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Frames Per Second

OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA

AGENT PARKER'S RADIO CRACKLED. HE TURNED AWAY AND SPOKE into it and then came back to Ben. "OK, the two from NBC have agreed."

Ben said, "I'd be the only photographer?"

"That's right," Parker said. "You and two television guys from NBC that Johansen remembers from some interview before. He says he remembers your face, so I can't put one of my men in."

Ben looked over at the barn. Five days had passed since Jarrod Johansen had shot Thad Greene. Last night, the word had spread among the sandbags that Greene was now conscious and expected to survive.

The morning mist was just beginning to burn off the fields behind the barn, but the light inside would still be poor. Ben double-checked his camera to make sure he was shooting with his fastest film.

Parker said. "So what do you say?"

"Wouldn't miss it." Ben knew that even if he didn't have a camera, he would have helped get those children out. Just as he hoped someone else would do the same for his ex-wife and kids.

But Ben also knew he simply wanted the shot.

"You talk to me first when you get out, OK?" Lucien said. He was the Insider reporter assigned to cover the story along with Ben. His black eyes were shining, his aftershave was coming on strong. "It's not like I have to actually be there. You know that Kurt is going to want us to tell our story first, not let everyone else have it. So even if Johansen starts shooting, kills somebody, don't talk in front of the TV cameras or anybody else. All right?"

"Jesus," Parker said. He was an enormous black man with skin so dark it was almost blue in some light. The black Kevlar bulletproof vest seemed to draw in even more light and somehow had the effect of making him appear larger.

Parker made Ben feel small, and Ben was six-two, two hundred pounds, himself.

Lucien pointed to the tripod-mounted camera with the six-hundred-millimeter lens and said, "I'll even cover you. Kurt'll like that."

"Who's Kurt?" Parker asked.

"Our editor," Lucien said.

Parker looked at Ben and the faintest of smiles crossed the agent's face. He swept his hand toward the barn door. "Then, by all means—cover him."

They wired Ben and strapped a bulletproof vest onto him. Parker waited with him just inside the command post vehicle, ready to begin the walk across.

Ben turned to watch the hostage negotiator, a guy by the name of Burnett, finish outfitting the two from NBC.

"How long?" Parker asked Burnett.

"Three minutes, we'll be all set."

Parker grunted. He looked over at Ben. "Tell me about this photo shoot you did of Johansen before."

Ben shrugged. "It was nothing special." Ben had photographed Johansen a year ago, back when he was making a surprisingly strong senate run from his home state of Alabama.

The day of the interview, Johansen had refused to allow any shots until he was ready—and that meant wearing jeans and an open-necked plaid shirt, one foot up on a bale of hay, the flag waving gently in the background. Strictly cornball.

"I hear you got yourself some prize for pictures of those prison kids in Rwanda," Johansen had said as Ben had settled in to take the shot. "I'm a great believer in the power of the press. So you help get me in the senate with this shot, and I'll send them nigras some food, tell them to stay home instead of coming here. Fair deal?"

"You meet Saunders?" Parker said.

"He looked familiar when I saw his picture later. He was there, but I guess he was keeping himself away from the camera."

"I'm sure he was," Parker said, dryly. "Something that undercover agents learn early."

When Johansen had somehow discovered that Saunders was an FBI agent, he shot him himself. He did this even after the agent told him that he was wired, that surveillance cameras were tracking them right then. "I'm the America that you have forgotten," Johansen said.

That video appeared on the news every night for almost a week, making Johansen a hero to what a New York Times editorial called "... a depressingly large minority."

Parker sighed. "You see his 7-Eleven video?"

"Who could miss it?"

Johansen's name had faded from the media until three weeks ago, when he escaped from prison. A few days after his escape, he bolstered his hero status by politely introducing himself to a 7-Eleven convenience store clerk and making a statement into a handheld tape recorder saying that he was on the way to Washington, D.C., to "kill that draft dodger." The audio was mated to the security camera video and once again he made the nightly news.

"His little media campaign almost took a hit right here," Parker said, moving his chin toward the barnyard. "White farmer. Vietnam vet."

Ben looked over his shoulder at the top of the hill where picketers were holding up signs. From the distance, he could just make out some of the larger ones: "Not another WACO," "Free America— Free J. J." One with the old standby, "God Bless Jarrod Johansen."

Parker snorted quietly. "People."

"Think we'd be seeing those signs if Greene died?" Ben said.

"Sure," Parker said. "You watch the news—lots of people went for Johansen's spin."

Ben nodded. Since the first news truck had arrived, Johansen had maintained that the cops had shot Greene, not him. All evidence to the contrary, it seemed many people still believed him.

"Just another government conspiracy," Ben had seen a woman in Alabama say. "Just like the Kennedy boys, only this time it's one of our own."

Parker looked at Ben. "The man knows his audience. And that you folks in the media are the way to them."

Ben rolled his shoulders, and exhaled, looking at that open barn door, the darkness inside.

"Yeah, well here we are."

"They're all set," said Burnett. "Wired and vests."

Parker and Ben turned. Ben knew the reporter on sight as most people would. Chuck Haynes was rumored to be next in line for a national anchor slot at NBC if he could keep his visibility up. The videographer, Ben had never met before.

"Gentlemen," Parker's voice was a deep rumble. "Understand that we've only agreed to let you folks from the media in to appease this fool long enough to walk him out of the barn. You operate under our orders. You do not ask him questions that will incite him, do you understand me?"

"I know I speak for all of us, when I say we'll cooperate," Haynes said.

