Chapter 13

Chuck ate a microwaved TV dinner and left the hangar, carefully locking the door behind him. Mel was still asleep and presumably Lina was too.

The curtains allowed as much privacy as possible, considering that three people unavoidably lived in close quarters during the week. There had been no friction so far; Mel and Chuck were careful not to say anything that would remind her of the assault, but otherwise treated her as a fellow worker. As for Lina, she enthusiastically joined the project. Whether in the technical work of maintenance and prepping the King for flight or the mundane work of cleaning the break room, she took a full part. More importantly, she now smiled occasionally, a distinct change from when she’d first arrived.

Chuck entered the guard shack and asked to speak to the shift supervisor. She was briefing the guards who’d just come on duty, so Chuck waited politely until she finished, then signaled that he wanted to talk to her. She nodded and found him in her office as soon as she finished assigning the guards to their posts. “How much do you know about what I do here, Maddy?”

“I know you have something to do with what goes on in the big building. I also know we’re not supposed to ask questions.”

“Close enough,” he agreed. “I’m involved primarily with plant operations, but I also represent my grandfather’s interests on the corporation’s board of directors. I’m not exactly sure where that puts me in the hierarchy, but it would be fair to say I’m one of your bosses. To clarify, your company has its own director but he works for us. Any problems with taking instructions from me?”

“None,” she said. “I’ll keep my contract administrator informed, of course, but unless your orders conflict with what he tells me I see no reason why I shouldn’t cooperate with you.”

“Fair enough,” Chuck said. “It’s time to bring you into some of what we’re doing. We’ll be manufacturing devices, and later on we’ll be putting them on aircraft. We anticipate buying airframes for now, although we may eventually manufacture our own. I can’t tell you more than that; for now we’re keeping everything low profile to maintain secrecy. There are reasons why we can’t go public yet. This has been an easy job for your security people up to now, but you should know that we’ve had a physical threat and an assault on one of our female employees. Corporate maneuverings are just business, we understand that, but when our people are threatened we take that very seriously.”

“I can understand that, Chuck. What you’re saying is that a higher state of security alert is justified by recent events. Did this happen here at the factory?”

“No, it happened elsewhere, and a police report was filed. If your supervisors feel it necessary, I can request a copy of the report, but the threat I mention was specific enough that I’m concerned the next attack could happen here. I’m not asking you to break the law, but we’ve had both a direct threat about company activities and criminal assault of an employee. In my judgement, stronger defensive measures are necessary. Based on that, and acting on my authority, you are authorized to employ whatever force is necessary to neutralize any threat to people or property.”

“You understand that what you’ve just told me allows us to employ deadly force if we feel the situation requires it, don’t you?”

“I do. This is not just about preventing industrial espionage, it’s about protecting our people. We expected people to try to snoop around the plant, that’s why we hired armed security agents. But we didn’t expect the degree of physical threat we’ve become aware of and we certainly didn’t expect an assault. The opposition has shown that they’ll stop at nothing.”

“I’ll pass this on to my contract supervisor, Boss, and I’ll also let the crew here know what they’re facing. Should we consider increasing the number of guards on site? We also provide a security escort for Mr. Fuqua on occasion, not always, but when he asks for an escort we provide someone. If you’re willing to authorize it, we can add protection for essential personnel to the contract. We have the assets to do that.”

“If you think you need more people on site, clear it with Mr. Fuqua. For that matter, you might ask him whether he wants to authorize personal protection for others. For now, I think you’ve got enough people. You know that Mr. Fuqua has other employees outside the fence who keep their eyes open, don’t you?”

“Right, and we’ve got a set of passwords we use when we talk to them, depending on the day of the week. We rarely see the cowboys, though; as long as they stay away from the graded area around the outer fence, there’s no reason for us to contact them. They have radios to alert us if they discover a problem, and we keep one of our radios tuned to their frequency. If they call in a contact, we’ll talk about it, but so far that hasn’t happened.”

“Sounds good,” Chuck said. “How many people are on your shift?”

“I’ve got six, two assigned to the gate, the rest circulating around the campus, and when the plant goes into full operation that number will likely double. That’s when we’ll need more people, not only to maintain security but to deal with the projected number of employees. Right now, I’m running three shifts of two on the gate. Each shift works four on, eight off, and this repeats once during the duty day. They man the gate in pairs for four hours, then they’re off for four hours except for routine foot patrols every two hours unless there’s an emergency. They can play cards, video games, watch a movie if they want. If they choose to sleep, that’s okay too, but they’re required to respond within thirty seconds if called. Breaking their shift into four hours, then giving them a break, minimizes the fatigue factor.”

“Sounds very professional.”

“It is, Chuck. We hire mostly military veterans and ex-cops. The vets know when not to shoot, that’s important when you’re dealing with civilians. You don’t want the adverse publicity and neither do we.”

“Good. Anyway, that’s all I’ve got for you. You might see a few more people inside the fence. They’ll be moving in and around the various buildings, so don’t get alarmed.”

“I won’t. We’ll be going to a badge ID system as soon as your other employees start working, but we can begin using that now if you think it’s necessary.”

“I don’t. The factory employees recognize each other by sight and we’re not likely to interact with your people. As for the later badge system, how will you handle that?” he asked.

“I’ve been told that your people will commute from Roswell and Clovis by bus. Before they board the bus, they’ll sign in, get their ID’s checked, and be issued their badges. When they arrive, no one gets off the bus without a badge. We’ll have an agent waiting with a scanner when the bus pulls in, to check the badges and compare numbers. Once they’re inside the fence, the badge color will tell security who’s allowed to go where. Limiting access to sensitive areas is standard security doctrine. I imagine you’ll be getting one of the blue all-access-anytime badges, but your company decides who gets what color badge; we just administer those decisions.”

