Purge on the Potomac

by Roberts, David Thomas;

  Pops moseyed up to the front of the tent.

  “Ladies and gentlemen, this is Pops Younger, commandant of the Texas Rangers. Proud to have you here, Pops,” he said, as several dozen Texas-based law enforcement types starting clapping. The federal agents, still sore about their tangles with Pops and the Rangers during the Texas Crisis, were not amused.

  “Pops, have you walked the grounds? What did you notice?” asked the chief.

  “I did,” Pops said plainly.

  “You got a theory, Pops?”

  “How many rounds we got?” asked Pops, referring to number of shots fired.

  “We are still gathering casings, but it’s got to be several thousand rounds. These were .223 rounds, likely an AR-15,” answered the ATF lead.

  “How long did the shootings last?” asked Pops.

  “No more than fifteen minutes, according to the sheriff’s deputies who were onsite,” answered the chief.

  “You got ballistics back?” asked Pops.

  The officers in the room looked around as if nobody knew who was in charge of ordering ballistics.

  “The FBI crime lab is on it, should have results in a day or two,” the director answered.

  “There was some sensitivity to extracting bullets from bodies until remains were identified,” said the ATF agent, but it was suddenly obvious that this basic step in solving a crime was temporarily overlooked.

  “I’d check those reports carefully; you’re likely to have more than one shooter,” Pops claimed to an immediate uproar of resistance.

  “What the do you base that on, sir?” asked a Homeland Security official.

  “Thousands of rounds from one AR-15 in fifteen minutes? That barrel must of lit up like a Christmas tree. I ain’t no gun expert, but I’m sure you boys can tell me if all makes of AR-15s could endure that rate of fire without jamming or becoming too hot to hold. Hell, I don’t know; I’m asking you?” chuckled Pops as if he knew something they didn’t.

  Nobody knew the answer to the question.

  “Are you done collecting shell casings?” asked Pops.

  “I think so,” said the chief, turning to the FBI director. “Are we?”

  “Yes, we think we have all the shell casings marked and collected.”

  “Have you compared the number of shell casings to the discarded magazines? Does it match up, or is it even close?” asked Pops.

  The FBI director looked panicked. He turned to his team as his second in command huddled with some other agents as they took out their pens and paper notebooks. Another agent punched out numbers on his calculator app on his iPhone. He then looked back at the director and shook his head.

  “Mind sharing with the rest of us what you boys just ciphered up?” asked Pops.

  “Ciphered? What the hell is that?” asked a federal agent from Connecticut to another agent standing next to him.

  “Must be Texas talk for calculating is my guess,” he answered.

  “I think we must be off here in our count. We need some time to review the numbers and go back out to the fairgrounds and count the marking flags,” said the lead ATF agent.

  “My bet is you ain’t going to match up,” answered Pops, to quizzical looks from dozens of faces.

  “What’s your theory, Pops?” asked the Dallas chief.

  “Wasn’t just one shooter,” Pops said flatly.

  An uproar went up from the feds. Pops reached over to one of the tables and grabbed a red plastic cup that obviously belonged to one of the FBI agents. He spit tobacco juice in it, totally oblivious to the feds, who were essentially mocking him.

  “I don’t follow, Pops,” said the chief.

  “You want my boys to search the fairgrounds? Has anything, and I mean anything, left the fairgrounds yet?” asked Pops.

  “Sure, if you want to, go ahead. Nothing has left. We do have a request, however, from the port-a-can company to take out their units. They have about three hundred here and they have a contract to set them up at the State Fair of Texas at the Cotton Bowl in three weeks. They need time to dump, clean and re-deliver them. They have about six trucks waiting at the gate for entry when we give them the okay. They are also getting fairly rank,” reported the chief.

  Pops rubbed his mustache and looked down at his cowboy boots, deep in thought.

  “We’ve already looked in each and every can, Mr. Younger,” said the FBI agent.

