Chapter 8.
We arrived at the main gate, they saw the familiar local sheriff's car and waved us through, we drove down a narrow paved road towards the power plant but stopped at a large trailer that was marked Minnesota State Police Incident Command. According to the scene commander two young Indian looking males with rifles and unknown other weapons entered the property via the river by cutting through fences, shot two workers in a maintenance building and told one of them their demands. They wanted the plant torn down, the land returned to Indian control. Their plan was: `Wreck the beast with one arrow.'
They entered the cooling pond in kayaks after cutting fences and approached the main part of the facility in the dark, then sprinted inside a maintenance building at 7pm shift change and shot two employees that tried to stop them and then entered the turbine building and shot out the security cameras.
The head of security walked us around the outside of the facility and said a private security service was en route with an ETA of 30 minutes. David told the group of people that this incident would be over long before they arrived, I used Whispernet to tell David they should tell the strike force to turn around and go home. They quietly cheered us when David announced a rapid conclusion to this potentially deadly situation, I thought that was un-wise to say without having all the facts.
The first thing I asked for was the most up to date floor plans, we stopped right there on the driveway so I could enter the password to access their wireless network and download detailed floor plans for the turbine building. The spider drones could use them to help with their reconnaissance of the two buildings.
We arrived at the place where the boys fired at two workers when they tried to stop them outside the back of the plant, I set down the case and got on my knees beside it. While everyone was listening to the security manager describe what they had done so far I activated and released two spider drones and set them on the ground beside me. While they ran towards the open garage door the case was transmitting the floor plans. I watched them run through puddles of blood on the back driveway. The plant manager said the men that were shot had already left for St. Cloud by ambulance.
The garage door on the maintenance building was still fully open and on the back wall we could see the door to enter the turbine building, which was propped open with something on the floor. The State Police guy explained what was captured on plant security cameras: two slender young males with very long black hair, two rifles, and a backpack. He said they reviewed recordings from all outside cameras and only saw those two people. The best info they had was there were two individuals inside and no more around the facility, his people had already searched the entire campus from top to bottom, and outside the fences along the river banks. He also said they had possible IDs on both young men they got from the State Police. We put on our glasses and got ready to end their problem.
Within two minutes we started to receive live video on our glasses but saw no movement. One spider ran across the floor to the turbine room door, which was propped open with a folding chair on the floor. The common plan our drones used was to climb walls as high as they could go and compare what they saw to the floor plans. The second thing they did was to identify threats, weapons, and warm bodies.
The drones usually searched for body-heat signatures early-on. Five minutes later drone #2 located heat signatures and identified them near the middle of the turbine doing what looked like trying to remove a bearing inspection cover. Drone #1 moved into the turbine building after not finding humans in the maintenance building. It went out on a roof truss directly above the two heat signatures so we could see the site with two views, which was when I pulled out my cell phone to show the plant people what we were watching on our glasses.
"Where's that video coming from?" One guy asked quietly.
"We inserted two small drones inside the plant to give us an accurate picture of what was going on inside." I turned to answer him. He just smiled, nodded his head and said it looked neat. When others asked how and when we activated drones we pretended to be too busy to answer.
I asked the commander what the vulnerability was at their location and he said there were bearings, almost any contamination could ruin the bearings and shut down the plant while replacements were handmade. Any time a reactor was scrammed it ran the risk of severe damage and leakage especially if the turbine seized-up. He talked to the plant engineer and asked how long would it take two inexperienced teenagers to remove the inspection port cover and he said with good arm strength and the right tools about half an hour, they had been at it for about fifteen minutes according to security people on the roof watching them through roof vents.
He explained that if they succeeded and caused the shaft of the turbine to suddenly stop spinning they'd have a super hot reactor making steam with nowhere for it to escape, which could scram the reactor. He asked if they should begin shutting down the reactor and David said, `not yet, I'm hoping to have this stopped before they remove the cover.' I thought he'd ask how long it would take to press the emergency stop button and slow the reactor but he never did, I think he already knew.
This situation reminded us once again that when we responded to events every second counted. Urgency was nearly impossible to communicate to people like the pilot or the cop that drove us here, so we learned to live with the anxiety we felt before arriving at any situation.
Talking privately over Whispernet we quickly decided gas was the safest and fastest way to stop them. While we were talking privately the plant manager interrupted us and asked when we were going to storm the turbine room (he saw the machine guns on our suits and assumed we'd run in shooting). I held up one finger to ask him to wait a moment while David and I finalized our plan.
