As Court moved past the car he pulled an old, shredded tire out of the weeds. It was only a small-sized spare, but it must have weighed twenty pounds. His injured right forearm hurt when he held that much weight in his right hand, so he hefted it in his left and continued on towards the porch.

As he started up the stairs he stopped suddenly. Something about the scene triggered a sense of danger. He figured it out quickly—it was odd there were no bright lights back here; it would have made sense considering the other security measures on the property—unless, of course, the back entrance was booby-trapped.

Court still had the lighter, so he fired it up and held it out, and immediately he saw the glint of metal suspended two feet in front of his face. A dozen or more large metal fishhooks hung on fishing line five and a half feet off the ground, at eye level of the average man. The thin filament was attached to the columns on either side of the steps up to the back porch, and the hooks hung ready to dig into the face and rip out the eyes of anyone unaware of this security measure. Obviously those who lived or worked in the stash house also knew to avoid the stairs of the back porch and instead to come and go by stepping up onto the two-foot-high porch on either side of the stairs.

Court saw a milk crate positioned to his right to help with that, so he sidestepped the booby trap and climbed up the rest of the way to the door.

He heard shouting and barking in the driveway now, and the gate rattled off to his left. Court assumed the Aryan Brotherhood men and their Nazi dog had just figured out they’d been tricked.

As he made to reach for the handle of the heavy back door, light engulfed the porch and the door flew open. A man appeared in the doorway, backlit from a bulb in the room behind him, a Kalashnikov rifle held high. Court rushed forward, batted the weapon to the side with his right hand, and banged the twenty-pound rubber tire into the man’s face with his left, striking him in the jaw, snapping the man’s head back, and knocking him to the floor.

Court entered the house by stepping over the dazed man, and he closed and locked the metal door behind him. He found himself in a poorly lit dark-paneled hallway floored with cheap linoleum. The thick smell of cigarette smoke, pot, and rotting garbage assaulted his nostrils and clawed at his eyes, and the incessant music, played at a volume that made Court think of a concert in hell, further disrupted his senses.