Globall War of Terror: Consolidation 2

The post incident planning was going well. We had rearranged the schedules, thickened the perimeter operation, planned for discreet observation of the new convoy arrivals ("Don't ever trust, always verify!" is our motto), and even arranged for most of the Reaction Team to be released from duty to get some sleep to resume their day jobs as coders tomorrow.

Then I got a call on radio.

"This is Sarah. We have a serious problem."

Sarah is not in the habit of making overstatements. Her ability to panic has been permanently burned out.

I paused with my finger halfway to the "REACT" button. Picking up on the cue, the duty dispatchers got busy on cameras.

"Type of issue?"

"Manifests do not match the items. Not even close. I think the Major is going to stroke out on us."

A logistics problem. But maybe a fatal one.

I wheeled my wheelchair towards the exit while saying over my shoulder, "I need a duty manager from Logistics, Site Ops and Finance -- yes, all three -- to meet me at the motor pool time now. And alert the VP and SLE that we have a potential discrepancy and we are investigating."

I was accompanied by one of our teams in full battle rattle. Apparently someone had decided - reasonably - that since I was chairbound I needed to be guarded.

Fortunately for all of us, I'd once spent a month in a wheelchair thanks to someone running over my foot with a box truck, some years ago back in peacetime when that meant an ER visit and a cast. So I was in danger of outracing my protection as I went out into the hall, down a ramp, to the double doors (where I jammed the HANDICAP buttons each in turn) and then across the tarmac to our Logistics area.

On arrival I saw the trucks, the precious trucks, with the Major and Sarah going from truck bed to truck bed and tearing open boxes.

"This is fucking trash!" he shouted when he saw me.

I knew what was supposed to be loaded. I had a detailed manifest, carefully corrected for items 'confiscated' or 'taxed' or 'donated' during the trip. Electronics and facilities parts. Medical supplies. Two precious 3-D printers. A laser lathe. Some metal parts about which I was prepared to know nothing. Firearms. Ammunition. Cameras. Digital video recorders. Alarm keypads. Wire. Lock shop parts.

I could see that one of the spilled boxes appeared to contain ... crushed beer cans. A thin layer of bubble wrap plastic, some spilled cardboard boxes with carefully printed labels, and beer cans for weight.

Another spilled box contained six bags of IV solution, just enough to cover the apparent top of the box, and then gel ice packs. Not that we couldn't use those -- but each of those IV bags was life and death, and ice packs were just ice packs.

The load had been doctored. Badly and comprehensively.

"Start a video log," I ordered. "Start with the last truck as a three-team. New label for each box, numbered 1, 2, 3 etc by truck. Video and describe the contents on the video. Inventory the entire fucking convoy." I paused. "NOW."

They moved. The Major was still ripping through boxes and Sarah was still keeping up with him.

Frank from Facilities showed up. "Site Ops sent me."

"Frank, you want nothing to do with this. Get Site Ops down here and do it now."

He turned as pale as his complexion allowed and got busy on his mobile phone. All authorized phones on the property are wi-fi only and only work on our network. But he was very authorized and he was burning up the phone.

I had received encrypted and very specific instructions about a particular item. I motioned to one of the horrified Logistics people.

"I need a siphon. Empty the right Diesel tank on the 2nd tractor to a separate tank. At once."

Then I paged Mo. Destructive vehicle search was well within a bomb tech's capabilities, if a little overkill.

My team leader finished with the first truck.

"Sir, every box does not match the labeled contents. The top or first layer is the items indicated. Underneath is debris or junk with approximately correct weights."

He held and displayed a box newly labeled Truck 1 Box 13 that purported to be 5.56mm ammunition. It was mostly red fire brick.

The company had spent millions of dollars on this convoy. People had lost lives for it. I had lost lives for it.

"Sharon. Major." I spoke quietly but loudly into the radio. Sharon encouraged the Major to trot over. I drew them some distance to the side.

"Major, at what time was the convoy left unsecured?"

"Never. I slept in the bed of Truck #4 myself. This is as packed in Reno."

"Then you got fucked in Reno." I used the obscenity deliberately, testing for a reaction. Then I said something else, as if by chance, "Goddamn it!"

He flinched. Mormon for sure.

"By what authority do you hold your rank, sir?"

"Utah National Guard."

It was not the kind of thing I really expected anyone to lie about.

"Did you see the shipment prepared?"

"No. I was released from my unit to command the convoy."

"Who with the convoy saw the shipment prepared?"

"I selected my team myself. Only a handful are from the site."

"Separate them out. Identify any that are dead, or injured and in infirmary."

The balance of power had shifted. He might be a Company manager, and a Major, and I was neither a client manager nor a military officer. But this was a cluster fuck and I was going to take charge until it was unfucked.

