Chapter 10.
Our next call for help came from Seattle. We were called by the city police to a protest that got out of control. Their request for help came (via the FBI) three days after our camping trip to Three Rivers. We'd already seen the riots and protests online and sort of expected our phone would ring.
A large group of young people had blocked off an area north of downtown with burnt vehicles, dumpsters, and hundreds of old truck tires. In that two block area all the storefronts had been looted and destroyed. It was an older (1950s & 60s buildings) retail area with apartments above some stores, an area that recently known for homelessness and crime. It was known for people crapping on the sidewalks, injecting drugs, and sometimes dying on the sidewalk. The report said someone hijacked a flatbed semi loaded with old truck tires, drove it there, and used them to barricade the streets. The protestors said they were forming an independent nation with no police, taxes, or politicians.
We were notified because the Seattle Police had no way to enter the site without great risk for death and destruction. They did not want the troublemakers killed just taken into custody. Photos we saw online looked like they used burnt cars and trucks to reinforce their tire barricades.
The area they blocked off was centered on a major intersection (30th Avenue NE @ 145th Street NE) and enclosed an area one block in all four directions. Their command bunker was on 30th Ave near the intersection. After the streets were blocked they looted every store then destroyed them. Above many of the stores were small apartments, most of them were left alone but the residents quietly fled the area.
We requested quadcopter drones (x2) and extra spiders (x2) with sleep capsules (x4). All of them could be delivered same day to our airport, so our boss made the calls. And we notified the Seattle Police we were obtaining extra gear and should arrive late tomorrow (Wednesday). We knew the drones usually came from Chicago.
We sat in the boss's office as he started making the calls. Although he kept the process to himself he called a procurement office in the Pentagon and identified himself, then poked a PIN number into his telephone number pad. Then he read off a list of items and the quantities we needed immediately. I think he was on the phone for three minutes mostly reading numbers into the phone.
We spent that afternoon reviewing the manual for the quadcopters, each one came with its own controller. We also got two more spiders with two sleep capsules each, they were being sent to us from Bullhead City AZ on the next Amtrak which would arrive tomorrow around 11am. We had to go get the box off the train which we'd never done before.
The Amtrak station was near downtown in the small area between the border fence and I-10.
You can see it on G-maps by searching for 700 W. San Francisco Ave, El Paso, TX. Notice how close it was to the border. The Rio Grande River was usually only a trickle of water in that area most of the year.
We went home and checked our gear and our existing spiders and made sure everything worked. We discussed a plan to infiltrate their bunker with spiders in swarm mode. We still had one spider with an 85% battery we needed to use up.
The stuff we ordered arrived that evening, so we drove back to the airport to the luggage claim area and got two pelican cases and drove home and checked their batteries and hovered them in our living room.
The next day we drove downtown to the train station. We parked nearby and walked up to the train. The first car after the locomotive carried cargo, we stood there waiting for the conductor to arrive. Eventually he walked over and opened the sliding door and found the small cardboard box and bounced it in his hands and asked to see our IDs to sign for it. We showed him our Pentagon ID cards.
Before we were allowed to leave with the tiny cardboard box the Amtrak conductor said there was a problem with who would sign for it, he read the name to us while he held the box in his hands with no clue what was inside.
He said it was addressed to Captain Phillip Jones, El Paso, National Security Services (our boss) so he said he couldn't release the box to us unless one of us could produce a government photo ID with that name. I could instantly feel anger radiating from my husband's brain beside me. But his reaction surprised me.
"That box was ordered by our boss, that's his name. But it's for us, not him. If I gave you forty bucks would that clear it up?"
"No sir, it's marked SIGNATURE ONLY."
"I know you're just doing your job but I promise you this is one of those things you'll look back on some day and wish you'd handled it differently."
The conductor, an older and well spoken black man, laughed and said, "Its simple, show me an ID or the box rides all the way to San Antonio. That's how this goes." We offered to let him use our phone to call our boss but he said he couldn't do that. "The person whose name is on the label has to arrive here with a photo ID and sign for the box, until then the box stays here, and this train will leave the station in twelve minutes." He glanced at his watch then looked seriously at us.
David paced around for a couple seconds like he was deep in thought because we really needed those spiders. I looked around and saw a large number of passengers milling around near the train smoking and talking but they were well down the platform. David whispered to me to go to the truck and get our motorcycle lock and our Batsuit case and bring `em here quickly. So I sprinted to our truck. On the floor in the back seat was a large U-shaped motorcycle wheel lock, I grabbed it and our Batsuit case and ran back to the freight car and set everything on the elevated walkway.
He took the lock and climbed down by the tracks beside the train's wheels and clamped their brake shoe against the wheel effectively putting the train out of commission! `Here we go again!' I thought to myself.
The conductor called for help on the radio and asked the train engineer to notify Amtrak dispatch and station security.
David told the conductor either he handed over the box or we'd kill him, he had ten seconds left. And as soon as he was done telling him he bent over and unzipped our case and pulled out one machine gun, cocked it and aimed it at the conductor.
The conductor tossed the box to me and raised his hands. He shouted that cops were on the way but David just replied with, "Whatever dude, we are the cops. That box contains cop stuff."
He reached into his shirt pocket and pulled out our business card and set it on the floor inside the cargo car and put away the machine gun and told him he could keep the lock for his trouble.
David told the conductor, "You ain't leaving in twelve minutes, and welcome to El Paso, enjoy your visit."
We grabbed our stuff and walked to the truck and slowly drove away, some people on the train platform used their cell phones to video us and the U-bolt lock on the cargo car brake. One of them yelled obscenities at us, but David just flipped them off as he opened his door and sat in the truck.
On the drive back to the airport David told me all train brake parts were made by one company, if you knew one you knew them all and they're all vulnerable to being bolted in place. He said it would probably take someone with a cutting torch or a diamond disc blade to remove it, which would give them time to ponder their choices. David said it was an eye for an eye.
