"Watch where you're going, Ray," Henry said gently. "Be embarrassing to drive into the Roaring Fork River sober and in broad daylight. To answer your question, to the best of my knowledge, no, I am not in trouble. Not yet, at least. But that could change any time."

"This sounds like it might be interesting," Ray said as he pulled off the road onto the gravel shoulder. "And maybe I'd better concentrate." How to start? he wondered as he turned to face his friend. "Ah, what do you...anticipate that you might be charged with?" Ray asked. "Lawyers need to know what the charges are and what evidence the prosecution has. They don't need to have the client confess his guilt or innocence." Although I never met one yet that didn't want to know, whether he needed to or not he added mentally.

"You remember my friend Allen Kane?" Henry asked.

"Sure. Guy from Indiana. Met him at your place that time."

"Right. ATF tapped his phone this past spring. They have recordings of us planning a trip out to Idaho to shoot jackrabbits. Here's what ATF knows and/or suspects." Henry took a deep breath and started in, speaking with the minimal inflection of a newscaster.

"On the morning of June fifth, Allen Kane was seen leaving his house in southern Indiana in his Army deuce-and-a-half. That afternoon he was seen driving onto Henry Bowman's property in Missouri.

"On June seventh, six ATF agents including Regional Director Wilson Blair left Indianapolis to execute a search warrant on Allen Kane's property. None of the six agents or the white van they were in has been seen since. Howe ver, Wilson Blair is believed to have contacted one or more agents in the Columbus, Ohio ATF office the following day. Four agents from that office, who were under Blair's supervision and planning to execute a second raid on an NFA dealer in Columbus on June eighth, have gone missing as well.

"Two, and possibly all four of the missing agents in the second group were last seen in Columbus, getting into a white van similar to the one Blair and the other five agents from Indianapolis were last seen driving. Witnesses said the driver was a white man whose physical appearance and manner of dress is consistent with Wilson Blair's. The raid, which was to be made on the home of an NFA dealer who is currently in South America, was supposed to be a secret. However, a number of NFA and Title 1 dealers were camped out at the site of the raid the day after it was to have taken place, and they had apparently been there for over 24 hours. It is clear that they were 'tipped off'.

"The following morning, June ninth, Blair or someone claiming to be him phoned the ATF office in Missouri to talk to an agent who was going on a third raid with him, this one scheduled for that afternoon. The raid was on Henry Bowman's property in Missouri, and because of the terrain, the agents had arranged to be transported there in three National Guard helicopters borrowed for the occasion.

"Two of the helicopters crashed in the woods on Bowman's property before reaching his house. The third is missing. Examination of the wrecks revealed that one helicopter was riddled with machine-gun fire which came from inside the aircraft. The body of the door gunner was found a quarter mile away in the woods. One theory gaining merit is that the door gunner shot down the other helicopter, swung the gun around and shot up his own aircraft, then either committed suicide by jumping out the door, or was blown out of it when leaking fuel in the plummeting craft ignited. No one has as yet come up with a satisfactory explanation for the third helicopter and the men in it, all of which remain missing.

"Upon learning of the crashes and hearing the FAA's preliminary evaluation of the evidence at the crash sites, the ATF Director in D.C. called the ATF regional office in Boise. He gave instructions to the agents there to look for Kane and Bowman in Idaho. The Director wanted to determine if the two men were indeed in that state.

"The agents were finally able to locate Kane and Bowman eating breakfast in a cafe in Salmon, Idaho on June twelfth. In the two days prior to that encounter, however, the ATF agents had spoken with numerous people in several towns who had seen the big green army truck and had talked to the two men who had come to Idaho to shoot running jackrabbits with revolvers.

"Several people interviewed place both Kane and Bowman in a remote section of the Pahsimeroi Valley on June tenth. One of these witnesses was a cattle rancher living at the base of Borah Peak, who recalls the two men stopping at his cabin on their way out of the valley that day. He accurately described Kane's injured left hand and the flecks of brown in Bowman's right eye. He said Kane drank coffee with him while Bowman played with his dogs, a pair of Australian Shepherds.

"Grant Millet, the owner of the property in Columbus, Ohio, which was scheduled to be raided on June eighth, was located in South America, where he had been for more than two weeks. Thus, none of the three NFA dealers scheduled to be raided appear to have been actively involved in the disappearance of the ten agents in Indiana and Ohio, or the deaths or disappearances of the twelve agents and Guardsmen in Missouri.