“Makes sense. Did Mr. Fuqua come up with this plan?”

“No, that came from a Mr. Jindae. According to our list, he’s the plant’s personnel director.”

“That sounds about right, although titles keep changing. Okay, I’ll leave you to your job. It’s time for me to go earn my keep.” Chuck smiled and left the office.

Maddy opened a laptop computer and began composing an email, then stopped; it would be better to update the guards first. The email to her directors could wait.

Frenchy left the site Monday morning and remained away during the rest of the week.

He drove in late Sunday, just after dark, and parked outside the main building. The site appeared deserted, except for the guards manning the gate. He telephoned Lina to tell her he’d arrived, then walked through the moonlight toward the hangar. Moments later, a whirring noise announced that he was being met. The faint glow of a chemlight guided him to the rear seat of the Bedstead.

“Climb aboard, Dad. I’ll have you inside the hangar in a moment.”

Frenchy eased into the seat and wondered if he needed a safety belt to hold himself in place. He decided that the seat was enough and settled in. Prudently, he gripped the seat with both hands as Lina smoothly brought the Bedstead up, stopping as soon as it was high enough to clear the fence. She flew ahead, slowing as she approached the building, then eased the craft inside the darkened hangar. The door rolled down behind the machine and moments later, the lights were switched on.

“Welcome, Frenchy. Sorry about sending our rookie pilot to pick you up, but she insisted.”

“Well, the flight was a bit rough, but they say any landing you can walk away from is a good one, right?”

“You two can just kiss my ass! I’m already as good a pilot as you are, Chuck! Mel said so!”

“He only said that because he was feeling miffed that I asked him to change the batteries after my last flight. Still, it’s fair to say you’re as good as me, since neither one of us has crashed yet.”

“Setting a low standard, Chuck?” teased Frenchy.

“I wouldn’t say that,” Chuck protested. “She’s taken over the Bedstead test flights, running that course I laid out, which gave us time to work on the replacement. It’s a good thing Mel and I are almost done modifying the King; otherwise, I doubt she’d ever let us fly again!”

“How’s that going, Chuck?”

“All we need now is the impellers, Frenchy, and they should be ready within a week or so. The computers are in place, but I can’t do a final calibration until the impellers are installed. The extra batteries came in last Wednesday, so we charged them up and installed them in the King on Friday. We’ve got cargo tie-downs on the rear deck and mounts for two seats, side by side. The windshields are part of the seat assemblies now, so all we have to do is put one in place and turn the cam-locks to hold it. It takes less than five minutes to install or remove a seat.”

“Sounds good. Something else has also been going well; you know I detached a crew to work on the marine systems, right?”

“I’d forgotten about that! You say it’s going well?”

“That’s why I’m here. We’ve got a unit ready for testing and I thought Morty should do it. You can come too, if you want. We can leave as soon as you and Morty are ready. We’ll be running the test out in Lake Michigan, a few miles from Chicago. We’ve also got two working service boats, but since there’s only one impeller for each boat and they run on battery power, the crews have already given them a good workout. They’re simpler even than the Bedstead, and they work fine. But the big craft has multiple heavy impellers, a large generator—we picked up more the same way we got the factory ones, by bidding on FEMA excess units— and more sophisticated controls than the boats. That’s why I thought of Morty; we’re getting close to what he had in mind for that—other—kind of ship.”

“So what kind of hull did they mount this system in, Frenchy? One of those small freighters? I don’t know that we’re ready to put impellers on a passenger craft yet. People would wonder if they noticed there was no propeller.”

“It’s not a freighter. Actually, we leased a...”

“A barge?” Morty asked, his astonishment obvious. “You mounted the system in one of those big flat-bottomed cargo haulers?”

“Yep, and why not?” Frenchy smirked. “You said it yourself, that as many impellers as needed can be mounted on anything, literally anything, that you need to move. Not to mention that leasing this one was lots cheaper than buying a ship. I think it might have been on its way to be scrapped, but it floats which means it will work for us. We didn’t even have to do a lot of modification, just hire people to weld a few patches where rust had weakened the hull. Unlike a ship, there was no propulsion system to be removed and no steering gear to deal with. The only thing our crew needed to do was weld brackets on the sidewalls for the impellers, and add supports for the generator. That’s mounted midway between the bow and stern to keep the barge trimmed level. We’re using the generator’s frame-mounted tank for fuel, so we only have about two hours of operation if we’re running the generator at full power.

“The impeller brackets have swivel mounts that can be tilted up or down electrically. They can be controlled locally, using their own panel, or remotely from the bridge, which is what we’re calling the pilot’s station even though it doesn’t look much like a bridge. It’s located on the deck, a bit forward of amidships, but everything else is below in what we’ve been calling the engine room. It’s really just a big open space. The generator’s in the middle, the battery packs are behind it, and there are walkways along the sides where the engineer can access the impellers if he needs to. But it’s still mostly open space.

“We had to cut two holes in the upper deck, though. We mounted the fan in one, the other is the exhaust opening. There’s only a lattice of expanded-steel over that to keep people from falling through. We found out quick that when the generator is running, it’s hot down there, and you also get fumes. I guess the exhaust pipe isn’t sealed as tight as it should be, but the fan clears all that stuff out. We’ve run tests on everything, we just haven’t taken her out yet.”