![[cermap1]](Polarized-CER1.jpg)
Minutes before, while Professor Vicente Sandoval spoke, Agent Lance Picket of the FBI resident agency in Rockville, Maryland, pressed one of the two buttons under his left shirt collar, the orange one, once.
"Alpha One this is Alpha," he said in the orange channel. "Radio check, over."
Alpha One, another FBI Agent, was one of the ten-men security made up of two groups--four FBI agents led by Agent Picket and six armed guards from Carl Newland's Capital Security Services--plugged in the radio channel and stationed at the perimeter of the three-acre real estate and around the house. Tonight's assignment had been arranged weeks ahead between the Rockville SAC (Special-Agent-in-Charge) James Lippert, Picket's boss, and Senator Alfred de Vera. Lippert and de Vera were friends, going way back, from the time de Vera moved to the Senate after four terms in the House when he was elected to one of the seats from Nevada. Twenty-eight years ago, when de Vera got James Lippert into the Bureau as a novice Agent.
Agent Picket knew exactly where Alpha One was, hidden in the dark behind a tall hickory tree down on the far side of the long driveway a few yards from the road.
Seconds ago, he saw a shadow move from another tree farther down near the road towards the hickory. He was thinking maybe his guy there might have gotten bored after lurking in the shadows for some time and took a short walk. Then in the next seconds, he heard a scuffle, feet thrashing on the dry autumn leaves covering the ground.
And then silence.
An alarm went off in his head. He sent the signal again--one buzz for A-1 (two for A-2 and so on). After two more seconds and no response came to his earpiece from A-1, he dropped quickly on all fours on the ground from his sitting position behind one of the columns supporting the entrance portico of the house.
"Shit," he murmured to himself. He immediately sent another signal this time by pressing the other button, the blue one, three times, the alert code for everyone to stay tuned, listen, get ready to take action for any unforeseen circumstance. With it, he whispered on his microphone: "Alpha One might be in trouble. He doesn't copy. Alpha Two take caution. Stay low, look all around you. Maintain your position. I'm moving towards halfway between you and Alpha One now. Everyone else keep a sharp eye and listen close."
A-2 was positioned 150 feet from A-1 towards the back of the property. Another man, A-3, lurked in the dark another 150 feet farther back, covering the rear of the property. Agent Picket and three other men code-named Beta, Charlie and Delta, guarded the four corners of the house. Delta was another FBI agent; the other two were Capital Security Services. One of them, Beta, was Ray Karpinski. He and Picket, who worked for another security service company before he became an FBI agent, were longtime friends.
The two of them were now crawling on the autumn-cold ground, converging towards the position of A-1 after Karpinski, positioned back of the house on the same side as Picket, told the latter on the radio: "I'm going with you. What do you think is wrong?"
"We'll find out. Cover me."
"Roger."
With sidearms ready in one hand, safeties disengaged, they figured they had crept fifty feet, coming to within twenty of the hickory, when Karpinski detected movement on the grass near a stretch of a low hedge some thirty feet to his right. A moment later, a figure materialized where the hedge ended, moving slowly on all fours from fifty feet away towards the basement level of the house.
He waited a few seconds to observe the figure. Six feet, at least, but lean 170 pounds. Dark fatigues, baseball cap backwards, hiking boots. Alert, careful and determined movement like that of a cheetah in the bushes stalking a prey. The fucker means business whatever his mission is for being here tonight, Karpinski thought then raised Agent Picket on the radio. But before he could utter a word on the microphone, Picket's voice came on his earpiece.
"Code Red! Code Red! Alpha One is dead. Broken neck."
"Alpha, this is Beta. I have visual of a subject approaching the house."
Another voice came on the radio.
"This is Alpha Two. I have visual of two subjects also converging towards the house from the back."
Alpha Three, from his position farther back near the rear property line in the woods, acknowledged the same visual reported by Alpha Two. Everything happening at the same time, Karpinski thought fast.
