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Wright made his own ordnance and raised Rottweilers on the land he owned, which included a big stone house and a smaller wooden dwelling across the street. He regularly patrolled his property with a gun slung on his hip. Today's plan called for something more extreme.The tall, imposing, gray-bearded sharpshooter had loaded his .50-caliber sniper rifle with 5 1/2-inch armor-piercing shells. He also had more than 40 firearms, several containers of gunpowder, material to make pipe bombs and thousands of rounds of ammo in the big house. Clark, normally a shy, quiet woman, was armed, sources at the scene would later say, with an assault weapon.
Her boyfriend had a beef with the city. Wright had been convicted of using his land as a dumpsite -- and today was the day his appeal hearing was scheduled. But he wasn't going to appeal. He was going to go to war and had developed a plan: He crossed the road to the small house and set it on fire. Then he returned and took up a position on the side of the stone house. Clark, sources believe, hunkered down with an assault rifle at a window on the upper floor. As flames brightened the sky of the bleak winter afternoon, they sighted their firearms and waited.
"Code 2, fire standby, possible explosion." The call relayed from a dispatcher crackled over the radio. Paramedic Mary Seymour and her partner were sitting in an ambulance at their post about a mile away. Turning on the siren, they sped through the streets, lights flashing. They could see smoke and flames on a hill in a lightly wooded, rural area.
Seymour was tall, lean and fit -- a triathlete. At 39, the mother of two had been a paramedic for 20 years. Yet, her job could still surprise and thrill her. Most fire calls were routine, involving only property damage. But sometimes, Seymour knew, what she did made the difference between life and death.
Driving up to the burning house on Grandview, Seymour could feel the heat radiating through the open window of the ambulance.
"Truck 15 responding," Fire Capt. Patrick Martin called in to his dispatcher. "We have smoke from the station" -- firefighter shorthand that meant he could see the smoke from where he stood, about two miles away.
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