It took longer than I would have thought, but eventually the helicopters landed on the nearby pasture and spun down their engines. When all was quiet I could hear the sounds of armed men and cooling car engines. Needing to know what was going on out there I climbed the tree I'd been resting against. Once I was high enough I could see through to the open ground on one side. What I saw through a narrow opening of canopy was two police cars parked about forty feet apart. Behind each of those cars I saw a police officer. I figured if they had three cars in that narrow field of view they would have a similar distribution all around the woods. I was too tired to do the math, but it was clear there were a lot of police out there.
Soon one of the helicopters began to spin up, then lifted off the ground. I heard it in a low hover over the trees on the side of the woods I'd entered on. It didn't take me long to discern by the sound that it was performing a grid search. This didn't make any sense since the canopy of trees was too thick to see through. This mystery was solved when the helicopter went over my position and I could look up and get a good view of it. Attached to the forward belly section was an infrared camera pod. I got a better look at it than I'd like because when it was directly above me it stopped and hovered there.
There was no doubt that the pilot was looking at a thermal image of my thirsty body hugging the tree, yet I froze, unwilling to move and remove any doubt they might have had. Yet there could be no doubt. I'd seen video images of what was displayed from an infrared image, so I knew exactly what they were looking at. Knowing they were up there making fun of me for staying still to hide from them didn't change my decision. I didn't move. Neither did the helicopter. After an uncomfortably long period of time the helicopter moved away and landed nearby. I heard its engine spinning down and then silence.
The next sound I heard was an amplified voice calling my name. Stating the obvious the voice informed me that I was completely surrounded and there was no possible chance of escape. It then suggested that I come out with my hands up. I thought about it for about ten heart beats. Everything the guy said was true. I was completely surrounded and there was no possible hope of getting away. As much as I despised the idea of giving up, there simply wasn't any other alternative. I guess getting killed was an option, but not something I would opt for given a choice. Here I had a clear choice, so I called out that I would come out.
I've climbed enough trees in my life to know that going down is always more difficult than going up, but going down this tree was unnaturally difficult. I'd climbed the thing like a monkey in heat. Going up I had been fighting for a way out. Even though I knew I was surrounded and that there didn't appear to be a way out I still had hope that I'd find one when I climbed up this tree. Now I had no hope. I had decided to surrender, but before I could do that I had to reach the ground. I've never accepted not having hope and I despise the idea of surrendering, so it was a long and painful decent from that tree.
I assumed they heard me shout that I'd surrender because they didn't say anything else as I took my time getting out of the tree and the two helicopters stayed on the ground. Of course they knew I'd been hiding high in the tree so perhaps they understood it would take a while to reach the ground so they were being patient. Or it might have been that it felt to me like it took an hour to reach the ground when in fact it only took a few minutes. Whatever the case, the instant my feet touched the ground my plans changed.
Recall that I didn't want to write about this part of my life. Well, this next part is one of the reasons I don't want to write about it. I don't like things I don't understand, so I really don't like writing about those things. Nor do I like making myself sound crazy. The next part of my story does both.
The moment my feet touched the ground I heard a voice. I know this voice was just in my head, but it sounded like it came from all around me. Like James Earl Jones doing the God voice in a movie. Not that it sounded like James Earl Jones, but that same effect. That voice said, "My warriors don't surrender."
I was either crazy or God had spoken to me. At the time I was sure it was God. I thought it was strange that this would happen, but I was sure this was the case. Today, seventeen years later, I'm still pretty sure that it was God. Of course this is CRAZY and I will accept the label. I'd rather write that the voice was a stress induced hallucination, which it could have been. But I'm determined to be as honest as possible in the telling of my tale, so the truth is that I believed then and now that God was suggesting I not surrender.
Note that the voice didn't actually tell me what to do, but rather suggested that if I was in fact one of His warriors then I wouldn't surrender. I know this is splitting hairs, but my analytical mind has attributed this to God's having given us free will. He didn't actually tell me what to do, only suggested that if I was up to the challenge I wouldn't surrender. Crazy I know, but I accepted the challenge and made the immediate decision not to surrender.
This entire line of logic was problematic in that getting away was impossible. I knew the cops wouldn't simply give up and go away. I gave a brief thought to the idea that if something else of more pressing importance occurred they might leave me for the larger problem. This was the summer of 1999, so I hadn't considered a 911 type disaster, but that was what it would have taken for them to leave me alone. Not having a better plan, I began to walk towards the edge of the woods to see if I could spot a place I could slip out through. At this point they must have gotten tired of waiting because I heard the sound of one of the helicopter's engine spinning up. Before it could lift off the ground I moved away from the tree where they had spotted me before.
The only place to hide was a dead tree that had fallen over a slight indent in the ground. You couldn't call it a hope because it wasn't deep enough to conceal my prone body. It might be enough to hide me from a visual search at night if the searchers lacked a flashlight, but that was about it. There was no way the dead tree would conceal me from someone walking by in the bright morning light and absolutely no way it would shield me from a helicopter equipped with infrared. Yet it was all I could find for cover so I crawled under the dead tree. I was so exposed that what I was doing could hardly be called hiding.
