Authors: John M. Del Vecchio
Immediately Sherrick obeyed. “I’m DEA,” he shouted. “Don’t shoot. Let em surrender. Let everybody surrender. Don’t shoot.”
“You’re ...?” Sherrick’s confidence confused the officer. He hadn’t been told that undercover agents had infiltrated the camp. Other men spread through the barn. A pair with rifles raced up the stairs to the loft while two covered them from the middle of the floor. A fifth man mounted the stairs.
“Let everybody surrender.” Sherrick’s voice was loud, firm, commanding. “They’re not armed.” Sherrick had been through it before—not as an American soldier in a foreign land but as an American drug-enforcement officer storming suspected drug dens in Indianapolis. He knew the fear of the agents, knew the “law and order” loathing of the perpetrators, knew the hair triggers. And he knew the best way to respond, the right things to say, the proper way to negotiate in order not to be accidently shot and killed. He remained still with his fingers laced behind his head. He glanced up as two men prepared to burst into Grandpa’s office, a third scurrying to cover their advance. “We’re not armed,” Sherrick repeated. “Why don’t you just take us all out front?” His voice was calm. In his mind he was already delineating the police harassment case—High Meadow vs. the State of Pennsylvania, the Town of Mill Creek Falls, and ...
The siren sounded. Everyone jumped.
Tony was up, hunched behind the barred door. The alarm siren was shrieking and even in his old cubicle behind the tractor garage the noise was intense. His head was forward, flicking back and forth, searching for a weapon, some way to protect himself. He flashed on retreating into the old deep bunker. With the flash came the smell, the ooze, the rot as strong as the moment they’d pulled the body, dismembered it and pulled it over him, over him jammed in that tunnel ... He grabbed the bar from the door hooks. It was a dry, rock-hard, rough-hewn oak two-by-four he’d taken from an old pallet years earlier. Let em come. He backed a step, set, not hinge side, not behind the door swing, but before it, to the open. Let em come. He was pumped. Eyes focused. The door burst open, two men stepped in.
SMACK
—Tony clobbered their arms, the M-16s clattered to the earthen floor. Immediately Tony shifted, attacked the pressure, the ambush, holding one end of the bar with his left hand, the middle with his right, hammering forward into the stunned officers, the now bleeding, downed men, Tony banging their heads with the wood bar ... kill or be killed! escape! evade! never surrender! never be captured! Then ... bam.bam.bam ...
In Grandpa’s office, Van Deusen, when he’d looked out the window and seen rifles, had grabbed up the papers from Bobby’s desk, tossed them, not really knowing what they were or why he was doing it, into the fire-resistant safe, slammed the door, twisted the dial. Then he’d hit the air-raid siren. Then the door was kicked open.
Immediately he’d raised his hands. To two men shouting, “Don’t move!” he’d nonchalantly shrugged, stammered, “Yeah ... sure.”
Another man came. Van Deusen was read his rights, cuffed.
“You want the siren off?” Van Deusen asked.
“Yeah.” The reply was curt.
“That switch.” Van Deusen pointed with his chin.
“Don’t touch it!” one agent blurted.
“Geez.” Van Deusen chuckled. “I’ll do it with my forehead. It’s not booby-trapped.”
With the siren off the atmosphere became more relaxed. The agents were in radio contact with their control unit. “Barn, Team Five, over.” One man said into his walkie-talkie.
The radio responded. “Go ahead, Andre.”
“There’s only one up here. Unarmed. There’s a locked rack with four rifles. You know, regular gun rack. This is just a real nice office up here. Desk. Bookshelves. Over.”
There was a pause, then, “Hold him there for questioning. Chief Hartley wants to come up.”
“Roger that.”
Van Deusen stood quietly, looking more relaxed than he felt. One agent held him at gunpoint, not aimed at Tom but at the floor before him so should he move the officer could simply flick the rifle up. The other two nosed around, one checking out the desk, the other, the one with the radio handset, perusing the drawings on the drawing board. None of them had heard the shots fired two stories below.
“Hey, what’s this?”
Van Deusen glanced over. “What?”
“This is a soccer field, isn’t it?”
“Yeah,” Van Deusen said.
“What are you doin with a soccer field ...”
“Lineups. We got a game Sunday morning.”
“Yeah?”
“Yeah.”
“Me too. Who do you play for?”
“Bechtel’s Energy Cell.”
“You guys the Energy Cell?!”
“Yeah. Who are you?”