After that unpleasant situation we drove back to ELP to get ready for our trip to Seattle. We weren't taking our Batsuits, just the pelican case and two drone cases, they were slightly smaller and heavier because of the battery packs.
On the drive to the airport David explained that after a few big runaway train problems all train brakes now came with holes drilled so you could insert a pin which locked the brakes against the wheels, that way if the train lost air the brakes could still be locked with a simple ¾ inch pin or some kind of bolt. That change was the result of the Lac-Megantic rail disaster in the Canadian province of Quebec.
Back at our office we had a serious talk with the air transport people (in Kansas City) due to our extra luggage but we could not get permission to fly (with the extra cases) so we got tickets a commercial flight to Denver then to Seattle and arrived later than we promised. Luckily we didn't have to bump anyone off the flight, Delta had empty seats.
As we waited to board the flight to Denver we saw a group of city officials walk by and enter the unmarked door on the passenger level of the terminal, the fastest way down to the hallway where our office was located.
We knew from experience that our boss would put them in a room with a video conference screen and let them talk to the Pentagon. They would question them about what they did to worsen the situation and not do what we ordered them to do.
We've learned over the years that for some bureaucrats and police officials that David and I don't look official enough or threatening enough to take us seriously, and for that they sometimes paid a steep price. Today was one of those bad days. Luckily nobody died today, so far, but the train was three hours late getting to the next stop in Marfa.
On the flight to Seattle we used the passenger phone service to call a motorcycle dealer to get a replacement motorcycle wheel lock and billed it to our DOD credit card and shipped it to our home.
He said as far as he was concerned Amtrak owed the Pentagon a new U-lock.
Something popped back into my brain during our flight so I asked him, "Hon, something you said recently struck a chord in my head, I've heard the name but didn't really know anything about it, what are the Marfa Lights?"
"Ahhh yes, the lights. I went there once and didn't see much, it's really not that far from El Paso in the little high desert town called Marfa Texas. I think it's a former ranching town, maybe former military too. East of town there used to be an army airbase but now it's sort of like a drive-in theater without a screen. You can go there during the day and sit on the bleachers and look to the south and see some very distant mountains but it's mostly just flat rocky desert with low scrub brush as far as you can see. In the evening people sometimes see distant lights that move around but there's nothing out there, just empty desert. Some people think it's like a mirage, the warmth from the desert causes a reflective layer and makes light from distant cars reflect and become visible much farther than normal, so the layer is like a giant invisible mirror hovering above the desert, and it's there at night too."
"In fact, that Amtrak train runs right by the place, it's a few miles east of Marfa out in the middle of nowhere, but it's one of the few attractions that brings them tourists, aside from steaks and live country music. It's not worth going to see the lights but the food there is worth the trip. The next town south of Marfa on Highway 67 was Shafter Texas. There was a scene from the 1971 movie Andromeda Strain filmed there as the town of Piedmont New Mexico (population 68) where almost everyone in town died from an outer space bacterial life form."
We were picked up by a plain clothes city detective at SeaTac Airport (10:25pm), he drove us north on I-5 across the downtown area to an older neighborhood near the border between Seattle and Lake Forest Park. We smelled burning tire odor miles away, the detective mentioned it first. He tried to describe what was going on and told us they wanted us to use our super powers to immobilize everyone so they could run in and handcuff everyone.
He described the barriers they erected and wondered how we were going to get inside.
David asked what started the protests and the detective said, `...they were protesting the cops and the economy.' He said, "They were mad because there's super wealthy people around Seattle while they're very poor with no path to improvement. They're mad about how they're treated for being homeless, and the entire thing was made worse by out of control meth abuse in the area. They saw no future, no hope, and felt the only thing the wealthy people wanted was for them to walk into the woods and die quietly, and take a couple other poor people along and have a Jonestown style suicide party."
After his explanation the smell of burning tires was even more noticeable in the back seat. David whispered to me, `Ask him who ran the meth importation business,' so I did.
"Say, you said there's a big meth problem around Seattle, do they ever have shortages of meth like they have shortages in stores?"
"As far as I know, no such thing's ever happened, it just keeps flowing in and the money flows back down to Mexico."
"Who manages that business?"
"I have no clue, organized crime, a criminal gang of some type," he replied not showing any insight or curiosity.
I could tell by the traffic and appearance of satellite news vans on the sidewalks we were close.
Last night at home we had closely examined the area on Bing maps and saw there were two tall apartment buildings that overlooked almost the entire area and we could work from the roof or an empty apartment. On arrival we parked about two blocks away and walked to the police command unit, which was in a large trailer being pulled by a semi.
After introductions we discussed the situation with the cops and they said they could probably get us in one of the nearby apartment buildings or on the roof. They sent someone to go ask the doorman to call the manager. Back at home we already picked out two that had possible unobstructed views of most of the zone and their main bunker. Their bunker was igloo shaped and made out of stacks of old truck tires.
It took about an hour and the call came back to walk to the apartment at the corner of 32nd Avenue NE and 145th St. NE, which was half a block outside their zone. They had an empty apartment with a window and a small balcony that overlooked 30th Avenue and their `bunker.' It was an older seven story building and the apartment was on the sixth floor. We arrived there with three uniform cops and met the building manager, he unlocked the apartment and let us in. I could tell David was bothered by the other two cops with us because their presence was never explained, they just appeared. He whispered to me they were spies and hopefully not working for the people inside the zone. The one cop in uniform we met in the command trailer was actually the chief of detectives.
The studio apartment was small and looked old. There was a small kitchen table, chairs, and some old appliances; everything looked like it was new in 1959. Our immediate attention was on the balcony door and kitchen window that had a view of the bunker in the barricaded zone. We knew we were going to use a quadcopter to deliver spiders, and David said we had to move the kitchen table outside on the balcony as a launch pad for the drone.
