He was returning the grease gun to the heap of weapons in the back of his truck. He paused and turned to look at me, giving a shrug that was more a gesture of politeness than an indication of doubt. “Better to have it and not need it than need it and not have it.”
I RODE WITH DECKER AT THE HEAD OF A SMALL convoy, in his black, rubber-coated Expedition, the heavily tinted windows giving the blue-sky day a dusky aspect, as if the sun were partially eclipsed. Directly behind us was an olive-drab Humvee—“up-armored,” Decker explained, with half-inch steel doors, and bulletproof windows that could keep out anything smaller than .50-caliber ammunition. Behind that came the mammoth armored vehicle the SWAT team had euphemistically dubbed the BFT—an acronym for “big fuckin’ truck,” Decker explained, his sheepishness mixed with obvious pride. The BFT—with room inside for twenty SWAT team members and their weapons—was built to repel not just gunfire but chemical, biological, and radiological assaults, too. If Armageddon came calling on East Tennessee, the inside of the BFT was clearly the place with the best odds of survival.
As we barreled east on I-40, we attracted more than a few stares from passing motorists, as well as a fairly equal mixture of thumbs-up signs and worried frowns. But not even the unhappiest frowners, I noticed, dared to flip us off.
After winding along River Road into downtown Jonesport, we rendezvoused behind the courthouse with one of O’Conner’s deputies. “The sheriff and Waylon’s up yonder near the Shiflett place with your recon team,” he told Decker. The SWAT team commander had sent a pair of two-man teams up the night before—two spotters and two snipers—to get eyes on the suspect, if possible. They’d glimpsed lights on in the house, barely visible behind heavy curtains, but they hadn’t seen any movement. O’Conner and Decker had talked strategy at daybreak; they had considered simply waiting until Shiflett emerged, then surrounding his truck, the way the FBI had nabbed some of the Oregon protesters when they left the Malheur National Wildlife Refuge to drive to a nearby town. “Trouble is, he could hole up there for weeks or months,” O’Conner said. “He’s totally off the grid, which means we can’t cut off his water or power. He’s a survivalist from way back, which means he’s got months’ worth of food and water stockpiled. I don’t have the resources to sit on him that long. Besides, if he gets wind of us, he’ll just sneak out—he grew up in these mountains, and his wilderness skills are good.”
“All right, then,” Decker had said. “If you can’t wait till he comes out, we’ll go in and get him for you.”
Shiflett lived in a mountain hollow just outside Del Rio, at the end of a long dirt road. Decker pulled into the turnoff and stopped at a stout metal gate, which was secured with a heavy chain and a massive padlock. The rest of the convoy eased onto the shoulder of the blacktop, although the BFT, practically scraping the trees, still occupied half the roadway.
In case the locked gate and standard red-and-black NO TRESPASSING and KEEP OUT signs weren’t enough to deter visitors, a profusion of other signs wired to the gate underscored the message: One, illustrated with a skull and crossbones, read, IS THERE LIFE AFTER DEATH? TRESPASS AND FIND OUT. Another bore the image of an assault rifle; underneath was a circle containing the crosshairs of a scope, centered on a red dot labeled YOU ARE HERE. A third warned, WE DON’T DIAL 911. WE CALL THE CORONER.
In addition to the warning signs, the gate was flanked on one side by a Confederate battle flag and on the other by a yellow-and-black flag; it depicted a rattlesnake coiled around an assault rifle, captioned with the dual messages DON’T TREAD ON LIBERTY and THE RIGHT TO KEEP AND BEAR ARMS.
Decker got out, opened his truck’s cargo door, and extricated an immense bolt cutter. He gave the handles a squeeze, and the padlock’s shackle snapped loudly. He was about to push the gate open when I saw him freeze. After a long, tense pause, during which his body remained motionless while he scanned the woods on both sides of the driveway, he removed his hands from the gate and backed away slowly.