Chapter 26.
We noticed the story about the missing cop didn't make it into the local news and our captain told us to shut up about it. The only person we told aside from the captain was the OD on duty that evening. Our office employed six active duty Army officers that functioned as OD, it's a job with a ton of responsibility. Most of them were O2 in rank (First Lieutenant). Each one worked under a 6-month top secret clearance and were background checked every renewal, re-confirmed by the FBI. Like us, they took a polygraph and were privately interviewed by an FBI security contractor.
The buzzards ate well for a few days; they probably flew in from over sixty miles away when the scent of rotting flesh made it up into the jet stream. His body probably departed in chunks within a week after making a black spot on the sand. Hopefully, we got him before he reported our identities to the cartels. David said telling Mark Krull to go run our plate was a dumb idea, I apologized and agreed it was stoopid but he had really pissed me off. It was a good example of why David usually took charge of our missions.
Two days later we were called to a situation in Houston! Imagine me being on duty in my old home town. Would I decide to stop by my parents place and say hi? Probably not. I could predict how that would go, I'd knock on the door and hear heavy footsteps cross the living room. Dad would look out the peep hole and see their son 'the fag,' and then I'd hear footsteps again as he returned to his favorite recliner and reruns of Jim and Tammy Faye Bakker on VHS tape.
"Who was it honey?"
"Nobody, it's the neighbor kids messin' around outside."
There was a hostage situation at a secure money processing facility jointly owned by banks and the local armored car company. Some guy took hostages with a shotgun, said he had a bomb too in a canvas bag; he wanted a bus ride to the airport and four million in cash. He demanded a flight to Rio de Janeiro where he would release his (two female) hostages unharmed.
As we heard the story David commented: "You notice hostage takers are never former airline pilots? Wouldn't that make it much easier if he was already certified on the plane he wanted?"
The perp had been hired as a janitor at the cash processor and over time he smuggled in a shotgun, piece by piece. Nobody yet confirmed the bombs but they all saw his weapon. Our jet was enroute to ELP since there were no direct flights from ELP to IAH that day. This event was about forty miles north of where I grew up, about 110 miles from where David was born.
We brought all our stuff but not canned spiders; we were still adjusting the mechanism that released the pin and pushed half the can about four feet straight up.
The incident was on the northwest side of Houston near the 610-loop interstate. The airport was on the far north side, so the trip from the airport should only take twenty minutes if traffic cooperated. We were supposed to go by police car with lights and sirens. We knew almost nothing about the building. Our OD was trying to obtain a floor plan and HVAC duct map to send to our tablet computer before we arrived. We didn't even have a suspect name. Supposedly a local man about 35 years old, with meth scarring on his face and arms, self-cutting scars on his left forearm and teardrop tattoos by one eye, but facial recognition showed no matches, so maybe he was from Central America. The flight from ELP to IAH on a commercial airline was 80-95 minutes usually, but in our jet it took 18 minutes after he completed the big U-turn to the southeast. For this flight I took an anti-nausea pill under the tongue.
Before we left ELP, the pilot advised there were thunderstorms popping up around Houston but supposedly none over the airport. The pilot warned it might be a bumpy ride, and rainy de-planing. We heard him call his dispatcher to advise he might be stuck in Houston for a while due to weather. She advised lots of instability in the atmosphere around Houston with a risk for straight line winds (microbursts) near thunderstorms.
When we parked by the general aviation terminal someone pushed steel stairs up beside our jet. The pilot shut down the engine to take on fuel and maybe hang out until the atmosphere improved. I got out first then David, then the pilot. We moved the stairs over for the pilot to use after us. I'm not sure how he closed the canopy after he got out, or opened it to get back inside. David thought he had a key-FOB in his pocket to open and close it like a tiny TV remote. The plane had some covered footholds built into the fuselage, the canopy button might be in one of those openings but it would be hard to reach.