The helicopter went straight to the tree I'd been in before. It only hovered over that spot for a moment before moving out in a circle that grew with each pass. It wasn't long before the second helicopter lifted into the air and flew a slow circle around the woods. The one with the infrared camera settled at one end of the woods and began flying from one side to the other. From my Coast Guard experience, I recognized the helicopter's movement as a grid search. I could only see it when it crossed the center section but it was easy to follow its sound. I briefly considered attempting to run into an area it had already searched as it swept to an opposite end, but discounted the idea. While it was possible to avoid the infrared camera in that manner, with so many cops and such small woods it was likely the officers were entering the trees as the helicopter cleared it. If so I'd likely be shot as I ran towards the row of searchers.
With no other viable option, I laid still and waited for the helicopter to pass over me. At that point it would hold over me for the ground forces to come and root me out.
The search was through so it took some time for the helicopter to pass over me. When it did I looked up through the canopy of trees and had a perfect view of the infrared pod on the front. I was so shocked that it passed over me without stopping that it took a moment for me to register what had happened. There was a second of hope before I realized they must have kept going so I didn't know my new hiding spot had been discovered. It was the only logical conclusion. This would mean that a SWAT team would soon join me. They were locked and loaded, and a little apprehensive about what I would do. Not wanting to be killed where I lay I spread my arms out and opened my hands so they could see that they were empty.
When the helicopter completed its search I heard it fly out of the range of my hearing. I'd been wondering about its fuel supply and figured it was low and going to the nearest airport for some Jet-A. That or it wasn't needed any longer since they knew exactly where I was. I couldn't hear the second helicopter so it had either landed or left while the search helicopter had my full attention. Either way it was very quiet. In the absence of rotor noise, I should have been able to hear something from the small army of police officers surrounding me but there was nothing. No bullhorn giving me orders, no keys jingling and no men talking. It was like they'd given up and left, but I didn't think that was possible.
Beyond all reasoning I fell asleep wondering if I was all alone.
I woke to the sound of keys. Then voices. Lots of voices. I heard the command of a dog handler, then soft sounds of a working dog. I knew I was caught so I lay perfectly still with my eyes closed. I didn't want to see what happened next, but I also knew that a large percentage of the population could sense it when someone was looking at them. I didn't have a prayer of not being found, but I'd long since trained myself not to look at cops when I didn't want them to notice me, so my eyes were closed.
The dogs were so close I could hear one panting in the heat, a reminder of my own thirst. Unable to resist I opened one eye for a quick look to see a dog on a short leash with a uniformed police officer in tow. At the handler's encouragement he continued to sniff the ground. Assuming they were using my clothes from the Yukon for scent, I expected the dog to turn towards me and alert the cops. To my surprise the dog put his nose to the ground, sniffed around a little, then led his handler away from me. I closed my eyes and continued to listen to the odd sounds of men moving by my position without seeing me.
It was not easy to lie still believing that at any moment a bullet could tear through my body, but that is what I did. I was beginning to believe that they had seen me and ignored me in hopes that I would make a wrong move. I envisioned a sniper zeroed in on me, a .308 bullet eager to rip through my body if I moved. Paranoid as that sounds, it was the only thing that made sense. They didn't want to catch me. They wanted to kill me, but they needed me to move first so they could kill me. All they needed was for me to move. So I lay perfectly still, thirsty, sore, and raw with fear. I laid like that for hours thinking I would be dead in the next minute. It wasn't until darkness had fully overtaken the woods that I moved.
After what had to have been more than twelve hours laying in that shallow indent my body was stiff. Moving was painful. Both arms and one of my legs were asleep from lack of circulation. Even my groin was numb, which was disconcerting. Careful to move slow and silently I stretched my body to cause blood to circulate into my limbs. When my leg began to hurt I knew it was getting the blood it needed so I took my first step. My leg failed me, but I managed to fall without making much noise. My second attempt to walk worked better, but the movement was painful. Had my life depended on my ability to run I'd be dead. But I could walk if I moved my leg slow, so I carefully moved through the center of the woods. After ten minutes of exploration I believed I was alone in the woods. I knew I wasn't completely alone because I picked up a faint whiff of cigarette smoke.
At the time I was in too much pain, and too tired and thirsty to consider what circumstance had left me in the woods alone and not dead or in jail, but several days later when I considered the issue my only rational explanation was that God had helped me. It's an odd circumstance when Divine intervention is the only rational explanation, but it's still all I can come up with. Supernatural help is the only reason I wasn't caught that day.
Having no idea what to expect I approached the edge of the woods on hands and knees, then went all the way to the ground to a crawl. At the clearing I saw police cars and officers who had made no attempt to conceal themselves. After a few minutes of observing them it was clear they were relaxed, and in no way on alert for danger from the woods. I may never know for sure, but I think that they had been ordered to guard the woods by someone, most likely the feds, but the officers on the ground didn't believe I was in the woods they guarded. There were plenty of them there, spread out but in enough force to keep me in the woods, but they were too relaxed. Though the cars were spread evenly around the woods, the officers were bunched together, talking and smoking.
Looking at it, I was sure they were just going through the motions of following orders they didn't agree with. But those orders had to have been given for a reason. Too much overtime was being spent on those men for this to have been for no reason. The only reason I could think of was that in the morning a new search of the woods would be conducted. That wouldn't matter to me as I'd be long gone by morning.
I worked my way around the edge of the woods until I found a slight depression that ran between two of the police cars. It looked like a trail cut by runoff rain water. It was far from a ditch, not near deep enough to hide my body, but it was better than flat ground. I crawled between those police cars so slowly that it took a good twenty minutes before I was far enough past the police cars that I risked rising. Covered by the dark night I ran.