I made a tiny motion that drew the alertness of the other two Security teams now guarding the convoy. Then I made a tiny motion with my left and right pinkie fingers. Crossing them.

The team members sighed, stretched a little, stood loosely, flexed a little. Touched their equipment a little.

The convoy members did not notice. Our Logistics people did and started sidling their way away from the vehicles and towards the exits from the yard.

The Major's men were on one side and six he would or could not vouch for were on the other side.

I pointed sideways with a thumb.

"DOWN! ON YOUR KNEES! HANDS ON YOUR HEADS! DO IT NOW! NOW!"

My teams were guns up, very ready to shoot, fearsomely aggressive and used to this drill. They took their opposition by utter surprise... they complied.

The six presumed hostiles secured, my team searched them and removed their weapons, then zip tied their hands behind their backs and their ankles together.

"Gentlemen," they were all men, "you are under private arrest for commercial burglary and cargo theft in interstate commerce. You will be interviewed individually, right now. If I don't like what I hear, you will be turned over to Homeland Security for internment. If you bullshit me, you will get half a helicopter ride."

The American military practice in China of interrogating prisoners by taking them up in a helicopter and returning with the craft empty was unofficial but now well known to all.

We set up three interrogation teams: the Major or one of his men, myself or one of my supervisors, and a site manager on each.

It only took ten minutes for the first one to break. My preferred technique was the handshake. Try it sometime. Take a pencil and interlace it between your fingers. Then have a friend give you a nice firm handshake. Forgive him after you stop screaming.

Local Company management had decided the convoy movement was too dangerous and they did not want to lose stuff. So they had packed lightly and not told anyone.

They had fucking killed us all. And they were in Utah so I could not return the favor.

One by one the stories were confirmed. They had been very afraid to tell anyone. Now they grasped that they had not been afraid enough.

"You are all disarmed and temporarily reassigned to Labor detail. Red and black badges. If you violate Security rules, you're fired. That means you do whatever you are told. When we fire you, we strip you to your underwear and send you back out the gate. We usually hear the screams for a day or two. If you touch a weapon, you attempt murder and we will kill you. We'll make some calls and revisit your status in a day or two. Badge 'em and escort to Labor barracks."

By then the SLE and VPs had arrived. The Major and I briefed them.

Company politics are bad enough when all that is at stake is a stock option.

The calls began. We finished the video inventory and started separating the layer of wheat from the truckloads of chaff.

Mo arrived.

"In that tank over there, there is supposed to be a safe package of weapons. I trust nothing. Check."

He did, after clearing a short radius and using a fiber optic camera on a pole. Then he fished it with some small brass chain -- fishing line would melt -- and unwrapped it.

A neat pile of Diesel soaked rebar. Not barrels. Certainly not receivers.

Craptastic.

"Let's start tearing down the trucks. Look for wear and tear, sabotage, booby traps, any issues."

Mo resigned himself to losing a night of sleep. But he had junior techs to push the nitty gritty onto. Good training.

The Executive Briefing Room was now occupied, with SLE and VPs and managers trying to decide how to handle the bad news.

The Major and Sharon and I went for a walk instead.

No one was going to like this. I radioed in and advised that I would be off net for a bit, and had Sharon do the same. Now the kicker.

"Sharon, the Major is going to search us -- and the chair -- for electronic devices. You are then going to search him for the same."

All cleared, we went for a two person walk and one person wheel.

One of the Major's men watched from a hundred yards with a scoped rifle. That was OK. H5, which he didn't know existed, was dialed in on him in turn.

Our backs to the site, it was time to have a discreet chat.

"This is a net drain on our resources. The supplies you brought don't even make up for the supplies we used. We have five days of food left, right now. I don't even want to think about ammo. We were counting on the reloading supplies. Your thoughts?"

"I think we were set up to get killed. I think they never expected us to make it at all."

"Exactly. I think Homeland fucked us. Spread juicy rumors about a convoy, draw out all the bad apples, fuck them up. So sorry about the Company. Next step is a visit from them."

The Major paled. Sharon and I did not. Death was death.

"We're going to re-vet everyone you brought in. Laborers unless you can vouch for them. Junior assignments until they prove themselves. As for you personally, I was going to give you site command and go back to security forces leader. I cannot possibly do that now, my own people would shoot me. Any ideas?"

"I want to go back and bust heads. But that's not possible, is it?"

"No, you would get killed along the way or shortly after arrival. In fact the safest thing I could do with you is help you desert and send you down to Watsonville Ward. They need people with your skills and they can trust you."

Unspoken: I can't.

"To heck with safe."

