It did occur to me that if the press were listening they would now have my witness’s phone number. I wouldn’t have put it past any of them to try to call the witness directly, which would have cut us out of the communication link and caused a very serious problem. There are certain things that you cannot control in every situation, and the best you can do is try to at least manage those things. This was one of those situations: I needed the phone number, so this was a risk I had to take.
I told Hundertmark to keep monitoring the cell phone call. “Relay whatever information you think the JOC needs to know. Oh, and let them know what I’m doing. And tell them we didn’t just become troopers yesterday; we know what the hell we’re doing.”
I got on the cell phone with my two witnesses. I remained calm, mostly for their sake, but also because I wanted to keep my wits about me. I told them who I was and asked them a series of questions. “Do you feel safe? If not, we can sneak a couple of troopers in to get you out.”
They told me that they felt safe for the moment. They still were not seeing any movement in or around the parked Caprice, nor anywhere in the rest area.
“Okay, good. Now either a Frederick duty officer or I will remain on the line with you for the duration. If at any time you feel threatened, then we can be there in less than one minute.”
I filled them in on my plan, which was to completely surround the rest area with troopers. We would carefully plan the arrest and execute it, I told them, when it was the right time. “This is going to take a considerable amount of time before we’re ready, and success is going to depend on your ability to be our eyes. But again, if you feel threatened at any point, just say the word, and we’ll get you out.”
They were okay with everything I had said. They told their story: The one caller said he was the night caretaker of the rest area. When he pulled into the rest area, he had parked a few spaces from the Caprice. He had been listening to his radio when he heard the description and tag number of the car that we were looking for. He said, “I don’t know much about how to read,” so he got out of the car and wrote the tag number down on his hand, including the state, with a pen. He didn’t have a cell phone or any money for the pay phone, so he found the other person, Mr. Donovan, and asked him to call the police. The entire time, he saw no one in or around the car.
While I was talking to the witnesses, the barrack kept calling me, but of course I couldn’t answer even if I had wanted to, since I was on the line with our witness. I understood the frustration of the brass back at the JOC. It’s difficult to be forty-five miles from the action and still feel responsible for the result. But it was also obvious to me that these leaders had either never been in the field in the middle of an incident or had forgotten what it was like to be up to your ass in alligators while someone is asking how many alligators you’re dealing with. They couldn’t help me solve a damned thing over the phone, so they needed to trust me and my training to make the call as I saw fit. And they needed to provide me the resources to get the job done.
Unfortunately, it wasn’t that simple. The FBI, the ATF, and all the other agencies had leadership at the table. They didn’t understand the state police’s culture and training—the culture and training that I represented—and I didn’t understand theirs. All these agencies had worked extremely well together over the past three weeks, but it was impossible to blend together all of our differences in such a short time, and under the pressure and stress that this case had created. The straight incident command structure works great when it’s one agency. Yet there’s always a human factor based upon the different agencies’ training and philosophy, and that can throw a monkey wrench into the mix. You can plan for it, you can talk about it, and you can even practice it, given the time and money, but you never know how it will hold up until the proverbial shit hits the fan.
While I was juggling talking with our people in the rest area, listening and responding to the police radio, and maintaining my post, another state police car pulled into the exit ramp and took up a position beside car 662. Again, a lucky break. Trooper First Class Dwayne Smith, at the time working out of the Hagerstown Barrack as a road trooper, was another senior guy and a good man to have around. I had served with Dwayne many times over the years. We had never really worked in the same unit, but he was another former narcotics trooper, who had received the same training I had. We had served search-and-seizure warrants together many times. He was another trooper who wouldn’t flinch in the face of a shoot/don’t-shoot situation.
Without saying a word, Dwayne handed me his cell phone so I could now talk to the witnesses, talk to the troopers over the radio, and call the JOC all at the same time. Dwayne was armed with a Remington 870 shotgun. I told him that no matter what happened, we couldn’t let that car get past us and out of the rest area. Dwayne simply nodded. I didn’t have to tell him anything else. Good thing, because it was then that we saw headlights heading our way from the rest area.
