Chapter 24. Just a reminder, 100% of this story is 100% fiction.
We attended a 3-hour fitness competition for middle aged soldiers and officers at McGregor Range, which had an obstacle course on the main part of the base that was very well designed. It looked like playground equipment for grown-ups. Yes, people were actually stationed at McGregor Range, hard to believe it was occupied 24/7, just like White Sands Missile Range (WSMR) a few miles to the west (you could almost say WSMR was 'across Dyer Street' from McGregor Range).
As we left the fitness event we got a call from the OD, she sounded breathless with excitement. There had just been a bank robbery in El Paso on the far northeast side near where McCombs crossed Dyer Street, the city cops were chasing a Dodge Minivan northbound on Dyer. The vehicle was reported stolen yesterday and the robbers wore masks so they had little to go on but we were invited to join the party since they'd likely drive right past us where Range Road ended at Highway-54. It's about five miles from central McGregor Range to the highway so he stomped on the pedal. When we got the call the perps were about fifteen miles south of us on Dyer Street, which merged into US-54 (Dyer St used to be US Route-54 and went from a border bridge to downtown Chicago). We flew out the main gate at 65mph, which freaked out the MPs in the guard booth.
I opened the Batsuit case and unpacked two machine guns and mags. Then from the Pelican case I got out the launcher and an experimental short-range vehicle stopping (non-lethal) rocket. David said I had to ride in back, and explained his plan over Whispernet. But we were not in our Batsuits, just loose fitting athletic clothes (shorts and tank tops). When he stopped I opened the door and David shouted, "I think I see 'em coming! Hop in back!" David shouted that the OD told the city cops we'd be waiting for them at Range Road.
I jumped out, dropped the weapons in the truck bed and rolled over the side. Our head start gave me time to un-wrap the weapon and carefully insert it into the launch tube and get it ready to fire. I heard a commotion on the highway and saw the old minivan race by, northbound on US-54. Three cop cars were in pursuit then David stomped the gas pedal and we joined the parade. We got caught up but stayed behind the cop cars. This close to El Paso, Highway-54 was four lanes, divided. The van was northbound in the right lane. The cops chasing them moved left and slowed down, so we passed them in the right lane to take the lead position. As they dropped back I raised the launch tube and held it in the air. To a civilian it looked sort of like a military projectile launcher or a piece of black plastic pipe. To teenagers it probably looked like a homemade PVC potato gun painted black.
In short order we were about 100 feet off their bumper. Yes, it was an older Dodge Minivan with wood siding and it looked like it was burning oil too, I could smell it. I'm sure we both thought, 'where the f-ck are these idiots going?' I assumed they were a couple of meth addicts that put absolutely no thought into the getaway, they just wanted cash to buy more meth and never considered what happened after they left the bank. They'd already crossed the state line into New Mexico, but they thought that meant all the cops had to stop and let them go, like it was still 1850 and the Sheriff's Posse had to turn their horses around. I said to myself, 'Boys, that world only existed on TV.'
There were military bases on both sides of Highway-54 from El Paso to Alamogordo and not too far ahead the highway narrowed from four lanes to two lanes. A single cop with a 45 pistol could stop them easily north of Oro Grande. What were they doing? Driving into the desert in a Dodge Minivan that's burning oil? How far they gonna get on sand, sixty feet? US-54 was like the easiest place to stop a fleeing vehicle. It's like playing hide-n-seek in the center of a football field.
From El Paso almost to Alamogordo on Highway 54 most of the way on both sides all you saw was desert and railroad tracks along the east side. The military bases were all miles away in the desert so there wasn't much to see except desert plants, sand, and maybe an occasional rabbit.
On my knees I examined the weapons vibrating around on the truck bed liner. I inserted one mag into my machine gun (just in case) and chambered a round, the other one went in my shorts pocket. Next, I extended the launch tube and verified the weapon was alive and well, already active and waiting to be shown a target.
We'd never used this one before, it was with us for evaluation and testing. The wind noise in the bed of the truck was so bad I couldn't hear my Whispernet implants but I saw the cops dropped back over a mile and shut off their sirens once they let us take the lead. The trooper car in front must have seen me getting ready to deploy. I raised the device and looked through the sights at the sky to check that it was powered-on, which it was. Then I got into position and set the launcher on my shoulder, which wasn't easy in a 70mph headwind.
I shifted around and got on my knees and leaned hard against the back of the cab with my elbows on the truck roof and stayed as low as I possibly could. With the van in the sights I took a deep breath and took aim and pressed the button in to wait for tone. Moments later I barely heard the tone, which amazed me since the wind noise was so strong. I estimated David was doing 65mph, probably top speed for the van, buuuuuuut not for long.