David turned and told the plant manager to immediately shut down all exterior ventilation in the turbine room and get everyone away from roof vents and make sure nobody entered those areas (he used a walkie talkie on his belt to call the control room to have them shut off the vents). I pulled out a third spider drone and inserted two gas pellets (each was the size of a baby aspirin) and sent it into the turbine room to the middle of the turbine housing, to very near the two youths and signal green when ready. The spider above the turbine would direct the third unit to the correct spot. I also summoned the first drone to return to me, which would leave two inside the plant.
While it ran across the driveway David asked to let us know when all the vents were off and what direction the air above the turbine would most likely be moving at that time. David updated the target location to account for ambient air movement.
He asked the plant manager to immediately send us their three most able bodied guards with six pairs of plastic handcuffs and make sure nobody fired or approached the scene, we sat on the ground under the street light on the cold hard ground and waited on the three officers to arrive with their plastic cuffs, I checked my arm display it said the temperature was now 38 degrees. We told him they did not need weapons because this situation would be over a few minutes after they arrived. A couple minutes later the security team arrived on a golf cart and kneeled down with us.
Two minutes later the third drone indicator turned green. I used my cell phone to show them the teens as seen from above, we watched them loosening large bolts from the cover plate. We could barely see they had three more to go, so I looked around at all the crew, everyone seemed anxious and stressed. I showed them how they used a ladder to climb onto the turbine housing and were sitting on top of it. David and I glanced at each other knowing there was a chance after they were gassed they could slide off the turbine and fall head-first, six feet to the concrete floor and die.
We discussed their route to the turbine cover plate and when they arrived the boys would be unconscious, all they needed to do was cuff their wrists and slide them off the turbine housing and over one shoulder and carry them outside to where we were sitting right now. The third man was to gather their weapons, leave the rest of their stuff where it was for the FBI to have something to do.
David told me to deploy the gas. We watched as one of the two suddenly dropped his tools, slumped over, and stopped moving, then the other one fell backwards, his blank stare clearly visible to both spiders. On the audio from the 3rd spider we heard tools fall to the floor with a crash. One of the guards watching the tiny display noticed their rifles sitting nearby.
We told the plant manager to re-activate all turbine room ventilation immediately and we actually heard the vent motors start-up from where we sat. David watched a countdown timer on his wrist panel then after two minutes he told the security men to quickly handcuff them and carry them outside, and bring them here to us. A group of four people stood behind me watching the tiny display on my cell phone.
We watched as they ran inside the building. On the monitor they quickly located the boys on top of the turbine housing and climbed up using the same ladder. Both boys were unresponsive. They handcuffed the teens and pulled them over a shoulder, down the ladder, and walked out to the driveway and laid them out on the ground by us. I told the plant manager to tell Incident Command the situation was over, both suspects were in custody. David told me to quickly recall our drones, but I had already sent that signal. The third guard walked outside carrying their rifles and backpack. He opened the pack and found a large bag of sand.
More and more vehicles drove up behind the plant to see the perps, David got to his feet to answer questions, everyone was curious how we did it so easily. All he could tell them was we used tiny camera drones and knock out gas, which was all he could legally say. None of them knew that inside the case was enough firepower to vaporize the entire nuclear plant and the wet ground underneath it.
Slowly, the two teens started to wake up and were totally confused about what happened. One minute they were removing bolts and the next they're sitting on the ground outside the plant talking to security people with handcuffs on their wrists and ankles. They looked and sounded like they were barely high school age, very naïve and misguided but not really a danger. One of the security guards stood them up and patted them down from top to bottom. He even ran his fingers through their long hair and grabbed their crotches firmly. The FBI agent was surprised that no violence had occurred during their capture and when they wanted to know how it happened we handed him our business card and told him to call our office for our report but it might take a few days to get home.
I knew we both felt some need to say something to these young kids about what they did but David wisely interrupted by saying:
"Our work here is done," with his eyes on mine as if to say we both needed to stop talking.
I caught a glimpse of the first two spiders as they dashed across the driveway and climbed up the back of my suit and parked near my collar. Meanwhile the police and security teams had to do their due diligence and search the entire facility and the perimeter (again). After they photographed the boys and their gear they loaded them inside a van and quickly left for Minneapolis, with the two brothers locked down, side by side on the back seat. Normally, the FBI would transport them in separate vehicles but we advised them this was not an international terror plot, this was a local thing by misinformed brothers from the Reservation. While everyone was staring at the teens (they still looked a bit bamboozled) I collapsed the spiders, shut them off, and gently pushed them inside their cubbies in my belt case. On my glasses display it said they'd used about 29% of their battery power, except for #3 because it took a bit of juice to heat the gas pellets, that one was down to 35% power remaining.
