The alarm device made a high pitched tone that elderly people couldn't hear much but was guaranteed to wake us from the deepest sleep. We'd only been asleep for an hour. I woke up with his salty flavor still in my mouth, his scent still on my hands. He read the bulletin while I took a quick shower and got dressed. The alarm unit said we'd be picked up `in uniform' at the front door in ten minutes, it showed a countdown clock. I set our gear case near the front door and unlocked it. I'm sure they'd be in the driveway soon and they didn't like to wait. In our line of work seconds count.
While David took his 90 second shower I ate an apple and finished getting into my batsuit. From the bedroom I heard strange voices in the living room, our transport must have arrived, they usually just walked in the front door. A minute later I was ready. I set his batsuit on the bathroom sink. We shut down the house and climbed into the back seat of a large black Lincoln SUV and backed onto the street and quietly left for Transmountain Road. Our direction of travel was the biggest giveaway about our destination; probably La Tuna Federal Prison.
Once we got near the mountains I opened the window and tossed my apple core into the desert. A lot of bugs would eat well tomorrow.
La Tuna was a medium security federal prison near a small farming town north-west of El Paso, near the New Mexico state line and I-10. From the street it resembled an old Spanish Mission.
One wing of La Tuna (the notorious E-Block) held newly captured soldiers of the Mexican drug cartels, they could attend court and complete their trials from special AV rooms inside the block, so they could attend court at almost any federal facility and never leave E-Block. The bad part was it made that facility the potential target of private armies in Mexico. La Tuna was only fifteen miles from the Mexican border and was surrounded by lots of flat sandy desert. E-Block was operated as a prison within a prison and the guards and prisoners were isolated from the rest of the prison population. Even the food prep and maintenance people had no prisoner contact.
Very few government people knew the prison was prepared for this scenario years ago using a small tunnel boring machine (TBM). La Tuna had two eight foot tunnels that started below a wholesale car parts warehouse near the prison. There was a thriving business for used car parts and impounded cars around the prison, which was a fantastic place to hide the tunnel access points.
The TBMs spent five days boring each eight foot diameter tubes through bedrock that terminated on the far side of the prison, but that was years ago. How that was accomplished was a very interesting story in itself but that contractor has made dozens of similar tunnels around the country without attracting any media or civilian attention.
According to our briefing, six prisoners had taken over E-Block but refused to negotiate with the warden's staff, their silence alerted us that an extraction was planned. The prison used cell jamming technology but they knew there were simple methods for communicating with the outside, they suspected a crooked lawyer as the pigeon used to transport documents to the cartel leaders in Mexico.
We were authorized to use deadly force to prevent escape but killing people was not the goal. Our tool kit was packed inside a lightweight black plastic case. David and I were also considered part of the technology. We both had implants, one near our vocal chords and another near our ears. We could be tracked by satellite and handheld gear, even from miles away, with accuracy down to a quarter inch. Our Whispernet implants allowed us to voice communicate without opening our mouths or making any sounds, sort of like whispering into each other's ear. We also wore augmented reality glasses that shared their video and audio with others on our team. They had stereoscopic IR cameras and could link directly with our team so not only could we secretly talk to each other, we could also talk to the team. We knew of fifteen other agents like ourselves in the USA with implants. All of us were Seal School grads. One of the other teams were a hetero couple the same ages as us, but we only met one time at the DOD training facility near Bullhead City, Arizona, across the river in far southern Nevada.
The E-Block prisoners were housed on the first floor, they barricaded themselves inside the top floor and prison officials thought they were cutting through the roof, expecting helicopter extraction. Our tunnel passed below that cell block and had shafts that came up into storage rooms and utility closets. Our entrances were often incorporated into air conditioning and high voltage transformer panels which made them appear highly commonplace since utility ducts were always used in large buildings.
In that end of the building our access continued to the roof and would put us near them. The report said the prison had cut off the air conditioning in the block. Since they employed noisy HVAC equipment we asked for the AC to be immediately turned back on, before we went below ground word came back that it was running again. Nobody explained how they made it to the third floor so we assumed they broke locks and forced stairway doors open.
