CHAPTER 4
Thursday morning Brad drove into Norfolk to make the rounds of boat stores and marine chandleries. He returned after lunch time with his truck bed loaded with coils of thick nylon dock and anchor lines, cardboard boxes full of assorted cruising gear, and a pair of giant deep cycle batteries that could easily power a golf cart through 36 holes. His tires crunched down the oyster shell driveway past the empty farmhouse and outbuildings of his seldom-seen absentee landlord, and as he neared the river he saw that he had visitors. A dusty black Chevy Suburban and a burgundy Crown Victoria were parked in his turn-around circle under the oak tree. Both vehicles had opaquely tinted windows and sprouted numerous small antennas.
Brad pulled off to the side of the drive to allow them room to leave and stepped out of his pickup. The four doors of the Suburban opened at once and four men got out, white men wearing sport coats and ties in the Indian Summer heat. Another pair of similarly attired men got out of the Crown Vic. There were only two reasons Brad could think of why anyone would wear a jacket and tie and long pants in the almost ninety degree weather: because it was departmental policy, and to conceal firearms. Brad was wearing his standard khaki shorts, polo shirt and boat shoes. He stood by his truck, and they fanned out as they walked toward him. He noticed that all their jackets were hanging open, presumably for fast access to their hidden pistols. Half of them were wearing dark sunglasses, the very image of the bad-ass detective.
“Bradley Thomas Fallon?” asked the oldest man, the only one over fifty judging by his lined face.
“Who’s asking?” Brad had a watery feeling in his gut but tried to give no sign of his unease.
“FBI. I’m Special Agent James Gibson. We’d like to talk to you.” Gibson held out his credentials briefly for Fallon to see: a gold badge and a laminated ID in their own leather wallet. One of the younger agents walked behind and around Brad. He had an unseen device on his belt that resembled a cell phone; if Brad Fallon had been carrying a firearm it would have begun vibrating. It didn’t, so he nodded an “okay” to his superior.
“Mr. Fallon, why don’t we sit in our truck and get out of the heat while we talk?” asked the oldest agent.
“I’m fine out here thank you.”
“Please Mr. Fallon, we’ll only take a few minutes of your time, and then we’ll be on our way.”
Brad looked around him at the six agents. One of them, a tall man with weight lifter’s shoulders straining against his jacket said, “Don’t be an asshole Fallon. If we were arresting you today, you’d already be handcuffed. So do everybody a favor, and let’s have a short talk in the air conditioned truck. Please.” He smiled bemusedly at Brad and they locked eyes. He had blue eyes like Brad, brush-cut blond hair, and a neck like one of the oak tree's branches.
He gave up and walked with them to their Suburban; its motor was idling noisily. He briefly wondered if he was going to be hauled away as soon as the door was closed behind him, but he didn’t see any alternative. He warily climbed into the backseat of the Suburban like a rabbit visiting a python’s cage. Gibson sat in the front passenger seat, the burly blond sat in the back seat next to him.
The third bench seat had been removed. The back half of the truck was full of aluminum and plastic lockers and boxes, weapons cases, body armor, communications gear, and other police and military items. The two agents settled in, closed the doors, and turned in their seats to face their “person of interest.”
Special Agent Gibson surprised him with his first question. “Well Mr. Fallon, how much longer until you sail off into the sunset?”
Brad tried not to express any astonishment at their knowledge. Perhaps Gibson was simply making an educated guess, trying to spook him. After all, there was 44 foot mastless sailboat tied up at the dock. “It depends on how many problems I have getting the boat ready.”
“Well you should be able to go rather far on $68,000, I’d say. And I understand that the Adalaska Corporation has a very generous transportation policy, so you can always fly back to the oil fields if your account gets thin. Really, it’s a remarkable achievement for a young man hardly thirty years old. But I’m guessing your parents in Florida would prefer that you finish college, instead of sailing off around the world.”
Brad took a deep, slow breath, feeling flushed in the face, and said, “Okay guys, I’m impressed. You know all about me. What do you want?”
The muscular agent next to Brad said, “Maybe it’s your assault weapons. Maybe it’s the AR-15 rifle you bought at, let me see here, A&A Sporting Goods in Missoula Montana in 1996. Maybe it’s the Mini-14 you bought in Jacksonville Florida in 1995. You’ve heard about the new law, haven’t you?”
“I think I might have heard something about it.”
“Uh huh. So do you still have the rifles? They’ll get you ten years hard time after next Tuesday.”
“I sold both rifles years ago. 223 isn’t my caliber.”
“Is that so? Can you prove it?”
From the front seat Agent Gibson said, “Settle down gentlemen. We’re not interested in your old rifles, bought or sold. Not until next week anyway. We’re only interested in some friends of yours.” Gibson opened a cream colored folder and handed several grainy black and white photos to Brad. Brad could see that several of the pictures had been taken inside the hardware store in Highpoint. There was a picture of the store owner Cecil Towers, along with two of the men who had been part of the conversation at the counter, and a few others.