Inside the house, Ken Robinson, a mixed-blood Governor of Virginia--half-black, a quarter white, a quarter Filipino--was speaking.
"I no longer have any qualms about defying this administration. If it is our desire to preserve and protect our American way of life, our values and heritage, establish a national identity and show the world that we are a sovereign nation, we don't want this fucking government.
"I will do exactly the same as our patriotic Governor of Utah, Frank Naismith, stated earlier. I will raise a consolidated law enforcement and defense force consisting of state militia, the Virginia Army National Guard and local law enforcements to defend and safeguard the people, all the territories and the Constitution of the Commonwealth of Virginia from any foreign, undocumented aliens, regardless of what this federal government does or does not do.
"I have nothing against anybody from anywhere in the world coming to immigrate to America--legally! My own mother is the result of a legitimate relationship between a white American man and a Filipino woman, both of whom then were living in the Philippines. Even if she had all the opportunities, and resources--as a highly educated, English-speaking woman from a middle class family in her country--to enter the United States and be re-united with her future husband, she did not just sneak in illegally to do so in utter disregard of our laws. She went through all the legal immigration processes, got in line and waited her turn for a green card number.
"It is for that reason, above all else, that I oppose CNABS or any legislation or statute you may call by any name which will allow a foreigner to simply step across the border, undocumented, unqualified by our immigration laws, and claim to be one of us, Americans, and a part of America. Not in the state of Virginia. No! Never!
"If a time comes when I have to defend the state of Virginia even against this incompetent and treasonous administration, as I said before, I will defy this federal government we have now. If this government will not do anything to preserve the sovereignty of our country and even allow the country to continue to segregate and disintegrate, I will bring my forces to the banks of the Potomac in Northern Virginia and face whatever hell they throw at us across the state line. I will do all that can be done to preserve our way of life as we know it in America, its character and quality, if we have to pay for it dearly even with our own lives."
A complete silence fell in the entire basement level of the house. One could hear only one's own breathing. The severity and the underlying bitterness of the words they just heard from the chief executive of one of the fifty states suddenly brought home the stark reality of the current and true State of the Union.
Richard Casey, sitting in an armchair behind Congressman Fukuda at the end of the table, was no less stunned than any of the public officials by what he heard. He would have done anything to have given his father, Lawrence Casey in Hawai'i, the opportunity to be a part of this gathering tonight to hear Virginia Governor Robinson's words. Words that to him and, no doubt, many others in the room, now rang of tumultuous ideas such as... sedition, secession, civil war. He felt goose bumps rise on the back of his neck.
With everything else that had been said so far tonight, Phil Bernardo--Associate Director for Demographic Programs of the Census Bureau--now sitting near Senator Alfred de Vera at the other end of the table, felt a wave of disbelief perhaps more than anyone else in the basement. Looking at the people around the table and others at both ends of the room, he envisioned--instead of a small group of the nation's legitimate leaders airing their discontent with the government--a gathering of dissenters at the early (or overdue) stage of building an alliance, a major force to upstage the ruling power; challenge and diminish it in the eye of the people at the least, or topple it outright in an all out rebellion at the most. Like Richard Casey, he felt goose bumps rise on the back of his neck.
After a few moments more of silence in the entire room, he realized he had yet to hear more of the same to reinforce that jarring vision when California Governor Henry Flynn, seated to the right of the Governor's friend Professor Vicente Sandoval, stood up next and took his turn.
"Governor Robinson," he began, nodding solemnly at the Virginia Governor, "I thank you very much for speaking your mind openly about what ails our country. And I thank you especially for expressing your feelings so boldly in defiance of what and who brought America to where it stands now and where they may take the country further, in the coming days, to her eventual downfall.
