I’m flying at 8000 feet AGL in Northern Florida in my Experimental Super STOL airplane a beautiful fall morning. The outside air temperature is around 20 degrees and down at ground level, it was about 45-50 degrees. I had a slight headwind due to the recent cold front that came through the state a couple of days ago. The sky was brilliant baby blue with no clouds anywhere to be seen…typical when a cold front moves through. Our winter cold fronts drag all of the clouds to the south along with the humidity. I reduced the engine’s throttle to begin my 500 foot per minute descent to the private airfield about 20 miles ahead that belongs to a very good friend of mine, Hymie Rosenthal.
So when Hymie called me to see if I would come up to his place in Destin, Florida to spend a couple of days with him, I knew that something was different, as he rarely does this. So of course I said yes. I packed up some clothes and placed them in my Super STOL airplane, pulled it out of the hanger and warmed up the engine, and took off. I have my own private grass airfield and 2 hangers at my house. A little background on how I met Hymie a few years ago. I was flying in his general area heading to the Destin airport for a business meeting when I noticed a grass airfield off to my left. I was only around 800 feet or so AGL (above ground level for you non-pilots) and banked over and dropped down to 500 feet and flew down the airstrip. It looked well maintained and I noticed a small hanger with a new windsock on top of it. A windsock is a bright orange, 4-5 foot long sock looking apparatus that is open on each end…one end smaller in diameter than on the end… the larger opening is located at the mounting pole. The wind, when blowing, opens the sock up and it can spin around 360 degrees to show the direction the wind is coming in from….once again for you non-pilots. How full the sock determines the wind’s velocity. On my first pass, I didn’t notice the huge new house at the end of the airstrip next to the hanger. How I missed such a large house was beyond me, but I did. So now I circled around for a third pass, only this time I dropped down to about 25 feet AGL. There was this man standing at the end of the airfield waving his arms at me and so I wagged my wings back and forth which is the universal ‘Hello’ maneuver. As I went by he motioned his arms downward like he wanted me to land…so I circled back around and landed. I taxied right up to him, spun the plane around sideways to him, shut down my engine, and opened the door window. The gentleman came right up to me and said ”Hi, my name is Hymie, what’s yours”? …..So this was how a great friendship began.
I saw Hymie’s airfield about a mile up ahead and flew down the airfield at about 50 feet and checked it for stray wildlife and to also look at the windsock to see how much wind was blowing and in what direction. The windsock was barely moving and what little wind there was, was coming right down the center of the field. I circled around while I called Hymie on my cell phone to say I’m here. I only need way less than 100 feet of the field to land this plane in, so I flew quite a ways before dropping it on the ground….which made for a shorter taxi to the hanger. As I shut down the engine Hymie walked around the corner and waved. So we got my plane backed into the hanger for safekeeping and we went up the stairs to the pool deck just below the Big House, as I call it. Hymie already had a pitcher of ice tea in the pool cabana and said let's sit outside in the sun… It's such a nice day.
After a long chit chat, Hymie said that he obtained the surveillance tapes from his friend, the police captain Saul Browne about the little incident that happened about 6 months ago. I will not go into detail about it here, but you can read about what had happened in my story of Photographs, Aquariums, and Planes Hymie said he kept looking at those tapes and admiring at how much I moved around and how I was about to take out four real bad drug dealers that were trying to kill me and not get shot in the process. He said, J. Michael, you performed like an elite Israeli Commando. Believe me, I know this well. Where do you think I am from J. Michael? I thought for a moment and said New York, as you might be able to tell from his name Hymie Rosenthal. Hymie laughed and said probably a very good guess as my people are well entrenched there, but no… I am actually from Israel. You see, J.Michael…you can tell by now that this was how Hymie always called me, I was an Israeli Masad Commander that had a team of 12 men. We conducted raids deep into our enemy’s territory. We eliminated threats to our country by those that only wanted to do our people harm. It made no difference to them if they killed innocent women and children in their attacks. We made many enemies in our twenty years of service to the State. We had lost two of our commandos and their families from these same enemies that have threatened to kill all of us. They somehow found our names and where we had lived in Israel. So we had to leave our country to preserve our family’s lives. We initially did go to New York, as you eluded to. We thought we would better blend in with our brethren, however, it only took a year or 2 before we found that there were people asking lots of questions about us. We all agreed that we needed to stay together as one group so that we could better protect one another. So one night we sat down and put a USA map on the wall with each one of us throwing one dart at the map. The area with more darts was where we would begin to look for a new place to call home. It was amazing that seven of those darts landed in and around the panhandle of Florida. So we took a closer look at the towns in this area and we all agreed on Destin.
