Patriots: A Novel of Survival in the Coming Collapse

CHAPTER 6 Lawyers, Guns, and Money

Matt and Chase Keane made their way back to eastern Washington shortly after the dollar collapsed. Unlike most other Americans, the Crunch was a relief to them. The anarchy spreading across the nation was their chance to go home with little fear of arrest. Four years earlier, the Keanes had a shoot-out with a North Carolina state trooper and a Randolph County sheriff’s deputy, and only minutes after, another one with an Asheboro police officer. Those events would irreparably change their lives.

Before the shoot-outs, the Keanes had made their living as traveling gun show dealers and day laborers. They were both intelligent and hard-working young men. They could have made good salaries in Spokane Valley industry, but they refused to apply for Social Security numbers. This limited them to self-employment or occasional short-term jobs where they could work for cash.

Between gun shows they built stock fences, cut and hauled firewood, worked at a brickyard, ran combines at harvest time, and bucked hay.

Matt and Chase were dyed-in-the-wool conservatives. Like many other conservatives, they felt that the Waco and Ruby Ridge incidents were nothing short of government massacres of law-abiding Christians who just wanted to be left alone. They thought that the Brady Law requiring a waiting period on handguns was a farce. They considered the Omnibus Crime Bill of 1994—which banned the manufacture of so-called “assault rifles” and magazines over ten-round capacity—absolutely unconstitutional. They were relieved when the law “sunsetted” in 2004, but were then horrified by the election of Barack Obama, and the threat of the onerous law being reinstated.

The Keanes derided the unconstitutional policies and legislation that came out of Washington, D.C. They referred to D.C. as “the District of Criminals” or “the District of Chaldeans.” The Keanes hated Washington, D.C. career politicians. They also hated the BATFE and the FBI. They had grown up admiring the FBI, but eventually despised it. The agency had been totally politicized, corrupted, and purged of any agents not loyal to the D.C. careerists.

Even its world-famous crime lab was caught fabricating evidence, as in the Lockerbie bombing case. They were convinced that the Oklahoma City bombing was a government setup. There was too much evidence pointing to two bomb blasts in rapid succession, one of which must have been inside the Alfred P. Murrah Federal Building. There was also strong evidence that the ATF had prior knowledge that the explosions were going to occur.

The Keanes concluded that the OKC bombing was a government sting operation, much like the previous World Trade Center bombing. In that incident, an undercover agent gave the terrorists detailed instructions on how to construct the bomb, helped supply materials, and even gave driving lessons to the recently immigrated terrorists, so that they could get the truck to its target.

The Keanes were convinced that in the Oklahoma City case, FBI undercover agents were again co-conspirators. For some reason, just as in the World Trade Center case, they did not make their arrests until after the bombing. The Keanes concluded that the FBI had become so politicized and so ruthless that it was willing to sacrifice the lives of hundreds of citizens for the political “big score.” They considered Timothy McVeigh and Terry Nichols “little fish” and patsies. They knew that the Federal government had intentionally avoided tracking down and convicting “John Does” number two through seven, and had quickly ordered the demolition of what was left of the Murrah building to destroy evidence of bomb blasts inside the building. At least one of those John Does, they concluded, was on the Federal payroll.

The brothers had a number of minor scrapes with the law, mainly over traffic citations. Matt rarely carried a driver’s license, and more often than not, he owned cars that had not been re-registered with the state of Washington into his name. As far as he was concerned, a valid bill of sale was all that he needed to prove that the car was his property under common law. He once told his friend Dave, “If you read the state vehicle code, it doesn’t say a word about privately owned automobiles. It only pertains to commercial vehicles, operating in commerce. People are tricked by the authorities into thinking that all these laws pertain to them, but they don’t. A ‘motor vehicle’ is used for commerce, using the privilege to drive on the highway. That means carrying commercial goods under a bill of lading, or paying passengers. If it is just you and your guests—not ‘passengers’ mind you— traveling, then you are exercising your right of locomotion on the right of way rather than using the privilege to drive. That’s an important distinction that most people don’t grasp, and that these statutory jurisdiction kangaroo courts rarely recognize.”

Both of the Keanes and their younger sister had been homeschooled. Once they had mastered the “three Rs,” their parents let them do independent study.

The youngest, Eileen, wanted to be a veterinarian. She worked part-time as an assistant at a local vet clinic. Chase was interested in music. He took guitar, violin, and piano classes. Matt was fascinated by the legal system, so he spent nearly two full years commuting with his father to downtown Spokane. Each day his father dropped him off with a sack lunch at the county law library, and picked him up each evening. This began when he was sixteen years old. Seeing that Matt was genuinely interested, one of the librarians immediately took Matt under her wing. She started him off with a copy of Legal Research by Stephen Elias, and Black’s Law Dictionary. Most of the lawyers that saw Matt using the library assumed that he was a law clerk or a paralegal researcher. Matt dug into his law research with gusto. He was gifted with a photographic memory. Within a few weeks he was reciting the names and key points of cases verbatim. He had been doing the same with Bible verses since he was a child.

