Agent Banish said, “Presume complicity. Get up there and bring them in separately and quietly.”
He switched off the radio and started away at a brisk pace across the clearing. Brian stood there just long enough to watch him disappear, striding hard into the shadows falling between two high lights, then hurried over to a Jeep to get back down as fast as he could to his assigned post. Things were finally starting to happen, and he knew now that Agent Banish was in full control.
Sound Truck
Perkins was already at the sound truck when Banish arrived. The sound man was seated in front of the monitor bank. Banish climbed inside. His blood was pumping again.
On the monitor showing the artificially bright eastern angle of the mountaintop, a team of marshals was rough-searching three people lying prone on the ground.
Perkins said, “The Newlands and Charles Mellis.”
“Escaped or released?”
The sound man said with a shrug, “They just walked out.”
Banish watched the monitor a moment longer. “Keep all three separated,” he said to Perkins. “Debrief them before you feed them. Read them their rights, then get everything down on tape. Cover it with your 302 and see me after. I want observations and impressions. Then call the U.S. Attorneys. They’ll need statements and so on.”
Perkins was nodding, taking it all in. “Wait,” he said. “We have only two holding tents.”
Banish acknowledged this with a frown. “All right,” he said. “Clear the personal effects out of my trailer. Put Mellis in there and assign two marshals to guard it full-time.” He raised his radio then. “Fagin. Anything?”
Fagin’s voice came back from the mountaintop. “Negative.”
Banish nodded. He said, “Keep watching.”
Sound Truck
Perkins was waiting for Banish outside the sound truck. His ear wire was out and hanging down to his lapel and he was smoking a cigarette. Banish had not smelled tobacco on him before. A roar started up again before they could speak, a UH-1 National Guard helicopter lifting off into the early evening sky and circling away. Dirt swirled up and the clearing shook. Banish would return to his office to find half the papers shaken off his desk again.
Perkins released a sighed stream of smoke out one side of his mouth. “The Newlands check out,” he said. “I took them backward and forward through it, the same exact story. Kept in a back room by the rear porch, given bread and fruit and water rations twice daily, but didn’t know what was going on inside. Ables purposefully kept them isolated. They said they could hear music playing and the voice on the loudspeaker, but they didn’t know what the reaction was. They heard the infant crying every once in a while, but Mrs. Mellis brought them their food and she never said anything.”
“So what happened?”
“They said it came out of nowhere. Ables appeared with Charles Mellis and told all three to get their things and go.”
“Why not Mellis’s wife?”
“Unknown. The Newlands say they don’t know much about Mellis, except that he was very tight with Ables. But since the shootout, they’ve been in back of the cabin and everyone else was in the front.”
Banish nodded. “What does Mellis say?”
Perkins took another deep drag, blew it out. “He admitted right away to being involved in the shootout. I Miranda’d him but he kept right on talking. Said Ables is losing control up there. Said he’s not thinking clearly, he’s talking to himself, pacing around the cabin, blah, blah, blah. But then a funny thing happened. Mellis figured out that I wasn’t Watson and he clammed up. He says he has something important to say, but only to the man in charge.”
Banish was shaking his head.
Perkins said, “All he said was that people will get hurt. That’s all he would tell me. Ask me, do I believe him? I don’t know. My read is that he’s serious, at least about refusing to talk to anyone else. He does seem anxious to spill, though.”
Banish said, “Out of the question.” The negotiator never met with the hostages.
“We need a break here,” said Perkins. “The men, everybody, getting very anxious. Maybe you should at least look at the videotape.”
“How does he seem?” Banish said, avoiding.
Perkins twisted apart his shirt collar. “Truthfully, I think Fagin scared him a little up there. But you get past that and he’s overly helpful. Like someone with a lot to get off his chest. Like the guy who walks in off the street and says he wants to show you where the bodies are buried.”
Banish was frowning and shaking his head again when in the distance they heard the pop-pop of gunfire. Both men looked quickly up toward the mountaintop, which could not be seen from where they were standing. Then more scattered reports.
Perkins flicked away his cigarette and fumbled the wire back into his ear. Banish worked his radio. “Fagin,” Banish said.
Fagin’s voice came back loud and full of adrenaline. “Shooting out the lights.”
Banish heard a burst of reports through the radio and the sound of glass breaking, then Fagin’s voice again over it. “Fucking crap-shoot, from holes in the cabin walls.”
Banish nodded, pleased. “Good,” he told him. “Put that down as their first communication. Hold your fire and get everybody down low.”
A pause. “I didn’t get that last part.”
“You got it all right. Hold your fire and get your men down low. There are still children in there. Pull back when it stops, then get those lights repaired ASAP.”
More gunfire and shattering and ricochets through the radio. “Motherfuckers,” spat Fagin, muffled.
Banish switched off. Perkins’s eyes were attentive and he was standing up straighter in his sagging clothes. “It’s working,” he said.
Banish showed him no reaction. “Get to the sound truck,” he said. “Have him start ringing the telephone again.”
Perkins nodded. “You think Ables is losing it?”
Another distant smattering of reports. Banish looked up at the mountain. “No,” he said. “I don’t think so.”
Staging Area
Brian pulled up the Jeep before the tents and hopped out. He could tell just by the look on Mr. and Mrs. Mellis’s faces that the sheer magnitude of the staging area the tents, the vehicles, the equipment — astounded them. It made him see it with fresh eyes again, and he got a bolt of renewed enthusiasm. The FBI in Huddleston. And him involved in the process, dealing with FBI agents, knowing them and being known by name.
He helped Mrs. Mellis out of the Jeep and walked them both toward the far-right tent nearest the chain fence and the long row of service vehicles. They slowed halfway, looking up and squinting as a spotlight swiped the clearing and a huge helicopter roared overhead.
Mr. Mellis was wiping his flat hands on the legs of his trousers. It had been a long wait for them. Brian explained that their son was still under arrest, but that he had asked to see them and the federal authorities had OK’d it. The couple kept nodding their heads, too grateful to quibble. At this point they would take whatever they could get.
Three men emerged from the tent, two tall marshals with Charles Mellis between them. He was a big spud, with a bushy beard and oversized boots, and shackles on his wrists and ankles. Brian had the parents stay where they were, then pulled off to the side himself. The marshals walked their prisoner about halfway, then stopped and undid both sets of cuffs, which Brian thought was a really fine gesture.
Charles Mellis jogged the last few steps into his mother’s arms. He towered over her. Her arms went around his hips but her hands didn’t touch behind. She was crying and saying his name over and over again, “Charlie, Charlie,” and his father, a good-sized guy himself, was smiling and patting his son on the back, and even, it seemed, wiping his eyes.