The Standoff

Marshal’s Tent

The principals convened inside the marshals tent for a midmorning strategy meeting over breakfast. Perkins had organized the conference and figured to be instrumental in the post resolution breakdown of the staging area. He was seated, spooning out the loose white of a salted soft-boiled egg, between his ASAC, Hardy, and a tieless representative of the American Red Cross. Also seated there were SAs Banish and Coyle, two HRT agents, Fagin and another deputy marshal, two U.S. Attorneys from Helena with whom Perkins was acquainted, a GS-5 stenographer, and the local sheriff. The mood around the table was one of optimism, of anticipating the end of a tough, drawn-out siege and the satisfaction of a job well done, except of course for Fagin, for whom no form of resolution short of a blitzkrieg would have been entirely satisfactory, and Banish, who appeared distracted. Perkins assumed it was because Ables had been silent overnight.

The surrender protocol was SOP and familiar to all involved. They were assembled to iron out the particulars so that the event would proceed smoothly, and to ensure that the arrest would be performed strictly by the book. All agreed that they had come too far to risk being shot in the foot by a technicality.

Following Ables’s arrest, the task of removing him safely off-site fell to HRT. They had already secured the services of a UH-60 Black Hawk military helicopter, to be captained by a member of the 160th Special Operations Aviation Regiment “Night Stalkers” unit, currently en route from its home base at Fort Campbell, Kentucky. Ables would be transferred under HRT guard to the U.S. District Court in Helena and held there pending arraignment.

A special medical helicopter would airlift Mrs. Ables to a hospital in Great Falls, where she would be treated and later interviewed along with Mrs. Mellis. The Ables children would be turned over to their maternal grandparents following a nutritious meal, routine physical and psychological examinations, and subsequent individual questioning. Banish spoke up for the first time at that juncture, reminding everyone once again that their primary concern was the safe rescue of the children.

Alert status would remain in effect until Ables was confirmed airborne. Following that, marshals and agents would move immediately up the mountain to secure the cabin and cordon off the surrounding area. An FBI forensics team would enter and complete a point-by-point situational analysis of the cabin and grounds, including on-site ballistics work and color photography for possible future trial exhibition. Weapons would be itemized and tagged, then removed to an outdoor table for press viewing. Perkins would deliver a brief media statement in front of the cabin detailing the harsh conditions inside, and end with a protocol of the various participating agencies. All inquiries would be referred to the Department of Justice.

Fagin, sitting next to the younger marshal taking notes, objected then. “We need a contingency plan,” he said. “We need a net in case things go sour up there.”

Perkins said, “Our current blanket operation is more than sufficient. We have total containment.”

“If the exchange goes bad,” Fagin argued, “there’s gonna be beaucoup confusion, and Ables could provoke events beyond our control. What do you think he’s doing up there now? He’s been quiet almost twelve hours. You think they’re playing cards?”

Perkins said to him across the table, “We own this mountain. The moment he indicates he’s coming out, we go to full alert and collapse in on the cabin.”

The debate went back and forth a few more times, then passed quietly, with the majority expressing confidence in the present game plan and no objections from Banish, if he was even listening. The only other point to which he spoke during the briefing was in reference to the post resolution deployment of the Marshals Service Special Operations Group for bridge barricade containment. “At no time are any shots to be fired at civilians,” he ordered. “Tear gas and baton battery if necessary, but absolutely no shooting. Make it perfectly clear to all personnel.”

No one anticipated any problems on that end. The Marshals Service SOG was well versed in riot control and crowd containment.

Perkins then directed the men and Coyle to the prospectus before them, which outlined his schedule for the dismantling of the staging area. He estimated twenty-four hours from the time of Ables’s removal until complete federal evacuation, including: transport of all hardware such as vehicles and generators; inventory and removal of reusable materials such as tents and all unused supplies; plans for the kitchens and latrines to be razed for scrap; and transportation of federal personnel to the airport, with special attention to Banish and Perkins himself, who would be flying directly to Washington, D.C., for post situation summary consults.

The protesters were expected to disperse once Ables was delivered from the cabin. By prior arrangement, the Red Cross would oversee the return of the mountain residents to their homes following the federal evacuation. No recompense was deemed necessary or was being offered to the residents by the federal government regarding either term of displacement or property damages resulting from misadventure, as per the determination of counsel for the Department of Justice.

Toward the end of Perkins’s presentation, which he had spent the better part of the night working on, Banish stood and walked out of the tent without explanation. Everyone watched him go. The county sheriff excused himself and followed shortly after.

Office

Banish entered his office fast. He had had enough of this. He was viewing the situation much too desperately. They were his wife and daughter and he was going to call them on the telephone like anyone else. He went around to his desk and sat down and picked up the phone. He pushed a button to call the switchboard for an outside line.

Blood walked in. Banish pulled the phone away from his ear and said “What?” roughly.

Blood came forward to the desk. “The protesters are back,” he said.

Banish nodded curtly. “No miracle?”

Blood shook his head. “The problem now is, we seem to have inherited a good number of people from it. I think disappointment may have carried them over here. They’re stretched out both ways down the county road now, easily up over a thousand. They want a show, I guess. They want something.”

Banish heard a small voice talking at him through the earpiece. Kearney. He hung up the phone impatiently, his foot tapping under the desk.

Blood said, “The hardware store I told you about was broken into last night. Ransacked. Guns, knives, crossbows, over sixty pieces in all. Ammunition cleared out too.”

Banish rubbed his face hard. “Suspects?”

“Two words spray-painted over the emptied gun racks: ‘Holy War.’ ”

“ ‘Holy War,’ ” Banish said, nodding.

“Then late yesterday there was a full-fledged run on the Huddleston Dime bank. They had to lock the front door. Near riot.”

“Christ,” Banish said.

“It’s gone past any reasoning now. People are even talking about raids and invasions. Some, anyway — I’m sure others just see all this hysteria and want to make sure their money’s safe.”

Banish said, “All we have to do is hold them down below.”