I remembered in class they said once we got tone to release the button and aim slightly higher so the roof of the vehicle was at the bottom of the sights and re-press the launch button and shut my eyes (and mouth and hold my breath) for the rocket propellant ash. That's what I did, I released the button, counted in my head 'one thousand and one' then aimed higher and pressed it in again and clenched every muscle in my face and drew my lips between my teeth.
With a big FOOMP and a blast of nasty fucking smoke and hot ash the thing shot out of the launcher like a hungry cheetah and chased after its prey. I carefully set the launcher by my feet and picked up the 9mm automatic but kept as much weight pressed against the truck roof as I could manage. There was nothing in the bed of our truck to press my feet against, I was too far from the wheel wells to put my feet on them. The wind in back blew my shirt up almost over my head but I kept my body pressed against the truck cab and the back window.
I glanced down at the hood of our truck to see if there was any paint damage after the launch. I felt it when David let off the gas pedal after he saw it take off. Our Toyota truck was just as vulnerable to the effect of the device as that old minivan and so were our implants and the electronics in the pelican case.
From behind, all I saw was a brilliant white orb about twenty feet above the highway, it seemed to oscillate up and down as it closed-in. David put his foot on the brakes to let them get further ahead, now maybe 200+ feet away. The weapon seemed to hover over their vehicle briefly as we dropped further back and then I saw a brilliant white flash in the sky and the van swerved and rolled to a stop on the shoulder, we drove closer and stopped. David jumped out with his machine gun in hand and joined me in back. I fully expected to see them jump out and take off running into the desert after the van died. David had stopped the truck at an angle on the shoulder so we'd be firing over the bed but the body of our truck didn't offer much protection unless they were using a 22. It's all the cover we had. By the time everyone stopped they were about 180 feet straight ahead of us.
I didn't notice it at the time but looking back I saw the red spot from my laser sights on my 9mm on the inside of the truck bed so it meant we were far enough from the device when it went off. And their engine died immediately but ours kept running so we were okay.
The two dudes in the van climbed out with their hands over their heads, David yelled to lie down on the pavement and keep their hands out, do not move or we would shoot. Surprisingly, they did what he shouted (Abajo en el suelo con los brazos extendidos y no te muevas o dispararemos!). When they got out they sort of staggered briefly but complied. I guess both of them were very shook-up, maybe even stunned. Neither of us felt a thing. All we heard was an instantaneous crack like a large caliber rifle shot.
We didn't have any handcuffs but we always carried cheap plastic rope for tying stuff down in back. I looked down the highway but the cop cars were too far to see. They assumed we were going to use some powerful weapon so they stopped and blocked traffic almost a mile behind us, but southbound traffic was unaffected. No vehicles in the southbound lane were disabled but the flash made them all slow way down.
As we cautiously approached them I cut two lengths of rope, about five feet each and hog-tied their wrists and ankles together while he stood by with the 9mm automatic aimed. I patted them down and found nothing except a broken glass meth pipe and lighters. After I got the second guy hog-tied David looked in the van and grabbed the cloth bank bag and carefully reached inside and tossed the blue paint bomb into the weeds before it went off. I walked to the center of the northbound lanes and waved both arms in the air hoping the cops saw me. My automatic was against my stomach but really wasn't needed any more. Those guys were properly hog-tied, the party was over and the keg was floating on its side.
We heard sirens as the coppers approached. Suddenly, the paint bomb exploded in the ditch and sent a large cloud of blue dust over the desert towards the train tracks, we both laughed. The first car arrived, David shouted, "Federal Agents!" but they had their little pistols out ready to shoot anyone that made a sudden move. Most of the El Paso County state cops didn't know us or our truck, but some city cops (northeast side) knew us well.
When they arrived we aimed our weapons at the sky, I removed the magazine from mine and David put his in the Batsuit case in our truck. Then he handed over his DOD ID card and walked over to me, fished out my wallet and showed them mine, while I stood there ready to waste the bank robbers. One of the Rangers asked, "Are those automatic weapons? I assume you got permits?" David told him to run our truck plate. More cops arrived and rescued the bank robbers one at a time from the hot pavement. They cut off our ropes and got them to their feet and patted down properly. Next, he cuffed them and put them into back seats of their cars. I put my weapon away once the 2nd perp was in stainless steel cuffs and seated in the cramped back seat. The only thing missing from this party was a stack of pizzas, two cases of cold beer, and some decent tunes.