We had a four thousand foot hike through the muggy damp tunnel beneath the desert. It was totally dark with standing water on the floor about four inches deep so we walked along the side. David and I had a chat as we walked inside what looked like a large municipal sewer line, but it was only rain water. Dave instructed the commander to have the tunnels pumped and inspected soon. Luckily we saw no roaches or rats.
He was in the lead with his glasses on, carrying an IR flashlight. I carried the case and my primary weapon, a fully auto 9mm with IR aiming laser, noise suppression, and a very long magazine. It was velcro'd to my chest and tethered to my body armor. We also carried gear in packs around our waists, some was for silently killing human threats. Our body armor went from toe to head and offered camouflage as well as protection from knife, gas, ammunition, blast, fire, and percussion. These suits cost almost as much as the suits worn in outer space. All this gear could link to our glasses and also be seen by the commander over in the warehouse by the junk yard. We had two-way communications and mapping displays on our forearms to supplement what we saw in our augmented reality glasses. Our gear linked to the comms router in the equipment case, so when we talked to the commander we did so via that impact resistant black case we always carried, but never inside a retail store or a restaurant.
After a twenty eight minute walk we arrived at the second ladder. David jumped up and grabbed the bottom rung of the steel ladder that ran down the tunnel wall. He reached the steel cage that covered the bottom of this tunnel and unlocked it. With a loud squeak it swung down and allowed us to climb up to ground level. I clipped the case to David's lower back and we started our ascent, forty feet up to ground level then up three stories to a utility closet. As we climbed higher the shaft got narrower and changed from round to rectangular until he scraped the corners of the case on the concrete walls. We adjusted our posture to keep our hips closer to the ladder, which was a raw steel bar bent into a wide U-shape and formed into the vertical concrete shaft. On one side of the shaft ran conduits that brought electricity into the upper floors of the building. If anyone servicing AC equipment saw the tube they would never suspect it was part of a secret underground tunnel system. Most buildings had shafts for utilities to reach the upper floors, except this one didn't appear on the blueprints. Taller buildings often used elevator shaft walls to mount utility conduits, we used those too but some had to have ladders installed their entire length.
I'm sure somewhere in the Pentagon someone had already written a media cover story to explain how police re-took E-Block, a story that would not mention Seals, secret technology, or hidden tunnels.
By the time we reached the third floor we felt rather hot, but we could hear and feel the rumble of the AC units. David put his hand flat on the wall, and said it felt like they had a bearing going out. Somewhere in the distance we heard the sound of a power saw cutting concrete and occasional hammering too. Very carefully David turned the latches and opened the panel, we crawled out of the electrical panel and stepped into a tiny closet and looked at our surroundings.
According to the floor plans there should be another ladder above us, it was an original roof access ladder. Each floor had its own AC units that were all supplied with chilled water and 480volt AC power.
The door beside us opened into a hallway near where prison people said the escapees were located. We heard men talking in Spanish. They were arguing about their rescue, what time it should arrive and if all of them would make it, someone asked if they'd get shot at. Someone said the helicopter was painted the same as the Texas Ranger's (State Police) so no Gringos would shoot at it. After examining the floor plan David asked me to activate two spiders. I reached into a case on my hip and pulled out two spiders and switched them on.
Spiders were tiny mechanical drones on six legs. They looked like actual spiders but contained advanced computers, two-way radio links, AV cameras, and they could swarm or work by remote control. I turned them on and set them on David's shoulder since it was too cramped for either of us to bend over and reach the floor, I was sandwiched between his back and the wall. The spiders immediately linked with our gear case and downloaded detailed building blueprints and data about enemy locations and strengths. Their mission programs were to confirm enemy location and size, weapons, activity, and any technology they may be using. We've learned from experience to not trust the information provided by prison officials. After fifty seconds they climbed down David's clothing, squeezed under the door and went towards opposite ends of the hallway to locate humans and do basic surveillance. We watched the drone that went in search of humans. The other spider was to assess perimeter security. We didn't want SWAT busting in with guns blasting any more than the escapees.
Our glasses were already activated and showed us the floor plan and the location of the spiders as they silently crawled along the hallway walls. I switched us to show live video on one lens and the floor plan on the other lens. The lead spider quickly located its prey in a room at the end of the hallway, it entered the room and climbed onto a long countertop then climbed up on top of wall mounted cabinets that gave it an ideal location to provide video of them and their work.
