Once again, luck was on my side. One of the troopers waiting for my arrival was Trooper First Class Rob Draskovic. Drak and I had worked together on the Frederick County Narcotics Task Force for many years, and we knew each other well. It was great to see the big man standing there as I pulled up. TFC Draskovic was one of the largest people I had ever seen. At over six-six and in the neighborhood of 265 to 280 pounds, Drak was an intimidating presence. He was a nice guy, but he didn’t need to say a word to intimidate someone.
I knew exactly what to expect from Drak, and he knew what to expect from me. We had served many search-and-seizure warrants together. He’d had the same training that I’d had, working with the STATE teams, and the two of us had come face to face with armed drug dealers on more than one occasion. If I’d had an opportunity to pick a trooper to face the snipers with me, Drak would have been at the top of my list. The other trooper waiting there was Trooper First Class Chris Paschal. I knew that TFC Paschal was also an outstanding, highly experienced trooper, and he would have easily been my second choice. The trooper in the K-9 car was Corporal Rich Poffenberger, another experienced hand. He had his German shepherd partner with him in the back seat. “I just pulled up to Drak a few seconds before you got here,” said Rich, leaning out the window. Rich was another trooper that was not to be fucked with. Armed with a big smile, a dry sense of humor, and a kick-ass dog, he wouldn’t blink at anything that was about to happen. Another big man that I was damn glad was here and was on my side.
“Yeah, Dave, I got here about five minutes ago,” Drak said. “I got the ramp blocked and did a sneak-and-peek foot recon through the woods.”
“And?” I asked.
“Confirmed. It’s the Caprice. I used binoculars, but didn’t see anyone in or around the car. The car is to the right in the car parking area, third or fourth space in. They backed it in. The trunk is facing the woods.”
If I were in their shoes I would have also backed into a parking space. That would give me an opportunity for a quick getaway. If there was any doubt left, it was gone now. These guys were the killers. They were constantly aware of their tactical situation. That also made them that much more dangerous and formidable.
I got on the radio. “Sergeant, is our caller still on the line?”
“He is. He’s waiting for your call. He’s still with the other person, still in a safe place.”
Nothing had changed since my last update. Good.
Drak, Chris, Rich, and I took a few minutes and evaluated the tactical situation we were facing. Our biggest concern: not having any idea where the snipers were, or even if they were in the rest area. It was entirely possible that they had heard about the lookout for their car and simply walked away from the rest area or carjacked another motorist.
It was now after 11 p.m., though, and I suspected they were sleeping in the car. But putting myself in their position, I would have slept in shifts. I would have had one of us watch from somewhere in the woods with the sniper rifle while the partner slept. They had already used a wooded area in several of the shootings, so it wouldn’t have been out of character for them to do that. If that were the case, and if we tried to either sneak in and take them or use a full-on lights-and-siren raid, we might very well walk into an ambush. While we would be able to pin the car in the parking spot, our sidearms and the one shotgun we had among us weren’t going to be a match for a sniper rifle with night sights or a laser sight. Hell, if they did have one of them on watch while the other one slept, we might well be in their rifle sights as we stood there talking.
But my gut told me otherwise. I felt that we had the element of surprise on our side, but we still needed to consider all options. If it were me, I would have been watching the entrance ramp to the rest area but would have stayed close enough to the car to get back and peel out before the exit was blocked. Anyway, there was a chance they hadn’t seen us. Maybe they were just a couple of lucky dumbasses and I was giving them way too much credit. If they were watching the ramp and had already seen Drak, they would have opened up on him, or they would have slipped out of the rest area. But nothing. Our caller was continuing to relay to us that there was no movement.
Another possibility: If they happened to be in the restroom and we secured their car without them in it, we could easily create a hostage barricade situation. Their only option would be to flee and try to commandeer one of the trucks or any of the other cars with people in them. With the number of shootings and killings these two guys had been involved with over the span of the last three weeks, a hostage situation was the last thing I wanted to see happen. It always came back to that. The body count was already way too high.
