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Chapter 40
THE WHITE HOUSE IN UTAH
The little house on East 600 North Street in Spanish Fork, Utah, had seen better days. The white
slats of siding were chipped from years of neglect, as was the wooden fence on the edge of the
property. In all directions small white steeples rose into the Utah sky, offering endless places of
worship. This was, after all, Mormon country, home of the Latter-day Saints.
On a Thursday morning in mid-January 2013, every few minutes the silence was punctured by a
car passing through the nearby intersection. And in the distance there was the echoing rattle of the
wind irritating a dozen or so ragged American flags that lined the nearby streets.
But there was something unusual about the street that day. An uncommon number of cars were
parked along the road, including a windowless white van that sat across the street from the house. If a
passerby could have seen inside the van, he or she would have spotted a group of men checking the
chambers of their semiautomatic machine guns while others placed masks over their faces and
adjusted their bulletproof vests.
Just after 11:00 a.m., right as the HuHot Mongolian Grill across the street from the white house
opened its doors for the daily $8.99 all-you-can-eat buffet, a man emerged from the white van
wearing blue jeans, sneakers, and a dark blue jacket with a U.S. Postal Service emblem on its sleeve.
He walked up to the little white house with a small package in his hand and knocked loudly. “Hello!”
he yelled as his fist thudded against the screen door. “Anyone home?”
No one answered, but it was apparent that someone was indeed inside. The man with the postal
jacket dropped the package onto the decrepit checkered welcome mat on the stoop and headed back
toward the white van.
Nearby, Special Agent Carl Force of the DEA watched this spectacle from an unmarked police
car. “He’s not going to fall for this,” Carl said to another much older agent sitting next to him in the
car.
“Give it some time,” the older agent said. “He’ll come out.”
Carl waited, savoring the serenity of the moment: the vast open sky and the flapping flags, all
surrounded by the snowcapped Wasatch Mountains and the sweeping emptiness beyond. Carl had
ended up there, as had all the other men with him, as a result of his online persona Nob having
concocted a brilliant plan to have the Dread Pirate Roberts find a buyer for a kilo of cocaine. In no