“How was your day?” Shannon asked me when I stepped through the door. “Anything you wanna talk about?”
“No, I’m good.”
She looked down at the discolored patch where I’d taped the fake IV. “How’d it go?”
Shannon knew I couldn’t answer, so I just hugged her tight. I knew this had been a very successful operation, but I knew from my experience that looming summits could prove to be false. And as well as everything had gone until that point, there was still ample opportunity for something to go wrong, just as it had back in Wayward. Jamie Ward had given me a single assault rifle to convert to fully automatic, but he had a multitude of other firearms stored in his home. The records of both Moran and Driver, meanwhile, were peppered with complaints from prisoners about the use of excess force. And I’d reported Charles Newcomb’s claim that he had killed four men to the FBI, so they were aware of the dangers he posed.
Vaughn summoned me to the Jacksonville field office on a damp, gray morning a week after I showed Moran, Driver, and Newcomb the photo of Warren Williams. Even though it was a weight off my shoulders to have gotten through those meetings not only unscathed but with the evidence the FBI was looking for, I hadn’t gotten much sleep the night before. Tia, just short of her first birthday, had been up coughing through the night. And even if she hadn’t, the measure of the work ahead of me—helping the FBI with the arrests—weighed heavy. Worrying about another potential false summit, I knew I wouldn’t feel truly at ease until I was certain we had gotten to the top. Maybe worst of all, I couldn’t share any of this with Shannon, because that would violate operational security.
Entering an overly bright conference room with a TV monitor still switched on from the last meeting held inside, I once again noted the absence of Lindsay Campbell, just as I had noted the absence of Vaughn from any number of the meetings I’d had with Joe Armstrong. I took this as more process than anything else, since Armstrong had been my official handler then just as Vaughn was now. But we had never reached this level with the first infiltration.
“State prosecutors met with a judge yesterday,” Vaughn said, right at the start. “The judge agreed that the evidence was overwhelming and issued arrest warrants for all four subjects on the spot. You’ve done an incredible job, Joe. Just like the first time, you’ve given us everything we need to prosecute. I’ll let you know when we secure the warrants and are ready to move to the next stage.”
There was something in his gaze and his tone that told me there was more.
“You could have told me that over the phone, Rich,” I prompted him.
His expression tightened. “Priority number one now becomes keeping you, and your family, safe until the arrests are made. So we’re officially moving you into protective custody.”
“What’s that mean exactly?”
“We’ve already chosen the hotel. Look at it like a vacation.”
“You didn’t answer my question, Rich.”
“We’re going to move you out of your home today. Agents will be waiting when you get back. We’re going to take your vehicles and give you a new one. You can pack one suitcase for each family member—that’s it. You take with you only what you can carry.”
“When do we come back for the rest?”
Vaughn was trying to remain unruffled. “You don’t. Whatever gets left behind stays behind. Standard procedure, Joe, and this all happens today. I want you and your family settled into your temporary new home at the Embassy Suites by dinner.”
I knew there was no point in arguing, wasting time better spent getting back to my family and packing up whatever we could. True to Vaughn’s word, four FBI agents were waiting when I got home. Two would be driving my vehicles away. A rental car was already parked at the curb.
“What’s going on?” Shannon asked, opening the door before I could grab the knob.
“We’ve got to leave. For our own protection.”
“Were there threats? Are we in danger?”
“Nothing like that. The FBI called it standard operating procedure.”
“What do you call it?”
I looked down, then back up. “We can only take what we can carry. Everything else stays behind. Everything else is gone.”
I thought of my children’s toys, especially Jordy’s collection of Elmo dolls. It was his pride and joy, but there was no way we could squeeze all those stuffed animals and figurines into a suitcase crammed with clothes and possessions. Nor could we squeeze in all of my mom’s pictures that were scattered throughout the house, keepsakes that helped keep my memories alive. And I had so many documents and commendations I’d accumulated over the years. I thought of the modest furniture we’d pinched pennies in order to fill the house with. So much I was used to, so much that had become part of the fabric of our lives. Whatever we left behind, we’d never see again, and that amounted to quite a lot.
“How’s Tia?” I asked, as much to change the subject as anything.
“I thought she was a little better. Now I’m not so sure.”
