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.
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