And simply because someone seemed to want to listen.
Melanie… will we ever have a conversation, the two of us?
He saw Dean Stillwell wave to him and stepped into the fragrant gully to meet the sheriff. He glanced at the shreds of fog wafting around the van. So Handy's weather report wasn't up to date after all. It gave him a fragment of hope – unreasonable perhaps, but hope nonetheless. He looked up at the late-afternoon sky, in which strips of yellow and bruise-colored clouds sped past. In a break between two of the vaporous shapes he saw the moon, a pale crescent sitting over the slaughterhouse, directly above the blood-red brick.
6:03 P.M.
They appeared suddenly, the dozen men.
The slippery wind covered the noise of their approach and by the time the agent was aware of them they'd surrounded him and Dean Stillwell, who was telling Potter about the dock behind the slaughterhouse. Stillwell had looked over the river and the dock and concluded that, even though the current was fast, as Budd had reported, it was too tempting an escape route. He'd put some armored troops in a skiff and anchored them twenty yards offshore.
Potter noticed Dean Stillwell look up and stare at something behind the agent. He turned.
The team was dressed in black and navy-blue combat gear. Potter recognized the outfits – the American Body Armor plated vests, the rubberized ducking uniforms and hoods, the H amp;K submachine guns with laser sights and flashlights. It was a Hostage Rescue Team, though not his, and Arthur Potter didn't want these men within a hundred miles of the Webber amp; Stoltz Processing Company.
"Agent Potter?"
A nod. Be gracious. Don't jerk leashes until leashes need to be jerked.
He shook the hand of the crew-cut man in his forties.
"I'm Dan Tremain. Commander of the state police Hostage Rescue Unit." His still eyes were confident. And challenging. "I understand you're expecting a Delta team."
"The Bureau's HRT actually. Jurisdiction, you know."
"Course."
Potter introduced him to Stillwell, whom Tremain ignored.
"What's the status?" Tremain asked.
"They're contained. One fatality."
"I heard," Tremain said, rubbing a gold pinky ring on which was a deep etching of a cross.
"We've gotten three girls out unhurt," Potter continued. "There are four other girls inside and two teachers. The HTs've asked for a chopper, which we aren't going to give them. They've threatened to execute another hostage at seven unless we have it here by then."
"You're not going to give him one?"
"No."
"But what'll happen?"
"I'm going to try to talk him through it."
"Well, why don't we deploy just the same? I mean, if it comes down to him killing her, I know you'll want to move in."
"No," Potter said, looking over at the press table, where Joe Silbert and his assistant were diligently typing away on a computer. The reporter looked up glumly. Potter nodded and glanced back at Tremain.
The state police commander said, "You're not saying that you'd let him kill the girl, are you?"
"Let's hope it doesn't come to that."
Acceptable casualties…
Tremain held his eye for a moment. "I'm thinking we really ought to move into position. Just in case."
Potter glanced at the men and gestured Tremain aside. They walked into the shadow of the command van. "If it comes down to an assault, and I certainly hope it doesn't, then my team'll be the one doing it – and only my team. Sorry, Captain, that's just the way it is."
Was this going to explode? Shoot straight to the governor and the Admiral in Washington?
Tremain bristled but he shrugged. "You're in charge, sir. But those men are state felons too and our regulations require us to be on the scene. And that's just the way it is too."
"I have no objection at all to your presence, Captain. And if they come out, guns ablazing, I'd sure welcome your firepower. But as long as it's understood that you're taking orders from me."
Tremain relented. "Fair enough. Fact is, I told my men that we'll probably be spending three hours drinking coffee and then pack up and go home."
"Let's hope so for all our sakes. If you want to go into position as part of the containment crew, Sheriff Stillwell here's in charge of that."
The two men nodded at each other coolly and every soul within earshot knew there was no way an HRT commander would put his men under the orders of a small-town sheriff. Potter hoped this would guarantee that Tremain would hightail it out of here.
"I think we'll just hang back. Stay out of sight. If you need us we'll be around."
"Whatever you want, Captain," Potter said.
Budd and Angie appeared, striding up the hill, and stopped suddenly. "Hey, Dan," Budd said, recognizing Tremain.
"Charlie." They shook hands. Tremain's eyes took in Angie's hair and face but it was a chaste examination, one of curiosity, and when his eyes dipped downward to her chest it was simply to confirm from her necklace ID that she was in fact an FBI agent.
"You boys heard about our little situation, did you?" Budd said.
Tremain laughed. "How 'bout, anybody watches TV knows about it. Who's working the CP?"
"Derek Elb."
"Derek the Red?" Tremain laughed. "I gotta say hi to him." Now jovial, Tremain said to Potter, "That boy wanted to join HRU but we took one look at that hair on him and thought he'd be just a little too prominent in a sniper's scope."
Potter smiled agreeably, pleased that there'd been no confrontation. Usually state and federal negotiators get along well enough but there's invariably tension between negotiators and tactical units from other branches. As Potter explained in class, "There're talkers and there're shooters. That's night and day and it won't ever change."
Tremain stepped into the van. Potter eyed the dozen men. Somber, artful, and oh-so-pleased to be here. He thought of Robert Duvall in Apocalypse Now and supposed these men too loved the smell of napalm in the morning. Potter finished his conversation with Stillwell. When he turned back he was surprised to find that the HRU, to a man, was gone. When he climbed into the van he saw that Tremain too had left.
LeBow entered the information about Stillwell's skiff into his electronic memory.
"Time, Tobe?" Potter was staring at the "Promises/Deceptions" board.
The young man glanced at the digital clock.
"Forty-five minutes," Tobe muttered, then said to LeBow, "You tell him."
"Tell me what?"
The intelligence officer said, "We've been playing with the infrared monitor. We caught a glimpse of Handy a minute ago."
"What was he doing?"
"Loading the shotguns."
The Kansas State Police Hostage Rescue Unit, led by Captain Daniel Tremain, slipped silently into a stand of trees a hundred yards from the slaughterhouse.
The trees, Tremain noted at once, were not unoccupied. There were a state police sniper and two or three local deputies in position. Using hand signals Tremain directed his men through the trees and down into a gully that would take them around the side of the slaughterhouse. They passed undetected through the small forest. Tremain looked about and saw – fifty yards toward the river – an abandoned windmill, forty feet high, sitting in the middle of a grassy field. Beside it were two state troopers, standing with their backs to the HRU as they gazed warily at the slaughterhouse. Tremain ordered the two men into a line of trees out of sight of both the north side of the slaughterhouse and the command post.
From the windmill, the HRU team walked into a gully and made their way closer to the slaughterhouse. Tremain held up his hand and they stopped. He tapped his helmet twice and the men responded to the signal by switching on their radios. Lieutenant Carfallo opened the terrain map and the architectural drawings. From his pocket Tremain took the diagram of the inside of the slaughterhouse that Derek the Red, Derek the trooper, Derek the spy, had just slipped him inside the van. It was marked with the location of the hostages and the HTs.