In November 1943, as World War II raged on, the US military dispatched Marine and other ground combat troops via boats to the Gilbert Islands, roughly halfway between Hawaii and Papua New Guinea. The location of this loose chain of atolls and coral islands was deemed strategic to the United States’ larger plan to neutralize Japanese bases in the central Pacific. The Marines arriving at the Gilbert Islands in low tides and approaching the open beach had no cover against the vigorous defense launched by Japanese troops. The worst of the fighting occurred at Tarawa Atoll, where a bloody seventy-six-hour battle took the lives of more than five thousand courageous American, Japanese, and Korean troops.
As a Marine, I often wondered what motivated those young men to continue to charge into the fray while watching their fellow soldiers being cut down by the hundreds before ever making it to the beach. Were they crazy? It is not natural for human beings to wade into certain death. My point is that one man’s crazy is another man’s call to duty. Like the Marines at Tarawa, RatSnakes might seem crazy through a different lens.
In order for law enforcement in the state of California to hold someone involuntarily due to perceived mental instabilities, the individual must be designated “5150” per California’s Welfare and Institutions Code. But in a RatSnakes world, you walk through the door because you are 5150. I suspect there is something in our psyche or DNA that makes us want to do this job that could be considered crazy. Certainly, my personality drew me to the danger, the excitement, and the adrenaline. My mother always said of me: “Vinny, when you’re bored, you start breaking things.”*
To be clear, I am not bragging about the events I’m going to tell about in this chapter, nor am I justifying them. I’m merely sharing them. On the one hand, I recount some of these stories with appropriate embarrassment and remorse. On the other hand, I don’t ask for forgiveness, but maybe just some good old-fashioned understanding. We were asked or, at the bare minimum, encouraged to go to places and be with people that no average person would agree to visit or associate with. We were asked to voluntarily go into environments that held a high probability of violence and to enter those places alone. Manuals full of orders, policies, and directives could not and did not address the real, day-to-day challenges of doing undercover work. Just as landing a speeding jet onto an aircraft carrier would scare the shit out of most of us, jet pilots settle into a comfort zone. This is the only explanation I have for what you are about to read.
Bird and I were ferrying a couple of drunk HQ suits back to their condo on St. Simons Island. These two guys, JD and TC, were bosses sent from Washington to oversee the training at the academy. They were button-down-oxford types but agents nonetheless, and personal friends, and they liked to go drinking with us UC guys. Problem was, they couldn’t get out of headquarters mode and had spent the whole night belittling field ops, undercover operators, and street agents. By the time we headed back to the island, Bird and I had heard enough about how we didn’t see the “big picture” of the importance of HQ.
Bird was driving. He looked into the back seat and said, “For the rest of this ride, how about you two shut the fuck up.”
Well, of course they didn’t because headquarters guys knew everything. Just ask them. As we were on the bridge passing over the intracoastal waterway, one of them said something stupid again. My pistol was on the seat. I grabbed it and held it up and said, “Last chance to shut the fuck up.” I was just teasing, but then Bird started to say, “I dare—”
I didn’t let him get the words out of his mouth before I emptied the magazine out the window into the water below. When my weapon went empty, Bird looked at me in disbelief and then smiled. The two guys in the back seat went Casper-the-fucking-Ghost white. We drove the last couple miles in silence. The only sound in the car was the ringing in our ears.* We rolled into the condo parking lot and exited in our different directions. The only time I heard of the incident being mentioned was years later, when Bird was telling the story to a bunch of cops and TC begged him not to.
Generally speaking, the words “gun” and “play” don’t belong in the same sentence. To the average citizen and probably even most cops, a gun is like a snake waiting to bite. As special agents, we had it pounded into our heads that guns always must be respected and treated with extreme caution. Deadly force is not a laughing matter and is treated by law enforcement as perhaps the most daunting of our duties. That being said, you already have it down that many seasoned ATF agents who deal in firearms daily are less sensitive to the presence of and use of guns. For RatSnakes, having loaded guns pointed at you by bad guys becomes all too commonplace and even, well, boring. I found out early in my police career that RatSnakes aren’t the only ones unimpressed by guns.
I responded to a burglary alarm and was thrilled to find that the burglar was still inside. However, as I observed him exiting a window about ten feet away, I realized that between us was a ten-foot cyclone fence with razor wire at the top. I was carrying a standard police-issue Remington 870 shotgun. It was clear I wasn’t going to scale that fence and lay hands on the violator, so I did the only thing I could think of. I leveled my shotgun at his head, racked a round in the chamber, and screamed, “Freeze, motherfucker!”
If you ever have heard the sound of a shotgun being racked, you know it is distinctive and ominous.
