Chapter 2

It was a seven minute ride in the mine cargo elevator to get upstairs into Operations from my quarters on Level One. That gave me far too much time to worry about potential problems that I had absolutely zero control over. The security protocol was for the on-duty night guard to call Phyl before calling me, and if followed, that was a huge comfort. My security boss would invariably make the right decisions until I could get there.

Logical or not, this surety wasn’t nearly comforting enough while I counted down the long remaining minutes of the elevator ride. As big mining elevator’s go, it was a fairly fast one, but since my usual sleeping quarters were on Level One, which was about 600 meters down into the crater mine (nearly half a mile), getting back up top fast wasn’t going to be possible. I had ‘normal’ residence quarters upstairs, outside, assigned to me but I didn’t sleep there much, but not due to any security concerns.

Most of our potential problems, day or night, concerned the labs further down in the mine, situated on Levels Two and Three. Getting down there required additional different elevator trips and nearly fifteen minutes of transit time just from the first level of the mine. A one-way trip from Operations upstairs to Level Three was nearly 23 minutes long! Accordingly, at least for sleeping purposes, keeping a regular bunk in an old storage supply nook of Level One made for the fastest potential transit for either direction in an emergency, either upstairs to Ops or deeper down below into the bowels of the mine. Like most compromises, it made no one especially happy, particularly me ... but it served its function.

Inside Security I was relieved to find that Adam was the overnight security guard on duty tonight. He usually was, but I didn’t remember his day off. That was Phyl’s concern anyway, not mine.

By just about any standards, Adam Wojcheichowski (joking called Adam Warlock in private behind his back) was a very strange duck. He had been one of our original contract security hires nearly three years ago and had stayed with us ever since. He was as thin as a bone with pasty fish belly white skin that hadn’t been touched by the malevolent rays of sunlight in perhaps years. His hair was shoulder long black and stringy, oily and seemingly lifeless that constantly flopped in front of his eyes, which were disturbingly dark like pits of coal but were constantly animated, missing nothing happening around him. He loved the desert and its vast expanse of nothingness, especially at night ... when he could hear the wind spirits most clearly. As a person, Adam was anti-social and reclusive, almost never to be found when off-duty at company social functions; but he excelled at his job ... primarily because he claimed to be a Wiccan and the passing spirits of the wind told him of all that occurred outside our walls.

Uh, huh ... right. Well, to each to their own. Adam did always seem to know when something interesting was about to happen, but the rest of us naturally assumed that the kid was just hyper-sensitive and nearly as paranoid as his salaried bosses were. The guy was downright strange though and no ever called him ‘Wojo’ or even ‘Ski’, just Adam. The kid might be crazy as a loon, but he did his job – and that’s all that either Phyl or I cared about. How the kid managed to become a Marine (and stay one for four years) I’ll never know.

“Black older model black F-350 van came up then back down the ranch road about ten minutes ago,” Adam informed me without his eyes once leaving the bank of a dozen video monitors, most of which showed quarter screens from multiple other cameras. We had a lot of security cameras of every variety, including natural light, thermal imaging and enhanced night vision. “Drove slowly up to the main gate without lights and then parked. Three passengers inside. Two guys got out and crossed under the wire, at the ditch about fifty feet north of the gate, one guy stayed at the van. They’ve all got wireless headsets and I’m trying to find the frequency but I think they’re security scrambled, something military that encrypts and splits the signal across three or four different frequencies when broadcast. I’ll keep trying though, they could get sloppy or something might break and they’d go clear.”

That was Adam at his hyper-vigilant best, focusing his mania and talents on a problem and not just shuffling about muttering about esoteric problems in the spirit world.

“Where’s Phyl?” I didn’t see her and she ought to have been here before I was even called. The security folks had a sort of barracks downstairs in the basement under Operations that was only accessible via a narrow restricted access staircase that directly connected the two areas together, bypassing the ground floor level entirely. Phyl kept her quarters down there and could run up the stairs and make it up to Security in less than two minutes, without the slightest shortness of breath. Phyl often ran those stairs up and down just for fun and exercise. Showoff.

“It’s quiet at the moment, so she went downstairs to the kitchen to make a fresh pot of coffee. The intruders are edging in pretty slow and haven’t even made it to the crater rim yet. Paralleling the road in, but about ten yards off it, probably think we have cameras or motion sensors along there ... which we do.”

“So they know where the obvious cameras are, but haven’t found any of the hidden ones yet?”

“That’s what it seems so far. The guy out in front appears young, and maybe a military vet. He knows how to move about and scout in the dark and he’s wearing night vision goggles too. Decent ones, I think, but I haven’t had a clear close-up image of them yet. Guy behind him is following his steps exactly and seems to be the one giving instructions. Got a small hunting rifle slung across his shoulder ... probably a .22, definitely not larger than a .30 caliber. No scope, so they’re not here for any man-hunting, obviously. He’s also got a big tablet out in his hands that he keeps looking down to check. Probably showing a hi-res satellite image of the crater, or else pictures from a live image feed from a drone. Can’t tell which without going active and pinging for a drone. That wouldn’t be a good idea.”