While David respectfully introduced us and our service I got a plastic baggie out of the truck and went in search of weapon circuitry fragments on the ground, we were asked to not leave those remains behind. So I gathered all the internal parts I could find in the weeds, zipped the bag shut, and got in the truck to wait for him to stop talking. I could tell by his hand gestures David was getting upset, I was ready to go home and cool off in the pool. He was trying to teach the cops something they didn't wanna hear.
We often got the same response from cops when we explained who we were and what we did: disbelief. Our story sounded a little too weird for most cops to believe on the first telling. Anyone with a decent printer can make a reasonable looking fake ID card, ours never really looked very official. But if they ran our plate the info came from a source the cops trusted, so we always suggested they run our plates. Problem was, our story still sounded like horseshit (to them) and our machine guns really made them uncomfortable.
We've been told before that based on the way we looked, acted, talked, and worked many cops got the first impression we're actually a couple of redneck vigilantes posing as feds. We both had south Texas accents which was different from what you heard out here in El Paso, which had more of a cowboy twang to it than our Houston accents. That triggered the disbelief brain cells in most cops which was why the default response for most of them was distrust.
There was a 'do your own thing' ethos in Houston, but in El Paso it was more of a 'do as you're told' ethos. Probably because of the huge cultural impact made by Fort Bliss on the entire southwest since 1849.
City cops didn't have access to weapons like ours. And we NEVER mentioned having two atomic weapons in the truck. When they asked if we had permits for automatic weapons David always replied with something about did soldiers in the Army with M16s get permit cards? The answer of course was, No. So he'd say "We don't either, we work for the DOD too. They don't issue permit cards for machine guns, just ask any soldier. Our machine guns were issued to us by the DOD, just like M-16s were issued to soldiers.
"How'er we supposed to know?" One of them asked.
David was ready for that too, "Look all the way around you, what are we surrounded by on all sides?" He said pointing all around us.
The cop turned his head and looked at the desert all the way around us and the mountains in the distance and said, "Military reservations."
"Uh huh." And everyone chuckled. The guy's face and ears turned red.
Finally David had enough and walked away from the gathering of police, I watched him walk towards our truck in the outside mirror. He raised the bottom front of his tank top and wiped the sweat off his face.
It turned me on watching his show. He got in the driver's seat and slammed the door. I told him I was ready. I held up the bag with the burnt rocket electronics inside so he could see.
Up ahead of us, maybe one mile was a turn-around in Oro Grande since the highway was divided from Oro Grande to El Paso. The median was too soft to drive on, even with our wide tires. He drove around the minivan being winched up onto a roll-back impound truck and drove into Oro Grande and did a U-turn once traffic cleared, I half expected he would flash a middle finger at the boys in black as we drove by, but he didn't. He sighed and I sat at an angle expecting to hear him gripe about the cops.
"One of them asked, 'you mean we can't even arrest you?' and I told him, no. You're playing with your life if you do. And I'm not kidding or exaggerating. You'd be executed that day. One of his partners did the coughing BULLSHIT thing when I said it." David explained and smacked his hand on the steering wheel. Then he continued with his hands very tightly gripped on the steering wheel.
"It frustrates me, as much time as we spend teaching cops about our service; the more we teach the dumber they get."
I chuckled but he was right, they should be taught by their own unit commanders, since each one had to sign off on the training, under oath. I think what pissed him off the most was us being treated like suspects until we showed our ID cards and proved they weren't fake. I added my two cents, "Civilian clothes, civilian vehicle, civilian highway, they don't know us, I don't fault them for being cautious. Plus we clearly outgunned them; I'd be cautious too." I could have rambled on but I stopped myself.
'So the cops drive up on the scene, middle of the desert, a van is stopped with the doors standing open, two men are hog-tied on the pavement and we're taking cover behind our truck exactly the same as they were taught to do. But they see our machine guns and assume we're guilty of something and our IDs probably came from a box of Cracker Jack.' That's why David always wanted to tell them to 'Fuck Off!' when they stubbornly doubted us.
David paused for a moment then said he had to force them to run his license plate or they were going to arrest us because of the machine guns. I reminded him we probably looked suspicious from a distance, and his dark skin didn't help with that first impression. When I reminded him of his brown skin he turned and glared at me but never spoke. He forgets how dark he looks towards the end of summer.
Then he shouted at me, "We're holding the perps for the cops to arrest, and that makes us suspicious?" I said, "No, but the 9mm autos with long mags and silencers bothers 'em; at a glance they knew we outgunned 'em. Some of 'em probably suspected we got paid a lot more for doing the same job so they like to embarrass the overpaid plain clothes feds whenever possible, it's what they do."