The risk of the four of us trying to take them was unacceptable—too unpredictable. “Boys,” I said, “no matter what happens tonight, we go home alive, and they don’t get out of this rest area. This case ends tonight.”
We looked at one another. Game time.
“Drak, keep the entrance ramp secured. No one comes in or goes out. Rich, get into the median strip and turn your dog loose on anybody who comes over the embankment on foot. I’m going to go block the exit ramp. I have additional troopers arriving. We don’t know what we’ve got, so we take them only if we have no other choice. If they try to leave, then we do whatever we need to do to prevent that. No hostages, no high-speed pursuit if we can help it. If nothing else, we need to keep them on foot, keep our advantage.”
I drove over and pulled car 662 across the exit ramp. Our current odds weren’t great: two killers with a sniper rifle versus four troopers, spread out, with sidearms, but it was going to have to do until I got some more troopers and deputies in place. Help was on its way, but I didn’t know when they would get here. This was a familiar situation to troopers assigned to the more rural areas of Maryland. If it took twenty minutes for backup to arrive, that was pretty good. I just hoped we had twenty minutes.
Once I was situated on the exit ramp, it was time for me to take command—time to initiate the incident command structure as I had been trained to do. I ordered a Code 3 on the Frederick Barrack radio channel. A Code 3 meant that all radio traffic was restricted to my command. Unless you had radio traffic specific to this incident, then the order was simple: stay the hell off the radio unless communication was directed at your unit. This also required that all repeater units get turned off except for the unit in the trunk of car 662. Car 662 was now the incident command car.
Word was getting out, at least within law enforcement. The radio, which had remained quiet, was starting to come alive with units from all over the state switching to the Frederick channel and advising their location and the fact that they were on their way. I wasn’t sure if there was anything going out over the civilian radio and news channels. But I figured the news channels had picked up on the radio traffic centering on the rest area, since they had known about everything else concerning this investigation, often before the cops did.
“Car 662, be advised,” the radio crackled. “Frederick County sheriff’s department has a K-9 unit minutes away.”
“Ten-four,” I said, then turned my attention to the K-9 team. “Frederick County, be advised, when you arrive, cover as much of the westbound median as you can. Frederick, make sure that any units coming my direction run silent with no lights.”
“Ten-four, car 662.” I then heard the police communication operator put out a general broadcast.
“At the direction of 662, all units responding secure lights and sirens. Six-six-two wants silent response. All cars acknowledge.”
This clearly established to all responding troopers and deputies that car 662 was the command vehicle and I had taken command of the situation. There was absolutely no sense in having some overanxious responding trooper or deputy blow what I had hoped was our tactical advantage of surprise by rolling in with siren blaring and lights flashing.
The goal was to have all the K-9 units I had available protecting the quarter-mile distance between the entrance ramp into the rest area and my location at the exit ramp.
I heard a Frederick County sheriff’s deputy arrive, and I assigned him to assist me in covering the exit ramp. Sergeant Hundertmark also advised me that he had orders for me to call the task force immediately.
I knew that all the brass housed in the operations center were aware of the sighting and were beside themselves because they weren’t on the scene. I could only imagine the conversations and arguments that were going on there. They had to be driving the barrack duty officer nuts with all kinds of demands and requests that he was, from a logistical standpoint, unable to provide. I was also guessing that there were a number of them jumping into cars and heading out like firemen leaving the station for a five-alarm fire.
“I’ll contact them as soon as I can,” I told Hundertmark, “but I need more time to set and secure a good perimeter. Frankly, it’s more important for me to speak with the two witnesses in the rest area. I have one cell phone; the JOC is going to have to wait.”
Knowing Sergeant Hundertmark the way I did, he was probably smiling. “Here’s the cell phone of our witness,” he said, and he read out the number.