“Of course I know him, he’s the manager of Dixie Hardware. The old man with the beard I’ve seen around, the other man I only saw once at the store. Am I supposed to know them?”
“Don’t play stupid Fallon,” Gibson replied. “We know you’re a bright guy. I’ll lay our cards on the table. We need to know everything about Shifflett’s friends and acquaintances, and we need to know it ASAP. We need to know the extent of militia activity in southeast Virginia, and if any of Shifflett’s old militia buddies helped him at the stadium. We need to know if they’re planning any more actions, and we need to know about it like right now.”
Brad was stunned by their questions. “How the hell would I know? I’ve been here less than two months! The only way I know anybody around here is running into them in a store.”
The crew cut agent said, “So you’ve never been shooting with any of them?”
“Of course not! I don’t even know them.”
“I see,” continued the agent. “Fallon, have you ever been to the Mineral Springs Rifle Range down by the Carolina border?”
Actually this blond agent did not carry FBI credentials, because he was the Assistant Special Agent In Charge (or ASAIC) of the Norfolk Virginia field office of the Bureau of Alcohol Tobacco Firearms and Explosives, formerly the BATF, and still commonly called that or simply the ATF. Since the massacre he had been temporarily attached to the newly formed MD-Rifle Task Force, which fell under the Joint Domestic Terrorism Task Force, answering to the Department of Homeland Security. The federal “alphabet agencies” were playing “scrabble” as they responded to changing terrorist threats. Supervisory Special Agent Gibson had come down from Washington with additional agents to augment the Joint Task Force in the Tidewater Virginia area as they ran down Shifflett’s militia connections.
The muscular blond ATF agent knew that Brad Fallon had been to Mineral Springs because he had reviewed videotapes showing Fallon there two weeks earlier, participating in a monthly rifle shooting competition which drew serious shooters from several states. ATF agents routinely trolled the parking lots of gun shows and shooting ranges covertly taping license plates and people’s faces. The tag numbers were crunched by computers, revealing the regional and national patterns behind the ebb and flow of militia and so-called “patriot” groups and their hangers-on. The faces were scanned into digital biometric data bases and matched with vehicles, addresses, and many of the weapons these individuals had purchased.
It was a well-established fact that extreme right wing gun nuts and militia kooks were devoted attendees of gun shows and rifle shooting ranges. Fallon’s Ford truck had indeed been filmed at Mineral Springs, along with those of several members of a group called the Black Water Rod and Gun Club. This was a group that Jimmy Shifflett had once belonged to. This was a group which the local ATF Field Office suspected of being a cover for a clandestine militia organization based in Tidewater Virginia.
“Sure, I’ve been there twice. Once to sight in rifles, and once to shoot in a match.”
“What kind of rifles Mr. Fallon?” asked Gibson. “There are rifles… and there are rifles.”
“I thought you already knew, Agent Gibson. I thought you knew everything about me. Don’t you already have it written down?”
“Don’t be a smartass Brad, don’t go getting an attitude. We’re not in a joking mood. After the stadium massacre, a lot of things changed, a lot of things. The American people have had it with you gun nuts, so you’d better buy a clue and get with the program while you can! Special Agent Hummel has already started an investigation into the disposition of your assault rifles, and that’s just for starters. We can freeze you bank accounts, or we can invalidate your passport with one phone call, do you understand me? We’re not playing for match sticks here! We’ve only got to say the magic word ‘terrorism’ and you’ll be put into a whole other category, and you won’t know what hit you! We’ll drop you into a cage with the other terrorists, and you’ll never even see a lawyer!”
Brad couldn’t make words form; his mouth had gone bone dry.
“We know things about you that you can’t imagine. We know you shot 294 out of a perfect 300 with your Swedish Mauser over iron sights at Mineral Springs, and took second place against folks who shoot competition every weekend of their lives. We have the entire roster of shooters; we know their scores, where they live, most of the guns they own, how much ammunition they bought last year.
“We know that after two good semesters in college you suddenly quit and enlisted in the Navy to try to make it into the SEALs, but you washed out on some sort of oxygen test in a pressure chamber. So you served the rest of your enlistment as a machinist’s mate and got out. I’ve got your DD 214 discharge paper right here in this file. So you went up to Alaska to make a ton of money, and now here you are on the verge of sailing away on your own boat.
“Well if you want to get that boat finished and sail away, you need to do your patriotic duty and help us out. I can’t put it any more clearly than that. Now if you’ll excuse me I have other places to go today.” Gibson climbed down from the Suburban, leaving Brad alone with the younger agent, who except for his north eastern accent reminded him of a Russian boxer, with his blond flat top, pale blue eyes and broken nose. Gibson got into the burgundy Crown Vic, which departed immediately. The remaining agents had climbed aboard Guajira in their black-soled street shoes, shed their jackets, and made themselves comfortable in the cockpit under the shade of the oak.
