October 23, 10:30 p.m. There were too many things racing through my mind all at once. I had to get there before that car took off. I just had to. And I didn’t want any more information going over the air than was necessary. I called the barrack on my cell phone and spoke directly to Sergeant Hundertmark.
I had to make sure we had a witness in case the killers slipped by us. I asked Hundertmark if he still had contact with the witness.
“I do, yes.”
“Get his cell phone number and find out all you can about what he saw. Make sure the caller is safe, and find out if he saw anybody in or around the car. Oh, and find out how many people and vehicles this guy estimates are in the rest area. Who’s moving around the area?” My mind was going faster than my ability to give instructions to Hundertmark.
“And sergeant?”
“Yes?”
I hesitated. Surely it was the right car, but we had to be sure. “Can you have the caller recheck the tag number and description of the car? Tell him to do that only if it’s safe to do so.”
I gave Hundertmark my cell phone number. “Use the Frederick Barrack resources. Set up a conference call with the witness. I want to be able to speak directly with the caller when I get on the scene.” I was also thinking the barrack would be able to monitor what was being said so that nothing would be missed.
Before I hung up, I asked Hundertmark to contact the MSP hangar at the Frederick airport and make sure that the helicopter Trooper 3 was fueled and ready upon my call, should we need aerial support or to medivac any of my troopers if this went bad.
“I’ll take care of it,” he said.
The one thing that could be to my advantage this night was that these guys had been found on my home turf. They would have to face some of the best troopers the Maryland State Police had.
At the time, the MSP were using Nextel cell phones with direct connect. Not all troopers had them—only command staff and troopers assigned to certain divisions and commands that needed “private and immediate communications.” Nearly all the road troopers had bought their own personal cell phones and used them for work, because the state police didn’t have the budget to provide everyone with a phone. The Intelligence Division had need for private and immediate communications, so we had been issued phones.
As I drove car 662 toward the rest area, I dialed Captain McAndrew on the Nextel. A very tired voice answered. I contained my excitement, but just barely. “Captain, it’s Reichenbaugh. We have a reported sighting of the sniper suspects in the I-70 westbound rest area in Frederick County. I’m headed there now and should arrive in a few minutes.”
Silence. Then his voice became more animated. “Got it. What are the orders so far?”
I told him what orders I had issued to Sergeant Hundertmark. “I think we’ve got the situation under control,” I said. “Would you pass the info to the JOC? I don’t have time to play a thousand questions with them. I’m kind of busy driving like a bat out of hell. Besides, I’m about the last bastard that pack of morons wants to hear from.”
“Something I should know?” he asked.
“I’m sure you’ll hear about it later, but nothing to worry about right now.”
McAndrew sounded energized. “You got it,” he said.
“Good. Once I’m on the scene, I’ll set up car 662 as the command and control vehicle. Have all other cars disable their repeater systems so that all repeater needs for the handheld radios will run through me.”
“I’ll take care of it.” I knew he would. McAndrew, like all troopers who have worked in the trenches together, always had my back. One less thing I would have to worry about as this unfolded.
I was taking a chance with the repeater system. If another car coming into the area with a repeater system—which takes a weak received signal and rebroadcasts it stronger—was on another channel, it could unintentionally take over the repeater function, and all the cars would lose communication with the command car, causing an unintentional communication blackout. I had fallen victim to this in other situations, and I really didn’t want to experience it now. By having the others disable their systems, we could avoid an accidental communications blackout. It sure as hell wasn’t an ideal situation, but it was what I had to work with. So the radio system I had would have to do.
When the first call from Sergeant Hundertmark had come, I was more than forty miles from the rest area. Having worked most of my career in Frederick County, I knew that rest area well. I had patrolled it many times during my uniformed days, and had set up more than one undercover drug deal there because it was an easy area to control. One way in, one way out. Plus, it was a public area where people were always coming and going, so it was easy to set up a surveillance team to monitor and record the drug buys. The problem was, it was public access. Hopefully we would get lucky now and there wouldn’t be a ton of people there at this time of night.
If the snipers had decided to lie low in this rest area, they had made a huge mistake: they had boxed themselves in. All we had to do was shut both the entrance ramp and exit ramp before they realized it.
This particular rest area is located a few miles west of Myersville on top of Old South Mountain, less than two hundred yards from the Washington County line. South Mountain had been the scene of numerous historic events stretching back to before the Revolutionary War. During the French and Indian War campaigns, General Braddock, accompanied by a young George Washington, had traveled in, around, and over a pass near where I-70 cuts over the mountain. The Civil War battle of South Mountain happened here, and the mountain also served as observation posts during the fighting at Antietam. In addition, General Lee had marched the Army of Northern Virginia on the west side of the mountain to shield his movements from the Union Army as he plunged deep into Pennsylvania on his way to the showdown at Gettysburg. Once again, this spot was going to be thrust into American history, only this time a modern-day showdown between law enforcement and two serial killers who would come to be known as the Beltway snipers.
As I was clocking over 110 miles per hour toward that rest area, I was determined not to let it become another battleground. If this turned out to be the snipers in the rest area, I wanted all my troopers to go home in one piece to their families and loved ones. That was my responsibility. I had never lost a trooper under my command, and I was damn well resolved not to let that happen now. The fate of the two killers would likely be their choice, but we were going to do our best to bring them to justice with little or no force or violence.
Plus, we didn’t want to let them slip through our fingers or make them martyrs for some perverse cause they may have thought themselves part of. We didn’t want to fuel some other nutbag’s desire to commit some future heinous act of violence. I was determined to make this nothing more than a call to justice for a couple of scumbag bushwhackers.
I laid my right foot hard on the accelerator, pressing it to the floor. The big engine roared, and I could feel myself being pressed back into the seat as the roller accelerated. Car 662 had a lot of miles on it, but I knew it wouldn’t fail and would give me every ounce of power it had. The grille lights flashed red and blue, and the portable blue strobe I had thrown up on the dash reflected off the guardrails. There was no need for a siren because there was really nobody else on the road. I was more than thirty-five miles from the rest area, so I wasn’t concerned that the killers would see or hear me coming. I had been trained to drive fast in pursuit. All my training and years of experience were kicking in, and the words of Corporal Cameron were in my ear from more than twenty years before: “Don’t fuck this up, son. If you don’t get there alive or you kill somebody else trying to get there you’ll be of no use to the agency, or to anybody depending on you to save their asses.”
I began to think about what I was racing toward. I was likely going to be the senior trooper, and the highest-ranking one, on the scene. This entire incident was about to become my total responsibility. It should have made me nervous, but it didn’t. I felt well prepared. I knew the incident command structure that had been adopted by all police agencies and emergency management agencies throughout the country—post-9/11, it had been drilled into all of us on a more detailed basis. I was cocky, arrogant, determined, well trained, experienced, and a Maryland state trooper, Maryland’s finest. I was in my element. Failure never entered my mind.