“No. That would announce that we’re looking for them. Besides, what boring mining company installs that sort of stuff? Dead giveaway that we’re up to something interesting. Zero pings only please.”

“Zero pings only ... aye, captain!” Adam kept his face immersed with his security monitors and I risked a slight smile. The crazy would-be Warlock did possess something of a sense of humor and clearly he’d seen the movie “Hunt for Red October”.

A few minutes later Phyl returned, complete with a large carafe of fresh hot coffee. She filled up an enormous mug for herself and I accepted a smaller, more standard coffee cup. Adam declined; he maintained that he only ever drank water but he was known to enjoy a Mountain Dew soda on occasion in secret when he thought no one was watching.

Phyl was briefly updated on developments since she’d gone downstairs for coffee, but really there was nothing much new of substance to report. It was clear that this was a very coordinated intrusion with professional level agents and equipment ... and the intruders were moving slowly and with great deliberation.

I sighed ... it was going to be a long night.

Our intruders kept to their deliberate pace and crossed the rim of the crater and descended down the gentle slope of the wall down to the floor. They bypassed the furthest outbuildings without stopping, confirming they had a relatively decent notion about which of the old mining buildings on the surface crater were still in use and which, like the old miner quarters, storage warehouses, furnace and smelters had been abandoned for years. With our array of passive thermal and motion sensors, not to mention the hidden cameras that covered our rather few sensitive external buildings, we could track nearly every step that the intruders made over the next three hours.

Phyl logged their route through the old mining structures on a large paper map and right from the start it was pretty clear to us that someone had been keeping tabs on us, probably via aerial surveillance, for at least month, perhaps longer. Buildings that we never used (or almost never) were largely bypassed or their entrances given just a cursory inspection before the intruders sidled off to another more interesting location. Frankly we didn’t have much sitting around ‘upstairs’ that ought to have attracted much, if any serious attention ... with a couple of minor exceptions – and our intruders paid more than passing attention to each of them in turn.

First of all, back when the mine was a commercial operation, ore used to be taken out of the crater by rail. There was still a string of six fifty-ton ore cars all loaded up with rock sitting on one rail siding that our predecessors Littlejohn Geo-Exploration, Ltd had left behind. Our spies climbed up and took samples from each and I just snorted with amusement. The black rock from the ore cars was mostly volcanic pumice ejecta and assorted Breccias of super-heated impact materials and fall-back debris from the original meteor strike about two million years ago. Pretty much worthless stuff, unless you wanted to pulverize it and use it for a roadbed.

Following the rail line to the old conveyors and the bulk storage loading systems led the intruders to the industrial steel gate blocking the crater wall entrance into the mines and rail transport to and from Level One. Designed for transporting and processing long strings of 3-ton mining dump carts of ore from the mine outside for storage, conveyor loading and transport, this entrance into the mine appeared to be little used today and the iron gates were secured apparently by just a pair of obviously rusty padlocks and an old obsolete electronic access system. I say apparently, because in fact while the padlocks were indeed old (they were the most rusted ones I could find in a tour of junk shops in Houston a few years ago) the actual access for these large loading gates was a quite modern (and hidden) electro-magnetic locking system controlled remotely from Security. The obvious old, weathered security panel and numeric keypad did absolutely nothing, except look enticing to strangers. It served this exact purpose and beguiled our intruders for the better part of an hour before they finally gave up.

This left only the Operations building as the only other blatant entrance into the mine. The steel sliding security doors downstairs in the parking lot could only be opened from the inside and they were both bolted and barred secure at night. A speeding semi-truck might be able to force the door, but these two intruders didn’t have a prayer and soon quit trying. The normal access door had an obvious video camera above it facing outwards and our two spies stayed out of its range, but took some pictures of the keypad and details of the brand and locking system for later research for making a future hacked entrance. Good luck with that too ... Phyl and Barry (our resident geek) had made sure all of the factory default codings and pre-sets for the main electronic security door locking system had been removed or disabled.

Proper prior preparation prevents piss-poor performance! And potential security nightmares.

Having seen, supposedly, everything that our visitors had deemed of advance interest, our pair of prowlers became increasingly much less cautious. One could even suggest that the pair now became even reckless with their next movements, but you would be quite wrong. Having looked at everything they’d come to see, they were now trying to test our security awareness and vigilance by crossing the line of sight of several of the more obvious video cameras. They wanted to provoke a response, and Adam didn’t need any reminding to keep playing stupid and blind and to keep his hands away from any alarm buttons.

Let them think that we were sloppy and lazy, or possibly that our guard might even be asleep at his post. They could even pound on the downstairs door for all I cared, but we were not going to respond in any obvious way. That way, if real trouble such as a seriously armed assault party came at us next they’d likely be over-confident and wouldn’t have a clue what our actual true response could be.

On the other hand, when the second intruder started to shoot into the air with his .22 hunting rifle right next to our resident staff housing area next to the Ops building, I decided that we’d all had quite enough entertainment for one early morning. It was after three-thirty a.m. and our interlopers had tried my patience long enough.