The blond Special Agent had recruited and run dozens of confidential informants during his 12 years with the ATF. Frequently his CI’s were parolees eager to avoid a return trip to prison, which they knew could be easily arranged if they failed to cooperate. But from Hummel’s point of view even non-felons typically had ‘hooks’ attached to them: a struggling business which could not endure a microscopic federal regulatory ‘rectal exam’, a critically needed job and paycheck which could not be lost, or young children and pretty wives which could not be left behind while Daddy went off to prison. Among the federal law enforcement agencies, the ATF had always been known for ruthlessly manufacturing federal cases out of thin air where necessary, usually in order to create a needed informant as part of an ongoing investigation. The 20,000 plus federal and state gun laws on the books, which were often vaguely written or even contradictory, made gun owners and especially licensed gun dealers an easy target for extra-legal arm twisting.
In Fallon’s case his ‘hook’ was his eagerness to finish his boat and get away sailing after years of working steadily toward that goal. Once he accepted that his bank accounts and his passport could be frozen at their whim, Fallon would come aboard, the veteran ATF agent was certain of it.
“So what’s it like sailing across an ocean on something like that? You could never get me on one. Fishing on the bay is all the ocean I can handle.” This was just an ice breaker; he knew that Fallon was still somewhat in shock.
Brad was slightly disarmed by the innocent question. “It’s not for everybody. But it beats the nine-to-five and a house in the suburbs, at least for me.”
“Oh give me the suburbs any day. I just wish I could cut back to nine to five. Okay Fallon, here’s the deal: you want to go sailing, and we want you to help us for a little while. If you help us, I’m sure that we’ll find that no investigation is needed into your assault rifles. We’ll give you a clean bill of health, forget we ever heard of you, and you’ll be on your merry way. If you try to move your money offshore before that, you’ll find that it’s been blocked. Screw with us, and you’ll find out what it’s like to live in a six by nine cage. That’s just the facts of life Brad, those are the ground rules.
“Now what we want you to do is get close to the folks on this list. You’re a big deal shooter and hunter, so they’ll trust you. All of these guys belong to the Black Water Rod and Gun Club, which is a cover for a secret anti-government militia group. There’s no formal membership roster, no dues, and the members come and go, but these men here seem to be the core.
“The club was formed right here in Suffolk in the 80’s, but it really grew in the mid 90’s. That was the same time that most of the open militias were fading away or moving underground after Oklahoma City. Most of the members of this ‘club’ are ex-military, most of them own and shoot assault rifles, most of them have four wheel drive trucks and a lot of them have boats. We want to know what connection they had to Shifflett and the stadium massacre, and if they have plans to commit any more terrorist acts in the future.
“That’s it. Now here’s where you come in. Most Friday nights some of them have what passes for a meeting in the back room at Lester’s Diner in Highpoint. They eat dinner and drink a lot of coffee, and then they pile into their trucks and go off into the swamps to shoot some damn animals or something. We want you to meet them at Lester’s and buddy up to them. We just want you to get an invitation to do whatever the hell it is they do. They’ve seen you around town for a while, they’ve seen you at the range, so it won’t be a problem. We know how these groups operate. Any shooting or fishing or hunting that comes along, you want to go, tag along. That’s it. Easy stuff. Then you call and tell me about it. Any questions?”
Brad had too many questions to count, but settled for, “What’s your name? Who do you work for?”
“Yeah right! You can just call me George, and I work for your government. Any more questions?”
Brad was studying “George’s” face, committing the small blue eyes and sprinkling of old acne scars and bent nose to his memory. He thought he had heard his last name but could not remember it. “H” something. If he ever met “George” on equal footing in the future, free of coercion and official blackmail, he wanted to deal with him personally. Threatening his freedom and his boat was threatening the very core of Brad’s existence.
“No, no questions.”
“So that’s it then, we’ll be in touch. Use this cell phone to contact us at any time, just hit star twenty nine, and a duty officer will contact Gibson or me. Just identify yourself as Bradley Fallon, and one of us will call you back. The phone has unlimited minutes on Uncle Sam’s dime, so feel free to use it for any calls you want to make in the fifty states. It’s already paid for. Remember star twenty nine gets us 24/7, but don’t call at night unless it can’t wait, like if you hear of any plans for violence. Okay? You can get out now, we’ll be in touch.
“And remember Brad: if you screw with us in any way, we’ll screw you for good. We’re not messing around: domestic terrorism is serious business, just like the Muslim kind.”
Brad opened the door and stepped down with the cell phone and a large manila mailing envelope containing the names, addresses, brief biographical sketches and photos of the gun club members. The other agents who were relaxing on Brad’s boat climbed off onto the dock and smirked at him as they passed, then they got into the Suburban and it went crunching back out the oyster shell driveway. He watched it until it was gone from sight, and he continued to stare after it until he could no longer hear its tires on the oyster shells.