“It’s exploding,” Blood said. “I understand it’s a race war now too, though I’m not quite sure how. They’ve taken Glenn Ables and they’ve fashioned him into a kind of hinge upon which all their beliefs turn. They’re preparing for a revolution.”

“That’s fine.” Banish nodded, wanting to push on.

“One more thing,” said Blood. He brought out the local paper and started to open it, then slipped it back under his arm and simply told Banish instead. “Today’s paper,” he said. “They got ahold of a courthouse copy of the letter mailed to Ables. He was right about that court date. It was a clerk’s mistake. The wrong date was on it.”

Banish looked at him a moment then. “You think he’s innocent?” he said sharply, suddenly trying to contain himself. “After all this. An illegal arms dealer. An explosives trafficker with white hate organizations. A racist. A murderer of federal agents, a shooter of police officers.”

Blood shook his head. “I think he’s guilty,” he said. “Of a lot of things. Just maybe not this.”

Banish brought his hand up near his head and squeezed a quivering fist. “Christ!” he said. He wanted to stand. “We should all just walk away, then.”

“I didn’t say that.”

“Then why do you come to me with this? Now you’re a crusader all of a sudden?”

Blood nodded. “That I am.”

“For the guilty?”

“For what’s right. For what’s lawful. I believe we talked about this yesterday. You pretty well took me out to the woodshed, matter of fact.”

Banish nodded and said, “Fine. Just fine. And you might as well bring a hat to a man with no head. Because I have no choice in the matter now. I was put on this mountain to do a job. And I will do it, I will accomplish what I came here to achieve, goddammit — and then they can all fight it out in court. I do not care. If it all comes to nothing — then fine. Let me read about it in the papers.”

Blood nodded. “All right,” he said.

“What word do you want me to use?” Banish continued. “ ‘Misguided’? ‘Unfortunate’? ‘It’s a damn unfortunate situation’? There. Now everybody’s even. Everybody’s got a raw deal, you, me, Ables — everybody. All right? That what you wanted to hear from me?”

“I understand the situation.”

“I cannot care. That is not my job here.”

Blood was nodding. “I am with you,” he said.

Banish saw that he was protesting too much. He curtailed it with a grand shrug of his arms and hands, and Blood nodded again. “Fine, then,” Banish said. Blood nodded and went out.

Banish sat still a moment, collecting himself. “Christ!” he said. He picked up the phone and got Kearney back. “Get me an outside line,” he said.

“Yes, sir.”

A dial tone came on immediately. Banish knew the long-distance number by heart. He dialed carefully. The connection went through and he switched ears, re gripping the receiver. He rubbed his itchy face. He waited through six long, empty rings until it was evident that there would be no answer. Then Coyle came in through the door flap. “Ables is on,” she said.

Sound Truck

“Watson.” The voice sounded tired and strange.

Banish said, “Mr. Ables.”

“I don’t like that tank out there.”

Banish glanced at Fagin standing next to him. The tank was there mainly for intimidation. Fagin showed him a shrug.

“The tank,” Banish said into the handset.

“It’s too close. I know what that thing could do to my house if I leave.”

“I’ll have it moved back.”

Ables was speaking more deliberately now. “I haven’t slept much since this started,” he said.

“You didn’t sleep overnight?”

“I stayed up with my children. We prayed together. For a sign.”

Banish flashed on the sound man’s report of having monitored one or more of the girls crying sometime before dawn.

Ables said, “My children don’t want me to go outside. They’d rather have that tank bomb us all into oblivion than see me go.”

“I’m having the tank moved back, Mr. Ables.”

“I will only be arrested by a white man.”

Banish nodded. “All right,” he said. He could not appear too eager.

“The house will be put in my wife’s name. She and Shelley and my children will not be arrested. Cameras will be there when I come out. They will have lights on so I can see them. I will not be handcuffed on my property, and I will be allowed to salute my supporters.”

The subtle sounds of disapproval from the men crowded behind him reflected the disappointment and exhaustion Banish felt himself.

“Mr. Ables,” he said, “that is unacceptable.”

Silence for a while, then Ables’s voice again over the speakers. “Watson,” was all he said. He sounded tired and dispirited.

Banish said, “You heard on your radio that people were keeping a vigil down at the foot of the mountain. First of all, those numbers have been exaggerated by the press. Secondly, it’s been nine days now and there are simply very few people left.” In a hostage negotiation, lying was known as disinformation. “Still, I cannot allow you to do anything that might bring about a civilian uprising.”

Ables said, “I know there are people down there, Watson. I know it. Good people, loyal people. Christian people. You will lie to me when it serves your purpose. They are down there waiting and they expect something of me.”

Banish came back quickly. “What do you want from me, Mr. Ables? Would you rather I agree to everything you say, that there are hundreds of people down there, that you can salute them and wave to them and give speeches and do whatever you want when you come down — and then double-cross you once we have you in custody? I am bargaining with you in good faith here. As unreasonable as things might seem to you right now, I am bending over backward for you.”

It was a measured risk. Ables was silent for a long while.

“Mr. Ables,” Banish said.

He looked to the sound man, who reassured him that Ables was still on the line.

“Mr. Ables,” Banish said.

“My children hate you, Watson.”

Banish went cold. “Mr. Ables,” he said.

“They will spit on your grave.”

“Mr. Ables.”

“No salute, then — but no handcuffs either.”

Banish looked over at Fagin. Fagin showed him a light shrug. Banish turned back to the microphone and made his decision, then waited, then waited some more.

“All right, Mr. Ables,” he said. “I accept your terms. Do we have an agreement?”

“I am still a man here, you bloodsuckers. A free man, an innocent man.”

“Mr. Ables, do we have an agreement?”

“Bastards,” he said. “Cowards.”

“Mr. Ables—”

“Do you believe in Yahweh, Mr. Watson?”

Banish, suddenly alarmed, reasserted himself. “Mr. Ables, I have accepted your terms and will honor them. Do we have an agreement?”

“You could take my life.” Ables’s voice was lower now. “You bloodsucking heathens — you could take my land and trample vilely upon it. But you will never take my faith.”

Banish straightened in his chair.