“Andre Paulowski. I play for the Pulaski Club over in Rock Ridge.”
“Yer shittin me?”
“No. I thought the Energy Cell ... you know, was like sponsored by a company ... Bechtel’s ...”
“We are. That’s who we are. We make solar heating panels and stuff. Howie Bechtel’s our team captain. He’s a team leader, ah, you know, like a production foreman, downstairs ... where we make the solar panels.”
“What about the bombs?” Paulowski asked.
“What bombs?” Van Deusen was truly surprised.
“They said you guys are building terrorist bombs up here.”
One hundred twenty-nine federal, state, and local law-enforcement officials descended upon High Meadow on the morning of Thursday, 21 August 1979. It was a well-planned, well-executed assault. Agents from the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms, state SWAT teams, local police officers, town officials, state child-care workers, and command, control and liaison personnel—all participated. Twelve men were assigned to the main house, six to each of the vet-family trailers, ten to each bunkhouse, twenty-two to the big barn, thirty-six to land search, and sixteen to tunnels and bunkers. At the dam, particularly after seeing Rick MacIntyre, the police officers were calm, almost gentle. They did not become edgy until they received the report, via radio, that one of the terrorists had badly beaten two officers before being shot and subdued. An ambulance had been on standby less than a mile down Mill Creek Road. It was advancing on the farm. A second ambulance was called for the terrorist.
Linda was on the verge of tears. On the car radio they were playing Elvis oldies—“Are You Lonesome Tonight?” then “I Can’t Stop Loving You.” She was half-singing along, half-talking to herself, half out of her mind, half talking to Tony. “Babe, I’m sorry I got so angry. I know it was a long time ago. I know we were separated then. Please come home. The girls are at your mom’s. I can’t stop loving you.”
Linda did not drive fast. She wanted to practice what she would say to Tony. What kept coming out was, “Why? Why Zookie? Maybe I could understand it if it had been someone like that Stacy Carter. But Zookie? Sometimes you’re such an ass ... such a ... bad little boy ... No, that’s no good.” She passed the New Mill, the Dump Road turnoff, approached the esses by the Old Mill. From behind her came an ambulance with its siren whining. She pulled over, let it pass, continued on. Two police cars and another ambulance came from the opposite direction, whizzed by. “I’m—I’m sorry, Babe,” she muttered. “I let the green-eyed monster control me. We can work it out.”
Before Adolph Lutz’s farm she was stopped by a police roadblock. With a tissue she dried her eyes, blew her nose. “Road’s closed, Ma’am.”
“Why?” Linda asked. “Was there an accident?” She leaned out slightly. Behind the barricade was a television van, men with cameras, a woman Linda recognized as a reporter from the 1st Witness News Team of Channel Five.
“No Ma’am. Just turn around please. The road will be closed for some time.”
“Wait a minute.” Linda got out of the car. “I saw two ambulances. One going, one coming. I’m a registered nurse. And my husband works—”
“Ma’am, there’s an illegal, armed, paramilitary organization up here. We don’t want anyone else hurt.”
Linda immediately grasped at least the surface of the situation. She tried to stall, to learn more. The trooper stonewalled her but she overheard the reporter. “... allegedly a cover for a one-hundred-man paramilitary terrorist force ...” The woman smiled into the camera. Her blond hair barely moved in the morning breeze. “... state and county officials are urging anyone who purchased or had installed any solar equipment, including electronic boards, from any of the following companies—EES, Environmental Energy Systems, The Energy Cell or The Power Pack—to immediately call local police. Do not touch the equipment! There may be explosive devices ...”
Inside Linda’s mind flares rose, alarms sounded, red flags waved. She knew immediately what to do.
Slowly, appearing from various structures about the farm, half-dressed men, their wrists cuffed behind their heads, the cuffs held by safety wire to each man’s belt, were being marched like POWs to a cordoned area between the main house and the big barn. All minors were taken into protective custody by the state child-care authority. Suzanna Shallier, Tom and Joycelyn’s eleven-year-old, kicked, scratched, and bit her handlers, but Erik and Lindsey Schevard, Erik and Emma’s children, stunned or in shock, went “peacefully.” High Meadow was officially subdued and secured in just under eight minutes.
In the cordon: “I wish I were in Nam again, Man. Back in the A Shau. Someplace safe.”
“Yeah. We need heavy ordnance, Man. Call in some fuckin arty. Call in ARA.”
“Pop smoke. Bring in the fast movers. Let em come in right on top a us. Blow these pigs away.”
