“Except the painkillers. Could be fatal if administered improperly. He didn’t ask for blood or plasma, so maybe it’s not too serious.”
“Water?”
“It’s clean,” Banish said.
“You can’t mickey him?”
“Unreliable. Could be fatal if taken by a child.”
The robot pulled up alongside the slanted front porch, its spine straightening hydraulically, arm extending out. Banish said to the pale agent working the controls, “A little closer.”
Fagin watched the robot roll back and forth into position. “Hope he doesn’t kidnap your robot too.”
Banish said to the pale agent, “Not too close.”
Fagin grinned briefly. Bureaucrats with their toys. He went and watched on the black-and-white monitor as the robot dumped its gifts on a stack of logs piled underneath a boarded-up window, then pulled back slowly. They watched and waited, Fagin growing impatient. Banish sent someone off to get his bullhorn. Then the boards moved, swinging open a few inches. A sleeveless male arm appeared. It snatched up the first-aid kit, then the satchel of water, then finally the telephone. Then the boards swung shut again.
The pale agent let out a long, gusty breath. In Fagin’s experience, whether on bomb squad or crisis intervention teams, these robot controllers were all a little fucking fruity. Talking to themselves while they worked, calling their machines little names, like Buddy or Hal. Fucking ventriloquists without an act. This one mumbled to himself as he worked the slide gears up and down, easing the robot back to him.
Banish peered over the top of the shield again, probably waiting for something to go wrong. After all their waltzing back and forth, the actual exchange itself had been nothing. Secure communication had finally been established, but at a great goddamn cost.
Fagin stepped away from the screen, watching Buddy the Robot return home through the slaughtered woods. “That fucking telephone better be miked,” he said.
Banish waved off a mosquito. “Don’t worry.”
Sound Truck
Banish pulled the sliding door open. The sound man was at his console, dials and recorders along the van walls all up and running. Banish said, “Anything?”
The sound man flipped a switch and a hollow sound came on over the speakers inside the van. Vague, distant noises, echoes reflected off walls, sounds of people moving around. “Mainly footsteps,” he said. “Different sets. Some chatter about bandages. Not clear enough, though. He must have left the phone in front and gone into one of the rooms in the rear, possibly the kitchen.”
“We’re in,” Banish said. It was all that mattered.
“You want me to ring him?”
The phone would ring abruptly twice like a bicycle bell, as opposed to a long ring or beeping noise, as different as possible from the sound any sort of bomb might make. The throw phone was just that, in most situations lobbed in through a door or window, and hostage-takers were notoriously paranoid and hypervigilant.
“No,” Banish said, easing himself into the other chair, feeling his exhaustion. “We’ll wait, and listen. Let him call us.”
Monday, August 9
Sound Truck
Banish was sitting back in the swivel-tilt chair in the quiet low light of the van monitors, tired but not sleeping. He could hear the deep, regular breathing of the sound man, who had put his head down to rest for a moment on the console board more than two hours before. Banish realized he still did not know the man’s name. But he let him sleep, and wished he could do the same. Banish sat in the humming darkness with his arms crossed over the borrowed parka he wore, the inside of the van not noticeably cold until just then. The van roof conducted the overnight chill. He was watching his breath mist and dissipate.
He had sat up the entire night. From time to time the noise-activated tape recorder reels clicked on and began their slow revolutions, but nothing audibly significant came out of the cabin: stray noises, rustling around, an occasional distant unintelligible voice. Banish was watching the monitors. Without daylight, the black-and-white images ran hazy, like photographic negatives. Now as day was starting to break, the cabin views, the empty road, the staging area, the bridge, all began filling in clearly, as though being tuned.
“Watson.”
The sound man bucked his head and jerked awake, clattering his headphones atop the console. He sat up straight and looked around. “Sorry,” he said, reaching for his headset.
Banish shook his head to show him it was all right. He picked up his own headset and put it on, adjusting the cushion comfortably over one ear, the opposing brace above the other. The tape reels had resumed their revolutions.
“Watson.”
Patience. Control. He had spent all night waiting for this. Banish cleared his throat and fixed the connected microphone under his chin. He pushed the appropriate button, cutting off the van speakers and patching himself through.
“Mr. Ables,” he said. “How is your wife doing?”
Ables’s voice sounded strained. “She’s all right now.”
“We have an ambulance available, and two paramedics, just twenty-five yards away from your cabin door. If you look out your window, you can see them.”
“She is all right,” Ables said.
“Can you tell me where she was injured?”
“Her arm.”
Banish nodded, encouraged. If it was just her arm, then Ables with his military background could treat her for days if necessary. Banish said, “I would ask you to put her on...”
“But she lost her voice to cancer,” Ables said. “I bet you think you know a lot about us. I bet you got files and witnesses and depositions and everything. You’re probably some kind of shrink yourself.”
“I am not,” Banish said. “Mr. Ables, have you given any more thought to coming out?”
“Never.”
“What about your children, Mr. Ables? They are much too young to be going through this. Think of the effect this ordeal must be having on them.”
“I warned you, Watson. Don’t talk to me about my family. Don’t talk like you know me. You want to do my kids some good, you all go away then. Because we can outlast you here. My kids are survivors, that’s how they were raised. My kids are tough. Tougher than any man you got hiding behind a tree.”
“You may be right about that, Mr. Ables,” Banish said. “And believe me, no one is telling you how you should or should not raise your own children. But they are just children, Mr. Ables. Minors, all of them. This is a situation for adults.”
“You don’t get it, Watson. Do you. My kids want to be here. We’re a family. There’s no place else they’d rather be.”
Banish said, “I do understand that, Mr. Ables. I understand how close-knit you and your family are. I’m sure a lot of people envy that closeness. That is what I am talking about. Mr. Ables — you must know that you can never get away from here. You are completely surrounded. This entire mountain is cut off from the rest of the world. We can sit out here and wait for you forever, and you can sit in there and wait for us, but the bottom line is, you are caught. You cannot escape. For all intents and purposes, you are already in police custody. Now, you have been charged with a serious crime. And your wife, by virtue of remaining at your side through all of this, has become an accomplice.”
“You’re trying to threaten me, Watson.”
“No, Mr. Ables.” Banish was shaking his head. “I am not. I am being straight with you here. I am giving you as much information as I can so that you are able to make an informed decision. If these men have to go in and extricate you from your home by force, then both you and your wife will be arrested and charges will be brought. If you are subsequently found guilty in a court of law, then your children, as minors, will likely become wards of the social services department of the state.”