As he scrambled for cover into the van, Matt yelled “Don’t shoot!” The trooper fired again, a wild shot that went over the van. The trooper’s hands were shaking.
Chase jumped out of the other side of the van, and was firing his Glock 19 in the direction of the cruisers. He aimed for the light bar on the lead car, attempting to protect his brother by diverting their fire. The trooper and the sheriff’s deputy crouched to the left and right, respectively.
The Randolph County sheriff’s deputy instinctively shot back at Chase, rapidly. All of his shots were high, even though Chase was only fifteen feet away. One of his shots hit the van. Now both the trooper and the deputy fired at Chase, very rapidly. All of their shots missed. Chase fired two more shots, and then jumped back into the van. The deputy ran up to the passenger-side door.
The deputy shouted “Halt!”
The state trooper fired again. This shot shattered the van’s rearview mirror, just inches from Matt’s shoulder.
Matt pulled his door shut and again shouted, “Don’t shoot, don’t shoot!”
The trooper thought that his gun had jammed. He was taking careful aim at the driver’s head and pulling the trigger repeatedly, but nothing was happening. He looked down to see the slide locked to the rear. The gun’s nineteen-round “+2” magazine was empty.
The deputy ran up to the open passenger-side door. Thinking that the officer meant to kill them, Matt shoved the column shifter down into drive, and stomped on the gas. The deputy held onto the swinging door’s window frame briefly, and was dragged ten feet before letting go. His S&W Model 915 pistol fell to the ground.
The van was more than one hundred and fifty yards away and accelerating rapidly by the time the state trooper had reloaded his Glock with a fresh seventeen-round magazine from the horizontal double magazine pouch on his belt.
Knowing that the driver was out of range, the trooper super-elevated the front sight and fired five more times anyway, in anger. Watching the van speed away, he shouted, “Son of a…!”
The deputy retrieved his pistol from the ground where he had dropped it.
He examined it, and reloaded it. He only had one round left in the fifteen-round magazine, and one in the chamber. Between them, the trooper and the deputy had fired thirty-eight rounds. Not one of them hit flesh. As the deputy reloaded, the trooper ran up to him and asked, “You hit?”
“No. I just pissed my pants, is all. How ’bout you?”
The trooper replied, “I’m okay, I think. You know I think I hit the driver a couple of times. Okay! You call this in, while I pursue that blue streak.” He started toward the door of his cruiser.
“No! No! No! What do you say you just shut up, and sit down, hot shot!”
The trooper stopped and glared at the deputy.
The deputy questioned him. “Why were you trying to shoot that kid in the back? He wasn’t a threat! I don’t know about your department’s policy, but under ours what I just witnessed was excessive force, big time. And I was stupid enough to go along with it. Now that the shooting has stopped, I realize that what I should have done was… holstered my piece and tackled you.”
The North Carolina trooper was speechless. He started looking for bloodstains on the ground. Meanwhile, the deputy reported shots fired and requested backup. Finally, the trooper offered, “I really do think I hit that one guy a couple of times.”
The deputy answered sharply, “You didn’t hit jack, Jack. And I don’t think I did, either. Did you find any blood?”
The trooper answered sullenly, “No.” He stared at the more than three-dozen pieces of brass that lay scattered on the pavement, and shook his head slowly from side to side. They could hear the first of many sirens approaching in the distance.
The trooper looked anxiously at the deputy and said, “Here comes the cavalry. I guess, we’d better get our story straight.”
Quoting an old Lone Ranger joke, the deputy replied, “‘What do you mean we, white man?’”
Matt Keane turned right at the first intersection he came to, and then started making semi-random turns at each subsequent intersection.
After taking a few deep breaths, Chase exclaimed. “Those bastards were trying to kill us!” He reloaded his Glock with a magazine from his duffel bag.
He handed it to Matt, who tucked the gun under his thigh.
“Where do they get off, trying to back-shoot an unarmed man?” Matt asked.
“Beats me. They are some kinda ‘mo-bile and hos-tile’ around here. That guy was definitely trying to kill you! I generally don’t have any beef with local and state law enforcement, but that guy had a serious BATF-jack-booted-thug attitude! I always thought that if we were ever going to have any confrontation, it was going to be with Federal law enforcement.”
Matt cocked his head and retorted, “Guess who is developing all the training curriculum for the state and local departments? Guess who is running the multi-jurisdictional task forces? But I just can’t believe these local guys are falling for the Federal brainwashing.”
Chase snaked into the rear of the van. He pulled out a Colt Sporter HBAR from their show inventory, new in the factory box. The box’s large red-orange price tag declared: “SALE! Colt after-ban: $1,100.” He tossed aside the Colt factory five-round magazine that came with the rifle in disgust, and started digging through inventory bins until he found a bin partly full of contract M16 magazines. He grabbed five, all still new in government contractor’s wrappers. He peeled the clear plastic wrappers off quickly and laid them down.
After finding the magazines, Chase picked through a group of .50 caliber ammo cans until he found the one with a price tag marked “Canadian 5.56 SS-109 (62 Grain) Ball. $28.00 per bandoleer.” He unclipped the stripper clip guide from one of the bandoleers, and started loading the magazines rapidly, emptying three stripper clips into each of the magazines with a ratcheting sound. Once all five magazines were loaded, he set them and the rifle between the front seats, and slid forward to take his seat. He exclaimed, “Little-big brother, we gotta ditch this rig, fast, or we’re dead meat!”
“No kidding.”
Chase popped one of the loaded magazines into the Colt, cycled the charging handle, checked the safety, and tapped the forward assist with the butt of his right hand. He looked up and asked, “Where are we?”
“I don’t know exactly. I’ve been on the side roads. We must be coming into Asheboro, proper. I just set the cruise control to thirty-five. Without it, I think I’d be up to sixty without even noticing it.”
“Good idea.”
“So do we go rent a car, or what?” Chase asked.
“No way. They’d ask for ID, and even if we made it out of a rental agency lot, they’d have an All-Points-Bulletin on the rental car within an hour or two.”
“We should have built ourselves false IDs a long time ago, like we talked about. Too late for that now. How about the bus, or hitchhiking?”
“Goshamighty! Then we’d have to leave most of our inventory, Chase.
We’ve got a good chunk of our life savings tied up in the inventory, not to mention the thirty-five hundred that I paid for this rig. We’re going to have to steal a car or a truck.”
“Are you kidding? Steal? We’ve never stolen so much as a candy bar, and you want to try grand theft auto! No. No way.‘Thou shalt not steal.’ That’s the law. That’s the covenant. We can’t go stealing a car. It’s a sin. It’s a crime.”
“So is ‘attempted murder of police officers,’ so is ‘carrying a concealed weapon,’ so is ‘flight to avoid arrest.’ That’s what they’re going to charge us with, little bro. No doubt about it.”