The down side of the short maintenance windows meant that the temporary workers couldn’t make as much money as they once could. The good ones often looked for permanent jobs in hopes of getting off the road and settling down. That didn’t leave a lot of traveling craftsmen left to choose from. So the utility was generally grateful for any and all who showed up and applied for work.
Many of the applicants for work showed signs of aging, with graying hair (or no hair) and large round stomachs. They wore faded blue jeans and steel-toed boots and looked like they were one prime rib dinner away from a heart attack. Others were young guys looking at their first job and trying to get a foothold in the industry or gain some experience to put on their résumé. Young or old, a few of them would be rejected when they didn’t pass the mandatory pre-employment drug screening, which included peeing in a bottle and a blood test. Some even came to the site intoxicated and couldn’t pass the Breathalyzer test.
However, those who met the minimum intelligence tests, could produce a valid driver’s license, pass a background test that said they didn’t have an arrest record, and pass the drug screening would be hired to work in the Unit 1 outage scheduled for late February.
Jansen arranged for six handpicked Waxman Industries men to get in that line. Six guys who looked to be in their late twenties or early thirties, appeared to be physically fit to anyone who happened to notice, and wore clothes that were not nearly as worn as many others in line. They would each carry a lunch pail or an Igloo cooler with union logos and Chiquita banana stickers all over them, just like everyone else, which spoke to a life on the road. A couple of them would wear ball caps with a baseball or football franchise logo on the front. Except for their age, broad shoulders, and upright posture, they would do their best to blend in. Each would have a valid driver’s license and would have no problem passing mandatory drug or alcohol testing. Jansen would make sure of that. When asked what temporary agency they worked for, each would put down ‘Waxman Industries’. It would take a couple of days and a lot of standing around, but each of the six would eventually be hired, given a car pass to get on site and a badge that identified them as temporary plant employees — a badge that allowed them unescorted access to the ‘protected’ area of the nuclear power plant.
Jansen already had this all planned. He needed a couple more pieces to fall into place and he’d be ready to go. Getting his men inside was an integral part of his plan. But he also needed some specialized ‘equipment’. Based on what he’d just seen from the ocean side of the plant, he felt ready to set the next part of his plan in motion.
As Stone sullenly tied a rope around a cleat on the dock, still waiting for some kind of explanation, Jansen looked at him and simply said, “It’s time for the next step. Let’s go.”
On a Monday, just before Christmas, a delivery truck pulled up to the warehouse of The Headlands Nuclear Power Plant. With a refueling outage coming in the spring, it was normal to begin receiving deliveries well in advance of refueling one of the two large pressurized water reactors. With hundreds of jobs, both big and small, and thousands of parts to support those jobs, it was vital to the success of the outage to have parts received, inspected, certified, and stored in their proper place in the warehouse so they could be quickly retrieved when needed. Trucks, both big and small, were lined up to deliver parts and consumables to the giant warehouse located just behind the power plant, as they had been doing for weeks now. So on this Monday morning, one more truck in the queue was completely normal and raised no eyebrows at all.
The warehouse fork lift operator came over to the delivery truck, picked up four large crates out of the back, one at a time, and set them down in the line of boxes and crates that had to be x-rayed prior to being brought inside the protected area of the plant. Nothing was allowed into the plant without being screened, x-rayed, or searched first. Firearms, explosives, and alcohol were all forbidden, and to bring these things on site would result in a felony arrest of the person trying to bring the items in. The Headlands took security seriously, as did all sixty-five nuclear power plants in the United States. The ramifications of a nuclear incident, whether by accident or design, were simply too great to chance.
The bill of lading on each of the four crates said ‘Waxman Industries’ and listed ‘machine parts’ as the contents. A second warehouseman compared the invoice number on the crates to the master list he was carrying to ensure that the parts were scheduled to be delivered. After he’d verified the delivery was expected, he gave the forklift operator the go-ahead to put them into the x-ray machine.
Today, the security officer who staffed the x-ray machine was very deliberate about how he did his job. He was a filling in for the regularly scheduled officer who, at the last minute, ‘requested’ some extra time off prior to Christmas. Doing x-rays of machine parts all day long was a tedious job. It wasn’t one of the glamorous jobs in the security department, but it paid well and it beat the alternatives. As the security officer looked at the crates, he noticed the name on them. When he saw ‘Waxman Industries’, he immediately tensed up and his heart began to race. He’d been told to look for these crates and to make sure that no one else looked at the x-rays. He was told if he did this, and kept his mouth shut about it, he’d be fast tracked for an armed responder position. That meant more pay and more prestige. He was told that these crates contained some parts that some engineer wanted that were not exactly nuclear grade, but they were supposed to be saving the company a whole lot of money. While not strictly on the up and up, he was told the parts were not being used on any critical plant equipment so it didn’t really matter that much. He was new to the organization and assumed this was how things worked. As the crates came through, the huge x-ray machine scanned the contents and printed out a picture of each box. The pictures would be put in the file for subsequent audits, should it ever be necessary to prove that the contents had been evaluated. The security officer took the pictures and when no one was looking, folded them up and put them in his pocket. He signed off on the ledger saying the boxes had been scanned and their intended storage location identified. Satisfied, and immensely relieved that he was able to do that without being found out, he affixed the proper authorization tag to the crates so the warehouseman would know they’d been cleared and could be brought in and stored.
A second forklift operator, this one inside the protected side of the warehouse, drove over and picked up the crates and took them to their ground floor location, at the end of a row, near an exit door.
CHAPTER 2
The offshore breeze died away and soon there was no air movement at all, which lent an uneasy feel to the mobile patrol officer’s surroundings. Between the cold, grey, suffocating February fog that hung low across the water, and the obscure sky, heavy with menacing clouds, obliterating any reflected light from above, his surroundings were as dark and foreboding as his malevolent intentions.
Bobby moved carefully over the slippery rocks, wet from the thickening fog, and up to a gate in the chain link fence, corroded over time from salt air, which had been seldom used since construction days. He fumbled for the key in his pocket and noticed his hands were shaking, whether from the cold or nerves, he didn’t know. He squeezed the key a bit tighter, perhaps so as not to drop it when he took it out of his pocket. With his free hand, he took hold of the cold, corroded lock, put the key in, and turned it, half expecting it not to work. On some level, he hoped it wouldn’t, for then he wouldn’t have had to go through with this. Unfortunately the key turned and the lock sprang open with a barely perceptible click. Perhaps this would be his undoing on the day he had to atone for his sins.