“So, you’re still debating when and how to do it?”
“Among other things, we’re hoping to gather some decent evidence and further information from our wiretaps. Your friend just needs to take a deep breath. This will all be over soon.”
“Can you do me a favor?”
“Maybe, depends on what it is.”
“Meet with our asset as soon as you can. Show him the pictures, so he can make the identification and encourage him it’s all going to work out.”
“I thought that was your job.”
“It has been, but I’m in your way and he needs to work this out with you.”
“So, you’re out of it now?”
“I’m trying to be. He’s going to call me in a few minutes. I would like to be able to tell him you have news, and you want to arrange a meeting. Then I’ll let you work out the details with him.”
“Fine, I’ll figure out a way to meet with him, without tipping off the opposition.”
“Great. My understanding is that once you make the arrests, he’ll go into the witness protection program until it’s time to testify at the trials. Is that correct?”
“Yes, John. I’ve already alerted the Marshal’s service. They’ll be ready to provide him with protection and move him on a moment’s notice.”
“OK. Be sure to tell him that, too.” I said.
“Are you alright? It sounds like you’re struggling with something.” Doug asked with some concern evident in his voice.
“This is hard for me. It’s hard for me to let go. It’s hard for me to trust you.”
“Oh ye of little faith’, I thought you trusted in God?”
“You know, you’re absolutely right. I do. You do the same.” I said brightly.
“That’ll be the day.” He answered, as he hung up the phone.
When Gary called me, I encouraged him as best I could and told him Special Agent Booker was anticipating wrapping the whole thing up within a week. I gave him Doug’s direct number and told him he should coordinate with Doug from then on.”
“So, is this goodbye? Am I ever going to see you again?” Gary asked me.
“Once you go into witness protection, they will re-locate you and change your identity. No one you have ever known will be able to get in touch with you, and you should never contact any of them.”
“…For how long?” Gary asked.
“Gary, Doug explained all this to you. You understood what this would mean when you made the commitment to see it through.”
“Yeah, I know…It’s just that…Thank you, John. You’ve been a good friend.”
“Listen, Gary, the United States Marshal’s service is very good at this. I have every confidence in them, but if you ever need me…”
“I know, man.
“Alright, you hang in there, and God be with you.”
“…And with you.”
We were both silent for a moment. Then Gary spoke up.
“OK. Bye,” he said, as he hung up.
Christine came in and saw the look on my face.
“John, what’s wrong? You look like you just lost your best friend.”
“Sort of, I just left Gary in the capable hands of the FBI.”
“Oh, no!”
“Oh yes. Special Agent in Charge, Doug Booker, now has the responsibility for what happens to Gary.”
“Why?”
“They’ll have it all wrapped up in a week or so. At this point I’m not much help to either Gary or the FBI. Once they round up the killers and co-conspirators, Gary will go into witness protection with the US Marshal’s service.”
“Doesn’t that mean we won’t ever see him again?”
I acknowledged her question with a slow nod.
“Is there any way I can say good bye to him?” Christine asked.
“Yes, if you do it pretty quickly. You could go down there to Bullard and see him on the job site.”
“Can I?”
“Sure, but you should have some sort of cover story, especially if you’re likely to cry and hug his neck.”
“You know me so well.”
“I understand how you feel.”
“Things are changing awfully fast, aren’t they?” She said, sadly.
“Yes, Christine. From our perspective it seems fast. One thing leads to another, as surely as the changing of the seasons.”
She was thoughtful for a moment, almost somber, and then she shook it off.
“Speaking of seasons, I’m really looking forward to the holidays. This time of year I think about fires in the fireplace, hot chocolate, Thanksgiving and all the feasting. I think about celebrating the birth of Jesus and all the Christmas cheer.” She informed me.
“Will you be going back to the Hill Country for Thanksgiving and Christmas, again this year?”
“Yep, the whole family will be there. You should come with me. Don’t spend the holidays by yourself.”
I wobbled my head.
“Thanks for the offer, but I hope to have other plans.”
She was thoughtful again. I never get used to the way women’s emotions can turn on a dime.
After a moment, she smiled and said.
“Hope. That’s what keeps us going, isn’t it?”
“Sure, we have hope because of our faith.”
“We wouldn’t have hope without our faith, would we?” She asked, rhetorically.
“Makes you wonder where the atheist finds hope.”
“We have hope because we know how much God loves us. That’s pretty much all we need, isn’t it?” She asked.
“…Faith, hope and love.” I answered.
Christine smiled and winked in agreement.
Chapter 53.
Late in the day, Gary called me.
“Tomorrow night, John, the meeting of the Righteous Patriot’s Brigade is set for Friday night. That’s tomorrow night.”
“OK. Calm down. Have you talked about it with Doug?”
“Yeah, he wants me to go to the meeting.”
“Have they made any progress on identifying the men you met?”
“Doug says they’ve identified all of them and they got everything they need to round them all up. That’s his plan, man. They’re going to raid the meeting and arrest everyone at once.”
“Do you know where the meeting is going to be?”
“Same place as last time. They gave me good directions.”