“Mr. Ables, we have an agreement. Will you come down now?” Banish hung on that, waiting a long time for an answer. “Will you come down now, Mr. Ables?”

Ables said, “I believe Yahweh has a plan for all of us.”

Then the thin click of the connection being broken. Banish said after him, “Mr. Ables— Mr. Ables—”

Fagin said, “Fuck.”

Banish tried again, becoming more anxious. “Mr. Ables—”

“What?” Blood said behind him. “Crazy talk?”

Perkins said, “Worse than that. The thing about the Surrender Ritual is—”

Banish switched off the handset and sat back fast. “It is identical to the Suicide Ritual,” he said. He turned to the sound man. “Ring him. Get him back on the line.”

“Screw it,” said Fagin. “I say fuck him. Let him twist.”

Banish turned. A sense of alarm was overwhelming him. “We need him alive.”

“Easy for you to say,” Fagin said. “I’m a black man.”

“He could turn right around and do the entire family.”

The sound man said beside him, “Not answering...”

“Sweet,” Fagin said, nodding, “real fucking sweet. Now all we have to do is worry about trying to save the life of the fucker we were sent here to kill.”

Banish stood then. “I wasn’t sent here to kill anybody.”

“Jesus Christ.” Perkins was standing behind everyone, seemingly in a daze. “We can’t turn this guy into a martyr. If we give them a grassy knoll here — Jesus Christ—”

“Agent Banish?” Banish swung around at the sound of his name. Kearney was standing outside the open door of the van. “The ATF agents are here.”

Banish was reeling. He avoided all faces, trying to rein in his desperation.

“Get HRT up to the cabin on standby,” he directed. “And keep trying that phone.”

Office

Banish in. Riga and Crimson seated, waiting.

“Why did you sting Ables?” Banish said, dispensing with formalities. No time for that now.

“What’s the idea,” Riga said, “pulling us off a job to come back here? You have the file.”

“Forget the file.” Banish was in front of them now. “Why Ables?” he said. “With all of the active WAR members inside the camp, why Ables?”

Riga said, “What do you mean?”

“You had a CI deep inside the WAR camp and you put him on a religious gun nut with delusions of grandeur, a non-Aryan racist malcontent living on top of a mountain miles away.”

“What does that mean?” Riga said. “What do you care?”

“Why did you get him on only one submachine gun and no explosives?”

“We told you why.”

“Why weren’t there any eyewitnesses to your meet with Ables?”

Riga opened his mouth to answer, then reconsidered. Crimson was sitting next to him watching Banish silently.

Banish said, “Why wasn’t either one of you wired?”

Neither agent said anything.

“Why wasn’t any money recovered from Ables after he sold you the Beretta? What prompted you to take him down without any backup?”

Nothing.

“How much prior contact did you have with Ables?”

Riga glanced over at Crimson.

Banish said louder, “Did you ever visit him at his cabin?”

Nothing.

“Did you ever threaten him with arrest if he did not cooperate?”

Nothing. They sat there.

Banish had worked himself up into a fury. “Why don’t you goddamn answer me?” he said.

The agents looked at each other. Riga sat slowly back in his chair, stern and narrow-eyed, while Crimson stayed where he was, his polite facial expression now betraying hints of concern. This was not at all how the game was played.

“You’re not asking the right questions,” Crimson said.

Command Tent

Agent Banish came back into the tent immediately after the ATF agents were asked to leave. He came up and used Brian’s telephone and dialed a number. Brian could hear the phone ringing without answer through the earpiece. Agent Banish waited fretfully. He rubbed the burned side of his face. When he hung up, Brian noticed him whispering to himself. Then he wrote down the phone number, area code included, and turned Brian around in his chair and showed it to him. “Forget what you are doing right now,” Agent Banish instructed. “I am reassigning you. Dial this telephone number and keep trying it until you get through. When you do get an answer, come and find me immediately. This is the home number of my wife and daughter in Cincinnati, Ohio, and it is imperative that I speak with them. Do you understand?”

“Yes,” Brian said.

“That is your sole responsibility from here on in. Clear?”

“Yes, sir,” Brian said, nodding.

Agent Banish went out then, Brian didn’t question it. He didn’t even tell Agent Coyle. He just started dialing.

Sound Truck

Fagin paced past Banish’s chair. Banish was sitting there with his head in his hands. The Indian sheriff was standing off to the side with his arms loosely crossed, leaning back against the wall.

This deathwatch was driving Fagin crazy. “What time is it now?” he said.

Perkins said behind him, “Four.”

Fagin said, “Mother fucker.”

“Watson.”

Banish was quick to react, switching on the mike. “Mr. Ables, are you coming down now?”

“I’m tired, Watson,” Ables said. He sounded weak. “I never been this tired.”

“Why don’t you come out, then. Come down and face your legal problems, Mr. Ables. Then you and your family can put this all behind you and get on with your lives.”

“Watson,” Ables said. He sighed then, or stifled a chuckle. “You have a forked tongue, Watson. I am charged with the murder of a federal official. I wouldn’t ever live to see the outside of one of your federal prisons.”

Even the sheriff stood off the back wall then. There couldn’t be any bigger flashing red light than that. Banish was sputtering. “Mr. Ables — I know it looks bleak in there — but out here there are no foregone conclusions. I guarantee that you will receive a fair trial—”

“In a federal court of law. The government establishment is looking forward to that. A legalized lynching. Or will your men save the taxpayers’ money, Watson?”

“Mr. Ables, listen to me.” Banish was leaning into the microphone. “You do not sound well.”

“Thorny-tongued... bastard,” Ables said. He was in-and-out like that, talking tired, taking deep breaths. “Who will you surrender to, Watson? Who will execute your sentence?”

“Mr. Ables,” Banish said. “Mr. Ables. Will you come down now?” He said it again, harder. “Will you come down?”

They waited, but that was it. Ables hung up and went away and Banish sat back in his chair. Fagin stepped up to him then, knowing what needed to be done. “He’s getting desperate,” Fagin told him. “We should go in there right now.”