We packed our gear and got out of our suits and into jeans and zipper down hoodies and called for a taxi ride into Monticello to the Red Roof Inn. While we watched for the taxi an FBI agent stuck near us trying to get us to tell them how we immobilized the kids but David just kept changing the subject, like asking if there was some place to get decent coffee this late at night. I told David that I thought only one person saw me activate a drone. At night on the ground they're very hard to see. When fully opened they're only about 1.8 inches across and their legs are as thin as medical needles and they had no shiny parts. They could fit under a door with a 3/8" clearance. Most buildings required more than that just for ventilation and building codes.
In our hotel room we squeezed into the bathtub, he sat in back, I sat in front and we soaked for an hour (with the lights off and new age music playing on his cell) and just talked about those kids and how sad their situation was, we agreed the FBI would probably infiltrate their high school. The situation never made the news locally, even though two employees were shot. The report we saw said both men would recover fully from their leg wounds.
The next morning we got an Uber ride to the MSP airport which was a long $190 ride. It took 90 minutes to drive to Minneapolis then part way around on the loop highway. We bought tickets on the first flight to Dallas then to El Paso and took David's truck back home. We were gone just over 30 hours and got home at 4:20pm. We'd be fully reimbursed for our expenses but had to collect receipts. We always flew coach and never stayed at 5-star hotels unless we were on vacation, spending our own money.
We spent nine hours a day at the office the rest of this week justifying our plan. Nobody was injured after we arrived, no secrets revealed except one guy saw me insert gas pellets into spider #3. All in all a happy ending to what could have been severe damage to the plant and two dead teenage brothers. Our commander said they had a sixty pound bag of play sand, their plan was to remove the access plate and pour in the sand which would destroy the turbine, and the power generator, and result in a nearly one year shut down of the nuke plant which provided base load power to the entire north half of Minnesota and the Twin Cities and Duluth too. The plant manager told us if they had accomplished their goal the drive shaft inside the turbine could have shattered and destroyed the housing, probably killed both boys and caused severe damage to the reactor, it could have turned into a Chernobyl grade accident and spread nuclear material over Minnesota, Iowa, Wisconsin, and Illinois.
The nuke plant owner had nothing to say to us for preventing loss of life and damage to the plant. We advised our boss the security arrangements around that plant were unacceptable and needed to be redesigned right away, we felt their security manager needed to work in another industry, like maybe shopping mall security.
That plant was one we evaluated for tunneling but since it sat beside the Mississippi River and bedrock was too deep under the plant they were unable to do any tunneling and preferred the approach we used, a simple plan after gaining good intel as to the exact nature of the enemy and his plan.
That plant used river water for cooling and it had two places that were wide open to the river, which was an unbelievably bad design.
Our boss seemed upset by how things ended, after they were captured we brought them outside and sat them on the ground with us as if we were teachers grading their homework. It made me think they would have been happier if we had shot them from the roof vents. David and I stuck to our guns, we're not hired killers, we're hired terror stoppers and we're the best in the USA. He told our boss if they wanted blood and guts they should call the FBI next time, then he just walked out and got in his truck and waited for me. After David stormed out of the office I stood and told our boss... `When we arrived the boys were only fourteen minutes away from pouring sixty pounds of sand into the turbine. Next time they should call 911 instead.' While I walked out to the truck I thought that the owner of the plant also wanted the brothers killed. But what we gave them was the optimal happy ending outcome, and they were still disappointed.
We spent the entire day Thursday reviewing the nuke plant scenario, what could have gone wrong and how we could have handled it differently (all of them involved shooting the boys). He said, "What if they'd had explosives in that backpack instead of play sand?" I could see my husband was getting angrier and angrier all day, he finally snapped back, "It was obvious what was going on, these kids had no clue. The biggest crime was they easily entered the plant through four layers of protection and accessed the turbine and nearly pulled it off, that's the biggest sin. They thought they were doing the work of heroes and they showed everyone how bad security was at the plant."
We went step by step, minute by minute through the entire event after our arrival to show us how all of our work and delays could have been avoided if we had simply walked into the turbine building and shot both kids. David whispered to me that the idea of firing a machine gun inside a nuclear power plant was absurd. After he said that I smiled and chuckled which interrupted our boss, pissed him off because he knew we were probably making fun of him over Whispernet, but there was nothing he could do to stop it aside from confiscating our case.
