent said. "He'd love an autograph. Spider-Man wouldn't be in there too, would he?"

"Might just be."

The fax machine whirred and a number of sheets scrolled out. LeBow snatched them up and flipped through them rapidly, paused at one and then scribbled on the top, HOSTAGES. He pointed to a girl's name, followed by a block of handwritten text. It was preliminary data from Angie Scapello.

Hostage negotiation is the process of testing limits. Potter read the fax and noticed something. He said casually, "Say, Lou, like to ask you a question. One of those girls in there's got some serious health problems. Would you let her go?"

It was surprising how often direct requests of this sort worked. Ask a question and go silent.

"Really?" Handy sounded concerned. "Sick, huh? What's the trouble?"

"Asthma." Maybe the joking and the cartoon-character chat was having an effect on Handy.

"Which one is she?"

"Fourteen, short blond hair."

Potter listened to the background noise – just hollowness – as Handy, he assumed, looked over the hostages.

"If she doesn't get her medicine she could die," Potter said. "You release her, you do that for me, and when we get down to the serious negotiating I'll remember it. Tell you what, release her and we'll get you some electricity in there. Some lights."

"You'll turn the power on?" Handy asked so suddenly it startled Potter.

"We checked into that. The place is too old. It's not wired for modern current." Potter pointed to the "Deceptions" board and LeBow wrote. "But we'll run a line in and get you some lights."

"Do that and then we'll talk."

The balance of power was shifting subtly to Handy. Time to be tough. "All right. Fair enough. Now listen, Lou, I have to warn you. Don't try to get out of the building. There'll be snipers sighting on you. You're perfectly safe inside."

He'll be angry, Potter anticipated. A mini tantrum. Obscenities and expletives.

"Oh, I'm perfectly safe anywhere," Handy whispered into the phone. "Bullets pass right through me. I have strong medicine. When do I get some lights?"

"Ten minutes, fifteen. Give us Beverly, Lou. If you do -"

Click.

"Damn," Potter muttered.

"Little eager there, Arthur," LeBow said. Potter nodded. He'd made the classic mistake of negotiating against himself. Always wait for the other side to ask you for something. Understandably he'd pushed when he heard Handy's hesitation and upped the stakes himself. But he'd scared off the seller. Still, at some point he'd have to go through this exercise. Hostage takers can be pushed a certain distance, and bribed a certain amount further. Half the battle was finding out how far and when to do which.

Potter called Stillwell and told him he'd warned the takers about leaving the slaughterhouse. "You're green-lighted to contain them, as discussed."

"Yessir," Stillwell said.

Potter asked Budd, "What's the ETA on that power truck?"

"Should be just ten minutes." He was looking out the window morosely.

"What's the matter, Charlie?"

"Oh, nothing. I was just thinking that was good what you did there. Talking him out of shooting her."

Potter sensed there was something else on Budd's mind. But he said only, "Oh, Handy was the one who decided not to shoot. I had nothing to do with it. The problem is, I don't know why yet."

Potter waited five minutes, then pushed speed dial.

The phone rang a million times. "Could you please turn that down a little, Tobe?" Potter nodded at the speaker above his head.

"Sure… Okay, uplink."

"Yeah?" Handy barked.

"Lou, you'll have a power line in about ten minutes."

Silence.

"What about the girl, Beverly?"

"Can't have her," he said abruptly, as if surprised that Potter hadn't figured this out yet.

Silence for a moment.

"Thought you said if you got power -"

"I'd think about it. I did, and you can't have her."

Never get drawn into petty bickering. "Well, have you done any thinking about what you fellows want?"

"I'll get back to you on that, Art."

"I was hoping -"

Click.

"Downlink terminated," Tobe announced.

Stillwell brought the trooper in, a short, swarthy young man. He leaned the offending weapon by the door, its black bolt locked back, and walked up to Potter.

"I'm sorry, sir, I was on this branch and there was this gust of wind. I -"

"You were told to unchamber your weapon," Potter snapped.

The trooper stirred and his eyes darted around the room.

"Here now," Stillwell said, looking faintly ridiculous with a bulky flak jacket on under his Penney's suit. 'Tell the agent what you told me."

The trooper looked icily at Stillwell, resenting the new chain of command. He said to Potter, "I never received that order. I was locked and loaded from the git-go. That's SOP for us, sir."

Stillwell grimaced but he said, "I'll take responsibility, Mr. Potter."

"Oh, brother…" Charlie Budd stepped forward. "Sir," he said formally to Potter, "I have to say – it's my fault. Mine alone."

Potter lifted an inquiring hand toward him.

"I didn't tell the snipers to unchamber. I should've, like you ordered me to. The fact is, I concluded that I wasn't going to have troopers in the field unprotected. It's my fault. Not this man's. Not Dean's."

Potter considered this and said to the sniper, "You'll stand down and assist at the rear staging area. Go report to Agent-in-Charge Henderson."

"But I slipped, sir. It wasn't my fault. It was an accident."

"There're no accidents in my barricades," Potter said coldly.

"But -"

"That's all, Trooper," Dean Stillwell said. "You heard your order. Dismissed." The man snagged his weapon then stormed out of the van.

Budd said, "I'll do the same, sir. I'm sorry. I really am. You should have Dean here assist you. I -"

Potter pulled the captain aside. He said in a whisper, "I need your help, Charlie. But what you did, it was a personal judgment call. That, I don't need from you. Understand?"

"Yessir."

"You still want to be on the team?"

Budd nodded slowly.

"Okay, now go on out there and give them the order to unchamber."

"Sir -"

"Arthur."

"I've got to go home and look my wife in the eye and tell her that I disobeyed an FBI agent's direct order."

"How long you been married?"

"Thirteen years."

"Get hitched in junior high?"

Budd smiled grimly.

"What's her name?"

"Meg. Margaret."

"You have children?"

"Two girls." Budd's face remained miserable.

"Go on now. Do what I asked." Potter held his eyes.

The captain sighed. "I will, yessir. It won't happen again."

"Keep your head down." Potter smiled. "And don't delegate this one, Charlie."

"No sir. I'll check everybody."

Stillwell looked on sympathetically as Budd, hangtail, walked out the door.

Tobe was stacking up audiocassettes. All conversations with the takers would be recorded. The tape recorder was a special unit with a two-second delay built in, so that an electronic voice added a minute-by-minute time stamp onto the recording yet didn't block out the conversation. He looked up at Potter. "Who was it who said, 'I've met the enemy and he is us'? Was that Napoleon? Or Eisenhower, or somebody?"

"I think it was Pogo," Potter said.

"Who?"

"Comic strip," Henry LeBow said. "Before your time."

12:33 P.M.

The room was growing dark.

It was only early afternoon but the sky had filled with purple clouds and the windows in the slaughterhouse were small. Need that juice and need it now, Lou Handy thought, peering through the dimness.

Water dripped and chains hung from the gloomy shadows of the ceiling. Hooks everywhere and overhead conveyors. There were rusted machines that looked like parts of cars a giant had been playing with and said fuck it and tossed down on the floor.

Giant, Handy laughed to himself. What the hell'm I talking about?

He wandered through the ground floor. Wild place. What's it like to make money knocking off animals? he wondered. Handy had worked dozens of jobs. Usually sweat labor. Nobody ever let him operate fancy equipment, which would have doubled or tripled his salary. The jobs always ended after a month or two. Arguments with the foreman, complaints, fights, drinking in the locker room. He had no patience to wait it out with people who couldn't understood that he wasn't your average person. He was special. Nofuckingbody in the world had ever caught on to this.

The floor was wood, solid as concrete. Beautifully joined oak. Handy was no craftsman, like Rudy'd been, but he could appreciate good work. His brother had laid flooring for a living. Handy was suddenly angry at that asshole Potter. For some reason the agent had brought Rudy to mind. It infuriated Handy, made him want to get even.

He walked to the room where they'd put the hostages. It was semicircular, sided in porcelain tile, windowless. The blood drain. He guessed that if somebody fired a gun in the middle of the room it'd be loud enough to shatter eardrums.

Didn't much matter with this buncha birds, he thought. He looked them over. What was weird was that these girls – most of 'em – were pretty. That oldest one especially, the one with the black hair. The one looking back at him with a go-to-fucking-hell expression on her face. She's what, seventeen, eighteen? He smiled at her. She stared back. Handy gazed at the rest of them. Yep, pretty. It blew him away. They're freaks and all and you'd think they'd look a little gross, like retards do – like no matter how pretty, there's still something wrong, the corners don't meet even. But no, they looked normal. But damn, they cry a lot. That was irritating… that sound their throats make. They're fucking deaf – they shouldn't be making those fucking sounds!

Suddenly, in his mind, Lou Handy saw his brother.

The red dot appearing where Rudy's skull joined his spine. Then more dots, the tiny gun bucking in his fingers. The shudder in his brother's shoulders as the man stiffened, did a spooky little dance, and fell dead.

Handy decided he hated Art Potter even more than he'd thought.

He ambled back to Wilcox and Bonner, pulled the remote control out of the canvas bag, and channel-surfed on the tiny battery-powered TV that rested on an oil drum. All the local stations and one network were reporting about them. One newscaster said this would be Lou Handy's fifteen minutes of fame, whatever the hell that meant. The cops had ordered the reporters so far back from the action that he couldn't see anything helpful on the screen. He remembered the O. J. Simpson case, watching the white Bronco cruise down the highway, park at the man's house. The choppers were close enough to see the faces of the guy who was driving and the cop in his driveway. Everybody white in the prison rec room thinking, Blow your fucking brains out, nigger. Everybody black thinking, Go, O.J.! We're with you, homes!

Handy turned down the sound on the TV. Fucking place, he thought, looking around the slaughterhouse. He smelled rotting carcasses.

A voice startled him, "Let them go. Keep me." He wandered over to the tiled room. He crouched down and looked at the woman. "Who're you?"

"I'm their teacher."

"You can do that sign language stuff, right?"

"Yes." She gazed at Handy with defiant eyes.

"Uck," Handy said. "Freaky."

"Please, let them go. Keep me."

"Shut up," Handy said, and walked away.

He looked out the window. A tall police van sat on the crest of a hill. He bet that was where Art Potter was sitting. He took his pistol from his pocket and aimed at a yellow square on its side. He compensated for the distance and the wind. He lowered the gun. "Coulda nailed you, they wanted to," he called to Wilcox. "That's what he told me."

Wilcox too was gazing out a window. "There's a lot of 'em," he mused. Then: "Who was he? Th'asshole you were talking to."

"FBI."

Bonner said, "Oh, man. You mean we got a Feebie out there?"

"Was a federal prison we broke outta. Who the fuck you think they'd have after us?"

"Tommy Lee Jones," Bonner said. The big man kept his eyes on the teacher for a moment. Then on the little girl in the flowered dress and white stockings.

Handy saw his eyes. That cocksucker. "Nup, Sonny. Keep it inside them stinky jeans of yours, you hear me? Or you'll lose it."

Bonner grunted. When accused of doing just what he was guilty of Bonner always got pissed. Fast as a hedgehog rolls up. "Fuck you."

"Hope I gave one of 'em a new asshole," Wilcox said, but in his lazy-as-could-be voice, one of the reasons why Handy liked him. "So what've we got?" Handy asked.

Wilcox answered, "The two shotguns. And close to forty shells. One Smitty only six rounds. No, make that five. But we've got the Glocks and beaucoup de ammo there. Three hundred rounds."

Handy paced around the slaughterhouse floor, dancing over the pools of standing water.

"Damn cryin's getting on my nerves," Handy snapped. "It's fucking with my mind. That fat one, shit. Lookit her. And I don't know what's going on out there. That agent sounded too slick. I don't trust his ass. Sonny, you stay with our girls. Shep 'n' me're gonna poke around."

"What about tear gas?" Bonner looked out the window uncertainly. "We shoulda got some masks."

"They shoot tear gas in," Handy explained, "just piss on the canisters."

"That works? To stop it?"

"Yep."

"How 'bout that."

Handy glanced into the tiled room. The older teacher gazed at him with her muddy eyes. Sort of defiant, sort of something else.

"What's your name?"

"Donna Harstrawn. I -"

"Tell me, Donna, what's her name?" he asked slowly, pointing to the oldest student, the pretty one with the long black hair.

Before the teacher could answer, the girl lifted her middle finger toward him. Handy roared with laughter.

Bonner stepped forward, lifting his arm. "You little shit."

Donna scrambled in front of the girl, who drew back her fists, grinning. The little girls made their fucking spooky bird noises and the scared blond teacher held up a pitiful, pleading hand.

Handy grabbed Bonner's hand and pushed him away. "Don't hit 'em 'less I tell you to." He pointed at the teenager and asked the teacher, "What's her fucking name?"

"Susan. Please, will you -"

"And what's hers?" Pointing at the blond, the younger teacher.

"Melanie."

Mel-a-nee. She was the one that really pissed him off. When he'd found her looking out the window just after the shooting he'd grabbed her arm and she'd gone apeshit, totally freaked. He'd let her wander around 'cause he knew she wouldn't cause any trouble. At first he'd thought it was funny, her being such a little mouse. Then it made him mad – that skittish light in her eyes that made him want to stamp his foot just to see her jump. It always pissed him off, seeing no spirit in a woman.

This little bitch was the opposite of Pris. Oh, he'd like to see the two of them tangle. Pris'd pull out that Buck knife she kept down her bra sometimes, hot against her left tit, open it up, and come after her. Little blondie here'd take a dump in her pants. She seemed a hell of a lot younger than that Susan.

Now, she interested him, Suze did. Good old Donna had her muddy eyes that told him nothing, and the younger teacher had her scared eyes that hid everything. But Miss Teenager here… well, her eyes said a lot and she didn't care if he read it. He figured that she was smarter than the other two put together.

And ballsier.

Like Pris, he thought, with approval. "Susan," Handy said slowly. "I like you. You've got spunk. You don't know what the fuck I'm saying. But I like you." To the older teacher he said, "Tell her that."

After a pause Donna gestured with her hands.

Susan gave him a drop-dead look and responded.

"What'd she say?" Handy barked.

"She said to please let the little girls go."

Handy grabbed the woman's hair and pulled hard. More little bird screeches. Melanie shook her head, tears streaming. "What the fuck did she say?"

"She said, 'Go to hell.' "

He pulled her hair harder; tufts of the dyed strands popped from her skull. She whined in pain. "She said," Donna gasped, "she said, 'You're an asshole.' "

Handy laughed hard and shoved the teacher to the ground.

"Please," she called. "Let them go, the girls. Keep me. What does it matter if you have one hostage or six?"

"Because, you stupid cunt, I can shoot a couple of 'em and still have some left over."

She gasped and turned away quickly, as if she'd just walked into a room and found a naked man leering at her.

Handy walked to Melanie. "You think I'm an asshole too?"

The other teacher started to move her hands but Melanie responded before she'd gotten the question out.

"What'd she say?"

"She said, 'Why do you want to hurt us, Brutus? We didn't hurt you.' "

"Brutus?"

"That's what she calls you."

Brutus. Sounded familiar but he couldn't remember where he'd heard it. He frowned slightly. "Tell her she knows the fucking answer to that question." As he walked out the doorway Handy called, "Hey, Sonny, I'm learning sign language. Lemme show you." Bonner looked up.

Handy extended his middle finger. The three men laughed and Handy and Wilcox started down the corridor into the back of the slaughterhouse. When they were exploring the maze of hallways and butcher and processing rooms Handy asked Wilcox, "Think he'll behave?"

"Sonny? Fuck, I guess. Any other time he'd be on 'em like a rooster. But there ain't nothing like having a hundred armed cops outside your door to keep a pecker limp. What the fuck d'they do here?" Wilcox was gazing at the machinery, the long tables, gears and governors and belts. "Whatta you think?"

"I don't know."

"It's a fucking slaughterhouse."

" 'Processing,' that's what it means?"

"Shoot 'em and gut 'em. Yeah. Processing."

Wilcox pointed to an old machine. "What's that?"

Handy walked over and looked at it. He grinned. "Shit. It's a old steam engine. Hell, lookit."

"What'd they use that for here?"

"See," Handy explained, "this is why the world's got itself into deep shit. Back then, see, that was a turbine." He pointed to an old rusted spine covered with rotting fan blades. "That was how things worked. It went around and did things. That was the steam age and it was like the gas age too. Then we got into the electric age and you couldn't see what things did too well. Like you can see steam and fire but you can't see electricity doing anything. That's what got us into World War Two. Now we're in the electronic age. It's computers and everything and it's fucking impossible to see how things work. You can look at a computer chip and not see a thing even though it's totally doing what it oughta do. We've lost control."

"It's all pretty fucked up."

"What? Life or what I'm saying?"

"I don't know. It just sounds all fucked up. Life, I guess." They'd emerged into a large dim cavern. Must have been the warehouse. They tied or chocked shut the back doors.

"They can blow 'em open," Wilcox said. "A couple cutting charges'd do it.

"They could drop an A-bomb on us too. Either way them girls die. If that's what they want that's what they'll get."

"Elevator?"

"Nothing much we can do 'bout that," Handy said, looking at the big service elevator. "They wanta come rappelling in, we can get the first half-dozen of 'em. You know, their necks. Always aim for their necks."

Wilcox glanced at him then drawled, "So, whatcha thinking?"

I do get that look in my eyes, Handy thought. Pris says so all the time. Damn, he missed her. He wanted to smell her hair, listen to the sound of her bracelet as she shifted gears in her car, wanted to feel her underneath him as they fucked on the shag carpet of her apartment.

"Let's send one back to 'em," Handy said.

"One of the girls?"

"Yeah."

"Which one?"

"I don't know. That Susan maybe. She's all right. I like her."

Wilcox said, "I'd vote her most likely to hump. Not a bad idea to get her out of Bonner's sight. He'd be sniffing her lickety-split 'fore sunset. Or that other one, Melanie."

Handy said, "Naw, let's keep her. We oughta hang on to the weak ones."

"Second that."

"Okay, it'll be Susan." He laughed. "Not many girls around can look me in the eye and tell me I'm an asshole, I'll tell you that."

Melanie kept her arm tight around Kielle's shoulders, which were oddly muscular for an eight-year-old, and reached out a little further to rub the arm of one of the twins.

The girls were sandwiched in between her and Susan, and Melanie admitted reluctantly to herself that her gesture was only partially to reassure the younger ones; she also wanted the comfort for herself, the comfort of being close to her favorite student.

Melanie's hands were still shaking. She'd been unnerved when Brutus had grabbed her earlier as she was looking out the window, sending her message to the policeman in the field. And downright terrified when he'd pointed at her a few minutes ago and demanded to know her name.

She glanced at Susan and saw her looking angrily at Mrs. Harstrawn.

"What's the matter?" Melanie signed.

"My name. Giving it to him. Shouldn't have done that. Don't cooperate."

"We have to," the older teacher signed.

Melanie added, "Can't make them mad at us."

Susan laughed derisively. "What difference does it make if they're mad? Don't give in. They're assholes. They're worst type of Other."

"We can't -" Melanie began.

Bear stamped his foot. Melanie felt the vibrations and jumped. His fat lips were working fast and all she could make out was "Shut up." Melanie looked away. She couldn't stand the sight of his face, the way the black hairs at the edge of his beard curled outward, his fat pores.

His eyes kept returning to Mrs. Harstrawn. And Emily.

When he looked away Melanie slowly brought her hand up and switched from American Sign Language to Signed Exact English and fingerspelling. This was a clumsy way of communicating – she had to spell out words and put them into English word order. But it allowed the use of small hand motions and avoided the broad gestures necessary to communicate in ASL.

"Don't make them mad," she told Susan. "Take it easy."

"They're assholes." Susan refused to switch from ASL.

"Sure. But don't provoke!"

"They won't hurt us. We're no good to them dead."

Exasperated, Melanie said, "They can hurt us without killing us."

Susan just grimaced and looked away.

Well, what does she want us to do? Melanie thought angrily. Grab their guns away and shoot them? Yet at the same time she thought: Oh, why can't I be like her? Look at her eyes! How strong she is! She's eight years younger than me but I feel like the child when I'm around her.

Some of her envy could be attributed to the fact that Susan was the highest in the hierarchy of the world of the Deaf. She was prelingually deaf – born deaf. But more than that, she was Deaf of Deaf: both her parents had been deaf. Politically active in Deaf issues even at seventeen, accepted at Gallaudet in Washington, D.C., on a full scholarship, unyielding about the use of ASL versus SEE, militantly rejecting oralism – the practice of forcing the deaf to try to speak. Susan Phillips was the chic, up-to-the-minute Deaf young woman, beautiful and strong, and Melanie would rather have one Susan by her side at a time like this than a roomful of men.

She felt a small hand tug at her blouse.

"Don't worry," she signed to Anna. The twins hugged each other, their cheeks together, their remarkable eyes wide and tearful. Beverly sat by herself, her hands in her lap, and stared mournfully at the floor, struggling to breathe.

Kielle signed, "We need Jean Grey and Cyclops," referring to two of her favorite X-Men. "They'd tear them apart."

Shannon responded, "No, we need Beast. Remember? He had the blind girlfriend?" Shannon studied Jack Kirby's art religiously and intended to be a superhero-comic artist.

"Gambit too," Kielle signed. Pointing to Shannon's tattoo. Shannon's own comics – surprisingly good, Melanie thought, for an eight-year-old – featured characters with disabilities, like blindness and deafness, that they could mutate to their advantage as they solved crimes and saved people. The two girls – Shannon, gangly and dark; Kielle, compact and fair – fell into a discussion of whether optic blasts, plasmoids, or psychic blades would be the weapons of choice to save them now.

Emily cried for a moment into the sleeve of her dress, printed with black and purple flowers. Then she bowed her head, praying. Melanie saw her two fists lift and open outward. It was the ASL word for "sacrifice."

"Don't worry," Melanie repeated to those girls who were looking at her. But no one paid attention. If they focused on anyone it was on Susan though the girl was signing nothing, merely gazing steadily at Bear, who stood near the entrance to the killing room. Susan was their rallying point. Her presence alone gave them confidence. Melanie found herself struggling to keep from crying.

And it'll be so dark in here tonight!

Melanie leaned forward and looked out the window. She saw the grass bending in the wind. The Kansas wind, relentless. Melanie remembered her father telling her about the sea captain Edward Smith, who came to Wichita in the 1800s and got the idea of mounting sails on Conestoga wagons – literally prairie schooners. She'd laughed at the idea and at her father's humorous telling of the tale, never knowing whether to believe it or not. Now, she was stung at the memory of the storytelling and wished desperately for anything, mythical or real, to sweep her away from the killing room.

She thought suddenly: And what about that man outside? The policeman?

There had been something so reassuring in the way he'd stood up there on the hill after Brutus had fired his gun out the window and Bear was running around, his fat belly jiggling, ripping open boxes of bullets in a panic. The man stood on the hilltop waving his arms, trying to calm things down, stop the shooting. He was looking directly at her.

What would she call him? No animals came to mind. Nothing sleek and heroic anyway. He was old – twice her age probably. And he dressed frumpy. His glasses seemed thick and he was a few pounds heavy. Then it occurred to her. De l'Epée.

That's what she'd call him. After Charles Michel de l'Epée, the eighteenth-century abbé who was one of the first people in the world to really care about the Deaf, to treat them as intelligent human beings. The man who created French Sign Language, the predecessor of ASL.

It was a perfect name for the man in the field, thought Melanie, who could read French and knew that the name itself meant a kind of sword. Her de l'Epée was brave. Just the way his namesake had stood up to the Church and the popular sentiment that the Deaf were retarded and freaks, he was standing up to Stoat and Brutus, up there on the hill, bullets flying around him.

Well, she had sent him a message – a prayer, in a way. A prayer and a warning. Had he seen her? Could he understand what she'd said even if he had? She closed her eyes for a brief moment, concentrating all her thoughts on de l'Epée. But all she sensed was the temperature, which had grown cooler, her fear, and – to her dismay – the vibration of footsteps as a man, no, two men, approached slowly over the resonant oak floor.

As Brutus and Stoat appeared in the doorway Melanie glanced at Susan, whose face hardened once again, looking up at their captors.

I'll make my face hard too.

She tried but it trembled and soon she was crying again.

Susan! Why can't I be like you?

Bear walked up to the other men. He was gesturing to the main room. The light was dim and the phony science of lipreading gave her a distorted message. She believed he said something about the phone.

Brutus responded, "So let the fucker ring."

This was very strange, Melanie reflected, as the urge to cry diminished. Why, she thought again, can I understand him so well? Why him and not the others?

"We're going to send one back."

Bear asked a question.

Brutus answered, "Miss Deaf Teen." He nodded at Susan. Mrs. Harstrawn's face blossomed with relief.

My God, thought Melanie in despair, they're going to let her go! We'll be here all alone without her. Without Susan. No! She choked a sob.

"Stand up, honey," Brutus said. "Your… day. You're going home."

Susan was shaking her head. She turned to Mrs. Harstrawn and signed a defiant message, with her fast, crisp signing. "She says she isn't going. She wants you to release the twins."

Brutus laughed. "She wants me…"

Stoat said, "Get… up." He pulled Susan to her feet.

And then Melanie's heart was pounding, her face burned red, for, to her horror, she realized that the first thought in her mind was: Why couldn't it have been me?

Forgive me, God. De l'Epée, please forgive me! But then she made her shameful wish once again. And again still. It looped through her mind endlessly. I want to go home. I want to sit down by myself with a big bowl of popcorn, I want to watch closed-captioned TV, I want to clap the Koss headsets around my ears and feel the vibrations of Beethoven and Smetana and Gordon Bok…

Susan struggled away from Stoat's grip. She thrust the twins toward him. But he pushed the little girls aside and brutally tied Susan's hands behind her. Brutus stared out through the half-open window. "Hold up here," Brutus said, pushing Susan to the floor beside the door. He glanced back. "Sonny, go keep our lady friends company… that scatter-gun with you."

Susan looked back into the killing room.

In the girl's face Melanie saw the message: Don't worry. You'll be all right. I'll see to it.

Melanie held her gaze for only a moment then looked away, afraid that Susan would read her own thoughts and would see in them the shameful question: Why can't it be me, why can't it be me, why can't it be me?

1:01 P.M.

Arthur Potter gazed at the slaughterhouse and the fields surrounding it through the jaundice glass of the van's window. He was watching a trooper run the electrical line up to the front door. Five caged lights hung from the end of the cable. The officer backed away and Wilcox came out once more, pistol in hand, to retrieve the wire. He didn't, as Potter had hoped, run the line through the door, which would then have to remain open, but fed it through a window. He returned inside and the thick metal door swung tightly shut.

"Door is still secure," the negotiator said absently, and LeBow typed.

More faxes arrived. More background on Handy and on the hostages from the school the girls attended. LeBow greedily looked over the sheets and entered relevant data in the "Profiles" computer. The engineering and architect's diagrams had been transmitted. They were helpful only for the negatives they presented – how hard an assault would be. There were no tunnels leading into the slaughterhouse and if the P amp;Z variance documents from 1938 were accurate there had been significant construction on the roof of the building – with plans to create a fourth story – which would make a helicopter assault very difficult.

Tobe stiffened suddenly. "They've popped the cover on the phone." His eyes stared intently at a row of dials.

"Is it still working?"

"So far." Looking for bugs.

The young agent relaxed. "It's back together again. Whoever did it knows his equipment."

"Henry, who?"

"No way of knowing yet. I'd have to guess Handy. The military training, you know."

"Downlink," Tobe called.

Potter lifted a curious eyebrow at LeBow and picked up the phone as it rang.

"Hello. That you, Lou?"

"Thanks for the lights. We checked 'em for microphones… the phone too. Didn't find a fucking thing. A man of your word."

Honor. It means something to him, Potter noted, trying once again to comprehend the unfathomable.

"Say, what are you, Art, a senior agent? Agent in Charge? That's what they call 'em, right?"

Never let the HT think you're in a position to make important decisions by yourself. You want the option to stall while you pretend to talk to your superiors.

"Nope. Just a run-of-the-mill special agent who happens to like talking."

"So you say."

"I'm a man of my word, remember?" Potter said, glancing at the "Deceptions" board.

Time to defuse things, build up some rapport. "So what about some food, Lou? We could start grilling up some burgers. How do you like 'em?

Blood red, Potter speculated.

But he was wrong.

"Listen up, Art. I just want you to know what kind of nice fellow I am. I'm letting one of 'em go."

This news depressed Potter immeasurably. Curiously, with this act of spontaneous generosity, Handy had put them on the defensive. It was tactically brilliant. Potter was now indebted to him and he felt again a shift in the balance of power between predator and prey.

"I want you to understand that I ain't all bad."

"Well, Lou, I appreciate that. Is it Beverly? The sick girl?"

"Uh-uh."

Potter and the other cops craned forward to look outside. They could see a slight splinter of light as the door opened. Then a blur of white.

Keep his mind off the hostages, Potter thought. "You done any more thinking about what you folks're interested in? It's time to get down to some serious horse trading, Lou. What do you say -"

The phone clicked into dull static.

The door to the van suddenly swung open. Dean Stillwell's head poked in. The sheriff said, "They're releasing one of them."

"We know."

Stillwell disappeared outside again.

Potter spun about in the swivel chair. He couldn't see clearly. The clouds were very dense now and the fields dim, as if an eclipse had suddenly dipped the earth into shadow.

"Let's try the video, Tobe."

A video screen burst to life, showing in crisp black-and-white the front of the slaughterhouse. The door was open. They had all five lamps burning, it seemed.

Tobe adjusted the sensitivity and the picture settled.

"Who, Henry?"

"It's the older girl, Susan Phillips. Seventeen."

Budd laughed. "Hey, looks like it may be easier than we thought. If he's just gonna give 'em away."

On the screen Susan looked back into the doorway. A hand pushed her forward. Then the door closed.

"This is great," LeBow said enthusiastically, looking out the window, his head close to Potter's. "Seventeen. And she's a top student. She'll tell us a truckload of stuff about the inside."

The girl walked in a straight line away from the building. Through the glasses Potter could see how grim her face was. Her hands were tied behind her but she didn't seem to have suffered from the brief captivity.

"Dean," Potter said into the radio microphone, "send one of your men to meet her."

"Yessir." The sheriff was now speaking in a normal tone into his throat mike; he'd finally gotten the hang of the gear.

A state trooper in body armor and helmet slipped from behind a squad car and cautiously started in a crouch toward the girl, who'd made her way fifty feet from the slaughterhouse.

The gasp came from deep in Arthur Potter's throat.

As if his whole body'd been submerged in ice water he shuddered, understanding perfectly what was happening.

It was intuition probably, a feeling gleaned from the hundreds of barricades he'd negotiated. The fact that no taker had ever spontaneously released a hostage this early. The fact that Handy was a killer without remorse.

He couldn't say for sure what tipped him but the absolute horror of what was about to occur gripped his heart. "No!" The negotiator leapt to his feet, knocking the chair over with a huge crash.

LeBow glanced at him. "Oh, no! Oh, Christ, no."

Charlie Budd's head swiveled back and forth. He whispered, "What's wrong? What's going on?"

"He's going to kill her," LeBow whispered.

Potter tore the door open and ran outside, his heart slugging away in his chest. Snatching a flak jacket from the ground, he slipped between two cars and, gasping, ran straight toward the girl, passing the man Dean Stillwell had sent to meet her. His urgency made the troopers in the field uneasy but some of them smiled at the sight of the pudgy man running, holding the heavy flak jacket in one hand and waving a white Kleenex in the other.

Susan was forty feet from him, walking steadily over the grass. She adjusted her course slightly so they would meet.

"Get down, drop down!" Potter cried. He released the tissue, which floated ahead of him on the fast breeze, and he gestured madly at the ground. "Down! Get down!"

But she couldn't hear, of course, and merely frowned. Several of the troopers had heard Potter and stepped away from the cars they were using as cover. Reaching tentatively for their guns.

Potter's shouts were joined by others. One woman trooper waved madly. "No, no, honey! Get down, for the love of God!"

Susan never heard a word of it. She'd stopped and was looking carefully at the ground, perhaps thinking that he was warning her about a hidden well or wire she might trip over.

Gasping, his middle-aged heart in agony, Potter narrowed the gap to fifteen feet.

The agent was so close that when the single bullet struck her squarely in the back, and a flower of dark red blossomed over her right breast, he heard the nauseating sound of the impact, followed by an unworldly groan from deep within a throat unaccustomed to speaking.

She stopped abruptly then spiraled to the ground.

No, no, no…

Potter ran to the girl and propped the flak jacket around her head. The trooper ran up, crouching, muttering, "My God, my God," over and over. He aimed his pistol toward the window.

"Don't shoot," Potter commanded.

"But -"

"No!" Potter lifted his gaze from Susan's dull eyes to the slaughterhouse. He saw in the window just to the left of the door the lean face of Lou Handy. And through the right, perhaps thirty feet inside the dim interior, the negotiator could make out the stunned face of the young teacher, the blond one, who'd sent him the cryptic message earlier and whose name he could not now recall.

You feel sounds.

Sound is merely a disturbance of air, a vibration, and it laps upon our bodies like waves, it touches our brows like a lover's hand, it stings and it can make us cry.

Within her chest she still felt the sound of the gunshot.

No, Melanie thought. No. This isn't possible.

It can't be…

But she knew what she'd seen. She didn't trust voices but her eyes were rarely wrong.

Susan, Deaf of Deaf.

Susan, braver than I could ever be.

Susan, who had the world of the Deaf and the world of the Others at her feet.

The girl had stepped into the horrible Outside and it had killed her. She was gone forever. A tiny hole opening in her back, kicking aside her dark hair. The abrupt halt as she walked the route that Melanie had shamefully prayed that she herself would be walking.

Melanie's breath grew shallow and the edges of her vision crumbled to blackness. The room tilted and sweat appeared in sheets on her face and neck. She turned slowly and looked at Brutus, who was slipping the still-smoking pistol into his waistband. What she saw filled her with hopelessness. For she could see no satisfaction, no lust, no malice. She saw only that he'd done what he planned to – and had already forgotten about the girl's death.

He clicked on the TV again and glanced toward the killing room, in whose doorway the seven girls stood or sat in a ragged line, some staring at Melanie, some staring at Mrs. Harstrawn, who had collapsed on the floor, sobbing, gripping her hair, her face contorted like a hideous red mask. The teacher had apparently seen the gunshot and understood what it meant. The other girls had not. Jocylyn wiped from her face a sheet of her dark hair, unfortunately self-cut. She lifted her hands, signing repeatedly, "What happened? What happened? What happened?"

I have to tell them, Melanie thought.

But I can't.

Beverly, the next oldest after Susan, understood something terrible had occurred but didn't quite know – or admit – what. She took Jocylyn's pudgy hand and gazed at Melanie. She sucked air deep into her damaged lungs and put her other arm around the inseparable twins.

Melanie did not spell the name Susan. She couldn't, for some reason. She used the impersonal "she," accompanied by a gesture toward the field.

"She…"

How do I say it? Oh, God, I have absolutely no idea. It took her a moment to remember the word for "killed." The word was constructed by moving the extended index finger of the right hand up under the left hand, held cupped, palm down.

Exactly like a bullet entering the body, she thought.

She couldn't say it. Saw Susan's hair pop up under the impact. Saw her ease to the ground.

"She's dead," Melanie finally signed. "Dead" was a different gesture, turning over the flattened, palm-up right hand so that it was palm down; simultaneously doing the opposite with the left. It was at her right hand that Melanie stared, thinking how the gesture of this hand mimicked scooping earth onto a grave.

The girls' reactions were different but really all the same: the tears, the silent gasps, the eyes filling with horror.

Her hands trembling, Melanie turned back to the window. De l'Epée had picked up Susan's body and was walking back to the police line with it. Melanie watched her friend's dangling arms, the cascade of black hair, the feet – one shoe on, one shoe off.

Beautiful Susan.

Susan, the person I would be if I could be anybody.

As she watched De l'Epée disappear behind a police car, part of Melanie's silent world grew slightly more silent. And that was something she could scarcely afford.

"I'm resigning, sir," Charlie Budd said softly.

Potter stepped into the John of the van to put on the fresh shirt that had somehow appeared in the hands of one of Dean Stillwell's officers. He dropped his own bloodstained shirt into a wastebasket and pulled on the new one; the bullet that had killed Susan had spattered him copiously.

"What's that, Charlie?" Potter asked absently, stepping back to the desk. Tobe and Derek sat silently at their consoles. Even Henry LeBow had stopped typing and stared out the window, which from the angle at which he sat revealed nothing but distant wheat fields, distorted and tinted ocher by the thick grass.

Through the window on the other side of the van the ambulance lights flashed as they took the girl's body away.

"I'm quitting," Budd continued. "This assignment and the force too." His voice was steady. "That was my fault. It was because of that shot a half-hour ago. When I didn't tell the snipers to unchamber. I'll call Topeka and get a replacement in here."

Potter turned back, tucking the crisp shirt in. "Stick around, Charlie. I need you."

"Nosir. I made a mistake and I'll shoulder the consequences."

"You may have plenty of opportunity to take responsibility for your screwups before this night is through," Potter told him evenly. "But that sniper shot wasn't one of them. What Handy just did had nothing to do with you."

"Then why? Why in God's name would he do that?"

"Because he's putting his cards on the table. He's telling us he's serious. We can't buy him out of there cheap."

"By shooting a hostage in cold blood?"

LeBow said, "This's the hardest kind of negotiation there is, Charlie. After a killing up front, usually the only way to save any hostage is a flat-out assault."

"High stakes," Derek Elb muttered.

Extreme stakes, Arthur Potter thought. Then: Jesus, what a day this's going to be.

"Downlink," Tobe said, and a moment later the phone buzzed. The tape recorder began turning automatically.

Potter picked up the receiver. "Lou?" he said evenly.

"There's something you gotta understand 'bout me, Art. I don't care about these girls. They're just little birds to me that I used to shoot off my back porch at home. I aim to get outta here and if it means I gotta shoot nine more of 'em dead as posts then that's the way it's gonna be. You hear me?"

Potter said, "I do hear you, Lou. But we've got to get one other thing straight. I'm the only man in this universe can get you out of there alive. There's nobody else. So I'm the one to reckon with. Now do you hear me?"

"I'll call you back with our demands."

1:25 P.M.

This was tricky, this was dangerous, this was not about re-election. This was about decency and life. So Daniel Tremain told himself as he walked into the governor's mansion.

Standing upright as a birch rod, he headed through the surprisingly modest home into a large den.

Decency and life.

"Officer."

"Governor."

