He was startled as the Unit 1 control room supervisor came into his office saying, “Time for shift brief, boss.”
Trying to appear calm, Dave said, “Be right there.” He couldn’t think straight and was near panic, but he needed to focus. “Do something normal and it will help you feel normal,” his mom would tell him as a young boy. He didn’t believe it then and wasn’t sure he believed it now, but he had to move. He would do the shift briefing and then figure out what to do. Yes, that’s what he’d do. He looked for his notebook and a pen, forgetting the one in his shirt pocket.
The shift briefing was held in the control room 30 minutes after the crew took the watch, which allowed everyone time to walk down their watch-stations so they could come to the brief informed. The control room operators weren’t allowed to leave the control room unless relieved by someone, so the in-plant operators had to come to them allowing everyone to be in on the briefing at the same time and hear the same things.
Each of the eighteen guys on shift was polled on the status of the equipment under their control, but Dave wasn’t paying any attention. He was in a daze. He needed this briefing to be done with so he could get back in his office and stay by the phone and check e-mails. One by one, each operator gave a short status of his watch. This was agonizing to Dave. He didn’t care what the operators would be doing tonight or what their plans were for the watch. He just wanted the brief to end.
When it came time for him to summarize work for the shift, he said, “We have no maintenance or surveillances scheduled for the shift. It’s going to be a quiet night. Let’s keep it that way.”
Turning to the two control room supervisors, Dave said, “I want you to run all work requests through me tonight. We’re expecting some weather,” he lied, “and I want to make sure we don’t do anything to jeopardize load.”
That didn’t sound unreasonable, so nobody objected. “End of briefing,” he stated matter-of-factly, then turned around and went back into his office to stare at his computer.
Dave was a man of action by nature and by training, and not doing anything at all was agonizingly painful. He had to do something — he just didn’t know what that should be. Then it occurred to him that maybe this was a trick of some kind. Why, he couldn’t imagine, but if it was, there must be some way he could verify it. He could respond to the e-mail. He could write back and see what was going on. Maybe he could call the computer geeks and have them trace the e-mail. But they weren’t there this time of night. Besides that, the sender said he would be watched. He wasn’t thinking clearly or he would have quickly realized all he had to do was call her cell phone. Of course! Just call Kay!
He stopped pacing, sat down at his desk, picked up his phone, and presses ‘9’ to get an outside line. He heard a click then the familiar dial tone. Did he always hear that click? He couldn’t remember now. He never paid attention before.
With shaking hands, he dialed Kay’s cell phone number. It was evening, so she’d be at Nana’s house by now with the kids, either getting them ready for bed or they were already in bed, worn out from the day in the Magic Kingdom and the long drive. The phone rang and almost startled Dave as it did so. His heart was racing. Just pick up the phone! Please, pick up! The longer it rang, the higher his anxiety. Twice; three times. He was afraid of what he might hear if it was answered and almost hung up. It seemed like a lifetime to him.
On the fourth ring, a man’s voice answered, “Was the note we sent you not clear enough?”
Dave almost fell over. He tried to swallow the lump in his throat, but his mouth had no spit in it. “Who are you and what do you want?” he said, not really knowing what to expect.
“Who I am is unimportant,” said the voice in a calm, yet threatening manner. “You will do exactly what we tell you to do, when we tell you to do it. If you call the authorities, we will kill your wife or one of your kids.”
Dave’s mind didn’t know how to comprehend what was happening. All he could do was respond with the first thing that came into his head. “How do I know you really have them?” he asked, knowing that of course they did. They had his wife’s cell phone.
The man on the other end of the phone described what Dave’s wife and children were wearing, and the name and room number of the motel where they’d been staying.
“Do as you’re told and no harm will come to them!”
Dave wanted to ask to speak to Kay, but the phone went dead before he had a chance. He slumped back in his chair and his eyes filled with tears.
CHAPTER 33
The plant security force was always understaffed. Like other departments that had to train their employees, security had to run brand new armed responders through a training program before they could be given weapons and put on the watch bill. And it took time and resources to run those classes, two things that were always in short supply. Security wasn’t a glamorous job, frequently involving a lot of standing around, watching the paint dry. It would be more exciting to put a dime in a parking meter and watching it expire. There had never been an armed attack on a nuclear power plant since nuclear power was first used to generate electricity more than five decades ago. That bred complacency.
Despite all the technological measures and countermeasures they had, personnel still had to staff posts near the perimeter fence and in other remote areas, sometimes sitting for hours at a time to watch for intruders who they were sure were never going to show up. To alleviate the boredom, some plants actually allowed the security officer in remote posts to read magazines and books and, in some cases, to watch videos. Management believed this was better than having them fall asleep, as had happened at one or two stations in the past. The pay for someone in security wasn’t as good as that in the technical departments either, but like other departments, specialty work meant specialty pay. In the world of security, being an armed responder was a specialty, meaning more training and more pay, and was therefore the sought-after job in the department.
Because The Headlands had fewer personnel than management would have liked, security officers, as well as their supervisors, had to work overtime routinely. While this made for big paychecks for them, it also meant a lot of long hours. As a result, Hector still had the graveyard watch as the security supervisor, and had for several days. This turned out to be okay, though, because he was finishing the report on what went wrong the other day in the security drill. And if he had to do it, he might as well get paid for it. So working overtime provided him some time to get it done.
Hector was sitting at a desk on the raised security shift supervisor’s platform in the security building when he noticed his manager walk in and step into the metal detectors. His presence there at that time of night was unusual, though not unheard of.
“Hey, Rob. What’re doing here? Checking up on me?”
“No rest for the weary.” Rob stepped out of the metal detector and into the explosive detector. A moment later, hearing the ‘ding’, he stepped forward into the security building. Despite the fact that he ran the department, he had to be screened before coming in, just like everyone else.