“No,” Banish said without turning. He told the sound man, “Try and get him back.”

Fagin said, “Listen to me. He’s going fucking loopy up there, and growing more dangerous every second. We’re not so refreshed ourselves, but we’ve got speed, surprise, superior tactics—”

Banish turned on him then. “The kids, goddammit,” he said, getting to his feet. “What the hell do you think this” — he waved awkwardly — “this whole goddamn thing is all about? What do you think we came here for in the first place? We’re here to save lives, for Christ’s sake. Not take them. The kids, Fagin.”

Fagin looked up at the ceiling and nodded. He knew full well what the hell their job there was. What he was doing now was cutting down the odds.

The Indian sheriff spoke up behind him. “What if he’s baiting us?” he said. “What if he’s playing possum? We’re out here doing a number on him, how do we know he’s not in there doing the same on us?”

Banish shook his head at it all. “We wait,” he said. “Wait. Wait. Wait.”

He also seemed to be convincing himself. This was crunch time and it was all they could do to keep from climbing the walls. Banish went off and moved toward the other side of the crowded van, bumping elbows with Perkins and pulling back in anger.

There was a crackling in Fagin’s ear. He put his finger to the wire, then tapped on his radio. “He’ll be right there,” he said.

Banish glanced across at him. Fagin grinned wide. “You’re gonna love this,” he said.

Banish turned and studied the black-and-white monitors. Then he and the sheriff left. The rest of them stood there trying not to look at each other. Fagin smiled and shook his head, pacing slowly back and forth.

Bridge

Blood got out of the government Jeep after Banish, halfway between the bottom of the road and the iron bridge. They faced a sea of protesters jammed in shoulder-to-shoulder, filling out the wide area beyond the bridge and extending out in both directions of the access road as far as the trees allowed Blood to see — all standing quiet and still. No speeches, no milling about. Standing silently in the dimness of the setting sun and watching the mountain, and waiting.

The only figures breaking rank were a dozen or more skinheads squatting shirtless on the jagged rocks to the right of the bridge. Large black swastika tattoos showed on their white skin, as did the yellow laces crisscrossing up their black boots. They were shaving their heads in the muddy creek. They crouched there in defiance, running disposable razors in clean strokes across the tops of their skulls and ladling out water and washing it over their smoothed heads.

A bridge marshal came up and gave his name as Orton. He reported to Banish that there had been a bomb scare earlier and the marshals had gone through and shaken down the crowd, and since then, this.

Banish instructed Orton and the roughly forty other marshals around the bridge to ready their riot equipment. He then reiterated his order that no civilians be fired upon under any circumstances.

Blood sensed heads turning. The gathered faithful were recognizing Banish, and the scandal of their discovery rippled, like a whisper, throughout the vast crowd.

Banish stood facing them. “We won’t win here,” he said quietly.

Blood turned and looked at him. “What?”

“We won’t win here,” Banish said, looking out over the mob. “It will not end well.”

“What do you mean?”

Banish did not answer. A few voices rose out of the horde then, hecklers, their voices growing louder. Banish listened as they taunted and cursed him. He remained there a while longer, seemingly accepting their vilification. Then he turned and climbed into the Jeep and they headed one last time back up the mountain.

Sound Truck

Banish was floating in the black realm behind his closed eyes. He was waiting. His fevered brain had finally cooled. Peaceful there in the darkness, his eyes relaxed and still, soaked black.

He opened them. He was seated on the step of the side door of the van, head down, forehead held lightly in his hands, shoes planted flat on the weedy ground. He looked up. Kearney was standing in the twilight before him. Banish started to get to his feet.

“No answer,” Kearney said quickly, stopping him. “Still no answer. I just wanted to let you know I was still trying. I’ve been dialing nonstop.”

Banish sat back down on the metal step.

Kearney said, “They must be out somewhere.”

Banish nodded, tired. Kearney was looking at him.

“I’ll be getting right back to it,” Kearney said. “I just thought I should reassure you...” His words trailed off. “I’ll get back,” he said.

“I just need to speak to them,” said Banish.

Kearney nodded quickly. “I understand that.”

“I’m better now,” Banish said. “I need to get through to them to tell them that.”

Kearney nodded. “I understand families, sir.”

They looked at each other, then Kearney’s eyes fell to the dirt and he turned to start away.

“I—” Banish said, rather than “Hold on,” not imploringly but with the same effect. Kearney stopped and turned uncertainly, then came back a few steps. Banish shook his head. “Listen,” he said. “I don’t have many friends left. But I still know a few names at the Bureau. Some people there I could call.”

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

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

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

Banish shook his head.

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

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

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

Banish nodded. Kearney came closer still.

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

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

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

“Watson.”

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

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

“Where do you find God, Watson?”

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

“Where do you find God, Watson?”

“What?”

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

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

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

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

“Is Banish there now?”

“No— Mr. Ables—”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Watson.”

“Yes, Mr. Ables?”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Bridge

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

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

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

There were people running up through the trees.

“Agent Banish—”

Staging Area

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Staging Area

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

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

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

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

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

Fagin turned left. He raised and aimed.

Banish said, “Don’t shoot him.”

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Sound Truck

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

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

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

“Flood it!” he said.

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

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

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

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

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

Blood said, “I’m going.”

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

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

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

Bridge

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

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

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

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

Cabin

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Command Tent

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

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

He got up. The noise outside the tent was tremendous now, but first he went around picking up different phones in the tent. All dead. The lines had gone down.

Brian went to the door flap and stepped outside to look, and it was incredible what he saw. Not a celebration. A revolution. The mob of protesters charging through the staging area, hundreds of them, a thousand, up from the mouth of the road and across the clearing like a civilian army. They were out of control. Brian saw people he knew, neighbors of his, racing for the road, yelling and pushing on each other, fists in the air, legs working frantically. He saw a few agents attempt to get in and stop the crowd but it was useless. Like rocks in the river. The dam had already been broken. Then trucks appeared behind the mob, TV trucks, like pistons driving the marauders into the clearing and across to storm up the road. It was a swarm. A whole mass of frenzied people moving as one. As the trucks rolled past the tents and onto the new road, Brian lit out fast from where he was, running after them. It was already a full blown riot. He feared a massacre.