We got our case activated and established contact with El Paso. He asked the two street cops to move the table out onto the balcony, it barely fit out the door.
"What's the police plan for invading their zone?" David asked the detective and he said they had a large front end loader two blocks away, they were going to use it to push an opening through their barricade then they'd rush in with force and arrest everyone, and haul them away to a detention/triage center they already made at a nearby school baseball field, up at the high school. He said they were prepared to arrest up to 100 people, from what they'd seen there were only about 46 people behind the barricades tonight. After the arrests they'd quickly open the streets to normal traffic.
"How long would it take, from the time we said GO! until all your people and the front end loader would be standing outside the barricade ready to invade?"
"About ten minutes if nothing else goes wrong."
"Can I use your binoculars?" David asked and the detective handed him the case. We stood on the balcony against the railing, the five of us. Our cases were on a dresser beside the balcony door, open and powered on. I got two spiders out and inserted pellets but they were still turned off. One drone case was also open and ready to assemble.
We took turns examining the zone and agreed with the police assessment of the number of people involved. At the moment things were quiet and it looked like there was an inner core of leaders and the rest were just going along, some may not have been involved in the original disturbance at all. It looked like they already did millions of dollars of damage to the buildings in the zone.
The center of the zone was a large intersection with a traffic light. The streets went east-west and north-south. The biggest street ran east-west (five lanes). The zone extended one block from that traffic light in all four directions, they had made barricades of burnt cars, trash dumpsters, and piles of old semi-truck tires. They also built something shaped like a giant igloo out of tires in the street near the intersection; that was supposed to be their command center and we saw lots of people hanging around outside. The igloo was our target. Their bunker was near an abandoned storefront, that building was one story tall and appeared to have a nearly flat roof.
The flatbed semi that carried the tires was parked in the left turn lane west of the intersection, but it didn't look damaged, just stolen.
As we looked down on the zone we saw there were two piles of smoldering burnt tires from earlier in the day. They had plenty more to burn too.
We decided to get started and told the detective to alert their commanders we were starting, they should get their invasion force ready to invade within 45 minutes.
David asked the detective to step into the bathroom with him to discuss something.
"Those two city cops, you know them?"
"Nope, never saw them before but that's not uncommon."
"What we're doing tonight is classified and needs to be protected so I'd like them to leave so it's just you and the two of us. Can you shoo them out of the apartment?"
The detective smiled and nodded yes and while David went back to assembling the drone the detective ushered the two uniform city cops out of the apartment into the hallway and spoke briefly with them then returned and locked the door.
I got out our glasses and turned them on then showed David the color of the gas pellets inside the spiders. David looked me in the eye and said four sleep pellets. I showed him the ass ends. I had to do it in such a way as to shield them from view too, but we were very skilled at cupping spiders in our hands.
He opened the other case and got out the first quadcopter and put it together and tested the controller and linked it to our pelican case comm gear. The drone, the spiders, and our glasses all talked to the comms gear in our case.
The first thing I did after seeing the location of their bunker was to estimate the distance and put it at 450 feet. Luckily we were almost seventy feet above the ground so comms should work fine with the spiders, distance was always an issue for them.
In the case were two telescoping metal antennas, I screwed them onto the external antenna mounts on the outside of our pelican case.
The drone talked to its controller and that controller talked to our case, which also talked to our spiders, our glasses, and a TDRS satellite which connected us to the internet. After comms were activated we shared images and our communications with the Pentagon and our office in El Paso. There was a time delay in what El Paso saw from us of about eight seconds.
"What are you guys gonna do to them?" The detective asked.
"Our plan right now is to enter the bunker and briefly watch and listen to them talk, then put the occupants to sleep and extract our drones just before you guys invade and start arresting people. Once we start we'll need about ten minutes before your people breach the barricade so they won't be injured by sleep gas."
David stopped and took off his glasses and spoke clearly to the detective with us: "It's very important for you to understand something. The technology we use to neutralize everyone in the bunker can also neutralize cops, it lingers in the area for about twelve minutes, after that it will be safe for police to approach. It is important that they not enter the zone until I give the clearance or you'll put them in danger. Do you understand what I just said?" The guy said yes, then raised his walkie talkie and called for the Lieutenant and walked away and started to explain our warning.
I asked the detective after he came back, "I asked you before, give me your best guess, how long would it take from the time the troops were told to gather outside the barricade us until they were all in place behind the front end loader?" The cop stood there then raised his arm and looked at his watch and said, `about ten minutes.'
That told me eight minutes after we triggered the gas we could give them the command to breach the barricade. That would give us plenty of time to get the spiders out of the tire igloo and back on the drone and get the drone off the ground.
The detective said there was a chance their front end loader might struggle pushing an opening in the barricade, it might sit there and spin its tires on the slick pavement and have to stop and actually dig an opening. I told him we understood, the front end loaders tires were designed for a dirt worksite and not a paved street.
I told David after our spiders were in the bunker he should fly the quadcopter to the flatbed trailer on the semi so the spiders could run there and emit gas the entire way, maybe 150 feet away.
The last thing David told the liaison cop was if they needed extra time for stuff like making sure they had enough shields, handcuffs, fuel in the tractor, and that the busses and detention people were ready better get on that immediately because this will be over soon. The uniform cop grabbed his cell phone and walked to the far corner of the apartment and called the command trailer.
We powered-on the spiders and inserted them into the cubbies under the quadcopter and powered it on and set it on the table, faced away from the building. Everything was green (now x3) on our glasses.
We noticed the roof of the building by the bunker was flat and there was some light shining on it from the buildings next door but our view would be IR and could see just fine without any lights. He asked me if I was ready, then we both switched our glasses to watch the quadcopter cam. Moments later he started the props and gently lifted off the balcony. He stood by the balcony door with the controller in his hands and watched it away from the building. I got out our small tablet computer and duplicated my glasses on the tablet so the uniformed detective could see what I saw. The guy mumbled, "This is so cool!" I told him we were starting. I asked him to use the binoculars to watch the area and report were most of the people were located.