I had a substantial amount of money put away from my 30 years of service to my country said Hymie. I never married or had a family and so my money earned very good dividends and nearly tripled in value. I decided to find a realtor in Destin to find a large piece of land from which to design a home with some substantial built-in safeguards. The realtor found this property that had the airfield, even though I really don’t like to fly, that was property was well isolated and adjoined State lands that would never be developed. It has the 100 foot high bluffs at one end overlooking the Gulf, which was where I decided to put my house. The realtor who was Jewish knew people, and so the project began. I found a rental house to move to during all phases of demolition and construction. We tore down the old single-story wood-frame house that was here but I decided to keep the airplane hanger intact. The realtor found an old Jewish architect that had retired and we designed what you see here today. He knew many fellow Jewish contractors and land developers that also were hired to build the project. There was a great amount of secrecy in this project that you will soon come to know about, J.Michael. I feel that you are a very trustworthy person and all of us agreed after getting to know you about letting you know about what I am going to disclose to you.
So… J. Michael, tell me what do you see here over my shoulder at the house? I really didn’t see much at first, but then noticed something different about the roofline of the Big House. I said I see four small corner structures on the roof. Is that part of the architecture flavor of this house. They fit in well but you don’t always see these here in Florida. Hymie said well done my friend…I knew you had special talents. I said that I had studied architecture in college, thinking that this was the field I wanted to pursue in life, which I didn’t. Hymie said do you see or have you seen anything else that strikes you as odd for this property? I said I don’t really see anything that captures my eye here but I did notice the front entrance and gate architecture. It appeared to me to be a little heavily overdone and I noticed black razor-wire on top of the unusual high black chainlink fencing. Hymie said well done again, you are quite observant. I am glad that you are not my enemy.
Let’s go into the house and let me show you my safe-room. We walked inside and upstairs to the master bedroom’s walk-in closet. Hymie, I think pushed a button somewhere, as I did not see him do it, but the back wall of the closet slid sideways revealing a very heavy metal door. This time I saw him touch his watch and the metal door opened up to reveal a 6 foot by 8-foot room with solid poured concrete walls, floor, and ceiling. Very typical of what you would expect from a safe room. There was what looked like a wall safe with a tumble coded lock. Hymie spun the dial and the floor began to move. This was an elevator!! but only the floor moved. I said that this is very cool and I am well impressed at the secrecy of the components. It's just another layer of protection above what is initially seen Hymie said. We went down about 25 feet or so to the floor of a well-lit tunnel. Hymie said follow me. As we walked along I noticed what looked like metal doors in the walls. Hymie said those the elevators that lead up to each of the first-floor bedrooms. Every bedroom has a safe room, he said. We continued down the tunnel until we came to another solid steel door, which again had to be activated by Hymie, and I had no idea where or when he did so as he did not touch his watch this time.
The heavy door opened up to reveal a very large bunker with the same type of poured concrete construction. This room and to be 25 feet wide by at least 50 feet long. There were smaller rooms off to one side of a center concrete wall that ran down the length of the bunker. There was a massive console with more TV monitors and horns and whistles that I could count. Hymie asked, where do you think we are? I said I have not a clue. He said we are under the pool. Everything you have just seen had to be built at night so that it would be kept private from the outside world. Having the pool overhead negates any ground-penetrating radar signals from showing up in this bunker. The unusual natural grading of the land is what made most of this possible. The concrete open decks and floors of the house disguise what is underground. We can sustain 21 people for over thirty days down here. Our food storage consists of military-type MRE’s and many freeze-dried camping meals… over 1400 meals stored in airtight containers. There is coffee, tea, water, and sodas. We have Infrared heating for stovetop cooking and winter heat, heat exchangers with glycol coolant to cool the air in the summer, microwave ovens, and 2 refrigerators that run on 120V/12V power. The air into and leaving the bunker and tunnel is triple filtered. The air intakes are concealed into the pedestals of each table around the pool. The exhaust air vents out from the underside of the concrete support of the diving board. All of the sewer liquid wastes run into the sewage pump station behind the hanger. This would be common to have for such a remote house location. The solar panels on top of the hanger supply the 12-volt power for the bank of lithium car batteries housed in a separate fireproof vault in the bunker. The battery’s power converter system could run for about 7 days without being recharged The solar panels would be normal for a pool this large. The entire emergency LPG generator for the house also has separate conduits that supply power to the bunker’s batteries and electrical system. The generator often performs a 30 minute run exercise time as part of the normal house procedure and is the second source of battery recharging in the bunker. Since the house is on a groundwater well system being this far out of town, it would be common for this system to periodically run as part of the recharge for the water softener at night. Extra water is stored down here in 10 plastic 30-gallon blue barrels. Drain water from the sinks and showers is pumped directly to 3 underground dry wells. This was done so as to not make the sewer pump station come on when in reality it should not.
