Boots Under The Ground-Thomas Calabrese

Rolling With The Rockmans

Thomas Calabrese -Mohawk Indians have an impressive history of being fearless and adept iron workers. Seven generations of this special breed of men have climbed halfway to the heavens on two-foot-wide steel girders with a steady gait and unwavering balance to create monuments of architecture. Their contributions to the construction industry include the; Empire State Building, Time Warner Building, Rockefeller Center, Chrysler Building and most of the bridges in the New York area.  Countless projects around the country had Mohawk ironworkers on their construction crews.

 Even more distinguishing and awe inspiring is the legacy of the iconic Rockman family. Every major underground construction project in the world over the past several centuries had either had a Rockman personally involved or used the innovative engineering technology developed by the Rockman brain trust.

Benjamin Rockman was technical advisor to General George Washington during the Revolutionary War and had already completed a tunnel under the Potomac just in case General Washington couldn’t make it across by boat. During the Civil War, President Lincoln pleaded with George Rockman to dig a tunnel under the field of Gettysburg, allowing General Grant and his entire army to come up behind the Confederate forces and defeat them in battle. This was the turning point in the War.

Teddy Roosevelt contacted Caleb Rockman in early June 1898 and asked him to build a tunnel for American troops and Cavalry during the Spanish American War. Three weeks later on July 1, 1898, many of the famed Rough Riders rode through a tunnel that was large enough for them and their horses to reach the base of San Juan Hill.

When world renowned magician, Harry Houdini was working on a new trick to escape from a coffin that would be buried ten feet underground, he called on Cecille Rockman to help him develop an escape plan. Members of the Rockman family designed the New York subway, as well as the Holland and Lincoln Tunnels. During World War II, Adolf Hitler grew increasingly paranoid and delusional when he envisioned Errol Rockman tunneling into his impenetrable mountain fortress, ‘The Eagle’s Nest.’  The stress led to Hitler’s suicide.

In the late 1950’s and 1960’s, there were a rash of coal mining accidents in the country and Wyatt Rockman was called in to evaluate the safety procedures and construction of current mines in the Appalachian area. After his suggestions were implemented, mining accidents dropped by over ninety percent. The songwriting couple of Boudleax and Felice Bryant, descendants of coal miners wrote the song ‘Rockman Top Tennessee’ in 1967 as a tribute to Wyatt for his contribution to the miners and their families.

John Rockman, the legendary tunnel rat won the Congressional Medal of Honor during the Vietnam War after he went into an underground complex near the city of Hue with only a three feet length of piano wire and a K-Bar knife and stayed underground for six days and strangled and stabbed 43 enemy soldiers before returning to the surface. Three months later, the Rockman family was commissioned to start construction on a tunnel under the DMZ, from South to North Vietnam. The war ended before it was completed and the construction project was designated a historical site by the Vietnamese people and is still visited by thousands of tourists yearly.

Military historians, Beaumont Billingsley and Clark Nielsen both agreed that if America had built tunnels like the North Vietnamese during the beginning of the Vietnam  War instead of toward the end, the outcome would have been different.

Roscoe Rockman, famous spelunker and archeologist spends so much time underground that he could communicate with bats and can see in total darkness. His brother Oscar Rockman, a professor at Mira Costa College has taken the traditions of his family and elevated them to astronomical levels. Holding P.H.D’. s in geology, archeology, seismology, gemology as well as nuclear, electrical and mechanical engineering, Oscar is a multi- billionaire many times over. Having an uncanny instinct in finding precious minerals, he has accumulated tons of gold, silver, plutonium and diamonds. It has often been said that Oscar Rockman could find valuable mineral deposits easier than an Oceanside surfer could find water under the city pier. He readily admitted to feeling more comfortable being three hundred feet underground with tons of dirt and rock over him than being in a high-rise penthouse with a panoramic view.

Ronald Rockman was the chief engineer on the thirty –one mile Channel Tunnel that connects Folkestone Kent, England with Coquelles Pas de-Calais in France He developed the innovative technology that allowed the tunnel to be built 790 feet below sea level without any leakage.

Clark Rockman developed a nuclear-powered land submarine with a laser drill assembly that could cut through solid rock easier than a hot knife can cut through bowl of oatmeal. In a field test Rockman traveled underground from Los Angeles to Boston without surfacing in less than two weeks. Clark then volunteered his services to Elon Musk to explore the cores of various planets in the solar system. He hollowed out a mountain in the Sierra Nevada region of Lake Tahoe for his primary residence and keeps a vacation home inside the Mauna Loa volcano in Hawaii.

Louise Rockman is the only woman in the world to have ever skied down a lava flow. She strives, not only to make the world a better place to live, but the entire universe as well.  She is currently working with private companies to build underground cities on the planet Mars for inhabitation by earth’s citizens.

