In the meantime, the local community in McHardy rose up in protest against the NPS’s heavy-handed enforcement against a sincere, devout Christian family that was only trying to live according to God’s word. Out-of-state lands rights organizations took up the Prophecy cause and offered the family moral and legal support during its ordeal. Local pol, Kelly Cobweal, authored a fiery retrospective of eighty years of NPS perfidy against inholders on public lands entitled, “Buy, Bully, or Burn Them Out,” which was posted and reposted across the blogosphere. For months the Christian family was the poster child for resistance to federal overreach against private citizens.
The boundary survey in April was not a success. The civilian surveyors were loaded for bear, but not for bearded, gun-toting young men who threatened them at every turn. Poppy and his boys vandalized their camp, stealing essential equipment. They spiked trees that needed to be felled. During the night they pulled up all the stakes, pins, and caps the surveyors had painstakingly set in the ground. The surveyors could make no progress and were fearful for their safety, so they quit.
JACE HAD BEEN wintering Outside while all of this was transpiring, and he returned to Caldecott in May, 2011, just in time to be assigned to the second survey party. The second party was “going in hot” with an armed escort. Superintendent Rodgers borrowed three BLM rangers for the task force, one from Montana and two from California, and three NPS rangers from other parks in Alaska. She assigned Ranger Masterson to the detail but, perhaps in light of his reputation for instability [see The Kitten of Our Discontent], placed one of the other Alaskans, LE Ranger Terry Swartz from Yukon-Charley, in charge. The Outside officers were trained in paramilitary operations, and the Alaska contingent possessed these skills plus extensive backcountry expertise. All of them wore body armor and carried sidearms. Their arsenal included shotguns, assault rifles, a sniper rifle, stun grenades, pepper spray, tasers, and a tear gas grenade launcher.
It was Ranger Swartz who asked Jace to join the group. Although not a law enforcement ranger, Jace was authorized to carry a shotgun in the bush for personal protection against bear attack. Swartz wanted Jace to manage the camp while the rest of them were in the field to serve as their camp cook and bull cook.
CW3 1.0
THE SECOND SURVEY attempt began in a peaceful enough manner. Early one sunny June morning, LE Ranger Swartz knocked politely on the Prophecy door. His demeanor was so deferential, his bearing so non-confrontational, and his arrival on their wilderness doorstep so unexpected that he was able to serve the patriarch with legal papers before anyone knew what was happening. Included was an injunction that restrained any member of the Prophecy family or its associates from interfering with the survey work, equipment, crew, or camp, or to approach any of the above, including NPS personnel and civilian contractors, closer than one hundred feet (30 m).
Having officially served the papers, Swartz tipped his flat hat, thanked them kindly, and took his leave of their property before they could react. Immediately thereafter, a borrowed Forest Service helicopter began ferrying material for the survey party camp to a nearby clearing on park land.
The next day, a couple of the older Prophecy boys followed the survey party around. They were armed, but they did not brandish their weapons. They recorded the crew at work with an ancient-looking camcorder, but they did so from a legal distance. There were no close encounters of the ugly kind.
The surveyors quickly reestablished the lines the first party had brushed out and set two iron and brass corner posts in fresh cement.
By the time the crew called it quits on the first day, Jace had established the campsite. He pitched tents for sleeping on high ground, set up the mess tent below, built a fire ring of stones on a dried-out creek bed, and arranged camp chairs around it.
Jace’s first dinner as a newly minted camp cook consisted of heaping helpings of corned beef hash and spaghetti, with sides of corn, green beans, and mashed potatoes. There were soft drinks, coffee, and tea. A warmed-over pineapple upside down cake served as dessert.
Everyone ate; no one complained. Call it a successful culinary debut.
While the surveyors and their federal bodyguards lounged around the token campfire under the Midnight Sun, a gunshot rang out. It was the report of a high-powered rifle, and it came from the southwest, the opposite direction from the Prophecy compound. It seemed far enough away that no one was alarmed.