The fact that all her material possessions, including the clothes and shoes she’d accumulated over the years, were gone for good—I could see all the pain and angst from that reality all over her taut expression. She was trying not to get angry or frustrated, and put on as brave a face as she could for me and the kids. We hadn’t done anything wrong, yet we were the ones who were suffering.
When I checked on Tia, I saw that she had gotten worse since last night. So amid the chaos of FBI agents entering our home to supervise the packing process, what we could take with us and what we couldn’t, I rushed my daughter to the hospital, leaving the rest of my family behind.
At the emergency room of University of Florida Hospital, doctors diagnosed her as suffering with RSV, or respiratory syncytial virus. They began antibiotic treatment immediately, gave me a prescription, and told me I had nothing to worry about after three tense hours by my daughter’s side.
I was relieved that Tia would be okay, but I knew I still had plenty to worry about once I got home. I stepped inside to find not only the FBI present, but also an official from the Department of Children and Families in the company of a local sheriff’s deputy.
Shannon pulled me aside before we got around to introductions. “I called my parents to let them know Tia was sick and you’d taken her to the hospital.”
Uh-oh, I thought. What did you do that for? I wanted to ask, but stopped short, given how much stress my wife was already under.
“Anyway, someone called in an anonymous complaint to DCF, the Department of Children and Families,” she resumed. “They tried to find you in the hospital, but you’d already left.”
“Complaint about what?” I asked, my blood starting to boil over what was clearly my father-in-law’s sordid attempt at payback.
Shannon swallowed hard. Tears welled up in her eyes. I’d never seen her look this guilty over anything.
“Whoever called in the complaint accused you of physically abusing her.”
Although I was never actually able to confirm it, I suspected this represented Rusty’s long-awaited opportunity to seek revenge on me—not very surprising on its face, though the timing couldn’t have been worse. Here we were with a family room occupied by FBI agents, DCF, and a deputy thrown in for good measure. The suitcases my wife had managed to get packed while I was at the hospital with Tia were sitting in the middle of the room, and the FBI agents present couldn’t intervene. So I called Rich Vaughn.
“Everything good on the home front with packing up, Joe?” he asked me, never expecting what I was about to tell him.
“Far from it,” I said, and told him about our uninvited visitors.
“Put the sheriff’s deputy on,” Vaughn instructed.
I handed the phone to the deputy and could only hear his side of the conversation, which wasn’t much. Vaughn was obviously giving him his marching orders and saw no reason to let him get a word in edgewise.
“Yes, sir, I do,” the deputy said. “Yes, sir, I will.”
With that, he handed me back my phone and turned to the woman from the Department of Children and Families. “We’re leaving. Nothing happened here. We’re not filing a report.”
I was so angry at my father-in-law for causing a ruckus at such an inopportune time, I showed neither the deputy nor the woman from DCF out, nor remember them leaving. We put on a brave, happy face so as not to upset our kids, telling them we were going on a vacation, that it was going to be fun. Jordy was thrilled, seeing this as an adventure. Tia had fallen asleep.
The FBI got us settled at the nearby Embassy Suites under a different name. My wife and I claimed the bedroom and turned the living room area of the suite into our kids’ bedrooms and playroom, although there weren’t many toys we were able to bring for Jordy to play with. I had no idea how I was going to break the news to him that he’d never see his Elmo collection again.
It made no sense to me why the FBI couldn’t place the rest of our stuff in storage to reclaim later, once they moved it out. This all caught me totally by surprise. There had been no forewarning about what this stage of the process would be like. It wouldn’t have changed a thing about my commitment to bringing down the Klan, but it would have been nice to be given some advance notice nonetheless. I’m sure such standard operating procedure involved not wanting to have those under FBI protective custody or witness protection possess anything that might connect them to their former lives. Resettlement was about embarking on brand-new lives, starting from scratch. That made a degree of sense, but I couldn’t help feeling some bitterness that my payback for laying my life on the line for the FBI was to have them strip away items I truly treasured, like a number of letters and pictures, including one from a great army friend who’d lost his life in Iraq. There were also my medals, awards, and my scholarship letter from Florida State, even my sniper school certificate. There was a document that officially commended me on the work I had done undercover for the army’s Criminal Investigation Division that had resulted in the arrest of sixteen drug dealers. All told, those possessions felt to me like Jordy’s Elmo collection felt to him. We couldn’t keep my Kia Sportage or the Mazda sport coupe I’d just purchased for Shannon. Whatever we left behind, we were never going to see again.