“Shit, shit, shit” thought Brad, climbing aboard his boat. Guajira’s companionway hatch padlock had been cut and was laying in the cockpit well. They were very up front about invading his private property; they didn’t even bother to toss the broken lock overboard. He looked below; he could see that his boat had been searched. Nothing looked broken and there was no obvious malicious damage; no slit cushions, no broken locker doors, so at least they hadn’t been in a foul mood. Just a friendly warrantless search to demonstrate their disregard for the constitution, and their complete power over him. The only weapons he had on the boat were standard bolt action rifles, not covered by the new law, and his Smith and Wesson .44 magnum. The rifles were still safe in their hidden locker, but Brad could tell they had been removed and handled and then replaced. Brad figured that if they meant for him to infiltrate a gun club, they knew he’d need his guns.
He climbed back into the cockpit and lay on his back staring up through the oak branches at the sky, as beams of sunlight flickered through the shifting leaves. They really have me by the balls, he thought. He knew that he could not ignore their demands. Randy Weaver had tried that approach with a BATF blackmail operation and refused to turn informant, and in the end the feds killed his son and his wife for his defiance. They shot his young son in the back, and they shot his wife through the head while she was holding a baby in her kitchen. The new federal police had somewhere crossed the line become a super mafia. When they offered you a deal, you couldn’t refuse.
After 9-11 the feds permitted themselves to go after foreigners in the U.S.A. with no regard at all for normal due process, all in the name of fighting the ‘War on Terror’. Now the War on Terror, with its special rules and constitutional exemptions, was being widened to include American citizens and “domestic terrorism.” The cut padlock left flippantly as an insult on Guajira’s cockpit floor told Brad that much in clear language.
Now in the wake of the stadium massacre, Brad had no doubt that the feds would extend the same harsh war-time measures against any suspected “militia” terrorists that they had taken against suspected Islamic terrorists who had been rounded up and put into secret detention facilities without any trial. Ignoring the feds’ demands was not an option. As the famous phrase had put it, “You are either with us, or with the terrorists.”
Twenty miles up this river on a mastless sailboat Brad felt as helpless as a turtle flipped on its back, trapped and vulnerable.
But Brad Fallon had one slight edge which had not shown up on the FBI’s computer screens, one stealth weapon which did not show on their radar scope: he was something of a self-taught student of espionage, law enforcement and special warfare techniques. During his long months working on the ANWR, he had devoured literally hundreds of paperback novels, biographies and histories. During his stints in Alaska he worked twelve on, twelve off, seven days a week. Informal paperback libraries in the dormitories were well stocked with the works of LeCarre, Seymour, Ignatius and many others. There were also plentiful non-fiction works covering every dirty war and covert operation from Southeast Asia to Northern Ireland, and from Central America to the Middle East.
By analyzing and comparing the information in these books he had developed a strong instinct for determining what was critical fact, and what was hyperbolic nonsense. His informal education in special warfare and covert intelligence operations would not register on George’s biography sheet, an advantage which Brad hoped to use if he could.
Brad had not developed an affinity for reading about espionage and clandestine operations by accident. For years he had watched the federal government’s rising tide of well-meant tyrannical power, which always tightened one click of the handcuff ratchet at a time on American freedom, without ever reversing direction or loosening. First in the name of the “War on Drugs,” and then in the name of the “War on Terror,” the federal law enforcement agencies had carved out their own special rules of engagement. In the name of national security, these rules superceded and bypassed the Bill of Rights where ever it stood in the way.
For the sake of expediency, pleading dire emergency, exceptions and exemptions were granted to federal law enforcement agencies, but the “exceptions” then quickly became the accepted norms. Each new graduating class of agents came into the federal law enforcement world learning that they were somehow above the Bill of Rights, because their calling was higher, and their mission too important, to be hamstrung by strict adherence to outdated rules of legal conduct.
Brad could connect the dots into the future: he had studied the pattern in many nations where the secret police gradually became empowered to break the law with impunity, and for a long time he had seen the same trends at work in America. Years ago he had wanted to become a Navy SEAL, in order to learn the dark trades from the inside. That plan had been torpedoed in the hyperbaric dive chamber when the Navy doctors discovered he had no taste for pure oxygen at a simulated depth of sixty feet.
So Brad did the best he could by teaching himself, and so he used his off-duty time in Alaska reading everything he could find on spies, commandos, and terrorists. Now that he was planning to become a world traveling sailor, Brad considered a sophisticated understanding of how secret police agencies worked to be an important tool for avoiding the kinds of mistakes which could cause his boat to be seized, or himself to be tossed in a foreign jail. In most nations, and increasingly in America, it was becoming crucial to be able to discern where the actual lines of power ran, as opposed to the overt public lines. The public lines of authority were often public lies, just polite window dressing, and often a trap for the naïve and unwary.
He had expected to use his special knowledge to help him to navigate through the Byzantine channels of third world politics, to tell him when to shut up and pay the mordida bribe, and when to demand his rights; when to seek a local patron, and when to pull up anchor and flee in the night.