Barn

Watching the crate slide back in the dark corner, and hearing the commotion going on up at the cabin and in his ear, Taber needed all his patience to remain quietly where he was. The dirt top came up and off and smoke puffed out of the tunnel hole as a woman came out coughing violently, recognizable as Michelle Mellis. She had a gun in her right hand.

Before she could step forward, Taber said authoritatively from behind the old sit-down lawnmower, “Hold it.”

Porter, at the barn entrance, echoed him. “U.S. Marshals Service.”

Mrs. Mellis’s shirt and sweatpants were streaked with dirt. Smoke drifted up around her. She stopped where she was but did not immediately lower the gun.

“Your choice,” said Taber.

Another moment of weighing her options. “Damn,” she said then, tersely, hacking dryly into a dirty fist and tossing the gun aside.

“Hands above your head,” Porter commanded.

Taber stood and advanced with his gun aimed, moving in behind her with handcuffs. “Who killed your husband, Mrs. Mellis?” he said.

Mrs. Mellis stifled her coughing. She looked away from Taber as the bracelets clicked around her wrists. “I want a lawyer,” she said.

Shed

A crash behind Banish as part of the roof collapsed and sparks shot out into the open land behind the burning cabin. There were flashlight beams in the trees. Marshals or agents moving along the outlying grounds. Banish quickly scanned the area. He was in the zone directly behind the cabin, beyond what the spotters in the no-man’s-land could see.

There were three small shacks and the outhouse between the cabin and the cliffs. The nearest was a skeletal frame of rafters and beams, only half-constructed. He went to the one in the middle ground, made of wafer board and flathead nails, with a box window facing the cabin and a four-foot latch-handle door on the right side. The door was closed.

Banish went to it. He stood and listened over his own harsh breathing for movement inside, then lightly tugged up on the door latch. It lifted and the door fell open a few inches. No noise. He pushed it open wider and stepped inside.

There was sudden, jerking movement from within and he stopped fast. Orange flame light slanted in through the box window. He saw one young Ables girl, then another, seated side by side on the floor, in the shadows between the wooden end-legs of a broad workbench and the far-left wall. The older one, Ruth, was sitting with her arms hugged around her knees, frightened, staring up at him. The five-year-old, Esther, had one arm tangled up inside her sister’s. Her other arm hugged what appeared to be a Bible. Esther began immediately to cry. Both skinny girls wore T-shirts and soiled skirts and sandals. Both wore leather holsters. Small-caliber guns hung in each.

Banish was so gratified to see them alive that at first he could think of nothing to say. He took another slow step inside and then showed them, without being too obvious, his empty hands. He saw that Ruth noticed.

“Hello,” Banish said.

Esther turned away, burying her face in Ruth’s arm. Ruth looked at him with wary eyes, then turned her head back toward the window. Flickering orange played over her dirty face. The cabin outside was now completely engulfed. They had huddled in the small toolshed to watch the blaze.

“Hello,” Banish said again. “Are you girls all right?”

Ruth turned and looked at him. Neither girl spoke.

“Where are your sister and brother?”

Again they said nothing. Ruth’s nine-year-old face was dark-eyed and tight with suspicion.

Banish entered more fully. He did so slowly and without looking at their holsters, removing his own jacket for further reassurance. Ruth saw that he was unarmed. A helicopter buzzed overhead and for a moment the dark shed glowed under the searchlight.

“No one is going to hurt you,” Banish said. Esther’s face was hidden. Both girls appeared particularly fragile, like rag dolls tossed into an attic corner. “Are you hungry?” he said. “We have food for you. Whatever you like.”

Ruth turned to look at the blaze again.

“What happened?” Banish said.

Ruth answered him then, blankly, bravely, staring at the fire. “Daddy lit a fire and told us to get out and run,” she said.

Banish nodded. “He was worried about you.”

Esther was peeking out at him now, sniffling, urchin-eyed. Banish took another small step forward into the center of the shed.

“I have a daughter,” he said. “She looked just like you two when she was your age. Same dark hair, big eyes.”

Ruth said, “You tried to take our daddy away.”

“No,” Banish told her. “We just wanted to keep you safe. Your grandparents asked us to come up here and get you.”

Footsteps rushing outside. HRT. Banish stepped back to the door as agents in black ninja gear ran up. He showed them a harsh face and an open, insistent hand, then turned back slowly to the girls. They were still sitting there on the floor, captivated by the blaze. Their guns remained holstered.

“We’re here to rescue you,” Banish said, coming back toward them. “To bring you to your mother. She’s safe too. She’s waiting for you out in front. Do you want me to take you there?”

Esther said, sniffling, “Mommy in back room.”

Banish stared at her until his eyes glistened. His eyes glowed. He moved close to them then, almost blinded. “Come on,” he said quietly, arms out. “Come on.”

Esther stood first, reluctantly, not letting go of her sister or her Bible. Then Ruth. Ruth’s head was turned, still watching the flames through the window, as Banish knelt on one knee before them. “You’ll be all right now,” he said, unbuckling Ruth’s holster belt, then Esther’s.

Ruth’s upturned, vacant face glowed like brass. “Mommy,” she said.

When they were both disarmed, Banish waved the HRT agents in behind him. He stood and handed the first one the holster belts, then grabbed the man’s sidearm from him and went racing out of the shed.

Cabin

Banish came around the front of the cabin with the gun up and aimed. The medical helicopter had landed in the foreground, rotors whining, waiting to take off again. Two EMTs led Mrs. Ables toward it. She was walking on her own, between them, wearing a loose sweater, a loose gray skirt, and a long, singed dark-haired wig. Banish came up behind them and stopped ten yards away. They were too close to the helicopter for him to risk waiting any longer.

“Mrs. Ables!” he yelled.

She stopped dead. The EMTs on either side of her stopped as well and turned back and looked at him strangely.

“Mrs. Ables!” Banish yelled again.