Hymie said as you may have guessed by now from the names of my friends and what you now know, that these six people that hold monthly dinner parties are part of my old commando group, as well as Rubin Gallagher, the owner of the Blue Marlin Restaurant and police captain Saul Browne. So now you know the players and you have seen firsthand the bunker system, let's go back up by way of the pool cabana. This I thought was going to be cool. It basically had a short tunnel with the same blast door as I call it, but this was a caged vertical ladder system that went up approximately 17 feet into the cabana. It also had a unique twist, in that the floor in the cabana had this bamboo rug /mat that at first glance looked as though it was just placed there. However, this rug/mat is actually on a movable rail embedded in the concrete floor and is motorized to move back out of the way to allow access to the motorized steel lid and extension ladder that comes up about 4 feet. This guy thinks of everything.
As total protection from any unwanted intruder from entering the bunker from the tunnel, should he get that far, is a hidden wall vault about 30 feet from the bunker steel door that contains 2- 40 MM frag grenades. These are the last defensive munitions aimed at stopping the assailants from gaining access to the bunker. Inside the bunker itself, are many rifles and handguns mounted on the walls for quick access. The level of thought that went into this entire place is totally mind-boggling. However, the icing on this cake is about to be revealed. How do you protect the outside of this place against intruders that are intent on killing you?
Once back top-side Hymie and I continued to enjoy the beautiful cool day, temps are now in the mid-’60s and the sun shining brightly. The ice tea was still chilled and was welcomed. So Hymie said, J. Michael…how would you go about setting up a defensive plan for this entire property. I said Hymie, there would be no way I could outdo you or even come close to what you have already shown me, and are obviously about to reveal to me next….I wouldn’t even try. Hymie laughed and said you have already identified several things that got your interest. You see those four short towers at each end of the roof on the house? Yep, sure do… each one of those little towers is actually a surveillance/munitions station. Each station is equipped with a zooming scoped/surveillance camera with infrared night vision and FLIR. Each tower has a pair of side by side 30 caliber machine guns, with overlapping fire coverage, and each gun has a 1000 round magazine supply. That’s 8000 rounds of firepower downrange. In between each corner turret/tower is a pop-up turret with a 40 MM grenade launcher with frag grenades and a zooming scoped/surveillance camera. Each of these four launchers has a 100 round belt fed magazine. So that’s a total of 400 frag grenades. All of this firepower is operated from inside the bunker, which pretty much covers the house area out to about 300 yards.
You had previously mentioned the entrance gate and columns. We also have surveillance cameras scattered throughout the property as well as at the gate area. They are positioned every 100 yards apart and are about 20 feet high. Each of these surveillance stations is also equipped with high-intensity lighting designed to disorientate and light up any intruders for verification. Each station also has motion sensors that will alarm inside the house as well as in the bunker. In the house on the living room wall around the TV are little red LED lights spaced into a rectangle that represents each of these station locations as well as the main gate. This immediately indicates the perimeter breach location. If the intruders make it inside the wired perimeter, there are many selected smaller pop-up stations with rotating 40 MM frag grenade launchers scattered throughout the interior of the property. No munitions on this property can go off automatically. They have to be initiated at the console in the bunker. The 7 foot high black commercial heavy-duty grade chain link fence has a 3-foot wide outward-facing defense climbing barrier with small black ribbon wire on the inside. There is a false bunker buried in the middle of the property. The entrance is not well disguised and is above the ground level. This is a dead-end tunnel with surveillance cameras inside to alert when intruders have entered. This false bunker is designed to entice intruders to go inside. Once inside and they are verified as assailants, they are closed up, locked down, and are gassed. The bodies would be buried on-site.
Now all of this is only good if you can maintain good communications with one another, and one that is kept private and safe from outside listening and tracking. We all have satellite phones with text messaging that is non-traceable. Cell phones are traceable by using cell phone towers as listening posts. Hymie said that If we have any kind of a breach of security that is verified, or I have detected any kind of potential threat, we will text message each other by sat phone with the message, ”Meet me at Buffies”. Everyone then will drive to my house as if for a friendly get together, immediately go to the bedroom safe rooms, and then down to the bunker. I said to Hymie, “you people are really serious with all of this surveillance and firepower,” and Hymie said, “Life is serious”.
Well, Hymie, all I can say is how much I appreciate our friendship and the fact that you and your friends have thought so much about my character that you would divulge and show me what I never could have imagined in my entire life. All of you and especially you, Hymie, have my deepest sympathy and respect for not only your past life but now your new life. I am truly honored to be your friend. I look forward to many more trips up here to see you and your friends at your monthly dinner parties… and to sell more aquariums and my landscape and wildlife photographs of course.
This is a fictional story
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