It wasn’t unusual for me to be out of communication with the klavern hierarchy for stretches at a time amounting to days or even weeks, given the multitude of duties I performed as the Grand Knighthawk for the region. Of course, Ward and Newcomb were both well aware of the murder I’d apparently facilitated, so lying low for a while would make perfect sense to them.
Then, a week after we’d taken refuge at the hotel, I contracted severe tonsillitis and had to go into the hospital to have my tonsils removed. I made a point of contacting both Ward and Newcomb prior to that, and in a raspy voice that was every bit real, told them I was going to be out of commission for a stretch. I remained in the hospital for four days. Shannon and the kids visited me there every day, creating a false sense of normalcy that would slip away when I returned to the hotel that was a vivid reminder of what had already transpired and what was about to come to pass: the simultaneous takedowns of all four targets the day after I was released from the hospital.
I felt like I was in the center of a tornado, swept up in all the moving parts of what was about to go down. Every time I thought I was done, it turned out there was another mountain to climb. My life had been dominated by my work inside the KKK for so long, even in the period between the two infiltrations, that I just wanted it to be over for the sake of my family.
A week before the takedowns, I met with Vaughn and the FBI SWAT commander at the Jacksonville field office. Lindsay Campbell did not attend that meeting. In answer to my inquiry about her absence, Vaughn told me she was responsible for coordinating our efforts with the state prosecutors out of Attorney General Pam Bondi’s office. The SWAT leader was right out of central casting: six foot two, ruggedly built, and bald. I was never introduced to him by name and addressed him as “Commander.”
“We’re gonna do this next week on April first,” he told me. “That was a strategic choice, because it’s a day when Thomas Driver will be coming off shift at the same time David Moran will be coming on. That gives us the opportunity to swoop them up together. We know they’ll be armed, but we intend to come at them in force with a tactical team. Whatever move they try to make, they won’t get to finish.”
He left it there, and I remained silent.
“That brings us to Jamie Ward,” the commander continued. “Agent Vaughn tells me you’ve got some intel on his place of residence, where we’ll be picking him up.”
I eased a notebook from the backpack that had been thoroughly searched when I entered the building lobby and opened it to pages filled with notes, schematics, drawings, and maps that all pertained to Ward’s home and yard.
“You did all this yourself?” he said, flipping through the pages.
“Yes, sir. You’ll see on the maps I indicated the precise positioning of routes of egress both in the front and rear of the home. The colored circle in the middle is a hatch that leads to a crawl space beneath the house, like an escape route. I wanted to make sure you knew about that.”
The commander just stared at me.
“The other thing I wanted to mention,” I said, turning to a set of two pages that mapped out the surrounding area and pointing out a large building I’d drawn, “is Bronson Elementary School, which is located here, approximately two hundred yards away diagonally from the rear of Ward’s home.”
I didn’t bother to mention that I’d been thinking of my own kids the whole time I was drawing out these schematics, doing everything I could to make sure Ward never got anywhere near that school.
“The takedowns are going to occur in the morning,” the commander said, “which means we’ll need to cover the school.”
“What about evacuating it?” Vaughn asked.
“That will take too long and attract too much attention. We’ll assign four men and a K-nine unit to the school on the remote chance Ward slips away and shows up there to take hostages.” Then the commander looked back at me as he took my notebook. “Impressive work. Which brings us to you.”
He reviewed my role in the April 1 operation, which he explained would include a hundred SWAT commandos. Those men had been culled from the Jacksonville Sheriff’s Office, Gainesville Police Department, Columbia County Sheriff’s Office, and Bradford County Sheriff’s Office, with others providing support. Approximately eight different agencies were involved, attesting to the magnitude of the operation, which would begin with a briefing in the Alachua Police Department parking lot at four o’clock in the morning under the spill of floodlights.
“We’re going to put twenty-five men on Ward, twenty-five on Driver and Moran at the prison, and fifty backing you up in the Home Depot parking lot.” The commander’s expression had been serious and stern from the get-go, but I watched it tighten even further. “Now comes the most important question of all: Do you expect Charles Newcomb to put up a fight?”
“Well, Commander, I can tell you he’s told me on several occasions that if the police ever tried to take him, he’d shoot his way out to the death.”
He nodded, clearly not surprised. “That’s why we’re allotting fifty men to the parking lot.”