"At the present time, efforts are being focused on investigating other NFA dealers known to or friends of Kane, Bowman, or Millet. No promising leads have been discovered as yet." Ray waited for Henry to go on, then realized his friend had finished. He's trying for a poker face, but I can see something in his eyes Ray thought.

"Do you...expect to be charged with a crime?" Ray asked finally. Henry shrugged.

"I didn't expect to have three Guard choppers with door gunners attack my place, but it looks like it happened." Yeah, no shit Ray thought.

"I get the distinct impression you know more about what happened than anyone in the ATF. Or the FAA, for that matter." He's thinking how to answer that one. Or whether to say anything at all. Ray waited him out. What have you gotten yourself into, Henry Bowman? Ray wondered. The dangerous game hunter had not felt so much alive since before his return to the states.

"Let's just say," Henry said deliberately, "that none of the events which I have just described baffle me." When he heard those words, Ray Johnson felt something click inside.

"I'm in."

"What?"

"I'm in. Whatever part you had in what you just told me about, you're not finished. You're planning something on top of it, aren't you?" / got him there Ray thought when he saw Henry's reaction. "I want to be part of it," Ray said baldly. "As an accomplice, not legal counsel." He turned the key in the ignition and restarted the car. Damn, I feel twenty years younger Ray thought happily.

"Uh, Ray, I don't think-"

"Hey, wait 'til we get to the house," Ray said, cutting Henry off in mid-sentence as he pulled back out onto the road.

"We're done dancing around," Ray said as he put down his coffee and leaned forward in his chair. "There were twenty-two feds you mentioned when we were in the car driving up here. Twelve dead and ten missing. I assume you killed some of them?" "Not some," Henry explained, shaking his head. "All twentytwo." "Damn," Ray said, "This is worse than when you got caught in that buffalo stampede."

Ray sat silently, thinking about everything Henry had told him, and about the videotape he had seen. Feds'll be looking for men that don't exist he thought. Even if they find the chopper in the quarry, it doesn't change anything. Same theory would still fit perfectly. And if they analyze the wrecks and find traces of thermite, like Henry's afraid they'll do, so what? That just makes their whole mission even more bizarre. He's home free. Ray squinted his eyes shut and rubbed his temples. But he's got that whole list, and all that other data from Blair's files... Ray opened his eyes and stared at his friend as he delivered his assessment.

"It's good, but it's not good enough," he said finally.

"I can't think of any more safeguards or cut-outs," Henry said, shrugging helplessly. "Either it'll work, or it won't. I can't go back and redo any of the things I set up, so no use playing coulda-shoulda-woulda. I'm sure Allen won't let me down on the alibi end of things."

"That's not what I meant," Ray corrected. "Your plan's a winner, far as it goes," he said, nodding. "You've eliminated the evidence and made it look like you were out in Idaho when it happened. You got the ringleader on tape, admitting that ATF was going to plant stuff and lie so they could arrest the three of you, and he stopped it. That call to action you have him giving was a damn stroke of genius. You're dead right that a few copies of that tape in the right places wi ll drive the whole department batshit and throw them off any theory that it might've been you that killed those guys in the helicopters. You're basically home free," the older man said. "But it doesn't go far enough. It doesn't solve the problem."

"Doesn't solve the problem? Not just staying out of prison, but not being arrested in the first place-what do you call that?" Henry said immediately. He doesn't see it Ray thought. At least not yet. I wonder if he'll think I've lost my mind.

"It doesn't solve the problem of the ATF, and all these other government assholes. There'll be an investigation, and then it will go back to the same thing. That's the first thing I thought of when you told me what happened." Ray sat back in his chair and stared out the big window that overlooked Aspen Mountain.

"Henry, when I left your house back in '94,1 didn't quite believe all the things you and your friend Allen had told me. I didn't think you were making anything up, but I figured there was more to the story than you knew. So when I got back here, I took some of my own money and I made my own inquiries. And I found out things were a lot worse. I found out that what you told me was just the tip of the iceberg.

"There were a lot of things I learned that bothered me, but the one that really did it was what I found out in early '95. The papers then were full of articles about how the FBI was being investigated for shooting Randy Weaver's son in the back, and blowing his wife's brains out while she was holding the baby she was nursing. I got transcripts of everything, and as you said, it was all stonewall and whitewash, and 'our brave agents acted heroically under tremendous adversity'. That didn't really surprise me, although I admit I had expected better.

"The last straw was what I discovered next. At the same time they were saying Horiuchi maybe shouldn't have murdered Vicki Weaver, and they would keep much closer control on their 'rules of engagement', the FBI had just ordered almost two thousand suppressed .308 sniper rifles with night vision scopes.

