A Maidens Grave

what the therapist was feeling and vice versa. Wemoved closer to each other. What I’m doing here—with Handy—is the same. You don’t click a switch and make Handy give up the girls. Just like the doctor doesn’t click a switch and make everything better. The point is to create a relationship between him and me. He’s got to know me, and I’ve got to know him.”
    “Hey, like you’re dating?”
    “You could say that,” Potter said without smiling. “I want to get him into my mind—so he’ll realize it’s a hopeless situation. So he’ll give me the girls and surrender, to make him feel that it’s pointless to go on. Not to understand it intellectually, but to feel it. You can see it’s working a bit. He’s given us two and hasn’t killed anyone else, even when that other girl snuck out.” Potter drew a final breath of his imaginary Camel. Stubbed it out.
    He started to imagine climbing stairs, Marian’s hand in his. But this image faded quickly.
    “And I do it to get into his mind. To understand him.”
    “So you become his friend?”
    “Friend? Not a friend. I’d say that we become linked.”
    “But, I mean, isn’t that a problem? If you have to order HRT to green-light him, you’d be ordering the death of somebody you’re close to. Betraying them.”
    “Oh, yes,” the negotiator said softly. “Yes, it’s a problem.”
    Budd blew air out of his cheeks and again studied the harvesting. “You said . . .”
    “What?”
    “You said before that you’re willing to sacrifice those girls to get him. Is that really true?”
    Potter looked at him for a moment while Budd’s distraught eyes gazed at the steadfast threshers miles away. “Yes, it is. My job is to stop Handy. Those’re my orders. And yes, there may have to be sacrifices.”
    “But they’re little girls.”
    Potter smiled grimly. “How can you make a value judgment? These aren’t the days of women and children first. A life is a life. Are those girls more deserving than the family Handy might kidnap and kill next year if he escapes today? Or the two traffic cops he shoots when they stop him for speeding? I have to keep thinking that thosehostages are dead already. If I can save some, so much the better. But I can’t look at it any other way and still function.”
    “You’re good at what you do, seems.”
    Potter didn’t answer.
    “You think there’ll be more deaths?”
    “Oh, yes, I’m afraid so. Just an educated guess but I do think so.”
    “The girls?”
    Potter didn’t answer.
    “Our immediate problem, Charlie—what can we use to buy another hour with?”
    Budd shrugged. “No guns or ammo, right?”
    “That’s not negotiable.”
    “Well, he thinks he’s getting his imaginary helicopter, right?”
    “Yes.”
    “As long as we’re lying to him ’bout that, why don’t we lie to him ’bout something else? Promise him something to go along with it.”
    “Can’t give a kid a toy without giving him batteries, is that what you’re saying?”
    “I guess I am.”
    “That’s brilliant, Charlie. Let’s go kick it around with Henry.”
    As they climbed into the van Potter clapped the trooper on the shoulder and Budd responded with as hangtail a smile as the agent had ever in his life encountered.
     
    They would divide into three teams, Alpha, Bravo, Charlie.
    The HRU officers, under Dan Tremain, were gathered in a cluster on the left side, the northwest side, of the slaughterhouse, hidden in a grove of trees. The men were now wearing black assault coveralls over their body armor. Nomex hoods and gloves. Their goggles rested on the crest of their foreheads.
    Alpha and Bravo teams had four men each, two armed with Heckler & Koch MP-5 submachine guns, fitted with B.E.A.M. mounts and halogen flashlights, two armed with H&K Super 90 semiautomatic shotguns. The twoHRU troopers in Charlie team had MP-5s as well but were also carrying Accuracy Systems M429 Thunderflash stun grenades and M451 Multistarflash grenades.
    Two other troopers had been deployed. Chuck Pfenninger—Outrider One—was in standard uniform beside the command van. Joey Wilson—Outrider Two—in ops armor and camouflage was beneath the middle window to the left of the main door of the slaughterhouse. He was hidden from view of the command post and the troopers in the field by the Laurent Clerc School bus and a ginkgo tree.
    Tremain went over the plan one more time in his mind. As soon as Wilson reported that the HTs were as far away