The Right Honorable Governor of the state of Kansas, A. R. Stepps, was looking at the faint horizon – fields of grain identical to those that had funded his father's insurance company, which had in turn allowed Stepps to be a public servant. Tremain believed Stepps was the perfect governor: connected, distrustful of Washington, infuriated about crime in Topeka and the felons that Missouri sloughed off into his Kansas City but able to live with it all, his eye no further than the low star of a retirement spent teaching in Lawrence and cruising Scandia Lines routes with the wife.

But now there was Crow Ridge.

The governor's eyes lifted from a fax he'd been reading and scanned Tremain.

Look me over if you want. Go right ahead. His blue-and-black operations gear certainly looked incongruous here among the framed prints of shot ducks, the Lemon-Pledged mahogany antiques. Most frequently Stepps's eyes dipped to the large automatic pistol, which the trooper adjusted as he sat in the irritatingly scrolly chair. "He's killed one?"

Tremain nodded his head, which was covered with a thinning crew cut. He noted that the governor had a tiny hole in the elbow of his baby-blue cardigan and that he was absolutely terrified. "What happened?"

"Premeditated, looks like. I'm getting a full report but it looks like there was no reason for it. Sent her out like he was giving her up and shot her in the back."

"Oh, dear God. How young was she?"

"The oldest. A teenager. But still…"

The governor nodded toward a silver service. "Coffee? Tea?… No? You've never been here before, have you?"

"The governor's mansion? No." Though it wasn't a mansion; it was just a nice house, a house that rang with the sounds of family. "I need some help here, Officer. Some of your expertise."

"I'll do whatever I can, sir."

"An odd situation. These prisoners escaped from a federal penitentiary – What is it, Captain?"

"With all respect, sir, that prison at Callana's like it's got a revolving door in it." Tremain recalled four breakouts in the last five years. His own men had captured a number of the escapees, a record better than that of the U.S. marshals, who in Tremain's opinion were overpaid baby-sitters.

The governor began cautiously, like a man stepping onto November ice. "So they're technically federal escapees but they also're lined up for state sentences. Won't be till the year three thousand maybe but the fact is they're state felons too."

"But the FBI's in charge of the barricade." Tremain had been told specifically by the assistant attorney general that his services would not be required in this matter. The trooper was no expert on the hierarchy of state government but even schoolchildren knew that the AG and his underlings worked for the governor. Executive branch. "We have to defer to them, of course. And maybe it's for the best."

The governor said, "This Potter's a fine man…" His voice seemed not to stop but to deflate until it became a dwelling question mark.

Dan Tremain was a career law enforcer and had learned never to say anything that could be quoted back against him even before he'd learned how to cover two opposing doors when diving through a barricade window. "Pride of the FBI, I'm told," the trooper said, assuming that a tape recorder was running somewhere nearby, though it probably wasn't.

"But?" The governor raised an eyebrow.

"I understand he's taking a hard line."

"Which means what?"

Outside the window, threshers moved back and forth.

"It means that he's going to try to wear Handy down and get him to surrender."

"Will Potter attack eventually? If he has to?"

"He's just a negotiator. A federal hostage rescue team's being assembled. They should be here by early evening."

"And if Handy doesn't surrender they'll go in and…"

"Neutralize him."

The round face smiled. The governor looked nostalgically at an ashtray and then back to Tremain. "How soon after they get there will they attack?"

"The rule is that you don't assault except as a last resort. Rand Corporation did a study a few years ago and found that ninety percent of the hostages killed in a barricade are killed when the situation goes hot – when there's an assault. I was going to say something else, sir."

"Please. Speak frankly."

The corner of a sheet of paper peeked out from under the governor's repulsively blue sweater. Tremain recognized it as his own re'sume. He was proud of his record with the state police though he wondered if he wasn't here now because the governor had read the brief paragraph referring to a "consulting" career, which had taken Tremain to Africa and Guatemala after his discharge from the Marines.

"The Rand Corporation study is pretty accurate as far as it goes. But there's something else that bears on this situation, sir. That if there's a killing early in the barricade, negotiations rarely work. The HT – the hostage taker – has little to lose. Sometimes there's a psychological thing that happens and the taker feels so powerful that he'll just keep upping his demands so that they can't be met, just so he'll have an excuse to kill the hostages."

The governor nodded.

"What's your assessment of Handy?"

"I read the file on the way over here and I came up with a profile."

"Which is?"

"He's not psychotic. But he's certainly amoral."

The governor's thin lips twitched into a momentary smile. Because, Tremain thought, I'm a mercenary thug who used the word amoral?

"I think," Tremain continued slowly, "that he's going to kill more of the girls. Maybe all of them ultimately. If he goes mobile and gets away from us I think he'll kill them just for the symmetry of it."

Symmetry. How do you like that, sir? Check out the education portion of my resume. I was cum laude from Lawrence. Top of my class at OCS.

"One other thing we have to consider," the captain continued. "He didn't try very hard to escape from that trooper who found them this afternoon."

"No?"

"There was just that one officer and the three takers, with guns and hostages. It was like Handy's goal wasn't so much to get away but to spend some time…"

"Some time what?"

"With the hostages. If you get what I'm saying. They are all female."

The governor lifted his bulky weight from the chair. He walked to the window. Outside the combines combed the flat landscape, two of the ungainly machines slowly converging. The man sighed deeply.

Fucking symmetrically amoral life, ain't it, sir?

"He simply isn't your typical hostage taker, Governor. There's a sadistic streak in him."

"And you really think he'd… hurt the girls? You know what I mean?"

"I believe he would. If he could keep an eye out the window at the same time. And one of the fellows in there with him, Sonny Bonner, he's doing time for rape. Well, interstate transport. But rape was at the bottom of it."

On the governor's desk were pictures of his blond family, a black Labrador retriever, and Jesus Christ.

"How good is your team, Captain?" Whispering now.

"We're very, very good, sir."

The governor rubbed his sleepy eyes. "Can you get them out?"

"Yes. To know how many casualties, I'd have to do a preliminary plan of the tactical operation and then run a damage assessment."

"How soon could you do that?"

"I've asked Lieutenant Carfallo to obtain terrain maps and architectural drawings of the building."

"Where is he now?"

Tremain glanced at his watch. "He happens to be outside, sir."

The governor's eyes twitched again. "Why don't you ask him in?"

A moment later the lieutenant, a short, stocky young officer, was unfurling maps and old drawings.

"Lieutenant," Tremain barked, "give us your assessment."

A stubby finger touched several places on the architectural drawings. "Breachable here and here. Move in, use stun grenades, set up crossfire zones." The young man said this cheerfully and the governor seemed to grow uneasy again. As well he ought to. Carfallo was a scary little weasel. The lieutenant continued, "I'd estimate six to eight seconds, bang to bullets."

"He means," Tremain explained, "it's six seconds from the time the door blows until we acquire all three targets – um, have guns pointed at all the HTs."

"Is that good?"

"Excellent. It means that hostage casualties would be minimal or nonexistent. But of course I can't guarantee that there'd be none."

"God doesn't give us guarantees."

"No, He doesn't."

"Thank you, Lieutenant," the governor said.

"Dismissed," Tremain snapped, and the young man's face went still as he turned and vanished.

"What about Potter?" the governor asked. "He is in charge after all."

Tremain said, "And the related issue – there'd have to be some reason to green-light an assault."

"Some excuse," the governor mused, very carelessly. Then he stiffened and picked at a renegade powder-blue thread on his cuff.

"Say something happened to sever communications between Potter and Handy and the men in the field. And then say someone in my team observed a high-risk activity inside the slaughterhouse, some activity that jeopardized troopers or the hostages. Something Potter wasn't able to respond to. I'd think that – well, even legally – we'd be fully authorized to move in and secure the premises."

"Yes, yes. I'd think you would be." The governor lifted an inquiring eyebrow then thought better of saying whatever he'd been about to say. He slapped the desktop. "All right, Captain. My instructions: You're to move the state Hostage Rescue Unit to Crow Ridge and provide any backup assistance you can to Agent Potter. If for some reason Agent Potter is unable to remain in command of the situation and the convicts present an immediate threat to anyone – hostages or troopers or… just plain anyone – you're authorized to do whatever's necessary to neutralize the situation."

Entrust that to tape if you want. Who could argue with the wisdom and prudence of the words?

"Yessir." Tremain rolled up the maps and diagrams. "Is there anything else, sir?"

"I know that time is of the essence," the governor said slowly, applying his last test to the solemn trooper, "but do you think we could spend a moment in prayer?"

"I'd be honored, sir."

And the soldier took the sovereign's hand and they both dropped to their knees. Tremain closed his piercing blue eyes. A stream of words filled the room, rapid and articulate, as if they flowed straight from the heart of an Almighty worried sick about those poor girls about to die in the corridors of the Webber amp; Stoltz Processing Company, Inc.

So you'll be home then.

Melanie watched the lump of a woman and thought: it's impossible for someone to cry that much. She tapped Mrs. Harstrawn's arm but all the teacher did was cry even harder.

They were still in the little hellhole of the killing room. Scummy water on the floor, ringed like a rainbow from spilled oil. Filthy ceramic tile. No windows. It smelled of mold and shit. And decayed, dead animals in the walls. It reminded Melanie of the shower room in Schindler's List.

Her eyes kept falling on the center of the room: a large drain from which radiated spider legs of troughs. All stained brown. Old, old blood. She pictured a young calf braying then struggling as its throat was cut, the blood pulsing out, down the drain.

Melanie started to cry and once again heard her father's voice from last spring, So you'll be home then. You'll be home then you'll be home then…

From there her thoughts leapt to her brother, lying in a hospital bed six hundred miles away. He'd have heard by now, heard about the murder of the couple in the Cadillac, the kidnaping. He'd be worried sick. I'm sorry, Danny. I wish I were with you!

Blood spraying through the air…

Mrs. Harstrawn huddled and shook. Her face was a remarkable blue and Melanie's horror at Susan's death was momentarily replaced by the fear that the teacher was having a stroke.

"Please," she signed. "Girls are scared."

But the woman didn't notice or, if she did, couldn't respond.

So you'll…

Melanie wiped her face and lowered her head into her arms.

… be home then.

And if she'd been home, like her parents wanted (well, her father, but her father's decision was her parents'), she wouldn't be here now.

None of them would.

And Susan would still be alive.

Stop thinking about it!

Bear walked past the killing room and looked in. He squeezed his crotch, half hidden beneath his belly, and barked something at Shannon. He offered his knee, said something about did she want to kick him again? She tried to give him a defiant look but stared down at her arm, rubbing the faded self-drawn tattoo of the superhero.

Brutus called something and Bear looked up. The big man was afraid of him, Melanie understood suddenly, seeing the look in Bear's eyes. He laughed humorlessly, sneering. Glanced once at Mrs. Harstrawn. But his eyes lingered longest on the little girls, especially the twins and Emily, her dress, her white stockings and black patent-leather shoes, the dress bought just for the occasion of Melanie's performance at the Kansas State Theater of the Deaf Summer Recital. How long the gaze coursed over the little girl. He reluctantly walked back into the main room of the slaughterhouse.

Get them out, Melanie told herself. Whatever you have to do, get them out.

Then: But I can't. Brutus will kill me. He'll rape me. He's evil, he's the Outside. She thought of Susan and wept again. He was right, her father.

So you'll be home then.

She'd be alive.

There'd have been no secret appointments after the recital in Topeka. No lies, no hard decisions.

"Get back, against the wall," she signed to the girls. She had to get them away from Bear, keep them out of sight. They moved as instructed, tearful all of them except lean, young Shannon, once more angry and defiant, the tomboy. And Kielle too – though she was neither angry nor defiant but eerily subdued. The girl troubled Melanie. What was in her eyes? The shadow of exactly what had been in Susan's? Here was a child with the visage of a woman. My God, there's vindictiveness, chill, raw hatred. Is she the one who's really Susan's heir? Melanie wondered.

"He's Magneto," Kielle signed matter-of-factly, glancing in Brutus's direction and addressing her comment to Shannon. It was her own nickname for Handy. The other girl disagreed. "No. He's Mr. Sinister. Not part of Brotherhood. Worst of the worst."

Kielle considered this. "But I think -"

"Oh, you two, stop!" Beverly burst into their conversation, her hands rising and falling like her struggling chest. "This isn't stupid game."

Melanie nodded. "Don't say anything more." Oh, Mrs. Harstrawn, Melanie raged silently, please… How you cry! Red face, blue face, quivering. Please don't do this! Her hands rose. "I can't do it alone."

But Mrs. Harstrawn was helpless. She lay on the tile floor of the killing room, her head against a trough where the hot blood of dying calves and lambs flowed and vanished and she said not a word.

Melanie looked up. The girls were staring at her.

I have to do something.

But all she remembered was her father's words – phantom words – as he sat on the front porch swing of their farmhouse last spring. A brilliant morning. He said to her, "This is your home and you'll be welcome here. See, it's a question of belonging and what God does to make sure those that oughta stay someplace do. Well, your place is here, working at what you can do, where your, you know, problem doesn't get you into trouble. God's will."

(How perfectly she'd made out the words then, even the impossible sibilants and elusive glottal stops. As clearly as she understood Handy – Brutus – now.)

Her father had finished. "So you'll be home then." And rose to hitch up the ammonia tank without letting her write a single word of response on the pad she carried around the house.

Suddenly Melanie was aware of Beverly 's head bobbing up and down. A full-fledged asthma attack. The girl's face darkened and she closed her eyes miserably, struggling ferociously to breathe. Melanie stroked her damp hair.

"Do something," Jocylyn signed with her stubby, inept fingers.

The shadows reaching into the room, shadows of machinery and wires, grew very sharp, then began to sway. Melanie stood and walked into the slaughterhouse. She saw Brutus and Stoat rearranging the lights.

Maybe he'll give us one for our room. Please…

"I hope he dies, I hate him," the blond fireball Kielle signed furiously, her round face contorted with hatred as she gazed at Brutus.

"Quiet."

"I want him to die!"

"Stop!"

Beverly lay down on the floor. She signed, "Please. Help."

In the outer room Brutus and Stoat sat close together under a swaying lamp, the light reflecting off Stoat's pale crew cut. They were watching the small TV, clicking through the channels. Bear stood at the window, counting. Police cars, she guessed.

Melanie walked toward the men. Stopped about ten feet from them. Brutus looked over the dark skirt, the ruddy blouse, the gold necklace – a present from her brother, Danny. He was studying her, that damn curious smile on his face. Not like Bear, not staring at her boobs and legs. Just her face and, especially, her ears. She realized it was the way he'd stared at devastated Mrs. Harstrawn – as if he was adding another specimen to a collection of tragedies.

She mimicked writing something.

"Tell me," he said slowly, and so loudly she felt the useless vibrations pelt her. "Say it."

She pointed to her throat.

"You can't talk neither?"

She wouldn't talk. No. Though there was nothing wrong with her vocal cords. And because she'd become deaf relatively late in life, Melanie knew the fundamentals of word formation. Still, following Susan's model, Melanie avoided oralism because it wasn't chic. The Deaf community resented people who straddled both worlds – the Deaf world and the world of the Others. Melanie hadn't tried to utter a single word; in five or six years.

She pointed toward Beverly and breathed in hard. Touched her chest.

"Yeah, the sick one – What about her?"

Melanie mimicked taking medicine.

Brutus shook his head. "I don't give a shit. Go back and sit down."

Melanie pushed her hands together, a prayer, a plea. Brutus and Stoat laughed. Brutus called something to Bear, and Melanie suddenly felt the firm vibrations of his footsteps approach. Then an arm was around her chest and Bear was dragging her across the floor. His fingers squeezed her nipple hard. She yanked his hand away and the tears came again.

In the killing room she pushed away from him and collapsed on the floor. Melanie grabbed one of the lights, which rested on the ground, and clutched it, hot and oily, to her chest. It burned her fingers but she clung to it like a life preserver. Bear looked down, seemed to ask a question.

But just as she'd done that spring day with her father on the farmhouse porch, Melanie gave no response; she simply went away.

That day last May, she'd climbed the creaking stairs and sat in an old rocking chair in her bedroom. Now, she lay on the killing room floor. A child again, younger than the twins. Mercifully she closed her eyes and went away. To anyone watching it seemed that she'd slipped into a faint. But in fact she wasn't here at all; she'd gone someplace else, someplace safe, someplace not another living soul knew about.

When he recruited hostage negotiators Arthur Potter found himself in the peculiar position of interviewing clones of himself. Middle-aged, frumpy, easygoing cops.

For a time it was thought that psychologists ought to be used for negotiating; but even though a barricade resembles a therapy session in many ways, shrinks just didn't work out. They were too analytical, focused too much on diagnostics. The point of talking to a taker isn't to figure out where he fits in the DSM IV but to persuade him to come out with his hands up. This requires common sense, concentration, a sharp mind, patience (well, Arthur Potter worked hard at that), a healthy sense of self, the rare gift of speaking well, and the rarer talent of listening.

And most important, a negotiator is a man with controlled emotions.

The very quality that Arthur Potter was wrestling with at the moment. He struggled to forget the image of Susan Phillips's chest exploding before him, feeling the hot tap of blood droplets striking his face. There'd been many deaths in the barricades he'd worked over the years. But he'd never been so close to such a cold-blooded death as this one.

Henderson called. The reporters had heard a gunshot and were champing to get some information. "Tell them I'll make a statement within a half-hour. Don't leak it, Pete, but he just killed one."

"Oh, God, no." But the SAC didn't sound upset at all; he seemed almost pleased – perhaps because Potter had assumed point position on this megatragedy in progress.

"Executed her. Shot her in the back. Listen, this could all go bad in a big way. Get on the horn to Washington and push the HRT assembly, okay?"

"Why'd he do it?"

"No apparent reason," Potter said, and they hung up.

"Henry?" Potter said to LeBow. "I need some help here. What should we stay away from?"

Negotiators try to increase the rapport with their takers by dipping into personal matters. But a question about a sensitive subject can send an agitated taker into a frenzy, even prompting him to kill.

"There's so little data," the intelligence officer said. "I guess I'd avoid his military service. His brother Rudy."

"Parents?"

"Relation unknown. I'd steer clear on general principles until we learn more."

"His girlfriend? What's her name?"

"Priscilla Gunder. No problems there, it looks like. Fancied themselves a regular Bonnie and Clyde."

"Unless," Budd pointed out, "she dumped him when he went to prison."

"Good point," Potter said, deciding to let Handy bring up the girlfriend and just echo or reflect whatever he said.

"Definitely avoid the ex-wife. It seems there was some bad blood there."

"Personal relations in general, then," Potter summarized. It was typical in criminal takings. Usually mentally disturbed takers wanted to talk about the ex-spouse they were still in love with. Potter gazed at the slaughterhouse and announced, "I want to try to get one out. Who should we go for? What do we know about the hostages so far?"

"Just a few isolated facts. We won't have anything substantive till Angie gets here."

"I was thinking…" Budd began.

"Yes, go ahead."

"That girl with the asthma. You asked about her before but he's had a spell of her choking up a storm – if I know asthma. Handy's the sort who'd have a short fuse for something like that, seems to me. He's probably ready to boot her out."

"It's a good thought, Charlie," Potter said. "But the psychology of negotiating is that once you've had a refusal you have to go on to a different issue or person. For the time being Beverly's non-negotiable. It'd be weak of us to try to get her and too weak of him to give in when he's already refused. Henry, you have anything at all on the others?"

"Well, this girl Jocylyn Weiderman. I have a note from Angie that she's been in and out of counseling for depression. Cries a lot and has attacks of hysteria. She might try to panic and run. Get herself killed."

"I'll buy that," said Budd.

"Good," Potter announced. "Let's try for her."

As he was reaching for the phone Tobe held up a hand. "Downlink."

The phone buzzed; the recorder turned.

"Hello?" Potter asked.

Silence.

"How's everything doing in there, Lou?"

"Not bad."

The thick window of the command van was right next to him but Potter's head was up, gazing at what LeBow had mounted – the CAD diagram of the slaughterhouse. It was a hostage rescue team's nightmare. The spot where Handy seemed to be at the moment was a single large room – a holding pen for the livestock. But in the back of the slaughterhouse were three stories of warrens – small offices, cutting and packing rooms, sausage grinding and stuffing rooms and storage areas, interconnected with narrow corridors.

"You fellows must be pretty tired," Potter offered.

"Listen, Art. I'm gonna tell you what we want. You probably got a tape recorder going but're gonna pretend you don't."

"Sure, we're taking down every word. I'm not going to lie to you. You know the drill."

"You know, I hate the way I sound on tape. One of my trials they played a confession tape of me in court. I didn't like the way I sounded. I don't know why I confessed either. I guess I was just anxious to tell somebody what I done to that girl."

Potter, eager to learn everything about this man, asked, "What did you do exactly, Lou?" He speculated: It was real nasty. I don't think you want to hear about it.

"Oh, wasn't pleasant, Art. Not pretty at all. I was proud of my work, though."

"Asshole," Tobe muttered.

"Nobody likes how they sound on tape, Lou," Potter continued easily. "I've got to give this training seminar once a year. They tape it. I hate how I sound."

Shut the fuck up, Art. Listen.

"Don't much care, Art. Now, get your pencil ready and listen. We want a chopper. A big one. One that seats eight."

Nine hostages, three HTs, and the pilot. That leaves five left over. What's going to happen to them?

LeBow was writing all this down on his computer. He'd padded the keys with cotton so that they were nearly silent.

"Okay, you want a helicopter. The police and the Bureau only have two-seaters. It'll take some time until we can get -"

"Like I say, Art. Don't much care. Chopper and a pilot. That's number one. Got it?"

"Sure do, Lou. But like I told you before, I'm just a special agent. I don't have the authority to requisition a chopper. I'll have to get on the horn to Washington."

"Art, you ain't listening. That's your problem. It's gonna be my theme for the day. Don't. Much. Care. The clock's running, whether you gotta call the airport that's up the road a couple miles or the Pope in his holy city."

"Okay. Keep going."

"We want some food."

"You got it. Anything in particular?"

"McDonald's. Lots of it."

Potter motioned to Budd, who picked up his phone and began whispering orders.

"It's on its way."

Get into him. Get inside his head. He's going to ask for liquor next, Potter guessed.

"And a hundred rounds of twelve-gauge shells, double-ought, body armor, and gas masks."

"Oh, well, Lou, I guess you know I can't do that."

"I don't know that at all."

"I can't give you weapons, Lou."

"Even if I was to give you a girl?"

"Nope, Lou. Weapons and ammunition are deal breakers. Sorry."

"You use my name a lot, Art. Hey, if we was to do some horse trading, which one of the girls would you want? Anybody in particular? Say we weren't talking about guns and such."

LeBow raised his eyebrows and nodded. Budd gave Potter a thumbs-up.

Melanie, Potter thought automatically. But he believed their assessment was right and that they had to try for the girl most at risk – Jocylyn, the troubled student.

Potter told him there was one girl in particular they wanted.

"Describe her."

LeBow spun the computer around. Potter read the fine print on the screen then said, "Short dark hair, overweight. Twelve. Her name's Jocylyn."

"Her? That weepy little shit. She whines like a pup with a busted leg. Good riddance. Thanks for picking her, Art. She's the one gets shot in five minutes, you don't agree to the guns 'n' ammo."

Click.

2:00 P.M.

Hell, Potter thought, slamming his fist on the table.

"Oh, brother," muttered Budd. Then: "Oh, Jesus."

Potter picked up the binoculars and saw a young girl appear in the window of the slaughterhouse. She was chubby and her round cheeks glistened with tears. When the muzzle of the gun touched her short-cut hair, she closed her eyes.

"Call it out, Tobe."

"Four minutes thirty."

"That's her?" Potter whispered to LeBow. "Jocylyn?"

"I'm sure."

"You've noted that the scatter guns are twelve-gauge?" Potter asked evenly.

LeBow said he had. "And that they're possibly low on ammo."

Derek glanced at them, shocked at this cold-blooded conversation.

"Jesus God," Budd rasped. "Do something."

"What?" Potter asked.

"Well, call him back and tell him you'll give him the ammo."

"No."

"Four minutes."

"But he's going to shoot her."

"I don't think he will." Will he, won't he? Potter debated. He honestly couldn't tell.

"Look at him," Budd said. "Look out there! That girl's got a gun to her head. I can see her crying from here."

"Which is just what he wants us to see. Calm down, Charlie, You never negotiate weapons or armor."

"But he's going to kill her!"

"Three minutes thirty."

"What if," Potter said, struggling to control his impatience, "he's completely out of ammo? He's sitting in there with two empty pistols and an empty scatter gun?"

"Well, maybe he's got one shell left and he's just about to use it on that girl."

A hostage situation is a homicide in progress.

Potter continued to gaze at the unhappy face of the child. "We have to assume there are nine fatalities right now – the girls inside. A hundred rounds of twelve-gauge shells? That could double the number of casualties."

"Three minutes," Tobe sang out.

Outside Stillwell shifted uncomfortably and ruffled his mop of hair. He looked at the van then back at the slaughterhouse. He hadn't heard the exchange but he, like all the other troopers, could see the poor girl's head in the window.

"Two minutes thirty."

"Send him some blanks. Or some shells that'll jam the guns."

"That's a good idea, Charlie. But we don't have any such thing. He won't waste another hostage this early." Is this true? Potter wondered.

"Waste a hostage?" The voice of another trooper – Derek the technician – cut through the van. Potter believed the man appended in a whisper, "Son of a bitch."

"Two minutes," Tobe said in his unflappable voice.

Potter hunched forward, gazing out the window. He saw the officers behind their Maginot line of cars, some looking back at the van uneasily.

"One minute thirty."

What's Handy doing? What's he thinking? I can't see into him. I need more time. I need to talk to him more. An hour from now I'd know whether he'd kill her or not. Right now, all I see is smoke and danger.

"One minute," Tobe called out.

Potter picked up the phone. Pressed the rapid-dial button.

Click.

"Uplink."

"Lou."

"Art, I've decided I want a hundred rounds of Glock ammo too."

"No."

"Make that a hundred and one rounds of Glock. I'm about to lose one in thirty seconds. I'll need something to replace it."

"No ammo, Lou."

Derek leapt forward and grabbed Potter's arm. "Do it. For God's sake!"

"Sergeant!" Budd cried, and pulled the man away, shoved him into the corner.

Handy continued, "Remember that Viet Cong dude got shot? It was on film? In the head? The blood squirting up into the air like a fucking fountain."

"I can't do it, Lou. Don't you follow? We have a bad connection, or something?"

"You're supposed to be negotiating!" Budd whispered. "Talk to him." Now he seemed to regret pulling Derek Elb off.

Potter ignored him.

"Ten seconds, Arthur," Tobe said, fingering his earring hole nervously. He'd turned away from his precious dials and was looking out the window.

The seconds passed, ten minutes or an hour. Absolute silence in the control van, except for the static on the open line, the sound bleeding through the van's speakers. Potter realized he was holding his breath. He resumed breathing.

"Lou, are you there?"

No answer.

"Lou?"

Suddenly the gun lowered and a hand grabbed the girl by the collar. She opened her mouth as she was dragged back into the slaughterhouse.

Potter speculated: Yo, Art, what's happening, homes?

"Hey, Art, how's it hanging?" Handy's cheerful voice crackled over the speakers.

"Fair to middlin'. How about you?"

"Doing peachy. Here's the deal. I shoot one an hour till that chopper's here. On the hour, every hour, starting at four."

"Well, Lou, I'll tell you right now we're going to need more time than that to get a big chopper."

Potter guessed: Fuck that. You'll do what I tell you.

But with playful menace in his voice Handy said, "How much more time?"

"A couple of hours. Maybe -"

"Fuck no. I'll give you till five."

Potter paused for a judicious moment. "I think we can work with that."

A harsh laugh. Then: "And a whole 'nother thing, Art."

"What's that?"

A pause, tension building. At last, Handy growled, "With those burgers I want some Fritos. Lots of Fritos."

"You got it. But I want that girl."

"Oh, hey," Budd whispered, "maybe you shouldn't push him."

"Which girl?"

"Jocylyn. The one you just had in the window."

"Jocylyn," Handy said with sudden animation, again startling Potter. "Funny 'bout that name."

Potter snapped his fingers, pointed at LeBow's computer. The intelligence officer scrolled through the profile of Handy, and both men tried to find some reference to Jocylyn: mother, sister, probation officer. But there was nothing.

"Why's that funny, Lou?"

" 'Bout ten years ago I fucked a waitress named Jocylyn and enjoyed it very much."

Potter felt the chill run from his legs to his shoulders.

"She was tasty. Before I met Pris of course."

Potter listened to Handy's tone. He closed his eyes. He speculated: She was a hostage too, that Jocylyn, and I killed her 'cause… He couldn't guess the rest of what Handy might say.

"Haven't thought about her for years. My Jocylyn was a hostage too, just like this one. She didn't do what I told her. I mean, she just didn't. So I had to use my knife."

Some of this is part of his act, Potter thought. The cheerful reference to the knife. But there was something revealing in the words too. Didn't do what I told her. Potter wrote down the sentence and pushed it to LeBow to type in.

"I want her, Lou," Potter said.

"Oh, don't you worry. I'm faithful to my Pris now."

"When we get the food, let's exchange. How 'bout it, Lou?"

"She's not much good for anything, Art. I think she peed her pants. Or maybe she just don't shower much. Even Bonner wouldn't come close to her. And he's a horny son of a bitch as you probably know."

"We're working on your chopper and you'll have the food there soon. You owe me a girl, Lou. You killed one. You owe me." Budd and Derek gazed at Potter in disbelief.

"Naw," Handy said. "Don't think so."

"You're only going to have room in the chopper for four or five hostages. Give me that one." Sometimes you have to lie down; sometimes you have to hit. Potter snapped, "Jesus Christ, Lou, I know you're willing to kill them. You made your damn point. So just let her go, all right? I'll send a trooper up with the food; let him come back with the girl." A pause.

"You really want that one?"

Potter thought: Actually, I'd like 'em all, Lou. Time for a joke? Or too early? He gambled. "I'd really like them all, Lou." A harrowing pause.

Then a raucous laugh from the speaker. "You're a pistol, Art. Okay, I'll send her out. Let's synchronize our Timexes, boys. The clock's running. You get the fat one for the food. Fifteen minutes. Or I might change my mind. And a big beautiful chopper at five in the p.m."

Click.

"All right!" Tobe shouted.

Budd was nodding. "Good, Arthur. That was good." Derek sat sullenly at his control panel for a moment but finally cracked a smile and apologized. Potter, ever willing to forgive youthful enthusiasm, shook the trooper's hand.

Budd was smiling in relief. He said, " Wichita 's the aviation capital of the Midwest. Hell, we can get a chopper here in a half-hour."

"We aren't getting him one," Potter said. He gestured to the "Promises/ Deceptions" chart. LeBow wrote, Helicopter seating eight, due on hourly deadlines. Commencing at 5 p.m.

"You're not going to give it to him?" Budd whispered.

"Of course not."

"But you lied."

"That's why it's on the 'Deceptions' side of the board."

Typing again, LeBow said, "We can't let him go mobile. Especially in a chopper."

"But he's going to kill another one at five."

"So he says."

"But -"

"That's my job, Charlie," Potter said, finding patience somewhere. "It's what I'm doing here, to talk him out of it."

And poured himself a cup of extremely bad coffee from a stainless steel pot.

Potter slipped a cellular phone into his pocket and stepped outside, crouching until he was in the gully, which protected him from the slaughterhouse.

Budd accompanied him part of the way. The young captain had found out that the Hutchinson police were in charge of stopping the river traffic and had ordered them to do so, incurring the wrath of several charterers of container barges bound for Wichita, whose meters were running to the tune of two thousand dollars an hour.

"Can't please everybody," the negotiator observed, distracted.

It was growing even colder – an odd July indeed with temperatures in the mid-fifties – and there was a rich metallic taste to the air, perhaps from the diesel exhaust of the nearby threshers or harvesters or combines, whatever they were. Potter waved at Stillwell, who was walking back and forth among the troopers, grinning laconically, and ordering troops into position.

Leaving Budd, Potter climbed into a bureau car and drove to the rear staging area. Already, all the networks and local stations from a three-state area were here, as were reporters or stringers from the big-city papers and the wire services.

He had a brief word with Peter Henderson, who – whatever his other failings and motives – had quickly put together an efficient transport pool, supply staging area, and press tent.

Potter was known to the press and they descended on him frantically as he walked from the car. They were as he expected them to be: aggressive, humorless, smart, blindered. They'd never changed in all the years Potter had been doing this. His first reaction, as always, was how he would hate to be married to one of them.

He climbed to the podium that Henderson had installed, and looked into the mass of white video lights. "At about eight-thirty this morning three escaped felons kidnaped and took hostage two teachers and eight students from the Laurent Clerc School for the Deaf in Hebron, Kansas. The felons had earlier in the day escaped from the Callana Federal Penitentiary.

"They're presently holed up in an abandoned factory along the Arkansas River about a mile and a half from here, on the border of the town of Crow Ridge. They are being contained by several hundred state, local, and federal law enforcers."

More like a hundred, but Potter would rather bend the truth to the fourth estate than risk nurturing overconfidence on the part of the takers – just in case they happened to catch a news report. "There has been one fatality among the hostages…" The reporters gasped and bristled at this and their hands shot up. They barked questions but Potter said only, "The identity of the victim and those of the rest of the hostages will not be disclosed until all family members have been notified of the incident. We are in the midst of negotiations with the felons, who've been identified as Louis Handy, Shepard Wilcox, and Ray 'Sonny' Bonner. During the course of the negotiations there will be no press access to the barricade site. You'll be receiving updates as we get new information. That's all I have to say at this time."

"Agent Potter -"

"I'm not answering any questions now."

"Agent Potter -"

"Agent Potter, please -"

"Could you compare this situation to the Koresh situation in Waco?"

"We need the press copters released. Our lawyers have already contacted the director -"

"Is this like the Weaver situation a few years -" Potter walked out of the press tent amid the silent flashes of still cameras and the blaring of videocam lights. He was almost to the car when he heard a voice. "Agent Potter, can I have a minute?"

Potter turned to see a man approaching. He had a limp. He didn't look like a typical newsman. He wasn't a pretty boy and while he seemed aggressive and sullen he was not indignant, which raised him – slightly – in Potter's estimation. Older than his colleagues, he was dark-complected, had a deeply lined face. At least he looked like a real journalist. Edward R. Murrow.

The negotiator said, "No individual statements."

"I'm not asking for one. I'm Joe Silbert with KFAL in Kansas City."

"Yessir, if you'll excuse me -"

"You're a prick, Potter," Silbert said with more exhaustion than anger. "Nobody's ever grounded press choppers before."

Extreme stakes, the agent thought. "You'll get the news as soon as anybody."

"Hold up. I know you guys could care less about us. We're a pain in the ass. But we've got our job to do too. This is big news. And you know it. We're going to need fucking more than just press releases and non-briefings like the one we just had. The Admiral's going to be on your ass so fast you'll wish you were back in Waco."

Something about the way he uttered the rank suggested that Silbert knew the FBI director personally.

"There's nothing I can do. Security at the barricade site has to be perfect."

"I have to tell you that if you suppress too much, those youngsters're going to try some pretty desperate things to get inside your perimeter. They're going to be using descrambling scanners to intercept transmissions, they're going to be impersonating officers -"

"All of which is illegal."

"I'm just telling you what some of them have been talking about. There are rumblings out there. And I sure as hell don't want to lose an exclusive to some little asshole law-breaking journalism school graduate."

"I've given orders to arrest any non-law-enforcement personnel within sight of the plant. Reporters included."

Silbert rolled his eyes. "Arnett had it easier in Baghdad. Jesus Christ. You're a negotiator, I thought. Why won't you negotiate?"

"I should be getting back."

"Please! Just listen to my proposal. I want to start a press pool. You allow one or two journalists at a time up near the front. No cameras, radios, recorders. Just typewriters or laptops. Or pen and pencil."

"Joe, we can't risk the takers' getting any information about what we're doing. You know that. They might have a radio inside."

An ominous tone slipped into his voice. "Look, you start suppressing, we'll start speculating."

A barricade in Miami several years ago went hot when the takers heard on their portable radio a newscaster describing an HRT assault on the barricade site. It turned out the reporter was merely speculating as to what might happen but the takers thought it was real and began firing at the hostages.

"That's a threat, I assume," Potter said evenly.

"Tornadoes are threats," Silbert responded. "They're also facts of life. Look, Potter, what can I do to convince you?"

"Nothing. Sorry."

Potter turned toward the car. Silbert sighed. "Fuck. How's this? You can read the stories before we file them. You can censor them."

This was a first. Of the hundreds of barricades Potter had negotiated, he'd had good and bad relationships with the press as he tried to balance the First Amendment versus the safety of hostages and cops. But he'd never met a journalist who agreed to let him preview stories.

"That's a prior restraint," said Potter, fourth in his law school class.

"There've already been a half-dozen reporters talking about crossing the barriers. That'll stop if you agree to let a couple of us inside. They'll listen to me."

"And you want to be one of those two."

Silbert grinned. "Of course I fucking want to be one of them. In fact I want to be one of the first two. I've got a deadline in an hour. Come on, what do you think?"

What did he think? That half the problem at Waco had been press relations. That he was responsible not only for the lives of the hostages and troopers and fellow agents but for the integrity of the Bureau itself and its image, and that for all his negotiating skills he was an inept player of agency politics. He knew too that most of what Congress, senior Justice officials, and the White House learned about what happened here would be from CNN and the Washington Post.

"All right," Potter agreed. "You can set it up. You'll coordinate with Captain Charlie Budd."

He looked at his watch. The food was due. He should be getting back. He drove to the command van, told Budd to set up a small press tent behind it and to meet with Joe Silbert about the pooling arrangement.

"Will do. Where's the food?" Budd asked, gazing anxiously up the road. "Time's getting close."

"Oh," Potter said, "we've got a little flexibility. Once a taker's agreed to release a hostage you're past the biggest hurdle. He's already given Jocylyn up in his mind."

"You think?"

"Go set up that press tent."

He started back to the command van and found himself thinking not of food or helicopters or Louis Handy but rather of Melanie Charrol. And not of how valuable she as a hostage might be to him as a negotiator nor of how much of a benefit or liability she might be in a tactical resolution of the barricade. No, he was mulling over soft information, dicta. Recalling the motion of her mouth as she spoke to him from the dim window of the slaughterhouse.

What could she have been saying?

Speculating mostly about what it would be like to have a conversation with her. Here was a man who'd made his way in the world by listening to other people's words, by talking. And here she was, a deaf-mute.