The violator snapped his head around, looked at me for a microsecond, and then took off like a rocket. He knew, and I knew, that I wasn’t going to shoot him. Lesson learned. Don’t ever bluff, because your bluff will be called. I slumped, unloaded the shotgun, and hoped nobody would ever hear about it.
Years later, as an ATF agent, I had a particularly dangerous CI during a joint case with the FBI. We were targeting one of the most violent street gangs operating in Atlanta. Said informant was becoming somewhat of a control problem and had been in the system long enough to become a jailhouse lawyer. I truly don’t recall what prompted me to go “bad cop” on him, but it was some sort of physical threat or confrontation, which isn’t unusual with snitches. We were way too far along in this case, and we had too much invested in this snitch to allow him to go sideways. So, when he said or did whatever it was that I no longer was willing to tolerate, I reached under my jacket and unsnapped my holster. My FBI counterpart hadn’t yet arrived at our meeting, and the CI and I were alone and secluded away from the public outside a vacant industrial warehouse, where he wouldn’t be seen with us.
When he saw me unsnap my holster, he immediately bowed up and said something to the effect of, “I know that you’re not even allowed to take your gun out of your fucking holster. You don’t scare me.”
I snatched my 9 mm pistol out of the holster and cranked off a round right next to his head, hoping to give the appearance that I had lost my fucking mind. In reality, I had chosen a safe backstop of piled-up wood, leaning against the abandoned building behind him. He grabbed his ears and dropped down to the ground, cussing up a storm. I imagine being that close to the discharge did sting his hearing pretty good.
My FBI counterpart arrived for our usual debriefing and planning session. He saw that the CI was somewhat unfocused and asked him, “What’s wrong?” The informant looked at me and blurted out, “Nothing.” The FBI agent looked at me, and I just smiled. He didn’t ask, and I didn’t tell.
I found myself alone with yet another troublesome informant. This one previously had been convicted of a quadruple murder. He weighed quite a bit over three hundred pounds and was pretty drunk, as well as agitated by some shit my DEA counterparts had pulled on him regarding money we owed him. He didn’t like or want to deal with DEA anyway. He felt I knew what I was doing and wouldn’t get him killed. But this night it was us/me (cops) against him (murdering, pissed-off gangster). Things escalated quickly because I could not afford to lose my authority as the controlling agent, but clearly, we were about to come to blows. It was pretty obvious that I would get the short end of that deal. His fists were like ham hocks, and he had that “I don’t give a fuck if I go back to prison” look on his face.
Without the obligatory unsnapping of my holster as a warning, I pulled my pistol and blew out the driver’s-side rear tire on his car. Then I pressed the hot gun barrel to his forehead and calmly said, “The next one goes into your head.”
He took a huge step back, threw his hands up, and muttered, “All right, all right.”
After a few more tense minutes allowing things to calm down, I peeled off a couple hundred dollar bills out of my own money and assured him I’d straighten out the DEA guys. Would I have shot him if things had continued to go south after I blew out his tire? He believed I would, and that’s all I will say on the matter.
If we are going to talk crazy, let’s talk really, really crazy.
Jimm Langley’s boss asked him to help a struggling agent with a biker case. After a year, the case hadn’t produced any actionable intelligence or evidence. Jimm was just back from working another extended biker case in Texas but said he would try to jump-start this Florida case.
After being a hang around for approximately three months, Jimm got an opportunity to take it to the next level. The club he was riding with went to another club’s open party. When they all got ready to leave, Jimm’s battery was dead. Most Harleys require you to take the seat off to get to the battery. The delay while Jimm broke out his tool kit and jumper cables pissed off the club members. It was cold out, and he was holding them up from making the forty-mile ride back to their clubhouse. It only took about fifteen minutes to make the repair, but the other bikers were “motherfucker”-ing him pretty hard for the inconvenience. Once they were ready to roll, and after Jimm had apologized as much as he was going to, the club president approached Jimm and his ATF UC partner with an offer: “If you ride those bikes all the way back to the clubhouse naked, you’ll have your patch within thirty days.”
Becoming patched members would gain Jimm and his partner unfettered access to the criminal inner workings of the club. The partner declined. He didn’t want to get caught and get in trouble with ATF. Or maybe it was just too cold and too far to ride.
Jimm, on the other hand, asked, “Can I at least wear my boots?”
The president nodded that he could, and within a minute Jimm was standing in the parking lot butt naked except for his boots. He made the forty-mile trek without incident.
When Jimm arrived at the clubhouse, he got his clothes back but noticed the ASP baton* he carried as his weapon of choice had been misplaced or stolen on the trip. He was pissed and protested to his fellow bikers. The club vice president told him to come by the next day and they would make it right regarding the missing nightstick. The next day, Jimm was presented with a stolen pistol as a replacement for his lost ASP. The case was now headed in the right direction.