A little while later, there was a second gunshot, closer in and from a different direction. Rangers exchanged looks, but they mostly ignored it.
“Listen up,” LE Ranger Swartz said. “Terry has something to tell us. Terry?”
Terry Thornbrus was a civil engineer in Valdez and the survey party boss. A man in his sixties, Thornbrus was still able to tramp over wild terrain all day long. He leaned forward in his camp chair and drew rectangles in the dirt with a stick.
“This here’s the compound,” he said, tapping his diagram, “and here’s the house and outbuildings. Often for reasons of logistics, miners used to put their support buildings close to a boundary. Although this old mine site is over three hundred acres in area, the living quarters are right up against the eastern line. There’s even the possibility that the main house here and the cabin here might be over the line. We won’t know for sure till tomorrow.”
When Jace heard this he felt a flush of mean-spirited elation. He knew it was petty of him, but he was thrilled to the gills by the possibility that the renegade family might lose their house. It would be karmic payback for the mountain of grief they had unloaded on him and Danielle a couple of years back on Lucky Strike Lane.
“What that means,” Swartz said after Thornbrus was finished, “is that the hundred-foot buffer zone will be effectively made null and void tomorrow while we’re on that end of the property unless we temporarily evict the entire family from their home. Does anyone think that’s a good idea?”
Everyone glanced at Masterson, who wisely kept his head down. Meanwhile, deep in the woods, another gunshot. Swartz paused to estimate its bearings before commenting:
“There’s no need to remind all of you that these people will try our resolve as professionals. They’re already at it with this random gunfire. They’re taunting us, testing us. They want us to lose our focus and step over the line. They might even want to be blood martyrs for their cause.
“But you know what? There’ll be none of that during this mission. All we’re doing is a boundary survey. This is not Ruby Ridge. There will be no gunplay on our part unless absolutely necessary. No bloodshed. In case I’m not making myself crystal clear, let me rephrase that: what we are doing here, while only a boundary survey, is under a great deal of scrutiny. Not only by the public but by our own bosses, from park and regional headquarters all the way up the chain to Secretary Salazar in DC himself.
“Successfully completing this mission in a peaceful manner will put a shine on our resumes, let me tell you, especially you young guys.
“Likewise, even one civilian casualty will kill every one of our careers. Is that plain enough?”
A lot of affirmative grunts and head nodding.
CW4 1.0
THE RANGERS TOOK shifts patrolling the cutlines throughout the night to prevent the kind of mischief that had plagued the first survey party. The random shooting continued, sometimes close in, sometimes far away. If it was meant to disturb their sleep — a kind of hectoring hillbilly psy-ops — it succeeded, and there were plenty of bleary eyes at breakfast.
On the second day, the surveyors lost a couple of chainsaw chains to tree spikes, but they were prepared for this and had brought plenty of spare chains.
During the day, Jace monitored the crew’s radio chatter as he hauled water and washed dishes and tidied up the camp. Despite his duties, Jace had plenty of down time. He’d brought along his iPad but couldn’t browse the internet because the mountain blocked the signal.
In the afternoon of the second day, the survey party made an unexpected discovery
. A small field beneath the compound toolshed that some previous owner had cleared decades earlier for a truck garden turned out to be mostly situated on park land. The current occupants had planted a vegetable garden there and built cold frames for tomatoes and cucumbers. It would all have to be pulled up and plowed under and the land restored to its natural state. Score one for the federales.
The Prophecys soon evened the score.
The task force camp toilet was essentially a folding stool over a plastic trash bag behind a screen of bushes. On the evening of the second day, the chief surveyor, Terry Thornbrus, was totally monopolizing it. The others, sitting around the campfire with their dinner plates on their laps, could hear each of his juicy expulsions and gasping moans.
“Sounds like food poisoning,” said one of the Alaska rangers, casting an accusatory eye in Jace’s direction.
“Don’t look at me,” Jace said. “Everything I serve is fresh from the tin.”