“What do you want me to do?”
“I don’t know, John. I’m just kind of freaking out.”
“It will all be over soon. All these weeks of fear and sacrifice, I guess you feel like you’ve been on a roller coaster ride.”
“Yeah, that and I’m worried about going to the meeting and then it being raided. These guys won’t just surrender.”
“Doug has promised to keep you safe.”
“I know. It’s just…”
“…Scary, you’ve never been in a situation like this before now, and it scares you.”
“That’s part of it. Also, I hate having to go and teach these guys how to make Molotov cocktails.”
“Is that what they asked you to do?”
“Well, no, not specifically. They want to learn about all kinds of explosives and incendiary devises. I figured to stall them by starting with the easiest and most common to make. I’ll point out they can be made pretty much anywhere, from commonly available materials and have tremendous destructive potential. Also, they don’t leave any kind of signature or clue that can be traced back. I’ll only take about a half-gallon of gasoline with me for demonstration purposes.”
“They could practice constructing them with water. That would eliminate the risk and you would need even less gasoline.”
“Yeah, I like that idea. It would be safer for everybody involved.”
“Good plan, especially since you’ll be raided at some point in the process. You don’t want somebody dropping a jar of gasoline with a lit wick. There won’t be any actual explosives on the prope
rty, right?”
“No, they had some black powder, but they used it all in the first attempt with the pipe bombs. They expect me to teach them about other kinds of explosives and how to make them.”
“Did Doug ask you to wear a wire?”
“No, he never even mentioned the possibility.”
I was glad to hear it. I needed more information before I decided what my course of action should be.
“Tell me everything about the meeting place.” I said.
Chapter 54.
The next morning, I drove my truck to the old farmhouse, the meeting place for the “Righteous Patriot’s Brigade”, the radical arm of the RAGs.
I had been analyzing aerial images most of my life, from the time we had first started taking pictures from the sky. The first aerial pictures were taken by men in balloons, then pilots of single engine aircraft. They were crude by today’s standard. Later we used cameras mounted on the aircraft; eventually we learned how to use satellite imagery. Because I had more experience analyzing every kind of aerial images of non-urban land and structures than Doug (or pretty much anyone else) did, I had already identified what I thought was the correct property. I had no trouble following Gary’s directions.
I drove right in, down the sloped and snaky driveway that was unpaved and dusty. I parked where it ended beside the old farmhouse, a couple of hundred yards from the road. Other than the house, the only other buildings were an empty hay barn about twenty five yards away, and a sagging pump-house for the water well. The yard was choked with tall grass and weeds, trampled down between the hay barn and the house. I could see where several vehicles had been parked here and in the hay barn.
Since there were no other vehicles parked down there now, and the feel of the place was vacant and little visited, I wasn’t too concerned about running in to anyone who might pose a threat. None the less, as I walked around the outside of the house, I called out several times to see if anyone else might be on the property.
As soon as I was confident I was alone and the house was unoccupied, I peeked in the windows. All I saw was empty rooms. I could see into two empty bedrooms without a stick of furniture, a living area that included the kitchen, and other than a shed like back porch, that was all I could see from outside the building. I opened the rusty old screen door and stepped up into the back porch and saw that at one time, the washing machine and perhaps clothes dryer had been enclosed here. I tested the back door and found it locked. Because of the cheap construction, time and my pocket tools made slipping the lock the simple task of only a moment.
I had already determined there was no alarm system. Although the house was supplied with electricity, running from a power pole in the yard, there was enough light inside that I didn’t need to turn on any of the overhead fixtures. A quick tour revealed that the only furniture in the house was a table, shoved into a corner of the kitchen/living area, a ratty old couch, and a bunch of folding chairs leaning against a wall. There was a single, rather dirty bathroom between the two empty bedrooms. The only adornment in the house was a blood red flag, nailed to a wall. The flag had a black cross on it. A cross with a big “R” at the top, a big “A” on the left side with a little “o” in the middle, and a big G on the right. It was the flag of the Righteous Army of God.
I opened the refrigerator and found it was packed full of light beer in cans, a few bottles of water, and nothing else. I grabbed a paper towel from a roll on the counter and wiped my prints off the refrigerator door handle. Better safe than sorry. There was an empty trashcan under the sink, but I put the paper towel in my pocket.
There was nothing else to be seen in the house. It only took me about five minutes to photograph everything inside the house.
Outside, I scouted around a little until I found a well-worn trail that wandered off into the woods. It was too narrow for a car or truck, and had the tracks of all-terrain vehicles. I decided to go for a hike.
The trail meandered through the woods and although there were places where it branched off, I stuck to the main and most worn part of it. After about twenty minutes, and a little more than three quarters of a mile of walking, I came to a small clearing. There was evidence here that the clearing had been used as a parking lot. It appeared to be a place where people came to unload their ATVs to go for a ride in the woods, or maybe hunters headed out to their blinds. There were several trails converging here.
I could see where the cars and trucks had come in off the county road and I followed the tracks up to the fence line. There was no real gate, just a gap, with a wire gate, and a twisted wire to keep it closed.