"I must also say that I am no less emboldened by what we heard from our brave Governor of Utah Frank Naismith. Gentlemen--" he said, bowing slightly at each of his two fellow state executives, and then panning to the rest of the people in the room: "Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Americans and leaders of the people of America, I now stand here before all of you to pledge my support for any undertaking we may decide to pursue for the preservation of our way of life, the reunification of the country and the establishment of our national identity.
"Foremost among these, as our great Senator de Vera stated earlier, is the enactment of a law to establish English as the national language of America. No person shall be recognized as a true American unless the person speaks, reads and writes first in English, American English, before any other language on earth. No one legally immigrates to the United States of America unless the person first meets that requirement regardless of race, ethnicity or nationality.
"But as we've seen many times over, the past century and before, every effort to enact any such law has failed. The same has happened with the immigration laws, securing the borders, identifying, apprehending and deporting illegal aliens, let alone foreign criminal elements involved in drug and human trafficking, and other unlawful acts."
He paused a moment to loosen his tie and undo the top shirt button, giving the impression that he had plenty more to say.
"Our country came into being, after its independence from a foreign ruler, out of the noble thoughts of a collection of men. They hammered out a document among themselves which became America's birth certificate, if you will--the U.S. Constitution, adopted in 1787 by the Constitutional Convention in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania, and later ratified in the convention of eleven states when it took effect, two years later, in 1789.
"My fellow Americans, that was truly a momentous event, a saving grace, in the history of our country--during that time. Imagine--those noble thoughts of the Founding Fathers framed in that single document, written in a mere forty-four hundred words--holding this country together, since its infancy, for better than two and a half centuries. That is, until the Great Race Riot of the [20]60s and the start of its decline that continues to this day.
"A saving grace it was, indeed, at the beginning. When there were only four million Americans in the country. And it cost less than six million dollars to run the government. And the country was sufficiently living off of the land. There were plenty of natural resources to support the simple lifestyle of a small population. There were no environmental hazards as pollution and other impurities to make people sick of all kinds of cancer, high blood pressure, clogged arteries and countless other diseases we suffer today. The AIDS virus and other health threats did not exist, nuclear weapons did not exist, there were no foreign terrorists sworn to killing Americans everywhere, no multi-billion-dollar drug problem threatening to destroy our society.
"That document was written more than three hundred years ago. True, it had been amended twenty seven times since it was ratified. But still, it does not address the social, political, economic, global, technological and industrial complexities of the life we now face in this country, in this planet. It could not possibly address the myriad of issues we face today since the Founding Fathers could not possibly have envisioned them in their wildest imagination. None of them could have foreseen America expanding into a Union of fifty States with a resident population of 560 million today.
"For instance, take the Fourteenth Amendment, Section One. It says, in short--All persons born... in the United States... are citizens of the United States. Millions of illegals from south of the border who didn't speak a word of English broke our laws and simply walked across the border; others carrying fake identities obtained visas and overstayed for years, and they all bred here like rabbits. Every one of those rabbits, or anchor babies in the millions including the parents of that man now living in the White House and the parents of the one before him, are automatically U.S. citizens.
"That Section needs to be repealed. At least stripped of its loose generality and include, for one, limitations on the parents' residency status to U.S. citizenship. Nothing in the Constitution says what or who a person has to be to acquire citizenship at birth other than to be born in America. With immigration control as lax as it had been for years now and especially with the coming of this CNABS, God help us when it comes to preserving our national identity, our culture and quality of life. Here again, the Constitution says nothing about anybody who wants to enter the country to become a legal permanent resident or a naturalized citizen of the United States. It doesn't say what language one must speak, what or how much education one must possess, what knowledge of the culture and way of life of America one must have. What then is an American? Who, then, is an American? What distinguishes an American person from any inhabitant from anywhere in the world?