Brad understood very well that the world was increasingly becoming more complex and dangerous for the serious traveler. He just didn’t foresee that he would be trapped by secret police right here in America, before he could even cross his first ocean on Guajira.
One thing he knew for certain was that the standard retirement plan for a dirty war informant was a rural safe house torture session, followed by a bullet in the brain and being dumped in a roadside ditch. The Black Water Rod and Gun Club might or might not be a cover for a secret militia group, but if they were, he was dead certain they would immediately suspect him, the stranger, if he suddenly showed a desire to follow them on their outings.
In fact, his position would be so exposed and obvious that he felt fairly sure that there must already be a government informant in the club, and that he was intentionally being dangled as a cover for the existing spy. If bad things suddenly began to happen to members of the gun club, suspicion would immediately fall on Brad Fallon, leaving the real informer or informers undiscovered and unsuspected. Fallon thought that he would most likely be playing the role of the feds’ intentional sacrificial pawn, a common last role for a duped informant.
Brad was not going to pull a Randy Weaver and refuse the feds outright. He didn’t want to have his money seized or his boat sunk at the dock, or to wind up living in a six by nine cage. But neither would he become an informant. He had just over 24 hours to come up with an alternate plan.
He picked up his broken padlock and threw it far out into the river, where it made a soft thunking splash and disappeared.
George Hummel was riding shotgun in the front passenger seat of the FBI’s black Suburban on their thirty mile drive back from Suffolk to the federal building in downtown Norfolk. The three FBI Special Agents with him had been sent down from Washington and were among the fifty odd federal law enforcement agents rushed into the area to augment the Tidewater end of the MD-Rifle investigation. Local FBI and ATF agents were riding with new arrivals to familiarize them with the area; the visit to Highpoint and Bradley Fallon’s one man boat yard had primarily been an orientation run for them. They had already toured Shifflett’s trailer, and conducted field interviews of Cecil Towers and several other Highpoint residents, but without indicating any interest in the Black Water Rod and Gun Club.
The task of actually making the recruitment pitch to Fallon was left to the Norfolk ATF Assistant Special Agent In Charge Hummel; he was permanently assigned here and would run the new informant long after the Joint Task Force had departed. The FBI’s own high profile Counter Terrorism Division was focused primarily on foreign based Islamic terrorist cells, the ATF was left with the less glamorous task of investigating domestic “militias” and other mostly right wing groups, because these investigations were often based on firearms law infractions. It was a rough division of labor with much overlap, and the FBI was always in the senior position.
From the front seat Hummel turned to the others and said, “Listen, one more stop and we’ll call it a day. Let’s visit a gun store for a compliance visit; you can see the kind of crap ATF is up against every day. Take a right after the Union 76, then head south on 32.” Like most BATFE agents, Hummel had never gotten used to the new letter tacked onto the already too long name of their bureau and he still called it simply the ATF.
State Road 32 was a two lane blacktop cutting due south through pine trees and soybean fields. “That’s the place up there on the left,” said Hummel. The gun store was a white one story cinderblock building 75 feet on a side, set behind a gravel parking lot. An American flag flapped softly atop a pole out front. “Freedom Arms” was painted in blue block letters across the top of the building over the front door and a pair of windows. Behind the store across a several acre sized fenced yard was the owner’s tan-colored one story ranch-style house. Pine woods bordered the fence around the yard and behind the house.
There was a jeep, a pickup truck and a motorcycle parked in front of the store; the muffled staccato popping of a handgun could be heard from within, someone practicing on the indoor range. Virginia was a “right to carry” state and many of the citizens who carried a licensed concealed handgun practiced diligently.
A heavy wrought iron burglar gate was latched back against the building, allowing access through a plate glass door. The two small windows in the front of the structure were set high and covered with iron bars, from the outside the place looked almost like a small bank.
The four federal agents got out, adjusted their jackets over their concealed pistols, and went inside. Decals from firearms and reloading supply companies were stuck all over the glass door, cowbells jingled and a chime rang when the door was opened, inside the air conditioning was refreshingly chilly. A young man, perhaps a military reservist judging by his haircut and demeanor, stood behind a long glass cased counter talking to a wiry older customer who was wearing jeans and boots and a black Harley Davidson t-shirt. Another string of shots was fired on the indoor range: pop pop pop. The young man behind the counter was wearing a holstered cocked and locked .45 Colt 1911 pistol on a wide leather belt: if trouble came looking, gun store employees were universally ready to greet it. George Hummel could not remember a single case of a gun store ever being robbed during business hours, but he never connected this remarkable fact to any larger issues involving citizens carrying firearms more generally.
The three FBI men browsed through the crowded non-firearms merchandise display areas, examining holsters, books, boxes of various calibers of ammunition and other shooting accessories, all while discretely watching Hummel handle the “compliance visit”. As would be expected, all of them were proficient with firearms; they all carried their own .40 caliber pistols in shoulder or belt holsters under their jackets. They all considered themselves shooters and bore no particular animosity toward the owners of gun stores, since they were themselves frequent customers in them. Gun stores were the ATF’s beat as far as compliance with the many federal laws went.