Lips, teeth, lips.

He mimicked her.

Lips, teeth…

Got it, he thought suddenly. And he heard in his mind: "Be forewarned."

He tried it out loud. "Be forewarned."

Yes, that was it. But why such an archaic expression? Of course: So he could lip-read it. The movement of the mouth was exaggerated with this phrase. It was obvious. Not "Be careful." Or "Look out." Or "He's dangerous."

Be forewarned.

Henry LeBow should know this.

Potter started toward the van and was only twenty feet from his destination when the limousine appeared silently beside him. It seemed to the agent that as it eased past it turned slightly, as if cutting him off. The door opened and a large, swarthy man climbed out. "Look at all this," he said boisterously. "It looks like D-Day, the troops have landed. You've got everything under control, Ike? Do you? Everything well in hand?''

Potter stopped and turned. The man walked up close and his smile, if a smile it had been, fell away. He said, "Agent Potter, we have to talk."

2:20 P.M.

But he didn't talk just at that moment.

He tugged his dark suit closed as a burst of chill wind shot through the gully and he strode to the rise, past Potter, and looked over the slaughterhouse.

The agent noted the state license plate, unhappily speculating as to who the visitor might be, and continued on to the van. "I'd step back," he said. "You're well within rifle range."

The man's large left hand reached out and gripped Potter's arm as they shook. He introduced himself as Roland Marks, the state's assistant attorney general.

Oh, him. Potter recalled the phone conversation earlier. The dusky man gazed at the factory again, still a clear target. "I'd be careful there," Potter repeated impatiently.

"Hell. They have rifles, do they? With laser scopes? Maybe phasers and photon torpedoes. Like Star Trek, you know."

I don't have time for this, Potter thought.

The man was tall and large, with a Roman nose, and his presence here was like the blue glow of plutonium in a reactor. Potter said, "One moment please." He stepped inside the command van, lifted an eyebrow.

Tobe nodded toward the slaughterhouse. "As a mouse," he said.

"And the food?"

Budd said it would arrive in a few minutes.

"Marks is outside, Henry. You find anything on him?"

"He's here?" LeBow grimaced. "I made a few calls. He's a hard-line prosecutor. Quick as a whip. Specializes in white-collar crimes. Excellent conviction ratio."

"Take-no-prisoners sort?"

"Exactly. But ambitious. Ran for Congress once. Lost, but still has his eye on Washington, the rumor is. My guess is he's trying to pry some media out of the situation."

Potter had learned long ago that hostage situations are also public relations situations and careers were as much on the line as were human lives. He decided to play Marks carefully.

"Oh, write down that I've translated the message from the hostage. 'Be forewarned.' Assume she's talking about Handy."

LeBow held his eye for a moment. He nodded and turned back to his keys.

Outside again, Potter turned to Marks, the second-most-powerful lawyer in the state. "What can I do for you?"

"So is it true then? What I heard? That he's killed one of them?" Potter nodded slowly. The man closed his eyes and sighed. His mouth tucked into a sorrowful wrinkle. "Why in the name of heaven do a crazy thing like that?"

"His way of telling us he's serious."

"Oh, my good Lord." Marks rubbed his face with large, blunt fingers. "The AG and I've been talking about this at some length, Agent Potter. We've been in a stew about the whole mess and I hightailed it down here to ask if there's anything we can do on the state level. I know about you, Potter. Your reputation. Everybody knows about you, sir."

The agent remained stone-faced. He thought he'd been rude enough on the phone to keep the lawyer out of his life. But it seemed that, to Marks, the earlier conversation had never taken place.

"Play it all close to your chest, do you? But I'd guess you have to. It is like playing poker, isn't it. High-stakes poker."

Extreme stakes, Potter thought again, and wished once more that this man would go away. "As I told you I don't really need anything else from the state at the moment. We've got state troopers for containment and I've enlisted Charlie Budd as my second-in-command."

"Budd?"

"You know him?"

"Sure I do. He's a good trooper. And I know all the good troopers." He looked around. "Where are the soldiers?"

"Hostage rescue?"

"I thought for sure they'd be in the thick of things by now."

Potter was still unsure of how the wind from Topeka was blowing. "I'm not using state HRT. The Bureau's team is assembling now and'll be here in the next few hours."

"That's troubling."

"Why's that?" Potter asked innocently, assuming that the man wanted the state rescue team to handle the tactical side.

"You're not thinking of an assault, I hope. Look at the Weaver barricade. Look at Waco. Innocent people killed. I don't want that to happen here."

"No one does. We'll attack only as a last resort."

Marks's boisterous facade fell away and he became deadly serious. "I know you're in charge of the situation, Agent Potter. But I want you to know that the attorney general's position is peaceful resolution at all costs."

Less than four months to the first Tuesday in November, Potter reflected.

"We're hoping things work out peacefully."

"What're his demands?" Marks asked.

Time to tug the leash? Not yet. Potter concluded that an offended Roland Marks could do much harm. "Typical. Chopper, food, ammo. All I'm giving him is food. I'm going to try to get him to surrender or at least get as many girls out as I can before HRT goes in."

He watched Marks's face turn darker than it already was. "I just don't want those little girls hurt."

"Of course not." Potter looked at his watch.

The assistant attorney general continued, "Here's a thought – have him give up the girls and take a chopper. You put one of those clever Mission : Impossible things inside and when they land you nail them."

"No."

"Why not?"

"We never let them go mobile if there's any way to avoid it."

"Don't you read Tom Clancy? There're all sorts of bugs and transponders you can use."

"It's still too risky. There's a known quantity of dead right now. The worst he can do is kill the nine remaining hostages, possibly one or two of the HRT." Marks's eyes widened in shock at this. Potter the cold fish continued, "If he gets out he could kill twice that. Three times, or more."

"He's just a bank robber. Hardly a mass murderer." And how many bodies does it take to qualify somebody as a mass murderer? Potter gazed past the silent combines working their way over hills several miles away. Winter wheat was planted in November, he'd been told by the helicopter pilot, who added that the white man's way of busting sod for wheat planting had mortified the Potawatomi Indians and helped bring on the Depression's dust bowl.

Where was the damn food? Potter thought, now nervous that minutes were slipping past.

"So that's what those girls are then?" Marks asked, none too friendly now. "Acceptable casualties?"

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

The door opened and Budd looked out. "That food's almost here, Arthur. Oh, hello, Mr. Marks."

"Charlie Budd. Good luck to you. Tough situation. You'll rise to meet it, though."

"We're doing our best," Budd said cautiously. "Mr. Potter here's really an expert. Agent Potter, I should say."

"I'm going to call in," Marks said. "Brief the governor."

When the limo had vanished, Potter asked Budd, "You know him?"

"Not too well, sir."

"He have an agenda?"

"Suppose he has his eye on Washington in a few years. But he's pretty much a good man."

"Henry thought he might be running for office this fall."

"Don't know 'bout that. But I don't think there's any politics here. His concern'd be the girls. He's a real family man, I heard. A father himself a few times over, all daughters. One of 'em's got some bad health problems so I guess he's feeling this is pretty close to home, those girls being deaf and all."

Potter had noticed Marks's well-worn wedding ring.

"Will he be a problem?"

"I can't imagine how. That way he is, joking and everything, it's kind of a front."

"It's not his sense of humor I'm worried about. How connected is he?"

Budd shrugged. "Oh, well, you know."

"It won't go any further than me, Charlie. I have to know if he can cause us any damage."

"Well, him saying he was going to call the governor? Like they were best buddies?"

"Yes?"

"Doubt the man'll even take his call. See, there're Republicans and then there are Republicans."

"Okay, thanks."

"Oh, hey, look, here we go now."

The state police car bounding over the rough road squealed to a stop. But it was not Handy's Big Macs and Fritos. Two women climbed out. Angie Scapello was in a mid-length navy suit, her weapon jutting from the thin blazer and her abundant black hair tumbling to her shoulders. She wore pale sunglasses in turquoise frames. Behind her emerged a young, short-haired brunette in a police uniform.

"Angie." Potter shook her hand. "Meet my right-hand man, Charlie Budd. Kansas State Police. Special Agent Angeline Scapello."

They shook hands and nodded to one another.

Angie introduced the other woman. "Officer Frances Whiting, Hebron PD. She'll be our sign language interpreter." The policewoman shook the men's hands and stole a fast glance at the slaughterhouse, grimaced.

"Please come inside," Potter said, nodding toward the van.

Henry LeBow was pleased by all the data Angie had brought. He rapidly began inputting the information. Potter had been right; the minute she'd heard about the barricade – before the DomTran Gulf-stream was even fueled – she'd spoken with officials at the Laurent Clerc School and started compiling the profiles of the captives.

"Excellent, Angie," LeBow said, typing madly. "You're a born biographer."

She opened another folder, offering the contents to Potter. "Tobe," he asked, "could you please tape these up?" The young agent took the photographs of the girls and pinned them to the corkboard, just above the CAD diagram of the slaughterhouse. Angie had written the names and ages of the girls in the bottom margin in black marker.

Anna Morgan, 7

Suzie Morgan, 7

Shannon Boyle, 8

Kielle Stone, 8

Emily Stoddard, 10

Jocylyn Weiderman, 12

Beverly Klemper, 14

The picture of Susan Phillips remained face-up on the table. "You always do this?" Frances waved at the wall.

Potter, eyes on the pictures, said absently, "You win by having better knowledge than the enemy." He found himself looking at the adorable twins, for they were the youngest. Whenever he thought of children he thought of them as being very young – perhaps because he and Marian never had any – and the image of the son or daughter that might have been was thus frozen in time, as if Potter were perpetually a young husband and Marian his bride of, say, twenty-five.

Look at them, he told himself. Look at them. And as if he'd spoken aloud, he realized that everyone except Derek and Tobe, who were hunched over their dials, had paused and was gazing up at the pictures.

Potter asked Angie for information about the girl who was about to be released, Jocylyn Weiderman.

Speaking from memory, Angie said, "Apparently she's a troubled girl. She was postlingually deaf – deaf after she learned to speak. You'd think that would make things easier and it does help with learning development. But psychologically what happens is people like that don't take to Deaf culture easily at all. You know what that means? 'Deaf' with a capital D?"

Potter, eye on the slaughterhouse, looking again for Melanie, said he didn't.

Angie lifted an eyebrow to Frances, who explained, "The word 'deaf,' small d, is the physical condition of not being able to hear. Deaf, upper-case D, is used by the Deaf to signify their community, their culture."

Angie continued, "In terms of Deaf status it's best to be born deaf of deaf parents and to shun all oral skills. If you're born hearing of hearing parents and know how to speak and read lips, you don't have the same status. But even that's a notch above someone deaf trying to pass for hearing – which is what Jocylyn's tried to do."

"So the girl has one strike against her to start with."

"She's been rejected by both the hearing and Deaf worlds. Add to that she's overweight. And has pretty undeveloped social skills. Prime candidate for a panic attack. If that happens Handy might think the girl was attacking him. She might even do it."

Potter nodded, thankful as always that Angie Scapello was assisting the threat management team. Her specialty was hostage psychology – helping them to recover and to remember observations that might be useful in future barricades and preparing former hostages to be witnesses at the trials of their takers.

Several years ago it had occurred to Potter to bring her along during ongoing barricades, analyzing the data that hostages reported and evaluating hostages and takers themselves. She often shared the podium with him when he lectured on negotiation strategy.

Potter observed, "Then we've got to try to keep her calm."

Panic during a hostage exchange was infectious. It often led to fatalities.

The negotiator asked Frances, "Could you teach our trooper something to tell her? Something that might help?"

Frances moved her hands and said, "That means 'Stay calm.' But signing's a very difficult skill to learn quickly and to remember. Slight mistakes change the meaning completely. I'd recommend if you have to communicate, use everyday gestures – for 'come here,' 'go there.' "

"And I'd suggest having him smile," Angie said. "Universal language, smiling. That's just what the girl needs. If he has to say something more complex, maybe write it down?"

Frances nodded. "That's a good idea."

"The reading age of prelingually deaf is sometimes below that of their chronological age. But with Jocylyn being postlingual and" – Angie stole back her notes from Henry LeBow, found what she sought – "and having a high IQ, she can read any commands fine."

"Hey, Derek, got any pens and writing pads?"

"Got 'em both right here," Elb replied, producing a stack of pads and a fistful of big black ink markers.

The agent then asked Angie if she happened to have a picture of the teachers. "No, I… Wait. I think I have one of Melanie Charrol. The younger of them."

She's twenty-five, Potter reminded himself. "We're past the food deadline," Tobe announced.

"Ah, here it is," Angie said, handing him a picture. Be forewarned…

He was surprised. The woman it depicted was more beautiful than he'd thought. Unlike the other photos, this was in color. She had wavy blond hair, very curly bangs, smooth pale skin, radiant eyes. The picture seemed less like a staff photograph than like a model's head shot. There was something childlike about everything except the eyes. He himself pinned it up, next to the picture of the twins. "Does she have family here?" Potter asked.

Angie looked at her notes. "The dean at Laurent Clerc told me her parents have a farm not far from the school but they're in St. Louis this weekend. Melanie's brother had an accident last year and he's having some kind of fancy surgery tomorrow. She was taking tomorrow off to go visit him."

"Farms," Budd muttered. "Most dangerous places on earth. You should hear some of the calls we get."

A console phone buzzed, a scrambled line, and Tobe pushed the button, spoke into his stalk mike for a moment. "It's the CIA," he announced to the room, then began speaking rapidly into the mike. He tapped several keys, conferred with Derek, and turned on a monitor. "Kwo got a SatSurv image, Arthur. Take a look."

A monitor slowly came to life. The background was dark green, like a glowing radar screen, and you could make out patches of lighter green, yellow, and amber. There was a faint outline of the slaughterhouse and a number of red dots surrounding it.

"The green's the ground," Tobe explained. "The yellow and orange, those are trees and natural thermal sources. The red are troopers." The slaughterhouse was a blue-green rectangle. Only toward the front was there any shift in the color, where the windows and doors were located. "There's probably a little heat rising from the lamps. Doesn't tell us much. Other than nobody's actually on the roof."

"Tell them to keep broadcasting."

"You know what it costs, don't you?" Tobe asked.

"Twelve thousand an hour," LeBow said, typing happily, "Now ask him if he cares."

Potter said, "Keep it on-line, Tobe."

"Will do. But I want a cost-of-living this year, we're so rich."

Then the door opened and a trooper entered, brown bags in his arms, and the van filled with the smell of hot greasy burgers and fries. Potter sat down at his chair, gripping the phone in his fingers.

The first exchange was about to begin.

2:45 P.M.

Stevie Gates again.

"Glutton for punishment?" Potter asked.

"Bored just sitting on my butt, sir."

"Nothing to pitch this time, Officer. You'll be going the distance."

Dean Stillwell stood beside the trooper as, Potter instructing, two FBI agents in flak jackets were suiting Gates up with two layers of thin body armor under his regular uniform. They were standing behind the van. Charlie Budd was nearby, directing the placement of the huge halogen spotlights, trained on the slaughterhouse. There was still plenty of summer light left in the day but the overcast had grown thicker and with every passing minute it seemed more like dusk.

"All set, Arthur," Budd announced.

"Hit 'em," Potter ordered, looking up from the trooper for a moment.

The halogens burst to life, shooting their streams of raw white light onto the front and sides of the slaughterhouse. Budd ordered a few adjustments and the lights focused on the door and the windows on either side of it. The wind was gusting sharply and the troopers had to anchor the legs of the lights with sandbags.

Suddenly a curious sound came from the field. "What's that?" Budd wondered aloud.

Stillwell said, "Somebody's laughing. Some of the troopers. Hank, what's going on out there?" the sheriff called over his radio. He listened, then looked at the slaughterhouse through field glasses. "Look in the window."

Potter ducked his head around the van. With the spotlights, nobody in the slaughterhouse would have a prayer of an effective sniper shot. He trained his Leicas on the window.

"Very funny," he muttered.

Lou Handy had put on sunglasses against the glaring lights. With exaggerated gestures he mopped his forehead and mugged for his laughing audience.

"Enough of that," Stillwell radioed sternly, speaking to his troops. "This isn't David Letterman."

Potter turned back to Gates, nodded at the thin armor. "You'll get a nasty bruise if you're shot. But it's important to look unthreatening."

HTs get very nervous, Angie explained, when they see troopers dressed up like alien spacemen plodding toward them. "You've got to dress for success."

"I'm about as unthreatening as can be. 'S'way I feel anyway. Should I leave my sidearm here?"

"No. But keep it out of sight," Potter said. "Your first responsibility is your own safety. Never compromise that. If it's between you and the hostage, save yourself first."

"Well -"

"That's an order, Trooper," Stillwell said solemnly. He'd grown into his role of containment officer like a natural.

Potter continued, "Walk up there slowly, carry the food at your side, in plain view. Don't move fast, whatever happens."

"Okay." Gates seemed to be memorizing these orders.

Tobe Geller stepped out of the doorway of the van, carrying a small box attached to a wire burgeoning into a stubby black rod. He hooked the box to the trooper's back, under the vest. The rod he clipped into Oates's hair with bobby pins.

"Couldn't use this with Arthur here," Tobe said. "Need a full head of hair."

"What is it?"

"Video camera. And earphone."

"That little thing? No foolin'."

Tobe ran the wire down Oates's back and plugged it into the transmitter. "The resolution isn't very good," Potter said, "but it'll help when you get back."

"How's that?"

"You seem pretty cool, Stevie," LeBow said. "But at best you'll remember about forty percent of what you see up there."

"Oh, he's a fifty percenter," Potter said, "if I'm not mistaken."

"The tape won't tell us too much on its own," the intelligence officer continued, "but it should refresh your memory."

"Gotcha. Say, those burgers sure smell good," Gates joked, while his face said that food was the last thing on his mind. "Angie?" Potter asked.

The agent walked up to the trooper and tossed the mass of dark, windblown hair from her face. "Here's a picture of the girl who's coming out. Her name's Jocylyn." Quickly, she repeated her assessment on how to best handle her.

"Don't talk to her," Angie concluded. "She won't understand your words and it might make her panic, thinking she's missing something important. And keep smiling."

"Smiling. Sure. Piece of cake." Gates swallowed.

Potter added, "Now, she's overweight and can't run very fast, I'd guess." He unfurled a small map of the grounds of the slaughterhouse. "If she could hustle I'd tell you to duck into that gully there, the one in front of the place, and then just run like hell. You'd be oblique targets. But as it is I think you'll just have to walk straight back."

"Like the girl who got shot?" Budd asked, and nobody was happy he had.

"Now, Stevie," Potter continued, "you should go up to the door. But under no circumstances are you to go inside."

"What if he says he won't release her 'less I do?"

"Then you leave her. Leave the food and walk away. But I think he'll let her go. Get as close as you can to the door. I want you to look inside. Look for what kinds of weapons they have, radios, any signs of blood, any hostages or hostage takers we might not know about."

Budd asked, "How could more've gotten in?"

"They might have been waiting inside for Handy and the others to arrive."

"Oh, sure." Budd looked discouraged. "Didn't think of that."

Potter continued to Gates, "Don't engage him in a dialogue, don't argue, don't say anything, except to answer his questions directly."

"You think he'll ask me stuff?"

Potter looked at Angie, who said, "It's possible. He might want to tease you a little. The sunglasses – he's got a playful streak in him. He might want to test you. Don't rise to the bait."

Gates nodded uncertainly.

Potter continued, "We'll be monitoring your conversations and I can feed you answers through your earphone."

Gates smiled a faint smile. "Those'll be the longest hundred yards of my life."

"There's nothing to worry about," Potter said. "He's a lot more interested in food right now than he is in shooting anybody."

This logic seemed to reassure Gates though the memory loomed in Potter's mind that some years ago he'd said similar words to an officer who a few moments later had been shot in the knee and wrist by a hostage taker who decided impulsively that he didn't want the painkillers and bandages the officer was bringing him.

Potter added an asthma inhaler to the bag of hamburgers. "Don't say anything about that. Just let him find it and decide to give it to Beverly or not."

Budd held up several pads of paper and the markers Derek had provided. "Should we include these?"

Potter considered. The pads and pens would give the hostages a chance to communicate with their captors and improve the Stockholming between them. But sometimes small deviations from what they expected set off HTs. The inhaler was one deviation. How would Handy feel about a second? He asked Angie's opinion.

"He may be a sociopath," she said after a moment. "But he hasn't had any temper tantrums or emotional outbursts, has he?"

"No. He's been pretty cool."

In fact he'd been frighteningly calm.

"Sure," Angle said, "add them."

"Dean, Charlie," Potter said, "come here a minute." The sheriff and the captain huddled. "Who're the best rifle shots you've got?"

"That'd be Sammy Bullock and – what do you think? Chris Felling? That's Christine. I'd say she's better'n Sammy. Dean?"

"If I was a squirrel sitting four hundred yards away from Chrissy and I saw her shoulder her piece, I wouldn't even bother to run. I'd just kiss my be-hind goodbye."

Potter wiped his glasses. "Have her load and lock and get a spotter with glasses to keep a watch on the door and windows. If it looks like Handy or one of the others is about to shoot, she's green-lighted to fire. But she's to aim for the doorjamb or windowsill."

"I thought you said there'd be no warning shots," Budd said.

'That's the rule," Potter said sagely. "And it's absolutely true – unless there's an exception to it."

"Oh."

"Go on and take care of that, Dean."

"Yessir." The sheriff hurried away, crouching.

Potter returned to Gates. "Okay, Trooper. Ready?"

Frances said to the young man, "Can I say 'Good luck'?"

"Please do," Gates said earnestly. Budd patted him on his Kevlared shoulder.

Melanie Charrol knew many Bible-school stories.

The lives of the Deaf used to be tied closely with religion, and many of them still were. The poor lambs of God… pat them on the head and force them to learn enough speech to struggle through catechism and Eucharist and confession (always among themselves of course so they didn't embarrass the hearing congregation). Abbe de l'Epée, good-hearted and brilliant though he was, created French Sign Language primarily to make sure his charges' souls could enter heaven.

And of course vows of silence by monks and nuns, adopting the "affliction" of the unfortunate as penance. (Maybe thinking that they could hear God's voice all the better though Melanie could have told them it didn't work worth squat.)

She leaned against the tile walls of the killing room, as horrible a part of the Outside as ever existed. Mrs. Harstrawn lay on her side, ten feet away, staring at the wall. No tears any longer – she was cried out, dry, empty. The woman blinked, she breathed but she might as well have been in a coma. Melanie rose and lifted her leg away from a pool of black water encrusted with green scum and the splintered bodies of a thousand insects.

Religion.

Melanie hugged the twins, feeling their delicate spines through identical powder-blue cowgirl blouses. She sat down beside them, thinking of some story she'd heard in Sunday school. It was about early Christians in ancient Rome, awaiting martyrdom in the Colosseum. They had, of course, refused to deny their faith. Men and women, children, happily praying on their knees while the centurions came for them. The story was ridiculous, the product of a simple-minded textbook writer, and it seemed inexcusable to adult Melanie Charrol that anyone would include it in a children's book. Yet like the cheapest melodrama the story had wrenched her heart then, at age eight or nine. And it wrenched her heart still.

Staring at the distant light, losing herself in the pulsing meditation of the yellow bulb, growing, shrinking, growing, shrinking, seeing the light turn into Susan's face, then into a beautiful young woman's body torn apart by lions' yellow claws.

Eight gray birds, sitting in dark…

But no, it's just seven birds now.

Was Jocylyn about to die too? Melanie peeked around the corner, seeing the girl standing at a window. She was sobbing, shaking her head. Stoat had her by the arm. They stood near the partially open door.

Motion nearby. She turned her head – the automatic reaction of a deaf person to the movement of gesturing hands. Kielle had closed her eyes. Melanie watched her hands move in a repetitive pattern, confused about the girl's message until she realized that she was summoning Wolverine, another of her comic-book heros.

"Do something," Shannon signed. "Melanie!" Her tiny hands chopped the air.

Do something. Right.

Melanie thought of de l'Epée. She hoped the thought of him would restart her frozen heart. It didn't. She was as helpless as ever, staring at Jocylyn, who looked back toward the killing room and caught Melanie's eye.

"Going to kill me," Jocylyn signed, sobbing; her cheeks, round and pale as a honeydew, glistened from the tears. "Please, help."

The Outside…

"Melanie." Kielle's dark eyes flared. The girl had suddenly appeared beside her. "Do something!"

"What?" Melanie suddenly snapped. "Tell me. Shoot him? Grow wings and fly?"

"Then I will," Kielle said, and turned, bursting toward the men. Without thinking, Melanie leapt after her. The little girl was just past the doorway to the killing room when Bear loomed in front of them. Both Melanie and Kielle stopped abruptly. Melanie put her arm around the girl and looked down, eyes fixed on the black pistol in Bear's waistband.

Grab it. Shoot him. Don't worry what happens. You can do it. His filthy mind is elsewhere. De l'Epée would hear the shot and come running to save them. Grab it. Do it. She actually saw herself pulling the trigger. Her hands began to shake. She stared at the pistol butt, glistening black plastic.

Bear reached forward and touched her hair. The back of his hand, a gentle stroke. A lover's or father's touch.

And whatever strength was within Melanie vanished in that instant. Bear grabbed them by the collars and dragged them back into the killing room, cutting off her view of Jocylyn.

I'm deaf so I can't hear her screams.

I'm deaf so I can't hear her beg me to help her.

I'm deaf, I'm deaf, I'm deaf…

Bear shoved them into the corner and sat down in the doorway. He gazed over the frightened captives.

I'm deaf so I'm dead already. What does it matter; what does anything matter?

Melanie closed her eyes, drew her beautiful hands into her lap, and, untethered, slipped away from the killing room once again.

"Run the HP, Tobe," Potter ordered.

Inside the van Tobe opened an attaché case, revealing the Hewlett-Packard Model 122 VSA, which resembled a cardiac-care monitor.

"These all one-ten, grounded?" He nodded at the outlets. Derek Elb told him yes.

Tobe plugged in and turned on the machine. A small strip of paper, like a cash-register receipt, fed out, and a grid appeared in green on the black screen. He glanced at the others in the room. LeBow pointed at Potter, himself, Angie, and Budd. "In that order."

Frances and Derek looked on curiously.

"Five says you're wrong," Potter offered. "Me, Angie, you, and Charlie."

Budd laughed uneasily. "What're you talking about?"

Tobe said, "Everybody, quiet." He pushed a microphone toward Angie.

"The rain in Spain falls -"

"That's enough," Tobe said, holding the microphone out to Potter.

He recited, "The quick brown fox…"

Henry LeBow was cut off during a lengthy quotation from The Tempest.

Budd nearly went cross-eyed gazing at the encroaching microphone and said, "That thing's making me pretty nervous."

The four FBI agents roared with laughter.

Tobe explained to Frances. "Voice stress analyzer. Gives us some clue about truth telling but mostly it gives us a risk assessment." He pushed a button and the screen divided into four squares. Wavy lines of differing peaks and valleys froze in place.

Tobe tapped the screen and said, "This is Arthur. He never gets rattled. Actually I think he pees his pants regularly but you'll never tell it by the sound of his voice. Then you're number two, Angie. Arthur was right. You get a Cool Cucumber Award. But Henry's not far behind." He laughed, tapping the final grid. "Captain Budd, you are one nervous fellow. Can I suggest yoga and breathing exercises?"

Budd frowned. "If you hadn't been poking that thing into my face I'da done better. Or told me what it was about in the first place. I get a second chance?"

The negotiator looked outside. "Let's make that phone call. Send him out, Charlie."

"Go ahead, Stevie," Budd said into the radio handset. They saw the trooper move into the gully and make his way toward the slaughterhouse.

Potter pressed the speed dial.

"Uplink."

"Hello, Lou."

"Art. We got the fat one all dressed up like a Thanksgiving turkey. We see your boy coming. He got my chocolate shake?"

"He's the same one who pitched the phone to you. Stevie's his name. Good man."

Potter thought: Was he one of them was shooting at us before?

"Maybe," Handy said, "he was the one gave the signal to shoot at our Shep."

"I told you that was an accident, Lou. Say, how's everybody doing in there?"

Who gives a shit?

"Fine. I just checked on 'em."

Curious, the negotiator thought. He hadn't expected this response at all. Is he saying that to reassure me? Is he scared? Does he want to lull me into being careless?

Or did the bad-boy act fall away for a moment and was the real Lou Handy actually giving a legitimate response to a legitimate question?

"I put some of that asthma medicine in the bag."

Fuck her, who cares?

Handy laughed. "Oh, for the one sucking air. It's a pain, Art. How can anybody get any sleep with that little shit gasping for breath?"

"And some paper and pens. In case the girls want to say something to you."

Silence. Potter and LeBow glanced at each other. Was he angry about the paper?

No, he was just talking to someone inside.

Keep his mind busy, off the hostages, off Stevie. "How're those lights working?" Potter asked.

"Good. The ones you've got outside suck, though. Can I shoot 'em out?"

"You know what they cost? It'd come out of my paycheck."

Gates was fifty feet away, walking slowly and steadily. Potter glanced at Tobe, who nodded and pushed buttons on the HP.

"So you're a McDonald's fan, Lou? Big Macs, they're the best."

"How'd you know?" Handy asked sarcastically. "You never ate under the golden arches in your life, betcha."

Angie gave him a thumbs-up and Potter nodded, pleased. It's a good sign when the HT refers to the negotiator. The transference process was proceeding.

"Guess again, Lou. You're going to have exactly what I had for dinner twice last week. Well, minus the Fritos. But I did have a milk shake. Vanilla."

"Thought you fancy agents had gourmet meals every night. Steak and lobster. Champagne. Then you fuck the beautiful agent works for you."

"A bacon cheeseburger, not a glass of wine to be had. Oh, and instead of sex I had a second order of fries. I do love my potatoes."

In the faint reflection of the window Potter was aware that Budd was staring at him and he believed the expression was of faint disbelief.

"You fat too, like this little girl I got by her piggy arm?"

"I could lose a few pounds. Maybe more than a few."

Gates was fifty feet from the door.

Potter wanted to probe some more into Handy's likes and dislikes. But he was cautious. He sensed it would rile the man. There's a philosophy in barricade situations that tries to keep the HTs on edge – bombarding them with bad music or playing with the heating and cooling of the barricade site. Potter didn't believe in this approach. Be firm, but establish rapport.

Handy was too quiet. What was distracting him? What was he thinking? I need more control. That's the problem, it occurred to Potter. I can't get control of the situation away from him.

"I was going to ask you, Lou… This is pretty odd weather for July. Must be cold in there. You want us to rig some heaters or something?"

Potter speculated: Naw, we got plenty of bodies to keep us warm.

But Handy responded slowly, "Maybe. How cold's it going to be tonight?"

Again, very logical and matter-of-fact. And behind the words: the implication that he might be planning on a long siege. That might give Potter the chance to push back some of Handy's deadlines. He jotted these impressions on a slip of paper and pushed it toward Henry LeBow to enter into his computer.

"Windy and chilly, I'm told."

"I'll think on it."

And listen to his voice, Potter thought. He sounds so reasonable. What do I make of that? Sometimes he's pure bravado; sometimes he sounds like an insurance salesman. Potter's eyes scanned the diagram of the slaughterhouse. Twelve yellow Post-Its, each representing a taker or a hostage, were stuck on the schematic. Ultimately, Potter hoped, they'd be placed in the exact position where each person was located. At the moment they were clustered off to the side.

"Lou, you there?"

"Sure I'm here. Where the fuck'd I be? Driving down 1-70 to Denver?"

"Didn't hear you breathing."

In a low, chilling voice Handy said, "That's 'cause I'm a ghost."

"A ghost?" Potter echoed.

"I slip up quiet as a cat behind you and slit your throat and I'm gone before your blood hits the ground. You think I'm in that building there, that slaughterhouse you're looking at right now. But I'm not."

"Where'd you be?"

"Maybe I'm coming up behind you, that van of yours. See, I know you're in that there truck. Looking out your window. Maybe I'm right outsida that window. Maybe I'm in that stand of buffalo grass your man's walking by right now and I'm going to knife him in the balls when he passes."

"And maybe I'm in the slaughterhouse with you, Lou."

A pause. Potter thought, He'll laugh.

Handy did, a hearty belly laugh. "You get me lotsa Fritos?"

"Lots. Regular and barbecue."

Stevie Gates was at the building.

"Hey, shave and a haircut… Somebody's come acalling."

"Got a visual," Tobe whispered. He dimmed the van lights. They turned to the screen broadcasting the picture from the camera above Stevie Oates's right ear. The image wasn't good. The door of the slaughterhouse opened only several feet and the images inside – pipes, machinery, a table – were distorted by light flares. The only person in sight was Jocylyn, in silhouette, hands to her face.

"Here's your boy now. Stevie? I don't think I've ever shot anyone named Stevie. He looks pretty dayamm uncomfortable."

What was probably a shotgun barrel protruded slowly and rested against Jocylyn's head. Her hands dropped to her sides, making fists. The sound of her whimpering floated from the speaker. Potter prayed that Stillwell's sniper would exercise restraint.

The video image quivered for a moment.

The shotgun turned toward Gates as a man's silhouette filled the doorway. Through the mike mounted above the trooper's ear came the words: "You got a gun on you?" A voice different from Handy's. Shepard Wilcox's, Potter guessed; Bonner would cast a far bigger shadow.

Potter looked down to make sure he was hitting the right buttons as he cut over to Oates's earphone. "Lie. Be insistent but respectful."

"No, I don't. Here's what you wanted. The food. Now, sir, if you'd let that girl go…" The trooper spoke without a quaver in his voice.

"Good, Stevie, you're doing fine. Nod if Jocylyn seems okay."

The picture dipped slightly.

"Keep smiling at her."

Another dip.

Handy asked Gates, "You got a microphone or camera?" Another silhouette had appeared. Handy's. "You recording me?"

"Your call," Potter whispered. "But there'll be no exchange if you say yes."

"No," the trooper said.

"I'll kill you if I find out you're lying to me."

"I don't," Gates said insistently, without hesitation.

Good, good.

"You alone? Anybody sneak up on either side of the door?"

"Can't you see? I'm alone. How's the girl?"

"Can't you see?" Handy mocked, stepping behind Wilcox, in plain view. "Here she is. Look for yourself."

There was no move to release her.

"Let her go," Gates said.

"Maybe you oughta come in and get her."

"No. Let her go."

"You wearing body armor?"

"Under my shirt, yeah."

"Maybe you oughta give me that. We could use it more'n you."

"How do you figure?" Gates said. His voice was no longer so steady.

" 'Cause it won't do you any good. See, we could shoot you in the face and take it offa you and you'd be just as dead as if we shot you in the back when you were walking away. So how 'bout you give it to us now?"

They'd find the video camera and radio transmitter if he gave up the armor. And probably kill him on the spot.

Potter whispers, "Tell him we had a bargain."

"We had a bargain," Gates said firmly. "Here's the food. I want that girl. And I want her now."

A pause that lasted eons.

"Put it on the ground," Handy finally said.

The image on the screen dipped as Gates set the bag down. Still, the trooper kept his head up and pointed directly into the crack of the open door. Unfortunately there was too much contrast in the image; the agents in the van could see virtually nothing inside.

"Here," Handy's voice crackled, "take Miss Piggy. Go wee, wee, wee all the way home." Laughter from several voices. Handy stepped away from the door. They lost sight of him and Wilcox. Was one of them raising the gun to shoot?

"Hiya, honey," Gates said. "Don't you worry, you're gonna be just fine."

"He shouldn't be talking to her," Angie muttered.

"Let's go for a walk, whatta you say? See your mommy and daddy?"

"Lou," Potter called into the throw phone, suddenly concerned that the takers were no longer in sight. No answer. To those in the van he muttered, "I don't trust him. Hell, I don't trust him."

"Lou?"

"Line's still open," Tobe called. "He hasn't hung up."

Potter said to Gates, "Don't say anything to her, Stevie. Might make her panic."

The screen dipped in response.

"Go on. Back on out of there. Go real slow. Then get behind the girl, turn around, and walk straight away. Keep your head up, so your helmet covers as much of your neck as possible. If you're shot, fall on top of the girl. I'll order covering fire and we'll get you out as fast as we can."

A faint disturbed whisper came through the speaker. But there was no other answer.

Suddenly the video screen went mad. There was a burst of light and motion and jiggling images.

"No!" came Oates's voice. Then a deep grunt, followed by a moan.

"He's down," Budd said, looking through the window with binoculars. "Oh, brother."

"Christ!" Derek Elb cried, gazing up at the video monitor.

They'd heard no gunfire but Potter was sure that Wilcox had shot the girl in the head with a silenced pistol and was firing repeatedly at Gates. The screen danced madly with grainy shapes and lens flares.

"Lou!" Potter cried into the phone. "Lou, are you there?"

"Look!" Budd shouted, pointing out the window.

It wasn't what Potter had feared. Jocylyn apparently had panicked and leapt forward. The big girl had knocked Gates flat on his back. She was bounding over the grass and bluestem toward the first row of police cars.

Gates rolled over and was on his feet, going after her.

Potter juggled more buttons. "Lou!" He slapped the console again, activating the radio to Dean Stillwell, who was watching through a night scope with a sniper beside him.

"Dean?" Potter called.

"Yessir."

"Can you see inside?"

"Not much. Door's open only about a foot. There's somebody behind it."

"Windows?"

"No one in 'em yet."

Jocylyn, overweight though she might be, was sprinting like an Olympian directly toward the command van, arms waving, mouth open wide. Gates was gaining on the girl but they were both clear targets.

"Tell the sniper," Potter said, desperately scanning the slaughterhouse windows, "safety off."

Should he order a shot?

"Yessir. Wait. There's Wilcox. Inside about five yards from the window. He's got a shotgun and's drawing a target."

Oh, Lord, Potter thought. If the sniper kills him Bandy's sure to murder one of the hostages in retaliation.

Is he going to shoot or not?

Maybe Wilcox's just panicked too, doesn't know what's going on.

"Agent Potter?" Stillwell asked.

"Acquire."

"Yessir… Wilcox's in Chrissy's sights. She's got a shot. Can't miss, she says. Crosshaired on his forehead."

Yes? No?

"Wait," Potter said. "Keep him acquired."

"Yessir."

Jocylyn was thirty yards from the slaughterhouse. Gates close behind her. Perfect targets. A load of twelve-gauge, double-ought buck would cut their legs off.

Sweating, Potter slammed his hand onto two buttons. Into the phone he said, "Lou, you there?"

