head got lower, and the second shot went off. This time, he dropped like a rock, disappearing from my view onto the ground just short of the porch. Just as he disappeared, a fusillade of shots came from the TAC people in the outbuildings, a few at first, then a rapid series, just like very loud popcorn. As I tried to make myself smaller, I saw, from my vantage point on the ground, pieces of the house near a window on the second floor, to the left of the doorway, begin to fly off and large gouges of raw wood appear all over the upper half of the house. The troops were trying to get somebody through the wall. The firing tapered off pretty quickly, as there was no return fire, and nobody in the house was about to show themselves as a target at that point. A weird silence settled over the farm. My ears were ringing again, but I clearly heard a dragonfly humming a few feet away. It was hot. I became aware of a woman yelling. Two of them, in fact. One was Hester.
‘‘Houseman!’’ she yelled. ‘‘You hit?’’
I sat up and shook my head. The other was Nancy. I looked back toward the lines, and saw her standing there, with Hester trying to get her to turn away. I couldn’t understand what she was saying, except for ‘‘Phil.’’
Well, shit.
I got up into a crouch, and felt faint. Very hard to get your breath back after you’ve knocked yourself just about silly. I couldn’t really move just yet, at least not in a crouch. I didn’t want to sit back down, naturally. I really wanted to get out of the sight of the people in the house more than anything. So I just stood up and half walked and half ran back to our lines. It only took a few seconds, but it seemed a little longer. I could see Al just staring at me from behind a squad car. He probably thought I was nuts.
As I got to the fence, I walked over to where they had Nancy pressed down between two cop cars.
‘‘Nancy,’’ I said, still breathless, ‘‘I never thought they’d do that…’’
About ten minutes later, while Nancy was being treated by the EMTs at the scene, Hester, Roger, George, Al, and I were having a conference under the awning attached to the rear of the camper I’d slept in. It was subdued.
‘‘I just can’t fucking figure it out,’’ said Al very quietly. ‘‘Nothing to gain at all. Nothing.’’
‘‘You’re right,’’ I said.
‘‘It was the stupidest thing he could have done,’’ said George.
‘‘Yeah, idiotic,’’ said Hester.
Silence. For what seemed like an hour.
‘‘So,’’ I said. ‘‘Now what do we do?’’
More silence.
‘‘Anybody think it might be time to go in and drag their asses out?’’ I was getting really frustrated. ‘‘Or do we wait for another casualty?’’
‘‘We should at least contact them,’’ said Roger, ‘‘and see if we can get Phil’s body back.’’
‘‘What?’’ I almost yelled at him. ‘‘You want to call them up and ask permission to retrieve a body? Permission?’’
‘‘Hey,’’ he said. ‘‘Don’t take it out on me!’’
I took a deep breath. ‘‘Sorry.’’
Silence, again.
‘‘It’s time they came out,’’ I said. ‘‘That’s all there is to it.’’
‘‘I agree,’’ said George.
‘‘What, just go in and take ’em out?’’ asked Al. ‘‘What, do you think FBI means, Superman?’’
George stood up at that one. ‘‘Not called for,’’ he said evenly. ‘‘But if you make it happen, I’ll be glad to take jurisdiction, and get our own team in here.’’
Al really didn’t want that. If that happened, the state would completely lose any influence or control, and would be reduced to providing crowd control services for the Feds.
‘‘Al,’’ I said, ‘‘what’s happening here is this… if some politicians over your head are worried about losing some of their constituents over this, just say so. I’ll be glad to talk to them and get some things straight. I know it isn’t you, because I’ve worked with you enough to know that you want to go in as bad as I do.’’
‘‘Nothing personal, George,’’ I said, standing up and reaching for some pop, ‘‘but the fewer Feds we have in this, the better. Otherwise, these idiots are gonna go nuts on us, and we’ll have even more problems.’’
‘‘That’s true,’’ said George. ‘‘I know that.’’
‘‘But,’’ I said, ‘‘if we have to go that way, then we do. I’d prefer state, but if I have to, I’ll go fed.’’ Like, I’d have a choice in the matter.
‘‘Let me make one more call,’’ said Al.
‘‘Sure.’’
He had a real problem, and I had some idea what it was. In my thinking about it, it was obvious that he had two bosses… the Attorney General and the Director of Public Safety. The AG was elected, the DPS was appointed by the governor. One, or both, had told him to hold off the violence. Period. Why? Well, traditionally, the governor’s office had felt that cops had no business interfering with political activities. Hard to disagree with that. Where they ran into trouble was with extremists. Mostly extremists on the right. The majority of them, after all, were farmers. Many of them were experiencing financial difficulties. I knew that no human being could ever get elected governor in Iowa on a ‘‘get tough on poor farmers’’ platform, and probably not on a ‘‘get tough on rich farmers’’ either. Hence the problem. Similarly, nobody could be elected Attorney General with that platform either.
Well, just a second, I thought. Let me qualify that. No human without courage could get elected. A leader, in the traditional vein, could. If he’d made the right decision and if he could defend it. But if he liked his job, and wanted to get reelected, he’d usually steer away from highly visible decisions that could come back to haunt him. So what were the chances of any of them hanging it all out in a situation like this? Right.
I looked at George, after Al was out of earshot. ‘‘Thanks,’’ I said.
‘‘No problem,’’ said George, ‘‘unless he calls my bluff. That could get interesting.’’
It was Hester’s turn. ‘‘You two’ll look great in fatigues and black ski masks.’’
‘‘Mine,’’ said George, ‘‘will say FBI. His,’’ he said pointing at me, ‘‘will say IDIOT.’’
We were quiet for a few seconds.
‘‘Why in the hell did they shoot Rumsford?’’ asked Hester.
That was the question, all right. We were right back to that. Something had gone really wrong. Big time. What? Whatever could have possessed them to shoot the representative they’d requested, the man to whom they wished to present their side of the problem, the vehicle who was to get their story out? Of all people.
I’m not especially known for either introspection or self-doubt. But this whole thing was beginning to get to me. What was I doing wrong? Honest to God, I never thought they’d shoot Phil. Not in a million years. But they had, and he was dead. Great decision, Carl. Great. Now I thought we should go in and get the whole bunch. If I was right, that’d be 50 percent for the day. They said a good executive was right about 33 percent of the time. Not good odds for my being right. Well, maybe I was just tired. ‘‘Maybe I’m just not too good at this,’’ I said to myself. I was in no mood to argue.
‘‘What?’’ asked George.
‘‘Just talking to myself.’’
‘‘Don’t start that,’’ said Hester.
Al came back about then. His face was red, and he had a disgusted look about him.
‘‘So what’s the word?’’ I asked.
‘‘The AG wants to talk to the governor. They’re going to have to ‘make a far-reaching policy decision,’ or something like that.’’
‘‘Great.’’
‘‘And he said it could take some time.’’
‘‘Well,’’ I said. ‘‘Well.’’ I took a deep breath. ‘‘That’s that, then.’’
George was getting a very worried look on his face. ‘‘Do you want me to call my people?’’
‘‘Not just yet,’’ I said. ‘‘Give me a few minutes.’’ I started to walk toward the perimeter. ‘‘Let’s look the scene over,’’ I said. ‘‘I might have an idea.’’
I had an idea, all right. But it sure wouldn’t stand a vote. We walked in silence toward the perimeter fence. When we got there, I just kept going down the path to the house.
‘‘Where are you going?’’ asked George.
‘‘To get the job done,’’ I answered. ‘‘I believe it’s time for the ‘deceive and detain’ phase. It’ll just take a
