Based on what I’d seen so far, I was not impressed with Lynn. I could tell by the look on Hector’s face that he was probably thinking the same thing. However, regardless of how I felt about any one person, my report would not target individuals. I didn’t work that way. It’s all about the team and the objective.
Hector looked at Rob. “All I know is we got nothing on radar, so I have to assume they dropped in on us from the hills behind the plant. We didn’t look that way because we were told the transmission lines heading up those hills would make it suicidal for anyone to try such a stunt.” He said ‘stunt’ in a sarcastic way, casting a glance in my direction.
Rob turned to address me directly. “Nick, I agree with Hector. Bringing in a helicopter, and bringing it from the east, was risky. You had no right to jeopardize the plant like that.”
Nice. He and I both knew the little dance we were doing here. I remained standing, though everyone else was seated. I didn’t think I’d be there that long. Tempers were running high and it was getting late. The real debriefing would come later anyway.
“I was asked to come in here and find your weaknesses and exploit them in a drill.” I was answering Rob’s question but I spoke to all three of them.
“That’s exactly what I did. Remember, my team consisted of your people acting as an adversary force. We had a limited amount of inside information, which was allowed; tools and explosives available to others; and, with the exception of the helo, we were acting within your design basis.”
“But a helicopter?” Hector didn’t appear to be placated by my explanations at all. “You know as well as I do that using a helicopter is outside our design basis. You just said so. That makes it off limits!”
I kept a close eye on Hector. He was venting and in no particular mood to listen to me. I’d seen this before. His response to getting beaten was expected. He has pride in what he does and I’d be disappointed if he didn’t. Right now, Hector was upset, perhaps embarrassed. I wasn’t going to be able to calm him down with reasoning and cold logic, and I didn’t want to waste time trying. All I could do for now was to tell him why he lost.
I decided to cut to the chase. “You and your guys are good, but you fight by the rules. I don’t. Sooner or later, you’re going to come up against someone else who doesn’t. In a situation like that, you need to be able to adjust and respond. You need to expect the unexpected. Tonight you didn’t, and because of that, you lost. Your people would be dead now and you’d be on your way to losing the Unit 1 core and contaminating everyone within 10 miles of the plant with radioactive material.”
Hector looked at me quizzically as if he didn’t know whether to ignore me or try to kick my ass. He knew very little of my background. In an introductory meeting, the site vice president told the security staff he was bringing in a private contract group called NeXus to test security readiness, after which he introduced me only as a ‘confidential consultant’. I was sure Hector could guess what that meant. Hector had probably seen people like me before — tall, lean, and quiet. Ruthless might be a better description. To him I was probably on the fringe of whatever military groups or organizations I used to be associated with. Hector probably assumed I liked to play by my own rules. He’d be close in that assessment. Actually, I don’t play by any rules at all, as he’d just found out.
He looked at me as if he was waiting for me to explain myself, something I rarely did. The more people talk, the more they give away who they are or what they’re doing, and I didn’t want these guys to know any more about me than they did. I wanted them to work effectively with one another, without knowing a lot about their enemy. Sometimes, a simple thing like a reputation is a more effective weapon than actually doing anything. People react to what they think they know, and they generally react in fear. So the less they knew about me, the more they would rely on what they knew, or thought they knew, of my reputation, causing them to make assumptions — and mistakes. It’s those mistakes I liked to capitalize on when I could. It was more important for them to learn how to function without the fear and in the face of uncertainty.
But back to the business at hand. They assigned some of their own Security Department volunteers to act as the adversary force for tonight’s force-on-force drill. We spent the last couple of days working to assess strategies, vulnerabilities, and routes. And in that short time, I devised a strategy that allowed me to beat Hector’s team. Hector wouldn’t say so out loud, but if pressed, even he would probably admit to being impressed.
Standing there looking at him, I got the distinct impression that Hector wondered if he could take me in a fight. Right now he probably wanted to see, not comfortable with the idea that he and I were actually on the same team. As an ex-Marine, Hector was no doubt confident in his own abilities, but he didn’t know me, and I could see that something was telling him to be cautious. Yet despite his better judgment, and his guardian angel telling him to give me a wide berth, he just couldn’t seem to let it go.
Turning back to Rob, Hector said, “You guys can do what you want, I guess. But I have to go back in there to my guys and explain to them that they got beat because they were following the rules. Great.”
Rob sighed. He valued Hector, but he could see Hector was angry and he didn’t need that right now. “Tell your guys they did good tonight and that we all learned something new, too.”
Without waiting for a response from Hector, Rob turned back to me and said, “I assume you’ll be in the meeting tomorrow when we debrief the vice president on the results of our drill tonight?”
I’d met Jeff Prichard in Washington at a meet-and-greet some time ago. While I didn’t know the man well, I knew the type — intelligent, confident, and bordering on arrogant — but it wasn’t important for me to know him well. My job was to evaluate situations and present solutions. By beating Hector’s team, I just opened the door to some executive ass-chewing — either my own or the Security Department’s. Either way, I did what I was hired to do. Find and exploit vulnerabilities in a mock assault. So I wasn’t too worried about it.
“I’ll be there.” Sensing that there was little more to be gained from the discussion, and knowing that they’d want to discuss this more with me out of the room, I looked at Hector, gave him a slight nod, ignored Lynn altogether, and walked out the door. I had some things to do and it was getting late. I needed a beer.
CHAPTER 7
Rob looked at Hector and with a tone of admonition in his voice, said, “You need to calm down. That won’t play well with Prichard tomorrow.” He wanted to let that settle. He was tired too and wanted to defuse the hot tempers standing in front of him. “Prichard is going to want a good write-up on this, so make sure your guys capture what went well and what didn’t. He’s going to want to know if you did all you could. Be honest about both. He’s spending a lot of money on this evaluation, so let’s make sure we do our homework on this, too.”
And although he didn’t really believe it would alter the outcome of the meeting tomorrow, he added, “Note the areas where Nick was out of bounds.”
“Just so you know, we had ‘em, right up to the point of the helo coming in,” said Hector. “Of course, we might have even intercepted it earlier if all our equipment were up to spec and working as designed.”
Rob knew Hector was right about that. He’d make sure Prichard knew it, too. But it was getting late, and tomorrow would no doubt be a long day and this was not the time to argue with Hector about it.