There was the sound of static, or breathing, or an erratic heartbeat.

"Tell the sniper to stand down," Potter ordered Stillwell suddenly. "Don't shoot. Whatever happens, don't shoot."

"Yessir," Stillwell said.

Potter leaned forward, felt his head tap against the cool glass window.

In two leaps, Stevie Gates grabbed the girl and pulled her down. Her hands and legs flailed and together they tumbled behind the rise, out of sight of the slaughterhouse.

Budd sighed loudly.

"Thank God," muttered Frances.

Angie said nothing but Potter noticed that her hand had strayed to her weapon and now held the grip tightly.

"Lou, you there?" he called. Then again.

There was a crackle, as if the phone were being wrapped in crispy paper. "Can't talk, Art," Handy said through a mouthful of food. "It's suppertime."

"Lou -"

There was a click and then silence.

Potter leaned back in his chair and rubbed his eyes.

Frances applauded, joined by Derek Elb.

"Congratulations," LeBow said quietly. "The first exchange. A success."

Budd was pale. He slowly exhaled a cheekful of air. "Brother."

"All right, everybody, let's not pat ourselves on the back too much," Potter said. "We've only got an hour forty-five minutes till our first helicopter deadline."

Of all the people in the van only young Tobe Geller seemed disturbed.

Arthur Potter, childless father that he was, noticed it immediately. "What is it, Tobe?"

The agent pushed several buttons on the Hewlett-Packard and pointed to the screen. "This was your VSA grid during the exchange, Arthur. Lower anxiety than normal for a mildly stressful event."

"Mildly," Budd muttered, rolling his eyes. "Glad you didn't take mine."

"Here's Handy's average ten-second sequence for the entire exchange." He tapped the screen. It was nearly a flat line. "He was in the doorway with a dozen guns pointed at his heart and that son of a bitch was about as stressed out as most people get ordering a cup of coffee at 7-Eleven."

3:13 P.M.

She felt no thud of gunshots, no quiver of scream resonating in her chest.

Thank you thank you thank you.

The butterball Jocylyn was safe.

Melanie huddled with the twins in the back of the killing room, their long chestnut hair damp from tears, plastered to their faces. She looked up at the bare bulb, which – just barely – kept the crushing waves of the Outside from smashing her to death.

Her finger nervously entwining a strand of hair again. The hand shape for "shine." The word for "brilliance."

The word for "light."

A blur of motion startled her. The huge bearded form of Bear, chewing a hamburger, stormed up to Stoat and snapped a few words. Waited for an answer, got none, and shouted some more. Melanie couldn't read a single word of their conversation. The more emotional people became, the more ragged and fast their words, making them impossible to understand, as if just when it was the most important to say things clearly there could be no clarity.

Brushing his crew cut, Stoat stayed cool and looked back at Bear with a sneer of a smile. A real cowboy, Melanie thought, Stoat is. He's as cruel as the others but he's brave and he has honor and if those are good qualities even in bad people then there's some good in him. Brutus appeared and Bear suddenly stopped talking, grabbed a packet of fries in his fat hand, and wandered off to the front of the slaughterhouse, where he sat down and began shoveling food into his messy beard.

Brutus carried a paper-wrapped hamburger with him. He kept glancing at it in an amused way, as if he'd never had one before. He took a small bite and chewed carefully. He crouched in the doorway of the killing room, looking over the girls and the teachers. Melanie caught his eye once and felt her skin burn with panic. "Hey, miss," he said. She looked down quickly, feeling stomach sick.

She felt a thud and looked up, startled. He'd slapped the floor beside her. From his shirt pocket he took a small blue cardboard box and tossed it to her. It was an asthma inhaler. She opened it slowly and handed it to Beverly, who breathed in the medicine greedily.

Melanie turned to Brutus and was about to mouth "Thank you," but he was looking away, staring once again at Mrs. Harstrawn, who'd fallen into another hysterical crying fit.

"Ain't that something – she… keeps going and going."

How can I understand his words if I can't understand him? Look at him – he crouches there and watches the poor woman cry. Chewing, chewing, with that damn half-smile on his lips. Nobody can be that cruel.

Or do I understand him?

Melanie hears a familiar voice. So you'll be home then…

Get up, she raged silently to the other teacher. Stop crying! Get up and do something! Help us. You're supposed to be in charge.

So you'll be -

Suddenly her heart went icy cold and anger vaporized her fear. Anger and… what else? A dark fire swirling within her. Her eyes met Brutus's. He'd stopped eating and was looking at her. His lids never flickered but she sensed he was winking at her – as if he knew exactly what she was thinking about Mrs. Harstrawn and that the same thing had occurred to him. For that instant the pathetic woman was the butt of an inexcusable, mutual joke.

In despair she felt the anger vanishing, fear flooding in to fill its place.

Stop looking at me! she begged him silently. Please! She lowered her head and began to tremble, crying. And so she did the only thing she could do – what she'd done earlier: closing her eyes, lowering her head, she went away. The place she'd escaped into from the slaughterhouse earlier today. Her secret place, her music room.

It is a room of dark wood, tapestries, pillows, smoky air. Not a window in the place. The Outside cannot get in here.

Here's a harpsichord carved of delicate rosewood, florets and filigree, inlaid with ivory and ebony. Here's a piano whose tone sounds like resonating crystal. A South American berimbau, a set of golden vibes, a crisp, prewar Martin guitar.

Here are walls to reflect Melanie's own voice, which is an amalgam of all the instruments in the orchestra. Mezzo-sopranos and coloratura sopranos and altos.

It was a place that never existed and never would. But it was Melanie's salvation. When the taunts at school had grown too much, when she simply couldn't grasp what someone was saying to her, when she thought of the world she'd never experience, her music room was the only place she could go to be safe, to be comforted.

Forgetting the twins, forgetting gasping Beverly, forgetting the sobs of the paralyzed Mrs. Harstrawn, forgetting the terrible man watching her as he inhaled for sustenance the sorrow of another human being. Forgetting Susan's death, and her own, which was probably all too close.

Melanie, sitting on the comfortable couch in her secret place, decides she doesn't want to be alone. She needs someone with her. Someone to talk with. Someone with whom she can share human words. Whom should I invite?

Melanie thinks of her parents. But she's never invited them here before. Friends from Laurent Clerc, from Hebron, neighbors, students… But when she thinks of them she thinks of Susan. And of course she dares not.

Sometimes she invites musicians and composers – people she's read about, even if she's never heard their music: Emmylou Harris, Bonnie Raitt, Gordon Bok, Patrick Ball, Mozart, Sam Barber. Ludwig, of course. Ralph Vaughan Williams. Never Wagner. Mahler came once but didn't stay long.

Her brother used to be a regular visitor to the music room.

In fact, for a time, Danny was her only visitor, for he seemed to be the only person in the family not thrown by her affliction. Her parents struggled to coddle their daughter, keeping her home, never letting her go to town alone, scraping up money for tutors to come to the house, impressing on her the dangers of "her, you know, condition" – all the while avoiding any mention of her being deaf.

Danny wouldn't put up with her timidity. He'd roar into town on his Honda 350 with his sister perched on the back. She wore a black helmet emblazoned with fiery wings. Before her hearing went completely he'd take her to movies and would drive audiences to rage by loudly repeating dialogue for her. To their parents' disgust the boy would walk around the house wearing an airline mechanic's ear-muffs, just so he'd know what she was going through. Bless his heart, Danny even learned some basic sign and taught her some phrases (naturally ones that she couldn't repeat in the company of adult Deaf though they would later earn her high esteem in the Laurent Clerc schoolyard).

Ah, but Danny…

Ever since the accident last year, she hadn't had the heart to ask him back.

She tries now but can't imagine him here.

And so today, when she opens the door, she finds a middle-aged man with graying hair, wearing an ill-fitting navy-blue jacket and black-framed glasses. The man from the field outside the slaughterhouse.

De l'Epée.

Who else but him?

"Hello," she says in a voice like a glass bell.

"And to you." She pictures him taking her hand and kissing it, rather bashfully, rather firmly.

"You're a policeman, aren't you?" she asks.

"Yes," he says.

She can't see him as clearly as she'd like. The power of desire is unlimited but that of imagination is not.

"I know it's not your name but can I call you De l'Epée?"

Of course he's agreeable to this, gentleman that he is.

"Can we talk for a little while? That's what I miss the most, talking."

Once you've spoken to someone, pelted them with your words and felt theirs in your ears, signing isn't the same at all.

"By all means, let's talk."

"I want to tell you a story. About how I learned I was deaf."

"Please…" He seems genuinely curious.

Melanie had planned to be a musician, she tells him. From the time she was four or five. She was no prodigy but did have the gift of perfect pitch. Classical, Celtic, or country-western – she loved it all. She could hear a tune once and pick it out from memory on the family's Yamaha piano.

"And then…"

"Tell me about it."

"When I was eight, almost nine, I went to a Judy Collins concert."

She continues, "She was singing a cappella, a song I'd never heard before. It was haunting…"

Conveniently, a Celtic harp begins playing the very tune through the imaginary speakers in the music room.

"My brother had the concert program and I leaned over and asked him what the name of the song was. He told me it was 'A Maiden's Grave.' "

De l'Epée says, "Never heard of it."

Melanie continues, "I wanted to play it on the piano. It was… It's hard to describe. Just a feeling, something I had to do. I had to learn the song. The day after the concert I asked my brother to stop by a music store and get some sheet music for me. He asked me which song. 'A Maiden's Grave,' I told him.

" 'What song's that?' he asked. He was frowning.

"I laughed. 'At the concert, dummy. The song she finished the concert with. That song. You told me the title.'

"Then he laughed. 'Who's a dummy? "A Maiden's Grave"? What're you talking about? It was "Amazing Grace." The old gospel. That's what I told you.'

" 'No!' I was sure I heard him say 'A Maiden's Grave.' I was positive! And just then I realized that I'd been leaning forward to hear him and that when either of us turned away I couldn't really hear what he was saying at all. And that when I was looking at him I was looking only at his lips, never his eyes or the rest of his face. The same way I'd been looking at everyone else I'd talked to for the last six or eight months.

"I ran straight to the record store downtown – two miles away. I was so desperate, I had to know. I was sure my brother was teasing me and I hated him for it. I swore I'd get even with him. I raced up to the folk section and flipped through the Judy Collins albums. It was true… 'Amazing Grace.' Two months later I was diagnosed with a fifty-decibel loss in one ear, seventy in the other. It's about ninety now in both."

"I'm so sorry," De l'Epée says. "What happened to your hearing?"

"An infection. It destroyed the hairs in my ear."

"And there's nothing you can do about it?"

She doesn't answer him. After a moment she says, "I think that you're Deaf."

"Deaf? Me?" He grins awkwardly. "But I can hear."

"Oh, you can be Deaf but hearing."

He looks confused.

"Deaf but hearing," she continues. "See, we call people who can hear the Others. But some of the Others are more like us."

"What sort of people are those?" he asks. Is he proud to be included? She thinks he is.

"People who live according to their own hearts," Melanie answers, "not someone else's."

For a moment she's ashamed, for she's not sure that she always listens to her own.

A Mozart piece begins to play. Or Bach. She isn't sure which. (Why couldn't the infection have come a year later? Think of all the music I could have listened to in twelve months. For God's sake, her father pumped easy-listening KSFT through the farm's loudspeakers. In my bio, they'll find I was reared on "Pearly Shells," Tom Jones, and Barry Manilow.)

"There's more I have to tell you. Something else I've never told anyone."

"I'd like to hear it," he says, agreeable. But then, in an instant, he disappears.

Melanie gasps.

The music room vanishes and she's back in the slaughterhouse.

Her eyes are wide, she looks around, expecting to see Brutus approaching. Or Bear shouting, storming toward her.

But, no, Brutus is gone. And Bear sits by himself outside the killing room, eating, an incongruous smile on his face.

What had dragged her from the music room?

A vibration from a sound? The light?

No, it was a smell. A scent had wakened her out of her daydream. But of what?

Something she detected amid the smell of greasy food, bodies, and oil and gasoline and rusting metal and old blood and rancid lard and a thousand other scents.

Ah, she recognized it clearly. A rich, pungent smell.

"Girls, girls," she signed emphatically to the students. "I want to say something."

Bear's head turned toward them. He noticed the signing. His smile vanished immediately and he climbed to his feet. He seemed to be shouting, "Stop that! Stop!"

"He doesn't like us to sign," Melanie signed quickly. "Pretend we're playing hand-shape game."

One thing Melanie liked about Deaf culture – the love of words. ASL was a language like any other. In fact it was the fifth most widely used language in America. ASL words and phrases could be broken down into smaller structural units (hand shape, motion, and relation of the hand to the body), just like spoken words could be broken down into syllables and phonemes. Those gestures lent themselves to word games, which nearly all Deaf people grew up playing.

Bear stormed up to her. "What the fuck… with…"

Melanie's hands began to shake violently. She managed to write in the dust on the floor, Game. We're playing game. See? We make shapes with our hands. Shapes of things.

"What things?"

This is animal game.

She signed the word "Stupid." With her index and middle fingers extended in a V, the shape vaguely resembled a rabbit.

"What's that… be?"

A rabbit, she wrote.

The twins ducked their heads, giggling.

"Rabbit… Doesn't… fucking rabbit to me," he said.

Please let us play. Can't hurt.

He glanced at Kielle, who signed, "You turd." Smiling, she wrote in the dust, That was hippo.

"… out of your fucking minds." Bear turned back to his fries and soda.

The girls waited until he was out of sight then looked expectantly at Melanie. Kielle, no longer smiling, asked brusquely, "What do you have to say?"

"I'm going to get us out of here," Melanie signed. "That's what."

Arthur Potter and Angie Scapello were preparing to debrief Jocylyn Weiderman, who was being examined by medics at that moment, when they heard the first shot.

It was a faint crack and far less alarming than Dean Stillwell's urgent voice breaking over the speaker above their heads. "Arthur, we've got a situation here! Handy's shooting."

Hell.

"There's somebody in the field."

Before he even looked outside Potter pressed the button on the mike and ordered, "Tell everybody, no return fire."

"Yessir."

Potter joined Angie and Charlie Budd in the ocher window of the van.

"That son of a bitch," Budd whispered.

Another shot rang out from the slaughterhouse and the bullet kicked up a cloud of splinters from the rotting stockade post next to the dark-suited man about sixty yards from the command van. A voluminous handkerchief, undoubtedly expensive, billowed around the raised right hand of the intruder.

"Oh, no," Angie whispered in dismay.

Potter's heart sank. "Henry, your profile of the assistant attorney general neglected to mention he's out of his damn mind."

Handy fired again, hitting a rock just behind Roland Marks. The assistant AG stopped, cringing. He waved the handkerchief again. He continued slowly toward the slaughterhouse.

Potter pressed speed dial. As the phone rang and rang he muttered, "Come on, Lou."

No answer.

Dean Stillwell's voice came over the speaker. "Arthur, I don't know what to make of it. Somebody here thinks it's -"

"It's Roland Marks, Dean. Is he saying anything to Handy?"

"Looks like he's shouting. We can't hear."

"Tobe, you have those Big Ears in place still?"

The young agent spoke into his stalk mike and punched buttons. In a few seconds, the mournful yet urgent sound of the wind filled the van. Then Marks's voice.

"Lou Handy! I'm Roland Marks, assistant attorney general of the state of Kansas."

A huge crack of a gunshot, overly amplified, burst into the van. Everyone cringed.

Tobe whispered, "The other Big Ear's trained on the slaughterhouse but we're not getting anything."

Sure. Because Handy's not saying anything. Why talk when you can make your point with bullets?

"This is bad," Angie muttered.

The AG's voice again: "Lou Handy, this isn't a trick. I want you to give up the girls and take me in their place."

"Jesus," Budd whispered. "He's doing that?" He sounded half-impressed and Potter had to restrain himself from scowling at the state police captain.

Another shot, closer. Marks danced sideways.

"For the love of God, Handy," came the desperate voice. "Let those girls go!"

And all the while the phone inside the slaughterhouse rang and rang and rang.

Potter spoke into the radio mike. "Dean, I hate to say it but we've got to stop him. Hail him on the bullhorn and try to get him over to the sidelines. If he doesn't come, send out a couple of men."

"Handy's just playing with him," Budd said. "I don't think he's in any real danger. They could've shot him easy by now, they'd wanted to."

"He's not who I'm worried about," Potter snapped.

"What?"

Angie said, "We're trying to get hostages out, not in."

"He's making our job harder," Potter said simply, not explaining the terrible mistake Marks was now making.

With a whining ricochet, a bullet split a rock beside the lawyer's leg. Marks remained on his feet. He turned and he was listening to Dean Stillwell, whose voice was being picked up by the Big Ear and relayed into the van. To Potter's relief the sheriff wasn't cowed by the man's authority. "You there, Marks, you're to get under cover immediately or you'll be arrested. Come back this way."

"We've got to save them." Marks's raw voice filled the van. It sounded resolute but terrified and for a moment Potter's heart went out to him.

Another shot.

"No, sir. Do you understand? You're about to be placed under arrest." Potter called Stillwell and told him he was doing great. "Tell him he's endangering the girls doing this."

The sheriff's voice, mixing with the ragged wind, filled the van as he relayed this message.

"No! I'm saving them," the assistant AG shouted and started forward again.

Potter tried the throw phone again. No answer. "Okay, Dean. Go get him. No covering fire under any circumstances." Stillwell sighed. "Yessir. I've got some volunteers. I hope it's okay but I green-lighted pepper spray if he resists."

"Give him a blast for me," Potter muttered, and turned back to watch. Two troopers in body armor and helmets slipped from the line of trees and, crouching, headed through the field.

Handy fired several more times. He hadn't noticed the troopers yet and was aiming only around Marks, the shots always near-misses. But one bullet hit a rock and ricocheted upwards, shattering the windshield of a squad car.

The two troopers kept low to the ground, running perpendicularly to the front of the slaughterhouse. Their hips and sides were easy targets if Handy decided to turn malicious and draw blood. Potter frowned. One of the men looked familiar.

"Who're those troopers?" Potter asked Stillwell. "Is one of them Stevie Gates?"

"Yessir."

Potter exhaled a deep sigh. "He just got back from a run, Dean. What's he thinking of?"

"Well, sir, he wanted to go out again. Was really insistent about it."

Potter shook his head.

Marks was now only forty yards from the slaughterhouse, the two troopers closing in slowly, scrambling through the buffalo grass. Marks saw them and shouted for them to get away.

"Sir," the voice through the speaker called – Potter recognized it as Oates's – "our orders're to bring you back."

"Fuck your orders. If you care about those girls just leave me alone."

They heard a whoop of distant laughter the Big Ear was picking up. "Turkey shoot," resounded Handy's voice, riding on the wind. Another deafening gunshot. A rock beside one of the troopers flew into the air. They both dropped to their bellies, began crawling like soldiers toward the assistant AG.

"Marks," Gates called, breathing hard. "We're bringing you back, sir. You're interfering with a federal operation."

Marks whirled around. "What're you going to do to stop me, Trooper? You work for me. Don't you forget it."

"Sheriff Stillwell has authorized me to use all necessary force to stop you, sir. And I aim to."

"You're downwind, son. Pepper-spray me and you're the only one who'll get a faceful of it."

Handy fired again. The bullet split an ancient post two feet from Oates's head. The convict, still in a playful mood, laughed hard.

"Jesus," somebody muttered.

"No, sir," Gates said calmly, "my orders're to shoot you in the leg and drag you back."

Potter and LeBow stared at each other. The negotiator's fervent thumb pressed the transmit button. "He is bluffing, isn't he, Dean?"

"Yep" was Stillwell's unsteady reply. "But… he sounds pretty determined. I mean, don't you think?"

Potter did think.

"Would he do it?" LeBow asked.

Potter shrugged.

Angie said, "He's drawn his weapon."

Gates was aiming steadily at Marks's lower extremities.

Well, this is escalating into a full-blown disaster, Potter thought.

"Sir," Gates called, "I will not miss. I'm an excellent shot and I'm just about to bring you down."

The assistant AG hesitated. The wind ripped the handkerchief from his fingers. It rose a few feet above his head.

A shot.

Handy's bullet struck the white cloth. It jerked and floated away on the breeze.

Again, through the Big Ear, the distant sound of Handy laughing. Marks looked back at the slaughterhouse. Called out, "You son of a bitch, Handy. I hope you rot in hell."

More laughter – or perhaps it was only the wind.

Standing tall, the assistant AG walked off the field. As if strolling through his own backyard. Potter was pleased to see that Stevie Gates and his partner kept low as terriers as they crawled after the man under cover of the sumptuous, windswept grass.

"You could've ruined everything," Arthur Potter snapped. "What the hell were you thinking?"

He had to look up into Marks's eyes – the man was well over six feet tall – but still felt he was talking to a snotty child caught misbehaving.

The assistant attorney general began firmly, "I was thinking -"

"You never exchange hostages. The whole point of negotiation is to devalue them. You were as good as saying to him, 'Here I am, I'm worth more than all of those girls combined.' If he'd gotten you it would've made my job impossible."

"I don't see why," Marks answered.

"Because," Angie said, "a hostage like you would have boosted his sense of power and control a hundred times. He'd up his demands and stick to them. We'd never get him to agree to anything reasonable."

"Well, I kept thinking about those girls in there. What they were going through."

"He never would have let them go."

"I was going to talk him into it."

LeBow rolled his eyes and continued to type up the incident.

Potter said, "I'm not going to arrest you." He'd considered it and concluded that the fallout would be too thorny. "But if you interfere in any way with this barricade again I will and I'll have the U.S. Attorney make sure you do time."

To Potter's astonishment, Marks wasn't the least contrite. The witty facade was gone, yes; but he seemed, if anything, irritated that Potter had interfered with his plans. "You do things by the book, Potter." A large index finger pointed bluntly at the agent. "But the book doesn't say anything about a psycho who gets his kicks killing children."

The phone buzzed. LeBow took the call and said to Potter, "Jocylyn's gotten a clean bill of health from the medics. She's fine. You want to debrief her now?"

"Yes, thank you, Henry. Tell them to send her in. Stevie Gates too." To Marks he said, "I'll ask you to leave now."

Marks buttoned his suit jacket, brushed away the rock dust that had powdered his jacket from Handy's target practice. He strode to the door and muttered something. Potter believed he heard: "blood on your hands." But as to the other words, he didn't have a clue.

3:40 P.M.

For precious minutes she wept uncontrollably.

Angie Scapello and Arthur Potter sat with Jocylyn and struggled to look calm and reassuring while in their hearts they wanted to grab the girl by the shoulders and shake answers out of her.

Impatience, Arthur Potter's nemesis.

He kept a smile on his face and nodded with reassurance while the chubby twelve-year-old cried and cried, resting her round, red face in her hands.

The door opened and Stevie Gates stepped inside, pulled off his helmet. Despite the cold his hair was damp with sweat. Potter turned his attention from the girl to the trooper.

"You should stand down for a while, Stevie."

"Yessir, I think I will. Those last couple shots were kind of, well… close."

"Sobered you up pretty fast, did they?"

"Yessir. Sure did."

"Tell me everything you saw when you went up there with the food."

As Potter expected, even with the aid of the videotape from the camera perched over his ear, Gates couldn't provide much detail about the interior of the slaughterhouse.

"Any thoughts on Handy's state of mind?"

"Seemed calm. Wasn't edgy."

Like he was buying a cup of coffee at 7-Eleven.

"Anybody hurt?"

"Not that I could see."

LeBow dutifully typed in the paltry intelligence. Gates could recall nothing else. Potter pointed out to the discouraged officer that it was good news he hadn't seen blood or bodies. Though he knew his own face didn't mask the discouragement he felt; they wouldn't get anything helpful from the twelve-year-old girl, who continued to weep and twine her short dark hair around fingers that ended in chewed nails.

"Thanks, Stevie. That's all for now. Oh, one question. Were you really going to shoot Marks in the leg?"

The young man grew serious for a moment then broke into a cautious grin. "The best way I can put it, sir, is I wasn't going to know until I pulled the trigger. Or didn't pull the trigger. As the case might be."

"Go get some coffee, Trooper," Potter said.

"Yessir."

Potter and Angie turned their attention back to Jocylyn. Her eyes were astonishingly red; she huddled in the blanket one of Stillwell's officers had given her.

Finally the girl was calm enough that Potter could begin to question her through Officer Frances Whiting. The negotiator noted that while Frances 's hands moved elegantly and with compact gestures Jocylyn's were broad and awkward, stilted: the difference, he guessed, between someone speaking smoothly and someone inserting "um"s and "you know"s into their speech. He wondered momentarily how Melanie signed. Staccato? Smooth?

"She isn't answering your questions," Frances said.

"What's she saying?" Angie asked, her quick, dark eyes picking up patterns in the signing.

"That she wants her parents."

"Are they at the motel?" he asked Budd.

The captain made a call and told him, "They should be, within the hour."

Frances relayed that information to her. Without acknowledging that she understood, the girl started another jag of crying.

"You're doing fine," Angie said encouragingly.

The negotiator glanced at his watch. A half-hour to the helicopter deadline. "Tell me about the men, Jocylyn. The bad men."

Frances's hands flew and the girl finally responded. "She says there are three of them. Those three there." The girl was gesturing at the wall. "They're sweaty and smell bad. The one there." Pointing at Handy. "Brutus. He's the leader."

"Brutus?" Potter asked, frowning.

Frances asked the question and watched a lengthy response, during which Jocylyn pointed to each of the takers.

"That's what Melanie calls him," she said. "Handy's 'Brutus.' Wilcox is 'Stoat.' And Bonner is 'Bear.' " The officer added, "Signing's very metaphoric. 'Lamb' is sometimes used for 'gentle,' for instance. The Deaf often think in poetic terms."

"Does she have any idea where they are in the slaughterhouse?" He asked this of Frances, and Angie said, "Talk to her directly, Arthur. It'll be more reassuring, make her feel more like an adult. And don't forget to smile."

He repeated the question, smiling, to the girl, and Frances translated her response as she pointed to several locations near the front of the big room then touched Handy's and Wilcox's pictures. Tobe moved the Post-Its emblazoned with their names. LeBow typed.

Jocylyn shook her head. She rose and placed them more exactly. She signed some words to Frances, who said, "Bear – Bonner – is in the room with her friends."

Jocylyn put Bear's Post-It in a large semicircular room about twenty-five feet from the front of the slaughterhouse. Tobe placed all the hostage markers in there.

Jocylyn rearranged them too, being very precise.

"That's where everyone is, she says. Exactly."

Potter's eye strayed to Melanie's tab.

Jocylyn wiped tears, then signed.

"She says Bear watches them all the time. Especially the little girls."

Bonner. The rapist.

Potter asked, "Are there any other doorways or windows that aren't on the diagram?"

Jocylyn studied it carefully. Shook her head.

"Are you sure?"

"Yes."

"Did you see any guns?"

"They all have guns." The girl pointed to Tobe's hip.

He asked, "What kind were they?"

She frowned and pointed to the agent's hip again.

"I mean, were they like this, or did they have cylinders?" He found himself making a circular gesture with his finger. "Revolvers," he said slowly.

Jocylyn shook her head. Her awkward hands spoke again.

"No, she says they were black automatics. Just like that one." Frances smiled. "She asked why don't you believe her."

"You know what an automatic is?"

"She says she watches TV."

Potter laughed and told LeBow to write down that she'd confirmed they were armed with three Glocks or similar weapons.

Jocylyn volunteered that they had two dozen boxes of bullets.

"Boxes?"

"This big," Frances said, as the girl motioned her hands about six inches apart. "Yellow and green."

"Remington," LeBow said.

"And shotguns. Like that. Three of them." Jocylyn pointed to a shotgun on the rack in the van.

"Any rifles?" Potter pointed to an M-16 resting against the wall.

"No."

"They're pretty damn prepared," Budd muttered.

Potter handed off to Angie, who asked, "Is anybody hurt?"

"No."

"Does Handy – Brutus – talk to anybody in particular? Any of the teachers or girls, I mean?"

"No. Mostly he just looks at us." This brought back some memory and, in turn, more tears.

"You're doing great, honey," Angie said, squeezing the girl's shoulder. "Have you been able to tell what the three men are talking about?"

"No. I'm sorry. I can't lip-read good."

"Is Beverly all right?"

"She can't breathe well. But she's had worse attacks. The worst problem is Mrs. Harstrawn."

"Ask her to explain."

Frances watched her hands and said, "It sounds like she's having a breakdown. She was fine until Susan was shot. All she does now is lie on her back and cry."

Potter thought: They're leaderless. The worst situation. They could panic and run. Unless Melanie has taken over.

"How's Melanie?"

"She just sits and stares. Sometimes closes her eyes." Frances added to Potter, "That's not good. The deaf never close their eyes in a tense situation. Their vision is the only warning system they have."

Angie asked, "Do the men fight among themselves?"

Jocylyn didn't know.

"Do they seem nervous? Happy? Scared? Sad?"

"They're not scared. Sometimes they laugh."

LeBow typed this into his computer.

"Okay," Potter said. "You're a very brave girl. You can go to the hotel now. Your parents will be there soon."

The twelve-year-old wiped her nose on her sleeve but didn't leave. She signed awkwardly.

"Is that all you want to ask me?" Frances translated.

"Yes. You can go."

But the girl signed some more. "She asked, 'Don't you want to know about the TV? And the other stuff?' "

Tobe, LeBow, and Budd turned their heads to Potter.

"They have a TV in there?" he whispered, dismayed. Frances translated and Jocylyn nodded.

"Where did they get it?"

"In the bags with the guns. They brought it in with them. It's a little one."

"Do they have a radio?"

"I didn't see one."

"Do they watch the TV a lot?"

She nodded.

"What other stuff do they have?"

"She says they have some tools. New ones. They're in plastic."

"What kind?"

"Silver ones. Wrenches. Pliers. Screwdrivers. A big shiny hammer."

"Offer her a job, Arthur," Henry LeBow said. "She's better than half our agents."

"Anything else you can think of, Jocylyn?"

Her red fingers moved.

"She misses her mommy."

"One more thing," Potter said. He hesitated. He wanted to ask something more about Melanie. He found he couldn't. Instead he asked, "Is it cold inside?"

"Not too bad."

Potter took the girl's round, damp hand and pressed it between his. "Tell her many thanks, Frances. She did a fine job."

After this message was translated Jocylyn wiped her face and smiled for the first time.

Angie asked Frances to tell the girl that she'd take her to the motel in a minute. Jocylyn went outside to wait with a woman state trooper.

LeBow printed out the list of what the men had inside the slaughterhouse with them. He handed it to Tobe, who pinned it up beside the diagram.

Tobe said, "It's like a computer adventure game. 'You're carrying a key, a magic sword, five stones, and a raven in a cage.' "

Potter sat back in his chair slowly, laughing. He looked at the list. "What do you make of it, Henry? Tools, a TV?"

"Knocked over a store on their way out of the prison?"

Potter asked Budd, "Any reports of a commercial burglary between here and Winfield, Charlie?"

"I'm outta that loop. I'll check." He stepped outside.

"I've never had such good intelligence from a hostage who'd been inside so short a time," Potter said. "Her powers of observation are remarkable."

"God compensates," Frances said.

Potter then asked Angie, "What do you think?"

"She's with us, I'd guess."

Because of the Stockholming process hostages have been known to give false information to negotiators and tactical teams. On one of Potter's negotiations – a weeklong terrorist barricade – a released hostage left a handkerchief in front of the window where Potter was hiding so that the barricaded gunman would know where to shoot. A sniper killed the hostage taker before he could fire. Potter testified on the hostage's behalf at her subsequent trial; she got a suspended sentence.

Potter agreed with Angie's assessment. Jocylyn hadn't been inside long enough to skew her feelings about Handy and the others. She was just a scared little girl.

Angie said, "I'm going to take her to the motel. Make sure she's comfortable. Reassure the other parents."

Henry LeBow called, "Arthur, just got some info on Henderson."

Potter said to Angie as she stepped out the door, "While you're down there, check up on him. He makes me nervous."

"Pete Henderson we're talking, the Wichita SAC?"

"Yep."

"Why?"

"Gut feel." Potter told her about the threat. And added that he was more concerned that Henderson hadn't at first volunteered that he'd interviewed Handy after the S amp;L arson. "It's probably because his boys did a lousy job on the collar, letting the girlfriend get away and ending up with two wounded troopers." The postcollar interrogation too, which Potter now recalled had yielded only unimaginative obscenities on Handy's part. "But he should've told us up front he was involved."

"What do you want me to do?" Angie asked.

Potter shrugged. "Just make sure he's not getting into any trouble."

She offered a gimme-a-break look. Peter Henderson, as Special Agent in Charge of a resident agency, had the rank to get into as much trouble as he liked and it wasn't for underlings like Angie Scapello to do anything about it.

"Try. Please." Potter blew her a kiss.

LeBow handed Potter the printout, explaining with a sneer, "It's only resume-quality data. But there are some details I'll bet he wants to keep under wraps."

Potter was intrigued. He read. Henderson had come up through the ranks, working as an investigator in the Chicago Police Department while he went to DePaul Law School at night. After he got his degree he joined the Bureau, excelled at Quantico, and returned to the Midwest, where he made a name for himself in southern Illinois and St. Louis, primarily investigating RICO crimes. He was a good administrator, fit the Feebie mold, and was clearly destined for a SAC job in Chicago or Miami or even the Southern District of New York. After which the career trajectory would have landed him in D.C.

If not for the lawsuit.

Potter read the press accounts and, supplemented by details from memos Henry LeBow had somehow managed to pry from the Bureau databases, he understood why Henderson had been shunted off to Kansas. Six years ago a dozen black agents had sued the Bureau for discrimination in doling out assignments, promotions, and raises. The St. Louis office was one of the targeted federal districts, and Henderson was quick to offer testimony supporting their claim. Too quick, some said. In the anticipated shakeup following the Title VII suit the then-current Bureau director was expected to resign and be replaced by a young deputy director, who would become the first black head of the FBI and who would – Henderson figured – remember those loyal to the cause.

But Henderson's scheming had blown up in his face. The steam went out of the suit as it bogged down in the federal courts. Some plaintiffs dropped out; others simply couldn't prove discrimination. For reasons stemming from ambition, not ideology, the young black deputy director chose to move to the National Security Council. The existing Bureau director simply retired, amid no scandal, and was replaced by the Admiral.

Turncoat Peter Henderson was administratively drawn and quartered. The man who'd once gotten a tap into syndicate boss Mario Lacosta's Clayton, Missouri, private den was sent packing to the state in which the geographic center of the country could be found and that was indeed known mostly for pilferings at McConnell Air Force Base and internecine battles with Indian Affairs and BATF. The career of the thirty-nine-year-old agent was at a complete standstill.

"Risks?" Potter asked LeBow. "He going to get in our way?"

"He's not in any position to do anything," the intelligence officer said. "Not officially."

"He's desperate."

"I'm sure he is. I said 'not officially.' We still have to keep our eyes on him."

Potter chuckled. "So, we've got an assistant attorney general ready to hand himself over to the takers and a SAC who wants to hand me over to them."

We have met the enemy…

He turned back to the window, thinking of Melanie, recalling what Jocylyn had said. She just closes her eyes. Doesn't do anything. What does that mean? he wondered.

Tobe broke into Potter's musings. "Handy's expecting a chopper in an hour, five minutes."

"Thank you, Tobe," Potter responded.

He looked out over the slaughterhouse and thought: A key, a magic sword, five stones, and a raven in a cage.

"Officer."

Charlie Budd was walking back to the van from his own unmarked car, where he'd just typed in a computer request for 211s in a four-county area. The only robberies today had been a convenience store, a gas station, and a Methodist church. The booty in none of them matched the weapons, TV, and tools that the HTs had brought with them.

"Come over here, Officer," the man's low voice said.

Oh, brother. What now?

Roland Marks leaned against the side of a supply van, smoking a cigarette. Budd thought he'd be ten miles away by now but there was purpose in his eyes and he looked like he was here to stay.

"You witnessed that little travesty," Marks announced. Budd had been in the corner of the van as Potter read the riot act. Budd looked around then wandered through the grass to the dark-featured man and stood upwind of the smoke. He said nothing.

"I love summer afternoons, Captain. Remind me of growing up. I played baseball every day. Did you? You look like could run like the wind."

"Track and field. Four-forty and eight-eighty mostly."

"All right." Marks's voice dropped again, softer than Budd thought it possibly could and still be audible. "We had the luxury, you and I'd dance around a bit like we were on a dinner cruise and you'd get my meaning and then go off and do what you ought to. But there's no time for that."

I was never cut out to be an officer, Budd thought, and replayed for the hundredth time the bullet cutting down seventeen-year-old Susan Phillips. He choked suddenly and turned it into an odd-sounding cough. "Say, I'm real busy right now, sir. I have to -"

"Answer me yes or no. Did I see something in your eyes in the van?"

"Don't know what you mean, sir."

"Sure, maybe what I did was out of line. I wasn't thinking too clearly. But you weren't completely sure Potter was right either. And – no, hold up there. I think if we took a vote more people in that van'd come down on my side than his."

Budd summoned his courage from somewhere and said, "It's not a popularity contest, sir."

"Oh, no, it's not. That's exactly right. It's a question about whether those girls live, and I think Potter doesn't care if they do or not."

"Noooo. That's not true. Not by a long shot. He cares a lot."

"What'm I seeing in your face, Officer? Just what I saw in the van, right? You're scared shitless for those little things in that slaughterhouse."

Our number-one priority isn't getting those girls out alive…

Marks continued, "Come on now, Officer. Admit it."

"He's a good man," Budd said.

"I know he's a good man. What the fuck does that have to do with anything?"

"He's doing the best -"

"There is no way in hell," Marks said slowly, "I'm letting those girls in there die. Which is something he's willing to do… and that's been eating at you all day. Am I right?"

"Well -"

Marks's hand dug into his suit jacket and he pulled out a wallet, flipped it open. For a crazy moment Budd though he was going to display his AG's office ID. But what Budd found himself looking at had far more impact on him. Three photos in glossy sleeves of young girls. One had knitted eyebrows and slightly distorted features. The handicapped daughter.

"You're a father of girls, Budd. Am I right?"

The captain swallowed and tried to look away from the six dark eyes. He couldn't.

"Just imagine your little ones in there. And then imagine someone like Potter saying, 'Hell, they're expendable.' Imagine that, Captain."

Budd inhaled long. And finally managed to look away. The wallet snapped closed.

"We have to get him removed."

"What?"

