It was a small incident in hindsight, but small incidents can quickly become high-level incidents during events like this. The DEA agent’s gaffe drove home the point—this thing still had the potential to spin out of control at any second. It was my responsibility to prevent that from happening. If I didn’t maintain command, and if the well-established incident command structure failed, we could have dead troopers, dead civilians, or both. So back to the phones I went, partly because I wanted to verify that we still had a status quo, but also because I needed to settle my nerves and get refocused. I couldn’t let what had just happened alter the plan.
I checked in with my witnesses and got their update: nothing had changed. Then I returned to the conference call. “Be advised,” I told the egos at the JOC, “I have enough coverage here at the scene. Do not send any more backup until I request it. And I do not want anyone near this incident who isn’t in uniform. A DEA agent in a pair of shorts carrying a rifle damn near got his fucking head blown off.” The response was silence.
I remembered the shooting in Virginia where three hundred cops converged on the crime scene. I didn’t want that. There were plenty of people here with guns already, and I wanted to make sure we limited gunfire to the bare necessity. Once that bullet leaves that barrel, there’s no calling it back. Plus, I was pretty sure all hell would break loose on the first shot. The situation could go from contained and dangerous to out of control and deadly with one inadvertent pull of a trigger from a nervous cop.
I’m not sure which one of the agents at the other end of the phone said it, but it was said: “This is not a strictly state police operation. My agents will go to that scene.”
I’d had enough. Memories of that drug raid gone afoul came pouring back into my mind. Bullets flying and nobody knows who the bad guys are and who the good guys are. The only difference was, this was going to be worse. “No,” I said. “This is in the woods. It’s dark. We have the perimeter covered. If cops are up here—and I don’t care if they’re agents, troopers, deputies, officers, or the guy delivering pizza—if they cannot be clearly identified as being in uniform, there’s a real risk they could be shot. If they aren’t in uniform, I don’t want them on the mountain. And if they’re already on the mountain, call them back immediately. I’ve ordered my troopers blocking both ends of the interstate to stop anyone not in uniform unless it’s approved by me. I don’t give a rat’s ass whose agent they are, if they’re not in uniform then get them the fuck off my crime scene.”
There were grumblings from the other end of the phone. The conversation was getting heated. Blood was up, and emotions were edging out common sense. They were ignoring the command structure, focusing instead on which agency would claim the glory when these killers were apprehended.
I’m sure they wanted this case to be over—we all did. And those guys at the JOC had to be under tremendous pressure. It wasn’t every case where they had to report back to the White House. I understood. And yet they were back at the JOC, and I was on the scene. I knew my troopers, and I knew the turf. I just couldn’t seem to get that through their heads. I was determined to follow our command structure protocol. As long as I was in charge of the scene, that’s how it was going to be. I wasn’t going to let any cops get sent home in a body bag—not even the dumb ones running around here in the dark in plainclothes and carrying assault rifles.
Another voice came on the line. “This is U.S. Deputy Marshal Johnny Hughes. Lieutenant Reichenbaugh is correct; he doesn’t need anyone not in uniform on that mountain. He knows what he’s doing. By my authority, he is in charge and is calling the shots up there until the TANGO teams are ready to deploy and execute the arrest.” It was a welcome voice from my past. Johnny Hughes, retired major from the Maryland State Police, had moved over to the Marshal’s Service after retirement. It was obvious that everyone on the line accepted that he and the Marshal’s Service trumped whatever authority they had.
I never did understand all the politics that get involved in cases like this, but the U.S. marshal has the final word, so the problem was quickly resolved. Now I could concentrate on communicating with my two witnesses, who were still very much in harm’s way. I could focus on maintaining the perimeter and evaluating any changes that might occur, and what change in tactics that would require. I did not see another plainclothes police officer or agent on the mountain until the whole thing was over.
