Chapter 3.
"Have you decided how to handle this?" I asked David.
"I'd like to take them alive, but they might have other plans." He whispered back, then added he felt they were probably all mentally focused on their helicopter ride to freedom.
The Whisper sensor was one centimeter from our vocal chords so you learned to talk without moving any air, the sensor picked it up and linked it to the receivers so you heard yourself and the other guy, we could talk directly over the link up to one hundred feet. It could not be turned off but it could be jammed which was the only way to stop it. The units were powered by body heat and were surgically implanted at a clinic in Washington, DC. We could also link to any nearby units on the same band as ours, it used an extremely high radio frequency, but at extremely low power levels. The main link was inside our equipment case, to Whisper we needed to be within one hundred feet of the case. We communicated with the rest of our team via sound gear in our glasses frames, all our team comms went through the case, our whispering was totally private.
I switched my glasses display to the escape room spider again and saw they already finished the third side and were hammering in foot-long wooden wedges. They switched saw operators, someone tied a shirt over his face so he could run the saw and keep his eyes squinted open. The last operator was at the sink washing his face and rinsing his eyes. David said he thought their saw was very expensive and wondered how they got it. I whispered back they probably ordered it on eBay and had it delivered to the third floor office. After I said that he reached over and squeezed my crotch as punishment, our bodies jiggled as we silently laughed. But, yes that was a very likely answer, it was there waiting for them. David said "...they asked the seller to make sure the battery packs were fully charged before it shipped," and we both silently chuckled again. I held my hands tightly over my mouth so no sounds escaped.
One thing I gotta say about my husband and me was we had the exact same sense of humor. Sometimes I suspected we were twins separated at birth, then reunited in college.
We discussed letting them finish the hole, but the boss wanted them captured at all costs. David argued that the hole only got them further above the ground, it did not itself constitute escape. He said the roof was a dead-end unless they had a rope to scale thirty feet down to the ground and then find a way through two fifteen foot tall chain link fences with barbed wire on top and guard towers with machine guns. The commander injected that nobody could shoot down a helicopter because that would endanger people inside and around the prison, but there was a large desert area to cross as they flew away from the prison. Then he added that if we could capture them and the helicopter and its crew it would be a huge win for America and increase our bonuses. I patted Dave on the arm and the commander agreed too. My mind briefly drifted off to think about a nice vacation with the bonus money, then a thought popped into my head, "They're armed, if we take them inside many would die because they're desperate and motivated, they won't hesitate to shoot." Dave argued then added, "Once they got on the roof and saw the chopper approaching the entire scenario will change."
The comms were silent briefly, then the commander said, "Okay, let them finish the hole, maybe one or more might be incapacitated by the falling slab of concrete."
David spoke, "That hole is only a few minutes from completion, Sir."
"Affirmative."
"Can anyone shoot at the roof from the guard towers?" I asked.
"Negative. This is a medium security prison, they never anticipated escape by helicopter." The commander replied and added, "The towers cannot see the roofs, only the walls, grounds, and the perimeter fences."
"Why are these guys in a medium security facility?" David asked.
"Because the State Department wanted them held near the border to try to make them more cooperative during trial, they're served ethnic food and enjoy traditional Mexican music and TV too. None of them ever caused trouble before for the prison or the other inmates. These guys are not MS13, they're private security for the cartel in Chihuahua," the commander said, then added that E-Block was a higher level of security, but David silently laughed at his remark and whispered to me that we have proof that his statement was not true.
"Can we gas them on the roof?" I asked.
"Negative, too windy."
"What is our desired outcome?" I asked.
"Optimally, we'd like to grab their chopper and its crew. They'd land on the roof, climb on board, then lift off but its fifteen miles of open desert to Mexico. When they touch down on the roof if you could get your drones onboard the chopper and shut down the engine after they left the roof they'd have to land just outside the prison fences where they'd be easier to capture." He whispered in my ear.
David had walked away from me to examine the ceiling of the room for possible routes to the roof, he shone his IR light at the ceiling and the walls looking for ducts or any other route to the roof. While he silently moved around shining his invisible light at the ceiling I whispered to him that they could escape the roof with a rope, bring the saw along and quickly cut long slits in both fences and make a dash towards the junkyards.
David replied that did not get them to Mexico but stuck in a desert with nothing to hide behind, no water, and fifteen miles of desert to cross.
"Chief, is there anything on the roof of this building near the roof ladder?" David asked the boss.
"Yes, one large box, and you can't bring the Batcase, it won't fit." Batcase was the nickname for our tool kit. David stopped and shone his light at me, I shrugged my shoulders and he walked over to me and whispered, "You want to take them outside the prison on the ground? We could send two spiders with chopper plans to disable the engine. It sounds like the Pentagon wants their chopper and the crew now. They'd confiscate the chopper which would be a big hit on the cartel too." I winked at him and shrugged my shoulders, meaning I'd do whatever he wanted.<>
I whispered back that "we'd have to quickly ID the chopper and upload the specs and release them to climb up the landing gear, if they didn't land but hovered above the roof then Plan-A wouldn't work." David sighed and stood there staring at me from several feet away. We both knew we had the means to bring it down ourselves using gear in the case. I also felt the spiders could climb onto their pant legs and get on board the chopper with the six men without them knowing and still get their jobs done.