In 2010, a copper and gold mine in San Jose, Chili collapsed, trapping 33 miners, 2300 feet underground. Randall Rockman immediately responded to the international SOS and after arrival, he informed the mine owners and the country of Chili about the innovative rescue technique that his family developed for such a situation. The authorities deemed it to be too great a risk. In reality, it was a politically motivated decision to refuse his offer, choosing instead to go with more conventional and less effective rescue procedures from a local company with connections to the Governor of province.

After sixty-eight days of failures, mine owners pleaded with Randall to enact the rescue. A lesser man would have denied their request, but Randall would never place his ego above the safety and welfare of the miners so on day 69, Randall rescued all 33 miners without any serious injuries. The entire extraction took less than eleven hours to complete and Randall left the country without meeting with the worthless bureaucrats responsible for the delay.

Joseph Rockman was a consultant with the United States Border Patrol and was often called upon to detect tunnels that are used by drug smugglers and human traffickers. He designed plans to render the tunnels useless and has been one hundred per cent successful in his endeavors. When there was excessive terrorist activity in the Achin District of Nangarhar, Afghanistan. Joseph developed a plan for the GBU-43 Massive Ordnance Air Blast to be dropped on an Islamic State cave complex. The exact location and altitude of the detonation of the “mother of all bombs” was meticulously calculated to ensure maximum efficiency.  The extensive cave complex was thoroughly destroyed and four hundred ISIS fighters were killed.

When terrorists captured the now defunct San Onofre Nuclear power plant, along with dozens of workers that were working on the decommissioning process, the Department of War and Nuclear Regulatory Commission called the Rockman Organization for assistance. Even though the facility was no longer in operation, the power plant still posed a significant risk to residents in the surrounding areas of San Clemente, Oceanside and Camp Pendleton if the terrorists were able to use the uranium from the spent fuel rods to make a bomb. Time was of the essence and the Rockman Emergency Response Team headed to Camp Pendleton from their headquarters in Minden, Nevada.

It was determined that the best way to enter the besieged facility was from the east side of Interstate Five near the San Onofre mobile home park on base. Even though the Rockman family were also highly trained operators in the art of counter terrorism as well as underground construction, they still decided that it was best to bring a Marine Corps Force Reconnaissance team for back up when they entered the facility. They burrowed to a depth of two hundred feet with the Rockman Prototype 643 land submarine then headed west and with their precise navigational equipment and came up in the middle of reactor number one.

The thickness of the walls silenced any sound from the turbo powered engines. In some places the concrete walls were six feet thick, but this posed little difficulty for the Rockmans who cut through the wall in a matter of minutes with their laser saws. They were able to catch the terrorists by surprise, just minutes before they contaminated the area with nuclear material. After regaining control of the San Onofre power plant, the land submarine was loaded on to a flatbed truck and the Rockman Team flew out by helicopter. There was no time for celebration because there would always be another mission, rescue or impossible challenge waiting just over the horizon for the family who soared to new heights by digging to new depths. They would not have long to wait.

The war against Iran was going well militarily, but there were still some radical extremists in the Iranian Republican Guard that would rather destroy their own country than live in peace or negotiate a truce. It is impossible to deal with ideological lunacy or Satanic evil and President Trump was aware of the untrustworthiness of Iran’s leaders, so he took a different approach.

The United States public was against a prolonged war against Iran and the current administration was doing everything possible to avoid putting boots on the ground. President Trump called Secretary of War, Pete Hegseth and said, “It’s time to call in the Rockmans.

            “Yes sir,” Secretary Hegseth replied, “I’ve been expecting your order.”

Stoney Rockman, former Navy Seal and his cousin, Slade Rockman, former Delta Force operative met with President Trump at the Palm Beach golf course.

            “This meeting is off the record,” President Trump reminded the two patriots, “Just a few friends playing golf.”

            “Our favorite kind,” Stoney smiled.

            “I want to ask you a favor,” President Trump said.

            “No problem, Mister President, we’re listening, “Slade replied.

            “How you feel about going into Iran?”  President Trump asked.

            “It’s at the top of my bucket list,” Slade said.

            “You know what they say; Rome, Monté Carlo, Tahiti, Tehran,” Stoney quipped.

            “I heard that you got a new prototype boring machine. How would you like to test it out?” President Trump inquired.

            “That is also on our ‘to do’ list,” Slade said.

            “Iran’s sensitive nuclear material specifically its stockpile of highly enriched uranium is believed by international inspectors and intelligence assessments to be stored deep underground in reinforced tunnels at the Isfahan nuclear complex.  I want the Rockmans to go get it,” President Trump stated matter of factly.

Stoney smiled, “We were wondering how long it was going take for you to ask us,” Slade said.