He turned on the radio but I reached up and turned the volume back down.
"You find much debris?" He asked after calming down a little.
"Yes, I found a nearly intact circuit board but it's burnt like toast. Not sure what good it'll do." I raised the bag again to show him, he glanced quickly.
"Did it fire okay?" he asked.
"Yes, maybe a little slow to give tone. Maybe that was because of all the southbound vehicles, made it harder to single out one vehicle. I barely heard the tone in the wind."
Then he laughed, "It scared the holy crap out of the Bozos in the van!" We both laughed. "They thought it was the Rapture." We laughed again. "Jesus has returned to McGregor Range!" I added and we chuckled again.
"You know, when it comes to these so-called smart weapons, I wonder what they actually saw when I aimed it at the back of a minivan and pushed the button and waited for tone. Like how wide an area did it see? Is it color or black and white or UV or what does it actually see. Nobody told us that. It might help us aim if we knew how it saw and identified the world." I preached. David glanced at me and nodded in agreement then he reached up and pressed the CD into the stereo, turned up the volume. "Who's that?" I asked.
"Margo Price I think, Farmer's Daughter." He just bought her CDs used on Ebay, we loved her music but sometimes her voice sounded like Dolly Parton. We were the only humans in America that disliked Dolly Parton. I thought she sounded like Alvin and the Chipmunks (the 1961 TV cartoon series). Watch them online then imagine the three chipmunks singing: Working nine to five, what a way to make a living.
Then suddenly we remembered to call the OD back and let her know we did not die and the mission was a success, one experimental weapon used, we were on our way home and would submit a report via email in a couple hours if anyone called.
The OD responded with, "If anyone calls? They always call, they need your report to write theirs."
David replied, "Okay ninety minutes, watch your in-box." She said thanks and we hung-up.
We knew from experience that if they actually arrested us for possession of fully automatic weapons it meant our truck would be impounded and towed, we'd be taken to their station, finger printed and photographed. They'd get our pelican case and open it. And as soon as they did that they just signed their own execution warrants and none of us wanted to see that happen, but we never found a way to convey who we were and what we were authorized to do without triggering some kind of aggressive thoughts in them and putting all our lives in peril. That was a risk we were never warned about during our two years of training for this job, but it's probably the worst part of our jobs.
In the USA the most powerful people on a local level were the local cops. None of them knew there were super cops that out-ranked them and their laws. Just the idea of a super cop pissed them off and made some cops go bat-shit crazy.
We stopped at our regular C-store on McCombs Street and got a 12-pack of Coors then drove home. I think if he'd had a confrontation with a homeless beggar outside the C-store he would have smashed his face from all the pent-up anger he had inside. I needed David to un-wind or I wouldn't get any milk tonight. Anger made his nuts shrink and his boner shortened too. A man's dick never lies.
On the computer in the Tac-room I ordered a replacement weapon and we packed away our gear, ejected the bullets from our automatics and pushed them back into the magazines and plugged-in the case. We stunk from our hours outside at the Range, then standing on the highway for 49 minutes didn't help. So we took brief showers and got in the pool for about fifteen minutes. We mostly swam underwater end to end long enough to cool off then got out and went back inside and started our report, which started with the OD call about the police pursuit on Dyer Street. For the record, the cops called the OD for help, not the other way around.
The manufacturer of the device we used needed feedback on how it performed, but I was biased. Throughout the design phase I said it should be a point and shoot electronic device that emitted an electrical pulse, not an exploding missile. Explosive rockets always took too much time and money. We wanted something handheld, maybe the size of a taser with a highly directional antenna on the front: 'isolate the target - squeeze the trigger.' That's what we wanted, not something that exploded. There was too much stuff that could go wrong when it got too complex. The complexity they added was to overcome (or mask) an impractical design. The technology exists for a handheld weapon like a pistol with laser pointer, aim and squeeze the trigger and the vehicle engine died immediately and coasted to a stop without effecting braking or steering.
David replied with, "Imagine you're a cop with one of those ray guns parked along a busy city street before the bad guys arrive. They roar past, you aim and squeeze the trigger. The problem is what about beyond their vehicle? The computer running the cash register down the block, the guy driving a car with a pacemaker implanted on the other side of the street? And if you're shooting at a vehicle that's already passed, all the electronics you're trying to stop are in the front end of that car, you're aiming at the back bumper!" I considered his examples, of course he was right. Then he went on ranting.