"I doubt there's any other way to the roof except by that utility shaft." He mumbled then said we'd have to leave the Batcase in the closet, we should hand carry the helicopter weapon up to the roof.
Just then we saw flashes of light in the hallway, David stepped beside me and we leaned firmly against the wall near the door as one of the guys walked down the hallway to check the cell block doors again. As he walked back he shouted the SWAT team couldn't open their own doors, but the rest of the group were all standing near the desks watching as the last inches of the fourth cut were completed.
David and I leaned firmly against the office wall watching the activity in the next room. Suddenly the cutting stopped and he handed down the saw. Two guys pushed up with one hand and wiggled the wedges loose, then the entire slab came loose and they shoved-up hard, we saw it disappear onto the roof. The hole now looked like a black square and the room had a big dust cloud as the men coughed and stood around the stacked desks. The first guy jumped up and grabbed the roof while the other one grabbed his legs and shoved him up onto the roof into the night air, then he handed him the saw and the rifles.
Moments later we saw an arm reach down to pull the second man through the hole. While the second man climbed onto the roof the others carefully climbed the desks and took turns escaping to the roof. One of them handed up a chair so the last two could climb through the hole without assistance. While they were pre-occupied with their accomplishment I summoned both our spiders to quickly return to my shoulder.
David and I silently moved back into the utility closet and locked the door behind us, he started up to the roof hatch and slowly opened it. According to the blueprints there would be a power transformer cabinet blocking their view of us joining them on the roof. Hopefully the prison guards did not figure out a way to shoot them because we'd get hit too. David asked our commander to tell the prison not to shoot, but they should immediately prepare for a chopper crash outside the fence (notify police, fire, EMS), be ready to capture eight possibly injured men. Luckily being so close to the prison they only had a couple directions to run, which made them easier to nab. I imagined their hard landing outside the fence would stun them and make them easier to handle.
David was first on the roof and scanned the sky for an approaching helicopter but stayed very low and watched the sixth man make it to the roof. I opened our case and took out the helicopter specific weapon and stuffed it down my shirt in case Plan-A failed. We had a brief chat if the helicopter would use a search light to scan the roof before they landed so I brought a plastic cover we could hide under as the chopper approached. Moments later my head poked up and I looked all around at the roof area. There roof ladder came up beside a large steel transformer box and on the other side of that box, maybe sixty feet away the six escapees were huddled low on the roof watching the starry night sky towards Juarez. One of them held a tiny white blinking LED to signal their location to the pilot.
David tapped me on the shoulder and pointed to the south-west, we spotted a blinking red light, maybe a thousand feet above the desert approaching. He told the commander a chopper was approaching from the south-west. I took the spiders off my shoulder and got them ready to update with blueprints once we ID'd the chopper. David pulled out his binoculars. We huddled together under the plastic sheet, only his binoculars could be seen peering out. I put my hand on his thigh, because I loved his patience and restraint. We had permission to kill these guys but have not yet even touched our weapons.
We watched as the helicopter approached and crossed over Doniphan Drive and the junkyard as it steadily lost altitude. He flew over the vast empty farm fields between the prison and the street, crossed over the perimeter fences and was moving slowly. The chopper activated a searchlight and looked closely at the roof then slowly landed near the corner and opened one door. We saw the six men get blasted by the powerful rotor wash.
Before the helicopter flew over the junkyard David identified it as a 1987 Bell UH-1 Huey. I uploaded the data into both spider drones and set them on the roof, they immediately ran towards the chopper as it touched down near the escapees.
While the men climbed on board (one at a time) the spiders climbed up the landing gear, in the open door, and then the engine control compartment and awaited our command once they got in position to short-out the electrical systems that pumped fuel to the turbine engine and power to the pilot's instruments and controls. They appeared as two red lights on our glasses that would turn green once they were in place.
David advised the commander as the last man climbed on board they were seconds away from lift off, prison security better be ready because a helicopter crash was less than forty seconds away. David whispered to me how patriotic it was to see their helicopter painted to match the Texas State trooper cars, someone in Mexico spent a lot of money on that old helicopter, it was probably worth a ton of cash just for the parts.
They slid the door shut as the engine wound-up and the blades picked-up speed. I think it took them about fourteen seconds to reach lifting speed. I whispered to David that the drones were in place, he patted me on the knee as if to say `okay.' Both drones now showed as green dots on our glasses.
The Huey started to lift off the roof and their searchlight went out. We stood up as our plastic cover blew away. They quickly lifted up to about thirty feet above the prison rooftops and started a sharp turn to the south-west. The tail lifted up as he moved the control to gain forward speed. Using my forearm control panel I ordered both spiders to short-out their electrical systems and about one second later all the external lights went out and the pitch of the turbine engine began to lower. They continued south-west above the prison complex and cleared the two rows of perimeter fence and were above the large farmland that sat between the prison and the street on the west side of the campus.
