Cabin
They had to abandon the Jeep halfway up the road. They jumped out and ran the rest of the way, up past all the service vehicles and the Jeeps and ambulances jammed together. Blood could see the black smoke up ahead spilling into the sky and glowing strangely.
They came at the spotlit, flaming cabin from the left, crossing the great divide of shredded trees that had once been the no-man’s-land, now everyman’s land, firemen, agents, marshals — just chaos. Men running this way and that, holding guns, axes. The wind carrying the stench of smoke and rotting dogs. Blood had to slow down, his leg wound starting to bite again. From where he was he could see the darkly lit rear of the cabin: smaller sheds standing in light tree cover, boulders half-buried in the earth, trash and scrap boards and weedy ground leading out to the cliffs. Blood looked for bodies fleeing but saw nothing he could be certain of. The flames gave everything the illusion of shifty movement.
The front of the cabin was already burned out. The porch had broken full off its frame and slumped forward like an early casualty, charred and dead. Flames darted fast along the roof, fueling the rising stream of black smoke and producing a hollow sucking noise like whipping gusts of wind.
Men in fire suits stood in front. They were entering the cabin in teams of two, charging through ragged pennants of flame as the previous team exited with suits blackened, stumbling out and pulling off their helmets and face masks and seizing mouthfuls of air. Fire trucks were pulled up, hoses partially unrolled but lying flaccid on the ground. The water truck was unable to get through. A spotlight grazed the area and a helicopter ran overhead, grabbing the pluming smoke in its rotors and twisting it and throwing it higher.
Banish stood before the engulfed cabin as though it were his own mortgaged house. His burnt face was flushed with the reflection of the red-orange flames as they surged, his expression and the underpinnings of his face faltering along with the foundation of the dying wood cabin.
Perkins came quickly across to them. His hands were dark with ash and his sandy hair was tossed. He came over from the right side of the cabin in a high state of anxiety.
“There’s a body in the rear of the cabin,” he said all at once. “Badly burned. Gross head trauma, gun in hand.” He gathered his breath, looking pained. “They think it’s Ables,” he said.
Banish’s head pitched a bit and his eyes went tight and sharp. There was a long moment when it seemed as though he were examining the air before his face for something vital. Then he choked on a swallow, or maybe just the smoke. Blood looked down and away.
Beyond the weight of his disappointment, Blood found himself even more worried about Banish. He looked up again and saw Banish still searching, body bent slightly forward. “The children,” he said, short of breath. It was issued to Perkins like a final appeal, the answer to which would either loose the steel blade hanging over his neck or pardon him.
“Nothing yet,” Perkins told him. He looked to his left, Blood and Banish’s right. “Mrs. Ables got out OK, though.”
Blood looked. She was away from the side of the cabin near a pair of paramedics, doubled up, coughing. Her arm was in a scarf sling and her clothes were sooty and darkened and some of her hair was burnt.
“She’s refusing treatment,” Perkins said. “We’re trying to get her into the medical helicopter now.”
Seeing her alive seemed to lift Banish. He turned back. “Sew up the mountain tight,” he said quickly. “Get some order here and forget about the fire. Let it burn to the ground. Just find those kids—”
He looked around in desperation, specifically to the left side of the cabin. He started off after them himself.
Command Tent
Brian Kearney stayed at his post long after everyone else was gone. First the explosions and the gunfire, ripping holes in the canvas and dropping everyone to the floor. Then the generators blowing up outside. Then immediately after that the gunshots up at the cabin and all the shouting over the radio. He was still at the switchboard now solely because he had not been relieved. Even Agent Coyle had left for the mountaintop after the staging-area shooting ended and the cabin fire had been reported. Brian was still in his chair at the outside switchboard line, punching in the numbers again, hearing the long-distance connection, the first, slow ring, then waiting through five more before starting all over again.
There was a great noise gathering outside, which he figured must have been the agents returning to the staging area. They sounded triumphant. Brian’s mood lifted and he fought the impulse to run out there and look. It was more relief on his part than anything — sweet relief. But he stayed dialing, and got halfway through the numbers again before realizing that there was no sound coming out through the earpiece now. He clicked the plunger down once, then a number of times. The receiver did nothing in his hands. The phone was dead.
He got up. The noise outside the tent was tremendous now, but first he went around picking up different phones in the tent. All dead. The lines had gone down.
Brian went to the door flap and stepped outside to look, and it was incredible what he saw. Not a celebration. A revolution. The mob of protesters charging through the staging area, hundreds of them, a thousand, up from the mouth of the road and across the clearing like a civilian army. They were out of control. Brian saw people he knew, neighbors of his, racing for the road, yelling and pushing on each other, fists in the air, legs working frantically. He saw a few agents attempt to get in and stop the crowd but it was useless. Like rocks in the river. The dam had already been broken. Then trucks appeared behind the mob, TV trucks, like pistons driving the marauders into the clearing and across to storm up the road. It was a swarm. A whole mass of frenzied people moving as one. As the trucks rolled past the tents and onto the new road, Brian lit out fast from where he was, running after them. It was already a full blown riot. He feared a massacre.
Barn
Watching the crate slide back in the dark corner, and hearing the commotion going on up at the cabin and in his ear, Taber needed all his patience to remain quietly where he was. The dirt top came up and off and smoke puffed out of the tunnel hole as a woman came out coughing violently, recognizable as Michelle Mellis. She had a gun in her right hand.
Before she could step forward, Taber said authoritatively from behind the old sit-down lawnmower, “Hold it.”
Porter, at the barn entrance, echoed him. “U.S. Marshals Service.”
Mrs. Mellis’s shirt and sweatpants were streaked with dirt. Smoke drifted up around her. She stopped where she was but did not immediately lower the gun.
“Your choice,” said Taber.
Another moment of weighing her options. “Damn,” she said then, tersely, hacking dryly into a dirty fist and tossing the gun aside.
“Hands above your head,” Porter commanded.
Taber stood and advanced with his gun aimed, moving in behind her with handcuffs. “Who killed your husband, Mrs. Mellis?” he said.
Mrs. Mellis stifled her coughing. She looked away from Taber as the bracelets clicked around her wrists. “I want a lawyer,” she said.