On one knotty pine paneled wall there was a large black and white poster of Adolf Hitler with a bullseye ring printed over him, he had his right arm raised high in a Nazi salute. Across the poster in large Germanic letters was written, “All those in favor of gun control, raise your right hand.” In smaller print was written, “After Hitler was elected Chancellor in 1933, the Nazis used existing German gun registration lists to disarm their citizens. The rest is history.”
One FBI agent pointed the poster out to his colleagues and they all chuckled. FBI agents generally looked down on their ATF cousins, referring to them as the BATF and now the BATFE. The ATF agents had a major inferiority complex and wanted to be considered a first-tier “three letter agency” like the CIA, FBI, NSA or even the DEA, INS or IRS. The BATF had spent sixty years under the Treasury Department as glorified tax collectors or “revenuers”, before most of their bureau was transferred over to the Justice Department following the homeland security reorganizations in the wake of 9-11.
With the transfer had come the new letter, the E for Explosives, and the four letter agency had become the first five letter agency. Behind their backs, BATFE agents were still called “F-Troop” by the FBI for their tendency to screw up major cases, such as the initial attack at Waco. (Not that the FBI had covered itself in glory ending the standoff.)
George Hummel went to the counter and presented his credentials: the black leather wallet containing his gold badge and laminated BATFE identification card. The conversation between the young store employee and his customer halted in mid-sentence.
“ATF: compliance check. Where’s the owner Joe Bardiwell?”
“In the back, wait one.” The employee pushed a button concealed behind the counter, in a few moments a heavy door to the back rooms of the building opened and a middle aged man wearing a leather machinist’s apron and clear safety glasses stepped out. Before the door closed a few louder shots could be heard from the range. Bardiwell had thick dark hair and a brushy mustache, and some of his customers thought he resembled Joseph Stalin or Saddam Hussein, although they would never say so out loud. To his friends, and there were many, he was just plain Joe. Besides owning the store and its indoor range, he was a highly respected and much sought after gunsmith, well known for his custom modifications to standard grade hunting rifles. His work shop and reloading room was in the back along with his office, storage rooms, and the four lane pistol range.
“ATF? And four of you today? What’s the problem? I just had a check last week and all of my books and papers were in perfect order.”
Agent Hummel already knew this, as the Norfolk ASAC he had scheduled the compliance check by the very ATF agent Bardiwell was referring to. “I see that all of your semi-auto rifles are gone,” he said, pointing to the nearly empty long gun racks behind the counters. As in most gun stores, the pistols were in glass cases beneath the counters, the rifles and shotguns were lined up in vertical racks along the back walls. “Have you turned them in, or sold them? Where are they?”
“Oh, I guess I sold just about every one of them. It’s been a busy week.”
“Sold them? All of them? Why would anybody buy a rifle that’s about to be prohibited? Did you inform the purchasers of the new law?”
Bardiwell tried not to smile. “They all know about the law. Why they want the rifles is their business, this week selling them is still perfectly legal, there’s nothing in the law which comes into effect before next Tuesday.”
“But the weapons will be illegal in five days! You’re aiding and abetting criminal activity!”
“I don’t see how. I didn’t write the law, and there’s nothing in the law about not selling them this week, not one word. Call your congressman if you don’t like the way they wrote the law.”
“But buying an assault rifle a week before they’re illegal clearly shows intent to break the law!”
“First, they’re semi-automatic rifles, not assault rifles. Assault rifles have a fully automatic capability. You know that. And I didn’t ask them about their ‘intent’. They were all qualified buyers who passed the instant background check. I just sell legal firearms to qualified buyers for a living. And this week they’re still legal.”
“Let me see your form 4473’s, let me see all your paperwork for the last week.” Hummel was asking for all of the yellow federal firearms purchase forms filled out by each purchaser, which were retained at the gun stores. Theoretically this was to prevent the information from being centrally collected, which would constitute national firearms registration. The ATF routinely collected information from the forms in the conduct of an actual criminal investigation, which was permitted. Lately they had taken to bringing in their own scanners and laptop computers and copying forms wholesale, which should not have been permitted. The “beltway sniper” case in 2002 had finally buried the pretense that the ATF could not go on wide net fishing expeditions, they had collected and culled through every 4473 in Maryland and Virginia on that case, and a new precedent had been set.
Joe Bardiwell went to his back office and returned in a minute with a stack of yellow cards. Usually an ATF agent would try to slip into the office to data mine in privacy, but Bardiwell had built a heavy hinged section into his counter to prevent his offices or storage rooms from being rushed by armed robbers, or federal agents without a warrant. The seemingly unbroken counter top served its purpose, and Hummel remained on the public side of the store. Bardiwell laid the forms on the counter top in front of the ATF agent. “The last sales are on top, they go back in order. Rifles, pistols, everything.”