"He's signing their death sentences. What did he say about meeting Handy's demands? Come on, Budd. Answer like an officer."

He looked into Marks's eye and ignored the slap, saying, "He said Handy wasn't leaving there except in cuffs or a body bag."

And that if those girls had to die, so be it.

"Is that acceptable to you, Officer?"

"It's not my job to say if it is or isn't."

" 'I was only following orders.' "

"That's about the size of it."

Marks spit the cigarette from his mouth. "For God's sake, Captain, you can take a moral position, can't you? Don't you have any higher values than running errands for a fat FBI agent?"

Budd said stiffly, "He's the senior officer. He's federal, and -"

"You just hold on to those words, Captain," Marks railed like a pumped-up evangelist. "Tuck 'em under your arm and bring 'em out at the funerals of those girls. I hope they make you feel better." He reached into Budd's soul and poked with a fingernail. "There's already one girl's blood on our hands."

He means your hands.

Budd saw Susan Phillips as she fell to her knees. The impact of that fall made her jaw drop open and distorted her beautiful face for a moment. It became beautiful once more as she died.

"What?" Budd whispered, his eyes on the buggish headlights of the harvesting threshers. "What do you want?" This sounded childish and shamed him but he couldn't stop himself.

"I want Potter out. You or I or somebody state'll take over the negotiations and give those cocksuckers their damn helicopter in exchange for the girls. We'll track 'em down when they land and blow 'em to hell. I've already checked. We can get a chopper here in a half-hour, fitted with a homing device that'll track 'em from a hundred miles away. They'll never know we're following."

"But he says Handy's too dangerous to let out."

"Of course he's dangerous," Marks said. "But once he's out he'll be up against professionals. Men and women who're paid to take risks. Those girls aren't."

Marks had tiny eyes and it seemed to Budd that they were on the verge of tears. He thought of the man's mentally retarded daughter, in and out of hospitals all her short life.

He observed that Marks had said nothing about the effect of Budd's decision on his career. If he had, Budd would have stonewalled. When it came to things like that, cheap shots, the young captain could be a mule. Then it discouraged him immensely to see that Marks had assessed that about him and had pointedly avoided any threats. Budd realized that he was already lying on the mat, shoulders pinned, staring at the ceiling. The count had begun.

Oh, brother.

"But how can we get Potter out?"

He said this to stymie Marks but of course the man was prepared. The small black box appeared in Marks's hand. For an absurd moment Budd actually thought it was a bomb. He stared at the tape recorder. "All I want is for you to get him to say that the hostages are expendable."

"You mean, record him?"

"Exactly."

"And… and then what?"

"I've got some friends at a St. Louis radio station. They'll run the tape on the news. Potter'll have to step down."

"That could be the end of his career."

"And it could be the end of mine, doing this. But I'm willing to risk it. For chrissake, I was willing to give myself up in exchange for them. You don't see Potter doing that."

"I just don't know."

"Let's save those nine poor girls in there, Captain. What do you say?" Marks thrust the recorder into Budd's unhappy hands. The officer stared at it then slipped it into his pocket and without a word turned away. His only act of defiance was to offer, "No, you're wrong. There are only eight people inside. He's gotten one out." But Marks was out of earshot when he said it.

4:10 P.M.

Captain Charles R. Budd stood in a gully not far from the command van.

He was delegating, yes, but mostly he was trying to ignore the weight of the tape recorder, a thousand pounds of hot metal, in his hip pocket.

I'll think about that later.

Delegate.

Phil Molto was setting up the press table: a folding fiberboard table, a small portable typewriter, paper and pencils. Budd was no news hog but he supposed this setup would be useless for today's high-tech reporters. Did they even know how to type, those pretty boys and girls? They seemed like spoiled high-school kids.

He guessed, though, that this arrangement had less to do with journalism than with politics. How did Potter know how to handle all these things? Maybe living in the nation's capital helped. Politics one way or another. The earnest young captain felt totally incompetent.

Shame too. The tape recorder melted into fiery plastic and ran down his leg.

Forget about it. Fifty minutes to five – fifty minutes to the deadline. He kept a meaningless smile on his face but he couldn't sweep from his mind the image of the teenage girl falling to ground, dying.

He somehow knew in his heart more blood would be spilled. Marks was right. In the van he had sided with the assistant attorney general.

Forty-nine minutes…

"Okay," he told his lieutenant. "Guess that'll do. You ride herd on 'em, Phil. Make sure they sit tight. They can wander around a little behind the lines and take notes on whatever they want -"

Was that okay? he wondered. What would Potter say?

"- but suit 'em up in flak jackets and make sure they keep their heads down."

Quiet Phil Molto nodded.

The first car arrived a minute later, containing two men. They climbed out, flashed press credentials, and as they looked around hungrily the older of them said, "I'm Joe Silbert, KFAL. This is Ted Biggins."

Budd got a kick out of their dress – dark suits that didn't fit very well and black running shoes. He pictured them racing down the hall of a TV station, shouting, "Exclusive, exclusive!" while papers spun in their wakes.

Silbert looked at the press table and laughed. Budd introduced himself and Molto and said, "Best we could do."

"It's fine, Officer. Only I hope you don't mind if we use our own stone tablet to write on?"

Biggins hefted a large portable computer onto the table.

"Long as we see what you write before you send it." For so Potter had instructed him.

"File it," Silbert said. "We say 'file it,' not 'send it.' " Budd couldn't tell if he was making a joke.

Biggins poked at the typewriter. "What exactly is this?"

The men laughed. Budd told them the ground rules. Where they could go and where they couldn't. "We've got a couple troopers you can talk to if you want. Phil here'll send 'em over."

"They hostage rescue?"

"No. They're from Troop K, up the road."

"Can we talk to some hostage rescue boys?"

When Budd grinned Silbert smiled too, like a co-conspirator, and the reporter realized he wasn't going to catch the captain in any slipups about whether or not HRT was on the scene.

"We're going to want to talk to Potter sometime soon," Silbert groused. "He planning on avoiding us?"

"I'll let him know you're here," Budd said cheerfully, the Switzerland of law enforcers. "Meanwhile Phil here'll bring you up to date. He's got profiles of the escapees and pictures of them. And he'll get you suited up in body armor. Oh, and I was thinking you might want to get the human-interest angle from some troopers. What it's like to be on a barricade. That sort of thing."

The reporters' faces were solemn masks but Budd wondered again if they were laughing at him. Silbert said, "Fact is, we're mostly interested in the hostages. That's where the story is. Anybody here we can talk to about them?"

"I'm just here to set up the press table. Agent Potter'll be by to give you the information he thinks you oughta have." Is that the right way to put it? Budd wondered. "Now I got some things need looking after so I'll leave you be."

"But I won't," said Molto, cracking a rare smile.

"I'm sure you won't, Officer." Their computer whirred to life.

What Melanie had smelled in the air of the killing room, what had forced her from her music room: mud, fish, water, diesel fuel, methane, decaying leaves, wet tree bark.

The river.

The fishy breeze had been strong enough to start the lamp swaying. That told her that somewhere near the back of the slaughterhouse was an open doorway. It occurred to her that maybe De l'Epée had already sent his men around the slaughterhouse looking for places where the girls might get out. Maybe some were even cutting their way in right now to rescue them.

She thought back to their arrival at the slaughterhouse this morning. She remembered seeing groves of trees on either side of the building, a muddy slope down to the river, which glistened gray and cold in the overcast afternoon light, black wood pilings, dotted with tar and creosote, a dock leaning precariously over the water, dangling rotten tires for ship bumpers.

The tires… That's what had given her the idea. When she was a girl, every summer in the early evening she and Danny would race down to Seversen Corner on the farm, run over the tractor ruts and through a fog of wheat down to the pond. It was nearly an acre, surrounded by willows and grass and stiff reeds filled with cores like Styrofoam. She ran like the Kansas wind so that she'd be the first one to the hill overlooking the pond, where she'd leap into space, grab the tire swing hanging over the water and sail out above the mirrorlike surface.

Then let go and tumble into the sky and clouds reflected below her.

She and her brother had spent long hours at the pond – even now, that glassy water was often her first thought when she stepped outside into a warm summer evening. Danny had taught her to swim twice. The first time when she was six and he'd taken her hands and eased her into the water of the still but deep pond. The second time was far harder – after she'd lost her hearing and grown afraid of so many things. She was twelve then. But the lanky, blond boy, five years older, refused to let her dodge the swimming hole any longer and, using the sign language he alone in the Charrol family had learned, talked her into letting go her grip on the bald Goodyear. And he calmly trod water, supported her and kept her from panicking while she finally remembered the strokes she'd learned years before.

Swimming. The first thing she'd done that gave her back a splinter of self-confidence after her plunge into deafness.

Thank you, Danny, she thought. For then, and for now. Because it was this memory that she believed was going to save some, if not all, of her students.

The river was wide here. The surface was choppy and the current fast but she remembered a tangle of branches and garbage washed up against a fallen tree that hung into the choppy water maybe a hundred feet downstream. Melanie pictured the girls moving silently through the back corridors of the slaughterhouse, over the dockside, into the water, then drifting with the current to the tree, scrambling out through the branches. Running to safety…

"Never underestimate a body of water," Danny had told her. "Even the calm ones can be dangerous."

Well, there was nothing calm about the Arkansas. Could they manage it? Donna Harstrawn can swim. Kielle and Shannon – superheroes that they are – can swim like otters. (Melanie pictures Kielle's compact body cannonballing off the diving board, while Shannon's willowy frame leisurely completes her laps.) The twins love to play in the water. But they can't swim. Beverly knows how but with her asthma she can't. Melanie doesn't know about pretty Emily; the girl refuses to put her face underwater and always stands demurely in the shallow end of the pool when they go swimming.

She'll have to find something for the ones who can't swim, a paddle-board, a float. But what?

And how do I get them to the back of the slaughterhouse?

She thought of Danny. But Danny wasn't here to help. Panic edged in.

De l'Epée?

She sent her thoughts out to him but all he did was whisper his reassurance that there'll be police to find the girls that escape into the river. (They'll be there, won't they? Yes, she has to believe they will.)

Crap, Melanie thinks. I'm on my own here.

Then, suddenly, the smell changes.

Her eyes open and she finds herself staring into the face of Brutus, a few feet away from her. She no longer smells the river but rather meat and stale breath and sweat. He's so close that she sees, with horror, that the marks on his neck – what she thought were freckles – must be the blood from the woman with the purse, the woman he killed this afternoon. Melanie recoiled in disgust.

"Sit tight, missie," Handy said.

Melanie wondered again, Why can I understand him? Sit tight. A phrase almost impossible to lip-read, and yet she knows without a doubt that this is what he said. Brutus took her hands. She tried to resist him but she couldn't. "You were sitting there with your eyes closed… hands were twitching like a shot 'coon's paws. Talking to yourself? That what you doing?"

There was movement in the corner. Kielle had sat up and was staring at him. The little girl had an eerily adult look in her face. Her jaw was set. "I'm Jubilee!" Kielle signed. Her favorite X-Man character. "I'm going to kill him!" Melanie dared not sign but her eyes implored the girl to sit down.

Brutus glanced at the little girl, laughed then stepped into the main room of the slaughterhouse, motioning Bear after him. When he returned a moment later he was carrying a large can of gasoline.

Kielle's face went still as she stared at the red can.

"Don't nobody move." Brutus looked into Melanie's eyes as he said this. Then he set a heavy metal canister, a small rendering vat maybe, on top of a shelf above the girls and poured the gasoline into it. Melanie felt the thud as he pitched the gas can into the corner of the room. Then he tied a wire to the edge of the canister and ran it to the other room. Eerie shadows danced on the floor and wall as the light from the other room grew brighter and brighter and Brutus returned suddenly, swinging another of the lights. He unscrewed the cage and tied the unprotected fixture and bulb to a bolt in the floor, directly below the canister of gas.

Bear surveyed the workmanship with approval.

Kielle stepped toward Brutus.

"No," Melanie signed. "Get back!"

Brutus suddenly dropped to his knees and took Kielle by the shoulders. He put his face inches from hers and he spoke slowly.

"Here now, little bird… hassles from you… or somebody tries to save you, I'll pull that wire and burn you up."

He pushed hard and Kielle fell over one of the blood grooves in the floor.

"What one should I pick?" Brutus asked Bear. The fat man looked them over. His eyes lingered longest on Emily, her flat chest, her white stockings, her black-strapped shoes.

Bear gestured at Shannon. "… kicked me. Pick her, man."

Brutus looked down at the girl, tossing her long, dark hair. Like Kielle, she gazed back defiantly. But after a moment she looked down, tears filling her eyes. And Melanie could see the real difference between the girls. Shannon Boyle was one hell of an artist but she wasn't Jubilee or any other kind of hero. She was an eight-year-old tomboy, scared to death.

"You're a kicker, are you?" Brutus asked. "Okay, let's go." They led her out.

What were they going to do with her? Release her, like Jocylyn? Melanie scooted toward the doorway of the killing room – as far as she dared. She looked out and saw Shannon in the greasy window in the front of the slaughterhouse. Brutus took his pistol from his back pocket. Rested the muzzle against the girl's head. No! Oh, no…

Melanie started to rise. Bear's bulbous head swiveled toward her quickly and he raised the shotgun. She sank down to the cold floor and stared hopelessly at her student. Shannon closed her eyes and wrapped her fingers around the pink-and-blue-string friendship bracelet she'd tied on her wrist a month ago. The girl had promised to make a matching bracelet for her, Melanie now recalled, choking back tears, but had never gotten around to it.

Angie Scapello paused on her way back to the van from the rear staging area.

"Hey, Captain."

If he hadn't known it for a fact, Charlie Budd would never have guessed she was a federal agent. "Hi," he said.

She paused and fell into step beside him.

"You worked with Arthur much?" he asked suddenly, flustered. Just trying to make conversation.

"About thirty or forty barricades. Maybe a few more, I guess."

"Hey, you must've started out young."

"I'm older than I look."

He didn't think "older" was a word that applied to her at all.

"This isn't a line – I'm married." Budd awkwardly held up his glistening ring, which happened to match his wife's. "But you ever do any modeling? I only ask 'cause Meg, that's my wife, she gets these magazines. You know, Vogue and Harper's Bazaar. Like that. I was thinking maybe I saw you in an ad or two?"

"Could've been. I put myself through school doing print ads. Was a few years ago. Undergrad." She laughed. "I was usually cast as a bride for some reason. Don't ask me why."

"Good hair for a veil," Budd suggested, and then went red because the comment sounded like a flirt.

"And I've been in one movie."

"No kiddin'?"

"I was a double for Isabella Rossellini. I stood outside in the snow for long angles."

"I was thinking you looked like her." Though Budd said this uneasily, having no idea who the actress was, and hoped that she wasn't some unknown who'd never appeared in a movie shown in America.

"You're kind of a celebrity in your own right, aren't you?" she asked.

"Me?" Budd laughed.

"They say you came up through the ranks real fast."

"They do?"

"Well, you're a captain and you're a young man."

"I'm older than I look," he joked. "And before today's over I'm going to be older still by a long shot." He looked at his watch. "I better be getting inside. Not long till the first deadline. How do you manage to stay calm?"

"I think it's all what you're used to. But what about you? That highspeed chase, the time you went after that sex offender in Hamilton?"

"How on earth d'you hear about that?" Budd laughed. Two years ago. He'd hit speeds of a hundred twenty. On a dirt road. "Didn't think my, you know, exploits made it into National Law Enforcement Monthly."

"You hear things. About certain people anyway."

Her brown eyes bored into Budd's, which were green, exceedingly embarrassed, and growing more and more flummoxed by the second. He rubbed his cheek with his left hand again, just to give her a view of his ring once more, then thought: Hey, get real. You actually think she's coming on to you? No way, he told himself. She's making polite talk to a local rube. "Better see if there's anything Arthur needs," Budd said. For some reason he stuck his hand out toward her. Wished he hadn't, but there it was and she reached out, took it in both of hers, and squeezed it hard, stepping close. He smelled perfume. It seemed entirely unnatural for FBI agents to be wearing perfume.

"I'm real glad we're working together, Charlie." She fired a smile at him, the likes of which he hadn't seen in years – since Meg, in fact, had crosshaired him at the junior prom with one of those flirtations that he never would've believed the president of Methodist Girls' Youth Group was capable of.

4:40 P.M.

"Twenty minutes to deadline," Tobe Geller called.

Potter nodded. He punched the speed-dial button. Handy answered by saying, "I've picked the next little bird, Art."

Get off the subject of the hostages; keep him thinking they're valueless. Potter said, "Lou, we're working on that helicopter. It isn't that easy to get one."

"This one's a little trouper, she is, Art. That fat one cried and cried. Man, did that bug me. This one's shedding a tear or two but she's a soldier. Got a fucking tattoo on her arm, you can believe it."

Share some observations. Show him you're concerned, find out a few things about him.

"You sound tired, Lou."

"Not me. I'm right as rain."

"Really? Would've guessed you were up all night planning your big getaway."

"Naw, got my full eight hours. 'Sides, there's nothing like a Mexican standoff to get the old juices flowing." In fact he didn't sound at all tired. He sounded relaxed and at ease. Potter nodded toward LeBow but the officer was already typing.

"So tell me. What's so hard about a chopper, Art?"

Potter trained the glasses out the window at the brown-haired, long-faced girl. He'd already memorized the names and faces. Punching the mute button, he said to Angie, "It's Shannon Boyle. Tell me about her." Then into the phone: "I'll tell you what's so hard, Lou," Potter snapped. "They don't grow on trees and they aren't free."

You're worried about fucking money at a time like this?

"Fuck, you got all the money you need. What with everything you assholes steal from us taxpayers."

"You a taxpayer, Lou?"

"We ain't buying nuclear bombs anymore so spend a little on a chopper and save some lives here."

Angie tapped his shoulder.

"Hold on a second, Lou. Word's coming in about that chopper right now."

"She's eight," Angie whispered, "prelingually deaf. No lip-reading skills to speak of. She's got a personality of her own. Very independent. She's marched in protests to get deaf deans at schools for the deaf in Kansas and Missouri. Signed the petition to increase the deaf faculty at Laurent Clerc and hers was the largest signature on the sheet. She's been in fistfights at school and she usually wins."

Potter nodded. So if they could distract him enough, and if she had an opportunity, the girl might make a run for freedom.

Or use the chance to attack Handy and get herself killed in the process.

He clicked the mute button off. Sounding exasperated: "Look, Lou. We're just talking about a little delay is all. You want a big aircraft. Well, we've got two-seaters galore. But the big ones're hard to find."

"That's your fucking problem, ain't it? I put a bullet into little Fannie Annie here in, lemme see, fifteen minutes by my clock."

Usually, you devalue the hostages.

Sometimes you just have to beg.

"Her name's Shannon, Lou. Come on. She's only eight years old."

"Shannon," Handy mused. "I guess you aren't catching on, Art. You're trying to get me to feel sorry for some poor kid's got a name. Shannon Shannon Shannon. Those're your rules, right, Art? Written up in your Feebie handbook?"

Page 45, in fact.

"But see, those rules don't take into account somebody like me. The more I know them the more I want to kill 'em."

Walk that fine line. Chide, push, trade barbs. He'll back off if you hit the balance just right. Arthur Potter thought this but his hand cramps on the receiver as he said cheerfully, "I think that's bullshit, Lou. I think you're just playing with us."

"Have it your way."

A little edge in the agent's voice: "I'm tired of this crap. We're trying to work with you."

"Naw, you want to shoot me down. Why don't you have the balls to admit it? If I had you in my sights I'd drop you like a fucking deer."

"No, I don't want to shoot you, Lou. I don't want anybody to die. We've got a lot of logistic problems. Landing is a real hassle here. The field out front's filled with those old posts from the stockyard pens. And we've got trees everywhere. We can't set a chopper down on the roof because of the weight. We -"

"So you've got diagrams of the building, do you?"

Negotiate from strength – with a reminder to the HT that there's always a tactical solution in the back of your mind (we can kick in the door any time we want and nail you cold, and remember, there're a hell of a lot more of us than of you). Potter laughed and said, "Of course we do. We've got maps and charts and diagrams and graphs and eight-by-ten color glossy photos. You're a damn cover boy in here, Lou. This's no surprise, is it?"

Silence.

Push too far?

No, I don't think so. He'll laugh and sound cool.

It was a chuckle. "You guys're too fucking much."

"And the field to the south," Potter continued, as if Handy hadn't spoken, "look at it. Nothing but gullies and hummocks. To set an eight-person copter down'd be pretty dangerous. And this wind… it's a real problem. Our aviation advisor isn't sure what to do about it."

Budd frowned, mouthing, "Aviation advisor?" Potter shrugged, having just made up the job. He pointed to the "Deceptions" board and Budd wrote it down, sighing.

Silver tools, wrapped in plastic, new.

Potter desperately wanted to ask what they were for. But of course he couldn't. It was vitally important that Handy not realize what they knew about the inside of the barricade. Even more vital: if Handy suspected the released hostages were giving Potter quality information he'd think twice about releasing others.

"Art," Handy spat out, "I keep saying, them's your problems." But he was not as flippant now and part of him at least seemed to realize that this had become his problem.

"Come on, Lou. This's just a practical thing. I'm not arguing about the chopper. I'm telling you we're having trouble finding one and that I'm not sure where we can set it down. You got any ideas, I'll be happy to take 'em."

Hostage negotiation strategy calls for the negotiator to avoid offering solutions to problems. Shift that burden to the taker. Keep him in a problem-solving mode, uncertain.

A disgusted sigh. "Fuck."

Will he hang up?

Finally Handy said, "How 'bout a pontoon chopper? You can do that, can't you?"

Never agree too quickly.

"Pontoon?" Potter said after a moment. "I don't know. We'd have to look into it. You mean, set her down in the river."

"Course that's what I mean. Where'd you think, land in some fucking toilet somewhere?"

"I'll see about it. If there's a sheltered cove it might work out perfectly. But you'll have to give us more time."

You don't have more time.

"You haven't got any more time."

"No, Lou. Pontoons'd be perfect. It's a great idea. I'll get on it right away. But let me buy some time. Tell me something you want."

"A fucking helicopter."

"And you'll have it. It may just take a little longer than we'd hoped. Name something else. Your heart's desire. Isn't there something you can think of you want?"

A pause. Potter thought: guns, X-rated tapes and a VCR, a friend busted out of prison, money, liquor…

"Yeah, I want something, Art."

"What?"

"Tell me 'bout yourself."

From out of left field.

Potter looked up into Angie's frown. She shook her head, cautious.

"What?"

"You asked me what I wanted. I want you to tell me about yourself."

You always want the HT to be curious about the negotiator but it usually takes hours, if not days, to establish any serious connection. This was the second time in just a few hours that Handy had expressed an interest in Potter, and the agent had never known an HT to ask the question so directly. Potter knew he was on thin ice here. He could improve the connection between the two or he could drive a wedge between them by not responding the way Handy wished.

Be forewarned…

"What do you want to know?"

"Anything you wanta tell me."

"Well, there's nothing very exciting. I'm just a civil servant." His mind went blank.

"Keep going, Art. Talk to me."

And then, as if a switch had been flicked, Arthur Potter found himself desiring to blurt out every last detail of his life, his loneliness, his sorrow… He wanted Lou Handy to know about him. "Well, I'm a widower. My wife died thirteen years ago, and today's our wedding anniversary."

He remembered that LeBow had told him there'd been bad blood between Handy and his ex; he turned to the intelligence officer, who had already called up a portion of Handy's profile. The convict had been married for two years when he was twenty. His wife had sued for divorce on the grounds of mental cruelty and had gotten a restraining order because he'd beaten her repeatedly. Just after that he'd gone off on a violent robbery spree. Potter was wishing he hadn't brought up the subject of marriage, but when Handy now asked what had happened to Potter's wife he sounded genuinely curious.

"She had cancer. Died about two months after we found out about it."

"Me, I was never married, Art. No woman'll ever tie me down. I'm a freewheelin' spirit, I go where my heart and my dick lead me. You ever get yourself remarried?"

"No, never did."

"What do you do when you want a little pussy?"

"My work keeps me pretty busy, Lou."

"You like your job, do you? How long you been doing it?"

"I've been with the Bureau all my adult life."

"All your adult life?"

My Lord, an amused Potter thought from a remote distance, he's echoing me. Coincidence? Or is he playing me the way I should be playing him?

"It's the only job I've ever had. Work eighteen hours a day a lot."

"How'd you get into this negotiating shit?"

"Just fell into it. Wanted to be an agent, liked the excitement of it. I was a pretty fair investigator but I think I was a little too easygoing. I could see both sides of everything."

"Oh, yessir," Handy said earnestly, "that'll keep you from moving to the top. Don't you know the sharks swim faster?"

"That's the God's truth, Lou."

"You must meet some real fucking wackos."

"Oh, present company excluded of course."

No laughter from the other end of the line. Only silence. Potter felt stung that the levity had fallen flat and he worried that Handy had heard sarcasm in Potter's voice and was hurt. He felt an urge to apologize.

But Handy just said, "Tell me a war story, Art."

Angie was frowning again. Potter ignored her. "Well, I did a barricade at the West German embassy in Washington about fifteen years ago. Talked for about eighteen hours straight." He laughed. "I had agents racing back and forth to the library bringing me books on political philosophy. Hegel, Kant, Nietzsche… Finally I had to send out for Cliff Notes. I was camped out in the backseat of an unmarked car, talking on a hard-wired throw phone to this maniac who thought he was Hitler. Wanted to dictate a new version of Mein Kampf to me. I still have no idea what the hell we talked about all that time."

Actually, the man hadn't claimed to be Hitler but Potter felt the urge to exaggerate, to make sure Handy was amused.

"Sounds like a fucking comedy."

"He was funny. His AK-47 was pretty sobering, I have to say."

"You a shrink?"

"Nope. Just a guy who likes to talk."

"You must have a pretty good ego."

"Ego?"

"Sure. You gotta listen to somebody like me say, 'You scurvy piece of dogshit, I'm going to kill you the first chance I get,' and then still ask him if he'd like Diet Coke or iced tea with his burgers."

"You want lemon with that tea, Lou?"

"Haw. This's all you do?"

"Well, I teach too. At the military police school at Fort McClellan. In Alabama. Then I'm head of hostage and barricade training at Quantico in the Bureau's Special Operations and Research Unit."

Now Henry LeBow offered an exasperated expression to Potter. The intelligence officer had never heard his fellow agent give away so much personal information.

Slowly Handy said in a low voice, "Tell me something, Art. You ever done anything bad?"

"Bad?"

"Really bad."

"I suppose I have."

"Did you mean to do it?"

"Mean to do it?"

"Ain't you listening to me?" Testy now. Echoing too frequently can antagonize the hostage taker.

"Well, the things I've done aren't so much intentional, I suppose. One bad thing is that I didn't spend enough time with my wife. Then she died, pretty fast, like I told you, and I realized there was a lot I hadn't said to her."

"Fuck," Handy spat out with a derisive laugh. "That's not bad. You don't know what I'm talking about."

Potter felt deeply hurt by the criticism. He wanted to cry out, "I do! And I did feel that I'd done something bad, terribly bad."

Handy continued, "I'm talking about killing somebody, ruining somebody's life, leaving a widow or widower, leaving children to grow up alone. Something bad."

"I've never killed anyone, Lou. Not directly."

Tobe was looking at him. Angie scribbled a note: You're giving away a lot, Arthur.

He ignored them, wiped the sweat from his forehead, kept his eyes focused outside on the slaughterhouse. "But people have died because of me. Carelessness. Mistakes. Sometimes intent. You and I, Lou, we both work flip sides of the same business." Feeling the overwhelming urge to make himself understood. "But you know -"

"Don't skip over this shit, Art. Tell me if they bother you, some of the things you've done?"

"I… I don't know."

"What about them people dying you was talking about?"

Take his pulse, Potter told himself. What's he thinking?

I can't see a thing. Who the hell knows?

"Yo, Art, keep talkin'. Who were they? Hostages you couldn't save? Troopers you sent in when you shouldn't've?"

"Yes, that's who they were."

And takers too. Though he doesn't say this. Ostrella, he thinks spontaneously, sees her long, beautiful face, serpentine. Dark eyebrows, full lips. His Ostrella.

"And that bothers you, huh?"

"Bothers me? Sure it does."

"Fuck," Handy seemed to sneer. Potter again felt the sting. "See, Art, you're proving my point. You've never done anything bad and you and me, we both know it. Take those folks in the Cadillac this afternoon, that couple I killed. Their names were Ruth and Hank, by the way. Ruthie and Hank. You know why I killed them?"

"Why, Lou?"

"Same reason I'm putting that little girl – Shannon – in the window in a minute or two and shooting her in the back of the head."

Even cool Henry LeBow stirred. Frances Whiting's elegant hands moved to her face.

"Why's that?" Potter asked calmly.

"Because I didn't get what I was owed! Pure and simple. This afternoon, in that field, they fucked up my car, ran right into it. And when I went to take theirs they tried to get away."

Potter had read the report from the Kansas State Police. It looked as if Handy's car had run a stop sign and been hit by the Cadillac, which had the right of way. Potter did not mention this fact.

"That's fair, isn't it? I mean, what could be clearer? They had to die, and it woulda been more painful than it was if I'd had more time. They didn't give me what I shoulda had."

How cold and logical he sounds.

Potter reminded himself: No value judgment. But don't approve of him either. Negotiators are neutral. (And it broke his heart that he didn't in fact feel the disgust that he ought to have been feeling. That a small portion of him believed Handy's words made sense.)

"Man, Art, I don't get it. When I kill somebody for a reason they call me bad. When a cop does it for a reason they give him a paycheck and call him good. Why're some reasons okay and others ain't? You kill when people don't do what they're supposed to. You kill the weak because they'll drag you down. What's wrong with that?"

Henry LeBow typed his notes calmly. Tobe Geller perused his monitors and dials. Charlie Budd sat in the corner, eyes on the floor, Angie beside him, listening carefully. And Officer Frances Whiting stood in the corner, uneasily holding a cup of coffee she'd lost all taste for; police work in Hebron, Kansas, didn't involve the likes of Lou Handy.

A laugh over the speaker. He asked, "Admit it, Art… Haven't you ever wanted to do that? Kill someone for a bad reason?"

"No, I haven't."

"That a fact?" He was skeptical. "I wonder…"

Silence filled the van. A trickle of sweat flowed down Potter's face and he wiped his forehead.

Handy asked, "So, you look like that guy in the old FBI show, Efrem Zimbalist?"

"Not a bit. I'm pretty ordinary. I'm just a humble constable. I eat too many potatoes -"

"Fries," Handy remembered.

"Mashed are my favorite, actually. With pan gravy."

Tobe whispered something to Budd, who wrote down on a slip of paper: Deadline.

Potter glanced at the clock. Into the phone he said, "I fancy sports coats. Tweed are my favorite. Or camel's hair. But we have to wear suits in the Bureau."

"Suits, huh? They cover up a lot of fat, don't they? Hold on a second there, Art."

Potter dipped out of his reverie and trained his Leicas on the factory window. A pistol barrel appeared next to Shannon 's head, which was covered with her long, brown hair, now mussed.

"That son of a bitch," Budd whispered. "The poor thing's terrified."

Frances leaned forward. "Oh, no. Please…"

Potter's fingers tapped buttons. "Dean?"

"Yessir," Stillwell answered.

"Can one of your snipers acquire a target?"

A pause.

"Negative. All they can see is a pistol barrel and slide. He's behind her. There's no shot he can make except into the window frame."

Handy asked, "Hey, Art, you really never shot anyone?"

LeBow looked up, frowning. But Potter answered anyway, "Nope, never have."

His hands stuffed deep into his pockets, Budd began pacing. It was very irritating.

"Ever fired a gun?"

"Of course. On the range at Quantico. I enjoyed it."

"Didja? You know, if you enjoyed shooting you might enjoy shooting somebody. Killing somebody."

"Sick son of a bitch," Budd muttered.

Potter waved the captain quiet.

"You know something, Art?"

"What's that?"

"You're all right. I mean it."

Potter felt a pleasing burst – from the man's approval.

I am good, he thought. He knew that it was the empathy that makes the difference at this job. Not the strategy, not the words, not the calculation or intelligence. It's what I can't teach in the training courses. I was always good, he reflected. But when you died, Marian, I became great. I had nowhere for my heart to go and so I gave it to men like Louis Handy.

And to Ostrella…

A terrorist takeover in Washington, D.C. The Estonian woman, blond and brilliant, walking out of the Soviet embassy after twenty hours of negotiating with Potter. Twelve hostages released, four more inside. Finally she'd surrendered, come out with her hands not outstretched but on her head – a violation of the hostage surrender protocol. But Potter knew she was harmless. Knew her as well as he knew Marian. He'd stepped unprotected from the barricade and walked toward her, to greet her, to embrace her, to make sure that when she was arrested the cuffs weren't too tight, that her rights were read to her in her native language. And he'd had to endure the copious spatter of her blood from the sniper who shot her in the head when she pulled the hidden pistol from her collar and shoved it directly toward Potter's face. (And his reaction? To scream to her, "Get down!" And fling his arms around her to protect his new love, as bits of her skull snapped against his skin.)

Have you ever wanted to do something bad?

Be…

Yes, Lou, I have. If you must know.

…forewarned.

Potter was unable to say anything for a moment, afraid to offend Handy, afraid that he'd hang up. Almost as afraid of that as of Handy's killing the girl. "Listen to me, Lou. I tell you in good faith we're working on this chopper and I asked you to tell me something that you'll accept to buy another hour." Potter added, "We're trying to work out a deal. Help me out here."

There was a pause and the confident voice said, "It's thirsty work, here."

Ah, let's play a game. "Diet Pepsi?" the agent asked coyly.

"You know what I'm talking about."

"Lemonade, made out of fresh Sunkist?"

LeBow hit several keys and showed the screen to Potter, who nodded.

"Glass of mother's milk?" Handy sneered.

Reading Wilcox's profile, Potter said, "I don't think liquor's a real good idea, Lou. Shep has a bit of a problem, doesn't he?"

A pause.

"You boys sure seem to know a lot about us."

"That's what they pay me my meager salary for. To know everything in the world."

"Well, that's the deal. One hour for some booze."

"Nothing hard. No way."

"Beer's fine. 'S'more to my liking anyway."

"I'll send in three cans."

"Hold up there. A case."

"No. You get three cans of light beer."

A snicker. "Fuck light beer."

"That's the best I can do."

Frances and Budd were plastered against the window, watching Shannon.

Handy's voice sang, "This little piggy went to market, this little piggy stayed home…" Moving the gun from one of the girl's ears to the other.

Stillwell came on the air to ask what he should tell the snipers.

Potter hesitated. "No fire," he said. "Whatever happens."

"Copy," Stillwell said.

They heard the whimper of the girl as Handy pressed the gun against her forehead.

"I'll give you a six-pack," Potter said, "if you let me have that girl."

Budd whispered, "Don't push it."

A pause. "Give me a reason why I'd want to do that."

LeBow dropped the cursor to a paragraph in the evolving Biography of Louis Handy. Potter read, then said, " 'Cause you love beer."

Handy had been reprimanded by one of his wardens for whipping up some home brew in prison. Later, his privileges were suspended after he'd smuggled in two cases of Budweiser.

"Come on," Potter chided, "what can it hurt? You'll have plenty of hostages left over." Potter took the chance. "Besides, she's a little pain in the ass, isn't she? That's her reputation at school."

Angie's eyes sprang open. It's a risk to refer to the hostages in any way because it gives them more value to the taker than they already have. You never suggest that they have some liability that might irritate or endanger him.

A pause.

Now, set the hook.

The agent said, "What's your favorite brand? Miller? Bud?"

"Mexican."

"You got it, Lou. A six-pack of Corona, you let that girl go and we get another hour for the chopper. Everybody's happy."

"I'd rather shoot her."

Potter and LeBow glanced at each other. Budd was suddenly standing close to Potter, his hands in his pocket, fidgeting.

The negotiator ignored the young captain and said to Handy, "Okay, Lou, then shoot her. I'm tired of this bullshit."

From the corner of his eye he saw Budd shift and for a moment Potter tensed, thinking the captain was going to leap forward, grab the phone, and agree to whatever Handy wanted. But he just kept his hands in his back pockets and turned away. Frances gazed at the negotiator in utter shock.

Potter hit buttons on the phone. "Dean, he may shoot the girl. If he does, make sure nobody returns fire."

A hesitation. "Yessir."

Potter was back on the line with Handy. The man hadn't hung up but he wasn't talking either. Shannon's head swiveled back and forth. The black rectangular pistol was still visible.

Potter jumped inches when Handy's staccato laugh shot into the van. "This's sorta like Monopoly, ain't it? Buying and selling and all?"

Potter struggled to remain silent.

Handy growled, "Two six-packs or I do it right now." Shannon 's head bent forward as Handy pressed the gun into it.

"And we get an extra hour for the chopper?" Potter asked. "Makes it about six-fifteen."

"Safety's off," Dean Stillwell sang out.

Potter closed his eyes.

Not a single sound in the van. Complete silence. This is what Melanie lives with day after day after day, Potter thinks.

"Deal, Art," Handy said. "By the way, you are one bad motherfucker."

Click.

Potter slumped into the chair, closed his eyes for a moment. "You get all that, Henry?"

LeBow nodded and typed away. He rose and started to lift Shannon 's marker out of the slaughterhouse schematic.

"Wait," said Potter. LeBow paused. "Let's just wait."

"I'll get that beer," Budd said, exhaling a sigh.

Potter smiled. "Getting a little hot for you, Captain?"

"Yeah. Some."

"You'll get used to it," Potter said, just as Budd said, "I'll get used to it." The captain's voice was far less optimistic than Potter's. The agent and the trooper laughed.

Budd started like a rabbit when Angie squeezed his arm. "I'll come with you to see about that beer, Captain. If that's all right with you."

"Uh, well, sure, I guess," he said uncertainly, and they left the van.

"One more hour," LeBow said, nodding.

Potter swiveled around in his chair, staring out the window at the slaughterhouse. "Henry, write down: 'It's the negotiator's conclusion that the stress and anxiety of the initial phase of the barricade have dissipated and subject Handy is calm and thinking rationally.'

"That makes one of us," said Frances Whiting, whose shaking hands spilled coffee on the floor of the van. Derek Elb, the red-haired trooper, gallantly dropped to hands and knees to clean up the mess.

5:11 P.M.

"What's he doing with Shannon?" Beverly signed, her chest rising and falling as she tried to breathe.

