"Fuck you, asshole…"

"I'll arrest your ass, Davenport."

"Come down here and you can arrest me for kicking a federal agent's ass, 'cause I will," Lucas shouted back. "You dumb cocksucker…"

The federal entry team and the Minneapolis teams stabilized the area and hustled the other tenants out of the apartment building and adjacent buildings. The city's hostage negotiator set up a mobile phone to call Hood.

When Lucas and Lily returned to the surveillance apartment, Daniel was talking with the AIC and Sloan was leaning against the apartment wall, listening.

"… go on television and explain exactly what happened," Daniel was droning piously. "We've had substantial experience with this type of situation, we had the scene cleared and stable, we had an excellent action plan prepared by our best officers. Suddenly, with no coordination and without proper intelligence-intelligence that we had: we knew that door wouldn't fall to AVONs, which is one reason we didn't try them-suddenly, an FBI team takes jurisdiction and promptly launches what I can only describe as a rash action, which not only endangered the lives of many police officers and innocent people in adjoining apartments, but also jeopardizes the chances of capturing Bill Hood alive, and cracking this terrible conspiracy which has taken the lives of so many people…"

"It should have worked," the AIC said bitterly.

Daniel discarded his pious-preacher voice and turned hard. "Bullshit. You know, I never would have believed you'd have tried this. I thought you were too smart. If you'd come in with your team, taken some time, talked it over, we could have done a joint operation and you would have gotten the credit. The way it happened… I ain't taking the rap."

"Could I get everybody out of here? Just for a minute," the AIC asked loudly. "Everybody?"

"Lucas, you stay," Daniel said.

When the other cops were gone, the AIC looked briefly at Lucas, then turned to Daniel.

"You need a witness?"

"Never hurts," Daniel said.

"So what do you want?"

"I don't know. I'll probably want your seal of approval and some active lobbying on a half-dozen federal law-enforcement-assistance grant applications…"

"No problem…"

"… and a line into your files. When I call you on something, I want what you got and no bullshit."

"Jesus Christ, Daniel."

"You can write me a letter to that effect."

"Nothing on paper…"

"If there's nothing on paper, there's no deal."

The AIC was sweating. He could have had a coup. He was now in charge of a disaster. "All right," he said finally. "I gotta trust you."

"Hey, we've always been friends," Daniel offered, slapping the FBI man on the back.

"Fuck that," said the AIC, wrenching away. "That fuckin' Clay. He's calling me every fifteen minutes, screaming for action. He's coming here, you know. He'll have that fuckin' gun in his armpit, the asshole."

"I feel for you," Daniel said.

"I don't give a shit about that," the AIC said. "Just find something that'll get me off the hook."

"I think we can do that," Daniel said. He glanced at Lucas. "We'll say that Minneapolis made the call and we decided to use FBI experts to attempt an entry. When that couldn't be accomplished, we went to an alternate plan that used city officers to negotiate a surrender."

"The fuckin' TV'11 never buy it," the agent said unhappily.

"If we both agree, what choice have they got?"

Del, Lily and Sloan were standing together in the hallway when Lucas and Daniel left the surveillance apartment.

"What'd we do?" Del asked.

"A deal," Daniel said.

"I hope you got a lot," Del said.

"We did all right, as long as we can pull Hood out of there," Daniel said.

"Maybe this wasn't a time to deal," Sloan suggested. "Maybe this was a time to tell it like it is."

Daniel shook his head. "You always deal," he said.

"Always," said Lucas.

Lily and Del nodded and Sloan shrugged.

Hood had fired seven shots with a big-bore pistol through the oak door after the molded-compound AVON rounds had failed to blow it open. When they saw that the door wasn't going to fall, the agents had cleared away from it and nobody was hurt. The firing stopped, there was the odd explosion, and then silence.

Twenty minutes after the attempted entry, with Daniel still meeting with the agent-in-charge, the police hostage negotiator called Hood. Hood answered, said he wasn't coming out, but that his friends in the apartment had nothing to do with any of it.

"You know me?" he asked.

"Yeah, we've had a line on you, Billy," the negotiator said. "But that wasn't us at the door, that was another agency."

"The FBI…"

"We're just trying to get everybody out, including you, without anybody getting hurt…"

"These guys in here, they didn't have anything to do with it."

"Could you send them out?"

"Yeah, but I don't want any of those white guys to snipe them. You know? The fuckin' FBIs, man, they shoot us down like dirty dogs."

"You send them out, I guarantee no harm will come to them."

"I'll ask them," Hood said. "They're scared. They're sleeping, and all of a sudden somebody tries to blow up the fuckin' apartment, you know?"

"I guarantee…"

"I'll ask them. You call back in two minutes." He hung up.

"What's going on?" Lucas asked. He and Lily had cut around the building to come up on the negotiator's car.

"I think he's gonna let the other two guys out."

"Just like that?"

"Just like that. He's not thinking like they're hostages."

"They're not. They're his friends."

"What happened with Daniel?" the negotiator asked.

"The feebs are out," Lucas said.

"All right."

The negotiator called back after a little more than two minutes.

"They're coming out, but they gotta come out the window. The goddamn door is all fucked up, we can't get it open," Hood said.

"All right. That's fine. Break the window, whatever you have to do."

"Tell those white boys, so they don't get sniped."

"We'll pass the word right now. Give us a minute, then send them out. And you ought to think about it too, Billy; we really don't want to do you any harm."

"Save the bullshit and pass the word not to snipe these guys," Hood said, and hung up.

"The two guys are coming out," the negotiator told the radio man next to him. "Pass the word."

As they watched, with Lucas and Lily standing beside the car, a chair sailed through the front window and broken glass was knocked out of the window frame with a broom. Then a blanket was thrown over the window ledge. The first man stood in the window, jumped the five feet to the ground and hurried down the street toward the blocking police cars. A patrolman met him as he crossed the line of cars.

Lily looked at him and shook her head. "Don't know him. Wasn't in any of the photos."

The second man followed a half-minute later, sitting on the window ledge with his legs dangling, talking back into the apartment. After a few seconds, he shrugged, hopped down and walked to the police line. The negotiator got back on the phone.

"Billy? Billy? Talk to me, man. Talk to me:… Come on, Billy, you know that's not right. That was the FBI, we cleared those fuckers out of here… I know, I know… No, bullshit, I don't do that and the men here don't do that. You tell me one time… Billy? Billy?" He shook his head and dropped the receiver to his lap. "Fuck it, he hung up."

"What's he say?" Lily asked.

"He says us white boys are going to snipe him," the negotiator said. The negotiator, who was burly and black, smiled and picked up the phone and started dialing again. "He's probably right, fuckin' white boys with guns."

The line was busy.

"Where's that file Anderson made?" the negotiator asked his radio man. The radio man passed a notebook. "Call the phone company, tell them what's happening and ask them to check the number, see where the call's going."