David said many combat jets had small handles on the outside for manually cranking up the canopy. I asked him why some jets had bold zigzag lines in the canopy glass and he said those lines were explosive cord used to blast away the canopy glass during ejection seat use.
Our transport was waiting as we jogged across the tarmac into the terminal, then out the front door and into a waiting police car illegally parked in front of the entrance. We got in the cramped back seat and had to sit sideways due to the tiny amount of leg room. He drove us quickly to the highway and southbound into the city. We drove around the northwest side and got off the highway in an industrial area. Our destination was a large building with concrete walls that was double fenced, no windows, no markings, and a few garage doors for unloading armored cars. The place looked like a secret prison with two guard towers and patrol dogs.
There were six police cars parked near the windowless office. The main indicator that it was an office were reserved parking signs and several nicer cars. This place processed bulk cash and coins. If you took a jar of change to one of those change counting machines at the grocery store it ended up at a place like this. They also serviced lots of small ATM machines and provided cash to banks and stores. The armed dude we were here for was supposedly in a break room that had no windows and only one door.
We got out of the car with our cases and walked towards the building. In almost every mission like this we always lost time trying to figure out who was in charge, then to locate that person and introduce ourselves.
We met with the officer in charge; she was a sergeant and spoke with a local accent. I wanted to boast I was born here too but kept my enthusiasm to myself. We were shown a floor plan then requested one that showed the ventilation ducts above the ceiling. I saw it on her face when she wondered why we wanted it; nobody else had ever asked for one before and we were clearly too large and heavy to fit inside.
While she went on and on with what they knew, my mind was drifting away to the south side of Houston to some of my favorite old BBQ joints; David saw my eyes staring off into the distance and nudged me with his elbow. I whispered to him, 'Sorry boss.' He smiled and whispered back that she talked too much. I told him I was dreaming of pork ribs and cole slaw.
We also got briefed about the hostages (two middle aged female employees who were on lunch break when it started). There were no cameras in the room and only one phone on the wall near the door. Police advised the cash was easy to obtain but a flight to Rio was nearly impossible but they told him they were working on a private jet with sufficient range (5100 miles). It would need to stop for fuel in Miami regardless. Their negotiator had been trying to get the perp to agree to release the hostages in Miami.
David was starting to set-up our stuff and activate comms with a satellite. We asked how hard it would be to get closer to the conference room and they said it was no problem. I advised we would probably use ventilation ducting above the ceiling to access the break room, but they probably thought we'd climb in the ducts ourselves because nobody knew we had tiny mechanical drones with video and sleep gas capability. There was a small meeting room next to the break room we could use. The cops advised those walls would not stop a shotgun blast. David chuckled and said this situation would be over in two minutes, the walls were not a problem. When he said 'two minutes' both of the cops laughed loudly, 'That's preposterous!'
The sergeant handed us the HVAC blueprint and we walked down the hallway to the smaller meeting room; the second to last door on the right. Once again we were in civilian clothing. David had wanted to get changed into a Batsuit but we didn't have time. While he tested comms with ELP I loaded the spider with (2) sleep gas pellets and set it on the floor beside the wall and set a chair over it. David got out the tablet computer, then I handed him the corded joystick. I updated the OD with our plan and status. We asked the police in the room to call for three ambulances and advise the local ER what drug we were using in case somebody reacted strongly to the gas. That was rare but it happened once in a while. We've not had one happen to us but all the other teams have experienced it. I held up the tiny bottle that I kept pellets inside, printed on the side were the names of the drugs in the sleep and kill gas pellets.
When David was ready I handed him his 9mm automatic and set mine on the table too. One of the cops whistled at our weapons like they were beautiful ladies in bikinis. We both smiled and everyone looked closer at them on the table. It's not that often one sees two fully loaded, fully automatic 9mm machine guns (with silencers and laser pointers) just lying on a table.
David stood and spoke to the audience to distract them while I drove the spider up the wall behind them. He explained our plan that was about to wrap up within 50 seconds.