Matt and Chase were accused of selling firearms without a Federal Firearms License (FFL) three different times: twice by other dealers, and once by a gun show promoter. It was true that neither of them had a license, but they didn’t see the need for one. Matt had researched the Federal gun laws in detail. In 2007, the promoter of an Oregon show came by the Keanes’ tables and asked Matt casually, “Are you selling a private collection, or do you have an FFL?”

The term “private collection” was the standard gun show euphemism for a table rented by someone who sold modern guns without a license. Matt replied frankly, “Sir, I am indeed a full-time gun seller, but I don’t have an FFL.”

The promoter replied huffily, “Well, if you’re ‘engaged in the business,’ then you are required by law to get an FFL.” When the promoter quoted the

“engaged in the business” phrase from the Federal law, it was enough to get Matt going. For the next five minutes, the promoter sat in stunned silence as the young man lectured him about the inapplicability of Federal gun laws to state Citizens. Matt began, “Now sir, I’m going to explain some terms and applicability of laws, as I understand them, and please hear me out.

“Now this is what I’ve learned: Both the National Firearms Act of 1934—the NFA—and the Gun Control Act of 1968—the GCA—are deliberately deceptive, making millions of Sovereign Citizens unwittingly and needlessly subject to a false jurisdiction. Both laws indicate that they are applicable ‘within the United States,’ for ‘interstate or foreign commerce’ unless otherwise excluded by law. Further, these laws define the ‘United States’ to include the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and possessions of the United States. This corresponds to the ‘exclusive jurisdiction’ as defined in Article 1, Section 8, clauses 17 and 18 of the Constitution.

“If you refer to Public Law 99-308, Chapter 44, section 921(a) (2) which reads: ‘The term interstate or foreign commerce includes commerce between any place in a State and any place outside of that State, or within any possession of the United States (not including the Canal Zone) or the District of Columbia, but such term does not include commerce between places within that same State but through any place outside that State. The term State includes the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, and the possessions of the United States (not including the Canal Zone.)’”

A small crowd of curious onlookers began to gradually gather around Matt’s tables when they heard him rattle off the legal citations in a loud voice.

“Based upon my research, it is my understanding that the term includes restricts rather than expands a definition. This was clearly established in a large body of State and Federal cases, such as Montello Salt Co. v. Utah, 221 U.S., 452 at 466, and in Treasury Decision Number 3980 Volume 29, of 1927. That one said that ‘includes’ means to ‘comprise as a member,’ ‘to confine,’ and ‘to comprise as the whole part.’ If ‘includes’ meant an incomplete list of examples, such as in the common vernacular use of the term, then Congress would have certainly used the phrase ‘including but not limited to…’ or something similar.

“In the strict Federal legal definition—the so-called ‘black letter law’—of the word, as opposed to common interpretation, if something is not ‘included,’ then it is excluded!

“Since the term includes is one of strict definition, when lawmakers wish to temporarily supersede that definition for the purposes of an individual section or paragraph, they often use the word means. To illustrate this, I quote Internal Revenue Code section 6103(b)(5)(a) in which Congress temporally expanded ( ‘for the purposes of this section’) the term State to encompass the fifty States:‘The term ‘State’ means any of the 50 States, the District of Columbia, the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico, the [U.S.] Virgin Islands, the Canal Zone, Guam, American Samoa….’

“Now by ‘possessions’ I assume that NFA and GCA both refer to the U.S. Virgin Islands, Guam, and American Samoa, as well as certain Federal enclaves within the fifty Sovereign States, such as Federal military forts, dockyards, et cetera. Clearly, the fifty Sovereign States are not ‘possessions’ of the Federal United States. The nature of the possessions of the Federal United States is described in Art. 1, Sect. 8, clauses 17 and 18 of the Constitution. So the bottom line is that Federal jurisdiction in no way extends to individual Citizens of the fifty Sovereign States and Commonwealths!

“Now sir, I fully understand that the definitions included in a number of Federal regulations concerning firearms (such as Title 27) amplify the terms includes and including to ‘not exclude other things not enumerated which are in the same general class or are otherwise within the scope thereof.’ However, the fifty Sovereign Union States are not by any stretch of the imagination in the same class as Federal ‘States’ such as the Commonwealth of Puerto Rico or other federal possessions. They are not the possessions of the U.S. Federal government, but rather have their own distinct sovereignty, and their respective systems of laws and legal jurisdictions.”

The promoter scratched his head and opened his mouth, but Matt went on before the man had a chance to comment. Keane added, “Now if you have any doubt about my reasoning, I should point out that the Territories of Hawaii and Alaska were both originally listed as territories included in the Federal United States, but they were removed in the new versions of the U.S. Code that were published after they became Sovereign Union States.”

The crowd around the table was growing larger. Matt paused, waiting for his words to sink in. The promoter said nothing, so he went on. “Anyone who is not a citizen or legal resident of the Federal United States should be exempt from any requirement to obtain a Federal Firearms License to conduct intra-state commerce or commerce between any other of the fifty Sovereign States. The only exception would be if someone were to do business with, say, for example, an individual or Federally licensed dealer in Puerto Rico or the District of Columbia or some other Federal ‘State’ as defined in the NFA and GCA.

