Chapter 29: The New Boss

Something about living at Missionary Ridge must agree with Kyle and Kathleen because they again wake early and enjoy watching the dawn while they have breakfast on this Wednesday morning. It’s like yesterday, but different in a way they can’t describe beyond recognizing it’s different. Sonny was told not to bother turning up until the others arrive for the meet and greet, so it’s no surprise for them to have a few hours of good study and project work done before the alarm sounds to let them know he’s coming up the drive.

It’s a little after 10:00 when Kyle and Kathleen meet the new staff gathered in Hector’s courtyard. Five families with eleven children ranging from six to sixteen, all military brats: which means they all grew up moving around on a regular basis from base housing to base housing with their parents on various postings, or living at a base while one was overseas.

After the introductions Adalina, Angelica, and KK lead the children off to the Lopez house while the others talk housing and security. Kyle says, “Hector, as the senior member of staff here I expect you to see to the overall management and control of things, but I also expect you all to work out who will be the senior security person and you’re to listen to them about security. Is that OK with you?”

Hector smiles when he replies, “Si, Patrón, that will make things easier to organize because we know who is in charge. Who will be in charge of the other sub-groups?”

Kyle has a huge grin while saying, “I leave those decisions up to the manager of my Hacienda, so that’s your problem, Hector. Sonny will be the senior driver, unless he asks one of the others to take on that role.”

Hector is surprised as the title Kyle used for him has more status, authority, and responsibility than he thought he’d have. He’s happy to accept the position and is determined to do a good job for his Patrón.

Getting down to the main reason for the meeting Kyle says, “I’ll leave you all to discuss the details of how this will go, but looking at the layout here I think we need to move the road a little.” He looks around this flat area between the mountain ridges as he talks. Waving at places with his hand he continues, “If we change the line of the road to curve left a bit before it takes the right angle across the front of Hector’s house we can put three houses against the ridge with the road curving in front of them before it curves in front of Hector’s, down and across the front of three houses against the opposite ridge, like a giant backward ’S.’ I suggest it comes around behind Hector’s house to pass the playground and the outbuildings before going to the main house. The maintenance building can be set back a bit from the road at that point so it has access to both ends of the road. The area around the road and the houses can be landscaped to improve security.” They all nod agreement while they envision what he’s saying. “There’s only a couple of things I insist on. I want all of the houses to have a nice front wall to match the one around Hector’s with the walls lined with good armor plate between the rows of adobe and the inside of the exterior walls of the houses lined with armor plate as extra protection. Hector’s wall is to be upgraded to the same standard. I want all of that to blend in well. I also want a couple of well armored and hidden secure areas for the non-combatants to hide in should there be major trouble. Build everything with energy conservation and comfort in mind. To that end, feel free to dig into the ridges for extra rooms too. Finally, I want you to work out where to put a pool building and any other sort of community buildings you feel we should have. Since this is all for the maintenance and security staff the trust will pay for all the housing and buildings we’ve discussed. Any comments?”

The new people are stunned by the trust paying for it all, but they all understand the basic security measures and layout described. The curving drive will make it hard for attackers to get up much speed and it’ll force them to drive a gauntlet of all the houses before they can cut back toward the main house. The road will also look like it’s to access the outbuildings behind Hector’s house, which will look like the main house of the compound. A nice looking secure set up with a very deceptive result about where the main house is.

Kyle turns to Sonny and says, “When you’ve finished talking about the houses let me know, because you need to collect the parcel of phone gear and I want to ride in to do a few things in town today.”

Sonny nods and one of the wives, Maria Garcia, asks, “What phone gear? My military specialty was communications with a focus on the use of phones.” Kyle grins as he talks about the issue with the current phones and the new gear they’re getting to use. Maria grins and adds, “I gather you want the antenna and relay to be concealed?” He nods and she looks around at the rocks of the mountain ridges, “I know how to do that. I also know where to get some solar panels to power the system that will be very hard to find. What’s your current network?”

