The FBIs highly trained special operations unit, the Hostage Rescue Team, conducted a successful rescue operation in Midland City, Alabama on February 4th, 2013.

Jimmy Lee Dykes, a 65 year old Vietnam War veteran, stormed a school bus on January 29th shooting the driver (Charles Poland, 66) dead and kidnapping a five-year-old little boy. Ethan, the kindergartner, was taken to a fortified underground bunker that Dykes spent the last year constructing on his property.

Inside sources tell me that roughly thirty men from HRTs Blue and Gold teams were forward deployed to the site of the hostage situation while FBI negotiators attempted to coax the kidnapper into releasing Ethan and surrendering. On the seventh day of the hostage crisis, FBI agents monitoring a well armed Dykes through a hidden camera saw that the man’s mental state was rapidly deteriorating and decided to give the order to conduct the assault.

At 3:12 pm on Monday afternoon, the HRT shooters breached through the 6-by-8-foot bunker’s roof, rather than the built-in hatch, and immediately killed an armed Dykes and successfully rescued the young boy. According to official FBI statements the bunker was rigged with two improvised explosive devices and the search for other IEDs around the kidnapper’s property was still ongoing as of February 6th.

According to my sources within the FBI, the last hostage rescue conducted by the HRT was in Puerto Rico.