Melanie leaned forward. Shannon's face was emotionless. She was signing and Melanie caught the name Professor X, the founder of the X-Men. Like Emily, the girl was summoning her guardian angels.

Bear and Brutus were talking and she could see their lips. Bear gestured to Shannon and asked Brutus, "Why… giving them away?"

"Because," Brutus answered patiently, "if we don't they'll break in the fucking door and… shoot us dead."

Melanie scooted back, said, "She's just sitting there. She's all right. They're going to let her go."

Everyone's face lit up.

Everyone except Mrs. Harstrawn's.

And Kielle's. Little Kielle, a blond, freckled bobcat. An eight-year-old with twenty-year-old eyes. The girl glanced impatiently at Melanie and turned away, bent down to the wall beside her, working away at something. What was she doing? Trying to tunnel her way out? Well, let her. It'll keep her out of harm's way.

"I think I'm going to be sick," signed one of the twins, Suzie. Anna signed the same but then she usually echoed everything her very slightly older sister said.

Melanie signed to them that they wouldn't be sick. Everything would be fine. She scooted over beside Emily, who was tearfully examining a rip in her dress. "You and I'll go shopping next week," Melanie signed. "Buy you new one."

And that was when De l'Epée whispered in her useless ear. "The gas can," he said, and vanished immediately.

Melanie felt the chill run down her back. The gas can, yes. She turned her head. It sat beside her, red and yellow, a big two-gallon one. She eased toward it, snapped closed the cover and the pressure hole cap. Then looked around the killing room for the other thing she'd need.

There, yes.

Melanie slid around to the front of the room, examined the back of the slaughterhouse. There were two doors – she could just make them out in the dimness. Which one led to the river? she wondered. She happened to glance down at the floor, where she'd written the messages in the dust about the hand-shape game. Squinting, she looked at the floor in front of each door – there was much less dust in front of the left. That's it – the river breeze blows through that one and has swept away the dust. Enough wind for there to be, just possibly, a window or door open far enough for a little girl to scoot through.

Beverly choked and started a crying fit. She lay on her side, struggling for breath. The inhaler hadn't done her much good. Bear frowned and looked at her, called something.

Shit. Melanie signed to Beverly, "It's hard, honey, but please be quiet."

"Scared, scared."

"I know. But it'll be all -"

Oh, my God. Melanie's eyes went wide and her signing hands stopped in midword as she looked across the room.

Kielle was holding the knife in front of her, an old hook-bladed knife. That's what she'd seen underneath a pile of trash; that's what she'd been digging out.

Melanie shuddered. "No!" she signed. "Put it back."

Kielle had murder in her gray eyes. She slipped the weapon into her pocket. "I'm going to kill Mr. Sinister. You can't stop me!" Her hands slashed the air in front of her as if she were already stabbing him.

"No! Can't do it that way!"

"I'm Jubilee! He can't stop me!"

"That's character in comic book," Melanie's staccato hands shot out. "Not real!"

Kielle ignored her. "Jubilation Lee! I'm going to blow him apart with plasmoids! He's going to die. No one can stop me!" She crawled through the door and disappeared through the shower of water tumbling from the ceiling.

The huge main room of the Webber amp; Stoltz slaughterhouse, in the front portion of which were clustered the three convicts, had been a series of holding pens and walkways for the beasts that had died here. The space was now used for storing slaughterhouse equipment – butcher blocks, one- and three-bay decapitation guillotines, gutting machines, grinders, huge rendering vats.

It was into this gruesome warehouse that Kielle disappeared, intending, it seemed, to circle around to the front wall, where the men lounged in front of the TV.

No…

Melanie half-rose, looked at Bear – the only one of the three with a clear view of the killing room – and froze. He wasn't looking their way but he had only to turn his greasy head inches to see them. In a panic she looked over the main room. Caught a glimpse of Kielle's blond hair vanishing behind a column.

Melanie eased closer to the doorway, still crouching. Brutus was at the window, beside Shannon, looking out. Bear started to glance toward the room but turned back to Stoat, who was laughing at something. Bear, stroking the shotgun he held, reared back and laughed, closing his eyes.

Now. Do it.

I can't.

Do it, while he can't see you.

A deep breath. Now. Melanie slipped out of the room and crawled under a rotting walkway, indented and bowed from a million hoof-prints. She paused, looking through the cascade of tumbling water. Kielle… Where are you? You think you can stab him and just vanish? You and your damn comic books!

She slipped through the water – it was freezing cold and slimy. Shivering in disgust, she made her way into the cavernous room.

What would the girl do? Circle around, she supposed, come up behind him, stab him in the back. Past the machinery, rusting scraps of metal and rotting wood. Piles of chains and meat hooks, stained with blood and barbed with sharp bits of dried flesh. The vats were disgusting. From them emanated a sickening smell and Melanie couldn't rid her mind of the image of animals sinking down into simmering fat and fluid. She felt her gorge rising, started to retch.

No! Be quiet! The least sound'll tell them you're here.

She struggled to control herself, dropping to her knees to breathe the cool moist air from the floor.

Glancing under the legs of a large guillotine, its angular blade rusty and pitted, Melanie saw the little girl's shadow across the room as she scrambled from one column to another.

Melanie started forward quickly. And got only two feet before she felt the numbing thud of her shoulder running into a piece of steel pipe, six feet long, resting against a column. It began a slow fall to the floor.

No!

Melanie flung her arms around the pipe. It must have weighed a hundred pounds.

I can't hold it, can't stop it!

The pipe fell faster, pulling her after it. Just as her grip was about to go she dropped to the floor, rolled under the rusty metal, and took the impact of it on her tensed stomach muscles. She gasped at the pain that surged through her body, praying that the wind and the cascade of water made enough noise to cover the grunting from her throat. She lay stunned for a long moment.

Finally she managed to ease out from underneath the pipe and roll it to the floor – silently, she hoped.

Oh, Kielle, where are you? Don't you understand? You can't kill them all. They'll find us, they'll kill us. Or Bear'll take us into the back of the factory. Haven't you seen his eyes? Don't you know what he wants? No, you probably don't. You don't have a clue -

She risked a look toward the front of the room. The attention of the men was mostly turned toward the TV. Occasionally Bear glanced at the killing room but didn't seem to notice that two of the captives were missing.

Glancing again beneath the legs of the machinery, Melanie caught a glimpse of blond hair. There she was, Kielle, making her way inexorably toward the three men near the window. Crawling, a smile on her face. She probably did think she could kill all three.

Struggling to catch her breath from the blow of the pipe, Melanie scrabbled down a corridor, hid behind a rusted column. She turned the corner and saw the blond girl, only twenty or thirty feet from Brutus, whose back was to her as he continued to gaze out the window. His hand casually gripping Shannon's collar. If any one of the three men had stood and walked toward the girl, they'd only have to look down over one of the large vats, which lay on its side, to see her.

Kielle was tensing. About to leap over the vat and charge Brutus.

Melanie thought, Should I just let her do it? What is the worst that would happen? She'd get a few feet toward them, Bear would see her, take the knife away. They'd slap her once or twice, shove her back into the killing room.

Why should I risk my life? Risk Bear's hands on me? Risk Brutus's eyes?

But then Melanie saw Susan. Saw the dot appearing on her back and the puff of black hair, like smoke, rise up.

She saw Bear looking over Emily's boyish body, grinning.

Shit.

Melanie pulled her black shoes off, pushed them under a metal table. She started to sprint. Flat out, down the narrow corridor, dodging overhanging hunks of metal and rods and pipes, leaping over a piece of butcher block.

Just as Kielle stood and reached for the top of the vat Melanie tackled her. One hand around her stomach, the other around her mouth. They went down hard and knocked into the hinged lid of a vat, which slammed closed.

"No!" the little girl signed. "Let me -"

Melanie did something she'd never in her life done: drew back her open palm and aimed directly at the girl's cheek. Kielle's eyes went wide. The teacher lowered her hand and glanced through the crack between two overturned vats. Brutus had turned, looking in their direction. Stoat was shrugging. "Wind," she saw him say. Unsmiling Bear was on his feet, carrying the shotgun, walking toward them.

"Inside," Melanie signed fiercely, gesturing toward a large steel vat nearby, resting on its side. The girl hesitated for a moment and they climbed inside, pulling the lid closed, like a door. The sides were coated with a waxy substance that disgusted Melanie and made her skin crawl. The smell was overpowering and she struggled once again to keep from vomiting.

A shadow fell over the vat and she felt a vibration as Bear stepped into the corridor. He was only two feet from them.

Halfheartedly, he glanced around and then stepped back toward Shannon and the other men.

Kielle turned to her. In the dim light Melanie could just make out the girl's words. "I'm going to kill him! Don't stop me, or I'll kill you too!"

Melanie gasped as the little girl lifted the razor-sharp blade and pointed it at her. "Stop it!" Melanie signed brutally. What should I do? she wondered. Images of Susan were flashing through her mind. Mrs. Harstrawn, her father, her brother.

And De l'Epée.

Susan, help me.

De l'Epée…

Then Melanie thought suddenly: There is no Susan. She's dead. Dead and already cold.

And Mrs. Harstrawn may as well be.

De l'Epée? He's just a lie. A phony visitor to your phony little room. Another of your sick, imaginary friends, one of the dozens you grew up talking to, going out with, making very solitary love to while you hid from everything real. I get everything wrong! I hear music when there is no music, I hear nothing when people speak to me inches away, I'm afraid when I have to be brave…

The little girl reached for the lid of the vat.

"Kielle!" Melanie signed angrily. "Jubilee… All right. Listen."

The girl looked at her cautiously, nodded.

"You really want to kill him?"

"Yes!" Kielle's eyes glowed.

"Okay. Then we'll do it together. We'll do it the right way."

A ragged smile blossomed in Kielle's face.

"I'll distract him. You go behind pipe there. See it? Go over there and hide."

"What should I do?"

"Wait until I give you signal to come out. He'll be talking to me, won't look for you."

"And then?"

"Stab him as hard as you can in back. Okay?"

"Yes!" The little girl smiled, her eyes no longer fiery but cold as stone. "I'm Jubilee! No one can stop me!"

Brutus had his back to the interior of the slaughterhouse but he must have seen her reflection in a pane of cracked glass. He turned. "Whatta we got here?"

Melanie had slipped from the vat and circled back toward the killing room. Now she walked toward them, smiled at Shannon.

She looked at Handy and mimicked writing. He handed her a yellow pad and pen. She wrote, I don't want you to hurt her. She nodded toward Shannon.

"Hurt her? I'm giving… away. Understand?"

Why not both her and the sick girl? she wrote. Mention her name, Melanie thought. Maybe he'll be more sympathetic. Beverly, she added.

Brutus grinned and nodded at Bear. "My friend… wants to keep the pretty ones… for a while."

He's saying this just to be cruel, she thought. Then reflected: He is cruel, yes. But what else is he, what else do I feel about him? Something strange; there's some connection. Is it because I can understand his words? Or do I understand him because of the connection?

Stoat stepped away from the window and said, "… coming… two… packs." He winked and continued to chew on a toothpick. But Brutus wasn't looking out the window; he was scanning the slaughterhouse, looking around, squinting.

What can I do to keep him from seeing Kielle?

Try to seduce him? she thought suddenly.

What she knew of love she knew from books, movies, and girl talk. Melanie had had boyfriends but had never slept with any of them. Always, the fear… Of what, she didn't know. The dark maybe. Trusting somebody that much. Of course there was the problem that she'd never met anyone interested in making love with her. Oh, there'd been plenty of boys who wanted to fuck her. But that was so different. Look at the two terms: Saying "fuck" pinched the nose and made your features tight and lonely. "Making love"… it was soft and opened up your face.

Suddenly Brutus laughed and stepped forward, grabbed her and pulled her close. Maybe he was far smarter than he seemed. Or maybe her eyes could keep nothing secret; in any event he knew exactly what she was thinking. He stroked her hair.

She waited for the hands on her breasts, between her legs. She remembered how she'd recoiled when a boyfriend had slipped his hand up there quickly. She'd leapt off his knee like lightning, smacking her head on the car's hot dome light.

Then Brutus turned his head and said something she didn't catch.

Bear and Stoat were laughing.

Abruptly he shoved her away, leaned his face close, and said, "Why'd I want you? A busted little thing like you? You're like a boy. I want women only." His black eyes bored into hers and she broke into sobs. With satisfaction he looked over the horror and shame in her face. "I got me a real woman. Pris's all I need. She's got herself a woman's body and a woman's eyes. We fuck for hours. You have a boyfriend?"

Melanie couldn't answer. Her arms were weak and hung at her side. In the corner of her eye she saw Kielle slip through the shadows of machinery. She struggled to stop the tears, refused to wipe them away.

"Pris's a real character. A ballbuster… Think I'm bad? She's badder. You hate me? You wouldn't like her one bit. Now, she might fuck you. She's a bit that way and I'd like to watch. If we get out of this we'll do that, her and me and you."

Melanie stepped away but he took her by the arm. The grip cut off the blood to her hands and she felt them tingle painfully.

Stoat, hand on his crew cut, was calling something. Brutus turned to the window, looked out. Melanie felt a vibration in the air. Brutus looked toward the phone. Smiling, he let go of Melanie's arm and picked up the receiver.

"Hello…"

Was he talking to De l'Epée? What were they saying?

Behind the pipes near the door was Kielle's shadow. The girl held the knife in her hand.

"… almost here," Stoat called, pointing his gun out the window.

Brutus lowered his head and kept talking into the phone, fiddling with the pistol stuffed in his belt. He looked bored; he grimaced and hung up. Picked up a shotgun, pulled back a lever on it, and stepped to the doorway. His back was to Kielle, perhaps ten feet away. The girl leaned her head out. Light from outside, a shaft of brilliant white light, glinted off the blade in her hand. Melanie signed, "Wait."

Stoat grabbed Shannon by the arm and pulled her to the door. Brutus stepped back, pointing the gun outward, and Stoat eased the door open.

A figure appeared in the doorway – a trooper dressed in black. He handed in two six-packs of beer. Stoat shoved the girl out the door.

Now!

Melanie stepped slowly behind Brutus. She smiled at Kielle, who frowned, confused. Then Melanie reached down and simply scooped the little girl off the ground, grabbing the knife from her hand.

Kielle shook her head violently.

But Melanie spun around, moving so fast that Brutus froze in confusion, staring at them, no idea what was going on. Melanie continued to smile as she stepped around him, firmly gripping the astonished girl.

Then flung Kielle out the door into the chest of the trooper.

For an instant no one moved. Melanie, still smiling at Stoat, slowly eased the door closed, shooing her hand lethargically at the astonished cop as if he were a bluetail fly.

"Fuck," Brutus spat out. Stoat started forward, but Melanie slammed the door completely closed and wedged it tight with Kielle's knife. Stoat tugged at the large knob but it wouldn't budge.

Then Melanie dropped to her knees and covered her face, trying to cushion herself from the blow as Stoat's bony fist slammed into her neck and jaw. He pulled her arms away and struck her hard on the forehead and chin.

"You fucking bitch!" Brutus's tendons and jaw quivered.

He hit her once hard and she fell against the floor. Trying to scrabble away, she pulled herself up by the windowsill, glanced outside and saw the trooper carrying both the young X-Men with him, tucked under his arms. Jogging awkwardly through the gully away from the slaughterhouse.

On her neck she heard the vibrations of a man's voice shouting in anger. Brutus was running to the window on the other side of the door. He stepped back from it then aimed the shotgun outside.

Melanie ran at him.

It seemed that her feet didn't even touch the ground. Stoat grabbed for her but caught only a shred of silk collar that tore away. As she collided with Brutus's shoulder she had the satisfaction of seeing his pain and surprise and fear as he fell sideways into a square of butcher block. The gun hit the floor but didn't go off.

Melanie looked out the window once more and saw the two girls and the trooper disappear over a small hill. And then Stoat's gun caught her above the ear that had first gone deaf, years ago, and she dropped to her knees. She fainted not so much from the pain as from the terror that the darkness taking her vision was from a broken nerve and that she would now be blind as well as deaf forever and ever.

5:34 P.M.

"You gave us a bonus, Lou. Thanks much."

"Wasn't me," Handy grumbled.

"No? What happened?"

"Listen here, I'm pissed."

"Why's that?"

"Just shut up and listen, Art. I don't wanta hear your bullshit." His voice was colder than it'd been all day.

"Forty-five minutes for that helicopter. That's all you got and I'll tell you, mister, I'm itching to kill somebody. I almost hope it don't show up. I'm not doing any more bargaining with you."

"How's your beer?"

"I picked the little bitch already. She's ten or eleven. Wearing a pretty dress."

"Emily," Angie said.

"And I'm gonna let Bonner have her first. You know 'bout Bonner, don't you? You got your fucking files on us. You must know all 'bout his little problem."

A negotiator never imposes his own values on the situation – either approval or criticism. Doing so suggests that there are standards of what is and isn't acceptable and is apt to irritate the taker or make his bad behavior seem justified. Even offering reassuring cliches can be dangerous, suggesting that you're not taking the situation seriously.

Reluctantly Potter now said in as blasé a voice as he could muster, "You don't want to do that, Lou. You know you don't."

The cackle of vicious laughter filled the van. "Everybody's telling me what I don't want to do. I hate that!"

"We're working on the chopper, Lou. Look outside. We've got twenty-mile-an-hour winds, low overcast, and fog. You wanted pontoons. Well, pontoons don't grow on trees."

"You got twelve-mile-an-hour winds, ceilings of two thousand feet, and no fucking fog that I can see."

The television, Potter remembered, angry with himself for forgetting. Maybe Handy was watching the Live at Five weather report at that moment. A long minute of silence. Potter, staring at the speaker above his head, decided they were too focused on the mechanics of the negotiating. It was time for something personal.

"Lou?"

"Yeah."

"You asked me what I looked like. Let me ask you about yourself."

"Fuck, you've got pictures in there, I'll bet."

"What do mug shots show?" Potter asked, and laughed.

When Handy spoke, his voice had calmed considerably. "What do I look like?" he mused. "Let me tell you a story, Art. I was in a prison riot one time. All kindsa shit was going down like usual in things like that. What the fuck happens but I find myself in the laundry room with a fellow I'd had it in for for a long time. Now, you know where you hide things when you're inside, don't you? So I crapped this glass knife, unwrapped it, and started to work on him. You know why?"

Echo his questions and comments, Arthur Potter the negotiator thought. But Arthur Potter remained silent.

" 'Cause when I first was in he come up to me, all macho and that shit, and said he didn't like the way I looked."

"So you killed him." A matter-of-fact statement.

"Fuck yes, but that's not my point. While he was dying there, his gut all split open, I leaned down. See, I was curious. I leaned down real close and I asked him what exactly it was he didn't like about the way I looked. And you know what he said? He said, 'You looked like cold death.' Know something, Art? I was sorry I killed him after he told me that. Yessir, cold death."

Don't play his game, Potter thought suddenly. You're falling under his spell. With an edge to his voice he asked, "Lou, give us until seven. You do me that, I think we'll have some good news for you."

"I -"

"That's all. What difference does it make?" Potter kept all supplication from his voice. He made it sound that Handy was being unreasonable. It was a risk but Potter assessed that the man would have no respect at all for whiners.

Still, he was very surprised when Handy said, "All right. Jesus! But have the chopper here, Art. Or the little one in the dress goes."

Click.

Potter calmly instructed Tobe to adjust the deadline clock accordingly.

The door to the van opened and a trooper looked in. "The two girls are here, sir. They're in the medical tent."

"Are they okay?"

"One fell and scraped her elbow. Otherwise they're fine."

"I'll go over there. I could use some fresh air. Frances, could you translate? Henry, get yourself unplugged and come with us. Angie too?"

In a grove of trees not far from the van Potter ushered the girls into folding chairs. Henry LeBow joined them, portable computer in hand. He sat down and smiled at the girls, who stared at the Toshiba.

Potter tried to recall what Frances had taught him and spelled their names in sign language. S-H-A-N-N-O-N and K-I-E-L-L-E, bringing a smile to Shannon 's face. They were the same age, Potter knew – eight – but Shannon was taller. Kielle, however, with her grim face and cynical eyes, gave the impression of being far older.

"What's the matter?" Potter asked Kielle.

Frances 's face went cold when she received a response. "She said she tried to kill him."

"Who?"

"Handy, I think she means. She calls him Mr. Sinister."

Potter produced the flyer of the fugitives. Kielle's face screwed into a tight mask and she poked a finger at Handy's picture.

"She says he killed Susan and she was going to kill him. Melanie betrayed her. Melanie is a Judas."

"Why?" Angie asked.

More brutal signing.

"She threw her out the door."

"Melanie did that?"

Potter felt the chill down his spine. He knew there'd be a payback of some kind.

Shannon confirmed that the men didn't seem to have any rifles, only shotguns – her father hunted and she knew something about guns. Beverly 's asthma was bad, though Handy had given her the medicine. She reiterated that the "big man," Bonner, hovered over the girls and kept looking at Emily because she was "prettier and looked more like a girl."

Angie asked delicately, "Has anyone touched any of you?"

Shannon said that they had. But Kielle waved her hand and signed, "Not the way you mean. But Bear looks a lot."

So, Potter reflected, Bonner's a discrete threat, separate from Handy. And probably more dangerous. Lust-driven criminals always are.

"Who picked you to be released?" Angie asked Shannon.

"Him." She pointed at Handy.

"The one Melanie calls Brutus, right?"

Shannon nodded. "We call him Mr. Sinister. Or Magneto."

"Why did he pick you, do you think? Was there any reason?"

"Because Bear" – Shannon pointed at Bonner's picture – "told him to." Frances looked at Angie and said, " Shannon kicked him and he was mad."

"I didn't mean to kick him. I just didn't think… And then I got really scared. I thought it was my fault he was going to burn us up."

"Burn you up? Why'd you think that?"

Shannon told them about the gas can rigged right above their heads.

Frances's face went pale. "He wouldn't."

"Oh, yes he would," Angie said. "Fire. His new toy."

"Damn," Potter muttered. This virtually eliminated the possibility of an HRT rescue. Henry LeBow's concession to the horror was to pause before he typed a description of the device.

Potter walked to the doorway of the van, called Budd out, and then motioned Dean Stillwell over. The negotiator said to them both, "We've got a hot trap inside -"

"Hot?" Budd asked.

"Armed," Potter continued. "We can't give him the least excuse to trip it. There's to be absolutely no action that could be construed as offensive. Double-check – all weapons unchambered."

"Yessir," Stillwell said.

Potter then asked Shannon if there was anything else she could remember about the men and what they did inside.

"They watch TV," Frances translated. "They walk around. Eat. Talk. They're pretty relaxed."

Relaxed. Jocylyn had said the same. Well, this was a first for a barricade.

"You saw the tools they have?"

Shannon nodded.

"Have they used them?"

"No."

"Do you remember what tools they had?"

She shook her head no.

"Can you tell what they talk about?" Potter asked.

"No," Frances explained. "Neither of them can lip-read."

"They watch you all the time?" Angie asked.

"Pretty much. He's scary. Him." Shannon was pointing at Handy. Kielle reached forward viciously and grabbed the picture. She tore it up and signed violently.

"She says she hates Melanie. She could have killed him. And now he's alive to kill more people. She says she wouldn't have minded dying. But Melanie's a coward and she hates her."

As he had done with Jocylyn, Potter warmly shook the girls' hands and thanked them. Shannon smiled; Kielle did not but it was with a strong, self-assured grip that the little girl grasped the agent's hand. Then he sent the two girls off with a trooper, to meet their parents at the motel in Crow Ridge. He conferred with Angie for a few minutes then climbed into the van. She followed him.

The negotiator rubbed his eyes and leaned back and took the cup of the dreadful coffee Derek set beside him. "I don't get it," he said to no one in particular.

"What?" Budd asked.

"A hostage escaped and he's angry. That part I understand. But he doesn't seem angry because he lost a bargaining chip. He's angry for some other reason." He looked across the van. "Angie? Our resident psychologist? Have any ideas?"

She organized her thoughts, then said, "I think Handy's big issue is control. He says he's killed people because they didn't do what he wanted. I've heard that before. A convenience store clerk didn't put the money in the robber's bag as fast as he wanted so she's the one guilty of an offense, not him. That gave him, in effect, permission to kill her."

"Is that why he killed Susan?" Budd asked.

Potter rose and paced. "Ah, a very good question, Charlie."

"I agree," Angie said. "A key question."

"Why her?" Potter continued.

"Well, what I actually meant," Budd said, "was why did he kill her? Why go to that extreme?"

"Oh, when somebody breaks his rules, however slightly," Angie said, "any punishment's fair. Death, torture, rape. In Handy's world, even misdemeanors are capital offenses. But let's ask Arthur's question. Why her? Why Susan Phillips? That's the important issue. Henry, tell us about the girl."

LeBow's finger clattered. He read from the screen. "Seventeen. Born of deaf parents. IQ of one hundred and forty-six."

"This is hard to listen to," Budd muttered. Potter nodded for LeBow to go on.

"First in her class at the Laurent Clerc School. And listen to this. She's got a record."

"What?"

"She was a protestor last year at Topeka School for the Deaf, a part of Hammersmith College. They wanted a deaf dean. Fifty students got arrested and Susan slugged a cop. They dropped the charges for assault but gave her a suspended for trespass."

LeBow continued, "Volunteered at the Midwest Bicultural/Bilingual Center. There's an article here – in the material Angie brought." He skimmed it. "Apparently it's an organization that opposes something called 'mainstreaming.' "

Angie said, "The dean of the Clerc School told me about that. It's a movement to force the Deaf into regular schools. It's very controversial. Deaf activists oppose it."

"All right," Potter said. "Let's file that away for a moment. Now, who's Handy given up so far?"

"Jocylyn and Shannon," Angie said.

"Anything in common about them?"

"Doesn't seem to be," Budd said. "In fact, looks like they're opposites. Jocylyn's a timid little thing. Shannon's feisty. She's a little Susan Phillips."

"Angie?" Potter said. "What do you think."

"Control again. Susan was a direct threat to him. She had an in-your-face attitude. She probably challenged his control directly. Now, Shannon, with her kicking Bonner… Handy'd sense the same threat but on a smaller scale. He wouldn't feel the need to kill her – to reassert control in the most extreme way possible – but he'd want her out. Jocylyn? She was crying all the time. Sniveling. She got on his nerves. That's a way to eat at his control too."

"What about the adults?" LeBow asked. "I'd think they'd be more of a threat than the children."

"Oh, not necessarily," Angie said. "The older teacher, Donna Harstrawn, is half-comatose, it sounds like. No threat there."

"And Melanie Charrol?"

Angie said, "The dean at the school told me that she's got a reputation for being very timid."

"But look at what she just did," Potter said. "Getting Kielle out."

"A fluke, I'd guess. Probably impulse." She gazed out the window. "He's an odd one, Handy is."

"Unique in my experience," Potter said. "Say, Henry, read to us from your opus. Tell us what we know about him so far."

LeBow sat up slightly and read in a stiff voice. "Louis Jeremiah Handy is thirty-five years old. Mother raised him after his alcoholic father went to jail when the baby was six months. The mother drank too. Child protective services considered placing him and his brothers in foster homes several times but nothing ever came of it. No evidence he was abused or beaten, though when his father returned from prison – Lou was eight – the man was arrested several times for beating up his neighbors. The father finally took off when Handy was thirteen and was killed a year later in a barroom fight. His mother died a year after that."

Officer Frances Whiting shook her head with undirected sympathy.

"Handy killed his first victim at age fifteen. He used a knife though he apparently had a gun on him and could have used the more merciful weapon. It took the victim, a boy his age, a long time to die. Six years in juvenile for that then out long enough to earn a string of GTA arrests, carjackings, assault, D amp;D. Suspected in ATM stickups and bank robberies. Was almost convicted twice for major jobs but the witnesses were killed before trial. No link to him could be proved.

"His two brothers were in and out of trouble with the law over the years. The eldest was killed five years ago, as I mentioned before. It was thought Handy might have done it. No known whereabouts for the younger brother.

"As Handy's career's progressed," LeBow said to his audience, "he's gotten more violent." It was the severity and randomness of his crimes that seemed to escalate, the intelligence officer explained. Recently he'd taken to killing for no apparent reason and – in the robbery in which he'd most recently been convicted – started committing arson.

Potter interrupted to say, "Tell us specifically what happened at the Wichita robbery. The Farmers amp; Merchants S amp;L."

Henry LeBow scrolled through the screen, then continued, "Handy, Wilcox, a two-time felon named Fred Laskey, and Priscilla Gunder – Handy's girlfriend – robbed the Farmers amp; Merchants S amp;L in Wichita. Handy ordered a teller to take him into the vault but she moved too slow for him. Handy lost his temper, beat her, and locked her and another woman teller inside the vault, then went outside and got a can of gas. Doused the inside of the bank and lit it. The fire was the reason he was caught. If they'd just run with the twenty thousand they'd have made it but it took him another five minutes or so to torch the place. That gave the cops and Pete Henderson's men time to roll up, silent."

He summarized the rest of the drama: There was a shootout in front of the bank. The girlfriend got away and Handy, Wilcox, and Laskey stole another car but got stopped by a roadblock a mile away. They'd climbed out and walked toward the cops. Handy fired a hidden gun through Laskey's back, killing him and wounding two of the arresting officers before being wounded himself.

"Pointless." Budd shook his head. "That fire. Burning up those women."

"Oh, no, the fire was one way to regain control of the situation," Angie said.

Potter quoted, " 'They didn't do what I wanted. When I wanted it.' "

"Maybe people like Handy'll become your specialty, Arthur," Tobe said.

Two years until retirement; as if I need a specialty, thought Potter. And one that includes the Lou Handys of the world.

Budd sighed.

"You all right, Captain?" Potter asked.

"I don't know if I'm exactly made for this kind of work."

"Ah, you're doing fine."

But of course the young trooper was right. He wasn't made for this line of work; nobody was.

"Listen, Charlie, the troopers're probably getting antsy by now. I want you to make the rounds, you and Dean. Calm ' em down. See about coffee. And for God's sake make sure their heads're down. Keep yours that way too."

"I'll come with you, Charlie," Angie said. "If it's okay with Arthur."

"Catch up with him, Angie. I want to talk to you for a moment."

"I'll meet you outside," she called, and pulled her chair closer to Potter.

"Angie, I need an ally," Potter said. "Someone inside."

She glanced at him. "Melanie?"

"Was that really just a fluke, what she did? Or can I count on some help?"

Angie thought for a minute. "When Melanie was a high-school student there, Laurent Clerc was an oralist school. Signing was forbidden."

"It was?"

"It was a mainstream school. But Melanie realized that was stifling her – which is what all educators are now coming to realize. What she did was to develop her own sign language, one that was very subtle – basically just using the fingers – so the teachers didn't notice it the way you'd see people signing in ASL. Her language spread through the school like wildfire."

"She created a language?"

"Yep. She found that the ten fingers alone weren't enough for a working vocabulary and syntax. So the variable element she introduced was brilliant. It had never been done in sign language before. She used rhythm. She overlaid a temporal structure on the finger shapes. Her inspiration was apparently orchestral conductors."

Arthur Potter, who, after all, made his living with language, was fascinated.

Angie continued, "Right around that time there were protests to shift to a curriculum where ASL was taught and one of the reasons cited by the deaf teachers in favor of doing so was that so many students were using Melanie's language. But Melanie wouldn't have anything to do with the protests. She denied that she'd invented the language – as if she was afraid the administration would punish her for it. All she wanted to do was study and go home. Very talented, very smart. Very scared. She had a chance to go to Gallaudet College in Washington this summer on a fellowship. She turned it down."

"Why?"

"Nobody knew. Her brother's accident maybe."

Potter recalled that the young man was having surgery tomorrow. He wondered if Henderson had gotten in touch with the family. "Maybe," he mused, "there's just a certain timidity that goes along with being deaf."

"Excuse me, Agent Potter." Frances Whiting leaned forward. "Is that like a certain amount of fascism goes along with being a federal agent?"

Potter blinked. "I'm sorry?"

Frances shrugged. "Stereotyping. The Deaf have had to deal with it forever. That they're kings of the beggars. That they're stupid. Deaf and dumb. That they're timid… Helen Keller said that blindness cuts you off from things, deafness cuts you off from people. So the Deaf compensate. There's no other defining physical condition that's given rise to a culture and community the way deafness has. There's a huge diversity among – pick a group: gays, paraplegics, athletes, tall people, short people, the elderly, alcoholics. But the Deaf community is militantly cohesive. And it's anything but timid."

Potter nodded. "I stand chastised." The officer smiled in response.

He looked out over the scruffy field beside them. He said to Angie, "My feeling is that I can get only so far with Handy through negotiations. It could save three or four lives if somebody inside was helping us."

"I'm not sure she's the one who can do it," Angie said.

"Noted," he said. "You better go find Charlie now. He's probably wondering what's become of you."

Angie left the van, Frances too, on her way to the hotel to check on the hostages' families. Potter sat back in the desk chair, picturing the photo of Melanie's face, her wavy blond hair.

How beautiful she is, he mused to himself.

Then he sat up, laughing to himself.

A beautiful face? What was he thinking of?

A negotiator must never Stockholm with hostages. That's the first rule of barricades. He has to be ready to sacrifice them if need be. Still, he couldn't stop thinking about her. This was ironic, for nowadays he rarely thought of women in terms of physical appearance. Since Marian died he'd had only one romantic involvement. A pleasant woman in her late thirties. It was a liaison doomed from the start. Potter now believed you could return successfully to romantic love at age sixty and above. But in your forties and fifties, he suspected, the process was doomed. It's the inflexibility. And the pride. Oh, and always the doubts.

Gazing at the slaughterhouse, he thought: In the past fifteen years, since Marian, the most meaningful conversations I've had have been not with my surrogate cousin Linden or her clansmen or the women who've hung chastely on my arm at functions in the District. No, they've been with men holding oiled guns at the heads of hostages. Women with short black hair and Middle Eastern faces, though very Western code names. Criminals and psychopaths and potential suicides. I've spilled my guts to them and they to me. Oh, they'd lie about tactics and motives (as I did) but everyone told the exquisite truth about themselves: their hopes, their dreams dead and dreams living still, their families, their children, their scorching failures.

They told their stories for the same reasons Arthur Potter told his. To wear the other side down, to establish bonds, to "transfer the emotive response" (as his own highly circulated hostage negotiation guidebook, eighth printing, explained).

And simply because someone seemed to want to listen.

Melanie… will we ever have a conversation, the two of us?

He saw Dean Stillwell wave to him and stepped into the fragrant gully to meet the sheriff. He glanced at the shreds of fog wafting around the van. So Handy's weather report wasn't up to date after all. It gave him a fragment of hope – unreasonable perhaps, but hope nonetheless. He looked up at the late-afternoon sky, in which strips of yellow and bruise-colored clouds sped past. In a break between two of the vaporous shapes he saw the moon, a pale crescent sitting over the slaughterhouse, directly above the blood-red brick.

6:03 P.M.

They appeared suddenly, the dozen men.

The slippery wind covered the noise of their approach and by the time the agent was aware of them they'd surrounded him and Dean Stillwell, who was telling Potter about the dock behind the slaughterhouse. Stillwell had looked over the river and the dock and concluded that, even though the current was fast, as Budd had reported, it was too tempting an escape route. He'd put some armored troops in a skiff and anchored them twenty yards offshore.

Potter noticed Dean Stillwell look up and stare at something behind the agent. He turned.

The team was dressed in black and navy-blue combat gear. Potter recognized the outfits – the American Body Armor plated vests, the rubberized ducking uniforms and hoods, the H amp;K submachine guns with laser sights and flashlights. It was a Hostage Rescue Team, though not his, and Arthur Potter didn't want these men within a hundred miles of the Webber amp; Stoltz Processing Company.

"Agent Potter?"

A nod. Be gracious. Don't jerk leashes until leashes need to be jerked.

He shook the hand of the crew-cut man in his forties.

"I'm Dan Tremain. Commander of the state police Hostage Rescue Unit." His still eyes were confident. And challenging. "I understand you're expecting a Delta team."

"The Bureau's HRT actually. Jurisdiction, you know."

"Course."

Potter introduced him to Stillwell, whom Tremain ignored.

"What's the status?" Tremain asked.

"They're contained. One fatality."

"I heard," Tremain said, rubbing a gold pinky ring on which was a deep etching of a cross.

"We've gotten three girls out unhurt," Potter continued. "There are four other girls inside and two teachers. The HTs've asked for a chopper, which we aren't going to give them. They've threatened to execute another hostage at seven unless we have it here by then."

"You're not going to give him one?"

"No."

"But what'll happen?"

"I'm going to try to talk him through it."

"Well, why don't we deploy just the same? I mean, if it comes down to him killing her, I know you'll want to move in."

"No," Potter said, looking over at the press table, where Joe Silbert and his assistant were diligently typing away on a computer. The reporter looked up glumly. Potter nodded and glanced back at Tremain.

The state police commander said, "You're not saying that you'd let him kill the girl, are you?"

"Let's hope it doesn't come to that."

Acceptable casualties…

Tremain held his eye for a moment. "I'm thinking we really ought to move into position. Just in case."

Potter glanced at the men and gestured Tremain aside. They walked into the shadow of the command van. "If it comes down to an assault, and I certainly hope it doesn't, then my team'll be the one doing it – and only my team. Sorry, Captain, that's just the way it is."

Was this going to explode? Shoot straight to the governor and the Admiral in Washington?

Tremain bristled but he shrugged. "You're in charge, sir. But those men are state felons too and our regulations require us to be on the scene. And that's just the way it is too."

"I have no objection at all to your presence, Captain. And if they come out, guns ablazing, I'd sure welcome your firepower. But as long as it's understood that you're taking orders from me."

Tremain relented. "Fair enough. Fact is, I told my men that we'll probably be spending three hours drinking coffee and then pack up and go home."

"Let's hope so for all our sakes. If you want to go into position as part of the containment crew, Sheriff Stillwell here's in charge of that."

The two men nodded at each other coolly and every soul within earshot knew there was no way an HRT commander would put his men under the orders of a small-town sheriff. Potter hoped this would guarantee that Tremain would hightail it out of here.

"I think we'll just hang back. Stay out of sight. If you need us we'll be around."

"Whatever you want, Captain," Potter said.

Budd and Angie appeared, striding up the hill, and stopped suddenly. "Hey, Dan," Budd said, recognizing Tremain.

"Charlie." They shook hands. Tremain's eyes took in Angie's hair and face but it was a chaste examination, one of curiosity, and when his eyes dipped downward to her chest it was simply to confirm from her necklace ID that she was in fact an FBI agent.