They'd already evacuated the rest of the office and ran most of the employees out of the work area, except a few armed guards in elevated positions above the area where money was sorted and counted.
The spider ran up the wall, crossed the ceiling and into the duct almost directly above us. We watched the spider run inside the sheet metal duct and both of us counted the air drops out loud so we didn't take a wrong turn. Believe me, it's super easy to get lost inside air conditioning ducts.
I drove the spider carefully down the tube to the duct cover and moved sideways until we could see all three people. By then we saw the break room had a kitchen counter, a water cooler, a sink and microwave oven, a refrigerator, and several tables with chairs arranged in a square with a TV on the wall but it was off. The perp sat alone with a sawed-off 12gau shotgun on the table beside him. The two women sat nearby, they looked upset but nobody was talking. Little did they know that less than twenty feet away two guys were about to use a high tech micro drone and gas to knock them out. None of them saw it coming, which was why we kept our gear secret. It always reminded me of the line from a comedy TV show: Nobody expects the Spanish Inquisition!
David confirmed with the cops in the room that they were ready to cuff them, and one of the three ambulances was already here. David released a full gas tablet and told the police to ask EMS to enter the office building with their gurneys and standard emergency response equipment. David started the timer and I requested they hand me six pairs of handcuffs. Soon after that, one at a time the hostages and perps' heads hit the tables but nobody fell to the floor. Nobody else had gas masks so I inserted mine and took the pile of steel cuffs they placed on the table and went to the break room and double cuffed all three people, one on their wrists and one on their ankles.
About six minutes after that it was safe for EMS so they rolled carts into the room and loaded all three people and transported them to the hospital, cuffed to their EMS carts. The police could interview them at the hospital.
FYI, from our experience about 70% of all similar situations the hostages were involved and only posing as hostages.
After all three her been properly secured to EMS carts I recovered our spider (David jumped it down into my waiting hands) and put our gear away. I asked the OD to get us a taxi ride back to the airport. She said the jet was still waiting for storms to clear, so we should return to the general aviation terminal unless we wanted to fly commercial, then use the main passenger terminal. It was pouring rain outside with thunder rumbling but no visible lightning. I was considering spending the night in Houston and taking a taxi about nine miles south to Burns BBQ on De Priest Street, and possibly staying at a hotel down there and spending the night in a hotel room bingeing on a huge feast of smoked delicacies smothered in house BBQ sauce. My fingers so slick with sauce I could barely hold onto a spoon to eat the cole slaw. We'd get two full racks of pork ribs, two pounds of pulled pork, a bottle of spicy BBQ sauce. The taxi ran us down there but we had to pay extra for custom packaging that fit inside our Batsuit case.
The ribs were mostly thin flat packages and the pulled pork was squishable so it would fit almost any of the outside pockets. We got it packed in two one-pound packs, all of them were waterproof so we didn't soak the automatics in liquid animal fat.
Fifty minutes later we arrived and the jet was still parked outside due to wind shear around the airport. The pilot was watching the radar on his cell and said about fifteen more minutes and we should be able to leave. He said the jet was fueled and ready to go; the storm cell was slowly drifting away from IAH. He commented the airport was so big it could be sunny and nice here but storming over the runways.
Twenty minutes later we saw the windsock bending down and the rain was just sprinkles so he decided to leave. We walked in the sprinkles (with the sound of thunder a couple miles away) towards the jet, the pilot went first and somehow opened the canopy. Then we moved the stairs and got in, David sat in back so he went first. The tug driver moved the stairs away but he was already connected to the nose wheel gear. He wore a neon yellow two piece rain suit so the rain didn't bother him much.
He turned us around and pulled us away from the building with the huge plate glass windows. Neither of us understood why they insisted on putting such large glass windows on the outside of airport buildings. If he started the jet near the building it would shatter several windows.
I sat there with the Pelican case between my legs thinking about our day. I listened to the sound of rain drops hitting the plastic jet canopy above my head. In the back seats we sat rather low, it was hard to see anything except the sky and maybe a peak over the pilot's shoulder to see straight ahead. Here in Houston the land was flat, there were no nearby mountains like we had out west.
