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.