George Hummel quickly flipped through the cards. “AR-15, SKS, Bushmaster, FAL, an AR-180, two Ruger Mini-14s, a Dragonov, another FAL….Jesus, you sold all of these yesterday! Do you think these guns were bought with the intention to comply with the law?”
Joe Bardiwell shrugged. “How would I know? Why should I be left with unsold inventory I paid for?”
Hummel picked up the entire inch thick stack of forms and turned to leave. Bardiwell said, “You can’t take them out of here, you know the law, those are my records, they have to stay secured in my office. You can copy pertinent information in pursuing an investigation, but you can’t take the forms out of here as long as I’m in business.” Bardiwell was making that statement for the record in front of witnesses, and knowing that his video cameras would catch the ATF agent in clear violation of the statutes if he left with the forms. It would not be above the ATF to take the forms on one day, and then arrest a firearms dealer for not having them as required by law on the next. Bardiwell’s store had two video cameras that were meant to be seen, and two more that were hidden.
“And just exactly how long do you expect to be in business Bardiwell? Maybe not as long as you think, if you’ve been selling ‘semi-automatic’ assault rifles with the intent to evade the law!” Hummel kept the stack of yellow cards and turned for the door.
The older customer, who had been at the counter watching and listening, suddenly said, “Hey Mr. BATF man, I thought there was no federal gun registration, but there you go out the door with the 4473s.” Hummel stopped and looked back at the civilian who had unexpectedly challenged him, and the man continued. “Let me ask you something Mr. BATF… excuse me, Mr. BATF-E man: after next Tuesday are you going to be kicking down those peoples’ doors? Stomping their kittens and shooting their dogs? Throwing pregnant women around causing miscarriages? Isn’t that what you do, in your black ninja suits, hiding your faces behind masks? You don’t do a damn thing about the Muslim terrorists running around loose, but you sure love busting regular Americans’ doors down, don’t you?”
George Hummel, the Norfolk ATF Assistant Special Agent in Charge, was used to receiving cringing courtesy in gun stores and was momentarily stunned into silence by the outburst. When he regained his voice he called back, “and just who the hell are you, Gomer?”
“Who the hell am I? Just somebody that was bleeding in the jungle for this country when you were in diapers, that’s who! And let me tell you, all of us, every one of us that went over there, we all took an oath to defend this country from ALL enemies, foreign AND domestic, do you hear me boy? But it looks like you think it’s all fine and dandy if the lawyers up in Washington decide to tear up the Bill of Rights, that’s fine by you as long as they sign your paycheck, isn’t it?”
“Shut up you asshole, you have no idea what you’re talking about!”
“No? Well it seems like maybe it’s time to figure it all out, figure out who’s defending the constitution, and who’s pissing on it. So my question to you is this: just exactly who wants to disarm us all so bad, and why?” Long harbored thoughts were flying through the old veteran’s mind now, and he couldn’t stop his mouth from firing for effect now that he had the BATF agent in his sights in front of him. “Let me tell you, whoever wrote that damn law is either the biggest fool who ever lived, or he just flat out wants to start a civil war in this country.”
The three FBI agents looked at Hummel and the old crackpot with amusement.
“You don’t believe me? Then why’d every decent rifle in Tidewater, and probably everywhere, get bought up this week? Look around, there’s not a rifle or a rifle magazine left, and not hardly a box of rifle bullets. Now why do you think that is? To throw them all in dumpsters come next Tuesday? You federal boys better think about it real hard, and pick which side of the Constitution you’re going to stand on, because it looks like everybody else is picking the other side.”
“Put a cork in it grandpa, or we’ll arrest you for threatening federal officers!” said Hummel, trying to regain his composure and his control over the situation. Threatening arrest usually did the trick, nobody wanted to be handcuffed and taken away to jail.
“I’m way too old for you to scare me that way boy! Now the VC and the NVA, they scared me plenty back in the day, but not you, oh not hardly! And let me tell you something else: Charlie taught me a thing or two, things I ain’t never forgot! And not just me, no sir, not by a long shot!”
George Hummel turned and headed out the door red faced with anger, the FBI men trailing behind. The last FBI agent turned back around at the front door, nodded slightly, flashed a ‘thumbs up’ against his chest in the old man’s direction and shot him a wink. Then they were gone.
In the shop the ranting man’s anger immediately turned to regret. “I’m sorry Joe, I guess I really screwed up; I mean I really put you in the shit with those guys. Seeing that BATF guy hauling out your 4473s, knowing what it means, what’s going to happen to those folks now…damn. I just don’t know what’s happening in this country any more… A war’s coming, I don’t know how I know, but I feel it coming, I got the old feeling again, I can’t explain it…”
“Ah forget it Phil, you spoke the truth, you said what you felt had to be said, don’t be sorry for that.”