He was aware of Perkins and the other agents around him turning and watching in confusion as he stood there aiming the gun. The helicopter beckoned. The EMTs were looking at her now. She was not moving. Banish called her one last time, yelling, dizzied.

“Mrs. Ables!”

She threw a fist suddenly and then an elbow with the same, good arm, and both EMTs collapsed to the ground. She turned fast, holding a gun. It was Ables himself. The wig hung ragged and low on his head and his face was darkened with soot, which obscured his identity. The clothes were shapeless on his small frame and soiled with ash, his left arm bent in its sling.

The surrounding agents all dropped and drew. The EMTs realized what was happening and scurried away.

Ables was staring at him darkly from behind the .45. “Watson,” he said. “You son of a bitch.”

Banish brought out his ID, ten yards away. “Banish,” he told him. “FBI. You’re under arrest.”

Ables’s face shook a moment, staring, then regained its outlaw composure. “Son of a bitch,” he said. His eyes glanced left and right. “Move and I’ll kill him!” he warned, then looked back to Banish. “I’m getting on that copter.”

Banish just shook his head.

He saw Fagin moving in front of the helicopter to his right. Fagin knocked on its bubble windshield and gave the pilot a quick thumbs-up sign and the pilot needed no more than that. He throttled up quickly and took the bird into the air.

The rotor wash whipped at Ables as the helicopter turned above, then dipped sharply down behind the tree cover and disappeared. Everything was quiet then except for the fire. Ables looked around desperately. More marshals and agents emerged from the woods and behind the cabin. Each had a gun or rifle out and was aiming at him. Ables saw them all and raised his arm a bit, reasserting himself, leveling the gun at Banish as though to shoot.

“You murdered my wife and my daughter,” he said loudly.

“You shot at policemen,” Banish said. “You killed a United States Marshal.”

“I was framed.”

“You wanted this,” Banish said, shaking his head. They were standing there pointing guns at each other. “This is what you wanted.”

Beyond Ables, the earth was rumbling, shouts and trampling footsteps approaching fast. Banish first saw the tops of heads, then bodies filling in around the vehicles, advancing upon the scene. The protesters had somehow broken free. They had rushed all the way up the new road and hundreds were now charging onto the mountaintop. If they overran the cabin, they would easily obscure Ables. Some of the nearby agents stepped back, greatly outnumbered, guns aimed. There was going to be shooting. Ables’s face showed that he knew exactly what was going on behind him and he grinned cockily. This was his dream fulfilled.

A body moved at the top of the road facing the stampeding crowd. It was Blood. He stopped in front of them and fired a single shotgun blast into the air, then recocked the weapon and aimed it at the mob, halting them all. The lead protesters stopped fast, others piling up quickly behind. “Not one more foot,” Blood announced. They stood there breathing heavily, pressing against one another, stunned, looking at the local sheriff standing up to them and beyond him to all the armed agents and Banish, and the figure standing there in the skirt and wig.

Ables realized what had happened behind him and his confidence failed. “Back off, all of you!” he shouted to the agents. “I’ll kill the FBI man!”

Not one man moved.

“Get back!” he shouted. “I’ll do it!”

No one retreated. Barely any motion from any of the men. Only Fagin moved. He started over toward Ables, in plain view from the right. His gun was up and aimed and obvious.

Ables saw him coming peripherally, and surely saw his black skin. “I’ll kill him!” Ables shouted, eyes on Banish. “I ain’t afraid to die!”

Fagin kept coming. Ables’s eyes darted from Fagin to Banish and quickly back and forth again. But Fagin just kept coming. Ables’s gun hand shook. His eyes twisted around and saw Fagin’s gun nearing his head. “I ain’t afraid to die!” he said.

Fagin stopped next to him, arm outstretched, his gun muzzle not six inches away from Ables’s left ear. “Here’s your big chance, then,” he said.

Ables’s face was a wide-open display of desperation. His eyebrows ran high as though trying to pull his head back from the muzzle. The .45 shook in his hand but stayed up.

Banish lowered his gun and tucked it loosely into his belt, then started forward.

Ables’s head turned just a little. His face could not comprehend what was happening as Banish approached him unarmed. The .45 remained high.

“After all your talk,” Banish said to him, halfway there.

Ables’s face clouded over in anger. “Son of a bitch,” he said, reasserting the .45.

Banish came closer until he was standing right in front of Ables, the muzzle of the .45 leveled flush at his heart. He watched Ables’s face under the dark wig, shaded with ash, small and weak-featured, and popping, and seething, and pathetic. He saw the flames reflected in his small black eyes. He saw the man standing there behind the gun. Behind all the rhetoric and the hatred, a small, pitiful man. In over his head and too blind to see it until just that moment. All the trouble he had caused, and all it had cost him.

Banish reached out and pushed Ables’s .45 away and stepped up to him. Ables was breathing fast. He was staring at Banish. Banish felt nothing for him. All the time and money spent, the man-hours, the equipment. Everything Banish and his men had gone through to arrive at this triumphant moment of surrender, to deliver this man from his home. “This is all it comes to,” Banish said. Fagin came around Ables and relieved him of the .45, ripping off his sling and pulling both his arms behind him. Ables grunted in pain. He twisted his head around to see the black-skinned man taking him into custody.

Banish turned Ables around to face the mob. He saw Deke Belcher pushing his way to the front of the crowd there. He saw Kearney standing next to Blood.

Banish pulled off Ables’s wig and tossed it to the ground. He could feel the spirit of the mob, palpably, its cresting triumph dying suddenly there in front of him like a ghost slipping free of a corpse. Here was their savior before them, revealed. Here was their tarnished soul.

Sheriff Blood turned back from the stilled crowd. They were mere bystanders now, as though snapped out of a trance and happening upon this strange scene. Blood came up in front of Ables and took a piece of paper out of his coat pocket. He pressed it to Ables’s thin chest.

“Served,” Blood said. “Notice of eviction.”

Fagin had handcuffs out and was snapping them tight around Ables’s wrists. “You have the right to remain silent,” he began loudly, adding under his breath, “you fuck.”