"The Constitution is a flawed document and we all know that. It does not say what, for instance, can be done when a federal government like we have now allows the country to disintegrate, does not exercise its vested power to protect the country and its citizens, allows millions of foreigners to break the law by coming here illegally and establishing residency in our land permanently. That document does not address many of the social, economic and ideological issues we now live with, issues that did not exist three hundred years ago when it was written. It needs to be vigorously re-examined, all forty-four hundred words of it, and thoroughly revamped, if not totally discarded and completely rewritten to address all our concerns today, not only those of three hundred years ago."
Governor Henry Flynn paused a few seconds to catch his breath. Professor Vicente Sandoval, looking up from the seat next to him, waited impatiently, enthusiastically, as did the rest in the room, to hear more.
"I say again--the Constitution is a flawed document by measure of the time we live in today. We've known that for years now and yet continue to swear to defend it in spite of its lacking. Any act anybody does contrary to the letters in that document is immediately labeled unconstitutional. That has been a problem area I'm sure all of you have thought of deep inside but were afraid to go into, thinking: you don't mess with something sacred. Now, that is a myth, a false pretense, one that we need to get over with right now. What is sacred about something that leaves the country open to exploitation by foreigners, holds us back, limits our freedom to move ahead because it forbids us, for instance, to defy an administration, the powers that be who are practically turning the whole country over to foreign invaders?
"Article IV, Section Four, states: The United States shall guarantee to every State in this Union a Republican Form of Government, and shall protect each of them against Invasion.
"There is a glowing example of what's written in that document on how the national government relates to the states. But as we've seen time and time again, what has the government done to protect the sovereignty of any state against those millions of foreign invaders who have now taken roots in our land? Nothing! On the contrary, it has done the exact opposite by allowing them to stay and even granting them amnesty. What's even worse--the government refuses to delegate authority to the states to enforce any immigration law, secure the border, identify and apprehend those invaders, illegal aliens, and deport them.
"Speaking of the delegation of power, the Tenth Amendment does state: The powers not delegated to the United States by the Constitution, nor prohibited by it to the States, are reserved to the States respectively, or to the people.
"Here again, the document is lacking in that it does not refer to any specific power. For all the foregoing reasons, I believe the time has come for us, the state [governments], to take action by introducing to the Union government and among us the Act of Nullification, whereby the state can and will disregard the Union authority over the states on the enforcement of certain laws.
"Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Americans, like Utah Governor Frank Naismith stated earlier, when the border with Mexico vanishes with the coming of this CNABS, I will protect my state against any foreign invasion. With my vested power as Governor of the State of California, I will seal every foot of the border with all and any force I could muster to protect the entire state. I will raise a state militia, command the California National Guard and all local law enforcement assets throughout the state and bring them all to bear. And I don't care what Washington does or does not do about it. If they see it as an open defiance of their power and authority, so be it."
Again Phil Bernardo, sitting at one end of the table next to Senator Alfred de Vera, felt goose bumps rise in the back of his neck. And again, like Richard Casey, he thought: holy shit, this smells Secession, Civil War.
"At this point in the State of the Union of these United States," Governor Henry Flynn continued, "this administration, this government, has done nothing in its vested power to, among other things, protect the freedom of the press as stated in the First Amendment of the Constitution, exercise the Freedom of Information Act, guard the sovereignty of the country and thus preserve the Union. The entire country is inundated with illegal aliens. Invaders who have been taking over America slowly but surely for more than a hundred years now. My state of California alone now has more than eight million illegals. That's twenty percent of over forty million unprocessed foreigners who have been living and have taken roots in America in defiance of our immigration laws.
"With this CNABS bearing down on us, I will exercise every power vested in me by the Constitution of the State of California and, if I have to, even that delegated to the United States if this administration won't enforce it and won't do anything to protect and preserve the Union and our American way of life. We are now not only looking at the possibility of the outcome of the Guadalupe Hidalgo Treaty getting reversed. We are now looking at the very real possibility of America breaking apart permanently and turning into several autonomous regions and, later, separate independent countries."