Kyle shows her his phone and replies, “You decide what to get and I’ll pay for it. I want it good, secure, and as undetectable as possible.”

Maria grins, “With the right equipment I should be able to get both going. I’ll ride in with you to pick it up. That’ll give me a head start in getting everything up and running.”

He replies, “We’ll be happy to have you join us.”

Kyle leaves them to talk further as he goes in search of KK. He finds her in Hector’s lounge room talking with the older children about their studies. He tells her about what’s happening later and she decides to stay to chat with the ladies and children.

About an hour later Sonny drives Kyle and Maria into El Paso while Angelica takes the rest to Albuquerque to look at the home she wants. It’s a good thing only the three go to El Paso. After studying the gear in the box from Dennis, Maria takes them across town to a few other places to buy a lot more gear. They end up with the SUV fully loaded with gear and some large flat panels tied to the roof-rack.

In Las Cruces Kyle stops to buy a lot of fried chicken for everyone’s evening meal. The only room for it is in the foot-well and the laps of Maria and Kyle. As a result it’s no wonder some of the side orders are a bit light when they reach home. The three take everything inside the huge garage beneath the main house. Just when Kyle is about to take the food upstairs to put it in the oven the others return from their house shopping. The food is quickly set out on some makeshift tables and everyone seems to enjoy the easy dinner arrangements.

The rest of the week is easy for Kyle and KK since they stay at home and study. Not needed by Kyle and KK, Sonny spends the time with his family and the others as they get things organized. Charlotte, Courtney, and Felicia fly back to Houston, taking Estelle and the others with them.

Mid-afternoon Thursday the alarm goes off. Kyle checks, and sees Sonny driving a large forklift with a long white container on it. Kyle opens the double garage doors from the security console and goes down to see if Sonny needs any help. Sonny works the container through the double door at an angle. Once inside he stops, gets down, and checks a paper while examining the back area of the garage. The garage is in a reverse ’L’ shape with an area in front of two roll up doors large enough to park ten cars beside the stairs leading to the living area above. Next to the stairs is the dumb waiter to move small items to the kitchen area, or to the hidden basement below the garage. The next two doors open into the workshop and the store room. To the right, as you enter, is a long area about the same width and about double the depth of where the cars are parked. About halfway down the left wall is the doorway to the plant room where the emergency generators, batteries, their controllers, and the environmental control equipment is located.

After giving the area on the right side a good check and reviewing the paper he’s holding Sonny places the paper on the seat of the forklift and takes a construction type measuring tape off his belt. He makes one measurement and makes a mark on the floor with a piece of chalk. He takes three more measurements and makes some similar marks. Finally he lays some heavy white tape on the floor in the middle of the area. He reopens the garage door, gets back on the forklift, and he starts it. He carefully turns the forklift and works back and forth until he’s lined up with the marked off area of the deep section. He slowly moves forward with the forklift straddling the heavy tape. Kyle walks over to look between the side of the container and the wall, he’s surprised to find there’s virtually no gap between the container and the basement wall. There’s a slight scrapping sound as Sonny lowers the container to the ground right at the marks he had made on the floor. He backs up and spins the forklift around before leaving the basement.

Kyle walks up to look at the container, it has a door in the middle and a window in the middle of the door. He wonders what it is until he looks in the window and he recognizes the layout of the walk in freezer at CyberFun. This must be part of their community freezer system.

A moment later the roar of the forklift announces Sonny’s return with a smaller unit. Another check of places and chalk marks then it’s soon in place when Sonny drives down the center to spin and slide it in at right angles to the other one. This one is about two thirds the length of the first, and it goes against the far right-hand wall. When Sonny drives out Hector arrives driving a golf cart with a load of gear in its carry area and two of the new staff members in the seats.