“It wasn’t you,” Scott said. “It was probably the cookies.”
Scott was Thornbras’ nephew, a college-bound kid from Nevada up for the summer to work for his uncle as a rodman and all-round gopher. Everyone called him “the Rodman.”
“What cookies?” Ranger Swartz said.
The Rodman glanced around the campfire before answering to make sure that Ranger Masterson wasn’t present. He wasn’t; he was patrolling the boundaries.
“My uncle and I were working near the house today, and the front door opens and out comes two little kids in their Amish sodbuster costumes, a little boy and girl. The boy’s got a pitcher of cold lemonade, and the girl’s got a plate of chocolate chip cookies right out of the oven. When they offer them to us, I tell them to beat it and leave us alone, but the girl holds up her plate like this and says, It’s all right, mister. It’s only just cookies. I was tempted, but I told them to take their lemonade and their cookies and scram out of there before there was trouble. But . . .” The Rodman gestured to the bushes where his uncle was suffering. “He tells me, Leave ‘em be. They’re just little kids. They’re a good Christian family just trying to survive out here, and this whole operation is overkill and an insult to liberty.”
Apparently, the Rodman disagreed with his uncle’s politics.
“So he accepts a full glass of lemonade and gulps it down and smacks his lips and says it’s the best darn lemonade he’s ever drunk. Same with the cookies. He eats two on the spot and stuffs two more in a pocket.
“The two little kids turn back to me with their sweet little faces and offer me their goodies again. I won’t lie; I was about to give in and take some when Ranger Danger shows up.” The Rodman paused to see if everyone knew who he was referring to.
“He comes on all official-like and runs off the kids. I mean, he seemed pretty worked up over it and used words those kids probably never heard before. I was afraid he was going to go all kitten on them, if you know what I mean, but my uncle inserts himself between him and the kids, and the kids go running back to the house crying and spilling lemonade and half their cookies on the ground. And my uncle says to Danger, Calm down, man. They’re only little kids being neighborly and there’s no reason to scare them like that.
“But Ranger Danger says you can’t trust them, not even the kids. So my uncle picks up the fallen cookies and offers one to the ranger. Danger takes it and throws it into the woods. So my uncle takes another cookie and eats it right in front of him going, Yum, yum.
“So that’s why I’m thinking it was probably the cookies. Or the lemonade.”
Swartz set down his plate. “I better go see how bad it is. I might have to evacuate him to town.”
One of the Outside rangers snorted. “Sounds to me like he’s evacuating pretty good on his own.”
CW5 1.0
ON DAY THREE, Terry Thornbras remained in camp to regain his strength. He was feeling pretty foolish, but Jace didn’t try to rub it in. After Jace had washed the breakfast dishes, they made amiable small talk over a fresh pot of coffee under the screened canopy. It was another gorgeous summer day in Alaska.
Then they heard an odd radio exchange. It started with Terry’s nephew:
Uh, Swartz, come in. This is the Rodman. Over.
The chief ranger replied:
This is Swartz. Go ahead. Over.
Your immediate presence is — uh — requested. Over.
Say again? Over.
There were a few drop-outs and squawks and then:
. . . that garden field. Out.
Terry Thornbras wanted to go at once to check out the situation, but his jello knees said no, and Jace told him to hold down the camp and he’d go instead. He started out but, on second thought, returned to his tent for his 870 shotgun.
Jace jogged down the survey lines, leaping over tangles of roots and stumps and approached the Prophecy compound from the west. The Rodman was lurking in the trees that bordered the encroaching field. Jace stopped next to him and asked what was going on.
“Well, as you can see, Ranger Danger is in the garden pulling up carrots.”
In fact, Masterson was leaning over the mounded garden rows and pulling up leafy green vegetation by the fistful.
“And the Amish guy over there is cursing him out with plagues and lakes of fire.”