"You watch, by 2040 all new cars will be required to have a remote kill feature." I argued with, "Yeah but what about all the used cars that don't? Or what happens if you can't identify the suspect vehicle? Ever hear of stolen license plates, or no license plate?"
David added it would be part of vehicle emissions inspections, that the kill device was working. It might become a crime to defeat it in your car. We got in a discussion how the kill features might work. He said the car had to be authorized by inspection or a time-out feature would disable or restrict it regardless. Drive without insurance and the engine won't start. Don't pay your parking ticket within ten days and your car won't go faster than 15mph. Drive beyond your pollution control daily limits and your maximum speed is reduced, and the vehicle comfort features won't work either. We considered that the remote kill feature might work in stages like just disable the radio and the AC, then elevate to restricted maximum speeds (45, 35, 25, 5mph), then maybe the horn won't stop blasting, then at last the engine won't run.
David said when that crap starts you'll see a lot more people buying used cars in Mexico.
I said, "You notice you never see articles online about how to reprogram the computer in a car, like how to defeat safety features, or stop the car from reporting your location." He said we might end up driving this truck for the rest of our lives.
We sat on the sofa with the laptop to write our report, but kept getting into fake arguments about stopping fleeing vehicles and all the complexities (hostages, medical emergencies, pirated kill devices, and on and on). It took two hours to finish the eight page report and email it to the OD's desktop computer. We recalled the entire event, step by step and pretended to argue over every detail. When I was in the back leaned against the cab roof he said he looked in the mirror and got a great view of my hairless tummy smashed against the glass because the wind blew my shirt up to my arm pits, that was unprofessional on my part. We argued over everything so it took longer to finish it, but it was kinda fun too.
After it was sent I got us two beers and offered to make dinner, we had enough stuff to make almost anything he wanted. We were both starved from hours of physical obstacle course work against a bunch of NCOs that were over age 35. The competition was for men over age 30, we were in our late 20s so we said we were 30 but we didn't win any of the challenges. The MPs from the range won the most because they can practice all the time since they're stationed there.
He finally agreed on splitting a Porterhouse with baked potatoes and a side salad, so I found one in the freezer and put it in the microwave oven to thaw, but we always finished thawing in the sink, under warm water.
He uncovered and turned on the griddle and the vent hood, then he scraped and cleaned the griddle. I made the salads, he prepped the potatoes and nuked them after the steak was ready to cook. There was one more 3-pound Porterhouse in that package so I set up the immersion cooker, it would be done later tonight. I'd pack it in a Ziploc bag and put it in the refrigerator for tomorrow. I set the heater for 135 degrees and got it started. We discovered you could put a frozen steak in the immersion cooker if you added more cook time. We liked to use one hundred eighty minutes cook time for a good steak. Our steak was thawed by the time the water in the tank got up to temperature. After it was done I put it on the griddle for a few minutes to brown and saute some onion and mushrooms slices in butter with salt and garlic.
We also discovered we could add glass bottle-stoppers in the bottom of the cooking bag to keep the steak from floating in water. We found a collection of antique solid-glass bottle stoppers on Ebay and dropped them in the bottom of the bag because just a steak in a plastic bag floated, they needed to sink to cook properly. Before we discovered glass we used wrenches in another baggie dropped in the bottom of the one gallon bag that held the steak submerged in the immersion cooker tank. The best part was it came out perfectly cooked, precisely medium-rare and juicy-tender each time. The bad part was it took 2-3 hours, or for cheaper meat it took longer (longer cook time meant softer meat). I told him I wanted to get a standing rib roast sometime to try a big cut of beef in the tank.
We drank beers and sat on the sofa with the sound muted, we played CDs on the little boom box on the kitchen counter while we watched reruns of MASH on the TV with no sound, we'd seen every episode at least twice.
We got to wondering how much money the lesser characters still made off the airing of MASH reruns. How much did the actors that played Radar, Father Mulcahy, and Klinger make from reruns airing? David said the outdoor MASH scenes were shot at Malibu Creek State Park, it used to be studio property and there were still remnants from the years of filming MASH still sitting around in the park, like Korean War army vehicles all rusted and overgrown by vines and saplings.
