RUDOLPH MANHUNT FINDS ONLY SKEPTICS By Laura Parker, USA TODAY Inside News 12/15/98- Updated 11:28 PM ET The Nation's Homepage ANDREWS, N.C. — People in these parts are convinced the federal manhunt for bombing suspect Eric Robert Rudolph is not going to end well. 'I don't think it will be quiet,'' says Jack Thompson, who served 12 years as Cherokee County sheriff until his defeat last month. ''I don't think Eric will come out and say, 'I give up,' and it won't end quiet and peaceful.'' The other prevailing theory is that Rudolph is not hiding in the bush, even though federal authorities have concentrated their efforts on a cave-to-cave search through the lush Nantahala National Forest in the Appalachian Mountains. ''He's in somebody's basement, eating good people's cooking and watching CNN,'' says Tim Rasmussen, a local lawyer. ''It would be naive to believe he doesn't have help.'' How else, the locals say, to explain the part-time carpenter's success at eluding a federal manhunt that has dragged on for nearly 11 months? Rudolph, 32, has been sought since Jan. 29. He is charged with four bombings in Georgia and Alabama that killed two people and wounded more than 110, including the bombing at the 1996 Olympics in Atlanta and the bombing of an abortion clinic in Birmingham in January. A camera- man also died several hours after the Olympics blast. Since Rudolph disappeared, he has eluded a team of up to 200 federal agents, Forest Service tracking guides, bloodhounds and helicopters equipped with heat sensors designed to detect body warmth. Despite a $1 million reward offered by the Southeast Bomb Task Force, headquartered in a defunct sewing machine factory here, no one has come forward with information that has helped the search. Not even the weather has cooperated. The unseasonably warm nights of late November and early December hampered the effectiveness of the heat-seeking equipment. Still, the federal team has expanded again to 200 for the winter search. Jackie Foust, who runs the Cherokee Restaurant, has added ''Rudolph burgers'' to her menu. They come with an onion ring on top: ''It's supposed to signify that the FBI's running around in circles,'' she says. The hill country here, just south of the Great Smokey Mountains National Park, turns out to be a good place to be a fugitive. The terrain is rugged, the people remote. Agents have looked through 300 caves and abandoned mines and brushed up against a prickly population full of independent-minded families skeptical of federal authority. ''Do you remember what they used to do in these mountains in the '20s and '30s, sis? Moonshine,'' says David Luther, whose family has lived in the hollows for generations. ''Who do you think it was that used to lock our grand- fathers up for making moonshine? Resident John Keller says he's so weary of the choppers he's thinking of putting Christmas lights on the roof, spelled out to say: ''He's Not Here.'' Last week, Turchie announced flights will be curtailing on Wednesday nights and Sundays. ''It's like too many people in an elevator,'' Rasmussen says. ''We've got highly adrenalized people with unlimited resources in this little town. Tensions go up the longer the elevator is stuck between floors.'' Phillip Rogers, a mechanic with incredibly bad timing, has learned first- hand how tenuous relations are with the agents. Last month, someone fired eight rounds into the task force compound. One bullet grazed an agent's hair. That same night, Rogers was in his backyard playing with his son's toy laser. Unaware of the shooting, Rogers shined the laser toward a helicopter as it passed over. "I was trying to see how far it would go,'' he says. A few seconds later, Rogers saw two red lasers on his chest. ''There were two red dots that hit me dead center on my heart,'' he says. ''That was my first indication of 'Oh Lord, what in the world have I done?' '' Rogers went down to the Andrews Police Department. The agents swooped in and Rogers was hauled away to jail overnight. He was charged with a misdemeanor, ''forcibly assaulting, resisting, opposing, impeding, intimidating and interfering with a federal officer.'' His trial is set for February. Within days, leaflets began circulating through Andrews, asking residents how long they were going to ''tolerate the presence of these brutal tyrants.'' Rasmussen, Rogers' lawyer, says his client is lucky to be alive: ''If he'd had a gun in his hand that night, they'd have killed him.''