After the tug disconnected and drove away the pilot lit the jet and we listened to it wind-up. We watched on the passenger video display as different systems came online. He had a brief text chat with his dispatcher in Kansas City Missouri; we were fueled and leaving for ELP, then he would fly to his base, the air national guard base on the river just north of downtown KCMO. He got clearance to taxi to runway 33R, we'd be blasting off toward the northwest.
We watched the radar on the backseat monitor it looked like we were about to be stuck again by a newly forming thunderstorm cell a mile north of the far end of the runway but he kept going to the south end of 33R. It looked very dark gray and very not-safe to fly into.
David whispered to me, 'Oh no, you know what he's gonna do?'
I answered with, 'No-what?'
'He's gonna go down the runway just enough to lift the wheels off then stick back and fly vertical and go over it.'
I said, 'I hate it when they do that.' I reached to the side and grabbed an air sickness bag just in case. This jet was designed for short runway use so it only needed about 600 feet to lift the wheels off the runway with moderate use of the throttle. He could reduce it even more if he pressed the brakes down until the jet was up to a certain RPM. Talk about a bad ride, that maneuver was a horrible experience for all three of us. You never wanted to do that with food in your stomach or needing to sit on the toilet.
It's a long taxi from general aviation to the end of 33R, it took us past several hangars for freight services and repair shops for the commercial airlines. 33R was a very long concrete runway and we only needed a small part of it. In the final yards of the taxiway he got clearance to take off since all the other flights were delayed due to the storm cell at the north end of the runway. I opened the puke bag wide at the top and held it against my chest.
We got to the end and started the big U-turn and hit the throttle before he got lined-up. I think we rolled about 700 feet then I felt myself being pressed back into the seat, and then he sticked back and all I saw was clouds. If I looked up I could almost see the Gulf of Mexico out the canopy as we flew vertically into the sky to avoid the storm cell. On a stormy day like this all the ocean would look like was a large dark gray patch on the horizon to the south.
Holy shit that was a horrible ride, I think it was the most Gs I ever felt. My body felt like I suddenly weighed 2000 pounds, it got hard to breathe and my vision got all wonky. I heard David make some weird throat sounds over Whispernet, then suddenly it was blue skies and he sticked forward (joy stick actually) and we were headed toward El Paso and quickly reached 48,000 feet where the sky was a darker shade of blue and you could see the curvature of the planet. Straight up through the canopy the sky started to look black and I saw stars. I tightly shut my eyes and fought back the tears because not only was it a dreadfully horrible ride, but it hurt, and it was scary as shit.
As we flew over that huge thunderstorm the jet bounced like a mechanical bull, but it also didn't last long and we were beyond it and the ride smoothed out.
Nine minutes into the flight he backed off the throttle and the jet noise dramatically decreased and I felt lighter in the seat as we started a glide path to 26R in El Paso. ELP was the only airport I've seen with two runways marked as parallel that were not parallel, 26R and 26L were intersecting lines, maybe less than a mile beyond the end of the pavement. It looked to me like 26L sat at 275 degrees. Perhaps 26R sat at 250 degrees.
Last time we were dropped off far from the terminal because he was in a hurry to get home. This time I'm pretty sure he needed to fill the tanks because those vertical take-offs drank a lot of fuel. He flew from Houston to Waco to Brownwood Texas and by then we were already lined up with the runway in El Paso about 650 miles away, and since we were so high we were nearly gliding the rest of the way. The autopilot did most of the work, he had to sit there and watch the instruments in case the unthinkable happened, like the landing gear failed to work. He said we could deadstick most of the way back as long as he had battery power it would land just fine. A flight like that was similar to landing in the space shuttle, it was like a glider.