Ben turned back to look at the open door, scratching distractedly at his beard. He felt scruffy. Suddenly aware that in that small barn, he would be part of the news, too. On the other side of the lens. That had only happened once before in his career, and it had been a distinctly unpleasant experience. Ben had a beard for the last few years, and he wondered what he looked like underneath it now. He looked down at himself. His jeans were dirty from the days of lying on the ground peering through the camera at that barn door. His shirt was damp with sweat. He yawned, feeling that curious combination of sleepiness and excitement that he'd felt whenever he was waiting for something to start. Like high school football, back in Portland, Maine. Later, it was waiting with his camera in hand, ready to jump out of an armored car with the marines in Sarajevo, or capturing images of young Zapatista rebels in Mexico.

Ben knew he usually did fine once things got started. But at the moment, he couldn't help but wish he was back at the motel, taking a shower, the exposed rolls of film tucked in his bag.

The two television guys were talking between themselves. Ben could hear the same nervousness in their voices, but Haynes was trying bluster over it. "Just be damn sure that thing is on the whole goddamn time," he was saying to the cameraman.

"Got it, got it, got it," said the cameraman.

Ben glanced back, smiling. Haynes was a big, good-looking guy with just the right amount of gray at the temples. But he didn't have a reputation for brains.

Haynes 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 goddamn 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 "the larger context." This, with a gun jammed against Mrs. Greene's neck. Most of it had a singsong, practiced sound. Johansen kept his eyes on the video camera, except when he would discuss the "institutions of entropy" that had "softened and weakened this great country in the name of equality."

Then he would look at Parker.

When he did that, Johansen's mouth turned ugly and his voice shook just slightly. Ben almost raised his camera to capture it, and then decided against it.

Johansen might read it as encouragement.

Finally, he was done.

Johansen bowed his head, and then waved the two television guys back.

"I've got some questions," Haynes said.

"Just shut up and keep your camera rolling," Johansen said.

Parker and Burnett stared at the newscaster, and he backed off, but didn't look too happy about it.

Abruptly, Johansen shoved the woman away. "Thank you, Mrs. Greene. You may leave now. I'm sorry for the trouble." He waved the gun at Burnett. "Walk her out, see that your guys don't kill her."

She seemed stunned, and then her face flushed crimson. She looked as if she were going to say something, but then looked to the gun and the other men, and simply turned away.

"What's going on here?" Burnett asked.

"Do it," Parker growled.

Burnett hesitated.

"Move!" Parker said.

Burnett took the woman away.

"Now how about these guys?" Parker said. "It's time for them to walk."

Johansen shook his head. "The fourth estate stays. If I've learned anything, it's that leadership is all a matter of making the right symbols. Well, I'm going to make one right now."

Faster than Ben could have imagined, Johansen lashed out with the gun butt and cracked Parker on the head. The agent staggered, and Johansen did it again. Blood gushed from a scalp wound. "Get on your knees, nigger."

Ben started forward and Johansen swung the gun to him. "Time for your picture, you whore. Get over here!"

Ben's hands were shaking, but in a glance, he double-checked everything. He had already put the flash on a coil cord so he could hold it off the camera. The power light on the flash was glowing red. He zoomed the lens back to its widest setting.

"You about ready there, Ben?" Johansen smiled slightly as he placed the gun inches from Parker's head.

"Just about." Ben stepped closer.

"You got my flag waving in the background? Is it still flying out there?"

"I've got it all." Ben's voice was shaking, too.

"Maybe you'll win some more awards here. The niggers have been good for you, haven't they?"

"You're fucking cold, Harris," the cameraman said, letting his video camera down.

"Keep rolling," Haynes snapped.

The cameraman shrugged and lifted it up, the red light gleaming above the lens.

"Don't do this, Mr. Johansen," Haynes said, his voice conveying just the right sense of urgency and dismay. "I'm asking you—the world is asking you—not to do this."

The audio was, of course, rolling too.

Johansen struck a pose and, indeed, a part of Ben knew it was a hell of a shot: the powerful black man staring up at Johansen. Parker was bloodied and confused, but still defiant. Out of focus, the running SWAT team, clearly too late. Johansen held the big gun rigidly in his right arm, his entire body conveying self-righteous judgment.

"Look at me," Ben said, with the assurance of years.

Damned if Johansen didn't comply, the gun moving just slightly as he did so.

Ben reached over with the flash and jammed it mere inches away from Johansen's eyes.

And took the picture.

"SO IT WAS PARKER WHO GOT THE GUN AWAY FROM JOHANSEN?" Peter Gallagher said.

"That's right."

"And it was Parker who clubbed him to the ground?"

"Well, I smacked him on the head a few times with the camera, but Parker did the heavy work. Then I backed off and covered the SWAT team as they came storming into the barn."

Peter laughed and took a sip of his beer. They were sitting in a small bar on Boston's waterfront overlooking the harbor. From long habit as a reporter, Peter kept his voice low.

"So all this hero shit I've been hearing is just Ben Harris giving yet another subject a bad case of red eye."

Ben nodded. "About sums it up. That distance from the flash, he'll probably have some permanent vision loss."

"Well, there's that."

"The picture was cool, though. Parker is this huge black force erupting from the floor; what you can see of Johansen's whited-out face has this funny little expression like he's just getting how much trouble he's in."

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Excerpted from Frames Per Second by Bill Eidson. Copyright © 1999 Bill Eidson. Excerpted by permission of OPEN ROAD INTEGRATED MEDIA.
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