"You boys heard about our little situation, did you?" Budd said.

Tremain laughed. "How 'bout, anybody watches TV knows about it. Who's working the CP?"

"Derek Elb."

"Derek the Red?" Tremain laughed. "I gotta say hi to him." Now jovial, Tremain said to Potter, "That boy wanted to join HRU but we took one look at that hair on him and thought he'd be just a little too prominent in a sniper's scope."

Potter smiled agreeably, pleased that there'd been no confrontation. Usually state and federal negotiators get along well enough but there's invariably tension between negotiators and tactical units from other branches. As Potter explained in class, "There're talkers and there're shooters. That's night and day and it won't ever change."

Tremain stepped into the van. Potter eyed the dozen men. Somber, artful, and oh-so-pleased to be here. He thought of Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now and supposed these men too loved the smell of napalm in the morning. Potter finished his conversation with Stillwell. When he turned back he was surprised to find that the HRU, to a man, was gone. When he climbed into the van he saw that Tremain too had left.

LeBow entered the information about Stillwell's skiff into his electronic memory.

"Time, Tobe?" Potter was staring at the "Promises/Deceptions" board.

The young man glanced at the digital clock.

"Forty-five minutes," Tobe muttered, then said to LeBow, "You tell him."

"Tell me what?"

The intelligence officer said, "We've been playing with the infrared monitor. We caught a glimpse of Handy a minute ago."

"What was he doing?"

"Loading the shotguns."

The Kansas State Police Hostage Rescue Unit, led by Captain Daniel Tremain, slipped silently into a stand of trees a hundred yards from the slaughterhouse.

The trees, Tremain noted at once, were not unoccupied. There were a state police sniper and two or three local deputies in position. Using hand signals Tremain directed his men through the trees and down into a gully that would take them around the side of the slaughterhouse. They passed undetected through the small forest. Tremain looked about and saw – fifty yards toward the river – an abandoned windmill, forty feet high, sitting in the middle of a grassy field. Beside it were two state troopers, standing with their backs to the HRU as they gazed warily at the slaughterhouse. Tremain ordered the two men into a line of trees out of sight of both the north side of the slaughterhouse and the command post.

From the windmill, the HRU team walked into a gully and made their way closer to the slaughterhouse. Tremain held up his hand and they stopped. He tapped his helmet twice and the men responded to the signal by switching on their radios. Lieutenant Carfallo opened the terrain map and the architectural drawings. From his pocket Tremain took the diagram of the inside of the slaughterhouse that Derek the Red, Derek the trooper, Derek the spy, had just slipped him inside the van. It was marked with the location of the hostages and the HTs.

Tremain was encouraged. The girls weren't being held in shield positions by the windows or in front of the HTs. There were no booby traps. Derek reported that the men inside were armed with pistols and shotguns only, no automatic weapons, and they had no flak jackets, helmets, or flashlights. Of course the hostages weren't as far away from the takers as he would have liked, and the room in which they were being kept had no door. But still Handy and the others were twenty or so feet from the girls. It would take a full five seconds for Handy to get to the hostages, and that was assuming he'd already decided that he would kill them the instant he heard the cutting charges. As a rule, in an assault, there were four to ten seconds of confusion and indecision while the takers tried to scope out what was happening before they could take up effective defensive positions.

"Listen up." Hands tapped ears and heads nodded. Tremain pointed at the chart. "There are six hostages inside. Three HTs – located here, here, and here, though they're pretty mobile. One checks on the girls with some frequency." Tremain nodded to one trooper. "Wilson."

"Sir."

"You're to proceed through this gully along the side of the building here and surveil from one of these two windows."

"Sir, can you get them to shift that light?" Trooper Joey Wilson nodded toward the halogens.

"Negative. This is a clandestine operation and you're not to expose yourself to the friendlies."

"Yessir," the young man barked. No questions asked.

"The middle window is hidden by that tree and the school bus. I'd suggest that one."

"Yessir."

"Pfenninger."

"Sir."

"You're to return to the command van and your orders are consistent with what you and I discussed earlier. Is that understood?"

"Yessir."

"The rest of us are moving to this point here. Using those bushes and trees for cover. Harding, you take point. All officers move out now."

And they dispersed into the dusky afternoon, as fluid as the dark river flowing past, more silent than the wind that bent the grass around them.

"Let's have a smoke," Potter said.

"Not me," Budd answered.

"An imaginary one."

"How's that?"

"Let's step outside, Captain."

They wandered away from the van twenty feet into a stand of trees, the agent adjusting his posture automatically to stand more upright; being in the presence of Charlie Budd made you want to do this. Potter paused and spoke with Joe Silbert and the other reporter.

"We've got two more out."

"Two more? Who?" Silbert seemed to be restraining himself.

"No identities," Potter said. "All I'll say is that they're students. Young girls. They've been released unharmed. That leaves a total of four students and two teachers left inside."

"What did you trade for them?"

"We can't release that information."

He'd expected the reporter would be grateful for the scoop but Silbert grumbled, "You're not making this very fucking easy."

Potter glanced at the computer screen. The story was a human-interest piece about an unnamed trooper, waiting for action – the boredom and the edginess of a barricade. Potter thought it was good and told the reporter so.

Silbert snorted. "Oh, it'd sing like poetry if I had some hard news to put in. When can we interview you?"

"Soon."

The agent and the trooper wandered down into a grove of trees out of the line of fire. Potter called in and told Tobe where he was, asked for any calls from Handy to be patched through immediately.

"Say, Charlie, where'd that attorney general get himself to?"

Budd looked around. "I think he went back to the hotel."

Potter shook his head. "Marks wants Handy to get his helicopter. The governor told me he wants Handy dead. The Bureau director'll probably be on the horn in the next half-hour – and there've been times when I've gotten a call from the president himself. Oh, and mark my words, Charlie, somebody's writing the script right at this moment and making me out to be the villain."

"You?" Budd asked, with inexplicable glumness. "You'll be the hero."

"Oh, not by a long shot. No, sir. Guns sell advertising, words don't."

"What's this about imaginary cigarettes?"

"When my wife got cancer I quit."

"Lung cancer? My uncle had that."

"No. Pancreas."

Unfortunately the party with whom Potter had been negotiating for his wife's recovery had reneged on the deal. Even so, Potter never took up smoking again.

"So you, what, imagine yourself smoking?"

Potter nodded. "And when I can't sleep I imagine myself taking a sleeping pill."

"When you're, you know, depressed you imagine yourself happy?"

That, Arthur Potter had found, didn't work.

Budd, who'd perhaps asked the question because of the funk he'd been in for the last hour, forgot his dolor momentarily and asked, "What brand aren't you smoking?"

"Camels. Without the filter."

"Hey, why not?" His face slipped and he seemed sad again. "I never smoked. Maybe I'll have me an imaginary Jack Daniel's."

"Have a double while you're at it." Arthur Potter drew hard on his fake cigarette. They stood among flowering catalpa and Osage orange and Potter was looking down at what appeared to be the deep tracks of wagon wheels. He asked Budd about them.

"Those? The real thing. The Santa Fe Trail itself."

"Those're the original tracks?" Potter was astonished.

"They call ' em swales. Headed west right through here."

Potter, genealogist that he was, kicked at the deep, rocklike tread mark cut into the dirt, and wondered if Marian's great-great-grandfather Ebb Schneider, who had traveled with his widowed mother from Ohio to Nevada in 1868, had been an infant asleep in the wagon that had made this very track.

Budd nodded toward the slaughterhouse. "The reason that was built was because of the Chisholm Trail. It went south to north right through here too, from San Antonio to Abilene – that's our Abilene, in Kansas. They'd drive the longhorns along here, sell off and slaughter some for the Wichita market."

"Got another question," Potter said after a moment.

"I'm not much of a state historian. That's 'bout all I know."

"Mostly, Charlie, I'm wondering why you're looking so damn uneasy."

Budd lost interest in the swales at his feet. "Well, I guess I wonder what exactly you wanted to talk to me about."

"In about forty minutes I've got to go talk Handy out of killing another of the girls. I don't have a lot of ideas. I'd like to get your opinion. What do you think of him?"

"Me?"

"Sure."

"Oh, I don't know."

"We never know in this business. Give me an educated guess. You've heard his profile. You've talked to Angie – She's quite a lady, isn't she?"

"Say, 'bout that, Arthur… the thing is, I'm a married man. She's been chatting me up an awful lot. I mentioned Meg must've been a dozen times and she doesn't seem to pay any attention to it."

"Consider it flattery, Charlie. You're in control of the situation."

"Sorta in control." He looked back at the van but didn't see the dark-haired agent anywhere.

Potter laughed. "So now, give me some thoughts."

Budd fidgeted with his fingers, maybe thinking he should actually be pretending to hold his glass of whisky. Potter smoked as he had come to do so much else in recent years – not actually doing it, not pantomiming, only imagining. It was for him a type of meditation.

"I guess what I'm thinking," Budd said slowly, "is that Handy's got a plan of some kind."

"Why?"

"Partly it's what Angie was saying. Everything he does has a purpose. He's not a crazed kick killer."

"What sort of plan were you thinking of?"

"Don't know exactly. Something he thinks is gonna outsmart us."

Budd's hands slipped into his rear pockets again. The man's nervous as a fifteen-year-old at his first school dance, Potter reflected.

"Why do you say that?"

"I'm not sure exactly. Just an impression. Maybe because he's got this holier-than-thou attitude. He doesn't respect us. Every time he talks to us what I hear is, you know, contempt. Like he knows it all and we don't know anything."

This was true. Potter had noticed it himself. Not a shred of desperation, no supplication, no nervous banter, no tin defiance; all the things you usually heard from hostage takers were noticeably absent here.

Along with the flattest VSA line Potter had ever seen.

"A breakout," Budd continued. "That's what I'd guess. Maybe setting fire to the place." The captain laughed. "Maybe he's got fireman outfits in there – in those bags he brought in with him. And he'll sneak out in all the confusion."

Potter nodded. "That's happened before."

"Has it?" Budd asked, incredulous that he'd thought of this strategy and, accordingly, very pleased with himself.

"Medical-worker outfits one time. And police uniforms another. But I'd given all the containment officers handouts, like what I distributed earlier, so the HTs were spotted right away. Here, though, I don't know. It doesn't seem to be his style. But you're right on about his attitude. That's the key. It's saying something to us. I just wish I knew what."

Again Budd was fiddling nervously with his pockets.

"Those tools," Potter mused, "might have something to do with it. Maybe they'll set a fire, hide in a piece of machinery or even under the floor. Then climb out when the rescue workers are there. We should make sure that everybody, not just the troopers, has a copy of the profile flyers."

"I'll take care of it." Budd laughed nervously again. "I'll delegate it."

Potter had calmed considerably. He thought of Marian. The infrequent evenings he was home they used to sit together by the radio listening to NPR and share one cigarette and a glass of sherry. Occasionally, once a week, perhaps twice, the cigarette would be stubbed out and they would climb the stairs to their ornate bed and forgo the musical programming for that evening.

"This negotiation stuff," Budd said. "It's pretty confusing to me."

"How so?"

"Well, you don't seem to talk to him about what I'd talk to him about – you know, the stuff he wants and the hostages and everything. Business. Mostly, it seems that you just chat."

"You ever been in therapy, Charlie?"

The young officer seemed to snicker. He shook his head. Maybe analysis was something Kansans didn't go in for.

Potter said, "I was. After my wife died."

"I was going to say, I'm sorry to hear that happened."

"You know what I talked to the therapist about? Genealogy."

"What?"

"It's my hobby. Family trees, you know."

"You were paying good money to a doctor to talk about hobbies?"

"And it was the best money I ever spent. I started to feel what the therapist was feeling and vice versa. We moved closer to each other. What I'm doing here – with Handy – is the same. You don't click a switch and make Handy give up the girls. Just like the doctor doesn't click a switch and make everything better. The point is to create a relationship between him and me. He's got to know me, and I've got to know him."

"Hey, like you're dating?"

"You could say that," Potter said without smiling. "I want to get him into my mind – so he'll realize it's a hopeless situation. So he'll give me the girls and surrender, to make him feel that it's pointless to go on. Not to understand it intellectually, but to feel it. You can see it's working a bit. He's given us two and hasn't killed anyone else, even when that other girl snuck out." Potter drew a final breath of his imaginary Camel. Stubbed it out.

He started to imagine climbing stairs, Marian's hand in his. But this image faded quickly.

"And I do it to get into his mind. To understand him."

"So you become his friend?"

"Friend? Not a friend. I'd say that we become linked."

"But, I mean, isn't that a problem? If you have to order HRT to green-light him, you'd be ordering the death of somebody you're close to. Betraying them."

"Oh, yes," the negotiator said softly. "Yes, it's a problem."

Budd blew air out of his cheeks and again studied the harvesting. "You said…"

"What?"

"You said before that you're willing to sacrifice those girls to get him. Is that really true?"

Potter looked at him for a moment while Budd's distraught eyes gazed at the steadfast threshers miles away. "Yes, it is. My job is to stop Handy. Those're my orders. And yes, there may have to be sacrifices."

"But they're little girls."

Potter smiled grimly. "How can you make a value judgment? These aren't the days of women and children first. A life is a life. Are those girls more deserving than the family Handy might kidnap and kill next year if he escapes today? Or the two traffic cops he shoots when they stop him for speeding? I have to keep thinking that those hostages are dead already. If I can save some, so much the better. But I can't look at it any other way and still function."

"You're good at what you do, seems."

Potter didn't answer.

"You think there'll be more deaths?"

"Oh, yes, I'm afraid so. Just an educated guess but I do think so."

"The girls?"

Potter didn't answer.

"Our immediate problem, Charlie – what can we use to buy another hour with?"

Budd shrugged. "No guns or ammo, right?"

"That's not negotiable."

"Well, he thinks he's getting his imaginary helicopter, right?"

"Yes."

"As long as we're lying to him 'bout that, why don't we lie to him 'bout something else? Promise him something to go along with it."

"Can't give a kid a toy without giving him batteries, is that what you're saying?"

"I guess I am."

"That's brilliant, Charlie. Let's go kick it around with Henry."

As they climbed into the van Potter clapped the trooper on the shoulder and Budd responded with as hangtail a smile as the agent had ever in his life encountered.

They would divide into three teams, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie.

The HRU officers, under Dan Tremain, were gathered in a cluster on the left side, the northwest side, of the slaughterhouse, hidden in a grove of trees. The men were now wearing black assault coveralls over their body armor. Nomex hoods and gloves. Their goggles rested on the crest of their foreheads.

Alpha and Bravo teams had four men each, two armed with Heckler amp; Koch MP-5 submachine guns, fitted with B.E.A.M. mounts and halogen flashlights, two armed with H amp;K Super 90 semiautomatic shotguns. The two HRU troopers in Charlie team had MP-5s as well but were also carrying Accuracy Systems M429 Thunderflash stun grenades and M451 Multistarflash grenades.

Two other troopers had been deployed. Chuck Pfenninger – Outrider One – was in standard uniform beside the command van. Joey Wilson – Outrider Two – in ops armor and camouflage was beneath the middle window to the left of the main door of the slaughterhouse. He was hidden from view of the command post and the troopers in the field by the Laurent Clerc School bus and a ginkgo tree.

Tremain went over the plan one more time in his mind. As soon as Wilson reported that the HTs were as far away from the hostages as they could hope for, Pfenninger would blow the generator in the command van, using an L210 charge, known informally as a mini-Molotov. It was a small gasoline bomb sealed in a special fiberboard container, like single-serving boxes of grape juice or fruit punch. The container would disintegrate under the heat from the blast and would be virtually undetectable by crime-scene technicians. Properly placed, it would cut off all communications and seal the troopers inside the van. The vehicle had been designed to be driven through flames, was well insulated, and had an internal oxygen system. As long as the door remained closed, no one inside would be injured.

Tremain would officially take charge and "declare" that the situation had gone hot.

As soon as this happened HRU's three teams would move into the slaughterhouse. Charlie team would use Model 521 cutting charges to blast a hole in the roof and drop two stun grenades onto the takers. Alpha and Bravo would blow the side and loading-dock doors simultaneously and enter the building while Charlie dropped the second – the flash – grenades, which would explode in a huge burst of blinding light, and then rappel through the opening in the roof. Bravo team would head straight to the hostages, and Alpha and Charlie would advance on the HTs, neutralizing them if there was any resistance.

They were now waiting for three troopers who'd gone to check out the side door, the loading dock, and the roof.

Dan Tremain lay prone beside the steely Lieutenant Carfallo and gazed at the slaughterhouse, which rose above them like a medieval castle, toothy and dark. The captain said to his troops, "You'll be using four-man entry. The first two men will be the key shooters. Machine guns first, followed by shotgun backup. This will be a dynamic shooting entry. You will proceed until all hostile targets have been successfully engaged and neutralized and the premises have been secured. There are six hostages inside, located where I indicated on the map. They're all female, and four are young girls, who may panic and run. You will exercise absolute muzzle control of your weapons at all times you are inside. Do you copy?"

Affirmative answers.

Then came the bad news.

One by one the surveillance troopers called in. The reconnaissance revealed that the side door was far thicker than the diagram indicated: three-inch oak with a sheet steel face. They would have to use four cutting charges. For safety, Alpha team would have to be farther away when it blew than originally planned. That would add as much as s seconds to the time it would take to get to the girls.

It turned out too that there'd been some construction on the roof not reflected in the original architectural drawings – a series of steel plate covering virtually the entire roof, had been bolted into place years ago. The men on the roof would have to use a large amount of C4 to cut through them. In an old building like this, that much plastic explosive could bring down girders – possibly even major portions of the roof.

Tremain then learned from the third scout that the loading-dock door was jammed open only about eight inches. It was a huge steel sheet, too large to blow.

The captain conferred with Carfallo and they revised their plan They decided they'd have to forgo the roof and loading-dock assault and go with a two-team, single-door entry through the north door. Wilson standing by the front window, would toss in a stun grenade, followed by the flash. This was risky because it would expose him to both the policeline and the HTs; he might get shot by either. But Tremain conclude there was no choice.

He needed another hour, he decided, for an effective attack – time to find another unbarred door or window and time to weaken the hinge on the fire door so they could use smaller charges.

But he didn't have an hour. He had twenty minutes until the next deadline.

Until the next girl would die.

Well, then, a single-entrance assault it would be. Tremain said "Code word 'filly' means green light. Code word 'stallion' means stand down. Acknowledge."

The men responded. Tremain led them into the gully beside the slaughterhouse. There they plastered themselves against the damp earth and fell into absolute stillness and silence, for so they had been instructed, and these were men who lived by their orders before anything else.

6:40 P.M.

Joe Silbert had taught himself to type with two fingers on an Underwood upright that smelled of oil and ink and the bittersweet scent of eraser shavings clogging the carriage.

Technology hadn't changed things for him much and he now pounded away with only his index digits thudding loudly on the large portable Compaq. The orange light of the screen illuminated both him and Ted Biggins, made them look jaundiced and depleted. Silbert supposed that, being almost double Biggins's age, he looked twice as bad.

Philip Molto stood his diligent guard, as instructed by nervous Captain Budd.

"What do you think?" Silbert asked Biggins.

Biggins looked over his colleague's shoulder at the dense single-spaced type on the screen and grunted. "Mind if I take over?" He nodded at the screen.

"Be my guest."

Biggins could touch-type like a demon and his fingers moved quietly and invisibly over the keys. "Hey, I'm a fucking natural at this," he said, his hair perfectly coiffed although he was only an engineer and Silbert was in fact the on-camera reporter.

"Hey, Officer," Silbert called to Molto, "our shift's almost up. We're just going to leave the computer here for the next team. They'll pick up the story where we left it off."

"You guys do that?"

"It's a cooperative thing, you know. You'll keep an eye on the computer?"

"Sure thing, yessir. What's the matter?"

Silbert was frowning, looking out into the stand of trees and juniper bushes behind the police line. "You hear something?"

Biggins was standing up, looking around uneasily. "Yeah."

Molto cocked his head. There were footsteps. A snap of branch, a shuffle.

"There's nobody behind there," the lieutenant said, half to himself. "I mean, nobody's supposed to be."

Silbert's face had the cautious look of a man who'd covered combat zones before. Then he broke into a wry grin. "That son of a bitch. Lieutenant, I think we've got a trespasser here."

The trooper, hand on his pistol, stepped into the bushes. When he returned he was escorting two men in black jogging suits. Press credentials bounced on their chests.

"Well, look who it is," Silbert said. "Walter Cronkite and Chet Huntley."

Biggins said to Molto, "If you're going to arrest them, forget trespassing. Charge 'em with being first-degree assholes."

"You boys know each other?"

One of the captives grimaced. "Silbert, you're a son of a bitch. You blow the whistle on us? And don't even let that little shit with you say a word to me."

Silbert said to Molto, "They're with KLTV. Sam Kellog and Tony Bianco. They seem to've forgotten that we're press-pooling."

"Fuck you," Bianco snapped.

Silbert spat out, "I gave up an exclusive just like you did, Kellog. You would've had your turn."

"I'm supposed to arrest you," Molto said to Kellog and Bianco.

"Bullshit, you can't do that."

"I'll think about it on the way back to the press tent. Come on."

"Look, Officer," Kellog said, "as long as we're here…"

"How'd you get here anyway, Kellog?" Biggins said. "Crawl on your belly?"

"Fuck you too."

Molto led them away. As soon as the squad car vanished Silbert barked to Biggins, "Now. Do it."

Biggins unhooked the casing of the computer monitor and pulled it open. From it he took a Nippona LL3R video camera – the subminiature model, which cost one hundred and thirty thousand dollars, weighed fourteen ounces, and was equipped with a folding twelve-inch parabolic antenna and transmitter. It produced a broadcast-quality picture in virtual darkness and had a telescopic lens as smooth as a sniper's rifle-scope. It had an effective range of three miles, which would be more than enough to reach the KFAL mobile transmitting center, where Silbert's colleagues (Tony Bianco and Sam Kellog, as it turned out, not too coincidentally) would soon – if they weren't actually under arrest – be waiting for the transmission. In case they were in fact sacrifices to the First Amendment other technicians were ready to wade into the breach.

Silbert opened his attache case and took out two black nylon running suits – identical to those that Kellog and Bianco had been wearing, except for one difference: on the back were stenciled the words U.S. Marshal. They pulled these on.

"Wait," Silbert said. He bent down to the screen and erased the entire file that Biggins had written – which consisted of the sentence The quick brown fox jumped over the lazy dog, written about three hundred times. Shift-F3. He switched screens to the generic cop-on-a-stakeout story, which Silbert had filed about three years ago and had called up tonight as soon as they got the computer booted up. The story that prick Arthur Potter had admired.

The two men slipped into the gully behind the command van and hurried through the night in the direction that Dan Tremain and his silent Hostage Rescue Unit had gone.

The gas can.

This was the first thing in her thoughts as she opened her eyes and looked around the killing room.

Emily, on her knees, playing good Christian nurse, brushed the blood away from Melanie's eye. It was swollen, though not closed. The girl ripped the hem of her precious Laura Ashley dress and wiped more of the blood away.

Melanie lay still, as the terrible pain in her head lessened and her vision improved. One of the twins, Suzie (she thought it was Suzie), brushed her hair with her tiny, perfect fingers.

The gas can. There it was.

Finally Melanie sat up and crawled over to Beverly.

"How are you?" she asked the girl.

Sweat had plastered Beverly's blond Dutch-boy hair to her face. She nodded, though her chest continued to rise and fall alarmingly. She used the inhaler again. Melanie had never seen her this sick. The device seemed to be having no effect.

Mrs. Harstrawn still lay on the floor, on her back. She'd been crying again but was now calm. Melanie gently worked the woman's colorful sweater over her shoulders. She muttered some words. Melanie thought she said, "Don't. I'm cold."

"I have to," Melanie signed. Her fingers danced in front of the woman's face but she didn't see the message.

A minute later Mrs. Harstrawn's sweater was off. Melanie looked around and pitched it casually against the wall of the killing room, near the place where the arched opening met the floor toward the rear of the slaughterhouse. Then she scooted forward until she could look into the main room. Bear glanced toward them occasionally but the men were concentrating on the television. Melanie looked at the twins and in faint gestures signed to them, "Go over to gas can."

They looked uneasily at each other, their heads moving identically.

"Do it. Now!" Her signs were urgent – sharp, compact stabs of her fingers.

They rose and crawled slowly toward the red-and-yellow can.

When Suzie looked at her she told the girl to pick up the sweater. Mrs. Harstrawn's mother in Topeka had knitted it. The colors were red and white and blue, very visible – bad news for now; good news once the girls got outside. But Suzie wasn't moving. Melanie repeated the command. There was no time for caution, she explained. "Move! Now!"

Why is she hesitating? She's just staring at me.

No, not at me…

Then the shadow fell over her.

She gasped as Brutus took her by the shoulders and spun her around.

"You think… a fucking hero, do you? Why, I've shot people for a lot less'n what you did."

She thought for a terrible moment that Brutus could actually read her mind, had an animal's sixth sense, and knew what she was planning with the gas can. But then she understood he was talking about her pitching Kielle out the door. Maybe being pistol-whipped wasn't enough punishment. He pulled his gun and rested it against her head.

Filled with a burst of rage that shocked her, she pushed the gun aside, stood, and walked into the main room of the plant, feeling the vibrations of his shouts on her back. She ignored him and continued to the oil drum that served as a table. Bear rose and stepped toward her but she ignored him too. She picked up the pen and paper and returned to the killing room.

She wrote: You work real hard to prove you're a bad guy, don't you? Thrust it in his face.

Brutus laughed. He ripped the pad from her hands, tossed it on the floor. He studied her for a long, long moment, then, eerily calm, he said, "… you and me chew the fat. I don't talk much… not many people I can talk to. But you I can. Why's that?… you can't talk back, I guess. It's good when a woman don't talk back. Pris, she's got a mind of her own… I approve of that. But sometimes she's off someplace else, you know?… I just don't get what she's saying. You, I look into your face and I can understand you. You seem like a little mouse, but maybe there's more to you. There is, ain't there?"

Melanie was horrified to find, somewhere in her heart, a splinter of pleasure. This terrible, terrible man was approving of her. He killed Susan, he killed Susan, he killed Susan, she told herself. He'd kill me in an instant if he wanted to. These things she knew but all she sensed at this moment was his approval.

He put the gun away and fiddled with his shoelaces. "You think I'm bad for… to your friend. Well, by your thinkin' I am bad. I ain't… smart and I don't have no particular talents. But the one thing I am is bad. I'm not saying I don't have a heart or that I haven't cried in my day. I cried for a week when somebody shot my brother. Yes, I did." Brutus paused, his pointy teeth rising from his thin lips, "Now, that sonofabitch out there…" He nodded toward the phone.

De l'Epée? Does he mean De l'Epée?

"Him and me, we're in a battle right now. And he's going to lose – Why? Because bad is simple and good is complicated. And the simple always wins. That's what everything comes down to in the end. Simple always wins. That's just nature and you know what kind of trouble people get into ignoring nature. Look at you, all you deaf people. You'll die out before people like me. I need something, I can say, 'Give it to me.' I open my mouth and somebody does what I want. But you, you have to do funny things with your hands. You have to write it down. That's complicated. You're a freak… you'll die and I'll live. It's nature.

"Me, I'm taking that girl over there, that flower-dress one, and shooting her in about ten minutes if… helicopter don't get here. Which I don't think it will. To me, that's no worse'n scratching an itch or buying a soda pop when you're thirsty."

He looked at Emily, his mouth curling into that faint smile of his. And in his glance, Melanie suddenly saw much more than a look of a captor toward his victim. She saw all the taunts of her classmates, the grinding frustrations of trying to understand what can be understood only by the miracle of hearing. She saw an empty life without a lover. She saw the cover of a piece of sheet music entitled "Amazing Grace" and inside, merely blank pages. God's will… Brutus's glance…

And so it made sense that she went for his eyes. Melanie leapt forward, her perfect fingernails clawing at his face. He gave a gasp of surprise and stumbled backwards, groping for his gun. He pulled it from his belt and she lunged for it. The pistol flew from his grip and slid across the floor. She was out of control, crazed, driven by a consuming anger unlike any she'd ever experienced. An anger that poured from her too quickly, ripping her open, hurting the way the fever had burned her skin when she was eight and took away the simple and made her life so terribly complicated.

Her long fingers, muscular from years of signing, tipped with pearl nails, ripped into his cheek; she slapped his nose, she dug for his eyes. As he fell onto his back she leapt upon his chest, her knee crunching into his solar plexus. He gasped as the breath was forced from his lungs. He struck her once in the chest and she recoiled from him but he had no leverage and his blow was painless.

"Jesus Christ…!" His wiry hands reached for her throat but she punched them aside and got a grip on his windpipe, her strong arms fending off his; he couldn't quite reach her. Where was this strength coming from? she wondered, as she banged his head into the concrete and watched his face turn blue.

Perhaps Stoat and Bear were running toward her, perhaps they were aiming their guns at her. Or maybe because Brutus had no air in his lungs he was silent, maybe he was too proud to call for help. She didn't know – or care. Nothing existed for her but this man and his evilness – not the other girls, not Mrs. Harstrawn, not the soul of Susan Phillips, who agnostic Melanie believed floated above them at this moment, a beautiful seraph.

She was going to kill him.

Then suddenly he went limp as a towel. His tongue protruded from his pale lips. And she thought, My God, I've done it! Exultant and terrified, she sat back, looking at the twins, sobbing Emily, gasping Bev.

When his knee rose fast she had no time to deflect it and it caught her between the legs, crashing into her with a raging pain. She inhaled fiercely and cradled her groin as Brutus's fist drove into her chest just below the breastbone. Melanie doubled over, breathless.

He rose easily and she saw that, aside from the scratches on his cheek, he wasn't hurt at all. He'd been playing with her. Roughhousing.

Then he had her by the hair and was dragging her into the front room.

She dug her nails into his hand and he slapped her face hard. Her vision exploded with light and her arms went limp. The next thing she knew she was in the window of the slaughterhouse, staring out at the windy field and the brilliant lights trained on the building.

Her face was against the glass and she thought it might break and slice through her eyes. No, no, not that kind of darkness. Permanent darkness. No, please…

Stoat stepped forward but Brutus waved him off. He pulled his pistol out. He spun her around so she could see him speak. "If you could talk like a normal person, maybe you could say something to save yourself. But you can't. No, no. You're a freak of nature and if they don't come through with that chopper you're going to be even more of a freak. Shep, how much time…?"

Stoat seemed to hesitate and said something she didn't understand.

"How much fucking time?" Brutus's bloody face was distorted with rage.

He received the answer and lifted the gun to her cheek. Then slowly his hand entwined in her hair and turned her around so that she was facing into the blinding white lights once again.

Melanie. Potter saw her face through his thick field glasses. Melanie was the next victim.

Budd, LeBow, and Frances stared out the window. Stillwell came on the radio and said, "One of my snipers reports that Handy's bleeding. Doesn't seem serious but his face is cut."

"Twelve minutes to deadline," Tobe said. "Downlink coming in."

The phone rang and Potter answered at once. "Lou, what -?"

"I've got a new one, Art," Handy's voice raged. "She's got some spirit. I was gonna forgive her after she gave you that little troublemaker. But the slut got it into her mind she wanted to have a little fun. Go for a roll in the hay with me."

Stay calm, Potter told himself. He's playing you again. He tamped down his own rage, which mimicked Handy's.

"She's into some sick stuff, Art. One of them S amp;M pups, looks like. She'll learn, she'll learn. You've got 'bout ten minutes, Art. I don't hear that chopper overhead we're gonna do some nine-millimeter plastic surgery on this here girl. Now I want that fucking helicopter. You got it?"

"We have to bring one in from Topeka. There -"

"There's a goddamn airport three miles west of here. Why the fuck don't you bring one in from there?"

"You said you -"

"Ten minutes."

Click.

Potter closed his eyes and sighed.

"Angie?"

"I think we have a problem," the psychologist answered. "He wants to hurt her."

This was a real setback. Potter could probably have gotten an extension of the deadline from a Lou Handy who was in a good frame of mind and in control. Vindictive Lou Handy, embarrassed and angry Lou Handy, wasn't inclined to give them anything and was now in the mood for bloodshed.

Oh, Melanie, why couldn't you have just left well enough alone? (Yet what else did he feel? Pride that she had the guts to resist Hardy when he tried to beat her for saving Kielle? Admiration? And what else?)

Angie's beautiful, exotic face was frowning.

"What is it?" Budd asked her.

"What Handy was saying about plastic surgery. What does he mean?"

"He doesn't want to kill anyone else just yet, I think," Potter said slowly. "He's worried that he's losing too many hostages and we haven't given him anything substantive. So he's going to wound her. Maybe blind her in one eye."

"Lord," Budd whispered.

Tobe called, "Arthur, I'm picking up scrambled signals from nearby."

"What frequency?"

"What megahertz, you mean?"

"I don't care about the numbers. Whose would they be?"

"It's an unassigned frequency."

"Two-way?"

"Yep. And they're retrosignals."

Some operations are so secret that the law enforcers' radios use special coordinated scramblers that change the code every few seconds. Derek confirmed that the state police radios didn't have this feature.

"How nearby?"

"Within a mile radius."

"Press?"

"They don't usually use scramblers but it could be."

Potter couldn't waste time on this now. He made a fist and stared out the window through the Leicas. He saw Melanie's blond hair, the black speck of the pistol. Struggling to keep his voice calm, he said, "Well, Charlie… you thought any more about what kind of imaginary batteries he wants for his toy?"

Budd lifted his hands helplessly. "I can't think. I… I just don't know." Panic edged into his voice. "Look at the time!"

"Henry?"

LeBow scrolled slowly through the now-lengthy profile of Louis Handy. To nervous Charlie Budd he said, "The more urgent the task, Captain, the more slowly you should perform it. Let's see, there was a lot of grand theft auto when he was a kid. Maybe he's into cars. Should we push that button?"

"No. Charlie's got a point. Let's think about something having to do with his escape."

"What else does he spend his money on?" Angie asked.

"Not much. Never owned property. Never knocked over a jewelry store -"

"Any interests?" Potter wondered.

Angie said suddenly, "His probation reports. You have those in there?"

"I've scanned them in."

"Read them. See if he's ever asked permission to leave a jurisdiction and why."

"Good, Angie," Potter said.

Keys tapped. "Okay. Yes, he has. Twice he left Milwaukee, where he was living following his release, to go fishing in Minnesota. Up near International Falls. And three times up to Canada. Returned all times without incident." LeBow squinted. "Fishing. That reminds me of something…" He typed in a search request. "Here, a prison counselor's report. He likes to fish. Loves it. Worked up merit points for a leave to a trout stream on the grounds at Pennaupsut State Pen."

Potter thought, Minnesota. His home state. Land of a Thousand Lakes.

Canada.

Budd – standing tall with his perfect posture – continued to fidget. "Oh, brother." He looked at his watch twice, five seconds apart.

"Please, Charlie."

"We've got seven minutes!"

"I know. You had the brainstorm. What was in your mind?"

"I don't know what I meant!"

Potter was staring at Melanie once again. Stop it, he ordered. Forget about her. He sat up suddenly. "Got it. He likes to fish and has a fondness for the north?"

"Right," Budd said. Asking, in effect, So what?

But LeBow understood. He nodded. "You're a poet, Arthur."

"Thank Charlie here. He got me thinking of it."

Budd looked merely perplexed.

"Five minutes," Tobe called.

"We're going to cut a phony escape deal." Potter said quickly, pointing to the "Deceptions" half of the board. LeBow rose to his feet, grabbed the marker. Potter thought for a moment. "Handy's going to want to check what I tell him. He's going to call the FAA regional headquarters. Where is that, Charlie?"

"Topeka."

To Tobe, Potter said, "I want an immediate routing of all calls into the main FAA number sent to that phone right there." He pointed to a console phone. It would be an arduous task, Potter knew, but without a word Tobe set to work pushing buttons and speaking urgently into his headset mike.

"No," Budd protested. "There's no time. Just give him that number. How will he know it's not the FAA?"

"Too risky if he checks." Potter picked up the phone and hit redial.

An enthusiastic voice answered, "Yo."

"Lou?"

"Hello, Art. My ears're peeled but I don't hear no chopper. You see my girlfriend here in the window?"

"Say, Lou," Potter said calmly, looking into the window. "I've got a proposition for you."

"Ten, nine, eight…"

"Listen -"

"Hey, Art, I just had a thought. Maybe this is your way of doing something bad. Maybe you are a son of a bitch."

"The chopper's just about ready."

"And this here girl is just about bleedin'. She's crying a stream, Art. I've had it. I've just fucking had it with you people. You don't take me seriously." He raged, "You don't do what I fucking want!"

Angie leaned forward. Charlie Budd's lips moved in a silent prayer. "All right, Lou," Potter growled. "I know you'll shoot her. But you know I'll let you do it." Static filled the van. "Hear me out at least."

"By my clock I'll hear you out for another minute or two."

"Lou, I've been working on this for an hour. I didn't want to say anything until it was in place but I'll tell you anyway. It's almost done." Let the anticipation build up.

"Well, what? Tell me."

"Give me another hour, don't hurt the girl, and I'll get you a priority FAA-cleared flight plan into Canada." Silence for a second.

"What the fuck does that mean?"

"You can deal with the FAA directly. We'll never know where you go."

"But the pilot will."

"The pilot'll have handcuffs for himself and the hostages. You set down wherever you want in Canada, disable the chopper and the radio, and you'll be gone hours before we find them." Silence.

Potter looked at Tobe desperately, eyebrows raised. The young man, sweating heavily, exhaled long and mouthed, "Working on it."

"We'll stock the chopper with food and water. You want backpacks, hiking boots? Hell, Lou, we'll even give you fishing rods. This is a good deal. Don't hurt her. Give us another hour and you'll get the clearance."

"Lemme think."

"I'll get the name of the FAA supervisor and call you right back."

Click.

Unflappable Tobe gazed at his inert dials then hit the console with his fist and said, "Where the fuck is our transfer?"

Potter folded his hands together and stared out the window at the configuration that was Melanie Charrol – tiny glowing shapes of color and light, like pixels on a TV screen.

Captain Dan Tremain leaned forward, pushing aside a branch, silent as snow.

From this angle he could just see the corner of the window in which the young woman was being held. Tremain was one of the best sniper shots in the HRU and often regretted that his command position didn't give him the chance to strap up a Remington and, with the aid of his spotter, acquire and neutralize a target eight hundred, a thousand yards away.