After dinner the sun went down and we got in the pool. "Too bad the pool's too small for a diving board." He mumbled. David ran across the yard and dove in, he flew over the stairs and nearly scraped his hands on the bottom. At the deep end he jumped up and sat on the edge of the pool with his feet in the water, I slid down his shorts and got him hard and extracted a load, then chased it with another cold beer that we split. He liked to hug my skull against his body when he came, I think he liked the feel of my face against his flesh as he squirted in my mouth. I always enjoyed it when he tightened his body muscles with each spurt in my mouth. I did it the exact opposite, I loved to totally relax my body during an orgasm to enjoy feeling every tiny part of it. After my orgasms my entire body twitched several times, like powerful aftershocks.
I added 'plastic rope' to our shopping list since ours was now too short. There was a small compartment behind a panel in the back of the truck, we always kept rope in there since we liked to wander around Lowe's and buy shit we didn't need.
Six AM came early but we got up and showered. We were done with most of our annual fitness stuff. Today, we had physical exams with a doc at WBAMC, the new clinic, not the old building that was now a VA hospital. Those exams were also usable for our pilot's license re-certs. David brought all the forms. We went in one at a time and stood around in our plain white boxers. They drew blood too but we declined any shots. They even did hearing tests and eye tests, urine samples, and I think those were drug screens. We wasted nearly 200 minutes in that place then had to sit in the lobby while they reviewed the early tests and our chest x-rays. Everything came back normal so we got our forms back and drove to the post office and mailed them to the FAA in Dallas with the signed exam forms and two money orders.
David commented: "So he showed me the color blindness charts, I read the numbers and passed. But I did some checking, there are fourteen different types of color blindness, those circle-number dot tests only work for two types of color blindness, not the other twelve. The clinics that use them had no idea what they're checking for."
"Yeah, but those pictures test for the most common types."
"True, but lots of people have the other twelve types and might not even know it." We drove to our office but the boss was gone for the day already. The OD said they got a call from a company in Colorado about the vehicle-stopping device and wanted us to fly up there for a debriefing about using it the other day. It turned out the minivan was only the second time it was used 'in anger' after the prototypes were given to all our teams. They wanted to hear detailed explanations of how it performed. We agreed and went upstairs to buy tickets to Denver.
There was one flight departing at 6:10pm, and since it was currently 4:05pm, we decided to run home and pack a suitcase and take a taxi back to ELP and grab that flight. In Denver we stayed at the La Quinta because they had the biggest pool and hot tub, all indoors. We left our Pelican case and Batsuits at home in the Tac room.
The Denver airport (DIA) was well outside the city, in the desert northeast of town. There was a highway that ran to it and all around it was a sea of rental car places, but no hotels. You gotta take a shuttle bus to the hotel area over by the loop highway and they're all in one area, so their prices were all about the same. None of the hotels were really very impressive, all chains that had the same amenities and the same prices, probably all used the same sheets, pillows, blankets and the same laundry service in Los Angeles too. If we planned to stay longer we might search for something better than the chain hotels. We liked to find the old hotels in downtown areas that had been there for fifty years. The rooms might be smaller but the service was better and so were the downtown restaurants. It seemed every old city in America had a classy famous old restaurant downtown (except El Paso).
After we got in our room we called the rep from the munitions company to let them know we were in Denver. He said a red van would arrive at 8am to take us to their secure facility near Barr Lake State Park, far northeast of the city and north of the airport. It seemed like all over the USA any company that made munitions that could down an airplane were always located near an airport. It sounded like a bad idea to me because any time a plane crashed they'd always be a prime suspect.
We ordered dinner to be delivered to us at the hot tub, four beers and one foot long Italian hoagie. Both of us loved crunchy Italian bread that was soft inside, crisp outside. Three kinds of meat, two cheeses (no American cheese thank you!) lettuce, onion, tomato slices, oregano, salt, pepper, oil-vinegar, and maybe a little Cholula sauce. The beer ran out before the sandwiches so we ordered four more. Then we slowly swam laps, I belched loudly under water which made David laugh underwater. And yes, Whispernet worked underwater but not as far.
The pool was a large rectangle with lane lines but most of the time we had it to ourselves. One thing neither of us liked was a hotel pool crowded with screaming children and drunk adults talking loud enough for everyone to hear every word they spoke. David was careful about not leaving our beers sitting unattended. We took turns swimming laps while the other guy stood by our plastic beer cups.
He was in the pool alone while I finished my dinner. Two older guys got in the pool and seemed to be flirting with him; I sat at our table enjoying the show. I thought I saw some gray hairs on both of them, which I think made them around fifty. It's not that often you saw someone built like David in a pool without a similar age woman nearby in a bikini.