David flew away several feet and hovered to see what the wind was like then flew down towards the bunker.
Before we flew to Seatac we studied power lines in that neighborhood, they all ran down narrow alleys behind the buildings so we could fly along the streets and not encounter any overhead wires.
It was weird but in this neighborhood all the blocks had alleys but none of them were barricaded so if the city wanted to invade they could have use an alley days ago, but never did.
In less than sixty seconds he was hovering about fifty feet above the bunker then turned towards the building and flew forward about fifty feet then turned around and slowly lowered. With illumination on we saw the roof appear below the drone and he gently touched down about ten feet from the front wall.
The front wall of that store went above the roof by about two feet and was capped by decorative tile. I asked if he was ready and David told me to proceed. But to make us sound really serious he barked an order: `Go drones!' I nearly laughed but marched both of them out of their tiny compartments under the quadcopter.
He set down the drone controller while I put the spiders into swarm mode so I only controlled one, the second one would mirror the first one in surveil mode. Using the wired joystick they crossed the roof, then up the little wall and stopped on the top and looked down on the bunker. Now we could see the opening and people sitting on the pavement inside. We saw people walking around on the sidewalks and street and waited until there was a break in the foot traffic and ran down the front brick wall, across the sidewalk and up to the stacks of tires, up to the third level and crawled between the tires and parked ourselves in two spots where we could see some faces and hear them talk.
As kind of a joke I barked an order back to David, "DRONE, MOVE NOW!" So he picked up the controller and took off again and flew straight up to about fifty feet then went back out over the tire igloo and went down to the intersection and slowly rotated around to look for people.
Next, he flew to the trailer and lowered to a few feet above the flatbed deck and slowly rotated around again to look for any people nearby but saw nobody moving. He landed and shut it down and told me, "Drone ready for extraction!"
Watching the images on our glasses felt like we were actually in the zone and on the street, my heart was beating hard in my chest and I was sweating with bits of anxiety in case our presence was detected.
Inside their tire-bunker a group of people were arguing about what the police were about to do and how they should respond. One guy sounded angry and loud, he said he would set everything on fire if they breached their barricades, this was their country now, it was no longer part of the capitalist USA.
That's all we heard after listening for several minutes. The detective asked how we were getting images and sound but we couldn't tell him about the spider drones.
I told David I was ready to advance to the next step so he told the detective to activate the troops and the loader, get them ready to breach the barricade now, but DO NOT enter yet. That guy took his walkie talkie and spoke to the scene commander and told him to start but hold short for the final go signal. Much to my surprise they actually repeated orders back.
The detective told us from what he saw most of the people in the zone were in that one block around their igloo shaped bunker made of old tires.
We heard a few cell calls come into the bunker, they had spies outside the zone that called to report sudden police movement.
I disengaged swarm mode and moved the one spider to the other side of the street, beside the curb so the sleep gas would be better spread. David said he was worried somebody in the zone would see the quadcopter and grab it.
Finally the news came, the cops were ready. I activated both spiders' first gas pellets and it quickly slept everyone within fifteen seconds (because it was a small space), so I put them back in swarm mode and piloted them towards the curbs and down the street towards the intersection, emitting gas the entire way. While they moved along in the darkness they burnt both sleep capsules and joined up at the crosswalk. Since they were so low we couldn't see what was going on at sidewalk level. The detective was near us with the binoculars and said he saw people falling to the ground all over the place. "Eww, there goes another one. Bam! I see at least twenty bodies on the sidewalks now."
We marched the spiders around the corner and about 40 feet along the curb, then out into the street. The semi was parked in the left turn lane in the center of 145th St, so I ran them out to it and climbed up their huge tires and onto the cargo deck and inside the spider carrier under the drone.
It was one of their many automatic features, if you walked the spiders toward the quadcopter then automatically moved near the carriers, turned around and backed inside the boxes and expanded their legs to lock themselves in place during flight. As soon as they saw the drone I set down the joystick and they did the rest.
About sixteen seconds later they were safely latched in place under the drone. So far it had been about seven minutes since we released the gas. By my calculation we had four minutes to kill before the cops could breach the barricade.
David lifted it off the flatbed and rose up to about thirty feet and hovered over the intersection and slowly rotated. We saw bodies on the sidewalks and in the street but in the distance and across the street were still some people running around in a panic because a bunch of their friends just collapsed. We saw two people run across the street towards the bunker but they also dropped in their tracks when they got near the bunker. We also saw two people throwing rocks at the gathering of cops outside the barricade.
Slowly he rotated around and looked for people moving around. We saw about four more west on 145thSt but they were just silhouettes to us. Beyond the barricade we saw the front end loader with the engine idling and a group of cops in riot gear standing and waiting for the go-command from us. I switched my glasses view to the camera on the drone. We saw the two school busses arrive outside the zone to transport people to the high school detainment area several blocks away to the north.
The clock ran down and David gave the cop the go-command to breach the barricade and quickly arrest people. From the cameras on the drone we saw the front end loader beyond the barricade as it approached rapidly and lowered its bucket to the pavement and drove straight into the pile of burnt cars and old truck tires and plowed an opening, behind that about two dozen cops ran in like storming the beach at Normandy. A city police helicopter circled overhead with a search light on to illuminate the intersection.
It looked to us like 70% of the people in the zone were flat on the ground before the troops penetrated the barricade. They ran in with fists of plastic handcuffs and started strapping people, other people with old fashioned stretchers (canvas and two long wood rods) came next and started carting people outside the zone to waiting busses. When the cops raided the zone we flew the quadcopter back to the apartment building, I asked the detective to aim his flashlight at the drone.