  “You boys then won’t mind if mine take a look? What about all the vendor and food trailers?” asked Pops, as the FBI lead was starting to become irritated that Pops was asking him how well they did their job.

  “Go right ahead, cowboy,” he snarled sarcastically. “If you don’t mind, my team is going to follow yours just to make sure our crime scene remains intact.”

  Pops walked out with his Rangers, followed by a couple of dozen federal agents, the police chief, and several detectives. One detective turned to another, “Wow, we actually get to see Pops Younger work a crime scene! You don’t get to see this every day!”

  “Show me where the first shots were reported, if you will?” asked Pops politely.

  “It’s quite a walk, sir. They were first reported in the northwest corner of the fairgrounds.”

  “Okay, let’s go,” answered Pops.

  The large contingent walked to where the first shots were reported. Everywhere they looked, they could see small evidence flags marking spots where shell casings were found. Pops and the Rangers surveyed the area, walking carefully around the markings, pointing to certain areas and talking among themselves.

  Pops walked over to the corner bank of port-a-cans.

  “There’s a heavy concentration of casings here, next to this handicapped can,” he noted to the chief as he stood next to the can and looked in front of it and behind it.

  “Quite a few shots fired from this location but, if he was hiding behind the can to shoot, the casings would be back here instead of in front of it,” Pops noted.

  Nobody said a thing, except Dyson, who was standing next to Pops. “These shots were in front of the can.”

  “Did your boys look in these cans?” he asked the FBI director.

  “Of course, we did,” the director answered indignantly.

  Pops reached over and slowly opened the door to the port-a-can, careful not to step in. He peered into the smelly unit, slowly taking everything in. Several others stepped back due to the smell.

  Then, to the surprise of everyone, Pops stepped into the port-a-can, asking Dyson to hold the door.

  “Got us one right here, boys.” He turned to the FBI director. “Your boys must have missed these,” he smirked.

  “Missed what? What the hell are you talking about?” The FBI lead stuck his head in the can.

  “There’s a casing in the urinal right there.” Pops pointed. “There’s another one right there, too,” he said, pointing to the slop below in the toilet. A shell casing could barely be seen poking out of the mixture of feces, urine, toilet paper and chemicals. Pops stepped out so the FBI director could get a clearer view.

  Pops took a deep breath once he got out.

  “Son of a bitch, you guys missed these. How the hell did they get in here?” he asked his team, absolutely disgusted that it took Pops less than twenty minutes to find evidence his team didn’t find.

  “How the hell did casings get in there?” asked a detective.

  “The shooter was taking shots from inside the can. I’ll bet there’s more shell casings in that crap,” said Pops.

  “How the hell do we find them? Nobody is going fishing in that stuff!” said the chief.

  Dyson instructed another Ranger to go speak to the port-a-can vendor to find out how they were dumped and if there was a way to screen each can when dumped. Several FBI and ATF agents followed them back to the big tent used as the investigation headquarters.

  Pops then walked around the entire bank of cans before asking where the next set was. They all walked several hundred yards, past hundreds of casing
markers to the next bank of cans, only to once again find a concentration around a corner handicapped access port-a-can.

  Pops opened the door, and again found three casings in this one.

  The FBI director was livid and didn’t hide his anger from his agents.

  This time, Pops stayed in the can, staring into the abyss for what seemed like too long to everyone who was watching him from outside the door.

  “Fetch me a stick,” he said.

  “A stick?” asked the chief. “You going fishing in there, Pops?” he chuckled.

  “Somethin’ like that,” Pops answered.

  Nobody knew what to get Pops, but another ranger pulled a three-foot-long wooden tomato stake, that had been used to anchor a vendor tent, out of the ground. He took it over to Pops.

  Pops took the stake and slowly stuck it down the toilet and began to slowly stir the murky concoction, then stopped.

  “I need something with some kinda hook on it,” Pops yelled out.

  “What the hell has he got?” asked another detective.

