“Sir,” he said, “I don’t think I could respect myself if—”
“Jack, I’m behind you. I’ve always been behind you. I think you know that. But my concerns are necessarily broader. I have faith in your talents, Jack, I do, but this operation has become much too significant for us to risk it being bungled. I need reassurance. Besides, Carlson says that as he understands it, you resisted the assignment from the beginning.”
Banish was recalling the day almost three years ago when he was told to walk away from his wife and daughter and never return. This assignment was his second chance at redemption, both personally and professionally, and perhaps his last.
“Sir,” Banish said, straightening when there was no one to see him there, “I’d like to stay on.”
Staging Area
The rain was falling harder and the wind was picking up, and Fagin stood waiting in it, his plastic poncho blown flat and wrinkled against his broad back. Two of Fagin’s men stood under nylon rain jackets near him, while a few yards away six members of the FBI Hostage Rescue Team were huddled together in their traditional black ninja uniforms. Banish was late to the meeting as usual.
Fagin turned. Two of the eight HRT agents stared at him coldly. Fagin shook his head a little but did not expend much effort. Stupid fucking mind games. Junior league interagency sandbox shit.
HRT was the FBI’s elite paramilitary force, trained to capture terrorists, hostage-takers, and violent criminals in life-threatening situations. Their team was made up of fifty volunteer agents split into three revolving units, with one unit on alert at all times and available for emergency assignment within a few hours anywhere in the country. They were assault specialists and top-flight snipers whose training regimen included what Fagin referred to as the Bayer drill, the ability to snipe an aspirin tablet at two hundred yards. In terms of prestige, equipment, and their five-million-dollar annual budget, HRT made the U.S. Marshals Special Operations Group look like Double-A ball, and Fagin was man enough to admit this professional envy, but only to himself.
He found resentment a much more pleasurable emotion. HRT agents were largely range-taught, not war-trained like himself. Honing their talents by picking off over-the-counter pain medicine at Quantico’s Hogan’s Alley test range, a five-acre simulated town of pop-up targets, seemed to Fagin like not much more than a parlor trick. Fagin had seen them misused by their commanders, trotted out before the cameras during high-profile but nonessential situations, and media-hyped to no end. That budget game that Congress played. It made men in the USG sing and dance like women in the USO.
Banish finally showed, head ducked to the rain, shoes sinking into the muddy ground. He eyed the two segregated groups of BOLOs. Fagin made no move to cojoin. He was expecting a nice clean whitewash here.
“Who fired that first shot?” Banish said above the downpour.
One of the HRT agents spoke up, name of Renke. Plump-faced but solidly built, big hands. “We spotted a suspect exiting the side of the residence armed with a rifle of some kind, crouching in a furtive manner.”
Banish said, “Adult figure?”
“Affirmative. I had the suspect in my Weaver scope.”
Banish stopped him there, turned. “Fagin?”
“I saw someone come out, but couldn’t make the object as a weapon until they started firing up at the NG helicopter. I was at six o’clock, head-on. The glare off the searchlight fucked my NVD.”
Renke stepped in, saying, “SA Banish, Marshals Service has no command or say-so over HRT.”
Banish’s response was quick. “That’s my determination, SA Renke. As your senior SOARs agent on this mountain, HRT answers to me, answers loud and answers clear. Deputy Fagin has been with this operation from the beginning, and if I so determine in the interests of convenience and/or mere whim that you men are to be placed at his disposal, then so shall it be.” Banish got in Renke’s face then. “Or do you feel the need to seek a second opinion from Quantico?”
Renke turned his eyes straight ahead. “No, sir.”
“Good,” said Banish, backing off. “Let me review for you men the rules of engagement on this mountain. Do not fire unless expressly fired upon. And even then: with extreme and diligent caution. Do not get drawn into an exchange. Every man will be held accountable for his actions here. If you had been with us over the past few days, you might have known that just last evening we received our first communication from the suspect. That alone renders your initial warning shot ill-advised at best. There are young children in the residence and they are armed and possibly dangerous, and that is what makes this operation such a challenge. And I know how you men like a challenge. That is all.”
The HRT agents looked at each other and went away. Banish was showing some spark here. He came back to Fagin through the rain.
“Listen,” Fagin said. “I’ve been giving it some thought. Last night. That side door didn’t close right away.”
Banish immediately shook his head. “Don’t tell me that,” he said. “I don’t want to hear that. I just got off the phone with the Director and the subject of a gunfight did not come up.”
“Well, I’m telling you. Now you know.”
“What are you saying?” Banish said. “You hit somebody?”
“I was taking heat. I popped back high and hit the door once. That’s all.”
Banish looked away, then looked back. “You mentioned night-vision,” he said. “Judith Ables was killed in the initial skirmish. How did they get her body all the way over to the barn without your men seeing anything?”
“We assumed they did it in the hour or so after the cease-fire, before we were moved into position.”
“Right.” Banish nodded. “But this is their twelve-year-old daughter. This is a child. They’ve been living together in that same five-room shack for two years now. You think they could get rid of her corpse in less than an hour?”
Fagin thought about it, shrugged. “What I’m telling you is, we’ve had that cabin under twenty-four-hour surveillance since the original shootout. There is no way they could have carried a dead body over to that barn without me and my men knowing about it.”
Banish nodded again. He was rubbing the burn on his face and looking up at the wet mountain.
Barn
A cloudburst on the way up, and the woods darkened some more and thumped with heavy rain. Marshals Taber and Porter stood posted outside as Fagin and Banish entered the run-down barn shaking off their coats. It still smelled of human death, rain rapping on the collapsing roof, piddling through to the ground. Fagin scanned the barn and moved directly to the far-left corner. Banish remained somewhere behind him, near the center, looking around.
There was a stack of old fruit crates in the corner, the only area of the barn where a section of floor was well concealed. Fagin tugged on the top crate with a gloved hand and met resistance. He checked it and saw that the bottom slat was nailed tightly to the top slat of the crate below, and so on. He bent over and stretched to reach the bottom crate farthest to the rear. It slid out freely without moving the rest. Fagin turned it over. No bottom slats. He examined the dirt there and saw that it was looser and finer than in other places and reached out and brushed the top layer aside, then dug in deeper with his gloves. The soil below was also loose. He stepped in beside the crates and dug some more and hit something hard about ten inches down. His fingers found a latch. He pulled on it and there was a rush of foul air and the entire section of dirt came up and out.
Fagin straightened up pissed off. “Fucking tunnel,” he said, too loudly, and Banish came over beside him and Fagin lowered his voice. “Sneaky fuckers,” he said.