That evening David was so uptight I got him on the basement carpet and lubed him with baby oil and massaged his entire body for two hours.
Our last day of the week, Friday, at 6pm we left the office and drove down to Montana Avenue and stopped for Chico's Tacos and got four orders to go and two orders to eat in the dining room. We loved their rolled, deep-fried, beef tacos drowning in house made tomato sauce.
Back at home we spent an hour in our hot tub drinking wine after the sun went down, then had sex in our basement. David did not seem joyous, I felt his aggression when he rode on top, the look on his face as he stared at my chest and pounded me. When it came to sex, David had no poker face, his inner feelings were clearly displayed across his entire body.
Sunday we went four wheeling around Shit Lake (aka: Fred Hervey Water Reclamation Plant, it's near Railroad Drive across from the El Paso City Impound lot (just north of town along Highway 54). That evening we drove his truck to the overlook park on Transmountain Road to park and watch the city lights and enjoy the cool mountain air, but did not enjoy the drunks wandering around asking for money and cigarettes.
We sat there in his truck looking out the windshield and talked about our lives. David sounded depressed, like he was tired of working for the DOD and wanted something with less bullshit and contradictions. Something we could do that didn't involved killing. I could tell our week long interview, repeating the same points over and over really bothered him personally.
David told me if we had shot those kids he'd never be able to get the image of their pimply faces out of his brain, they'd haunt him for the rest of his life. He'd regret it forever. I told him I felt exactly the same.
A week after the incident David read me a summary he got from the FBI, what they learned from interviewing the two teenagers from the nuclear plant:
`The boys were brothers (15 and 16 years old) and doing poorly in their sophomore year of high school on the reservation. Their father was deceased and they lived with their (unemployed) mother and grandmother, the boys were ten months apart in age but looked like twins.'
`They freely cooperated with the FBI in Minneapolis, two days later they were handed over to tribal police while the prosecutor decided about what charges to file. They described how they came to believe the nuclear plant was on sacred land and how it was a threat to the health of all Indians. The report went on to describe the boys as immature and poorly educated but no danger to anyone in their community and had never been in trouble in school or at home. There was no evidence of abuse, neglect, or drug use. There was evidence that both had some fetal alcohol syndrome due to their parent's decade's long alcoholism.' He went on to read another summary:
`As a learning opportunity the boys were returned to their mother three days later and to demonstrate what would happen if they'd destroyed the turbine the electricity in their home was shut off for 24 hours, which meant there was also no cable TV, no heat, no water, no refrigeration, no internet, and no computer games. They had to explain their actions to their tribal leaders and received a good education why what they did was wrong and how to address grievances in a lawful manner.' David looked at me, still clearly upset and said he wished all youth crimes could be handled that way.
It was a sad story with a happy ending but I prayed we never read about those two again. Perhaps both of them could run for tribal office. It was very impressive how supportive their tribe was of them and their family. The tribal elders promised the FBI these two young men would never be in trouble again. The FBI statement sounded like the tribe hinted that if these boys got in trouble again it would cost them their lives.
We drove home slowly down the last portion of Transmountain Road and south on McCombs Street then parked in our garage and went inside.
In bed that evening we continued our discussion about what we could do for a living if we decided to quit the DOD. We talked about our finances and decided if we could pull off a few more high-dollar ops we'd be able to start almost any business we wanted here in El Paso. We often joked about opening one that would never get any customers so we could tinker at hobbies, play loud music, read books, watch some internet porn, and just turn into retired slobs. I suggested we open a snowmobile sales and service shop (in the desert!), he laughed.
Then we decided to make a list of what El Paso was missing that we could start.
Radio station for boomers that played 60s to 80s progressive rock in AM stereo, anyone could do it on FM but it took real skill to do it right on AM and AM went much further than FM, so our potential audience could be millions in two countries and four states.
Gourmet hot dog restaurant
Gourmet pan-crust pizzeria
But when we got more serious we talked about a small movie theater that showed older movies to a members-only audience. But we realized the big chain theaters could make sure that Hollywood never rented us any movies so the business would never get off the ground.
El Paso area historical van tours. But we realized that might actually become very popular and turn into a money making nightmare.
David said, "What about a record and CD store that owned that AM radio station that played stoner music?" It sounded like a neat but expensive idea. I told him the maintenance on an AM broadcast tower could get real pricey, and we'd have rent on a retail store too. The good news was there were plenty of affordable empty stores for rent. As far as we knew the closest new/used music store was way up in Albuquerque. Most of their business was online selling to collectors.
Note: contact the author borischenaz gmail