The connection wasn't very good to begin with, so Jack Idema hunkered down in the passenger seat of his brand-new lightly armored Toyota SUV. His flak jacket and his black- and-white-checked kaffiyah bunched up around his neck as he leaned down far enough to smell the oil that glistened on his assault rifle. His wife's voice faded in and out over the satellite link from their home, some seven thousand miles away.

The feds had been at the shop again, she told him. It was the usual routine. For weeks now, federal agents, FBI men, had been keeping Viktoria Running-Wolf under tight surveillance. Sometimes it seemed like they were watching every move she made, showing up unannounced at the dog-walking business she ran near their home just outside Fort Bragg in Fayetteville, N.C., quizzing her and even some of her customers about Jack's "operation" in Afghanistan.

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The whole ordeal rattled Viktoria. But it really ticked off Jack Idema, so much so that he claimed to have called the FBI and warned them to leave his wife alone.

"Don't you ever set foot on my...property again, don't you ever talk to my wife again, don't you ever go into her place of business again or I'll...shoot every one of you," Idema claimed to have warned them.

What was his business in Afghanistan? That's what the feds claimed they wanted to know.