Once again, many voices rose from every corner of the room, protesting, angry, arguing disgustedly. The noise built up quickly. Many couldn't keep themselves seated and got up to air their feelings so, again, Senator de Vera and Congressman Fukuda had to wave the noise down. Once everybody cooled off, Senator de Vera nodded appreciatively at Governor Henry Flynn now sitting down. He noticed several hands raised, one of them that of Louisiana 4th District Congresswoman Jennifer Guitreau whom the Senator acknowledged. Brunette, early fifties, about five feet eight inches tall, on the lean side, fairly attractive, in her fourth term in office.
"Yes, Jennifer," Senator de Vera said, gesturing politely at her with a hand.
"Thank you, Fred." she said and quickly opened the inner valve to release the pressure that had built up inside her while she listened to those who spoke before her. "Ladies and gentlemen, fellow Members of Congress and Honorable Chief Executives of several States present, after listening to what had been said here tonight, I could only say that I felt I was listening to myself saying exactly the same thing."
That prompted a buzz of approval in the entire room but she was quick to hold up the palm of a hand so she could continue.
"Congressional District 4 which I represent of the State of Louisiana, as well as District 3 south of it, both of which bordering the state of Texas to the west, for many years now have been undergoing a cultural, economic and racial transformation. The burgeoning population density of eastern Texas which is a majority of Latinos has been spilling into those two Louisiana Districts, as the numbers in this book show." She took her copy of the Project Concord book and held it up. "Thanks to everyone of you who labored hard to gather all the truths about our country between these covers. Three years ago, my Fourth District had a population of nine hundred fifty thousand residents. That had increased by thirty percent according to the latest figures in the state statistics. Most of that came from across the state line with Texas. But there are in reality many more that came from the west, most of whom are undocumented, illegal foreigners and we didn't know exactly how many since they have no official record with the local or federal government. Fortunately, however--again thanks to the people who put this book together--we now have the facts, according to their findings from direct canvassing of the people in the district."
At that point, she turned to Congressman Steven Fukuda who gave her an understanding nod. The Congressman then signaled to Cathy Lane and John Powell who stood behind a digital video docking machine on a table facing a sixty-inch flat screen on the end-wall of the room. Congressman Borja, the host, then dimmed the light in the room before the two at the table projected an image on the screen, Cathy Lane adjusting the focus, John Powell moving the docker in position for the image to fit the screen perfectly.
The image was a black-and-white map of the lower forty-eight. It showed each state with the state name as the only information on it.
"That picture, according to the current administration and the government, is what America looks like, and nothing more," the Congresswoman said. "The same as it has been since Arizona, the last state to join the Union, was admitted in 1912."
She then turned and nodded to Cathy Lane at the table and a new image with a transparent background slid on the screen. It showed the same outline of the lower forty-eight but without the state names and borders. Inside was a totally different picture of the U.S. mainland.
"Ladies and gentlemen," Jennifer Guitreau continued, "those of you who are yet unfamiliar with this image or are seeing it for the first time, you are looking at the demographic map of America as of today. It is called appropriately, and I agree, the Cultural, Ethnic and Racial map of our country. The CER map."
The Louisiana Governor again signaled to Cathy Lane at the table and the previous image slid on the screen, superimposing on the CER map.
![[cermap2]](Polarized-CER2.jpg)
"Ladies and gentlemen, if I may bring your attention to the western half of Louisiana, you can see that the line marking the extent of the Southwest Region in its eastern demographic border is now inside the western half of the state. That border is now forty miles inside the state, in my District 4, and goes all the way down the entire depth of the state through District 3. For what matters in being part of America, that part of the state of Louisiana, all of its population centers--Shreveport, Mansfield, Natchitoches, DeRidder, all the way down to Lake Charles in the south--no longer meet the criteria. The culture, the people, the language, the holidays and traditions, the food, the music, the arts and entertainment. The sight and sound of everything is now of Hispanic flavor. You might as well be in Texas. Or New Mexico. Better yet, you might as well be in Mexico.