They start unloading the gear, but do nothing until Sonny delivers a third unit that’s about half the length of the first one. This goes on the left, facing the other, and ends just short of the door to the plant room. When Sonny leaves Hector and the men put a ladder up against the last unit and one man climbs on top while the others bring materials to pass up to him. In a few minutes one is securing fascia to the top of the units to seal the small gaps between them and the walls as well as each other. Another man is doing the same thing across their bottom gaps and Hector is doing the side gaps. It’s quick work and they finish the work just as Sonny delivers a long waist high bench like affair about a quarter of the length of the first unit. He soon has that placed in the middle of the area between the two shorter freezers. Kyle tries to make some sense of this while Hector’s work team gets more gear out of their golf cart. The three freezer units make up a lopsided upside down ’U’ with the bench running parallel to the sides and midway between them. Its end is in line with the shorter freezer unit.

Plan of the garage / basement Area with the fridges in place.

All images are also available in high resolution at:

https://www.dropbox.com/sh/ebk8ve052m0c1rs/AACohN7e_x8OuRFrn0EbQ2L6a?dl=0

Shaking his head Kyle walks over to Hector and starts to ask a question. Hector grins and points at the big unit while saying, “That’s the Sub-zero freezer, the fridge unit is the one on the right, and the regular freezer is on the left, with the canning and bottling table in the middle. The ladies will be very happy when this is all set up.” Kyle nods his agreement now he knows what’s happening. Just then Sonny arrives back with a pallet load of gear. He drops it and leaves while a line of golf carts arrive with more gear.

KK walks down the steps and claps her hands with glee when she sees the set-up, saying, “Oh, good! They’re here. Kyle, go and study. Let Hector and his crew get everything wired up while the ladies and I get them set up.” Recognizing marching orders when he hears them he nods and heads upstairs as all the others smile at the Patrón following orders from his wife. Behind him organized pandemonium breaks out as they all set to work. The men take gear from their golf carts and the pallet to set up the power, the chillers, and the ventilation of the four units while the ladies remove the travel packing and start installing various devices to the bench while arranging the refrigeration units’ interiors how they want them, including attaching labels in many places within the cooler units.

While he works on one of the project assignments Kyle thinks about how much studying they’re getting done. Between the early morning starts and the lack of interruptions they’re really racing through the work they have to do. About the only breaks they take, at the moment, are for meals, exercise, rest, and to help with the changes when they can.

Early Friday afternoon Kathleen and Kyle take an exercise break from their studies and go for a jog down to Hector’s. Well before they arrive they can see much is going on. Heavy equipment is working to their left as they approach and they can see what the equipment has done on their right. The areas for the houses are level with spaces carved out of the ridge behind where they’ll sit. A couple of large areas behind Hector’s house are ready for construction. One crew is drilling a well while another is digging holes in the rock. To their left the places for the houses are level with the foundations poured. Another crew is cutting into the ridge behind three houses so additional rooms can be added. At this rate the new houses will be in and livable very soon.

Keeping well back from the work crews the couple move through the area. When they do they both notice the security staff are keeping an eye on all of the crews while making sure everything goes where the plan says it’s to go.

Kyle thinks to have a joke with Hector and asks, “Hector, how many of these workers aren’t related to you?”

Hector looks around the site then he replies, “The man working the drill unit cutting into the ridge is the second husband of a cousin’s in-law. But three of the truck drivers who delivered the gear this morning were Anglos we know well. All these people need some work, so this is good for us all. They do good work, charge us less because we’re family, and don’t talk about what they do.”

Kyle grins when he responds, “Hector, if they finish and everyone’s moved in to their houses by this time next week I’ll tell Doctor N she should pay them a nice performance bonus. This is fast work. In El Paso we’d still be looking at plans for this amount of work.”

Hector grins and nods while he adds, “Well, we did get a hand with the county because my cousin approved the work without having the engineer go over it. That alone saved a few weeks of paper pushing.” Kyle walks off laughing. He has to tell Doctor N about this little game of who you know working to their advantage.