"Henry," Ray said, leaning forward as he spoke, "We get that kind of information out, along with that tape you made of Wilson Blair, we can stop these bastards. Put them all on the run, in fear for their lives, and-" "Those rifles," Henry broke in, "were they made by Brown Precision, with AWC suppressors and STAND image tubes?" Ray's eyes grew wide. How did he know?

"Y-yes," he said, caught off guard. "How...?"

"Everyone knew. Hell, those three companies were months behind in the last half of '94 and the first half of '95. None of us with NFA licenses could get anything out of them for a long time. Was like trying to get semiauto pistols out of Smith & Wesson at the end of the Vietnam war."

"Yeah, well, I called those places, because I wanted to find out why the FBI thought it needed two thousand suppressed, night-capable sniper rifles. You know what one of them said?"

"Let me guess-when you talked to the guys at AWC and STANO, they either said it was confidential, or gave you a bunch of crap about the FBI meeting the terrorist threat, and used those morons who bombed the World Trade Center as an example. They got the order long before the Oklahoma City bombing, or they'd've used that one as an excuse, too.

"If you talked to anyone at Brown Precision, they probably half-joked that it was so the FBI could kill civilian members of the gun culture, like me or Allen, with less risk of dying in the process. And they probably sounded half apologetic that they were doing business with the goddamned feds in the first place, 'cause Chet Brown is an old-time prairie dog hunter and bench rest shooter, but the company needed the business and they figured it wouldn't hurt to get on the government's good side."

Ray Johnson's mouth hung open. "How did you know?" he asked, dumbfounded. Henry shrugged.

"Common knowledge. While you were doing research, did you check out the Bill Fleming case, happened about the same time? Machine gun manufacturer in Oklahoma, no relation to my friend Tom the lawyer. Bill used to do business with a bunch of police departments, developed a bunch of HK variations the factory had said were impossible, like an MP5 in .45 auto, and ended up going to prison?"

"Yes," Ray said with great animation. "That was another one I was going to tell you I found out about. He got three years in prison for a $1200 tax dispute-$200 taxes on six guns. I looked into it, and he was exempt from the tax because the transaction was with a police department. Henry, when people find out what our government's doing, they-"

"Everybody knew that," Henry cut in. "Did you find out the real reason Bill's in prison?" "What do you mean?"

"Bill acted as an expert witness a few years earlier, in a case the ATF was trying to make against some guy, involving suppressors. He made the jury see the feds didn't have a case. If that was all, he might've been okay, but Bill rubbed their noses in it, made 'em look like idiots in court. They never forgave him for that. He knew he'd fucked up, and for a while, his ads had a picture of him and his family dressed up like feds on a raid, ready to break in the back door of some cheap tract house. They were all holding machine guns, with Bill toting a G.E. Minigun, which everyone thought was hilarious. He was trying to suck up to the feds, but it was too late and they got him.

"Jerry Drasen, over in Illinois, feds bought an AR-15 barrel from him. Not a gun, just the barrel. Was one of those short military ones, and Jerry had a long flash hider on the muzzle, welded in place to make sure the length was over 16". Feds put the thing in a vise, stuck a pipe wrench on the flash hider to try to bust it off. It turned in the jaws, so they threw the barrel on a milling machine, milled a couple flats on it to keep it from turning, went back to the vise with their four-foot Stillson, and snapped the welds. Hit Jerry with a couple hundred counts of selling short-barreled rifles, 'cause that's how many barrels he had in stock, then threw on a couple hundred more counts of conspiracy to violate federal tax laws, 'cause that's what the NFA is officially-a tax measure."

"I thought you said it was just as barrel, and there was no gun with it."

"There wasn't, but Jerry did have AR-15s for sale, so that was good enough. After spending half a million bucks fighting it, he finally pled to a few of the counts, and they let him off with a hundred-thousand-dollar fine. Since he's a felon, he can never own or sell guns again. Only reason he got off that easy is that while all this was going on, he got in a car accident when a tire came through his windshield. It almost killed him, and he's disabled now with brain damage.