They had one desk lamp aimed at the ceiling, and we saw two office desks stacked up to serve as a work platform, they were using a commercial saw like the ones used to cut concrete floors and sidewalks. One guy was working the saw and trying to cut a square hole in the concrete roof above him. It looked like they forgot to obtain goggles so he was dealing with dust in his face while three other men sat in chairs talking, and one guy paced the hallway to listen for prison SWAT that might break-in and open fire. We also saw several prison guard rifles they had captured, but it seemed the main effort was the hole in the roof. David radioed confirmation: six men on the third floor cutting a hole in the roof, three rifles visible but not being used.
According to the plans, this part of the third floor was used as office space by the prison for managing the facility. It looked like an old Army barracks with dormitory bays, large empty rooms that would be set up with bunk beds and steel lockers to house soldiers but was converted into offices. The building was basically pre-formed concrete floors and steel reinforced concrete block walls. The windows were all narrow vertical slits, too narrow for any adult to escape through, but allowed in sunlight and were wide enough to look outside, one eye at a time.
The spider in the hallway found the cell block doors were chained shut and beyond the doors sat a prison SWAT team ready to go, but how they would breach the doors was not evident based on imaging. Why would you build a prison that was too strong for your own SWAT team to break? We couldn't laugh about it, but we'd seen this problem before in other scenarios.
The hallway spider fit under the doors and followed along the wall and got within three feet of the SWAT team, all of them seated on the floor against the walls awaiting orders to storm the unit. The spider did not image any device for busting doors, so they were probably unaware they were chained and only pulled open, and appeared to be heavily reinforced steel doors.
A few minutes later it looked like the prisoners were halfway done cutting a three foot square hole in the roof.
After the hole was finished we guessed they would climb onto the roof and watch for the helicopter. David wondered what they would do when the three foot square chunk of reinforced concrete broke loose and fell onto the guy operating the saw. Maybe they had a plan for that but it wasn't apparent from watching IR drone video. The saw appeared to be one of the new ultra high speed battery powered saws with a diamond disc blade, kind of like a grinding wheel that could quickly cut through almost anything. Our scene commander over by the junkyard said the roof was painted and the concrete block would only weigh about forty pounds, one guy could push up while the other finished the cuts then once it broke loose they just shoved it straight up.
After the spider moved to provide a better image we looked closer at the hole and noticed they had wedges hammered into the cuts so it didn't fall. That finding explained the hammering we heard on the way up here. It was taking about six minutes per side and they were being as quiet as possible but didn't realize a pre-formed concrete element like that carried sound very well, like a guitar case and everyone in the building faintly heard the saw. To many people it may have sounded like a dentist's drill in the distance.
We took the time to compare the prison data on who was in the group of escapees, compared to pictures taken by the lead spider, and they matched. Score one for the prison guards, they got that one right. All of them were Mexicans captured in Chihuahua, Mexico months ago on international drug smuggling and murder charges. We had authorization to terminate any of them, or capture any we could safely. Our mission goal was to prevent the escape and would earn bonuses for prisoners captured alive. We didn't actually capture them, we had to facilitate their capture by local authorities.
The second spider had entered each room briefly and used its sensors to scan for body heat, but found nothing, everyone was in that one room. The SWAT team was relaxing just outside the cell block doors with all their gear, they had no clue we imaged them up close. But they were supposedly aware there was a DOD team somewhere in the building, most of them assumed we were on the roof because none of them knew about the tunnels. If any of them knew eventually the cartels would know too, so that's why they're secret, especially from anyone working at the prison. If the cartels knew about the tunnels they would have used them to escape instead of waiting for a very expensive and risky helicopter ride.
David told me he was ready to proceed so he silently turned the door knob and slowly opened the door. I felt a rush of cool air on my face and leaned my forehead against his upper back, I whispered, `thank you.' David reached back and gently patted my hip, then I raised my head and we left the utility closet and silently stepped into the dark hallway, closed the door, and moved into one of the dark office rooms, the one next to where the six guys were working on the hole. I kept one hand on his left hip as we silently moved across the wide hallway.
Up next: the Great Escape or Bust. Write the author: borischenaz gmail.
All my previous books from nifty.org are now on amazon, search for boris chen.