“Now here’s the kicker. It’s not just the Federal gun laws that are written this way. Nearly all the Federal laws apply only in the ‘District of Criminals’ and the Federal Territories. Only a few laws regarding the Postal Service, the Patent Office, and espionage apply in the fifty states. Except for those few laws, the Federal laws don’t apply to state Citizens or carry true force of law within the states. So when you see these ninja-suited Federal alphabet soup agency boys running around the fifty states, collecting taxes, arresting people, levying fines, burning down churches, and shooting nursing mothers in the head; guess what? They’re outside their jurisdiction.

“Now here are some other cases you might want to ponder: ‘It is a well established principle of law that all federal legislation applies only within the territorial jurisdiction of the United States unless a contrary intent appears.’ That’s from Foley Brothers Inc. v. Filardo, 336 U.S. 281.

“‘The laws of Congress in respect to those matters’— that is those outside of those Constitutionally delegated powers—‘do not extend into the territorial limits of the states, but have force only in the District of Columbia, and other places that are within the exclusive jurisdiction of the national government.’ That’s from Caha v. U.S., 152 U.S. 211.

“‘Since in common usage, the term person does not include the sovereign, statutes not employing the phrase are ordinarily construed to exclude it.’ That’s from U.S. v. Fox, 94 U.S. 315.”

The show promoter began nodding his head repeatedly. Matt carried on.

“‘Because of what appears to be a lawful command on the surface, many Citizens, because of respect for the law, are cunningly coerced into waiving their rights, due to ignorance.’ That’s from U.S. v. Minker, 350 U.S. 179 187.

“‘Waivers of Constitutional rights not only must be voluntary, they must be knowingly intelligent acts, done with sufficient awareness of the relevant circumstances and consequences.’ That’s from Brady v. U.S., 397 U.S. 742 at 748.

“‘The words ‘People of the United States’ and ‘citizens’ are synonymous terms, and mean the same thing. They both describe the political body who, according to our republican institutions, form the sovereignty… They are what we familiarly call the ‘sovereign people,’ and every citizen is one of this people, and a constituent member of the sovereignty.’ That’s from Wong Kim Ark, quoting the Dred Scott v. Sanford decision .

“‘Under our form of government, the legislature is not supreme. It is only one of the organs of that absolute sovereignty which resides in the whole body of the People; like other bodies of the government, it can only exercise such powers as have been delegated to it, and when it steps beyond that boundary, its acts are utterly void.’ That’s from Billings v. Hall.

“And last but not least: ‘All laws which are repugnant to the Constitution are null and void.’ That’s from Marbury v. Madison, 5 U.S. 137, 176.”With that, Matt sat down on the edge of one of his rented tables and folded his hands.

The crowd that had gathered applauded. The promoter walked away speechless and red-faced.

One of the men from the crowd stepped up to shake Matt’s hand and said, “I wish I had that one on tape. What are you, an attorney?”

“No sir. I’m just a private Citizen that spends far too much time in law libraries.”

Four years before the Crunch, Matt was twenty-four years old. His brother had just turned twenty. On a chilly February evening, Matt and Chase were on their way back from the Charlotte, North Carolina, gun show in Matt’s light blue 1987 Ford van. The Keanes had had a good show. They had sold seven guns, and bought two. They also nearly sold out of their small remaining inventory of magazines, knowing that magazine prices would collapse following the sunset of the 1994 Federal law. So instead of selling magazines to supplement their gun sales, the Keanes switched to selling web gear, gas masks, first-aid gear, bulletproof vests, police and military memorabilia, and ammunition. They had the majority of their gun show inventory in the back of the van. The rest of it was in Chase’s aging Dodge Executive motor home.

They had left the gun show promptly at five on Saturday, as was their habit.

Unlike most dealers, they did not operate their tables on Sunday. The Keanes refused to buy or sell on the Lord’s Day. This often angered the gun show organizers, who didn’t like seeing bare tables on Sunday. But they stood firm.

They just quoted the scripture, “Remember the Sabbath day, to keep it holy. Exodus 20, verse 8.”

On Friday morning, they had left Chase’s motor home at the campground where Chase was working temporarily, near Greensboro. Chase had worked out a barter deal where he could have a free space for his motor home and free laundry room privileges in exchange for picking up trash, cleaning the laundry room, spreading sand on icy mornings, and helping travelers use the septic dump station. The latter was the campground owner’s least favorite job. He was happy to find someone willing to do it and not ask for wages in return.

On their way back from the gun show, Matt was driving. He was wearing his trademark black BDU cap—the one that Chase jokingly referred to as “that Sarah Conner cap.” Just before they reached the city of Asheboro, sixty miles southeast of Greensboro, Matt noticed that they were being followed by a North Carolina state trooper. The car paced them for several minutes. This made Matt nervous. “They probably don’t like the look of our Washington plates.”

Chase muttered, “We should have registered the van and brought the tags up to date before we left on this trip. They’ve got no sense of humor about expired tags here in these ‘miscellaneous eastern states.’”