“I really thought they still weren’t allowed to take the 4473s out of the store.”
“They’re not, but they do what the hell they like. Especially after 9-11, and the beltway sniper, and now the stadium massacre…. They’re a law unto themselves; they just do what the hell they want. If they can say it involves national security or terrorism, they get a blank check and a free hand, no questions asked. It’s difficult times my friend, difficult times. Muslims are running around shooting people and blowing themselves up and the feds pick now to disarm honest Americans.”
“Well Joe, I’m sorry for any trouble I caused you, I really am.”
“Hey, don’t worry about it. What’s going to happen is going to happen. Don’t let ‘em drive you crazy; we’ll get through this if we stay cool.” The two men shook hands across the glass topped pistol display counter, and then the older man left the shop, mounted his Harley, fired it up and took off fast to the south.
Joe Bardiwell went back into his office and began making phone calls, he felt it was his duty to call his customers and tell them that the ATF had just pulled their 4473’s and taken them away, which was highly unusual, and indicated certain trouble. In order to avoid any ATF concocted conspiracy charge he carefully told each customer or answering machine the safe and truthful statement “the ATF just pulled your yellow form, make sure you comply with the new law and get rid of your semi-auto rifles by next Tuesday.”
In reality Bardiwell knew that virtually all of these rifles had already been “gotten rid of;” buried in watertight plastic containers or otherwise well hidden. He had heard talk of stockpiles and caches and six inch diameter PVC pipe all week long as rifles and ammo had flown off the shelves. Customers wanted to know what kind of grease or lubricant to use for long term storage, and if they should take apart weapons to relieve spring pressure. Bardiwell stayed away from talk of weapons caches and resistance, he heard it but didn’t join in it. However, in point of fact Joe Bardiwell himself had already cached a significant amount of arms and ammunition: storm clouds had been gathering for a long time and he intended to be ready for whatever came next.
Joe Bardiwell had lived until his late thirties in a predominantly Christian town in the hills east of Beirut Lebanon, and he knew better than most that if and when the storm broke the USA could quickly be divided into two classes of people: armed survivors, and disarmed victims. He had seen it and he had lived it from 1976 until 1981 when he immigrated to the United States with his American born wife, after his entire village had been ethnically and religiously cleansed by the far better-armed invading Muslim PLO. The Christians were all murdered or forced to flee, after two thousand years of their people living in the same town. He decided after leaving Lebanon and embracing freedom in the United States that he would never again under any circumstances be voluntarily disarmed.
ATF agent George Hummel was livid, slamming the heavy door of the Suburban shut behind him. “Do you see now, do you see now, the kind of shit we have to take from these stinking gun nuts every damn day in and day out? You guys saw it, those bastards hate the government, they hate us, they’re armed to the teeth, they’re crazy and they’re itching for a fight! They think their almighty Second Amendment is some kind of holy writ, something Charlton Heston brought down from the mountain like the Ten Commandments! You just cannot get it into these stupid crackers’ skulls that the only real ‘militia’ today is the National Stinking Guard! They think they’re all Thomas Jefferson and Patrick Henry, and we’re the damned lousy redcoats!”
After a moment of embarrassed silence in the truck one of the FBI men said “Well, uh, George, it looks like at least you won’t have to go all the way to Idaho to find the militias. It looks like you’ve got them all over your backyard these days”
“You’ve got that right. Not just here, not just Idaho, it’s everywhere; right wing loonie tunes have been stockpiling guns and ammo like you wouldn’t believe. If you saw the amount of 5.56 and 7.62 that’s been getting bought wholesale every month you wouldn’t believe it. These gun nuts, they don’t buy a hundred rounds at a time any more, they buy a thousand, they buy ten thousand, they buy it by the case in sealed ‘battle packs’, I kid you not! But we’ve got some tricks up our sleeves they haven’t thought of, believe you me! They talk about resisting, they talk about a fight, well…they’ll see. And they call us ‘jack booted thugs’! We’ll show them our jackboots, right in their damned teeth!” Hummel was banging his fist on the door ledge by the window as he shouted.
“Who’s this ‘we’ George?” asked an FBI agent sitting behind Hummel, the one who had given the secret ‘thumbs up’ while leaving the gun store. “Are you enlisting the FBI in your war on gun owners? My Dad’s a gun owner, and so are my brothers. And so am I. Do you know every year ten or fifteen million Americans buy deer stamps and go off into the woods with scoped rifles? Have you ever thought about that? I’m not so sure it’s a great idea to piss off millions of ‘gun nuts’ with high powered rifles…they’ve got us outnumbered about a thousand to one.”
Hummel was laboring to control his breathing so that he could speak normally. “That’s the hunters, they’re okay. I’m talking about the wackjobs with the assault rifles.”
“So just how are you going to find the wackjobs in the middle of those 15 million hunters?”
“Oh trust me. We’ve got some ideas; we’ve been working on that problem a long long time. We’ll be able to sort them all out when the time comes.” |