Jimm didn’t forget the president’s promise to patch him into the club, but he also never mentioned it. He patiently waited the thirty days, knowing he would leverage the promise at some point. The month passed, and Jimm was called to the clubhouse for an undisclosed reason. To be summoned by the gang boss always was a nerve-racking situation for a UC. Jimm walked in to see that all the officers of the club were present. The president began to explain that they had taken a vote and that they would patch Jimm in three more months. This was decision time for Jimm and a pivotal moment in the case, not to mention that he hadn’t forgotten freezing his balls off for forty miles. He made a last-minute Hail Mary pass. It could only go one of two ways.
He snatched off his prospect vest* and threw it at the officers. As he turned to walk away he said, “I ain’t riding with brothers who have no honor.”
As Jimm reached the door, the president called him back. “We were only fucking with you,” he said, and tossed Jimm his member patch.
No matter what side of the crazy fence you sit on, Jimm’s bike stunt was batshit nuts. If the bosses had found out, he would have faced serious time on the beach and possibly termination. However, the ultimate prosecution of the case was successful, with numerous club members pleading guilty to drug and firearms charges. Since they all pleaded out, Jimm was spared having to recount his Lady Godiva–like motorcycle ride that fall Florida night.
During the first half of my career, the Bureau of ATF still was under the oversight of the Secretary of Treasury and the US Department of Treasury. After the attacks of 9/11 and the subsequent restructuring of the federal government law enforcement apparatus, ATF was placed under the US Attorney General and the Department of Justice as the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives. Whether main Treasury or main Justice, there were very strict rules about the discharge of firearms. Any discharge of a firearm was highly discouraged unless the agent was involved in a life-threatening encounter. All discharges of duty firearms not on an official shooting range, intentional or otherwise, were to be reported immediately.
One of those occasions that a rule or two may or may not have been ignored was on a hot, shitty, hungover day in the Las Vegas desert where, without backup, Bird and I were out with ten or twelve militia members under the guise of being taught antigovernment tactics. The “colonel,” as he demanded to be called, slowly walked past some Hogan’s Alley–type targets the militiamen had set up against the rocks for the occasion.* Slowly and methodically, he shot each target while describing the course to us in a very condescending manner. He hit about half his shots and had real shitty tactical technique.
Bird went first, playing the young militia recruit. He walked the course, passively shooting, acting very unskilled, and thanked the colonel for his guidance. Bird’s performance was a calculated act to build up the boss of this militia and ultimately gain his confidence and be allowed to join the group. We had intel that this particular group was capable and possessed the resources to attack government installations.
When Jay was done, the colonel said something like, “Don’t worry, son. You’ll get better.”
It was very hot in the damn Nevada desert. I didn’t want to be there. I’d been away from home for months. I had been out gambling and drinking until about three hours before this so-called training session. So, when my turn came to eat shit, I wasn’t hungry. I tactically loaded my pistol, made sure I had extra mags, and when the colonel said “Go,” I went full-out balls to the walls. I blazed past those targets doing speed tactical reloads. I had kill shots on every target, and when I came to the last target, a coyote popped up out of a cave and I shot him dead too. I holstered and shouted, “Clear!” and then yelled back at the colonel, “How’d I do?”
Translation: “Fuck you, Colonel.”
He stood there, slack-jawed.
Bird leaned against a car, smoking a cigarette, half smiling, half pissed. The militia group called a side meeting and said for Bird to join the powwow. I was not invited. Later that evening, he told me they had said, “Bird, you gotta rein Vinny in. He acts a little crazy.” Bird bought me a drink and said, “Dude, stop scaring the bad guys.” We laughed.
* I have seen our crew do some crazy shit for a laugh or entertainment. A guy named Yott once jumped from a two-story window, severely damaging his ankle, in order not to miss a ride to the bar. I watched Milton break one of those old, hard-plastic telephones over Yott’s head during an innocent argument. Jimm filled our rental house hot tub and swimming pool with so many soapsuds that we couldn’t use them for three days. Then he did it again. I was called upon to talk Fitz off a second-story balcony because one of our group had antagonized him to the point that he was going to try to leap from there into the pool—which I was reasonably certain his fat ass wasn’t going to make. I got so pissed off at everyone taunting him, and his refusal to come off the balcony, that I ended my intervention with: “Then jump, you stupid motherfucker.” The only reason we weren’t scooping up his body parts was because one of the female agents offered to show him her tits if he’d come down. That worked.
* If you never have shot a gun inside an enclosed space, my advice is don’t!
* A telescoping baton favored for its carrying ease and psychological impact.
* Usually a leather vest or jacket with a sewn-on rocker designating the wearer as a prospective member.
* Hogan’s Alley is the FBI Academy’s original live-fire range, set up to look like a normal city street to add to realism during training. Targets would pop up with pictures of either bad guys or innocents, setting up shoot/don’t shoot scenarios.