"How 'bout Aron Lippman?" Henry asked. "You check on him? Jewish guy in his late fifties, NFA dealer who sold guns to police departments and made self-defense videos. Goes to Florida with his girlfriend, and when he gets back to Pennsylvania he finds this guy who was working for him has sold a bunch of his inventory and made off with the money. Aron has him arrested, and to save his ass the guy tells the cops he'll cut a deal with the feds. Says Aron's making suppressors and machine guns without a Class 2 manufacturer's license, and shows them a bunch of steel tubing lying around the shop and a junky old semiauto M-l1 MAC that he says is now full auto. Feds seize the tubing and the MAC, and every other gun in his inventory, hit him with eighty-seven counts of illegal manufacture, and conspiracy to violate federal firearms laws, or tax laws, I forget which. Prosecutor saw it was a bullshit case and kicked it, but the feds kept all Aron's guns, which were worth about sixty grand. The dumb bastard sued to get them back, so the feds had to give it all they had to keep from looking like idiots."

"And...?"

"Guilty on eighty-seven counts. He's in the federal slam right now." Henry cocked his head to one side. "Dave Green, at Springfield Armory, and Jack Birge, over in Ohio- you know about that one?" "No," Ray said, his anger mounting. Henry scowled.

"There was another guy in there, too, I forget his name 'cause I never met him. Anyway, all three of 'em were NFA dealers like me. Dave was supposed to transfer twenty M60 machine guns to one of the others, I think it was the third guy, but Dave's secretary gets the message wrong and fills out the forms transferring them to Jack Birge instead. Dave realizes the error when the transfers come back approved and he sees the wrong name on them. So he calls Jack, explains the fuckup, and Jack says he'll transfer them to the third guy, where they should have gone in the first place. Jack grabs a stack of transfer forms, fill 'em out, signs 'em, and sends 'em off to Washington. Dave calls the third guy, explains his mistake, tells him the delay will only be a few weeks, and he'll ship the twenty guns as soon as Jack gets the papers back approved. Guy says that's fine. Papers clear in three weeks, Jack mails them to the guy, and then Dave ships the guy his guns."

"So what's the problem?"

"Problem is the feds found out, from somebody who heard about it and ratted out those three to save his own butt."

"Ratted them out for what?" Ray demanded. "What was the crime?"

"Jack Birge was hit with twenty counts of filling out transfer forms to transfer NFA weapons which were not in his possession. All three men were charged with twenty counts of conspiring to violate federal firearms laws, since they discussed the screwup on the phone. In point of fact, I don't think any one of them thought Dave should ship nine hundred pounds of stuff worth forty thousand dollars to the wrong guy, so that he could then ship it to the right one. Anyway, all three of them spent a pile of money, saw they were fucked, and pleaded to a few counts with six-figure fines. None of 'em have licenses any more.

"You could talk for weeks without running out of examples. Guy named Lamplugh in Pennsylvania, he was a guy organized gun shows. Fifteen feds broke into his house, tore the shit out of the place, and left. On the way out, walking across the yard, a lady fed stomped the wife's kitten to death in front of her and other witnesses."

"Stomped her cat to death?" Ray almost shouted.

"Yeah. Laughed at her while she did it, and told Lamplugh and his wife to count themselves lucky.

"Louie Katona, you find out about him? He had a machine gun collection, taxes all paid, the whole deal. Police chief who signed his paperwork got in a jam about child molestation, so he hands 'em Louie. Says he never signed any of the forms-his secretary did it for him, so they're not legit. Feds bust into Katona's house, jack his pregnant wife up against the wall, and she miscarries. He eventually got his guns back, but it cost him a hundred thousand or so, in addition to the miscarriage.

"There are literally thousands more cases-I'm just giving you the ones I knew personally." Henry quit talking, and Ray stared at him. Looks like he's about to cry Ray thought in surprise. He kept his peace and waited for his friend to speak.

"Worst one of all, at least in my opinion," Henry said finally, "was Chris Lee. Chris was an NFA dealer and manufacturer lived up north of Allen in Indiana. Never saw a gun he couldn't fix. Got swamped during all the cease-fires at Knob Creek, 'cause he'd work on everybody's stuff for free. Just for the challenge, I guess," Henry added as an afterthought.

"One year at Knob, this big fat guy from Michigan sees Chris on the firing line and says 'Hey Chris, where can I find Dan Hunter? I need to talk to him.' Chris says 'At the other end of the line,' or whatever, and the fat guy goes off and finds Hunter.

"Turns out what the fat guy wants to talk to Hunter about is getting some 'paper' for guns he's got. That means registration paperwork that somebody typed up and got approved before May 19, 1986, when the feds slammed the door because of that stupid New Jersey cocksucker Hughes. We're talking about paperwork that was typed up and approved, without there ever having been a gun to go with it. Paperwork that manufacturers planned to use after the cutoff, so they could do some business while they looked for other employment, since the law change abolished their livelihood.

