How Four Stoplights and a Silo Became a National-Security Bull’s-Eye

The Day the Black SUVs Arrived

Johnston County, North Carolina—population 1,043—still measures distance in corn rows and Friday-night touchdowns. So when a convoy of unmarked Suburbans rumbled past the gas station last October, clerk Dana Holt didn’t reach for her phone to call the sheriff. She called her mama.

"Mama said, ‘That’s not local money,’" Holt remembers, wiping coffee rings off the counter. "And Mama’s never wrong."

The Secret in the Soybeans

Three miles south, past the volunteer fire department and the Pentecostal church that still has outhouses, a squat concrete building the color of dishwater squats beside a soybean field. No signage, no address, just a perimeter fence that hums—locals swear—like a beehive when you get close.

For years kids called it the "Bubble-Wrap Factory" because of the way the windows reflect the sky. Then the Department of Homeland Security labeled it a "critical communications node," and the Pentagon started using words like "redundancy" and "continuity of government."

What We Know, What We Can’t

• The site is one of six nationwide that relay encrypted emergency traffic for the National Command Authority.
• It was built in 1987 as a Cold-War relay bunker, mothballed in 1999, and quietly reactivated after 9/11.
• Johnston County received $38 million in federal grants the year the site went hot again—more than double its annual budget.

When the Town Became a Target

Congressman Lyle Merritt (R-NC) chairs the House subcommittee that oversees continuity-of-government programs. In a brief hallway interview, he confirmed the site’s existence but refused to discuss capabilities. "Revealing topology reveals vulnerability," he said, before aides whisked him away.

That vulnerability became real on March 4, when the FBI’s Joint Terrorism Task Force arrested two Chinese nationals in nearby Smithfield. According to an unsealed indictment, the pair photographed the perimeter and ran lidar scans from a drone purchased on Amazon. Prosecutors allege they were mapping fiber routes for Beijing.

"We wake up now wondering if today’s the day the power grid test is real."
— Mayor Earl “Buck” Honeycutt

Life on the Bull’s-Eye

Main Street hasn’t changed—same barber pole, same diner with the same meatloaf blue-plate. But the psychological terrain has shifted. Sheriff’s deputies patrol 24/7. The elementary school added "lockdown drills" for incoming artillery. Even the church bible-study group now includes a FEMA rep.

"We traded tranquility for a target," says Pastor Lucy Geddings. "Faith tells me that’s okay. My neighbor’s AR-15 tells me it’s necessary."

The Economic Flip Side

County Manager Ted Sowell shows off a new $12 million water-treatment plant paid for entirely by federal resilience grants. "We got sidewalks that light up at night. We got fiber to every porch," he boasts. Unemployment is under 3 % for the first time since the textile mills left.

Yet the boom feels brittle. A single cyberattack on the relay station could erase the gains overnight. Sowell keeps a red folder labeled "Continuity of Tax Base" beside his desk. Inside: contingency plans for evacuating 200,000 hogs and 47,000 people within four hours.

What Comes Next

The Pentagon’s 2025 budget request includes another $78 million for "hardening" the site—underground power lines, drone-killing microwave arrays, and an 18-foot berm that will block the view from Highway 210. Construction starts in September.

Meanwhile, locals practice a new kind of civic ritual: the silent count. When the sirens wail at noon, everyone pauses for 30 seconds, listening for the secondary tone that means "this is not a drill." So far, it’s always been a drill.

But Dana Holt keeps a go-bag behind the counter—water, insulin for her daddy, and the .38 revolver her granddad carried in Vietnam. "I’d rather have it and not need it," she says, watching the highway for black SUVs that no longer turn heads.