A Maidens Grave

sides. Do you hear me, Lou?”
    He was gasping for breath and struggling to call out. A pain shot through his chest and he had to slow down.
    A perfect target, he stood on the crest of a hill—the very place where Susan Phillips had been shot in the back—and shouted, “They’re about to blow the side doors but you can stop them before they get inside. Set up crossfire positions in the southeast and the northwest windows. There’s a door on the south side you don’t know about. It’s covered up but it’s there. They’re going to blow their way in from there too, Lou. Listen to me. I want you to shoot for their legs. They have body armor. Shoot for their legs! Use shotguns. Shoot for their legs.”
    No movement inside the slaughterhouse.
    Oh, please . . . .
    “Lou!”
    Silence. Except for the urgent wind.
    Then he noticed movement from the gully to the north of the slaughterhouse. A helmet rising from a stand ofbuffalo grass. A flash as a pair of binoculars turned his way.
    Or was it the telescopic sight of an H&K MP-5?
    “Lou, do you hear me?” Potter called again. “This is an unauthorized operation. Set up crossfire positions on the north door and the south door. There’ll be plasterboard or something covering the doorway on the south.”
    Nothing . . . silence.
    Somebody please . . .
    For God’s sake, talk to me. Somebody!
    Then: movement. Potter looked toward it—just to the north of the slaughterhouse.
    On the crest of a hill seventy-five, eighty yards away a man in black stood, his hip cocked, an H&K on a strap at his side, staring at Potter. Then one by one the troopers in the gullies on either side of the slaughterhouse rose and slithered away from the doors. The helmeted heads bobbed up and retreated into the bushes. HRU was standing down.
    From the slaughterhouse there was nothing but silence. But Arthur Potter still was heartsick. For he knew that there would have to be a reparation. As amoral and cruel as Handy was, the one thing he’d done consistently was keep his word. Handy’s world may have run on a justice of his own making, an evil justice, but justice it was nonetheless. And it was the good guys who’d just broken faith.
     
    Potter, LeBow, and Budd stood back, arms crossed, while Tobe desperately ran wires, cutting and splicing.
    Potter watched Derek Elb being escorted away by two of Pete Henderson’s agents and asked Tobe, “Sabotage?”
    Tobe—nearly as good at ballistics as he was at electronics—couldn’t say for certain. “Looks like a simple gasoline fire. We were running a lot of juice out of the generator. But somebody could’ve slipped in an L210 and we’d be none the wiser. Anyway I can’t look for anything now.” And he stripped, joined, and taped a dozen wires at once, it seemed.
    LeBow said, “You know it is, Arthur.”
    Potter agreed, of course. Tremain had probably left a remote-controlled incendiary device in the generator of the van.
    Incredulous, Budd asked, “He’d do something like that? What are you going to do?”
    The negotiator said, “Nothing right now.” In his heart he lived too far in the past; in his career, he lived there hardly at all. Potter had no time or taste for revenge. Now he had the hostages to think about. Hurry, Tobe, get the lines running again.
    Officer Frances Whiting returned to the van. She’d been inhaling oxygen at the medical tent. Her face was smudged and she breathed with some difficulty, but otherwise she was okay.
    “Little more excitement than you’re used to in Hebron?” Potter asked her.
    “Not counting traffic citations, my last collar was when Bush was in office.”
    The smell of scorch and burnt rubber and plastic was overwhelming. Potter’s arms were streaked with burn. The hair on the backs of his hands was gone and one searing patch on his wrist raged with pain. But he couldn’t take the time to see the medics just yet. He had to make contact with Handy first, try to minimize whatever payback was undoubtedly fermenting in Handy’s mind.
    “Okay,” Tobe called. “Got it.” The miracle worker had run a line from the remote generator truck and the van was up and running again.
    Potter was about to tell Budd to prop the door open to air the place out when he realized there was no door. It had been burned away. He sat down at the desk, grabbed the phone, and dialed.
    The electronic sound of a ringing phone filled the van.
    No answer.
    Behind them Henry LeBow had begun to type again.