Molon Labe! (34 page)

near Lander, Wyoming

4:29AM

FBI agents from Casper, Rock Springs, Laramie, Cheyenne, and Lander have converged on the small farm of Kyle and Susan Bradford. They timed the raid with Swan's so that the subjects could not warn each other. The Bradfords live at the end of a remote county road, and their nearest neighbor is several hundred yards away behind a small knoll.

For the FBI, it was ideal. Seclusion was preferred for such raids. It not only limited risk of collateral damage, but the subjects could be isolated from interfering third parties such as friends, media, etc. As the Weaver family learned at Ruby Ridge, a remote homestead is a mixed blessing.

Logan, Utah

4:30AM

Several dogs up and down the street begin to bark from all the activity, waking a blue heeler at the foot of Swan's bed. His intelligent brown eyes are alert, his ears radar dishes swiveling about. The dog jumps to the floor and runs to the bedroom window. He sees several dark shadows moving stealthily by his master's house. His low, soft growl snaps Swan instantly awake from a very deep sleep. After seven years he knows every nuance of every bark and growl. This growl means
Danger!

"What is it, Otto?" Swan whispers hoarsely. Otto is still on point, softly growling at the window. Still in sweatpants, Swan gets up and peeks slightly through the top of the drapes.
Shit! Burglars!
He forces himself to take deep breaths as he dons his emergency gear. He is dressed in seconds.

He unholsters his Glock and does a blind system check of mag and chamber. Holding the .45 in his right hand, he removes the magazine with his left and touches the top round with his index finger. Loaded. The ISMI chrome silicon mag spring would last years fully depressed. He reinserts the magazine with a
Tap
Tug
. Fully seated. Then he grabs the middle of the slide with his left hand and pulls it back about a half inch. With his middle finger he feels the partially chambered round. He pushes the slide forward, feeling the flush barrel lockup to ensure that it's in battery. A man should be able to load, unload, check, and clear his weapons by tactile feel only. During a gunfight you cannot risk taking your eyes off your threats.

Swan easily sees his tritium sights as the decaying hydrogen isotope H
₃
glows reassuringly inside its hardened sapphire vials. Swan reholsters the Glock. Fourteen rounds of Triton 200 grain hollowpoints. Night sights. Tactical light. Bulletproof vest. Peltors. Boots.

All Swan needs now is the proper
mindset
the most important ingredient for victory. Without a fighting spirit the best gear is irrelevant.
With
a fighting spirit you can defend yourself with a rolled up newspaper.

Always Cheat. Always Win. The only unfair fight is the one you
lose
.

He is halfway down the hall before he recalls something his Thunder Ranch instructor Clint Smith once said. From Swan's memory a small piece calves off:
There is a big difference in
being
in a fight and
going
to a fight. You get
caught
in a fight with a handgun. You go to a fight with a
rifle
.

Why fight with 14 rounds of .45 when you can fight with 20 rounds of .308? Besides, rifles are much easier to hit with during great stress.

Swan stops in mid stride, returns to his bed, holsters his Glock, and grabs his M1A. Again, he does a blind system check of mag and chamber. He keeps the rifle in Condition One, meaning cocked and locked. His instructors taught him that he may not have the luxury of time or silence to chamber a first round. Thus, a home defensive rifle should be kept in Condition One. Very few gunowners know to do this and the ones who do are often uncomfortable with the "danger" of keeping a cocked and locked rifle in the house. Swan knows better because he has been trained better.

With the 11½ pounds of stock and steel in his hands he feels immensely more prepared. What a difference a
rifle
makes. He walks down the hall with his M1A shouldered in the High Ready position, safety off, trigger finger straight. His left hand is underneath the forestock —thumb on the flashlight's momentary ON/OFF rubber button.

near Lander, Wyoming

4:30AM

Raid leader Scott Malone checks his watch and nods to his men. An entry man with a battering ram steps forward on the front porch. There will be no knocking at the Bradford farm, either.

Logan, Utah

Commander Wilcox makes a radio call to his men. All silently click in to communicate that they are standing by at Green.

The White Team leader hand signals "breacher up!" and an operator moves forward with a sawed off 12 gauge Remington 870 pump shotgun loaded with Hatton rounds. The powdered lead shells were specifically designed for safely blowing apart door hinges.

Wilcox checks his watch. It is precisely 0430. He looks at his Special Agent in Charge, who nods. Wilcox presses the transmit button and speaks.

TOC to all units. I have control. Stand by. Five. Four. Three.

near Lander, Wyoming

Five agents are "stacked" just beside the door's left jamb. Malone holds up his non gun hand and counts down from five to one. Their tension doubles as they anticipate being released in seconds, like a coiled spring.

Logan, Utah

Two. One. Execute! Execute! Execute!

Swan suddenly remembers to switch on the Aimpoint, and its small orange red dot comes immediately to life. Battery life of the CompM2 is liter ally thousands of hours, and the unit is quite rugged. Even if the device failed he could still use his iron sights.

Swan is just twenty feet from the kitchen back door when his home explodes from both ends with a stereophonic crash. His Peltors blank out from nearly a second of sonic overpressure. Both front and rear doors blow off the jambs and fly inside in a shower of splinters.

Home invasion!

Gruff voices are screaming but Swan cannot make out the words amidst the smoke and confusion. The front doorway is blocked by the heavy sofa which Swan had pushed aside earlier that evening for vacuuming. It is his great fortune that he'd been too tired to move it back. Because of the sofa, the armed men in front are delayed entry.

Cover!
Swan ducks in a left side bathroom doorway, keeping his rifle pointed down the hall towards the kitchen. He has a nearly overwhelming urge to begin shooting at the burglars he knows are just a split second away, but forces himself to wait for visibly armed and hostile threats.