            “Should you or any members of your Rockman Force be caught or killed, this administration will disavow all knowledge of your actions,” President Trump smiled, “I loved using that line. It is beyond top secret…understood”

            “Like my uncle, Sergeant Schutlz Rockman used to say, “I know nothing, I see nothing, I hear nothing,” Slade quipped.

            “How fast can you be ready?” President Trump asked.

            “We’ve been ready since you started military actions against Iran,” Stoney replied.

Underground tunnel boring machines (TBMs) were designed and built to cut through rock and soil. Traditional machines move slower than a snail (about 10 to 40 meters a day), but new models can dig over 8 miles per hour. That was nothing compared to the Rockman Terra Gopher Model 8, a nuclear-powered subterranean capsule that could travel at 80 miles per hour through loose dirt and twenty-five miles an hour through rock and stone. The Model 8 was a 60-foot-long cigar-shaped glass tube made of the strongest mineral on earth called Unobtanium. Its nose conewas equipped with a high-intensity ultrasonic laser system that liquefied rock instantly, parting the earth ahead of it. Propulsion was provided by a series of rotating plasma/fusion-powered impellers and ring-like segments along the body that pushed the melted rock backward. The interior was divided into a series of connected cylindrical compartments and separated by heavy automatic bulkhead doors. Internal stabilizing gyro-gimbals allowed the cockpit and compartments to rotate or stay level while navigating violent shifts in the earth’s mantle.

The cockpit had four ergonomically designed seats that were just as comfortable as massage chairs, one each for the pilot and co-pilot and two passengers. Since visibility was limited underground, navigation was done by satellite and infra-red technology. The two passengers going with Slade and Stoney Rockman on this covert mission were nuclear scientists, Milo Banducci and Jensen Arbuckle.

The capsule was transported by a C-5 Galaxy to the shoreline of Iran and burrowed underground. Using their excavating skills, the Rockman set the Terra Gopher on a course that led them through dirt rather than rock to maintain as high a speed as possible. Upon reaching the Isfahan nuclear complex, ultra-sensitive Geiger detectors determined the exact location of the nuclear material. Slade and Stoney maneuvered the Terra Gopher into position and under supervision of the Banducci and Arbuckle, loaded the weapons grade material into a lead lined compartment of the capsule and prepared to exit the area.

Stoney commented to his cousin with a devious glint in his eyes, “Since we’re not supposed to be here anyway, we might as well take a little initiative.”

            “Sounds interesting, tell me more,” Slade smiled. 

            “The Iranian Republican Guards’ underground complex is only forty miles from here,” Stoney said.

            “Nothing like a massive sinkhole to get their attention,” Slade said.

Stoney turned to the nuclear scientists, “We’re going to make a slight detour before heading back to the extraction point. Just sit back and relax,” Stoney said.

Using their sophisticated equipment and knowledge of construction, the Rockmans quickly determined how the massive underground complex was built into rock and where the stress points were. They weakened the appropriate areas by burrowing under them and breaking the rock formation where the steel beams were imbedded.

Slate commented, “That should do it.”

            “I think so,” Stoney agreed, “Let’s take a look.”

They headed for the surface and watched the underground complex from a quarter of a mile away. It took ten minutes and nine seconds before the military industrial complex began to rumble. ·

Milo smiled, “Looking good so far.”

Suddenly a giant sinkhole swallowed the entire area. Two seconds later, the Terra Gopher submerged underground leaving no trace of its existence and headed to its extraction point. Mission completed.

Three weeks later, Slade and Stoney were back at Mar-A-Lago playing golf with President Trump. Slade made a forty foot putt on the ninth hole and Stoney made a 38 foot putt up a hill on the tenth hole.

President Trump marveled, “You guys are great putters.”

            “It’s runs in the family,” Stoney smiled.

            “We learned at an early age the value of finding holes and also making them,” Slade added.

            “There’s a story that I heard about one of your relatives, I’ve always wondered if it was true,” President Trump said.

            “Which one?”

            “Coal Rockman.”

            “The guitar playing mining engineer,” Stoney replied, “What you want to know?”

            “Coal was playing in Elvis Presley’s band and they went to buy a Cadillac at a car dealer in Memphis. Elvis said this as they drove away, ‘I love Rock n’ Roll, but I’d rather be rolling with a Rockman. Did he actually say that?” President Trump inquired.

Slade said, “When we were kids, our Aunt Holevia told us, “You are going to hear a lot of stories about your family. Some are true, some are lies and some you’ll never know for sure.”

            “Then she said, “If you don’t know the facts then believe the legend,” Stoney added.

The three men got into their golf cart as President Trump commented, “Rolling with the Rockmans and Boots Under The Ground will always be a good day for America.”

As this story reluctantly comes to an end, one question remains for you, what part of the Rockman Legacy do you believe?

The End