Matt replied with his oft-quoted catchphrase, “But we’re not driving, little brother. We’re locomoting on a right-of-way. I’m not a driver. I’m a traveler.

Traveling is a right, but driving is a privilege. Why should I register this van for commerce, when….” Just then, the trooper turned on the cruiser’s light bar.

Matt declared, “Oh mercy’s sake. Another ticket. Swell. There goes a good chunk of today’s profit. Time to render unto Caesar.” He waited until there was a wide spot in the road, and pulled off onto the shoulder. The cruiser stopped five yards behind the van.

The trooper didn’t approach immediately, which made Matt even more nervous. In the rearview mirror, he could see the trooper using his radio handset. He asked Chase, “Is North Carolina on that NRVC you researched?”

He was referring to the Non-Resident Violator Compact, an agreement signed by more than thirty states. The NRVC shared records of motor vehicle registrations and driving privilege suspensions in a computer database that was available to law enforcement agencies in each of the signatory states. Under the NRVC, any violation in any compact state was treated as a violation in any other NRVC state. Cars and trucks were often impounded until fines and late penalties were paid and records were cleared in distant states. This process often took more than a week, leaving motorists stranded.

“I don’t recall,” Chase answered tersely.

As they were waiting, Matt flipped down his visor and pulled out the expired registration form and the notarized bill of sale signed by the man in Spokane from whom he had bought the van.

With his citation book in his left hand and his right on the butt of his holstered Glock Model 17, the trooper walked up to the van. He paused to examine the plate’s registration sticker, and then to peer in the back and side windows at the pile of cardboard boxes and plastic storage bins in the back. Then he walked up passenger side window, which Chase had already rolled down.

A Randolph county sheriff’s deputy approached from the south. As soon as the deputy saw the sharp angle at which the trooper had turned his car’s front wheels, he applied his brakes and pulled his car in behind the state patrol car.

He had recognized a secret signal used by law enforcement officers in the area.

Sharply turned wheels meant: “I need back up on this traffic stop—from an officer of any jurisdiction.” The deputy dutifully but regretfully stepped out to assist. He disliked the typically arrogant attitude of the state police, and their weekly ticket quotas. He mumbled to himself, “Gotta keep up that revenue….”

The trooper, who was six-feet-two and weighed two hundred and ten pounds, leaned over and gazed down at Matt. Matt was just five-feet-seven and weighed one hundred and thirty five. “Your registration sticker expired three months ago. That’s going to cost you.”With practice and precision he intoned,

“Driver’s license and registration, please.”

The sheriff’s deputy stepped out of his car and walked to the front bumper of his patrol car, so he could assist, if necessary. He edged forward so that he could hear what the trooper was saying. He didn’t want to intrude on the state police’s business, but to provide an effective backup, he had to hear what was going on.

Fumbling with the papers in his hands, Matt said, “Here’s the registration, but as for the driver’s license, I haven’t got it on me now, sir.”

“Just where is your driver’s license then, in your luggage?”

“No, it’s at home in Washington. I only carry it for when I’m driving.”

“Then you weren’t driving? So the other young man there was? I didn’t see you switch places.”

“No. He wasn’t driving either.”

“Don’t play friggin’ games with me, son. One of you was driving! Now which one of you was it?”

“Neither of us was. We’re traveling. Driving is a privilege, and requires a license. Traveling as a free de jure Sovereign Citizen doesn’t. If you refer to Shapiro v. Thompson and U.S. v. Meulner, the case law is well established on the unconditional right to travel.”

The trooper put on a stern expression. “You know, about ten years ago some uppity militia-Sovereignty-Citizen type like you with custom plates that said ‘Militia Chaplain’ tried to smart mouth the Ohio state patrol. He was saying the same sorta things you are, and he was packing a pistol. And they settled his hash, but good. The Federal Task Force boys showed us a training video on that incident. Did you hear about that one?”

“Yeah.”

The trooper tightened his grip on the Glock and thumbed off the retention strap with a loud pop. “Do you want the same thing to happen to you?”

Now Matt wasn’t just nervous. He was scared.

The trooper intoned with a practiced voice, “Your passenger can stay where he is. Will you please step out of the vehicle?”

“It’s not a ‘vehicle,’ and he’s not a ‘passenger.’ He’s my guest. I’m not getting out. You don’t have probable cause or even reasonable suspicion. You just want an excuse….”

“Get out, now!”

Matt obeyed the order. He was shaking. They walked in unison on either side of the van and met at the double rear doors. Matt asked, “Don’t you want to see these papers?”

“No. I want you to step back to my car. I’m going to search you for weapons first!”

Hearing the urgency in the trooper’s voice, the deputy jogged forward.

Matt replied, “I don’t want to be violated like this!” and took a step backward.

“You friggin’ sovereign-militia types are like peas in a pod. You quote two-hundred-year-old laws, and refuse to be ruled by those in authority over you. You’ve got no respect for legal statutory jurisdiction. The guys on the task force told me how to deal with you and your uppity attitudes. So you ‘don’t want to be violated.’ All right, son. Then I’ll just arrest you for not having a driver’s license, and then I’ll search you, and I’ll put you in jail, and I’ll impound your vehicle and its contents. How do you want to play it?You tell me.”