My senses had been on high alert ever since the initial call from Sergeant Hundertmark saying the snipers had been spotted in the rest area. My eye was catching any movement, including rustling of the leaves from the slight breeze. I don’t know if it was a slight shadow I suddenly saw, a slight and sudden downdraft, or a sensation that I felt. But I looked up and saw nothing more than a shadow and a silhouette of a helicopter rotor and the body of some sort of helicopter. The aircraft made no sound and was completely blacked out—no lights visible. It was just a black silhouette against a dark sky.
At first I thought I was seeing things, but I wasn’t. The aircraft was up there. It moved low overhead and wasn’t far above tree level. I don’t know whose aircraft it was, but it wasn’t one of the twelve Maryland State Police helicopters. MSP helicopters make a very distinctive whiny sound and would have been heard by everybody, including the sleeping or, for that matter, the dead. This unidentified aircraft was moving very slowly, silently, almost in a hover.
I had a feeling it was being used as an airborne observation post, and that they were using forward-looking infrared, or FLIR, to see if they could pick up any heat signatures coming out of that Caprice—or, more important, an unexpected heat signature in the woods behind the Caprice. It was the smart thing to do, and I had thought about requesting a helicopter to come and take a look for me earlier, but I had nixed the idea because I was afraid the helicopter noise would wake our sleeping killers. To this day I don’t know whose helicopter that was. The FBI helicopter I had observed early in the investigation sitting at the Montgomery County police training facility wasn’t capable of silence like this craft. My guess was that it was military.
To me, the benefit of calling in one of our choppers earlier was outweighed by the risk at the time. The state police helicopter would have been no different from a news helicopter—noisy. This one was like nothing I had ever seen. There wasn’t a sound except the slight rustle of leaves in the tree canopy. Whoever those guys were, I hoped they were wearing white hats and were on my side. Because if it wasn’t one of ours, then I had bitten off a lot more than any of us could chew.
But the snipers couldn’t have access to that kind of technology. It had to be TANGO. That meant the TANGO teams were getting close to deploying and were trying to gather as much intelligence about their target as possible. It wouldn’t make any sense to conduct this flyover, then wait an hour. A lot of things can change in an hour in a situation like this. I looked at my watch: It was just after 3 a.m. Most of the area was asleep at this hour. It was time.
My guess was that Major Ballard was in that aircraft so he could get a personal feel for the situation, the layout, the tree cover, and the exact location of the parked Caprice that we believed and hoped the killers were sleeping in. It was still unknown if the snipers were in that car or what they were doing. We still had to assume that one of them could be in the woods with that rifle while the other one slept. But we had seen no changing of the guard in the hours we had been there. As for my witnesses, I was confident that they were wide awake and would have reported any movement. I know this because I was in constant communication with them and asked them about every ten minutes if anything was different.
Less than fifteen minutes later, the Code 3 radio silence was broken. Major Ballard’s voice came over the air. “Be advised, TANGO is in route and three minutes out.”
“Ten-four, TANGO, I copy,” I replied. “Car 662 to all units. TANGO is incoming. Maintain your positions and stay sharp until further advised. Do not react to anything you see or hear coming from inside the perimeter. Maintain weapons discipline and do not fire unless there is a threat directly in front of you that you must deal with. All units acknowledge.”
I didn’t really need to say what I said, because I knew all the troopers up there on the scene understood how STATE, now incorporated into TANGO, operated. I made the announcement in case there were other agents and deputies that I didn’t know about up there hiding in the bushes someplace; if so, I wanted them to clearly understand the orders and know what was expected.
The moment of truth was at hand. If the snipers were in that car, they were about to have justice administered to them. Their reign of terror was over. It was going to be completely up to them if they left that rest area in handcuffs or in body bags. But what if they weren’t in that car? We would be back to square one. We knew who they were, but we would have no idea where they were, or how they were moving around. Had they carjacked somebody in the rest area? When daylight came would we find the body of another citizen in a ditch or in the woods? Darker yet, was this a trap? Had they lured us in so they could take out a bunch of cops in a last blaze of glory? We could turn from hunters to hunted in one hell of a hurry.
Questions, questions: within a few minutes, we were about to know the answers to all those questions rolling around in my head.