Through the kitchen door several dark gun carrying forms in black ski masks pour inside. Swan lights up the one in front, quickly takes up the first stage of the M1A trigger, focuses on the glowing dot, and squeezes out the rest of the trigger pull.
Front sight! Press! Front sight!
What happens in an eye-blink seems to take hours, but time distortions usually occur when you are fighting for your life. After a mini eternity his rifle finally
Booms!
Swan sees and hears his assailant hit in the lower chest with the 2,500 foot pound impact of a rifle bullet at nearly point blank range. As he falls, Swan visually picks up Aimpoint dot the following shots he knew would come.

Front sight! Press! Front sight!

near Lander, Wyoming

The Bradfords' front door is bashed in and federal agents immediately pour through the house.
FBI! FBI!
They approach the master bedroom in an urgent tangle of flashlight beams as Kyle Bradford groggily reaches for his Ed Brown Kobra .45 on the nightstand.

Freeze! Don't move!

Logan, Utah

Two other intruders become instantly visible and Swan shoots them both in the head within .52 seconds of each other. He notes that he saw his Aimpoint dot before and after each shot, just like he was trained. The terminal ballistics of a .308 round to the human cranial cavity are stupefying. Their heads literally burst with loud
Thwhops!
and the men collapse like string cut puppets. The kitchen walls are instantly painted in gore.

Swan hears much barking, pistol fire, and shouting from the front of his home and is suddenly aware of his dog attacking intruders in the living room.
Otto is buying me time!
He swats down the impulse to save his dog and instead rushes down the hall towards the kitchen, muzzle leading the way.

A fourth invader suddenly appears through the kitchen doorway, his Oakley goggles covered with the blood and brain matter of his colleagues. Screaming something unintelligible at the top of his lungs, he muzzles a black subgun at the homeowner. The FBI are not accustomed to being shot at during raids, and this agent, shocked at the deaths of his comrades, has forgotten to identify himself.

Swan marvels at burglars who can afford Heckler & Koch MP5s while centering the red dot on the invader's chest as he presses out the trigger. The impact makes a dull clanging sound, but the man drops instantly. Swan steps over the four bodies and stops next to the doorway. He has a difficult time not slipping on the tile. The kitchen floor is slick with blood, its copper stench heavy in the air with the smell of burnt gunpowder and hot brass.

The magnitude of events presses upon Swan's consciousness but he is too busy.
The answer to fear is preoccupation. Solve your problem!
He is more than preoccupied, he is furious.
They started this party, but I am going to finish it for them!

He flips a wall switch, and a porchlight illuminates two other men partially concealed behind small trees. They immediately pour bursts of 9mm subgun fire at the rear of the house, shooting out the light. Through his Peltors Swan hears raspy chirps of the suppressed MP5s, their winking muzzles strangely captivating. 147 grain slugs shatter the kitchen window, raining glass on the besieged homeowner.
May your enemies be on full auto!
as Jeff Cooper said. Single well placed shots are what win battles.

Swan crouches, pies out slightly past the right door jamb, quickly lights up the kneeling man on the left and fires three aimed rounds through the tree. FMJ zip through the small tree as if it were balsa wood, striking the man behind and causing him to expose more of himself.
Shoot
what
is available,
while
it is available, until something
else
becomes available
. Swan fires twice more, knocking the man over in a lifeless sprawl.

Five down, one to go
.

near Lander, Wyoming

FBI! Hands up, now!
scream three agents more or less in unison. As the Bradfords are blinded by the powerful tac lights, Kyle slowly withdraws his hand from the .45 and pulls Susan to him. Agents yank away the down comforter and plaid flannel sheets to expose the terrified, naked couple, and roughly drag them from their warm bed. They are handcuffed and herded to separate areas of the house.

"Susan, say nothing to them!" Kyle yells from the hallway.
"Shut the fuck up, you!" snarls an agent as he shoves Kyle along.
In the background, Bondo the parrot is squawking at full volume.

Logan, Utah

From behind Swan a raking burst just over his head showers him with shards of dishes.
They're making their way from the front!
Swan understands at once that he will be overcome by the men coming down the hall. His world is violent chaos and it's getting worse by the second. He must flee and find cover
now
. He can take the remaining guy in the yard, but not the several in the house. There is Danger in front, but Death is clearly behind him. No choice but to charge the Danger. This clarity is oddly comforting.

His life is about to
really
suck, so he takes a deep breath. Another burst of fire from behind rakes the wall above him, digging out chunks of white plaster. Although he does not know it, White and Black Teams are now being very cautious in their shooting for fear of hitting each other in the crossfire. Swan turns and fires three rounds at the living room in hopes of suppressing their fire, the .308 concussion pounding his mastoid bones. He wills himself to ignore this sudden headache.
When you don't have time for the pain
.

Swan thinks that the several rounds in his rifle and the fourteen in his Glock will be enough to get him to safety until the police arrive. With all this pre -dawn gunfire they should be here any minute. He is surprised not to hear any sirens yet. He notes that he is incredibly thirsty, though calm. His mouth is tomb dry but his nose drips from excitement.

The suddenness of this violence has dumped a keg of adrenaline into Swan's endocrinology. He finds it difficult to think clearly. His 11½ pound rifle feels like 50. His shoulders burn, his head throbs. His hand and arm movements have become coarse, which would have greatly compromised handgun accuracy. He notices the onset of tunnel vision and counteracts it by moving his head and eyes about, scanning for new threats. Lessons from his instructors playback surreally like old movies reminding him to breathe, think, move, fight.
So much to remember!