Matt stood his ground. The trooper snorted, and said in a demanding voice,

“We have three options…. Option one is I’m going to search your person to make sure you have no dangerous or deadly weapons. Odds are I’ll find something on you or in your van that could be construed as deadly. Then I’ll put you in jail. Option two is I can arrest you for not having a driver’s license. Then I can search you, and I’ll put you in jail…. Option three is if you continue to resist being searched, claiming your mythical ‘rights’ I’m going to ventilate you.

Those are the options you have, son. Which would you like to exercise?” The trooper tucked his citation book under his left arm and pulled the Glock from its holster.

The sheriff’s deputy now stood immediately to the trooper’s right. Seeing the trooper draw his pistol, he instinctively drew his, too. He asked quizzically,

“What’s going on here? Are there warrants on these guys?”

Matt asked, “How long will it take for you to call the state of Washington and have them confirm that I have a valid driver’s license?” He looked down at the muzzles of the two guns pointing toward him at “low ready.”

The trooper’s mouth contorted into a crooked grin. “Timezup! You just picked ‘option three,’ scumbag.”

Matt turned and ran back toward the front of the van, yelling to Chase, “Go!”

The trooper jerked the trigger of the Glock and it roared, even before the sights came in line with Matt’s body. The bullet barely grazed Matt’s leg, tearing a neat hole through his black denim jeans, just below the knee. The bullet bounced harmlessly off the pavement.

As he scrambled for cover into the van, Matt yelled “Don’t shoot!” The trooper fired again, a wild shot that went over the van. The trooper’s hands were shaking.

Chase jumped out of the other side of the van, and was firing his Glock 19 in the direction of the cruisers. He aimed for the light bar on the lead car, attempting to protect his brother by diverting their fire. The trooper and the sheriff’s deputy crouched to the left and right, respectively.

The Randolph County sheriff’s deputy instinctively shot back at Chase, rapidly. All of his shots were high, even though Chase was only fifteen feet away. One of his shots hit the van. Now both the trooper and the deputy fired at Chase, very rapidly. All of their shots missed. Chase fired two more shots, and then jumped back into the van. The deputy ran up to the passenger-side door.

The deputy shouted “Halt!”

The state trooper fired again. This shot shattered the van’s rearview mirror, just inches from Matt’s shoulder.

Matt pulled his door shut and again shouted, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!”

The trooper thought that his gun had jammed. He was taking careful aim at the driver’s head and pulling the trigger repeatedly, but nothing was happening. He looked down to see the slide locked to the rear. The gun’s nineteen-round “+2” magazine was empty.

The deputy ran up to the open passenger-side door. Thinking that the officer meant to kill them, Matt shoved the column shifter down into drive, and stomped on the gas. The deputy held onto the swinging door’s window frame briefly, and was dragged ten feet before letting go. His S&W Model 915 pistol fell to the ground.

The van was more than one hundred and fifty yards away and accelerating rapidly by the time the state trooper had reloaded his Glock with a fresh seventeen-round magazine from the horizontal double magazine pouch on his belt.

Knowing that the driver was out of range, the trooper super-elevated the front sight and fired five more times anyway, in anger. Watching the van speed away, he shouted, “Son of a…!”

The deputy retrieved his pistol from the ground where he had dropped it.

He examined it, and reloaded it. He only had one round left in the fifteen-round magazine, and one in the chamber. Between them, the trooper and the deputy had fired thirty-eight rounds. Not one of them hit flesh. As the deputy reloaded, the trooper ran up to him and asked, “You hit?”

“No. I just pissed my pants, is all. How ’bout you?”

The trooper replied, “I’m okay, I think. You know I think I hit the driver a couple of times. Okay! You call this in, while I pursue that blue streak.” He started toward the door of his cruiser.

“No! No! No! What do you say you just shut up, and sit down, hot shot!”

The trooper stopped and glared at the deputy.

The deputy questioned him. “Why were you trying to shoot that kid in the back? He wasn’t a threat! I don’t know about your department’s policy, but under ours what I just witnessed was excessive force, big time. And I was stupid enough to go along with it. Now that the shooting has stopped, I realize that what I should have done was… holstered my piece and tackled you.”

The North Carolina trooper was speechless. He started looking for bloodstains on the ground. Meanwhile, the deputy reported shots fired and requested backup. Finally, the trooper offered, “I really do think I hit that one guy a couple of times.”

The deputy answered sharply, “You didn’t hit jack, Jack. And I don’t think I did, either. Did you find any blood?”

The trooper answered sullenly, “No.” He stared at the more than three-dozen pieces of brass that lay scattered on the pavement, and shook his head slowly from side to side. They could hear the first of many sirens approaching in the distance.

The trooper looked anxiously at the deputy and said, “Here comes the cavalry. I guess, we’d better get our story straight.”

Quoting an old Lone Ranger joke, the deputy replied, “‘What do you mean we, white man?’”

Matt Keane turned right at the first intersection he came to, and then started making semi-random turns at each subsequent intersection.