  “I don’t know yet,” answered Pops. “I need something with a hook of some type.”

  Now everyone was curious what the hell this Texas Ranger was doing, stirring the nasty concoction in the toilet of a port-a-can.

  “You thinking what I’m thinking, Dick?” Pops asked Dyson in a low voice.

  “I hope you’re right, Pops, or these boys here will be laughing at us all the way back to D.C.”

  Pops walked back out of the can and reached for a cigar from the front of his pearl snap western shirt, bit the end off, and lit it up.

  “I need something to kill that damn smell,” he said to no one in particular.

  “We’ve got somebody getting something for you that might work,” said the chief. “Give him a few minutes and he’ll be here with it. Had to go back to his patrol car.”

  Ten minutes later, a Dallas police officer showed up with an iron tool used to unlock a locked car. It was thicker than a coat hanger and much stiffer, with a small hook on the end used to open door handles or door locks once a wedge was placed on the window to allow the officer to breach the window and fish for the handle inside.

  “That just might do the trick,” said Pops, as he took it from the officer, looked it up and down and took his hat off and handed it to Dyson. “Don’t need any unnecessary accidents,” he said, referring to the possibility of his Stetson dropping into the toilet.

  Pops took the tool and stuck it down into the toilet, carefully using it to feel around. He had felt something out of place with the wooden stake; now he wanted to pull out whatever it was he felt.

  Minutes went by. Nothing. Pops held a handkerchief over his mouth and nose to try to stifle the smell.

  “There we go,” he said, as a crowd gathered around the door opening.

  Slowly, Pops maneuvered the tool. It was obvious he had hooked something, but what?

  “Back up! Back up!” Pops yelled. “Make a hole!”

  Dyson began to back everyone up.

  As Pops slowly pulled up out of the port-a-can toilet with the tool, a dark object began to appear. He pulled it completely from the toilet, then swung around, careful to back out slowly, as the dark object was dripping with the rancid concoction from the toilet.

  As he backed out of the can, he could hear gasps.

  “Are you freakin’ kidding me?” said the police chief.

  Pops held up a bull pup AR-15 with collapsible stock and pistol grip and let it fall onto the grass.

  “I’ll be damned,” said the FBI director.

  Several Dallas police began clapping.

  “How the hell did you know that was in there?” the ATF lead agent asked.

  “Son, I go where the evidence leads me. Shell casings were inside the can. Nobody saw anyone leave with a weapon. Where would be the perfect place to hide it? Where nobody else will look.”

  “So, are you saying our shooter calmly walked out with the crowd?” asked the chief.

  “Or your shooters calmly walked out,” replied Pops. “If the other cans show this concentration of casings, it means shots were fired from inside the cans. Now, if you boys are telling me all these rounds were shot in fifteen minutes, how the hell could a shooter get that far in that short of time, calmly and methodically walking through the fairgrounds as your witnesses have declared? But, more important, why would he bother to get into a can and shoot from inside it once the melee started?”

  “And, if this is where the shooting started, why is the gun in the place where it began instead of where it ended?” Dyson added.

  “Damn, Pops. That makes sense!” said the chief.

  Pops took three steps toward the FBI director.

  “Here you go. I know this is your crime scene, so you might want to get your boys to go fishing in the other couple of hundred cans.” He handed the director the car unlocking tool that was covered in fecal muck almost to the top.

  The FBI director’s face turned beet-red.

  “Now, you educated types will likely want to fish every can but, if you have more of these handicapped cans on the ends of the rows with a heavy concentration of shell casings on the ground outside of them, that’s where I would start. You may find the weapons of the other shooters,” said Pops as he put his hat on after Dyson handed it back to him, then reached into his back pocket to take a pinch of snuff.

  Later that day, after fishing all of the cans, the FBI found three more identical weapons in the exact cans Pops predicted.

  “Damn, Pops was right!” exclaimed the chief after learning his agents pulled out three more weapons from the handicapped port-a-cans.