Adam, it looked like, was pacing back and forth along the newly brushed-out property line. He carried a hunting rifle, but he kept it pointed at the ground as he thundered up a storm of invective. For his part, Masterson was ignoring him. His leg cannon was still in its holster on his hip. So far, not a disaster.
“How did it start?”
“A couple of girls came down from the house to water their garden, and your man over there goes postal on them and chases them away. Then the Amish dude comes out and they get into a shoutfest, which makes your man start murdering vegetables.”
That sounded about right.
There was a third man involved, a balding graybeard who stood on a little promontory overlooking the field and was recording the confrontation with his phone. Behind him you could just make out the eaves of a ramshackle shed at the edge of the compound.
“Who’s the old guy with the phone?”
“Him? Not a clue except that he’s not a movie star.”
“What?”
“He came from the house with the Amish dude, and he told me he might look like a famous movie star but he’s not him.”
“Not who?”
“Beats me. He says he’s livestreaming to the internet so nobody better do anything stupid unless they want the whole world to see it. But that’s bullshit; there’s no service out here.”
“I know, but eventually he’ll go back to wherever he came from and upload it there. What’s he got so far?”
“I don’t know. Maybe twenty minutes of the Amish dude shouting and Danger pulling up the garden.”
That was bad but still no disaster.
Down in the field, Masterson finished destroying a row and moved to one of the cold frames. He kicked it over and reached in for the tomato starts.
Jace said, “Let’s just hope it doesn’t get any worse than this.”
Enter the cat.
CW6 1.0
FREE-RANGING DOMESTIC cats fared poorly in the wilderness. They were just the right size for eagles to scoop up like a take-out dinner. Owls and hawks snacked on them too, as well as foxes, wolves, and their wild cousins, the lynx. Calgary, the family’s tabby, had thus far beaten the odds and survived into adulthood, despite her own fondness for the hunt. Now she was seen slinking across the cutline from yard to field, looking for something to kill. She disappeared into the brush.
Meanwhile, Masterson kicked over a second cold frame, and Jace said, “I’d better go see if I can talk some sense into him.”
“Good luck with that.”
Jace started across the field, but two rangers were approaching from the eastern end, and they reached him first. They were Ranger Swartz and one of the Outside rangers.
The
Outside ranger was attired in full SWAT regalia, from his high-impact composite helmet to his waffle-soled combat boots. He held an AR-15 assault rifle across his bulletproof chest. In contrast to him, Swartz wore no armor and carried only a sidearm on his hip.
When Jace joined them, Swartz was telling Masterson, “It’s not up to us. It’s not our problem.”
“Of course it’s our problem,” Masterson countered. “It’s our park, isn’t it? If not us, who?”
“The FBI,” Swartz replied. “The U.S. Marshals. But not till later, after we turn in our results and the prosecutors, courts, and lawyers all have their say. Our assignment here is the boundary survey, nothing more. We can’t get ahead of ourselves. Not now when we’re so close to bringing this puppy home without violence.”
Masterson wasn’t buying it. He bent over and yanked up another tomato plant.
Swartz shook his head in frustration. When he noticed Jace standing there, he said, “Who’s watching the goddam camp?”
“Terry Thornbrus,” Jace said.
Swartz looked back and forth between Jace and Masterson, and a light came on in his head. “All right, tell you what — I’m swapping out the two of you.”
Masterson stood still for a moment. “Say what?”
“Masterson, you’re our new camp boss. Kuliak will replace you on the line.”
“Are you,” Masterson asked as he bent over to throttle another tomato plant, “benching me?”
“Yes, in fact, I am. Effective immediately. Go on, get out of here. You, Kuliak, go follow the Rodman around. Where is that kid?”
“Over there.” Jace pointed. “Next to the trees.”
“Well, tell him to get back to work.”
Just then, a screen door banged shut, and a moment later another Prophecy son came barreling across the yard. It was evil twin Hoss, the hefty second born, wielding a shotgun and a grim ugly face. The cameraman near the shed swiveled his phone around to capture his entrance.
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