He was getting away from the smell. The smell of the beer was so thick he could nearly taste it, and if he could taste it, then he could swallow it, so he was getting away from that. He was breathing clean air. It smelled of diesel fuel and exhaust, but it tasted clean, because it did not tempt his immense thirst.
Sound Truck
He came to the sound truck and knocked twice. The agent inside, the sound man, whatever his name was, slid the door open. Rap music beat tinnily from the headphones hanging around his neck. He stepped back to allow Banish inside.
“Anything?” Banish asked.
The sound man shook his head. “Nothing.”
Banish did not nod. If there had been any activity whatsoever from the cabin, he would of course have been notified immediately. It was a senseless question. He sat down in the chair nearest the open door. It creaked under him.
The sound man took the other chair. He was quiet, waiting for the senior agent to say something. He tapped two fingers on his fold-down desktop. Finally he came out with what was on his mind. “Why haven’t they answered?” he said.
Banish’s eyes were closed. His head was bowed. He just shook his head.
After a while the tin music became muffled as the sound man put his headphones back on. Banish opened his eyes and looked up. Surveillance cameras had been installed overnight, the monitor bank on the panel above the sound man’s head showing six different scenes in flickering black and white. It took Banish a moment to place each location: the cabin from three strategic angles, one head-on through the trees in front, and two wider pictures more than forty-five degrees each way; a wide view of the bridge and the crowd of protesters at the foot of the mountain; a section of empty road leading up the mountainside; and a high, wide overview of the staging area itself.
Banish thought he could discern the small dark blot the throw phone made on the wavy ground in the trees before the cabin. When the sound man looked up again, Banish caught his eye with a head nod. The sound man pulled off his headphones. “What about the external microphones?” Banish said.
The sound man shook his head. “Nothing between the music. Except once around three in the morning, a marshal taking a piss against a tree.”
“My men don’t piss on duty,” Fagin said.
Banish turned slowly, unimpressed by theatrics. Fagin was standing outside the open van door in full uniform minus his ball cap a camouflage bandanna wrapped tightly around his hard black head.
“Mighty big squirrels, then,” said the sound man in his Virginian accent.
Fagin nodded. “Must fucking be.” He stood with his big arms crossed, sizing up both of them. He looked as though he had had a shower. “Beautiful Montana morning,” he said, eyes cool and bright. There was something about Fagin that was always coiled.
“Actually,” the sound man said, turning more in his chair, “there was one strange thing overnight. A growling sound.”
Banish said, “What do you mean?”
“Not from inside the cabin — out there in the no-man’s-land. Every once in a while. Guttural noises, deep and fierce.”
“Coyotes,” Fagin said. “Bloodthirsty sons of bitches. My men see them stalking the perimeter at night through the trees. Yellow fucking eyes, and stealthy. It’s the dog meat. Music doesn’t scare them anymore.”
Fagin’s voice trailed off slightly at the end, and then his entire countenance gradually changed, his sharp eyes showing just a touch of vacancy. Then he frowned. He was receiving a transmission in his ear.
He looked up. “Where the fuck’s Perkins?”
“With the press,” Banish said. “Up there.” He motioned toward the adjoining peak.
Fagin said, “Fuck.” Then he moved off fast.
Banish turned back around. The sound man was looking at him, but Banish shrugged mildly. Delegation was another part of command “Put me through,” Banish said, lifting the handset off its hook.
The sound man readjusted his headphones, then cut the music with a flip of a switch, cueing Banish to begin.
Banish said flatly, “This is Special Agent Bob Watson.” He was watching the cabin on the wavy monitor, the dark blot of the orphan telephone. “Your cabin is completely surrounded. There is no chance for escape...”
The Baltimore Sun
HUDDLESTON Mont.” Aug. 7 — Federal authorities obtained a murder warrant yesterday against fugitive Glenn Alien Ables in the shooting death of Deputy U.S. Marshal Stanley Bascombe.
FBI agents yesterday continued to surround Ables’s remote mountaintop cabin in a tense standoff, wary that a full-scale assault could endanger the lives of the five children living inside.
Ables was indicted two years ago on federal weapons charges. Bascombe was killed during a gun battle touched off when a family dog picked up the scent of four U.S. Marshals conducting what has been described as a routine surveillance in a ravine below Ables’s cabin, according to authorities.
Bascombe’s body was flown home to Maryland two days ago. He will be eulogized at a service today at St. Paul’s Church in Baltimore by E. Walter Leveralt, Director of the U.S. Marshals Service.
Ables, a notorious white supremacist and former Ku Klux Klansman, has been charged with firing the shot that killed Bascombe. Charles Mellis, 29, Ables’s brother-in-law and one of four other relatives also hiding out in the cabin, faces a lesser charge of assault on a federal agent.
Authorities reportedly have received no response from the cabin since the initial shooting. They continued yesterday the tense and prolonged process of attempting to lure Ables out of the cabin. “This is not a routine arrest,” said Frank Spona, spokesman for the FBI in Washington, D.C. “We will exhaust every possible means we believe will effect a peaceful resolution.”
Ables has vowed not to be taken alive.
[The fifth day of the standoff was marked by mounting tension and swirling rumors, according to the Associated Press.
[A bizarre scene unfolded early yesterday as members of the elite U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group arrested five heavily armed men on a mountain road leading to a high ridge overlooking both Ables’s secluded cabin and the federal command post. Marshals, who described the young men as members of a neo-Nazi skinhead sect known as The Truth, stopped the Jeep and confiscated at least eight semiautomatic rifles without incident.
[The five men had swastikas painted on their faces, according to eyewitnesses. A banner proclaiming “Great White Revolution” was also recovered.
[Also yesterday, a Helena television station, without identifying its sources, reported that authorities had previously cut the eleven-member family’s water supply. Authorities have said that such action would be routine, although they have denied several other media reports, including one broadcast that tear gas canisters had been launched at Ables’s cabin.
[“We have purposefully and patiently taken no aggressive action,” said Reginald Perkins, Special Agent in Charge of the Butte, Montana, FBI Field Office, in the first FBI briefing at Paradise Ridge. “The critical factor in this situation is that there are juveniles in the residence.”
[Authorities denied that Ables’s continued lawlessness showed ineptitude on their part.
[“I see no embarrassment,” said Perkins. “This whole prolonged procedure shows only caring on the part of the government. The situation right now is that we care more about the children than Mr. Ables does, and this is a shame.”
[Authorities have said they are unsure how many weapons Ables may have stockpiled in the cabin, though it is widely known that his wife and children, ranging in age from 18 months to 14 years, regularly practice target shooting in the area.