After taking a few deep breaths, Chase exclaimed. “Those bastards were trying to kill us!” He reloaded his Glock with a magazine from his duffel bag.

He handed it to Matt, who tucked the gun under his thigh.

“Where do they get off, trying to back-shoot an unarmed man?” Matt asked.

“Beats me. They are some kinda ‘mo-bile and hos-tile’ around here. That guy was definitely trying to kill you! I generally don’t have any beef with local and state law enforcement, but that guy had a serious BATF-jack-booted-thug attitude! I always thought that if we were ever going to have any confrontation, it was going to be with Federal law enforcement.”

Matt cocked his head and retorted, “Guess who is developing all the training curriculum for the state and local departments? Guess who is running the multi-jurisdictional task forces? But I just can’t believe these local guys are falling for the Federal brainwashing.”

Chase snaked into the rear of the van. He pulled out a Colt Sporter HBAR from their show inventory, new in the factory box. The box’s large red-orange price tag declared: “SALE! Colt after-ban: $1,100.” He tossed aside the Colt factory five-round magazine that came with the rifle in disgust, and started digging through inventory bins until he found a bin partly full of contract M16 magazines. He grabbed five, all still new in government contractor’s wrappers. He peeled the clear plastic wrappers off quickly and laid them down.

After finding the magazines, Chase picked through a group of .50 caliber ammo cans until he found the one with a price tag marked “Canadian 5.56 SS-109 (62 Grain) Ball. $28.00 per bandoleer.” He unclipped the stripper clip guide from one of the bandoleers, and started loading the magazines rapidly, emptying three stripper clips into each of the magazines with a ratcheting sound. Once all five magazines were loaded, he set them and the rifle between the front seats, and slid forward to take his seat. He exclaimed, “Little-big brother, we gotta ditch this rig, fast, or we’re dead meat!”

“No kidding.”

Chase popped one of the loaded magazines into the Colt, cycled the charging handle, checked the safety, and tapped the forward assist with the butt of his right hand. He looked up and asked, “Where are we?”

“I don’t know exactly. I’ve been on the side roads. We must be coming into Asheboro, proper. I just set the cruise control to thirty-five. Without it, I think I’d be up to sixty without even noticing it.”

“Good idea.”

“So do we go rent a car, or what?” Chase asked.

“No way. They’d ask for ID, and even if we made it out of a rental agency lot, they’d have an All-Points-Bulletin on the rental car within an hour or two.”

“We should have built ourselves false IDs a long time ago, like we talked about. Too late for that now. How about the bus, or hitchhiking?”

“Goshamighty! Then we’d have to leave most of our inventory, Chase.

We’ve got a good chunk of our life savings tied up in the inventory, not to mention the thirty-five hundred that I paid for this rig. We’re going to have to steal a car or a truck.”

“Are you kidding? Steal? We’ve never stolen so much as a candy bar, and you want to try grand theft auto! No. No way.‘Thou shalt not steal.’ That’s the law. That’s the covenant. We can’t go stealing a car. It’s a sin. It’s a crime.”

“So is ‘attempted murder of police officers,’ so is ‘carrying a concealed weapon,’ so is ‘flight to avoid arrest.’ That’s what they’re going to charge us with, little bro. No doubt about it.”

“But they started shooting first, not me, Matt. I can rightfully claim self-defense—or more precisely, that I was defending you.”

“Try proving that to a jury. It’ll be our word against theirs. They’ll be the upstanding Dudley Do-Rights. We’ll get tarred with a broad brush. They’ll make us out to be ‘scruffy-red-neck-trailer-trash-anti-government-survivalist-militia-whackos.’ The district attorney will have a field day. He’ll have the jury convinced that we were Osama Bin Laden’s pen pals, and that we took correspondence courses on bad check writing from the Montana Freemen. You know how these admiralty jurisdiction perverts operate. They’ll nail us for twenty years, minimum.”

“Then we’re totally hosed.”

“Not if we can find a car with keys in it, ditch the van, and get back to the campground. The best place to find a car with keys in it is in a parking lot of one of those oil change places, or a mechanic’s shop.”

Chase shook his head and complained, “It’s still stealing.”

“Yes, you’re 100 percent right. It is stealing. But I’d say under the circumstances, that it’s justifiable, and a pardonable sin.”

Matt didn’t see any mechanic shops, so he started cruising through shopping center parking lots, looking for an appropriate size vehicle.

Just after Matt turned down a steep drive into a strip mall parking lot, an officer in a passing Asheboro police cruiser spotted the van. The officer slammed on his brakes. Matt turned his head when he heard the screech of the cruiser’s skidding tires. He yanked the wheel, trying to maneuver the van back out of the parking lot.

The officer was immediately on the radio:“All units! This is Alpha Six. I’ve got him coming out of Randolph Electric!”

The officer leaned over and unlatched the vertical shotgun rack. Once he had the gun out, he turned the car’s wheel and goosed the gas pedal. He stomped on the brakes again. Now the cruiser was perpendicular to the entrance of the shopping center. He said to himself gleefully, “Now I gotcha!”

