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saw Ben’s smile and he snapped, “Don’t get in our way, clear? We’re capturing this live.”
    Ben laughed, shortly, and didn’t answer the man. Instead, he looked over at Parker. He thought of the Newsweek issue that had just been distributed behind the sandbags that morning. Under the headline, “Collision Course,” the cover had depicted high school photos of Johansen with a winning smile, Parker solemn and serious.
    “Nervous?” Parker said.
    “Hell, yes.”
    Both of them started slightly when the telephone on Burnett’s belt sounded. He flipped it open. “All right, Mr. Johansen. Give us a second to secure everybody here.”
    He nodded to Parker, who spoke rapidly into his radio to the SWAT team. “The girl’s coming out. Everybody be god damn sure you hold fire.”
    Katy was shoved into the doorway. Around Ben, he could feel everyone relax slightly. This was the first they’d seen of her in the whole stand, and although she seemed terrified, she looked all right otherwise.
    “I’ve got one her age at home,” Parker said. He clapped Ben lightly on the arm. “Swap with her.”
    Ben started across the grass. He lifted his camera slowly to his eye and captured a shot of her standing in the doorway. Her lower lip was trembling. “Hey,” he said, as he got closer. “Hey, Katy.”
    Johansen spoke around the door. “Keep on coming. Once you’re in, she goes.”
    Ben stepped into the gloom of the barn. In an instant, he took it all in: Johansen standing by the concrete wall, the gun on him; the mother and boy, bound and tied to a farm tractor. A shaft of light revealed the mother’s face, looking imploringly between Johansen and her daughter. “Please now, can she go?”
    “I don’t want to,” the girl said. “I want to stay with you, Mommy.”
    “Move it,” Johansen snapped.
    Ben did a mild double take when he looked at Johansen again. Somehow, the man had shaved and cleaned himself up. Ready for the cameras. “Can I?” Ben said, gesturing to the girl.
    Johansen nodded abruptly.
    Ben knelt down next to her. “Hey, I’ve got a girl your age.” He pointed to Parker. “So does he.” Ben looked back at the phalanx of men with guns and he understood her hesitation. He flapped his hand down to Parker and the agent got his point immediately and knelt down to the girl’s level. “Run to him, honey. He knows you’re scared.”
    The girl looked at Ben closely, and then abruptly ran to Parker.
    Without thinking, Ben raised the camera and captured two shots of the girl with dirty blue coveralls and pigtails, running for the kneeling FBI agent.
    “Never miss a shot, do you, Ben?” Johansen said. “Now come here, and take off that vest.”
    Ben hesitated, but Johansen simply raised his gun to Ben’s right eye. “You’ll miss that, in your business.”
    Ben took off the vest and Johansen had him kneel with his hands on his head while he put the vest onto himself. “Open your shirt and your pants and show me where the wires are—and then pull them.’’
    After a moment’s hesitation, Ben did.
    “All right. You go against that wall and you can keep shooting. Just save a shot or two for me.”
    And that’s what Ben did. He took shots of the twelve-year-old boy, looking back at his mother as Haynes and the cameraman walked toward him. After that, of Parker and Burnett filling the barn doorway, silhouetted by bright light. Johansen had all of them pull their wires. “You’ll forgive me, I’m sure,” he drawled. “I had a bad experience with these once.”
     
    Johansen’s diatribe took a surprisingly short time to complete. “I make no apologies for my actions,” he began, looking into the video camera. “Although I was saddened that Thad Greene was pressed so violently into service in the war against the disintegration of America, I am delighted to hear the news that he’ll recover …”
    And so on.
    A self-serving monologue that placed all of Johansen’s acts of terrorism into