Individually the vets were read their rights. “You pressing charges?” It was Sherrick, loud, angry. They didn’t answer him. “Are we charged with something or not?”
They separated Sherrick from the others, to the side, but not out of sight. Again he was read his rights. “I asked you a direct question, Sergeant. Are we being charged or not?”
“No.” The man was terse, hard. “There are no charges right now. But, at any time they may be filed....”
“There’s no charges because you don’t have any goddamn charges. Why don’t you fuckin admit it. You guys blew it.”
“You may be arrested at any time.” The sergeant stood square to Sherrick, stood looking like he’d like to club the cuffed man. “You can be charged with additional charges if you talk to anyone....”
“Bullshit!” Even with his hands behind his head Sherrick seemed threatening. “You asshole! You can’t demand that unless you charge us. What the fuck are you going to trump up?”
From the tractor garage, from the main barn floor, from the Sugar Shack, black-clad troops came with knives, axes, saws, hammers, utility knives, toolboxes—all the equipment that any farm or small manufacturing company would normally have. The items were tagged, recorded, loaded into various police evidence vans. Then they came from the house, from the library, from Grandpa’s office, with stacks and boxes of records, plans and ledgers. And from the main floor they took all the electronic control panels under assemblage and all the boxes of components.
Then from the tractor barn—Tony had been evacuated without anyone even knowing he’d been wounded—came word of the tunnel, the deep bunker, the survivalist supplies—mostly food, water, seeds, medicine and books, but also a shotgun (a cheap single-shot 12-gauge) and four boxes of shells.
In the house Bobby and Sara were still on their knees, still in separate rooms. Three times Bobby had been read his rights. Twice they’d showed him the warrant:
There is probable cause to believe that property described herein may be found at the location set forth herein. This property is seizable pursuant to Penal Code 1524, as indicated below by Xs. The seizable property is evidence which tends to indicate that a felony has been committed, or a particular person or persons has/have committed a felony.
“Where’s my wife?”
No answer.
“Where are my sons?”
No answer.
“Are they with my wife?”
No answer.
“You motherfuckin cocksuckers. We fought for freedom. Every man here fought for freedom! This is not freedom when for no god damned reason you motherfuckers can come in here and point a gun at my head!!”
“Sir,” an officer behind Bobby said to a man who had just entered. “This is Robert J. Wapinski. We’re sure of that. His sister identified him.”
Wapinski snapped around. An officer twisted his head back forward.
“Humph!” The man who’d entered snorted. Then, loud enough so Bobby could hear him, he said, “His own mother tipped us off. She said she was worried sick about what he’s been doing up here.”
“Yes Sir. That’s what Mayor Hartley said too. Did they find the mortars or those phu ... What were they called?”
“Phu-gas.”
“Those canisters?”
“Just a matter of time. We’ve got enough to lock these perverts away for life. Half these bastards have records long as your arm. There’s so many drug addicts, convicts and psychos up here ... Shit, they picked up another one coming in from California. Driving a big gold Cadillac. We’ve got to stop this before it spreads.”
Bobby’s knees ached. His back ached. His wrists and shoulders and feet ached. The longer they held him on his knees the more furious he grew, the more he felt disconnected from the present, the more he heard her voice, “Pig. You eat like a pig. You sound like a pig. If you can’t eat properly ... Get down on the floor. Get down there! Down!”
Killing me. The thought displaced Miriam’s words. They’re killing me. They want to kill me.
Sara too was still on her knees, alone, thinking the boys were with Bobby, terrified, miserable, afraid for her baby, her fetus, totally horrified at what the men were doing to her house. Every piece of furniture was inverted, every drape taken down, every rug rolled back. She could hear them upstairs going through drawers, closets. In the living room, before her, where the wallpaper had buckled from the water damage the weekend the dam nearly washed away—they had never repaired the wall—an officer split the bulge to check for drugs. Sara could hear them in the basement, too, and on the roof. They could not have been more thorough. After three hours she was allowed a drink of water; after four she was allowed to sit. Her legs were numb, her feet swollen. Slowly the feeling came back. After six hours, at one o’clock in the afternoon, she was uncuffed. The vets had disappeared from the yard. Bobby and the children were gone. Josh was nowhere to be seen. Still there were police in the house, in the yard. “This is an ongoing investigation,” one man told her. “You’re not allowed to say a word to anyone. Speaking to anyone will result in additional charges being filed against you.”