TANGO had deployed on foot. They were coming through the woods using night-vision goggles. This was the kind of operation they did well and had practiced over and over within the past three weeks. This team consisted of a full six STATE team members supplemented by three FBI SWAT members and one from the Montgomery County SWAT team. While we waited for TANGO to get in place, I got on the phone again with our two witnesses.
“We’re moving in on the Caprice in a few minutes. You may hear a loud noise. If it doesn’t go as planned and the suspects aren’t sleeping, you may hear gunfire. Don’t worry—our teams know where you are. Just stay in your vehicle, and you’ll be safe. And no matter what you hear or see, do not get out of your vehicle for any reason. If you feel threatened or if you feel in danger, just start your car and head toward the exit.”
I could hear the nervousness in the voice on the other end of the line. “Yes sir, I understand. We have not seen anybody or anything moving in or around that car. Do you think they are still in that car? We won’t move or get out.”
I talked to them in the most soothing voice I could muster. “Good. Don’t worry; we have you covered. I will make sure that nothing happens to you. I can get to your car in under a minute if I need to. Just remember—no matter what you hear, stay in the car and stay low. Stay on the line with me.” I remembered the lesson I had learned years ago: Always stay in control, or make it seem like you’re in control, no matter what the hell is going on.
All the troopers and deputies on the perimeter had heard the radio message from Major Ballard. I didn’t need to repeat orders; every one of those troopers had worked with STATE teams before. They wouldn’t approach until the scene was cleared by STATE. I could hear and feel the tension in the silence over the radio. Every trooper, deputy, officer, and agent was at a peak level of readiness. It wouldn’t take much to set off this powder keg.
I had told the witnesses that I was shrinking the perimeter in their direction in case there was a need to come to their defense. Trooper Smith, the deputy, and I began our approach on foot from the exit side of the rest area. We spread out in a skirmish line, maintaining a sight line with each other. That gave us better visuals and made each of us a more difficult target in the event the snipers were in fact awake, out of the car, and waiting for us. Our radios were turned down to nothing more than a whisper. The last thing we needed was radio traffic giving away our position.
The night had become still, the breeze had quieted, and the temperature had dropped into the high thirties or low forties. Eerily, the rest area and surrounding woods were extremely quiet. I knew then what it meant to experience deafening silence. Our weapons at the ready, we slowly moved toward our witnesses’ vehicle. We were also now able to put ourselves between the snipers and the four or five other sleeping truck drivers who were unaware of what was happening. We were slightly out in the open in the parking lot, but given the surroundings, there wasn’t much we could do about that. If the snipers had relocated to one of those trucks now behind us, then our asses were in trouble and we had walked into an ambush that we likely wouldn’t walk away from.
I looked across the parking lot in the direction of the parked blue Caprice. I could just see it through the trees, across the lawn and beyond the picnic tables, about 150 yards away. I had the earpiece attached to my portable radio with the ear bud in my right ear. I heard the soft squelch of the radio. Ballard’s voice came on briefly. “Thirty seconds out.”
I halted our three-man skirmish line. I could only just make out the TANGO teams emerging from the woods behind the Caprice. They were nothing more than dark shadows. They moved quietly and quickly in tactical formation, closing the gap between the parked Caprice and the thirty yards of lawn that separated the parking lot from the tree line. The three of us took cover behind anything we could find. We also got low in the event bullets started flying. TANGO knew we were there. They knew I had shrunk the perimeter on our side to provide cover for our witnesses. Bullets wouldn’t come in our direction unless they came from the snipers. TANGO was the best there is on the civilian side of this business.
It was pucker time, that moment when you try to turn your five-foot, ten-inch frame into a three-foot bundle and stuff your entire body behind a tree that was three inches wide.
The TANGO team approached the car and split into two groups, one moving to the driver’s side and the other to the passenger side. I knew what would happen next, but my heart still jumped a beat when the teams smashed the two car windows simultaneously. I closed my eyes as I had been trained to do when I heard or anticipated the flash-bang grenades going off. The flash-bangs are just as the term implies. They go off with one hell of a bang and a flash of bright light. The bang is designed to invoke confusion and the flash is to instill blindness because it would happen faster than the killer’s minds could process the information or understand what the hell just happened. The few seconds of confusion were all that TANGO would need. I closed my eyes so I wouldn’t lose my night vision.
However, what I had anticipated never happened. TANGO had caught them so much by surprise that there was no need to use flash-bangs.
It seemed to be happening in slow motion. I saw hands reach inside the vehicle and bodies being pulled out, one on each side. From where I stood, the snipers looked like rag dolls, one pulled from the front seat and the other from the back seat, then quickly vaulted clear of the car and thrown to the pavement. Two large, heavily armored troopers, complete with Kevlar helmets and their night-vision equipment flipped up and out of the way, leaped on top of them. The troopers worked fast, quickly securing the suspects’ hands behind their backs and searching them for weapons.
The radio crackled. Ballard’s voice came over the air: “Be advised, the suspects are secured. The scene is secure.”
I took a deep breath for the first time in hours. All that anticipation of things going badly wrong, all that thinking and anticipating what the next move would be depending on what happened—it left me in an instant. It was as if someone had finally rolled that dump truck loaded with ten tons of gravel off my chest.
It also felt like victory. We had somehow been able to surround two of the most notorious and cold-blooded killers in American history and end their killing spree without having to fire a shot.
Smith, the deputy, and I made our way through the picnic area to the Caprice and the two suspects, who had been flipped up to sit on their asses Indian style. Two extremely large and well-armed troopers were standing over them, guns trained right at them. I still had two cell phones with me, and both lines were still active. I grabbed the JOC phone and relayed Major Ballard’s message.
It may just have been my own tension being released, but I swear I could feel the collective sigh of relief coming through that phone line.