David flew it slowly and gently landed on the table and killed the power, so I went outside and used the power switch to turn it off and removed the spiders (checked that both pellets were spent). I turned each one over and used my finger nail to switch them off and collapsed their legs and dropped them in my shirt pocket. David disassembled the drone and put it back in the case. I removed the external antennas on our pelican case. We didn't need an external antenna to maintain satellite comms, even inside a concrete high-rise. That antenna was glued to the underside of the pelican case lid.
After about five minutes our gear was pretty much put away, our glasses were off and put away too. David notified El Paso the was mission accomplished and we needed a flight home from SeaTac. Then we shut down the pelican case and gave the OD a quick wrap-up report that included materials used and any comments about equipment failures. As always, our gear worked flawlessly.
"You done?" David whispered to me. I just nodded yes, the detective had been talking quietly to the command trailer and said his boss was pleased with how things went but they still had a huge mess to clean up.
There was some handshaking and the detective asked us to stop in at their command trailer briefly, David handed him our business card and told him to have his boss call our boss, then said we needed a ride back to SeaTac immediately.
The detective said he'd drive us there right now. David and I carried the kitchen table back where it belonged and closed the balcony door, shut off the lights, and left with our gear. Elapsed time since we arrived about 91 minutes.
We took the elevator back down to the lobby and walked three blocks with our three cases to the same unmarked detective car and he drove us back to SeaTac and dropped us at the departure terminal.
This was one of the biggest news events in the US today.
During our ride south to the airport our OD in ELP researched flights and found the best way back was to fly from SeaTac to Las Vegas, then Vegas to El Paso, we'd be home around 1pm. So he purchased tickets and they were ready by the time we arrived but we had a four hour wait for our flight to Vegas.
We stretched out with our gear (we did not bring our Batsuit case on this mission, just three pelican-style cases).
TSA at SeaTac was a little stupid, this was the night shift at a smaller airport so we used their key phrases to warn them we were federal agents on a mission and were not to be detained or inspected, but since the x-ray of our case looked like weapons they had to check. I suggested before he touched anything to call his supervisor, we told him that three times and warned him not to open the case it was secret military gear and could not be opened, he'd be arrested tonight if he opened it. It seemed like this guy thought we were lying and our ID cards were fake.
Finally (thank God) he paused and called his supervisor. That lady arrived (looked like she'd been asleep somewhere) and told him to let us pass after she looked at the case and saw the stickers (we also showed her our ID cards). She pointed to the stickers (and used her flashlight to show him the detail) and reminded him about the classes he took as a new hire and the guy said, "Ohhh, that's right!" The supervisor smiled and commented, "I saw the raid on the protest up in Seattle so it's no surprise to see you guys quietly heading somewhere." We all chuckled because she was the first person that put that all together without being told by us. David mumbled that she was one smart cookie.
As we got ready to leave the TSA checkpoint David quietly told him if he had opened it he'd have been dead within the hour.
We slept about four hours in the first class lounge for Southwest and got to Vegas at 9:25am and back to ELP at 12:55pm and stopped at Sam's Subs for two to go; we always got his foot long Italian subs on crusty white bread, it was an excellent sub and we'd started eating lunch there at least twice a month.
This time we recorded our notes sitting in the Southwest Lounge in Vegas waiting on our next boarding call for the flight home. When we got back to ELP I pulled out the SD card and dumped the file into the computer, ran the speech to text program and saved it to the main server and gave it the proper filename and then we drove home after a brief chat with the OD behind the desk, and thanked him for help getting airline tickets last night.
When we first started working for this service it was our duty to arrange transport home but they recently made that a duty for the OD. The change was made because we were often surrounded by people that had no need to know our names and home address.
Two days later the boss said he was happy, he got a call from the Mayor of Seattle and they were pleased with the outcome and invited us all to come back and visit anytime. He already sent the drones back to Chicago and asked why we couldn't have our own always on hand. We were told because of required maintenance, it had to be done by someone licensed by the FAA.
All David said (via whisper) was `O.M.G. What the fuck have we become? We could buy the same quadcopter on Amazon!' As we left his office when I suddenly smiled and snickered the boss knew we must have been ridiculing him over Whispernet.
I told David the government had to maintain the drones for liability reasons and they did it in Chicago because it was centrally located and they could fly drones to nearly any airport in the world quickly from O'Hare Airport, and they had cargo agreements with all the major airlines.
We left work early that day, there was a voicemail from the carpenter, he was ready to start on our kitchen door, or did we want to do the bathroom? David called him back and asked which one he could start first and he said either one, same deal. We agreed on him starting the patio sliding door and kitchen, which meant we'd be doing almost no cooking at home for the next 2-3 months.
Back at home we searched the news for any stories about the Amtrak train stuck in El Paso but saw nothing about it.
The carpenter hired two more guys and in two days they had our kitchen stripped to the studs and rafters, but not the flooring. They had a dumpster delivered to our driveway and were tossing stuff in it all day. I saw our old counters, the old sink, the stove and dishwasher all sitting outside for a special appliance removal service but the refrigerator and microwave went to the back yard since it still held our food!
He would have to get custom vent hoods made for the kitchen for over the stove and deep fryer. One guy worked on extending the natural gas pipes from the back yard into the basement then ready to run up to where the new stove would go. The new deep fryer, two-burner range, and where the oven would go under the hood. The gas stove also had a small griddle on top, 16 deep x 10 wide of one inch polished stainless steel deck with a five inch splash barrier on three sides. The hood would be stainless steel with lighting, fire extinguishers and proper kitchen ventilation straight up through the roof. He warned us that the hood would turn our kitchen into the coldest place in the house on windy winter days.
We spent hours reviewing the plans and discussing changes. We had the only window in the kitchen removed to add cabinet space on that wall. Since we lost the window we added two sunlight tubes from the ceiling to the roof to bring in daylight to the entire kitchen.
Finally, all the old stuff was gone, along with the appliances, but the refrigerator and microwave were outside on the patio so we could keep food until the new kitchen was done. We'd be nuking outside for a month or two, but we didn't cook our own meals every day, but that will change after the kitchen was done.