A slight left-hand curve out of the parking lot prevented anyone in the truck lot from seeing our location, and any vehicle merging onto the exit ramp from the car parking lot wouldn’t see us until it rounded the bend. Likewise, we couldn’t know for sure if these headlights were coming from the truck lot or the car lot. I put down the cell phone and radio and advised the barrack that we had headlights coming at us and to stand by. Trooper Smith took up position to my left and behind his driver’s side quarter panel. He had his high beams on, and his outside spotlight pointed to the front in the sightline of anybody coming at him. Car 662 didn’t have a spotlight, so I had the high beams on and was staying behind my engine block as well. We had both cars across the ramp in a V-shape, with the point directed toward the inside of the rest area, toward the oncoming headlights.
As the vehicle approached, we could tell it was a tractor trailer. The sounds of the diesel engine and the driver changing gears made it obvious. In some respects, I was relieved to realize it was a truck coming at us and not the sniper car. But we weren’t out of the woods. The snipers could have hijacked the driver and his vehicle. The truck was a lot higher than our police cars. Although we would be able to see the driver, we couldn’t be sure if there was anyone else inside that truck.
As the truck rounded the slight bend we heard the engine change as the driver started to idle down. This was another good sign. Our high beams and spotlight would have blinded the driver, and as long as we were behind the headlights there was no way he could see us or know how many of us there were. We were trying to use every tactical trick we had in our book. Then we heard the release of the air brakes. Trooper Smith had his shotgun pointed at the driver. I approached the driver’s-side window slowly, my .40-caliber Beretta drawn. The driver rolled down his window. With my five-cell flashlight blinding him and my Beretta pointed right at him, he looked startled and nervous.
“State police,” I said.
He stuck both his hands out of the window.
“Are you alone?”
“Yes,” he said.
“Have you been contacted by anybody while in the rest area?”
“No. I pulled in here around ten tonight to get some sleep. I went to the restroom, then I came back to my rig and went to sleep. What the hell is going on?”
“Did you see or speak to anyone?”
“No one.”
“Would you step out of the truck so we can have a look, please? You’re not in any trouble. You just happen to be in the wrong place at the wrong time.”
The driver complied readily. Trooper Smith had quietly slipped around to the passenger side of the truck and had opened the passenger side door, quickly checking the interior of the sleeper cab. The cab was empty, as was the sleeper compartment. I performed a quick pat down to make sure the driver didn’t have surprises that I needed to be aware of. It’s not unusual for truck drivers to be armed. I had no idea who this guy was; he could be a wanted person who happened to be caught in an unexpected situation and thought we were after him.
“Clear,” said Dwayne.
The driver was shaken. “What’s going on?”
“Sir, I’m sorry for the inconvenience. But the snipers are in the rest area.”
“Holy shit,” he muttered, wide-eyed.
“And you saw no one moving around when you pulled out of your parking spot?”
“I didn’t notice anyone, no.”
“Well, you have two options; you can leave and be on your way, or you could help us out.”
He looked back at me, confused.
“Would you like to be a good American? If so, just leave your truck where it is and help us block the exit ramp. That’s it. Just leave it here, get in your cab, lock the doors, and get into your sleeper. Mind you, it could be a while before we’re able to move in.”
The driver readily agreed.
“Another thing,” I said. “If you hear any CB radio traffic coming from any of the other trucks still in the rest area, ask them to stay where they are and stay locked in their trucks. And in the event of gunfire, keep your head down. Don’t be tempted to look out the windows. Just stay in the sleeper.”
The driver climbed back up into his cab. He kept the engine running for warmth, but shut all the lights out. Within a few minutes, a second truck approached us from inside the rest area.
Trooper Smith and I once again cleared this truck and had the driver pull up alongside the other parked truck. Now there would be no way, with the woods so close and an embankment on either side of the parked trucks, that the snipers could get out of the rest area by car.