“Thank you, Sergeant. Appreciate it,” I said as I passed through the gate. Tucked into my belt in back and under my shirt was a modified 9 mm Glock 19 with a 15-round magazine, night sights, with tape wrapped around the grip. For a pistol, it was my weapon of choice. It wasn’t generally affected by sand or water and just kept shooting, which was a very likable attribute in a weapon.
Going anywhere unarmed was not an option for me, or at least not a very good idea. However, bringing weapons of any kind into a nuclear power facility was against the law — a law from which I was being granted an exemption. This was a condition of the contract I’d negotiated with Prichard. So I went through this little dance with Security each morning.
Having bypassed the explosives detectors and the metal detectors once again, I headed over to the turnstiles and swiped my key card on the pad provided. A soft beep reminded me to insert my right hand onto a laser hand geometry reader. The security computer checked the shape of my hand against the profile identified by the key card, verified I was who I was supposed to be, and with a click unlocks the portal, allowed me access to the restricted areas of the power plant.
A few short steps later, I was standing in front of the six-story administration building. With the exception of a three-story parking garage in downtown Willits, the admin building was the tallest structure in the county and was the only building with elevators. The entire top floor — the sixth — of the admin building was dedicated to nothing but the internal computer systems that ran the myriad programs used to plan and track maintenance on hundreds of pieces of plant equipment each day. It tracked the tens of thousands of parts in the warehouse. It was used for payroll and performance reviews. It housed electronic copies of procedures and correspondence without which a nuclear power plant could not run. And it interfaced with the Dosimetry Department that tracked radiation dose accumulated by plant employees and contractors. The Headlands had a very sophisticated computer system, ran its own internal local area network (LAN), and was still connected to the outside world and its parent corporation in Sacramento. For security reasons, access to the computer rooms was restricted to only a few people on site. However, computer access to the LAN itself, even though somewhat restricted, was available to all plant employees. That made the possibility of a cyber attack possible — something I intended to mention to Prichard when I got a chance.
I got off on the fifth floor and headed to the vice president’s corner office. The fifth floor was reserved for management and operations staff, so most departments had a manager on this floor. The fifth floor was also home to the senior leadership team, which included the site vice president and directors of key line organizations. At the west end of the floor, behind glass doors, were the offices of the leadership team members and their executive secretaries. Prichard’s office was at one end of ‘management row,’ as the staff called it. His office walls had wood paneling, floor-to-ceiling glass windows overlooking the Pacific Ocean, and was just short of opulent, which was unusual considering this was a power plant and not a plush corporate office. The leather couch and matching chairs were intended to provide a homey feeling for his guests and to reduce — not eliminate — the intimidation one felt when walking into this office.
I presented myself to Cathy, the administrative assistant, a pleasant woman who invited me to take a seat near her desk, just outside the vice president’s office. She was efficient and cordial, but it was clear she controlled the space outside the VP’s office as well as access to it, and that her invitation to take a seat was nothing short of a subtle command.
The door to Prichard’s office was open and people were already inside. I respected the man’s position and had no problem waiting to be asked into his office. Prichard spotted me there even before Cathy could let him know. Rob, Lynn, Hector, and one other guy I hadn’t met yet were already seated.
“Nick! Come on in!” Prichard said as he got up and walked over to greet me. Prichard was a tall black man, towering over everyone else in the room. He looked like he used to play basketball for the Los Angeles Lakers.
“I think you know everyone except possibly for Dave Street here. Dave was the shift manager on watch last night for the drill.”
I went over to Dave, and offered him my hand. “Good morning, sir. Glad to meet you.”
Dave got up and gripped my hand in return. “’Morning.” He didn’t look too happy about being there. He’d worked all night and probably didn’t appreciate the helo fly-by in the drill.
“Let’s all sit down, shall we?” said Prichard.
CHAPTER 16
Prichard exuded an imposing presence. Besides his size, he had the ability to speak to people in a polite manner, making his orders sound like requests. He spoke slowly and clearly. And when he spoke, he looked people straight in the eye. He’d clearly risen to his position for his technical acumen, though having a deep baritone voice, which had a tendency to enhance his authority, didn’t hurt much either.
Prichard opened the discussion. “Thanks for joining us, Dave. I know you’ve had a long night. We’ll get you out of here just as soon as we can.”
“Thanks, Jeff. No rush, though. Kay and the kids headed down to Disneyland for a few days while I’m on nights. Some kind of school holiday, though I honestly can’t really keep track of those things. All I know is its nice and quiet around the house and I’ll get some good sleep before I come back tonight.”
Shift managers enjoyed a unique relationship with plant executives. Because he ran the plant, the shift manager usually had a familial relationship with department heads and VP’s, despite being several levels below.
“Excellent!” Taking a sip from his coffee, Prichard leaned back and paused for a moment. He wanted to put people at ease while at the same time control the meeting. Still holding his coffee, and without preamble, he said, “So, Nick, I hear you deviated a bit from the script last night?” looking at no one in particular.
“I challenged your security organization, yes, sir.” I paused to see if anyone was going to take exception to that. Hearing no objection, I assumed the security personnel had been advised last night to keep their mouths shut this morning. I knew some of them were waiting for me to try to explain the drill last night, while looking for an opening that they could use to embarrass me. They’d be mistaken in their thinking, though.
“Initial conditions prior to the drill were both units at 100 percent power, no major maintenance in progress. The time we chose was midweek, in the evening, just after shift change. The adversary force consisted of three two-man teams, carrying the weapons and charges as outlined by federal regulations regarding the design basis threat. Two of the teams were on foot, and one came in by air from behind the plant. The teams came in from the north, breached the fence, split up, and headed for the target set outlined in my drill report. The team arriving by air came in over the hills to the east and dropped two men on your fuel-handling building, just behind Unit 1 containment. This team’s arrival was staggered to approximately three minutes after the two teams breached the perimeter. Once we were inside the fence, your primary security officers responded to the threat by procedures, much as I expected. We opted to start from a position just inside the fence, to avoid having to actually blow a hole in it. Because of that, we delayed our team by four seconds to simulate the time we would actually need to breach your perimeter.”