We had to park our Goldwing under a cover in our back yard because the crew took over our entire garage as their workshop.
It actually took them three days to strip the kitchen to the studs. On the fourth day the new boards for the ceiling and walls were delivered and the new sub flooring. All of it was water proof, fire resistant, and suitable for a restaurant kitchen with a heavy commercial tile floor. One thing we never anticipated was the height of the new floor, we had to add edging trim so we didn't stub our toes walking from the hallway into the kitchen. In fact we discussed raising the entire hallway, not just the step into the kitchen and dining area.
The entire area, kitchen and dining area would have the same (pre-textured non-slip) restaurant red quarry stone tile floor and new brass floor drains. He also said the new kitchen would put way more weight on the floor than the house was designed to carry so they doubled the floor joists under those areas. When they stripped the kitchen to the studs they also removed the original sub flooring (3/4 inch particle board). It was weird being able to stand outside the back door and look inside and see the basement floor for two days! For those days you could stand in the basement and look up and see the underside of the roof!
The new sub-floor was one inch marine plywood with a thin layer of flooring grout on top to slope it towards the new drains. Those sheets of plywood cost $60 each!
They hung a plastic curtain to isolate the kitchen (and garage) from the rest of the house to keep the dust controlled.
One guy worked exclusively on removing the sliding patio door frame and building a new opening and installing a new exterior door, then closing in the smaller opening, and making both sides match the existing walls as best he could. They said they immediately sold the old sliding door, appliances, and cabinets to a company in Juarez.
We wanted to get rid of the big sliding glass patio door because the bearings always failed, especially in a city in the desert where sand gets in everything. Sliding doors in the southwest were a really bad idea but most houses were built with them. Our new back door will be wide enough to carry in furniture, appliances, or someone in a wide wheel chair.
The carpenter guy also showed us the new measurements of the space and how there wasn't enough room for the two restaurant booths we wanted, they needed to be smaller. What he said was they'd stick out from the wall about ten inches less than originally planned and he showed me why. So far that was the only bad news. Our design was like a tiny pocket restaurant/bar (Izakaya) on the side streets of Tokyo, except our kitchen would be larger.
The bar would be shelves on the wall where the window used to be. You folded down a tiny shelf to set drink glasses, but the ice was beside you in the freezer. The new wall shelves could hold about thirty bottles with extra space for clean glasses and condiments in containers: olives, fruit slices, cherries, or tiny drink umbrellas. One of our goals after the remodel was to learn how to make authentic Tokyo style Yakitori and condiments.
After the new back door was installed the remodel crew had another man that just did plumbing and utilities. They set a new electrical subpanel in a kitchen wall for routing power and tapped into the main panel outside and ran a new 220v line (in conduit) beside the natural gas pipe to the new panel. The old kitchen and dining area had four outlets total, soon it would have twelve.
Finally, the new flooring was installed and cut for all the water, gas, and sewer lines. After the floor tiles were placed and grouted we had to stay off the floor for 48 hours. By week two the ceiling, and walls were done (but not painted) and the floor was curing. They took Monday off to give everything time to cure.
On Tuesday they installed the wall cabinet frames, on Wednesday the big base cabinets were anchored and the plumbing extended into place, then on Thursday the counter tops arrived and were mounted. After those were in it was time for the appliances, all new small restaurant equipment: a gas stove, gas oven/broiler, a small dual basket deep fryer (gas), and a stainless steel refrigerator the same size as our old Kenmore, but waterproof outside and plugged into 220vAC. We got two sinks and a new dishwasher under the counter. That stuff required us to add a fifteen gallon hot water heater under the counter so the dish washer got hot water faster, along with a new tiny sink mostly for hand washing.
We did all that even though our kitchen would never be inspected since it wasn't a restaurant, it just looked like an Izakaya (pocket restaurant/bar) in Tokyo. Just to make it more authentic we ordered three red paper lanterns to hang from the ceiling as decorations.
There were small districts in Tokyo that ran two to three blocks long and were packed full of tiny bars that only sat ten to twenty people and were very popular with young educated office workers.
Picture a tiny brick alley about eight feet wide with elbow to elbow bars and eateries the entire length. That was what our kitchen/dining room was designed to look like, except we won't be serving sushi. And our place was suitable for cooking a menu like a small US diner in the 1930s.
Try doing an image search online for: Tokyo Izakaya.
David showed me on the computer a countertop ice maker, it wasn't very big, maybe the size of a bread machine. You poured in a gallon of clean water and it made perfectly round, perfectly clear large ice cubes, four at a time. It cost $390 but I liked it too, the outside was stainless steel and we had room for it! But we had to special order it from Japan, they had to adapt it to run on American 117v power instead of their 100v power.
Lots of Americans called our home electricity: 110 volts, but it changed decades ago and was actually 117.3 volts AC, nationwide.
On Friday the stainless steel kitchen walls panels were installed, the dining area walls were painted with a latex marine paint.
Finally, the two booths arrived and were screwed to the floor and wall, then the stools arrived but they stood on four legs. David made a mad dash to Target to buy a five gallon can of fryer oil (peanut oil) since it was discounted for deep frying turkeys and the holidays were over.
The guy that delivered our booths said they were from the same company that made booths for the Waffle House chain of restaurants.
On Monday of the following week another guy arrived with all the drawers and cabinet doors and carefully mounted everything and made sure all the catches and latches worked and everything slid shut easily. Those took two days to install. They hung lighting above the booths and LED strips above the bar and florescent lights over the kitchen and the appliances. It was so nice to be rid of the original 1960s Kenmore appliances and that ugly blue-green sink. We emptied the refrigerator outside and let them take it away too then we moved our stuff inside.