I saw the terrain quickly change from lush green to brown and it started to feel like home. We landed smoothly on 26R but had to wait to cross 26L (due to a passenger jet) then taxi the rest of the way to the tarmac outside our office, which was in the oldest part of the airport. He shut down for a fuel delivery as the canopy opened under the cloudless El Paso sky. I put the bag back and unbelted, took off the helmet and stood up, moved the pelican case onto my seat and stepped over the side and found my foot holds in the fuselage and climbed down first, and dropped four feet to the tarmac. David dropped both cases to me then climbed out too. I tried to slow his fall by catching him in the arm pits. We took our cases and walked to our office. Not too long after we arrived the fuel truck and a tug arrived and in thirty minutes he was being towed away.
Reality set in when I realized there were no BBQ joints on the northeast side of El Paso. El Paso was a beef city, not a porkopolis. I told David after we retire we should buy 200 acres and start our own hog farm and run our own butchery for pork only. That's probably all the city needed; someone to kick start the business.
That weekend we loaded the Hondas into the truck and went riding in the desert near the ghost town of Zora. Just like Brice, this 'town' was piles of busted concrete, scrap metal, and burn marks on the ground. We gave serious consideration to camping that night near Zora since there was an off road club there too, they seemed like a nice bunch of mostly married young couples. There was lots of smooth flesh on display, with lots of young men showing off their lower tummies. This group of guys liked to hang out in the late day sun with their moto pants riding low, and no shirt on. I suggested we buy a pair of those tiny video cameras we could velcro to our clothes and record the scenery for later use at home ;-).
The moto pants everyone wore looked like high school football uniform pants, they had no zipper or buttons. If you had to pee you pushed them down in front. With a wide elastic waistband they stayed up, even on a harsh moto-track. And the back side rode high to hide your crack in back. They sat low in front and the pants had a two inch V-notch where the button would be. On many guys if you looked closely (which was a major social sin for heteros to do) you easily saw if he had a line of fur growing towards his belly button, the notch framed it for everyone to see. If you had a hairless belly and a very nice belly button hole moto pants were about the sexiest things you could wear. The first time I saw David in his moto pants walking around I got hard in less than four seconds. God bless the designer of those pants was all I had to say! If you wore the right kind of sunglasses nobody knew where your eyes were lookin anyway. I think those boys bought that brand to display their virgin flesh anyway.
At work we got permission to create a flyer that would be sent to all area police departments in El Paso County. We asked for it to be posted in every police station so the employees could read it and increase their awareness of our service and their legal obligations. All too often when a police captain received a letter from another governmental organization that told them they must do something, those letters tended to fall into the shredder.
We got some advice from a psychology professor at UTEP on the wording and appearance. He suggested some phrases and words to avoid. Most cops said they joined the force to help people so we appealed to that sense of duty and put less emphasis on the penalties for confiscating our Pelican case or detaining us on a mission; and how to quickly identify our DOD license plate/bumper stickers. David felt what we were doing was kicking the hornet's nest then telling them they cannot sting us or we'd spray them with RAID and set their nest on fire. He felt we created a lose/lose situation for cops doing their job.
The bottom line of our flyer was: see the sticker and let us go. There were nineteen small towns and fourteen precincts in El Paso County, so we made 33 copies and five more for the state police (Texas Rangers) office, airport security, military MPs, and the Border Patrol. There was only one Ranger office in El Paso County. The best we could hope for was it would be posted in their meeting room so all of them could read it and see photos of our plate stickers. It mentioned us possessing advanced weaponry that was under the jurisdiction of the Pentagon and considered top secret. The fine print on the flyer warned of extreme penalties for violating the security of our gear and our missions.
This was a big part of the reason why we donated time to their jurisdictions to capture their worst fugitives. Doing that increased police awareness of our service and our team. Many of them knew we had magic hardware but didn't know specifics. Most cops didn't want to know about secret military gear because they feared knowledge of it possibly made them a target.
Contact the author: borischenaz at mailfence
My gmail email box is closed permanently as of August 2023.
And the twitter update service will be ended due to lack of interest.