A Maidens Grave

captain swallowed and tried to look away from the six dark eyes. He couldn’t.
    “Just imagine your little ones in there. And then imagine someone like Potter saying, ‘Hell, they’re expendable.’ Imagine that, Captain.”
    Budd inhaled long. And finally managed to look away. The wallet snapped closed.
    “We have to get him removed.”
    “What?”
    “ He’s signing their death sentences. What did he say about meeting Handy’s demands? Come on, Budd. Answer like an officer.”
    He looked into Marks’s eye and ignored the slap, saying, “He said Handy wasn’t leaving there except in cuffs or a body bag.”
    And that if those girls had to die, so be it.
    “Is that acceptable to you, Officer?”
    “It’s not my job to say if it is or isn’t.”
    “ ‘I was only following orders.’ ”
    “That’s about the size of it.”
    Marks spit the cigarette from his mouth. “For God’s sake, Captain, you can take a moral position, can’t you? Don’t you have any higher values than running errands for a fat FBI agent?”
    Budd said stiffly, “He’s the senior officer. He’s federal, and—”
    “You just hold on to those words, Captain,” Marks railed like a pumped-up evangelist. “Tuck ’em under your arm and bring ’em out at the funerals of those girls. I hope they make you feel better.” He reached into Budd’s soul and poked with a fingernail. “There’s already one girl’s blood on our hands.”
    He means your hands.
    Budd saw Susan Phillips as she fell to her knees. The impact of that fall made her jaw drop open and distorted her beautiful face for a moment. It became beautiful once more as she died.
    “What?” Budd whispered, his eyes on the buggish headlights of the harvesting threshers. “What do you want?” This sounded childish and shamed him but he couldn’t stop himself.
    “I want Potter out. You or I or somebody state’ll take over the negotiations and give those cocksuckers their damn helicopter in exchange for the girls. We’ll track ’em down when they land and blow ’em to hell. I’ve already checked. We can get a chopper here in a half-hour, fittedwith a homing device that’ll track ’em from a hundred miles away. They’ll never know we’re following.”
    “But he says Handy’s too dangerous to let out.”
    “Of course he’s dangerous,” Marks said. “But once he’s out he’ll be up against professionals. Men and women who’re paid to take risks. Those girls aren’t.”
    Marks had tiny eyes and it seemed to Budd that they were on the verge of tears. He thought of the man’s mentally retarded daughter, in and out of hospitals all her short life.
    He observed that Marks had said nothing about the effect of Budd’s decision on his career. If he had, Budd would have stonewalled. When it came to things like that, cheap shots, the young captain could be a mule. Then it discouraged him immensely to see that Marks had assessed that about him and had pointedly avoided any threats. Budd realized that he was already lying on the mat, shoulders pinned, staring at the ceiling. The count had begun.
    Oh, brother.
    “But how can we get Potter out?”
    He said this to stymie Marks but of course the man was prepared. The small black box appeared in Marks’s hand. For an absurd moment Budd actually thought it was a bomb. He stared at the tape recorder. “All I want is for you to get him to say that the hostages are expendable.”
    “You mean, record him?”
    “Exactly.”
    “And . . . and then what?”
    “I’ve got some friends at a St. Louis radio station. They’ll run the tape on the news. Potter’ll have to step down.”
    “That could be the end of his career.”
    “And it could be the end of mine, doing this. But I’m willing to risk it. For chrissake, I was willing to give myself up in exchange for them. You don’t see Potter doing that.”
    “I just don’t know.”
    “Let’s save those nine poor girls in there, Captain. What do you say?”
    Marks thrust the recorder into Budd’s unhappy hands.The officer stared at it then slipped it into his pocket and without a word turned away. His only act of defiance was to offer, “No, you’re wrong. There are only eight people inside. He’s gotten one out.” But Marks was out of earshot when he said it.

4:10 P.M.
    Captain Charles R. Budd stood in a gully not far from the command van.
    He was delegating, yes, but mostly he was trying to ignore the weight of the tape recorder, a thousand pounds