"The white flight that began years ago, going back twenty years during the Spanglish administration, continues today. You can no longer walk out of your house especially on a weekend without being approached by a handyman; somebody offering to cut your grass, prune your hedges, fix your roof, clean your house. The drug problem has worsened. They're not just selling at school yards. They're now at your street corners, shopping centers, convenience stores, foodstore parking lots. That is why even if I still enjoy a strong support of my constituent in the District, the remaining whites and a majority of the middle-class, educated Anglats, I don't feel I can effectively represent my District any longer. I am beginning to consider turning down my party's nomination for re-election next year.
That met with a lot of disapproval as indicated by many heads shaking sideways and a few throaty moans. Seeing this, she immediately had a sense of discourtesy and regretted having said her last sentence. But thanks to another woman across the table from her--Colorado Governor Liz Murphy--who shot up from her seat with a hand raised up high, motioning to her first and to everybody to let her speak.
"Yes, Liz," Congresswoman Jennifer Guitreau said last before sitting down.
"Thank you, Jennie," the Colorado Governor said, smiling appreciatively at the Louisiana Congresswoman. She was a tall woman, five eleven, a hundred fifty. Late fifties, hale and athletic-looking but without losing her feminine appeal. "I, too, have the same feeling as you do about what have been said here tonight regarding this administration, those in control in the government right now and what's been happening to the country especially with the coming of this CNABS.
"Going back to what you pointed out in your District, Jennie, and south of it, I too would like to bring to everyone's attention what has been happening in my state of Colorado."
As the Governor spoke those words, Ray Karpinski (Beta), who had been holding his breath as he watched the figure continue to inch towards the sliding glass doors to the basement floor of the house forty feet away finally got word on the radio from Lance Picket (Alpha) what to do.
"Take him out now! Over!"
He was fifteen yards away from the intruder on the green backyard that sloped up twelve degrees before it leveled at a concrete outdoor lounge next to the house. He was thinking either rush the distance to the man for a contact kill, the same as what killed Alpha One, but risk being detected before he could get to him, or just shoot the son of a bitch. He opted for the latter but when he got in position to aim at the target, he realized he hadn't attached the suppressor. He immediately rolled to his side to take it out of his jacket side pouch. The figure continued to inch towards the basement glass doors behind which the Alliance meeting was in progress with Colorado Governor Liz Murphy now saying:
"If you look at that map on the screen again, you will notice how the demographic border of the southwestern region of the country extends north into my state. That border now goes over fifty miles north into southern Colorado. Talking about white flight, with the influx of newcomers from the south in recent years--mostly migrants, illegals, from New Mexico, Arizona and Oklahoma--people who have been living there for generations have abandoned their lands and moved farther up north. We no longer have an American society as we know it from days of old in that part of Colorado. Hardly anybody speaks English anymore down there. In major population centers such as Durango, Cortez, Alamosa, Trinidad. If you're driving through and stopped for something to eat, you better have a taste for all sorts of roadside Mexican food. Many won't even know what you're talking about if you asked for a hot dog. Enchilada, burrito, taco, fajita, yes.
"That part of the country in Colorado and south of it all the way down to the [Mexican] border is no longer America. But for the official survey maps of the government, it is now part of Mexico. And with the coming of CNABS, it will soon be officially part of Mexico."
More gestures of disapproval, the air filling with anger and despair. Before the Colorado Governor could say another word, Congresswoman Linda Conrad, 4th District Arkansas, was up on her feet. She looked feisty and ready to explode. Without asking to be acknowledged by the current speaker, she said heatedly.
