“Tell them to go home. Tell them there is nothing there that can help them. Tell them that they will get hurt or killed if they approach any of the buildings.”
“I told you I speak a little Haitian. Not all of that,” Kara said.
Kara sat up straight in her chair. She said something in Haitian, talking loudly so she could be clearly heard.
“Ale lakay ou. Si ou rete n' a blese.”
The boys inside the fenced area of the reactor compound heard the words and reacted with nervous stares and twitches. By now, the other two boys on the ground had recovered from the airsoft onslaught and were standing next to their tall friend. All their heads were on swivels, looking this way and that.
Kara spoke again.
“Ale konnye a, ni nou p'ap mouri.”
Her words seemed to convince the juveniles that there were easier places to rob. They all turned and began walking back toward the fence, trying to rub away the pain from the areas that had received airsoft hits.
“That seemed to do it.” Hail said. “We hate to hurt these people unless the reactor is at risk. They are just poor people who would strip the aluminum off the door jams, if they were allowed to get that close.”
“Disaster averted,” Renner said flippantly. “Have a good flight and we will see you when you get back on board.”
“See you soon,” Hail said.
“Nice to meet you,” Kara said, but the monitor had already gone black.
Kara went back to looking out her window again. A big truck was pumping jet fuel in under the right wing of the aircraft.
“So what’s up with that whole situation there?” Kara asked.
“What do you mean?” Hail responded, selecting a magazine from the center console. He flipped it open.
“I mean with the reactor security stuff. Why don’t the people at the reactors handle it?”
“Well, that would be because there are no people at the reactors. No security either.”
Kara looked surprised.
“You mean the reactors run themselves?”
“Pretty much,” Hail said, turning the page in his magazine.
“So people don’t need to monitor the reactors?”
“Yes and they do. All of our reactors are monitored remotely from the Hail Reactor Center.”
Kara looked disturbed.
“I can’t believe that a nuclear reactor site doesn’t need some sort of worker present to run the place.”
“They really don’t. The reactors themselves are very stable since they operate at atmospheric pressure. No chance of blowing the lid off the thing. They also burn their fuel bundle very slowly, so that eliminates the task of lowering or raising rods to regulate the reaction. The fuel bundle regulates the burn rate.”
“Well, that’s all well and good, but what about what we just saw? There is no one around to protect the reactors.”
“Which is why we have the Reactor Security Center,” Hail countered.
“It’s hard to believe that any government is going to allow you to plop down an unmanned and unsecured nuclear reactor in their country,” Kara questioned.
“On the contrary,” Hail responded defensively, “countries beg for us to install our reactors. For example, in Haiti the electricity sector owned by the government is called Haiti Electric. They were in a deep energy crisis with only twelve percent of their country with regular access to power. For all practical purposes, they were living in the dark ages with no chance of proliferation. We installed two reactors in Haiti; one in Gonaives and the other in Miragoane. Now Haiti has more power than they will ever need. Just like that. It’s wonderful.”
“And how much money did it cost those poor people?” Kara asked.
“Not one penny. That’s the beauty of providing power to underdeveloped nations. They don’t have any money, so they barter for the reactors. They write us a blank check when it comes to land. We can build industrial plants where we can make the reactors, put beta reactors online and see how they perform, and have a home base for my ships as well as shipyards to build my ships. These little countries virtually throw away all the red tape that we encounter with tight-asses like the United States; countries that at the mere mention of the word of nuclear, go running for the hills.”
“I heard that the United States has several Hail reactors that are in production,” Kara stated.
“Now they do, but they were very late adopters. They wanted to monitor these little countries for years and make sure our reactors didn’t explode or maybe even something worse ― a meltdown.” Hail made a scary face and made quote signs with his fingers.
“I thought you said that your reactors can’t meltdown.”
“They can’t. It is physically impossible and I am saying that as a physicist.”
Hail could tell that something else was on Kara’s mind.
“Aren’t you concerned that someday a big armed contingent of men will take over one of your reactor sites?”
“No, not at all. The sites are armed to the teeth and well protected. You saw the poles that have all the rings of explosives and projectiles?”
“Yes, I saw them.”
“Well, what you didn’t see was the 50 caliber machine gun that was under the camera that was taking the video. We have two of those. One gun is on top of the control building and the other gun is on top of the containment vessel. Both of those guns are laser guided. So let’s assume there was a force of three hundred men and they begin to break in through the wire. Our first line of defense is distance. We have more than one hundred yards of clear-cut all the way out to the fence line, three-hundred and sixty degrees with a clear line of site. A robotic lawn mower cuts it every day to keep it clear. So the three hundred men cut through the wire and the fifty-cals could start cutting down their army even before they made it through the wire. Our guns, by the way, are belt fed from ammunition stored in a huge box next to the gun. We are talking thousands of rounds per gun. But let’s say for the sake of argument that two-hundred men make it in through the wire. We have fifty of our explosive poles in the ground and arranged in quadrants. For nonlethal, we blow them after the trespassers walk by, so their backs are facing the poles. That way they don’t get BBs in their eyes or face. For fully lethal, for a full jail break, if we just lit up twenty-five of our ball bearing rings, anything in the area would be rendered Swiss cheese. So they would have to go get another three-hundred men and try again.”
Kara asked, “And why wouldn’t they do just that? It doesn’t appear that they place much value on life.”
“Because the end-game for them doesn’t make sense; the win for them would still be death.”
“I don’t understand.”
“The control buildings at our reactor sites are nothing more than thin cement towers. They are about as wide as a big closet. There are no offices or anything else inside them but electronics. They weren’t designed for people; they are essentially cement cell towers that house servers and sophisticated communications. So if the army of men somehow made it inside that control room, then they would be very disappointed. There would be some weird racks of computers that they wouldn’t know what to do with, and that’s about it. Now if they were to break into the reactor itself, they would be immediately exposed to massive amounts of radiation and die within minutes. So you see, there is no real win for them.”
“Do they know that?” Kara asked. “All the families in the villages who live next to your reactors?”
“Yes and no,” Hail replied. “They have been told pretty much what I just told you, but then the world is full of crazy people, if you haven’t noticed. And therefore, we have the guns and exploding poles to deal with those types.”
Hail purposely didn’t tell Kara about all the airborne deterrents that Hail Security deployed. She would have to earn the right to know about those things.