Chase looked at the steep landscaping berms that surrounded the parking lot, and warned, “Matt… There’s only one way out of this lot, and he’s blocking it.”

“I know, I know. If we try any of those berms, we’ll go high-center, sure as anything. We’re going to have to go out of here on foot. Hand me my briefcase and my AUG duffel bag. And get your range bag ready.” Chase quickly did what he was told. He tucked the loaded Glock into the range bag.

The officer stepped out of his cruiser and pointed the Remington riotgun across the hood. He fidgeted with the safety and the slide release. Then he pumped the action. A live shell skittered across the hood of the car. “Aaaaagh!” the officer growled at his own incompetence with the gun.

Matt picked up the Colt Sporter and said quietly, “Okay, I’m going to lay down some suppressive fire, and you skee-daddle. Meet me on the back side of these stores.”

Matt and Chase jumped out of the van simultaneously. Chase ran directly for the end of the strip mall, carrying his black nylon range bag. Consciously avoiding shooting directly at the officer, Matt took cover behind the open door and began to pepper the back of the Asheboro cruiser. He shot out the rear windows and both of the rear tires. He fired twenty-eight cartridges, at roughly one-second intervals.

The Asheboro police officer ducked behind the cruiser as soon as he saw Matt emerge with the rifle. As the shooting started, he scampered back to the passenger compartment and grabbed the handset. “Shots fired at Randolph Electric! This is Alpha Six. Shots fired at me by an AR-15 rifle!” The officer was not hit by any of the bullets or flying glass. He didn’t get up from his crouched position until other units began to arrive.

Matt set the rifle down, picked up his duffel bag and briefcase, and ran in the same direction that his brother had gone. Chase was waiting, as ordered.

They could hear sirens wailing in the distance. They ran across the street into a residential neighborhood. They covered three blocks in a zigzag, checking parked cars for keys as they ran. They found none. Chase pointed to an apartment complex on their right. “This way!”

They walked briskly through the apartment complex, again looking for cars with keys. An Asheboro PD car roared down the street that they had left just moments before, with its red lights flashing. When they got to the back of the complex, Chase peered at a concrete drainage ditch through a chain-link fence. The brothers nodded to each other. Chase handed Matt his range bag, and scrambled over. Once he was over the fence, Matt lifted over all three of their bags. Then he climbed the fence. It was nearly fully dark now.

They spent forty minutes in the drainage ditch, making their way through ankle-deep cold water. Matt stumbled once and got wet up to his thighs. They emerged from the ditch fourteen blocks east. They started looking for a car with keys again, slowly working their way east. They saw just two more police cars flash by, traveling together at high speed, three blocks distant.

It took nearly an hour to find a car. By then, they were twenty-five blocks from the strip mall where they had left the van. It was a 1985 Olds Cutlass, parked in an open garage. The car had belonged to a man who had died of cancer just two weeks before. The man’s son-in-law had been at the car earlier that same day. In anticipation of placing a newspaper ad to sell the Cutlass, he had been there to check if the battery had enough current to start the engine.

Distracted by the registration, owner’s manual, and the stack of service receipts he had gathered from the glove box, he accidentally left the keys in the ignition when he departed.

Matt drove toward Greensboro on minor roads. Chase lay in the backseat of the Cutlass, clutching his Glock. Chase tried to stay out of sight, knowing that any police would be on the lookout for two men traveling together. They listened to the car radio as they drove. Matt scanned through the dial, trying to catch any news about the shooting incidents. They caught just one brief blurb: “State police are still on the lookout for a pair of heavily armed men that fled on foot, eluding arrest, following two gun battles in Asheboro late yesterday afternoon. They are described as armed and extremely dangerous.” There was nothing more, so Matt scanned on, hoping to catch another news report.

Matt laughed when he heard Warren Zevon’s “Send Lawyers, Guns, and Money.” He proclaimed, “Hey Chase, they’re playing our song!” He tapped the scan button again to hold the station. He sang along:

They parked on a side road at 2 a.m. to assess their situation. In the briefcase they had just over one thousand and one hundred in cash—the gross from the day’s sales, Matt’s address book, his customized ParaOrdnance .45 “race gun,” four loaded thirteen-round magazines, and a Galco shoulder holster. Between their two wallets, they had another hundred and eighty in cash. In the range bag, they had Chase’s Glock and his Auto-Ordnance .45, three pairs of earplugs, five spare loaded magazines for each, and two extra boxes of ammunition—one of .45 ball, and one of 9 millimeter ball.

The duffel bag held Matt’s prized Steyr AUG rifle, stowed with its barrel removed, a M65 field jacket, a set of web gear, five bandoleers of .223, and nine magazines—one forty-two round and the rest thirty-rounders. Only one thirty-round magazine was loaded, so Matt took the time to load three more.

His father had bought the AUG for him just before the 1994 ban. When the ban passed, its value suddenly doubled. He had originally considered the gun “inventory” but once its value shot up, he realized that it would be a very expensive gun to replace, so he added it to his personal collection.

Once they had finished their inventory, Matt turned off the car’s interior lights. They each said prayers aloud. After sitting for a few moments in silence, Matt asked, “Well, the big question is, do we risk going back to the motor home? You know we could just take off straight from here. I don’t think that we left anything in the van that would point the lawmen to the campground, did we?”