"That's not going to happen. Not with my state of Arkansas! According to that map on the screen, what has happened in the western part of Louisiana has already happened in the western part of Arkansas. The southwest demographic border has moved thirty miles inside of my state, right in my District 4. But we're doing something about it even as I speak. We, the legal citizens and longtime American residents and landowners of Arkansas, are not budging another inch. We are reclaiming, instead, the American culture and way of life of that part of the state. We are pushing out those undocumented aliens, foreign invaders, out of the state. Like what I heard here tonight from our loyal American Governors of Oklahoma, Nevada, Virginia, California, we in the state of Arkansas will gather our forces to defend the sovereignty of our state, yes, even against this treasonous administration and the trick it's concocting with that [Coalition of North American Border-States] bullshit bill!
"Everyday now, we have loyal and patriotic citizens, volunteers (vigilantes), patrolling our state lines and turning back those foreign invaders from the southwest and anywhere else they may be coming from."
Outside, Beta had installed the 9mm suppressor on his Glock 20 and rolled back on his elbows to aim and fire. But a split second before he could, he heard a pop--much the same sound as his suppressor would have allowed out of the muzzle--from the direction of Alpha Three near the rear of the property in the backwoods. He was then thrown back by his left shoulder where he felt a sudden jolt and a searing pain at the same time. Now he realized that he had been shot.
The two other intruders that had been spotted by A-2 and A-3 had seen him moving towards his target and one of them had shot him. He lay on his back as flat on the ground as possible for a few seconds, minutes, it seemed, as his mind raced for his next move. Then it dawned on him: shortly after nightfall when they deployed around the property, he was walking back towards the basement doors, closer than where his target was now, when a pair of floodlights turned on. Motion sensor lights!
Instinctively, he glanced around, saw and got hold of a two-foot long fallen branch nearby. Quickly then, he flipped his radio to broadcast and whispered on the microphone: "This is Beta. Alpha, I'm hit! Everybody--combat alert!" Then he hurled the dead branch towards the basement glass doors. While it arched in the air toward the house past the intruder, light from two 250-watt halogen lamps flooded the back of the house to around a hundred feet of the backyard.
Ray Karpinski saw his target, now thirty feet from the doors, clear as daylight. The man only had a moment to react looking up at the sudden change around him from darkness to light. Two rounds struck him in succession from Beta's Glock 20, one on his right cheek and another on his right rib cage.
The next moment, a gunbattle ensued with A-2 and A-3 on one side and, on the other side, the two other intruders who had now crept closer to the house. Although they were still beyond the range of the floodlights, there were enough spilled illumination for A-2 and A-3 to make them out. Rounds were exchanged between the two sides. Two rounds from A-3, whose line of sight to one of the targets formed a straight line to the basement entrance, missed and shattered the glass doors.
Meanwhile, bleeding and in pain while trying to get in position where he was on the grass to help in the gunbattle, Ray Karpinski saw--to his disbelief--the one he had shot get up and rush to the now open doorways to the basement floor inside, shooting blindly through the opaque drapes that still visually concealed the interior and all the people there.
Ray Karpinski shot him again several times and the intruder collapsed halfway inside through the drapes.
At this time, A-2 and A-3, along with Charlie and Delta who came from the other side of the house, had silenced the other two intruders. As quickly as all the commotion had occurred did the silence then resume around the house.
Inside the basement, Governor Henry Flynn who was the first to react when the glass doors suddenly collapsed, had stood up from his seat and yelled out to everybody to drop on the floor. At the same time, somebody reached up to the light switch and turned it off. Over the span of two minutes, in total darkness, they listened to the activities outside, felt the terror of several rounds rip through the room randomly from the wounded intruder until he collapsed at the doorway. The sound coming from the outside which had then become audible died down quickly and an eerie night silence followed.
Nobody moved the next couple of minutes. Then the drapes swung open and three men, silhouetted by the floodlights outside, appeared at the doorway over the body of the dead intruder. For a second, everybody kept still on the floor, terrified, until they heard the man in the middle of the doorway say quickly.
"FBI! Agent Lance Picket."