The pool was in a separate building with a glass roof and a large patio deck, with lots of plants growing inside. They get some severe winters up this high so most pools around Denver are indoors and are heated all year. When you walked in the pool building and David was the only person in the water the first thing that caught your eyes were his large dark red nipples, about as big around as a can of beer. They attracted both sexes almost equally, but he acted as if that was not true, they were attracted by his good looks and fit body. I tried to tell him the entire pool area was bright white or light blue, the only dark things in the pool were peoples swim suits and his nipples! They really stood out, at a glance he looked like a topless woman. They even stood out when he was under water.
I listened to them from across the deck. They asked how long he was at the hotel, did he know the area, favorite attractions around Denver. We'd been to Denver many times but mostly driving through on I-25 or at the airport waiting for a connecting flight. David loved to downplay Denver due to its history of radioactive contamination. We rarely drank the water there, only drank bottled beer/wine. Many people died from plutonium ingestion in Colorado. Read the history of Rocky Flats sometime; we both liked John Denver but his songs about Colorado were delusional, and maybe he was too.
I saw the guys stand closer to David as they stood talking in shallow water; I assumed he stayed there because he was teasing them with his body. I heard them laugh about something, but five more people came into the pool building just then so it was impossible to hear them. They were all standing closer now by the side of the pool. I expected him to hop out and sit on the side like he would at home when he wanted his dick sucked. But with extra people in the building that wouldn't happen but he could still tease them. After about fifteen minutes the other guys moved away and started swimming laps and that was when he got out of the water and sat there watching the increasing number of people in the building. I finished my food but stayed at the small table near the pool. After a while I ate the rest of his sandwich too.
Just after I put the last bites of his hoagie in my mouth David walked up and looked at his empty sandwich wrapper then looked at me chewing and smiling at him and figured out his food was in my mouth. He chuckled and said, "I'm still hungry." I looked down at his crotch then back in his eyes and said "Me too." He smirked and looked all around then sat in the other chair. I think if we'd had the place to ourselves he would have shoved it in my mouth right then and there, even while I was still chewing hoagie bread.
Two hours later we left (after a large family with three kids arrived) and I was horny so back in our room I got him in the shower and we made out for a while. Then I had him do me against the wall, him behind. I could tell he was in the mood because of how he lifted my heels off the shower floor with his dick. He always said that shoving hard up and inward during an orgasm always made it more intense. Afterward, he got on his knees and did mine, my back against the shower wall. I embraced his skull and squirted hard in his mouth.
Being in the pool and watching him walk around in a bathing suit for nearly three hours really made me horny.
We got up early the next morning and walked to a (Village Inn) restaurant two blocks away for breakfast then back to the hotel for the van. They arrived on time and drove us far outside Denver to a large manmade lake state park; near the dam was their rocket testing range. This was not a huge company and the weapon we had used was experimental, just for evaluation and testing. We were in the hot seat answering questions for six hours. Sometimes, some of them sounded like they were trying to cover their asses about something. They wouldn't answer our questions and didn't want to hear any of our suggestions, because we were clear that we didn't like the weapon format. We wanted a small handheld weapon like a ray gun that stalled vehicle engines, not something that exploded. Apparently it did something(s) wrong based on our witness statements. I wondered if they checked up on the well being of the two guys in the van, they were less than twenty feet from the detonation.
By the time the round was fired the minivan was nearly a football field away. I remembered seeing it move up-down-left-right as it chased the van and stayed on track until it got about fifteen feet above it and exploded. We never saw any damage to either vehicle. The thing blasted me in the face with a small dusting of hot sand, but they all did that.
Shoulder fired weapons use an initial charge to kick-up the end of the tube and move it away from people, then the rocket motor ignites and takes over. It worked similar to the old submarine-launched Polaris missiles where they burst out of the sub, ejected to above the water with a blast of air, then once above water the solid rocket motor ignited. Almost every hand launched missile used a small initial charge designed to keep the projectile from impacting the ground during that brief time before the solid rocket motor lit and provided primary thrust. All the small man-fired rockets had the ground-contact problem.
They showed us the software that ran the rocket. It was amazing how much computing it had to do from the time it was turned on until after it was fired and had to re-acquire the target. It had to image the target and surrounding area then recognize it again from a new location moments later. There was an astounding amount of processor work to be done to recognize a target and differentiate that from the surrounding areas.
Imagine your target vehicle was on a busy eight lane street with car dealerships on both sides! It had a lot of thinking to do in less than two seconds. That was part of the reason why they were so expensive and top secret. We got the impression their rocket was also made with some kind of non-EMP explosive warhead too, or maybe even a toxic gas.