"Now Dan Hunter was a fucking squirrel, and he always seemed to have a virtually limitless supply of preMay 19th approved paper. I guess those two things together should have been a tip-off, but back then the guys he was selling it to weren't thinking along those lines.

"So the fat guy buys the paper for some gun or other that he's built up, and Dan Hunter rats him out. Dan Hunter rats him out 'cause ratting guys out is what Dan Hunter does for a living. You see, Dan Hunter is the highest-paid informant in the history of the whole fucking ATF, and that is why Dan Hunter always has a supply of Pre-May 19th paper-the feds make it up for him whenever he wants, with all the proper date stamps and official signatures on it.

"The fat guy from Michigan shits when the feds come down on him, and he starts blubbering that he'll rat anyone out that they want if they'll pleasepleaseplease give him immunity. Who do they want? Chris Lee.

"Now most people might not think that Chris Lee had committed a crime, but most people don't work for the ATF. Chris Lee was charged with our old friend conspiracy, the all-purpose charge. You see, he told the fat guy at Knob Creek where to find Dan Hunter when the fat guy asked him."

"But that wouldn-" Ray broke in, but Henry cut him off.

"Don't argue with me Ray, I said the same thing until I got a copy of the indictment. I read it." He's furious Ray thought as he watched Henry get himself back under control. Ray's own outrage was continuing to mount.

"So they break into his place with a dozen agents, one guy shoves his gun in Chris's mouth, and they cut open his safes and take maybe $200,000 worth of guns. They go to one prosecutor after another, and none of them would touch it, but finally they get some cunt from Detroit who thinks that no one but the cops should have guns, and she says okay.

"What everybody hoped would happen, Chris included, was that the feds would offer to let him plead to an infraction and pay a big fine, like a quarter million dollars or so. No soap. The feds were bound and determined to get at least one felony count. You see, Chris Lee is the most serious shooting enthusiast on the entire planet, bar none, and everyone, feds included, knows it. He makes you, me, Allen, and Tom put together look like we're bored with shooting. He fires upwards of half a million rounds a year. And there is no way Chris Lee will ever rat out or set up another gun guy, and everyone knows that, too. So it is a matter of pride for the feds to make it so that Chris Lee can never own or shoot another gun in his life.

"Chris hires Bob Sanders, the former head of the Chicago ATF office. Sanders quit ATF in 1982 when he got proof his agents were planting evidence and committing perjury against guys like us, and his bosses in Washington told him to shut up about it. He quit and went into private practice doing nothing but defending gun guys on this kind of stuff. Chris also hires Jim Jefferies, former prosecutor who nailed Agnew in the '70s. And Chris hires Stephen Halbrook, the country's top legal scholar on the Second Amendment.

"These three guys are the best there is, and they are not cheap, especially for a guy who tries to make his living selling something the government banned the manufacture of in 1986. The feds hit back by getting indictments in several other districts so he has to fight those too. They hit him with an IRS audit the next day. They drag their feet on his transfers. His lawyers file suit for harassment, get documentation of a bunch of illegal actions by all the agents involved, show that the warrant's a joke, and get a court order stating that any agent discussing the case is committing a felony as he is divulging confidential tax information.

"Then Waco happens, and the public is outraged, and we start thinking Chris's case will get dismissed. Nope. Feds have unlimited money, and they're going to bankrupt him and make him plead to a felony." Henry sat back in his chair. His eyes were focused far off in the distance.

"Is that what happened?" Ray asked finally.

"I don't know," Henry answered, without shifting his gaze. "I'm ashamed to say that. Last I heard, it was still getting delayed, with the feds hoping he'd go bust before they had to go to trial, 'cause they were afraid they'd lose. But that was a while ago.

"See, in '95, I found out that there were over three thousand people in federal prison for gun paperwork violations, and I figured that sooner or later, I would be next. I quit going to Knob Creek, and I quit going to gun shows, and I quit selling guns, and I damn near quit buying them, too. Other than the people in Missouri, I lost contact with every gun guy I used to see except Allen Kane. Mainly, I would just shoot on my own place. Figured the feds would leave me alone, that way." Henry drew a deep breath.

"It's the only thing I've ever done in my life for which I am truly ashamed." He laughed mirthlessly. "And you can see how well that plan worked."

"That's just what I've been wanting to tell you," Ray said, finally seeing an outlet for the intense feelings that had been building up within him. "The time for passive resistance and legal redress is past, and the time to take up arms has come. We can't let these feds keep getting away with this kind of outrage. With what you've done and that tape you made, we can reverse this. If you're willing to continue the fight, I'll sign on with you. If you fade into the background now, it'll just keep happening."