He clambered back into the truck. “Shit,” he muttered, then reached for his radio. “Decker here. Vests on. Everybody. Now.” I shot him a questioning look, and I got my answer when he keyed the radio mike again. “The gate’s booby-trapped. Everybody sit tight. He’s not gonna make this easy.”
He exited the truck again and went to the back once more, and I heard him rummaging around. When he stepped to the gate again, he was wearing an armored vest and a helmet and was carrying a riot shield, which he held against the left side of his body. In his right hand, I glimpsed a pair of wire cutters. Threading his hand through the bars of the gate, he maneuvered the tool gingerly into position, then slowly squeezed. I felt myself brace for a bang or a boom, but neither came, and after a moment I slowly let out the breath that I’d been holding. Decker, too, seemed to unwind slightly, and after another moment, he gave the gate a tentative push, still protecting his left side with the shield. The gate swung open a couple of feet, again without triggering any sort of blast, and again I felt myself unclench.
Pocketing the wire cutters, Decker turned toward the truck but paused, midturn, facing the left side of the gate. Then, bizarrely, he lifted his right hand and gave a small wave: like a beauty queen in SWAT gear. After he’d stashed the shield in the back of the truck and climbed back in, I said, “What was that about?”
“He’s got a surveillance camera hidden in a stump over there. Right beside the shotgun that was wired to the gate. If he’s watching, he knows we’re here. Might as well let him know that we know that he knows.”
Once I had untangled the convoluted sentence, I nodded. “Makes sense. Show him that you’re onto his tricks, and that you’re not scared. Probably ups the pressure on him.”
He gave a tight smile. “Doc, we have not even begun to apply pressure.” He picked up the radio mike again and told his men the order in which he wanted the vehicles to enter: the armored Humvee first, followed by the BFT, then the two conventional, unarmored trucks. “Fan out and stop as soon as you get to the clearing,” he added. “Let’s keep our distance from the house.”
Decker backed away from the gate and into the roadway, allowing the Humvee and the other three vehicles to enter the driveway ahead of us. Moving slowly, the Humvee pushed the gate; it opened wide and our convoy proceeded down the quarter-mile dirt lane, lurching and bucking over the ruts. The ride was relatively rough in Decker’s civilized Expedition, so I imagined it to be bone-jarring in the Humvee and the BFT.
We emerged from the woods and into a large clearing, roughly the size of a football field, its center occupied by a squat, hulking log cabin, one that looked like a throwback to frontier days. The windows were few and small, and I suspected that even without curtains, the interior would have been dark as a cave. “Hmm,” Decker said, then, “Christ. You see the gunports?” I took a closer look. Sure enough, several horizontal slits had been sawed through the front wall.
Decker radioed a team member named Ron. “Ron, take the BFT up close to the house and use the PA system to call him out. No point playing coy. Might as well get right up in his face.”
The truck began lumbering forward, its angled windshield and hood half as high as the cabin’s porch roof. “Is that safe?” I asked.
Decker gave a slight shrug. “Probably. The truck’s built for threat level four—armor-piercing bullets; biological and chemical agents—so unless he’s got a grenade launcher or a howitzer in there, there’s not much way he can hurt it.”
The vehicle stopped only a few feet from the front porch. “Jimmy Ray Shiflett, we have a warrant for your arrest,” the officer’s voice rang out, the drawl amplified by a factor of ten. “Come out unarmed, with your hands up and in plain sight.”
We waited, but no one emerged, so we waited some more. Still no one. “Tell him again,” Decker radioed Ron. Ron did as he was told, but Shiflett did not. After another long wait, Decker ordered, “See if the third time’s the charm.” Ron tried once more, but the third time was not the charm.
“Too bad,” Decker said, “but not surprising.” He got on the radio again. “Ron? Come on back to the tree line for now. Jake? Let’s get some eyes in the sky.” He looked at me with a grin. “Want to see our newest toy?”
“Sure, if it doesn’t get me shot.”
“Not to worry.” He put the truck in gear and followed the BFT to the edge of the clearing, then tucked in behind it, so we were shielded. The big vehicle’s rear door was already open, and one of Decker’s men was leaning inside, removing tubes and motors and other parts from a large plastic case. Decker motioned me to follow him, so I got out and wandered up to the back of the truck.