Later, as the couple head back toward the main house they run into Maria and her husband Nick. They’ve tools over their shoulders and both look like they’ve been hard at work. They stop to chat. Maria says, “As you know, we’re at nearly fifty-one hundred feet here with the ridge even higher. The ridges to the south, except for Picacho Mountain, all top out around the forty-six to forty-eight hundred feet. I set the repeaters up near the top of this ridge, just short of fifty-two hundred feet, and ran the antenna cables a thousand feet to set them up on the south-east tip of the second ridge to the south. The way I’ve done it you’ll not only get coverage up here, but you’ll also have a strong signal for the entire trip down the valley and along Rocky Acres Trail with some overlap from the Doña Ana towers. The repeaters feed the towers at the Las Cruces International Airport, which is the least utilized tower in the area. The set up works with both 3G and 4G phones and the 4G Internet is very fast. All four antennas are painted to look like rock, so they’re hard to spot. The whole deal is powered by solar panels colored to look like the rock and the batteries are in a water-tight and weather protected cave with rock like doors. The cables are protected against animals and well buried. Secure, hard to find, and harder to trace.”

Kyle smiles as he responds, “Thanks, Maria, I’ll stop worrying about them using the phones to find us here, because they’ll think we live over a dozen miles away west of Las Cruces. That’s brilliant.”

She laughs, “I’d like to be sitting in on the Verizon meeting when they review coverage areas and find the dead spot they had on this side of Doña Ana has magically come alive. The gear you got is very capable and it can handle the extra traffic as well as ours. My next project will be to set up our community Internet using the phone network. I’ll set up a server room with a web proxy server to minimize repeat page hits and run fiber optic cables into every household with Cat-six cables and Wi-Fi in each house. That’ll make us all happy. Also, Hector spoke to the trust administrator and she’s getting everyone a phone like yours so we’ll all be phone capable.”

KK grins and says, “Since you know what you’re doing just go ahead and do it. Then let us know when it’s up and running.” Maria nods yes with a smile. Nick has a big grin as well, Kyle thinks it’s because he doesn’t often get to see Maria just doing her thing at a technical level.

Maria starts walking away, but Nick hangs back a little and softly says, “Thanks for trusting her judgment. One of the reasons we got out was I was fed up with watching officers ignore, or question, all of the decisions she made on technical matters. Being a female Hispanic did not sit well with a lot in that tech field. And thanks for getting them to let us go early. I don’t know how you did that, but it’s a big help.”

Kyle simply says, “You both came highly recommended, so why wouldn’t we trust you to know your job? Just keep doing what you know how to do, is all we ask.” Nick nods and hurries after Maria.

When the work crews pack up later that afternoon Kathleen and Kyle offer to buy their staff and families dinner at CyberFun, with Felicia still in Houston they feel they need to be on hand to support Beverly because Friday night is usually one of their busiest nights of the week. They all pack into a few vehicles with Sonny’s family riding in the SUV with KK and Kyle as the group convoys into El Paso.

They park behind CyberFun and enter through the back door. On his last visit Felicia gave Kyle a set of keys so he can help out as needed. The place is a lot busier than they expected and Beverly is at her wits end. Seeing KK and Kyle arrive she smiles and rushes to them. It takes only a few minutes for the three to agree Beverly will take over the kitchen for tonight while KK will see to their guests and Kyle takes over as night manager. A few more minutes and some rearrangements are done to the various areas. No one is using the study area so that becomes the games area and the main area nearly triples in size. About the time full order is restored the dinners for the Alexander group are on their way to the tables they’ve pushed together.

Kyle joins them for his dinner before taking over the register to let the staff have their meals. He keeps an eye on his guests as he works and he notices all the children go to the games area when they finish eating and the adults continue to talk while watching the sports events on the television. He joins them when he can. Toward the end of the evening he notices Maria is absent, but Nick isn’t worried, so Kyle isn’t.

