U.S. Border Patrol agent Chris Voss received a call that shots had been fired off Route 30 near Lake Titus. He and other members of his tactical unit headed toward the scene as reports of more shots came over the line. When Voss arrived, a state trooper on patrol said they had heard coughing coming from deep in the woods.
The border patrol team began to close in when Voss saw movement through the trees.
“Show your hands!” he yelled.
He heard the branches rustle. Voss inched toward the sound.
A man’s face became visible through the brush. As Voss approached, he could see the barrel of a twenty-gauge shotgun pointed directly at him.
He drew his M4 and fired.
• • •
Sgt. Jay Cook drove along Frenette Road six miles east of Lake Titus.
“Boy,” he thought, looking out the window to a passing farm field. “Imagine if they just came running out of there.”
Not a moment later his phone rang.
Cook answered. The voice of one of his men came across the line.
“Hey, d’ya hear what’s going on!?” the trooper said. “They just shot one of ’em!”
“You’re fucking kidding me!” Cook said. He had not heard a word of it on the radio. “Damn reception!” he thought.
“The major wants you down on Route 30, Trombley Road. Set up a road block.”
“O.K.,” Cook said.
The sergeant switched on his AVL—the automatic vehicle location technology used by the New York State Police to view the positions of other personnel in the area. A sea of blue dots spread across the screen. The specks represented the hundreds of troopers who had surrounded Route 30 near Lake Titus in Elephant’s Head, several miles east of Chasm Falls off Fayette Road.
Cook took in the digital display. He had never seen so many officers in one place. Later one of his colleagues would print out the image and hang it up in the barracks, an homage to those who partook in the manhunt that would forever change the tiny town of Malone.
• • •
Franz Fredericks was heading home from his hardware shop when he reached a checkpoint at the dam of Chasm Falls near the corner of Studley Hill Road, five miles east of Route 30 on Mt. Titus.
An officer approached his vehicle.
“You can’t go home,” said the cop.
Fredericks checked the time. Betsy would be expecting him for supper.
“Well, how long’s this going to take?” he asked.
The cop shook his head.
“We don’t know.”
Fredericks waited on the side of the road. The salesman, whose demeanor was more gentle and good-natured than most, did not complain. Instead he thought back to his dog Henry, who had barked at something in the woods just one day before.
• • •
Greg Durandetto was on shift at the assembly line at the General Motors plant in Tonawanda, New York, when another worker caught his attention.
“Hey,” the latter said. “I’m sorry to hear about your friend.”
Durandetto paused.
“What are you talking about, Stu?”
“Richard Matt. You know him, right? Didn’t you hear? They shot him in the head.”
Durandetto had not heard. He did he know what to think.
“There was no way he was going back to prison,” he later said. “Death by cop was better than going back.”
• • •
Michael McCaffrey rode in the passenger seat as his wife Terry drove their purple Subaru Tribeca along Route 30. As soon as he heard about the shooting, he had pulled on his 3D leafy camo ghillie suit and stuffed his metal framed military-style ALICE pack with a tarp, headlamp, maps, three trail cams, a canteen, battery packs, a bush knife, and other camping tools. He had not had luck rallying a crew of locals to join in the search, and the state police did not seem to want his assistance, but no matter. McCaffrey was prepared to go at it alone.
“I hope they don’t shoot Sweat,” he said to his wife before leaving the car. “I want to hear that goddamn story.”
• • •
Cheers erupted in the upper lodge of Titus Mountain Family Ski Center. Troopers and other members of law enforcement hugged and shook hands. Word had spread that Richard Matt was dead.
Not five minutes later, manager Zach White’s phone buzzed in his pocket. His sister had sent him a text message from her home near Heidelberg, Germany. Even thousands of miles away, she too had heard the news.
• • •
Sweat lay still on the floor of a deer blind, lost in thought.
He had spent most of the day hiking north through dense marshland before coming across this bit of shelter, where he decided to spend the night. As he prepared to sleep he turned on his transistor radio and hung the device from a nail on the wall. He was about to drift off when heard a voice come over the waves:
Richard Matt has been killed.
Sweat was brought back to full alertness. He listened intently.
Shots had been heard near Lake Titus, the voice said. Law enforcement had found a bullet hole in a trailer. Troopers had saturated the area. A border patrol agent had shot Matt in the head. A special team had been flown in to remove his body.
Sweat could now hear the faint, familiar whir of chopper blades.
“You dumbass,” he thought. “What the hell did you fire at an RV for?”
Part of Sweat did not believe the story about how things went down, but it really didn’t matter. Matt was dead.
The words from just a few days before came swimming back into focus:
“You’ve got to make it if I don’t,” his friend had said.
“Dude, stop saying you’re not going to make it.”
“Just promise me.”
“C’mon, motherfucker, I’m ready to go.”
“If you want to go, go, but I’m not leaving ’til dark. I’m not going to get caught or killed because you want to drink. I’ll go my own fucking way first.”
“Well if you feel that way then you should just shoot me in the head.”
• • •
The police car pulled into the parking lot of Grange Hall Park. Sheriff Deputy Kevin Tarsia stepped out of the vehicle. He worked the night shifts and would often stop home for dinner, a quarter of a mile down the road. But something in the park drew him in. Perhaps it was the Honda and the stolen truck (or the presence of the young men, if he could see them in the night) that made him veer off course. Perhaps it was simply a sense of duty.
Tarsia shined a spotlight toward the vehicles. He stepped out of his patrol car, a flashlight in one hand and a 40-caliber Glock in the other.
Dave drew his gun.
Then the shots came, ringing through the dark:
Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang. Bang.
He had emptied his clip.
Shawn and Jeff peered out from behind the bushes. Dave was on his feet. He was still holding the Glock. In that moment—in that single second when the world had slowed down, when it seemed to have closed in and swallowed him whole—Shawn realized it was Dave who had shot the sheriff’s deputy.
Dave jumped in the Honda and hit the gas. The cop, who had been knocked to the ground, went to reach for his own Glock before the wheels rolled over his body, dragging him across the asphalt.
The car stopped. Jeff watched from behind the nearby brush.
Shawn’s head pounded. He could not comprehend what had just happened—and he did not want to. He did not want to be there. He wished he had never come.