Banish stepped forward then. He felt a sad sense of piety looking out over the mob. There was no glory here. He eyed the thick stream of bodies stretching down the freshly cut road. “Go on home,” he told them. “Get out of here, all of you. It’s over.”

A lilting silence. Failure brought to the mob a small, ringing moment of true peace. Then the people in front started, reacting suddenly, buzzing again and looking to their left, Banish’s right. He turned. A figure was emerging from the woods. It was Rebecca, the fourteen-year-old daughter. She held the infant Amos in one arm, a .38 in the other. Marshals and agents were backing cautiously out of the way. She saw her father standing there in a skirt and handcuffs and was moving toward him, aiming mainly at Banish.

Banish held his open hands out toward her. “No,” he said. He said it simply, extending his arms, trying to stop her with sheer will. “No,” he said. “Don’t do this.”

The marshals were all backing off, giving her a wide berth as she walked with the baby and the gun from the trees in toward the burning cabin. The girl was crying. Tears rolled in two clean streaks down her face. She wore a plain, frayed cotton dress and sandals with broken straps.

“Let him go,” she said.

Banish moved between her and her father. His arms were out. “Don’t do this to me,” he said.

“Becca—” said Ables behind him, followed by a grunting noise, Fagin shutting him up.

Tears rolled liberally down the girl’s face. “Let my daddy go!” she screamed, the gun shaking.

She stopped a few yards in front of Banish. The baby was waking in her other arm. Marshals moved in slowly around her.

“No, no, no,” said Banish. His arms were out and he was simultaneously holding off the marshals and pleading with the girl. “No,” he said, trying to stop time, trying to hold everything.

The marshals slowed, remaining close. Banish slipped his gun out of his belt and tossed it away. He started forward toward her. He was shaking his head. If he could not talk her down, he would jump her himself. She was aiming fully at him now.

“Give me the gun,” he said. He reached one open hand out to her. “Give me the gun. It’s all over.”

She shook her head wildly. “You let him go!”

Banish moved again closer. His hands were out in front of him. He was pleading. “I don’t want you to get hurt,” he said.

“Don’t touch me.”

“Give me the gun.” He was walking forward, close to her. He was shaking his head sadly. “It’s all over now,” he said. “It’s over. It’s over.”

The corners of her eyes crinkled, then fresh tears squeezed out. One lip came up to comfort the other. The siege had taken its toll. He saw now that she was looking at her father standing there in custody. She was fighting reason. She shuddered twice, two small, silent sobs. A revolution going on within her. The baby boy, Amos, held in a sitting position, looked blankly at Banish.

“It’s over now,” Banish said. He was getting through to her. Her lower lip quivered as her face crumbled inward. The baby and the gun both heavy. She was fighting hard to hold her composure. He was convincing her. She was only fourteen years old.

Banish shook his head again, nearly crying himself. He was reaching out to her plaintively. “Don’t do this to me,” he said.

She was lowering the gun. She was putting the gun down. Her shoulders were shaking and the tears were washing her face, and the gun was going down. Two marshals, one on either side of her, started forward. Banish let them. He dared not move. The gun was pointed at about his knees now. He made ready to step forward and take it away from her.

The girl looked once more at her father. Her quivering shoulders stopped then and held still, as though in one final swallow of compliance. But the gun had stopped too. Stopped at about Banish’s feet, and now she was staring hard at her father. Only Banish was close enough to see the burning in her eyes, her face changing before him, the burning overcoming all else. It was fierce in her eyes, the flames, reflected from the cabin and not reflected, and Banish saw in a moment of flaring intuition that she was not looking at her father at all now, she was looking at the man standing behind her father, the man who was holding her father in handcuffs, and seeing the black color of that man’s skin. He saw it happening as it was just about to happen, a moment of pure vision, and as he rushed at her all at once, propelling himself forward, her gun came back up and she got one shot past him before he threw himself upon her and the infant boy and went crashing down on top of them hard to the ground.

Cabin

It all happened at once. Blood saw the girl’s arm stop going down, and then that look she got on her face, like wind blowing sand off a sundial, and Banish leaping forward and the gun going up and her firing off one shot and Fagin pitching back behind Ables, hit, his head snapping back, blown off his feet by a shot to the chest and his body dropping fast and the gun kicking back in her small white hand and the non look on her face — it was pure instinct — and the marshals’ rifles beside her coming up in their hands, and Banish leaping in the air with his arms out and landing on the girl and the boy, tackling them, smothering them underneath him and falling to the ground, the marshals’ guns kicking back and puffing smoke, all happening at once, Banish coming down hard on top of the girl with the baby and the gun and Ables falling forward from the act of Fagin being blown back off his feet and settling still on the ground.

Cabin

He saw the night sky. He struggled up dizzily to sit. Screaming fucking pain in his chest. Fagin said viciously, “Jesus fucking Christ!” and looked down and saw the hole in his jacket and ripped it open and saw the fabric torn apart. He saw the shotglass punch mark in his Kevlar vest. Christ, it hurt. Right in the fucking sternum. He looked up fast, the pain shooting to his waist and neck. Did they get the gun? And why wasn’t anybody fucking helping him?

He got to his knees, then his feet. Christ, it fucking hurt. Ables was lying on his stomach near him, hands cuffed behind, unable to move. Fagin stumbled forward, standing on his own. He had to. Everyone else was away from him. He looked over and saw that Banish had taken down the girl himself. He was body-blanketing her and the infant, holding them still on the ground, and the gun was lying clear. The marshals and agents were all moving in around them. Blood reached Banish first and touched his shoulder. Fagin saw then for the first time the two holes in Banish’s back. He saw the blood soaking like red ink into Banish’s white shirt. Blood rolled him off the children, who were hysterical. Banish’s half-burnt face was fixed. His eyes searched the night sky, mouth mumbling.