It’s after 11:00 when the crowd is small enough they can encourage people to go home. When they pack up all of their guests comment on how they enjoyed the food and the night out as a group.

As they leave Beverly says, “With the two big games on tomorrow I could do with a hand! Any chances of you being able to help?”

KK looks across at Kyle and gets a nod yes before she replies, “Sure we can. We’ll both be here. Does this mean we’re back on the books as casual managers?”

Her mother grins, “Damn right it does! And at the normal rate, too.”

Kyle grins when he says, “Right, Boss, see you in the morning.” He enjoys the shocked look on Beverly’s face when she realizes she is his boss when he works here now. As it seeps in she grins back at him.

While walking to the cars Maria asks Kyle, “Do you think the trust will pay for the gear to set up a few games servers like here?”

KK says. “If they don’t, we will. It’ll let the kids have fun across local network, especially when they have some of their new school friends stay over on a weekend or holidays.” All the kids hear this and cheer.

The trip home is quick and quiet with most of the cars leaving their little convoy while they drive through Doña Ana. Sonny’s kids are asleep before they reach Doña Ana so he drops Kyle and KK off before taking them home. All are worn out from their busy day and evening, so they’re in bed and asleep soon after they get to where they’re staying.

Saturday morning is an early start so KK and Kyle can get to El Paso to open up on time. Expecting this to be another long day they all have small packs with a change of clothes so they can have a shower and change before the evening gets too busy. As he now has a remote for the CyberFun garages Kyle has Sonny park inside one when they arrive at the business.

They open up and are soon very busy making a few changes to the layout. They leave it much like it was last night, but do set up a small study area. The games today are the major El Paso sports teams against some long term rivals. So all of the El Paso sports bars will be busy with people wanting to watch the games on big sets with the first one starting at lunchtime and another in the mid-afternoon. The eight screen single image hook up of screens is set up in the middle of the main bar for the day with a few of the single screens around the edges of the area too.

The morning starts out normal, but the crowd and business keeps growing in size and activity as the clock turns. By midday the whole place is set up as the sports bar with all of the game and study gear in storage. The place is squashing room only, but all are behaving well and are happy. Although Beverly did a night drop on her way home last night Kyle has Sonny escort her to the bank to do another at 13:00 just so he has space for more money in the tills.

Mid-afternoon Peter arrives with Charlotte, Courtney, and Felicia. They can’t believe how busy the place is. All three are soon put to work with Charlotte on the till and the girls working the crowd for orders.

Peter sits down beside Sonny at the back of the room and says, “You know, try as I might I can’t think of any other job where I’ll get paid to sit back and have a few drinks while watching a game in a sports bar.”

Sonny grins when he replies, “Yeah, the hours may be odd, but the people are fun and we do end up in some interesting places meeting some very interesting people.” They both smile as they enjoy their cold sodas while watching the crowd for trouble.

After the second game most of the people hang around to have their dinner before going home. About seven thirty the crowd starts to thin out and they return the place to its usual layout while the staff start taking time out for a late dinner of their own.

At 20:00 the Alexanders sit down with Beverly for their dinner and Beverly grins when she says, “Good, my boss is here now, so she can do the paperwork for today.” Charlotte and Felicia look up and she adds, “Last night Kyle pointed out that since he’s now a casual manager I’m his boss and he can duck certain tasks for me to do. We did a good night last night and I’ve already made two deposits today to keep down the cash on hand. So the books for yesterday and today are going to be a lot of work. I know the kitchen order on Monday will be easy, we just order a full load of everything because we’re almost out, despite a delivery on Wednesday.” They all shake their heads while they think about what they’ll do if tomorrow is just as big.

Charlotte asks, “Kyle, I’ve got to head to Houston tomorrow, can you go back with me to be ready to start first thing Monday morning?”