Letting out a loud sigh just for theatrics, I dialed up a local phone number from memory, the Collins ranch house further up our shared private road. They were our nearest neighbor and owned all of the property north of the crater mine and everything on the other side of the private ranch road. As I expected, Waylon Collins, the ranch owner, answered the phone by the second ring. He was a very early riser and invariably would be out checking his stock right at the crack of dawn each morning.

“Waylon, ‘morning, this Dave Mayfair at the crater mine next door. Thought you ought to know that a dark van is parked right next to your fence and two guys got out and went under the wire ... yes ... sure thing ... I’ll sit back then and wait for the sheriff to come. I knew that you’d want to know ASAP. Good morning to you then! Bye!”

Being a longtime west Texas ranch family in these parts since the legendary days of Judge Roy Bean, they’d had their share of cattle rustlers over the years. It wasn’t just a historical problem from the days of the old west but a constant (albeit minor) concern that everyone out here in the back ass side of nowhere took pretty darned seriously. Mexico wasn’t that far away and the New Mexico border was even closer. With beef prices inching up every week and already far across the north side of outrageous, an enterprising rascal could grab a couple of head of cattle in the dead of night and have the cash in their hand before breakfast. The Collins family also had more than their share of political clout and had been financial donors to the incumbent County Sheriff (and County Judge) since their first elections over a decade ago.

We calculated the over-under for a deputy’s response time at twelve minutes. I took the under, and won, with a patrol car arriving in time to catch the waiting driver of the van just a moment or two before his two skulking scouts had returned. Caught in the act of crossing under the fence again, the deputy arrested the entire lot of them and took them back to town in cuffs to face a variety of charges, of which trespass was the least significant.

Just like with the white Suburban, the plates on the black van had been reported stolen about a week previously. With more than sufficient probable cause, the enterprising deputy searched the van and found a vast array of surveillance and burglary equipment and quite a few unregistered firearms, all with their serial numbers filed off. To conclude the morning’s fine entertainment, Waylon Collins appeared on horseback toting a big hunting rifle just after the criminal trio were packed off into the back of the patrol car, and loudly gave the villains a rather loud dressing down. This would give the intruders a pretty good and clear understanding of exactly whom had spoiled their late evening stroll, leaving any discussion of us and the security of the crater mine entirely out of the conversation.

Perfect. Just as I’d hoped. Collins could get the credit for discovering the obvious criminals, complete with their high-tech rustling apparatus, and this would let the intruders think that they would have completely gotten away with it all ... except for that pesky local busybody rancher!

Entirely too pleased with my own cleverness, I smugly shuffled back off to bed and Phyl did pretty much the same. Together, but separately, we dreamt the dreams of the righteous and virtuous, certain that we’d thrown a pretty hefty monkey wrench into the plans of our unknown enemies ... but that was a self-deceiving illusion and more than a little bit of wish fulfillment.

I slept late that Sunday morning, then lingered about in bed reading, basking in the afterglow of the self-satisfaction that occurs when a plan has indeed come together and worked out precisely as intended. Then I shuffled upstairs into Ops to scrounge up a late breakfast, or probably more accurately an only slightly early lunch. I hadn’t even managed to eat my first mouthful before the bad news hit. Dwayne, our relatively newest security guard was taking a short break from his day shift to scrounge in the kitchen too and rushed over to me at once.

“Boss, Mr. Collins called for you earlier this morning and he’s been calling back every half-hour or so, and getting mighty steamed about it too. Says you need to call him back ASAP!” This couldn’t be good ... and it wasn’t.

“The judge let them all go ... and without charges? How is that even remotely possible?” I shouted into the phone. It wasn’t Waylon’s fault, but he’d been the first to hear the impossibly improbable news and he badly needed a friendly ear to vent his rage upon. I was none too pleased myself!

“Seems one of the guys had a satellite phone and made a call or two to someone before they were all arrested and taken into Aphrodite. Sheriff’s office said that they’d just barely even finished booking them before their legal mouthpieces showed up from out-of-town on a red-eye to get them out. Said that they, the rustlers, had a full legal team waving all sorts of documents at them, threatening to sue everybody and their dog unless bail was immediately granted. Had the balls, big huge brass ones, to wake up the Country DA and the Judge too! In short, the DA’s office is officially ‘reviewing the charges’ and the Judge granted them an appearance bond at $25k each. Fuckers just pulled the cash immediately right out of a briefcase! Can you believe that! Then they all get into a big SUV and drive off to the country airport where a small private plane was waiting for them, and now they’re all gone!”

“When’s the hearing going be? Doesn’t the DA only have three days to officially file charges? Also, was it a big white SUV, like a Suburban?”

“I didn’t ask. Granger would know, he was the one working the desk and saw them drive off. Probably won’t be a hearing; if there is, they certainly won’t show. The lawyers showed off some business cards from a firm in Dallas, but the DA’s office told me that they checked and there’s no such law firm. None of the men arrested had any ID, no driver’s licenses or anything. No serials on the guns, nothing to tie them to anything. Ghosts ... maybe from a big Mexican rusting cartel! With what beef prices are, stealing cows might be more profitable than dealing drugs!”