Cabin

Blood was the first to reach him. Banish wasn’t moving. Blood called his name and touched his shoulder, the girl and the baby boy screaming beneath him. Then he saw the holes in Banish’s back. Two distinct holes filling up red. Blood grasped Banish’s shoulder and rolled him off them and stood back fast. Banish was staring up. His blue eyes were glazed, blinking for comprehension. His face seemed lazy, half-ashen, lips opening and closing without sense. Hands grabbing lightly at the ground. Blood took a full, terrified step backward, then rushed forward and down. The blood was pooling on the dry earth beneath Banish’s back, spreading. His head lolled to one side. He was looking at the children. Blood reached for Banish’s head and turned it so that he was looking up at him. Blood could say nothing. He tried. Then Banish’s weak neck failed again and his head dropped the other way and blood spilled like red syrup out of his mouth. Blood righted him, holding his head with both hands now. Banish was mumbling, incomprehensibly at first. Then, wheezing: “Call my wife.” Blood could hear Fagin saying behind him, “Somebody get a fucking EMT!” and sensed the people suddenly rushing around him, the weight of their collective realization. The girl and boy being pulled away, screaming. Banish was looking up past Blood. “I’m sorry,” he said. “I’m sorry.” He was apologizing over and over again. Blood was yelling down at him, something, holding his head up, watching the red life spill from his mouth.

Cabin

They rolled him over and he was looking up at the last of the shooting flames and the black tower of smoke running up into the night sky. A buzzing helicopter slowly crossed his view. Banish’s eyes fell left and he saw Rebecca and he saw Amos and his blood was on their dirty clothes but the gun was knocked away and they were crying and they were both fine. They were fine.

They moved his head again and he asked for his wife. He asked that Molly and Nicole be brought to him immediately. If he spoke at all, that was what he said. He was trying to speak. He was just a head now, nothing in his arms or legs or in his chest except the heaviness, not really tingling but absent now and gone.

He saw Blood over him. The Indian’s hat was off and his long black hair was out and hanging and he was wild-eyed, yelling. He told Blood to get his wife and daughter and hurry. He needed to tell them. It was never too late. That was what the songs always said. It was never too late. He saw Fagin now, alive. Others looking over him with paralyzed expressions. Kearney, his face wide. Coyle in tears. Perkins. The smoke funneling up beyond them.

He saw the smoke and the fire and the helicopters and the branches and the night. He heard the buzzing now, full in his head. The buzzing. He was getting through to Molly. “I’m sorry,” he said. He said it again and again. “I’m sorry,” he said. Everything relaxing in him now. “So sorry,” he said. The smoke and the fire and the night. “Forgive me,” he said. Everything he had ever done to anybody he had ever hurt.

Blood yelling at him now. Fagin motioning. EMTs working over him, shaking him. Shining lights, talking in his face.

Some things you cannot negotiate. Some things are fixed and cannot be bargained with or for. Banish relaxed completely and let his eyes unfocus softly, like ribbon raveling off a spool.

Butte, Montana

[PARASIEGE, p. 83]

SA Banish expired at 22:47 hrs. (Mountain Time) on 10 August 1993. His body was loaded into a service truck and transported off Paradise Ridge and flown to FBI headquarters in Washington, D.C., for postmortem examination. An intermediate crime scene was declared and the area cordoned off and all weapons surrendered for inspection. Members of the press were briefly detained, camera film and videotape recordings confiscated as evidence.

The subsequent official ruling of SA Banish’s demise as death by misadventure was appropriate and the dismissal of all charges against the two deputy marshals justified. No one law enforcement individual or group of individuals could be said to have been at fault or performing outside their duties in the wake of the attempted murder of Deputy Marshal Fagin by Rebecca Ables.

As to the subject of this report, Special Agent John Banish:

As directed telephonically by Assistant Director Richardsen, GID, on 4 August 1993, I insinuated myself as close as possible to SA Banish during the PARASIEGE operation in Montana and monitored his daily activities, re porting nightly to AD Richardsen’s office and recording notes and observations variously reflected herein. In summary, I find that I cannot accurately estimate the quality or state of SA Banish’s mental health and disposition, or whatever limitations it may or may not have imposed upon his reasoning faculties as they impacted his decision-making ability over the course of the siege. I can, however, offer my impressions of SA Banish’s job performance as compared to those activities generally understood to befit a federal agent.

SA Banish’s methods were unorthodox. SA Banish’s actions were suspect and often baffling, and his motivation for these actions secretive and at times wholly unknown to anyone but himself. SA Banish was inconsistent in following both basic negotiator as well as Bureau SOP, and on at least two occasions detailed herein blatantly disregarded or, at best, casually ignored direct Bureau orders. The joint forces’ confidence in SA Banish varied widely throughout the siege, but overall would be rated at a level lower than the minimum standard any effective case agent would be expected to garner. SA Banish’s interpersonal skills were naught and his personality — that is, his presence, characterized by the caliber of his leadership — was, at best, remote.

Having said this, I find however that I cannot myself join the recent chorus condemning SA Banish’s performance at Paradise Ridge. Despite his numerous shortcomings, I found SA Banish to be entirely focused on the case assigned to him and at all times fully and wholeheartedly dedicated to the successful resolution of operation PARASIEGE I must also contradict SAC Perkins’s and others’ accounting of SA Banish’s professional demeanor, in as plain language as I am capable: at no time in my numerous daily exchanges with SA Banish did I suspect, sense, or otherwise detect any evidence whatsoever of alcohol use. Unsubstantiated allegations as to SA Banish’s deportment can only serve to cloud this already difficult and complicated after-action examination. SA Banish was dispatched to Paradise Ridge under unusual circumstances with the directive to end the delicate, highly public siege situation ongoing therein and deliver the suspect individual while preventing any further harm to the hostage family. Setting aside for a moment the question of the death of Marjorie Ables, with which this internal investigation is primarily concerned, and the death of Judith Ables, which occurred before SA Banish’s arrival, SA Banish resolved PARASIEGE successfully and at extraordinary personal cost. SA Banish delivered all four of the Ables children into safety, including single-handedly saving the lives of the oldest and the youngest at the expense of his own. In this light, I find the recent backlash and revision of SA Banish’s reputation by SAC Perkins and others not only misguided but, frankly, most unfortunate.

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