We spent the entire day at the ranch in their lab taking questions and discussing what we saw, over and over. They had us identify the locations on Highway-54 where the projectile was fired and detonated, and what percentage of debris we found and where it landed in relation to the explosion. We confirmed it appeared the perps were uninjured despite being only twelve feet below the detonation. It might have toasted the paint on their roof but we never saw any burn marks. No fire department was called or needed, the van was towed to the county impound, which was just down the highway.
Their bottom line excuse for not making a ray-gun device was the output, the pulse, would destroy the ray-gun too. They hadn't found a way to create the pulse without destroying the circuit that created it too. They were working on a design that didn't evolve into a proper EMP until about 50 feet away. Making the wave highly directional and localized was another huge obsticle.
They finally cut us loose at 5:45pm and said we were free to go. David asked if we were going to get another rocket and they said yes, in a few weeks. They had some software issues to resolve first. The info we provided described a few small but important bugs they needed to address first. One of them whispered the next version would not produce a fireball when it detonated, just a flash and some smoke.
My complaint that I barely heard the ready-tone they said was an issue with the launcher, not the missile.
They walked us to the van and stood by the driveway waving when we left on the long drive back to Denver.
You know, when people think about Colorado many picture Alpine mountains and ski resorts, but actually about 1/3 of the state is a barren rocky desert; the eastern part of the state and that terrain extends well into Kansas and Nebraska and becomes the Great Plains where some buffalo roam freely.
One thing I think we figured out that was a possible problem was that all these shoulder-fired weapons were designed to be fired by someone standing motionless, aiming at a moving target. Our debriefing revealed we had slowed to around 50mph when I re-pressed the button on the launcher. That created a situation the missile was not programmed or designed for: like being launched in a 50mph headwind and while bouncing around. Neither of us had considered that we might be launching from a moving vehicle and in a strong wind when we took their initial training. Their software handled it correctly but it was never formally considered.
We also noticed it seemed to hover over the front end of the minivan for several seconds before it detonated. We were chasing them but had to drop back. We didn't want to destroy our own engine (and possibly all the weapons inside our Pelican case and our Whispernet implants too) with the same EMP.
That projectile was designed to fly from 45 to 120mph to chase a target, and there was a chance we could have destroyed it by exposing the small steering wings to winds of nearly 175mph by firing it from a speeding vehicle. I wondered what it would have done if the guys in the van saw it and hit the brakes. It would have had to turn around and re-acquire the vehicle, now seen from the front. I doubted it could have handled it, and if that happened it would have put us at risk, like a runaway torpedo striking the sub that launched it. David liked it but I thought it was a bad concept, maybe even dangerous.
If the minivan saw the launch in the mirror and stomped on the brakes the projectile would have flown over the target, then what would it have done? In the movies when the torpedo looses the target it searches for another. They told us this one had two seconds to re-acquire then it flew straight up and detonated about 200 feet above the ground. That would be too low to damage aircraft.
By the time we got back to the hotel we just missed the last flight to El Paso so we stayed at the hotel again and hung out in the pool. All in all it was not a horrible day, but it was 100% not fun. At least they fed us well.
We ordered delivery pizza to the hotel room and a 12-pack of Coors. There's something about fresh hot pizza and cold beer that went together perfectly. We got a medium cheese and pepperoni and added crushed red pepper and salt. David usually commented that we should have a dog to give the pizza crust pieces to. But there was no way we could have a dog with our work schedule, not to mention the travel and no grass or dirt in the back yard.
While we ate I bought tickets for the flight home, supposedly wheels-up at 8:15am and we should be home by 10am, if we didn't hang out in the office too long. We didn't have to submit a report about this trip.
Our discussions concluded that if we didn't have that engine stopping weapon we would have had to run them off the road while displaying a machine gun, and hope they didn't fire back or wreck our truck. We could shoot their tires and hope for the best outcome. With a vehicle going 65mph we really had no technology to stop them in which where they were guaranteed to be alive to stand trial and be re-united with friends already in jail.
David said we could try to drop a spider from the drone but they're not able to fly that fast. If we used the variable nuke turned all the way down it would stop them but also make a crater in Highway-54 bigger than three Olympic swimming pools. David suggested we invent a way to get spiders onboard a moving target vehicle. We came up with dozens of stupid ideas before we even got close to something that might work.
If we could have shot a spider into their van when they drove past that would have ended their escape quickly. On the spiders the legs were rather fragile so they couldn't be tossed into a fleeing vehicle.
We drove home to brainstorm more about how to get a spider (or two) on-board a fleeing vehicle (without destroying it in the process).
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