It finally came down to the last few days as the final painting and floor sealant was finished (mostly to protect the grouting), we wrote the carpenter a check for our new kitchen and asked when he could start on our bathroom! He said he was taking a week off. One of the last things to finish were the ceiling light tubes, which added needed sunlight in the kitchen.
Final price for a new commercial kitchen was just under $49k! Half of that was for the stainless steel and the new appliances. After David handed Pablo (head carpenter dude) the check we raced to the bank to deposit cash to cover it.
It was a weird feeling when we walked across the new floor, it felt like walking across concrete because it was super rigid and the tiles felt cold under my feet.
Since we had our garage back that evening we drove to the Toyota dealer to look at cars but the one I wanted wasn't sold there, because it was too pricey for the northeast El Paso market. I wanted a Toyota Supra GR with the 3-liter six-cylinder engine and the deluxe interior package (power everything, leather everywhere). The dealer asked why I wasn't looking at Tesla but I just laughed and said I wanted a car that could fill up at any gas station, and unlike the rest of America I was not in love with Elon and his vast fortune. He said it would take about a week to locate and have the car I wanted delivered here by semi, I put down $10k and got a receipt.
Back at home we watched promo videos on Rumble for the Supra, it was popular with fat older guys that had too much money and small dicks. I wasn't suffering from either of those. I'm a thirty year old that could still pass for a twink (below the neck) and my dick wasn't short either.
David corrected me about my small dick comment and reminded me (again) there were a lot more guys with three inch boners than ten inch boners so never make fun of small dicks around strangers.
The next day the dealer called and said they found a Supra in Nashville and another in Dayton Ohio, they were nearly identical and the closest ones to El Paso. I picked the one I wanted and he said seven to nine days on a truck and it will be here unless I wanted to fly there and drive it home, I said I'd wait but it would be inspected closely before I paid and signed for the title. We agreed on the kinds of things that would cause me to ask for my money back, and I recorded that conversation.
We discussed my driving to Nashville instead of dealing with the potential for damage on a semi.
The next morning I decided to fly to Nashville to buy the car and drive it home myself. David said he'd go too, but I said I could do it myself so he could cover our territory. It would only take me 2-3 days to get home. The drive home would be on I-40 most of the way, then I-25 down to The Arm Pit.
That day I called our insurance agent and was on the phone for half an hour with the dealer and put down a ten thousand dollar deposit, David got me plane tickets, ELP to DFW to Nashville, then a taxi to the dealer. They promised to have everything ready to go and a temp plate too. I was surprised they agreed to set a price over the phone.
I left alone with one small overnight bag and a pair of hospital scrubs as PJs and my bathroom stuff and a wad of cash to pay for the car and food/hotels on the way back. My plan for day #1 was to stop overnight near Little Rock, then Amarillo on day #2, and home on day #3.
The flight and taxi ride went off without a hitch, I met with one of their sales babes and spent an hour in a horrible chair, signed papers and was handed the key. I think the reality that I was driving home to Texas meant they could treat me any way they wanted. It was not as speedy or friendly as it was before I put money down, and even purchased the old credit card slip and paid 100% in cash.
The dealer was near the interstate so getting home was easy, turn right at the sign for I-40 and follow it to Albuquerque. Just keep pushing west.
I drove off their lot at 2:45pm and raced to get away from the city just as the PM rush was starting. I stopped every time the gas gauge got to half and filled up.
At the first truck stop I remembered to dig out the clip-on license plate circle emblem and tighten it to the temp plate, which was paper taped to a plastic card.
Most of the traffic was going 75 so I set the cruise at 75 and blended in with the rest of the slaves. The stereo was fantastic but I soon discovered that in this tiny sports car you sat really low, it almost felt like if we hit a piece of tire tread it might whack my ass.
I got to Memphis during the rush and got bogged down in heavy traffic but I followed the I-40 West signs and kept moving west. Before I made it to the exit for Little Rock I had the yawns so my next gas stop was just to top off the tank. I filled it with four gallons of 91 octane and parked outside their diner and took a few minutes to go for a short run along the property then back inside, got a tall cup of black coffee and left for Fort Smith where I stayed the night at a Red Roof Inn for $89. Luckily, they had a nice pool and a laundry facility so I did both, laps and laundry. For this trip I packed my most stretchy knee length shorts and a tank top for maximum comfort. That night we jerked off together over the phone.
Day #2 I left the hotel at 8am after a giant load in the toilet and a big breakfast and two cups of Joe.
My lunch was at 11am in Oklahoma City at a truck stop diner. They had a fantastic half pound burger on a bun with the classic toppings and fantastic fries that weren't like the crap at the fast food joints. They were cooked in lard and used locally made catsup made from locally grown tomatoes.
That evening I got the droops again after I was past Amarillo and getting close to the NM state line, my big left turn was about three hours ahead but I stopped at the little town of Vega Texas (just west of Amarillo on I-40) and spent the night at a very old Route-66 motel that appeared near the Interstate. The place was an actual 1930s motor court with fifteen cottages, they picked them up and moved the entire place to the new highway.
That place of course did not have laundry or a pool so I soaked in the tub and had David on speaker phone while I recovered from sitting all day in a leather car seat.
I left the motor court at 8am on an empty stomach and drove to the next down for breakfast, then pushed myself all the way home, only stopping for gas. It felt nice to be on I-25 heading south from Albuquerque towards Las Cruces. Since it was just me I stopped in Hatch and bought four large cans of pickled peppers.
At 5:52pm I turned off Transmountain Road onto Railroad Drive and parked in our driveway nine minutes later, grabbed my stuff and the bags with my empty coffee cups and cans of peppers and went inside.
David was not home which was odd. I saw the Goldwing was gone so I parked in the garage and left room for him to ride the bike between the vehicles and park it at the end of the garage near the house door.