  “Whose mind works like that anyhow?” asked the FBI director, trying to brush off Pops’ law enforcement brilliance. “How could you think someone would literally hide a gun down a toilet?” He made sure Pops could overhear their conversation.

  “Son, one thing I’ve learned from the bad guys is that I can’t deduce a damned thing about how a criminal mind works. Every crime I’ve been involved with throughout my time as a Texas Ranger that wasn’t solved by a confession was solved through evidence. Your boys miscounting those shell casings, as compared to the number of recovered magazines, didn’t make no sense to me. Neither did that many shots in that short of a timeframe by one shooter. Simple as Sunday afternoon’s apple pie.”

  “Spare me the Texas country colloquialisms, cowboy,” snarled the director. “You got a theory on the shooters and their motive?”

  “I do, in fact. But I ain’t ready to share it just yet. Let’s just say this was a major political statement for now,” answered Pops.

  “Political statement? How is killing children a political statement?” asked the director.

  “When it serves a greater evil cause,” Pops stated as he calmly walked out of the tent.

  Chapter 52

  “Positive laws are tyrannical. One’s individual rights—whether they be life, liberty, or property—must be sacrificed by the state in order to fulfill the positive rights of another.”

  - Mark Da Vee

  Political Commentator, Blogger & Author

  Senator Kevin Simpson walked into the closed-door meeting of the Senate Intelligence Committee. Guards were posted at the two separate doors that were the only entry and exit into the meeting.

  Simpson, a former federal prosecutor from Dallas, chaired the committee and had garnered a lot of favor from the D.C. elite because of his unpopular stance in Texas in opposition to the independence referendum. He spoke out against it, loudly and often. He was a favorite of the establishment.

  Simpson was up for election in eighteen months but had only recently gotten a Republican primary challenger. A hard-core Texas nationalist was gaining momentum and his donations from individual donors were surprisingly strong. Simpson, a four-term senator with an eight-million dollar campaign war chest, would be hard to beat, even though his popularity was at an all-time low in Texas.

  “I call this meeti
ng of the United States Senate Intelligence Committee to order,” said Simpson as he struck the gavel in front of him.

  “I second,” said a senator from Kansas.

  “Fellow Senators, we have a short agenda today. We welcome the presence of FBI Director Nelson, who will answer any questions the committee may pose on the matters at hand. On our docket is Top Secret information from the NSA regarding current FISA court actions with respect to domestic terrorism. I will ask our colleague, Senator Hill, to summarize the report.”

  “Senator Simpson, before we begin, let us all express our sincere condolences for the tragic mass shooting that took place in Dallas,” said Senator Rockley from Oregon.

  In mutual agreement, all the senators lowered their heads for a moment of silence.

  “My fellow senators,” said Senator Hill after the pause, “today we have an update from the NSA on known and existing militia groups and their relationship with the Texas independence movement and various Tea Party organizations the FBI has linked to this horrible mass shooting. What you have in front of you is a summary of the initial findings. To be clear and to get to the point quickly, it appears guns were staged at various locations within the fairgrounds so that the shooter could shoot one gun, dispose of it and then pick up another and begin shooting again as he made his way through the fairgrounds. The ATF and FBI found four guns in total and forty magazines disposed of at random as the shooter emptied them. This was a carefully orchestrated and methodical attack for maximum carnage.

  “The FBI has traced these weapons by serial numbers to members of these various groups, including the paramilitary pro-independence group, Free Texas, whose identities are linked to multiple militias and Tea Party organizations. These folks are far-right freaks. I move that this committee adopt a resolution re-authorizing FISA court warrants that allow for unrestricted surveillance.”

  “I second,” said a senator from California.

  “Hold up, hold up, I’ve got a few questions, please, before we just ramrod this through,” said Senator Galvin from Kentucky, who was widely known to be somewhat Libertarian and extremely protective of any incursion into American civil liberties.