I opened it and walked out onto the pavement. I needed to identify some landmarks, so I could easily find this gap again. The gap in the fence appeared to be the first worn spot past the driveway to the old farm house. That property was just around a curve and about a half a mile as the crow flies, down-hill from this spot on the road. The clearing in the woods was perfect for my needs.
I pulled the wire gate aside. Then I walked back down the trail through the woods, to the farm house where my truck was parked,. Five minutes later, I was parked in the clearing, with the wire gate closed behind me. I pulled the tarp off the things I had covered in the bed of my pickup.
I spent the next few hours testing and practicing with my multi-rotor, remote control aircraft. I had spent several thousand dollars on this baby. Most of that money had been invested in the cameras and gimbals that provided stable and brilliant images to my monitor. The battery powered aircraft was high tech enough that it could be programed to fly a particular pattern, or I could control it with a joystick, out to about three quarters of a mile.
It had another limitation though; it only had a flight time of about twenty minutes before it would need new batteries. The thing was so smart, if it sensed the batteries were getting low, it would return to the launch point and land itself. I had brought extra batteries and a charger that was plugged into my diesel pickup. I had custom painted the little aircraft and disabled the running lights, so it would be very difficult to see, day or night.
I soon learned that the programed flight was what I needed in this situation. It could fly down to the farm house in about one minute and circle at a given distance and altitude, for about fifteen minutes, and then fly back and land beside my truck. I found that an altitude of about one hundred feet made it virtually impossible to see or hear from the ground, and provided excellent video to my monitor. The primary video camera was capable of low light photography and it had an excellent zoom lens. The other camera did thermal image, and/or “night vision,” video photography. The multi rotor drone aircraft had been reasonably priced; the cameras had cost a fortune.
Once I had the program worked out and had tested it a couple of times, I had pretty well used up all the batteries I’d brought with me, so I packed up and headed into the town of Gladewater, to get more batteries and something to eat. A body needs to recharge too.
By four o’clock that afternoon, re stocked with batteries and other essentials, I was headed back to the clearing. The meeting at the farmhouse wasn’t scheduled to start till six o’clock, but when I drove down into the clearing in the woods, there was a truck parked there. The tailgate was down and a folding ramp leaned against it. I recognized the truck. It belonged to Kevin Watkins.
I shut off the big diesel and got out to look for Watkins. It was evident he had unloaded an ATV and gone for a ride. I couldn’t hear a motor running anywhere, so I suspected he had gone to the farm house. I decided to sneak on down there and have a look. Then I remembered why I had brought the multi rotor aircraft.
Ten minutes later, the multi-rotor was circling about a hundred and fifty feet above the farm house. There was no immediate sign of the ATV. I decided to see if I could lower the aircraft to look into the hay barn. I knew this would be risky. If the drone was anywhere near the farmhouse or the hay barn when it lowered out of the sky it could be spotted by Watkins. Using the joystick, I took a minute to
circle it out away from the back of the hay barn and slowly lower it. I was sweating now, partly because of the afternoon heat and humidity in the woods, but mostly because of apprehension.
I was able to point the camera straight down as I lowered the aircraft. This gave me a good view directly below the aircraft, which helped prevent me from flying it into a tree, fencepost, or some other object sticking up from the surface of the abandoned hay meadow. Once it was about six feet above the hay meadow, I reoriented the camera, focused on the hay barn and sent the aircraft slowly in that direction. I watched my monitor carefully. By the time the drone was about a hundred feet from the hay barn, I could see into it. I used the zoom for the first time and I was able to fill the screen with an image of the ATV that Watkins had parked there. I could also read the license plate on the SUV that it was parked beside. Someone else had come to the meeting more than an hour early. I hit the record button.
Five minutes after that, I had successfully brought the multi-rotor back to the clearing. I took all my gear and eased back into the woods, out of sight of anyone else who might show up early for the meeting, intending to park in the clearing. This possibility was fraught with danger. If someone did show up in the clearing and they saw my truck, a truck that didn’t belong there. I would be in trouble. I had to risk it because anywhere else I could park the truck would be too far away to operate the aircraft.
This was the place I had to be.
Chapter 55.
From my hiding position back in the woods, I considered the way Doug had told Gary things were going to go down. Gary told me Doug had assembled an elite team of FBI agents. Once the meeting started, there would be road blocks on the county road to prevent anyone from approaching or leaving the site. These road blocks would be manned by Texas Rangers. The FBI strike team would arrive in five SUVs and there would be a helicopter providing eyes in the sky. The FBI agents would quietly surround the farm house while the meeting was in progress and hit hard in a coordinated assault, using flash-bang grenades and teargas. Everyone at the meeting would be arrested, and anyone who resisted or attempted to fight would be shot. Gary was to drop to the ground the moment the assault started. In that way, he would be out of the line of fire, if any gunfire broke out, which after the stun grenades and teargas, was highly unlikely. Once the arrests were made, Gary could be handed over to the Marshal’s service for protective custody, until it was time for him to testify at the trials. When the trials were completed and the felons locked away, Gary would live the rest of his life with a new name in a different location.
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