“No. Not that I remember. But you know, if they act fast, the cops could check on other ‘motor vehicles’ registered in our family name. The motor home is registered in dad’s name.”

Matt pondered for a moment and then said matter-of-factly, “Okay then. Let’s set a limit of twenty-four hours to get out of North Carolina, and another twenty-four hours to ditch the motor home. Anything beyond that, and we’ve got to expect that they’ll be circulating the license plate number, and a description of it.”

“Fair enough.”

“So then we’re agreed that we’ve got to go back to the campground. We can’t just abandon everything there. If we’re going to be on the run, we’ll need the rest of our money, our coins, our guns, and our survival gear. We’ve already lost the van and most of our inventory. We absolutely can’t afford to lose any more!”

Chase nodded gravely, and said, “Agreed.”

They got back to the campground at 3:30 a.m. They stopped two hundred yards short of the entrance and walked the rest of the way to the motor home.

After carrying in their bags and the briefcase, Matt emerged from the trailer, carrying a can of WD-40 and a roll of paper towels. Alone now, he drove the Cutlass a mile away and parked it behind a tavern. He sprayed every surface that they might have touched with the lubricant, and rubbed them thoroughly with paper towels, leaving behind a light coating of the WD-40. “Forensics will have fun trying to lift any prints off of this one,” he whispered to himself. He left the keys in the ignition and the driver’s side window rolled halfway down, hoping the car would be stolen again.

Matt tucked the used paper towels under a trash bag in a dumpster that was halfway back to the campground. He was back in Chase’s motor home just before 5 a.m. He found Chase sound asleep. Matt lay in his bed fitfully for an hour, working out their getaway strategy. Finally exhaustion let him sleep.

Chase awoke at 7 a.m. and made breakfast. Matt awoke to the smell of coffee. They spent the next hour sorting their things into piles, talking escape and evasion possibilities as they worked. Everything that was nonessential but that might be somehow incriminating or otherwise point to any of their friends went into black plastic trash bags that they intended to either dump or burn. Nearly everything else except a few clothes, linens, books, cookware, dishes, and perishable food items went into the rapidly growing pile that lined the motor home’s center aisle. This included their remaining gun show inventory—mostly duplicate items that they hadn’t brought with them to the show.

These were: three laminate-stocked Russian SKS rifles, eighteen ammo cans, three sets of web gear, two sleeping bags, duffel bags full of clothes and BDU uniforms, five cases of MREs, an Army shelter half-tent set, and their Army CFP-90 backpacks.

Using a Phillips screwdriver, Matt extracted the rest of their “non-inventory” guns from their hiding places behind the motor home’s fiberboard paneling. These included an M1 Garand, an HK-93, a pre-ban Olympic Arms AR-15 clone, a glass-bedded .30-06 bolt action with a 4-12x scope, and two Smith and Wesson .357 Magnums. After sorting through ammo cans for appropriate ammunition, clips, and magazines, Matt loaded all the guns. He also loaded forty extra Garand clips with AP ammo, and thirty-two assorted spare magazines, mainly for the AR-15.

Meanwhile, Chase retrieved a slim metal box that was attached with magnets in the back of the motor home’s LP tank compartment. This box contained cash, four Canadian Maple Leaf one-ounce gold coins, and twenty-eight one-ounce silver ingots and trade dollars. He counted out $3,850 in cash.

He divided all of the assets equally into two canvas moneybags, and put one into Matt’s backpack, and one into his range bag.

The sorting went on until 10 a.m., when Chase glanced up at the clock and declared, “Hey, we’re going to be late for church!”

After showering, shaving, and changing clothes, they walked the six hundred yards to the Baptist church that they had been attending for the last three Sundays. They sat down at a pew just as the pastor was about to begin the sermon. Some of the regular congregation members were later quoted by reporters as stating that the pair seemed deep in prayer for most of the service.

One commented, “They were very pious looking.”

They got back to Chase’s motor home just before 1 p.m., and again started sorting. It seemed like a monumental project. Just reprioritizing and repacking their backpacks took two hours. When they were done, each of the packs weighed nearly eighty pounds. In deciding how to set the ratio between food and ammo, they both opted to go “heavy on ammo, light on food.”

They finished their organizing at just after 8 p.m. Matt and Chase shared a pan of soup and studied their road maps. They picked out intended primary route, a secondary route, and decided on two different rendezvous points in case they got separated.

Chase was melancholy. He declared, “I don’t think it is either fair or wise to go stay at any of our friends’ places. The cops will probably start checking them and maybe even phone tapping and keeping them under surveillance. It’s just a matter of time. And we sure can’t go back to Spokane. They’ll trace the van to there very quickly.”

They tried to get some more sleep, but couldn’t. Finally, at 1 a.m., Matt stepped outside, disconnected the power ponytail and septic hose, and wiped the power receptacle box vigorously with an oily rag. Then he yanked the wheel blocks and stowed them in their bin near the rear wheels. They left the campground an hour and a half after midnight.