As they cleared the two perimeter fences the Huey was clearly in trouble and losing altitude. We watched as they approached the ground, a huge cloud of dust billowed up as the landing skids impacted the ground and collapsed, one of the doors blew off and bodies tumbled out but they were surrounded immediately by armed forces and taken into custody inside a thick cloud of dust and smoldering helicopter wreckage.
The helicopter blades slowed as each man was pulled clear, handcuffed, and dragged into an armored vehicle for transport back inside the prison.
We shook hands and walked over to look at the hole in the roof, but decided to use the roof ladder instead. Within minutes we had our gear packed away and strapped on David's lower back and climbed down the long steel ladder to the secret tunnel below the prison. The bedrock beneath Anthony, Texas was ideal for using the TBM. From the roof to the tunnel floor was about eighty five feet. At the bottom of the shaft David locked the steel grate across the bottom.
I hit the tunnel floor first, David slid the padlock into the grate and pushed it shut. Our team in the junkyard building saw everything we did, one of them played the song Danger Zone back to us as David dropped to the ground with a big splash and we started the long walk back to the exit. They couldn't see we held hands most of the way back. Everyone on our comms channel laughed when the song started, suspecting I was involved he slapped my shoulder but I told him I was not involved. While we walked together he started to play a bass air-guitar and kept glancing at me with a big smile, we bounced our heads and walked faster to the beat.
As the song faded out I asked if he had more, he said it came from his cell, so I asked him to play Wicked Game by Chris Isaak. Ten seconds later it started, David remembered when I sang it to him at a karaoke gay bar in Dallas one night and how we both cried in front of hundreds of people towards the end of the song. We kept walking down the tunnel and enjoyed the music coming from our glasses frames. In the distance I started to see the light that shone down the vertical shaft under the junkyard building. I reminded him about how we've both been told numerous times that David looked a lot like Chris Isaak when he appeared in Silence of the Lambs. And he said I could be the body double for actor David Kross in the 2008 movie The Reader, but not above the shoulders. He said I shrank a lot after finishing Seal School.
At the south end of the tunnel we climbed up the ladder after I hung the case on the hook behind David's butt. He went first then I followed. He stepped off the ladder into the small storage room. It had two round shafts with steel ladders in one corner and a simple light in the ceiling. Our team was in the room, everyone was smiling, we shook hands. I took the case off David's back and gestured toward the door. One of our team opened it to make sure the area was empty as one other guy packed up their comms gear and shut off the lights. We all stepped outside into the fresh night air tinged with the smell of the surrounding junkyard cars. Nearby sat two large black SUVs, all of us went to our assigned spots and drove off and parked a few blocks away in a truck stop parking lot. We had our mandatory debriefing which lasted about 40 minutes as we described what happened. I reported all our gear worked perfectly.
When we got to the part about climbing back down the shaft the driver started the engine and headed back towards I-10 and Transmountain Road.
After an hour long debriefing and party in their SUV we were dropped off at home. We opened the front door at 12:15am and went directly to the third bedroom, which we called the tactical room (tac room) and got out of our gear, both of us were sweaty and stinky. I plugged-in the case to charge the battery pack and pulled off my 9mm weapon and set it on my gear stand. Next came the hard part, unzipping and removing the batsuit, which was a custom fit to my body. Our daily routine included weighing ourselves to ensure the suits always fit. We logged our weights on a chart in the computer followed by a quick electronic photo of us naked above the waist. David finished first, he left the room (naked) for our bathroom and the shower. He put two towels by the sink and started the hot water. I arrived about thirty seconds later.
Next came my favorite part of the evening, we took turns showering. Our shower was too small for two so we took turns, I sat on the toilet seat lid and we talked and laughed about how it must have felt when they saw the prison fences pass beneath them out the side windows, assuming in ten minutes or less they'd be back in Mexico. They could even see the street lights in Juarez straight ahead. They could probably even taste the genuine Mexican Tacos on real handmade corn tortillas, but they only made it about three hundred feet and never even cleared the prison property. They were lucky to have landed without serious injuries. Our commander said they only got bruises and one got a mild concussion when he was ejected and landed on impact with the soft desert sand.
I took my shower while David opened the bed and climbed under the sheets, we kept our bedroom very cold. Our house was cooled by a swamp cooler but we had a window AC unit in the bedroom because we both liked to sleep under a comforter and soft sheets. When I climbed into bed David was already smiling happy, I climbed on top of him and we made out for several minutes, I told him I was very proud of how he handled that op, the restraint he showed and the excellent outcome. David laid on his back staring in my eyes as I was nearly in tears complimenting him as my emotions swelled. We kissed a little bit longer then wiggled into our normal sleeping positions. I lay on my side facing him so the cold AC air blew on my face. With my eyes closed I thought about the outcome of that Op, and how David could have easily used one of our gas weapons, pulled the pin and tossed it in the room and gassed them all, then cut the chains and walked the SWAT into the last room on the left and that would have ended it, but he was always looking for ways to optimize our missions. I think his mind went from captured alive and reward to escape and helicopter and crew and bigger reward, sure! Why not? I slept until the alarm went off at 5:30am.
NOTE: contact the author: borischenaz gmail
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