I went to the bathroom and emptied all my places and took a shower, while I was in the shower David walked in and welcomed me home. That knucklehead got in the shower in his clothes and we French kissed non-stop for almost six minutes. By the time we had communicated ourselves he'd managed to slip out of his wet clothes and then he turned me around and fucked me hard against the shower wall. During the final minute he shut off the water, pulled out, I turned around and he spunked on my belly and lower chest. It was wonderful, then we moved into each other and made out some more. While we were kissing he managed to whisper to me, 'nice car.'
We got out of the shower, and hung his clothes in the guest bath tub to drip dry. We went out to the garage, which was now very hot with the Goldwing cooling off.
He got out his service blanket, the one he tosses over the motorcycle when not in use and spread it on my new hood and fucked me again with my front side on my hood. This time I got it even harder and held onto the wiper arms so I didn't slide too far towards the windshield. After that he came on my back, which took us back to the shower again, then we went out to the pool, naked and dripping. This time it was dark outside and Jeremy was also out there but as always he ignored us and left a few minutes after we got in the pool naked.
We discussed my trip, I told him I never saw a single marked cop car the entire way and stayed with groups of truckers and went the same speed they drove. I said I sometimes wished I had a CB radio in the car for something to listen to other than the commercials and the same old songs on the radio. David asked if the car had SiriusXM and I said yes, but the sound quality is so bad it pissed me off listening to it, I thought music on AM radio sounded better than Satellite radio.
We floated on the pool for about an hour talking softly then the subject changed to our new (unused) kitchen.
David noticed we forgot about a toaster so he ordered a used commercial four-slice unit off Ebay.
It took two more days until we got around to using our new kitchen. I cooked scrambled eggs and toast, then we realized we forgot the coffee machine so we ordered a new (residential size) Gaggia espresso machine from Italy, which was super expensive and it's picky about what beans it accepted.
Next, we ordered all stainless pots and pans and an upright blender and a rolling pin and new knives and spatulas and spoons and a ladle. He picked out a food processor but we decided not to buy a stand mixer.
I got him two gay joke chef aprons, one had a big hole around his penis so he could cook naked, we also ordered a pellet smoker for the back yard. Then he wanted a TV projector for the basement and a 10ft wide pull-down screen, we bought a sofa at a yard sale down the block and carried it into the basement for our own home theater, then we bought sound gear for it.
We easily carried the sofa into the back yard, into the new back door and down the hallway but making the turn down the basement stairs took some engineering, but we finally got it down to the basement along the wall. It was actually comfortable for coming from a yard sale.
One week after my Nashville trip the carpenter came over to review our choices for showers, toilets, sinks, and counters for our bathroom remodel. Cabinets, flooring, lights, vents, etc., then he commented our kitchen was the single biggest remodel he ever did but it was fun.
He didn't know you could build a miniature restaurant kitchen inside a residence. We told him about the restaurant and bar districts in Tokyo, what some people called Pocket Bars (Izakaya bar), some were private members-only clubs but most were open to the public. You walked down a narrow alley and looked for one with open seats while dozens of other people were doing the exact same thing. The bars were so small none of them had bathrooms so they were part of the district with restroom doors every 100 feet along the walkway. Some of them looked like the street scenes from the (1982) Blade Runner movie, or in episodes of Anthony Bourdain's series in Tokyo, he went to several of those tiny restaurants for excellent food and drinks.
Those places often only had seating for twenty people or less, some could only seat as few as eight customers at a time.
We explained that was the design we tried to duplicate with our kitchen and we hadn't used it much yet but would get there eventually. We left the bathroom and walked down the hallway and looked over the kitchen, they finished the remodel a couple weeks ago, there were marks from cooking two burgers on the gas griddle beside the stove. We covered the deep fryer to keep the oil clean.
If the carpenter dude hadn't had a ring on his left hand we might have invited him over for a burger, fries, and maybe a complimentary hand job. He was a decent and handsome man, maybe 12 years older than us but in great physical shape.
David pointed out we were getting dust blowing in the hood from outside and falling onto the stove, griddle, and deep fryer. So we started covering them with newspaper when not in use.
The carpenter told David that was something every restaurant in the desert dealt with. He said most of them covered appliances at night.
We had a three day weekend coming up and arranged to tack on a few more days and take a road trip on the motorcycle. We didn't really have anything significant planned and with five days we could see some sights and cover a few thousand miles. While I was looking at a map of the western USA David was online ordering us two more rain suits that were rain and wind proof but didn't make us look like a dorky gay couple.
The suits we ordered the day we purchased the bike matched so we wanted two that were different because we looked super dorky and 1950s gay riding around in matching rain suits. He got one that was camouflage and another that was just OD green.
We mapped a route straight north to Devil's Tower Wyoming and then across to northern California and down the coast to LA, then follow the southern Transcontinental Railroad back to El Paso. That would be a long trip but the scenery would be worth the time. The bad part of a road trip was it was mostly sitting, hour after hour.
We also considered buying a tiny pop-up camper trailer to pull behind the motorcycle but decided motels would be much easier, but we'd still have the problem of laundry along the way. As we researched our route and destinations we saw campgrounds were all over the place out west.
We talked about our bathroom remodel and agreed on all the stuff we wanted to do to our bathroom: walk-in shower with every wall, floor, and ceiling surface tiled. We decided to eliminate the 2nd sink in favor of more cabinets, one toilet, and several towel rods. It would also have a powerful exhaust fan to help prevent mold in the walls. And we wanted to keep our old toilet which was new in 1948 when the house was built and flushed perfectly.
The bathroom project would be like the kitchen: we'd strip the existing room to the studs and start over with all new materials, except the toilet. The carpenter guy said it should take two weeks to finish, and we'd have to reinforce the floor joists for the added weight like we did in the kitchen.
We already started removing stuff from the bathroom even the start date wasn't set yet.
Our house discussions also included stuff far in the future, like a pool in the back yard, and all new windows and doors, a new garage door, a heat pump for the bedroom, and better home security system.
Contact the author: borischenaz gmail