But tonight was a door-entry operation. Snipers would be useless and so he turned his thoughts from the vague target in the window to the job at hand.

Tremain's watch showed seven. "Deadline," he said. "Outrider One. Report."

"Charge loaded in generator."

"Await green-light command."

"Roger."

"Outrider Two, report."

"The subjects are all in the main room, hostages are unattended, except for the woman in the window."

"Roger," Tremain said. "Teams A and B, status?"

"Team A to home base. Loaded and locked."

"Team B, loaded and locked."

Tremain chocked his foot against a rock and eased to one knee. Eyes on Handy. He looked like a sprinter waiting for the gun – which was exactly what he would become in a matter of minutes.

"Done," Tobe called.

He added, "Theoretically, at least."

Potter wiped his palm. He transferred the phone to his other hand, then called Handy back and said the helicopter clearance was arranged. He gave him the number of the FAA office.

"What'sa name?" Handy growled. "Who should I talk to?" Potter said, "Don Creswell." It was the name of his cousin-in-law Linden's husband. LeBow scrawled it on the nearly filled "Deceptions" board.

"We'll see, Art. I'll call you back. The girl stays right beside me and my big G till I'm satisfied."

Click.

Potter spun around and looked at Tobe's screen. He said, "It'll have to be you, Henry. He knows my voice."

LeBow grimaced. "I could have used time to prepare, Arthur."

"So could we all."

A moment later Tobe said, "Uplink from slaughterhouse… Not coming here… digits… one, nine-one-three, five-five-five, one-two-one-two. Topeka directory assistance."

They heard Handy's voice ask for the number of the FAA regional office. The operator gave it to him. Potter exhaled in relief. Budd said, "You were right. He didn't trust you."

"Uplink terminated," Tobe whispered unnecessarily. "Uplink from slaughterhouse to Topeka, downlink transfer from trunk line to…" He pointed to the phone on the desk, and it began to ring. "Curtain up."

LeBow took a deep breath and nodded.

"Wait," Budd said urgently. "He'll be expecting a secretary or receptionist."

"Damn," Potter spat out. "Of course. Angie?"

She was the closest to the phone.

Third ring. Fourth.

She nodded brusquely, snatched up the receiver. "Federal Aviation Administration," she said breezily. "May I help you?"

"I wanta talk to Don Creswell."

"One moment please. Who's calling?"

A laugh. "Lou Handy."

She clapped her hand to the mouthpiece and whispered, "What's hold?"

Tobe took the phone from her and tapped it with a fingernail, then handed it to LeBow. Potter winked at her.

Again LeBow inhaled and said, "Creswell here."

"Hey, Don. You don't know me."

A brief pause. "This is that fellow the FBI called me about? Louis Handy?"

"Yeah, this's that fellow. Tell me, is this bullshit he's feeding me? It is, isn't it?"

Pudgy, benign Henry LeBow snapped, "Well, sir, I'll tell you, it's more bullshit for me. 'Cause frankly it's making my life pure hell. I got sixty planes an hour coming into our airspace and this's going to mean rerouting close to three-quarters of them. And that's just the commercial flights. I told the agent no way at first but he's a grade-A pain in the ass, and a FBI pain in the ass to boot. He told me he'd fuck up my life royal if I don't do exactly what you want. So, yeah, it's bullshit but, yeah, I'm going to give him what he asked for."

"What the fuck is that, exactly?"

"Didn't he tell you? An M-4 priority airspace clearance straight into western Ontario."

Good job, Henry, Potter thought, his eyes on Melanie's silhouette.

"A what?"

"It's the highest priority there is. It's reserved for Air Force One and visiting heads of state. We call it 'papal clearance' because it's what the Pope gets. Now listen, you might want to write this down. What you have to do is make sure the helicopter pilot shuts off the transponder. He'll point it out to you and you can shut it off or smash it or whatever, and we won't be able to track you on radar."

"No radar?"

"That's part of the M-4. We do that so radar-seeking missiles can't lock onto a dignitary's jet."

"The transponder. I think I heard about them. How long do we have?"

LeBow looked at Potter, who held up eight fingers.

"We can keep the airspace open for eight hours. After that there's too much commercial traffic and we'd have to rewrite the airspace requirements."

"Okay. Do it."

"It's being done. It'll be effective in, let me see…"

Potter held up two fingers.

"About two hours."

"Fuck that. One hour tops, or I kill this pretty little thing next to me."

"Oh, my God. Are you seri -? Well, sure. One hour. But I need a full hour. Only please, mister, don't hurt anybody."

Handy's cold chuckle came through the speaker. "Hey, Don, lemme ask you a question."

"Sure."

"You in Topeka right now?"

Silence in the room.

Potter's head turned away from the window, stared at LeBow.

"Sure am."

Potter snapped his fingers and pointed to LeBow's computer. The intelligence officer's eyes went wide and he nodded. He punched silent buttons. The message came on: "Loading Encyclopedia." The words blinked repeatedly.

"Topeka, huh?" Handy said. "Nice place?"

Loading… loading…

Come on, Potter thought desperately. Come on!

"I like it."

The screen went blank; at last a colorful logo appeared. LeBow typed madly.

"How long you been there?"

How calm Handy sounds, Potter reflected. Holding a gun to a girl's eye and he's still working all the angles, cool as can be.

"About a year," LeBow ad-libbed. "You work for Uncle Sam, they move you around a lot." He typed rapidly. His fingers stopped. An error message appeared. "Invalid Search Request."

The more urgent the task…

He started again. Finally a map and text appeared and in the corner of the screen a color photo of a skyline.

"Imagine they do. Like that FBI agent who called you. Andy Palmer. He must move a bunch too."

LeBow took a breath to answer but Potter scrawled on a sheet of paper, "Don't respond to name."

"Hell, I'd guess so."

"That is his name, right? Andy?"

"I think so. I don't remember. He just told me the code that let me know it was a real call."

"You got codes? That you use like spies?"

"You know, sir, I really oughta get on this project for you."

"What's that river there?"

"In Topeka, you mean?"

"Yeah."

LeBow leaned forward and read the blurb about the city. 'The Kaw, you mean. The Kansas River. The one cuts the town in half?"

"Yeah. That's it. Used to go fishing there. Had a uncle lived in that old neighborhood. It was all la-di-da, fancy old houses. Cobblestoned roads, you know."

Henry LeBow was sitting so far forward he was in danger of tumbling off his chair. He read frantically. "Oh, Potwin Place. He's a lucky man, your uncle. Nice houses. But the streets aren't cobblestoned, they're brick." The agent's bald head glistened with silver beads of sweat.

"What's your favorite restaurant there?"

A pause.

"Denny's. I have six children."

"You son of a bitch," Handy growled.

Click.

"Downlink terminated," Tobe called.

LeBow, hands shaking, stared at the phone.

Four heads jammed into the window.

"Did it work?" Frances muttered.

No one ventured a guess. Only Charlie Budd said anything and the most he dared utter was "Oh, brother."

"Home base to Outrider Two."

"Outrider Two," whispered Lieutenant Joey Wilson, standing just beneath the window of the slaughterhouse, in the shadow of the school bus.

"Positions of subjects?"

The trooper lifted his blackened face quickly, glanced inside, then dropped down again.

"Two takers in the main room by the window, Handy's got a gun on one hostage. A Glock. Right against her head. Can't tell if it's cocked. Wilcox doesn't have a weapon in his hands but's got a Glock in his belt. Bonner's got a Mossberg semiauto twelve-gauge. But he's thirty feet from the hostage room. It's a good scenario. Except for the girl in the window."

"Can you take out Handy?"

"Negative. He's behind pipes. Have no clear shot. Bonner keeps going back and forth. Maybe I can acquire him. I don't know."

"Stand by."

They were well past deadline now. Handy could shoot the poor woman at any moment.

"Outrider One? Report."

"Outrider One. I'm at the generator. Charge is armed."

Lord, let us not fail, Tremain thought, and took a deep breath.

"Outrider One?" Tremain called to Pfenninger, whom he pictured beside the command van's generator, the detonating cord to the L- 210 in his hand.

"Outrider One here."

"Code word -"

"Outrider Two to home base!" Wilson's energetic voice cut through the airwaves. "Hostage is safe. Repeat. Outrider Two to home base. Subject Handy is standing down. He's put his weapon away. Subject Bonner's taking the girl back to the room with the rest of the hostages."

Tremain looked. The girl was being pulled out of the window.

"Subject Bonner has left her in the hostage room and has returned to the front of the factory."

"Code word Stallion," Tremain said. "All outriders, all teams, Stallion, Stallion, Stallion. Confirm transmission."

They all did.

Dan Tremain – senior HRU commander and a man who had a reputation for thinking fast – composed and then offered a silent prayer to his just and merciful Lord in Christ, thanking Him for sparing the girl's life. But mostly he gave thanks for providing the extra time in which to prepare for the assault that He had assured Tremain would free the poor lambs from the hands of the barbaric Romans.

"Downlink," Tobe announced. "From him."

Potter let the phone ring twice then answered it. "Art?"

"Lou. Creswell just called."

"He thinks you're a prick. He doesn't even know your fucking name."

"I have my enemies. More of them within the government than without, I'm sorry to say. What about it?"

"Okay, it's a deal," Handy said cheerfully. "You got one more hour."

Potter paused, let the silence build up.

"Art," Handy asked uncertainly, "you still there?"

A subtle sigh issued from the negotiator's mouth.

"What'sa matter? You sound like your fucking dog just died."

"Well…"

"Come on, talk to me."

"I don't know how to ask this. You were real good about agreeing to give us the extra time. And…"

Test the bonds, Potter was thinking. What exactly is Handy thinking about me? How close are we?

"Well, ask me what you gotta, Art. Just fucking do it."

"Creswell said he'll need at least until nine-thirty to do the clearance right. He's got to coordinate with the Canadian authorities. I told him to do it within an hour. But he said they can't do it that fast. I feel like I'm letting you down…"

And part of him did, yes – at the lie he was telling, so blatantly, so coldly.

"Nine-thirty?' A long hesitation. "Fuck, I can live with that."

"Really, Lou?" Arthur Potter asked, surprised. "Appreciate it."

"Hey, anything for my good buddy Art."

Take advantage of the good mood. He said, "Lou, let me ask you another question."

"Shoot."

Should I push or not?

Angie was watching him. Their eyes met and she mouthed, "Go for it."

"Lou, how about if you let her go? Melanie."

Okay. Art, I'm in a good mood. I'm going to Canada, so you just bought yourself one.

Handy's voice was like a cold razor blade. "Sometimes you ask for too fucking much, you asshole. I'm the one person in the fucking universe you don't want to do that to."

The phone went dead.

Potter raised his eyebrows at the outburst. But the room erupted into applause and laughter. Potter hung up the phone and joined in.

Potter clapped LeBow on the back. "Excellent job." He looked at Angie. "Both of you."

Budd said, "You deserve an Oscar for that. Yessir, I'd vote for you."

"M-4?" Potter said. "What's an M-4 priority?"

"Doris and I went to England last year," LeBow explained. "That was a highway, I seem to recall. Did sound good, didn't it?" He was very pleased with himself.

"That radar missile tracking," Budd said. "That sounded pretty cool."

"All made up."

"Oh, brother. He bought it all."

Then they went somber again as Potter gazed out the window at the place where six hostages still remained, safe for at least a couple of hours – if Handy kept his word. Then simultaneously the entire crowd in the van all laughed once more as Tobe Geller, maven of electronics and coldly rational science, whispered reverently, "Papal clearance," and crossed himself expertly like the good Catholic that he apparently was.

7:15 P.M.

"Well, Charlie, what's the news from the front?"

Budd stood outside the van in a gully. He held his cellular phone pressed hard into his ear – as if that would keep anyone from overhearing. Roland Marks's voice tended to boom.

The assistant attorney general was down at the rear staging area. Budd said, "I'll tell you, it's been a real roller coaster here. Up and down, you know. He's doing some real remarkable things – Agent Potter, I mean."

"Remarkable?" Marks asked sarcastically. "He's brought that girl back to life, has he? A regular Lazarus situation, is it?"

"He's gotten a couple more out safe and he just bought us another couple of hours. He's -"

"Do you have that present for me?" Marks asked evenly.

The door of the van opened and Angie Scapello stepped out.

"Not yet," Budd said, and decided the lie was credible. "Soon. I should go."

"I want that tape within the hour. My friend from the press'll be here then."

"Yessir, that's right," he said. "I'll talk to you later."

He pushed disconnect. And said to Angie, "Bosses. We could do without 'em."

She was carrying two cups of coffee and offered one to him.

"Milk, no sugar. That's how you like it?" she said.

"Agent LeBow has my file too, huh?"

"You live near here, Charlie?"

"My wife and I bought a house about fifteen miles away."

That was good. Work in Meg again.

"I have an apartment in Georgetown. I travel so much it doesn't make sense for me to buy. And just being by myself."

"Never been married?"

"Nope. I'm an old maid."

"Old, there you go again. You must be all of twenty-eight."

She laughed.

"You like life out here in the country?" Angie asked him.

"Sure do. The girls have good schools – I showed you the pictures of my family?"

"You did, yes, Charlie. Twice."

"They have good schools and good teams to be on. They live for soccer. And it's not expensive, really. I'm thirty-two and own my own house on four acres. You couldn't do that on the East Coast, I don't imagine. I went to New York once and what people pay for apartments there -"

"You faithful to your wife, Charlie?" She turned her warm, brown eyes on him.

He gulped down coffee he had absolutely no taste for. "Yes, I am. And as a matter of fact I've been meaning to talk to you. I think you're an interesting person and what you're doing to help us is real valuable. And I'd have to be a blind man not to see how pretty you are -"

"Thank you, Charlie."

"But I'm not even unfaithful in my mind – like that president was, Jimmy Carter? Or somebody, I don't remember." This was all rehearsed and he wished he didn't have to swallow so often. "Meg and I've had our problems, that's for sure. But who hasn't? Problems're part of a relationship and you get through them just like you get through the good times, and you keep going." He stopped abruptly, forgetting completely the end of his speech, which he improvised as "So there. I just wanted to say that."

Angie stepped closer and touched his arm. She leaned up and kissed his cheek. "I'm very glad you told me that, Charlie. I think fidelity is the most important trait in a relationship. Loyalty. And you don't see much of it nowadays."

He hesitated. "No, I guess you don't."

"I'm going down to the motel and visit the girls and their parents. Would you like to come with me?" She smiled. "As a friend and fellow threat management team member?"

"I'd be delighted." And to Budd's unbounded relief she didn't slip her arm through his as they walked to the van to tell Potter where they would be and then proceeded to the squad car for the short drive to the Days Inn.

They sat in the killing room, the entrance to hell, tears on all their faces.

What was happening now – only a few feet in front of them – was worse than they'd ever imagined. Let it be over soon, Melanie thought, her fingers twitching this mute plea. For the love of God.

"Don't look," she finally signed to the girls. But they all did look – no one could turn away from this terrible spectacle.

Bear lay atop poor Mrs. Harstrawn, her blouse open, her skirt up to her waist. Numb, Melanie watched the man's naked ass bob up and down. She watched his hands grip one of Mrs. Harstrawn's breasts, as white as his own bloated skin. She watched him kiss her and stick his wet tongue into her unresponsive mouth.

He paused for a moment and looked back into the main room. There, Brutus and Stoat sat before the TV, drinking beer. Laughing. Like Melanie's father and brother would sit around the TV on Sunday, as if the small black box were something magic that allowed them to talk to one another. Then Bear reared up, hooked his arms beneath Mrs. Harstrawn's knees and lifted her legs into the air. He began his ungainly motion once again.

Melanie grew calm as death.

It's time, she decided. They couldn't wait any longer. Never looking away from Bear's closed eyes, she wrote a note on the pad of paper that Brutus had torn from her hands earlier. She folded it tightly and slipped it into Anna's pocket. The girl looked up. Her twin did too. "Go into corner," Melanie signed. "By gas can." They didn't want to. They were terrified of Bear, terrified of the horrible thing he was doing. But so emphatic was Melanie's signing, so cold were her eyes that they moved steadily into the corner of the room. Once again Melanie told them to take Mrs. Harstrawn's sweater. "Tie it around gas can. Go -"

Suddenly Bear leapt up off the teacher and faced Melanie. His bloody organ was upright and glistened red and purple. The overwhelming scent of musk and sweat and woman's fluid made her gag. He paused, his groin only a foot from her face. He reached down and touched her hair. "Stop that fucking spooky shit. Stop… with your hands… that bullshit." He mimicked signing.

Melanie understood his reaction. It was common. People have always been frightened by signing. It was why there was such a strong desire to force the deaf to speak and not use sign language – which was a code, a secret language, the hallmark of a mysterious society.

She nodded slowly and lowered her eyes once more to the glistening, erect penis.

Bear strode back to Mrs. Harstrawn, squeezed her breasts, knocked her legs apart, and plunged into her once again. She lifted a hand in a pathetic protest. He slapped it away. Don't sign…

How could she talk to the girls? Tell the twins what they had to do? Then she happened to recall her own argot. The language that she had created at age sixteen, when she'd risked getting her knuckles slapped by the teachers – most of them Others – for using ASL or SEE at the Laurent Clerc School. It was a simple language, one that had occurred to her while watching Georg Solti conduct a silent orchestra. In music the meter and rhythm were as much a part of the piece as the melody; she'd kept her hands close to her chin and spoke to her classmates through the shape and rhythm of her fingers, combined with facial expressions. She'd shown all her students the basics of the language – when she compared different types of signing – but she didn't know if the twins recalled enough to understand her.

Yet she had no choice. She lifted her hands and moved her fingers in rhythmic patterns.

Anna didn't understand at first and began to respond in ASL.

"No," Melanie instructed, frowning for emphasis. "No signing."

It was vital that she convey her message, for she believed she could save the twins at least, and maybe one more – poor gasping Beverly, or Emily, whose thin white legs Bear had been staring at for long moments before he pulled Donna Harstrawn toward him and spread her legs like a hungry man opening up a package of food.

"Take gas can," Melanie communicated. Somehow. "Tie sweater around it."

After a moment the girls understood. They eased forward. Their tiny hands went to work enwrapping the can with the colorful sweater.

The can was now enwrapped by the sweater.

"Go out back door. One on left."

The doorway swept clean of dust by the breeze from the river.

"Afraid."

Melanie nodded but persisted. "Have to."

A faint, heartbreaking nod. Then another. Emily stirred beside Melanie. The girl was terrified. Melanie took her hand, behind their backs, out of Bear's view. She fingerspelled in English. "Y-o-u w-i-l-l b-e n-e-x-t. D-o n-o-t w-o-r-r-y."

Emily nodded. To the twins Melanie said, "Follow smell of river." She flared her nostrils. "River. Smell."

A nod from both girls.

"Hold on to sweater and jump into water."

Two no shakes. Emphatic.

Melanie's eyes flared. "Yes!"

Then Melanie looked at the teacher and back to the girls, explaining silently what could happen to them. And the twins understood. Anna started to whimper.

Melanie would not allow this. "Stop!" she insisted. "Now. Go."

The twins were behind Bear. He'd have to stand up and turn to see them.

Afraid to use her hands, Anna timidly lowered her face and wiped it on her sleeve. They shook their heads no. In heartbreaking unison.

Melanie's hand rose and she risked fast fingerspellings and hand signs. Bear's eyes were closed; he missed the gestures. "Abbé de l'Epée is out there. Waiting for you."

Their eyes went wide.

De l'Epée?

The savior of the Deaf. A legend. He was Lancelot, he was King Arthur. For heaven's sake, he was Tom Cruise! He couldn't be outside. Yet Melanie's face was so serious, she was so insistent that they offered faint nods of acquiescence.

"You must find him. Give him note in your pocket."

"Where is he?" Anna signed.

"He's older man, heavy. Gray hair. Glasses and blue sports coat." They nodded enthusiastically (though this was hardly how they pictured the legendary abbé). "Find him and give him note."

Bear looked up and Melanie continued to lift her hand innocently to wipe her red, but dry, eyes as if she'd been crying. He looked down again and continued. Melanie was grateful she couldn't hear the piggish grunts she knew issued from his fat mouth.

"Ready?" she asked the girls.

Indeed they were; they would leap into flames if it meant they could meet their idol. Melanie looked again at Bear, the sweat dripping off his face and falling like rain on poor Mrs. Harstrawn's cheeks and jiggling breasts. His eyes closed. The moment of finishing was near – something Melanie had read about but couldn't quite comprehend.

"Take shoes off. And tell De l'Epée to be careful."

Anna nodded. "I love you," she signed. Suzie did too.

Melanie looked out the doorway and saw Brutus and Stoat, far across the slaughterhouse, staring at the TV. She nodded twice. The girls picked up their gas-can life preserver and vanished around the corner. Melanie watched Bear to see if their passage was silent. Apparently it was.

To distract him she leaned forward, enduring the ugly man's ominous stare, and slowly, cautiously, with her burgundy sleeve wiped the sheen of his sweat from the teacher's face. He was perplexed by the gesture then angered. He shoved her back against the wall. Her head hit the tile with a thud. There she sat until he finished and lay gasping. Finally he rolled off her. Melanie saw a slick pool on the woman's thigh. Blood too. Bear glanced furtively into the other room. He had escaped undetected; Brutus and Stoat hadn't seen. He sat up. He zipped his filthy jeans and pulled down Mrs. Harstrawn's skirt, roughly buttoned her blouse.

Bear leaned forward and put his face inches from Melanie's. She managed to hold his eye – it was terrifying but she would do anything to keep him from looking around the room. He spat out, "You… word about… you're…"

Delay, stall. Buy time for the twins.

She frowned and shook her head.

He tried again, words spitting from his mouth.

Again she shook her head, pointed to her ear. He boiled in frustration.

Finally, she leaned away and pointed to the dusty floor. He wrote, Say anything and your dead.

She nodded slowly.

He obliterated the message and buttoned his shirt.

Sometimes all of us, even Others, are mute and deaf and blind as the dead; we perceive only what our desires allow us to see. This is a terrible burden and a danger but can also be, as now, a small miracle. For Bear rose unsteadily, tucked in his shirt, and looked around the killing room with a glazed look of contentment on his flushed face. Then he strode out, never noticing that only four shoes remained in place of the twins and that the girls were gone, floating free of this terrible place.

For a few years I was nothing but Deaf.

I lived Deaf, I ate Deaf, I breathed it.

Melanie is speaking to De l'Epée.

She has gone into her music room because she cannot bear to think about Anna and Suzie, leaping into the waters of the Arkansas River, dark as a coffin. They're better off, she tells herself. She remembers the way Bear looked at the girls. Whatever happens, they're better off.

De l'Epée shifts in his chair and asks what she meant by being nothing but Deaf.

"When I was a junior the Deaf movement came to Laurent Clerc.

Deaf with a capital D. Oralism was out and at last the school began teaching Signed Exact English. Which is sort of a half-assed compromise. Eventually, after I graduated, they agreed to switch to ASL. That's American Sign."

"I'm interested in languages. Tell me about it." (Would he say this? It's my fantasy; yes, he would.)

"ASL conies from the world's first school for the deaf, founded in France in the 1760s by your namesake. Abbé Charles Michel de l'Epée. He was like Rousseau – he felt that there was a primordial human language. A language that was pure and absolute and unfalteringly clear. It could express every emotion directly and it would be so transparent that you couldn't use it to lie or deceive anyone."

De l'Epée smiles at this.

"With French Sign Language, oh, the Deaf came into their own. A teacher from De l'Epée's school, Laurent Clerc, came to America in the early 1800s with Thomas Gallaudet – he was a minister from Connecticut – and set up a school for the deaf in Hartford. French Sign Language was used there but it got mixed with local signing – especially the dialect used on Martha's Vineyard, where there was a lot of heredity deafness. That's how American Sign Language came about. That, more than anything, allowed the Deaf to live normal lives. See, you have to develop language – some language, either sign or spoken – by age three. Otherwise you basically end up retarded."

De l'Epée looks at her somewhat cynically. "It seems to me that you've rehearsed this."

She can only laugh.

"Once ASL hit the school, as I was saying, I lived for the Deaf movement. I learned the party line. Mostly because of Susan Phillips. It was amazing. I was a student teacher at the time. She saw my eyes flickering up and down as I read somebody's lips. She came up to me and said, The word "hearing" means only one thing to me. It's the opposite of who I am.' I felt ashamed. She later said that the term 'hard of hearing' should infuriate us because it defines us in terms of the Other community. 'Oral' is even worse because the Oral deaf want to pass. They haven't come out yet. If somebody's Oral, Susan said, we have to 'rescue' them.

"I knew what she was talking about because for years I'd tried to pass. The rule is 'Plan ahead.' You're always thinking about what's coming, second-guessing what questions you'll be asked, steering people toward streets with noisy traffic or construction, so you'll have an excuse to ask them to shout or repeat what they say.

"But after I met Susan I rejected all that. I was anti-Oral, I was anti-mainstreaming. I taught ASL. I became a poet and gave performances at theaters of the deaf."

"Poet?"

"I did that as a substitute for my music. It seemed the closest I could hope for."

"What are signed poems like?" he asks.

She explains that they "rhymed" not sonically but because the hand shape of the last word of the line was similar to that of the last words in preceding lines. Melanie recited:

"Eight gray birds, sitting in dark.

"Cold wind blows, it isn't kind.

"Sitting on wire, they lift their wings

"And sail off into billowy clouds."

"Dark" and "kind" share a flat, closed hand, the palm facing the body of the signer. "Wings" and "clouds" involve similar movements from the shoulders up into the air above the signer.

De l'Epée listens, fascinated. He watches her sign several other poems. Melanie puts almond-scented cream on them every night and her nails are smooth and translucent as lapidaried stones.

She stopped in mid line. "Oh," she muses, "I did it all. The National Association of the Deaf, the Bicultural Center, the National Athletic Association of the Deaf."

He nods. (She wishes he'd tell her about his life. Is he married? (Please no!) Does he have children? Is he older than I imagine, or younger?)

"I had my career all laid out before me. I was going to be the first deaf woman farm foreman."

"Farm?"

"Ask me about dressing corn. About anhydrous ammonia. You want to know about wheat? Red wheat comes from the Russian steppes. But it's name isn't political – oh, not in Kansas, nosir. It's the color. 'Amber waves of grain…' Ask me about the advantages of no-till planting and to how to fill out UCC financing statements to collateralize crops that haven't grown yet. 'All the accretions and appurtenances upon said land…' "

Her father, she explains, owned six hundred and sixty acres in south-central Kansas. He was a lean man who wore an exhaustion that many people confused with ruggedness. His problem wasn't a lack of willingness but a lack of talent, which he called luck. And he acknowledged – to himself alone – that he needed help from many quarters. He of course put most of his stock in his son but farms are big business now. Harold Charrol planned to invest both son, Danny, and daughter, Melanie, with third-share interests and watch them all prosper as a corporate family.

She had been reluctant about these plans but the prospect of working with her brother had an appeal to it. The unfazable boy had become an easygoing young man, nothing at all like their embittered father. While Harold would mutter darkly about fate when a thresher blade snapped and he stood paralyzed with anger, staring at the splintered wood, Danny might jump down out of the cockpit, vanish for a time, and return with a six-pack and some sandwiches for an impromptu picnic. "We'll fix the son of a bitch tonight. Let's eat."

For a time she believed this could be a pleasant life. She took some ag extension courses and even sent an article to Silent News about farm life and Deafness.

But then, last summer, Danny'd had the accident, and lost both the ability, and the will, to work the place. Charrol, with the desperate legitimacy of a man needing heirs, turned to Melanie. She was a woman, yes (this a handicap somewhat worse than her audiologic one), but an educated, hardworking one at least.

Melanie, he planned, would become his full partner. And why not? Since age seven she'd ridden in the air-conditioned cab of the big John Deere, helping him shift up through the infinite number of gears. She'd donned goggles and mask and gloves like a rustic surgeon and filled the ammonia tank, she'd sat in on his meetings with United Produce, and she'd driven with him to the roadside stops, known only to insiders, where the illegal migrant workers hid, waiting for day jobs at harvest.

It's a question of belonging and what God does to make sure those that oughta stay someplace do. Well, your place is here, working at what you can do, where your, you know, problem doesn't get you into trouble. God's will… So you'll be home then.

Tell him, Melanie thinks.

Yes! If you never tell another soul, tell De l'Epée.

"There's something," she begins, "I want to say."

His placid face gazes at her.

"It's a confession."

"You're too young to have anything to confess."

"After the poetry recital in Topeka I wasn't going back to the school right away. I was going to see my brother in St. Louis. He's in the hospital. He's having some surgery tomorrow."

De l'Epée nods.

"But before I went to see him there was something I planned to do in Topeka. I had an appointment to see somebody."

"Tell me."

Should she? Yes, no?

Yes, she decides. She has to. But just as she is about to speak, something intrudes.

The smell of the river?

The thud of approaching feet.

Brutus?

Alarmed, she opened her eyes. No, there was nothing. The slaughterhouse was peaceful. None of their three captors was nearby. She closed her eyes and struggled back into the music room. But De l'Epée was gone.

"Where are you?" she cried. But realized that though her lips were moving she could no longer hear any words.

No! I don't want to leave. Come back, please…

Then Melanie realized that it wasn't the breeze from the river that booted them out of the room; it was her own self. She had grown timid once again, ashamed, and could not confess.

Even to the man who seemed more than willing to listen to anything she wanted to say, however foolish, however dark.

They caught the glint of light about fifty yards away.

Joe Silbert and Ted Biggins walked silently through the field on the left flank of the slaughterhouse. Silbert pointed to the light, a flash off the field glasses or a piece of equipment dangling from the belt of one of the hostage rescue troopers, a reflection from the brilliant halogen lights.

Biggins grumbled that the lights were too bright. There'd be lens flare, he was worried.

"You want me to go fucking shut them off?" Silbert whispered. He wanted a cigarette badly. They continued through the woods until they broke into an open field. Silbert looked through the camera, pushing the zoom button. The troopers, he could see, were clustered on a brush-filled ridge overlooking the slaughterhouse. One of them – hidden behind the school bus – was actually at the slaughterhouse, hovering just below a window.

"Damn, they're good," Silbert whispered. "One of the best teams I've ever seen."

"Fucking lights," muttered Biggins. "Let's get going."

As they walked through the field Silbert looked for patrolling troops. "I thought we had baby-sitters all over the place."

"Those lights're really a pain."

"This is almost too easy," Silbert muttered. "Oh, my God." Biggins was looking up in the air. "Perfecto," Silbert whispered, laughing softly. The men gazed up at the top of the windmill. "It'll get us above the lights," Biggins the sticking record said. Forty feet in the air. They'd have a spectacular view of the field. Silbert grinned and began to climb. At the top they stood on the rickety platform. The mill was long abandoned and the blades were missing. It rocked back and forth in the wind. "That going to be a problem?"

Biggins pulled a retractable monopod from his pocket and extended it, screwing the joints tight. "So what can I do about it? Like, I've got a Steadicam in my fucking pocket?"

The view was excellent. Silbert could see troopers were clustered on the left side of the slaughterhouse. With grim respect he thought of Agent Arthur Potter, who'd looked him in the eye and said there'd be no assault. It was obvious the troopers were getting ready for an imminent kick-in.

Stillwell took a small sponge-covered microphone from his pocket and held it in his hand. He spoke into his scrambled cellular phone and called the remote transmission van, which was back near the main press tent. "You cocksucker," he said to Kellog when the man answered. "I was hoping they'd bust your ass."

"Naw, I told that trooper they could fuck your wife and they let me go."

"The other guys, they're at the press table?"

"Yep."

Silbert had in fact never told any of the other reporters about the press pool arrangement. He and Biggins, Kellog and Bianco and the two reporters now sitting at the pool site, pretending to type stories on the gutted Compaq, were all employees of KFAL in Kansas City.

Biggins plugged the mike into the camera and unfolded the parabolic antenna. He clipped it to the handrail of the windmill and began speaking into the mike, "Testing, testing, testing…"

"Cut the crap, Silbert, you gonna give us some pictures?"

"Ted's sending the level now." Silbert gestured toward the antenna and Biggins adjusted it while he spoke. "I'm switching to radio," the anchorman said, then took the microphone and shoved an earphone in his left ear.

After a moment Kellog said, "There. Five by five. Jesus H. Christ, we got the visual. Where the fuck are you? In a helicopter?"

"The pros know," Silbert said. "Cut into the feed. I'm ready to roll. Let's do it before we get shot down."

There was a staticky click and he heard a Toyota commercial suddenly cut off in mid-disclaimer. "And now from Crow Ridge, Kansas," the baritone announcer said, "We have a live report from Channel 9 anchorman Joe Silbert with exclusive footage from the kidnaping scene, where a number of students from the Laurent Clerc School for the Deaf and two teachers are being held by escaped convicts. Let's go live to you, Joe."

"Ron, we're overlooking the slaughterhouse in which the girls and their teachers are being held. As you can see, there are literally hundreds of troopers surrounding the building. The police have set up a series of those brilliant halogen lights to shine into the slaughterhouse windows, presumably to prevent any sniping from inside.

"The lights and the presence of the troopers, however, didn't prevent the murder of one of the hostages on that spot right about there, in the center of your screen, about six hours ago. A trooper told me that the girl was released by the fugitives and was walking down to join her family and friends when a single shot rang out and she was hit squarely in the back. She was, as you said, Ron, deaf, and the trooper told me he believed she'd used sign language to plead for help and to tell her family that she loved them."

"Joe, do you know the identity of that girl?"

"No, we don't, Ron. The authorities are being very slow in releasing any information."

"How many hostages are involved?"

"At this point it seems there are four students remaining inside and two teachers."

"So some have gotten out?"

"That's right. Three have been released so far, in exchange for demands by the kidnapers. We don't know what concessions the authorities have made."

"Joe, what can you tell us about those policemen off to the side there?"

"Ron, those are members of the elite Kansas State Police Hostage Rescue Unit. We've had no official word about an attempted rescue but I've covered a number of situations like this before and my impression is that they're preparing for an assault."

"What will happen, do you think, Joe? In terms of the assault? How will it proceed?"

"It's hard to say without knowing where the hostages are being kept, what the firepower of the men inside is, and so on."

"Could you speculate for us?"

"Sure, Ron," Silbert said. "I'd be happy to."

And he signaled to Biggins, using the hand gestures they'd developed between them. The sign meant "Zoom in."

They got down to the business at hand, for they didn't know how much time remained until the next deadline.

Captain Dan Tremain spoke on the scrambled radio to Bravo team and learned that they had found a breachable door near the dock in the back of the slaughterhouse but it was in full view of a skiff containing two armed troopers. The boat was anchored about twenty yards offshore.

"They'll see us if we get any closer."

"Any other access to the door?"

"Nosir."

Outrider Two, however, had some good news. Glancing into the plant, Trooper Joey Wilson had scanned the far wall – the southeast side – of the slaughterhouse and saw that, just opposite the fire door that Alpha team was going to breach, was a large piece of sloppily mounted plasterboard. He wondered if it covered a second fire door. The initial exterior surveillance hadn't revealed it. Tremain sent another trooper under the dock to the far side of the building. He made his way to the place Wilson mentioned and reported that it was in fact a door, invisible because it was overgrown with ivy.

Tremain ordered the trooper to drill through the door with a silenced Dremel tool fitted with a long, thin titanium sampling bit. Examining the core samples he found that the door was only an inch thick and had been weakened with wet rot and termite and carpenter ant tunneling. There was a two-inch gap and then he struck plasterboard, which proved to be only three-eighths inch thick. The whole assembly was far weaker than the door on the opposite side. Small cutting charges would rip it open easily.

Tremain was ecstatic. This was even better than going through the loading-dock door, because opposing door entry allowed for immediate dynamic crossfire. The takers wouldn't have a chance to respond. Tremain conferred with Carfallo and divided the men into two new teams. Bravo would make its way under the dock to the southeast side of the slaughterhouse. Alpha would position itself at the north door, further to the back but closer to the hostages.

Upon entry, Alpha would split in two groups, three men going for the hostages, three advancing on the takers, while the four-man Bravo team would enter through the south door and engage the HTs from behind.

Tremain considered the plan: Deep gullies to cover their approach, absolute surprise, stun then flash grenades, crossfire. It was a good scenario.

"Home base to all teams and outriders. On my mark it will be forty-five minutes to green-light order. Are you ready? Counting from my five… Five, four, three, two, one, mark."

The troopers acknowledged the synchronization. He would -

An urgent, staticky message: "Bravo leader to home base. We have movement here. From the loading dock. Somebody's rabbiting."

"Identify."

"Can't tell. They're slipping out from under the loading-dock door. I can't see clearly. It's just motion."

"An HT?"

"Unknown. The dock's shot to hell and there's crap all over it."

"Mount your suppressors."

"Yessir."

The men had suppressors on their H amp;Ks – big tubes of silencers. For at least a clip or two of ammunition the sound of the guns would be merely a whispering rattle and with this wind the troopers in the skiff would probably not hear a sound. "Acquire target. Semi-auto fire."

"Acquired."

"What's it look like, Bravo leader?"

"Real hard to make him out but he's wearing a red, white, and blue shirt. I can probably neutralize but can't make a positive ID. Whoever it is, he's staying real low to the ground. Advise."

"If you can make a positive ID on a taker you've got a green light to take him out."

"Yessir."

"Keep him acquired. And wait."

Tremain called Outrider Two, who risked a look through the window. The Trooper responded, "If anybody's bolting, it's Bonner. I can't see him. Only Handy and Wilcox."

Bonner. The rapist. Tremain would love the chance to bring God's revenge down upon him.

"Bravo leader. Status? He's going into the water?"

"Wait, yeah, there he goes. Just slipped in. Lost him. No, got him again. Should I tell the officers in the boat? He'll float right past them." Tremain debated.

"Home base, do you copy?"

If it was Bonner he might get away. But at least he wouldn't be inside for the assault. One less person to worry about. If – though it seemed impossible – it was a hostage there was a chance she might drown. The current was swift here and the channel deep. But to rescue her he'd have to give away his presence, which would mean calling off the operation and jeopardizing the other hostages. But no, he thought. It couldn't be a hostage. There was no way a little girl could escape from three armed men.

"Negative, Bravo team leader, do not advise the troopers in the boat. Repeat, do not advise of subject's presence."

"I copy, home base. By the way, I don't think we have to worry about him. He's going straight out to mid-river. Doubt we'll ever see him again."