"Take up internal security, especially personnel. I've tried to vet as much as I can but I'm still a contractor. You are genuine Corporate Security Management and you can jack people up as much as you like. I'll report to you on paper but I still own the wire and the security force, the convoy operations and anything inside I don't like."

"OK." We shook hands.

As the Major walked away, Sharon asked, "Was that a good idea?"

"Probably not. The alternative is to shoot him."

We might still work our way around to that. The evening was still young.

Globall War of Terror: Perimeter Raid

Today was Thursday. So it was time , I decided, to visit our next door neighbors.

Under our benign protection, a shantytown had developed along our east fence line, equidistant between our north and south perimeter. We had a path from the shantytown to the site, which could be used during limited daytime hours by authorized persons with special permission. But you could not enter (or exit) the shantytown from outside the site under any conditions. We enforced this with night vision and by sniper rifle.

Its residents were dependents of contractors and other site workers, what an earlier age had called "camp followers," and the occasional distant relative of an Employee who did not meet conventional entry criteria. While we could in theory exile someone to "the Perimeter Encampment" or simply "Camp" for misconduct, I considered it both wiser and safer to eject them from the site to grim odds and likely death. For one, if they did not get away from site fast enough, enraged locals would torture them to death for formerly being one of us.

It was still a horrible security exposure, and other exposures as well. Their water system was filtered creek water. Their power system, where it existed, was batteries and bicycle alternators and scrounged small solar panels. Their sanitation system was the same bucket system we used.

Today we would be conducting a patrol of Camp. Functionally it was a raid, a cross between a search warrant and a Code Enforcement inspection, if the inspectors carried rifles.

Every day we geared up for a convoy operation. But about one day in six, we did not leave the wire and suddenly turned our vehicles and heads inward, and arrived in Camp about two minutes later. That was enough time to hide some things from us, but not all. The longest I had let Camp go was eight days. But we had searched three times in a row, and more than once on successive days.

Today was just a little different. The convoy operation had been short and stilted -- skunked, all three objectives impossible for one good reason or another. So I wanted to kill two birds with one stone.

As we ran in with our weapons, casually shouting "[COMPANY] Security, freeze and keep your hands visible!" I could immediately see a difference.

We were going to find something today.

The Camp layout was a circle compressed against our fence line, more of an oval. The outside of the racetrack was housing. The inside was those services that were needed or permitted to exist - administration, clinic, fire house, classrooms, etc. Both the outer ring and the race track were kept scrupulously clear.

We also used a drag three times a day on the outer perimeter, which circled around the Camp. This was to detect footprints.

Authorized foraging parties had several routes of entry and exit from the campus. None were near the Camp. Less authorized personnel could only enter or exit from the South Gate. The former North Gate had been permanently closed to vehicles.

The last time we had found footprints (inbound) we had counted the Camp residents six times before finding the interloper.

Unfortunately, she had escaped. But rumor had it that she had escaped to fall to her death from one of the towers.

Aside from quibbling details (such as the actual timing of her heart stopping), rumor was correct.

One of our biggest concerns was infiltration. Either getting an outsider in to assess our defenses, or corrupting an insider and somehow providing them false assurances that they would survive the site's fall.

I had little interest in investigating the death of someone whose survival would have endangered us all. Besides, I already knew what had happened.

This made me, on paper at least, an accessory after the fact to murder most foul. But after the thermonuclear annihilation of San Francisco and lesser cities to her south, I found myself having great difficulty giving a shit.

Speaking of which ... my nose wrinkled. Someone had apparently knocked over a bucket, and it was even more rank than ordinary sewage.

I sniffed again.

"Medic!" I shouted. Then got on the radio. I needed one of our public health folks and I needed them now.

I suppose that in civilization, diarrhea is merely a nuisance. But when hundreds of people are crowded together in substandard housing, it's a killer. Just like a wire noose tightened around an infiltrator's neck.

We investigated. Someone had concealed a child's illness, afraid that they would be expelled. There was a language barrier, we obtained translation. The child and one parent were transported to our infirmary. The other parent was detained.

Under the supervision of our one public health nurse, worth much more than his weight in gold, the questionable areas and buckets were detail scrubbed to gleaming with a heavy stink of chemicals.

We continued to turn up technically stolen cafeteria food. We tracked this but did not confiscate it. What's the point? But it was a constant low grade arm's race between serving what food we could and hungry workers sneaking some out to their loved ones. Not even a race we wanted to win, merely control.

I had to look away in time to avoid learning that the 'diner' was actually a speakeasy that served alcohol. Unlike during Prohibition, the vile brew was relatively safe to drink. But I had to work to not officially learn about this essential safety valve. One reason I had to leave my usual bodyguard behind: Shane Shreve would insist on dragging me to the keg and rubbing his wet fingers under my nose, disregarding any clues from me or from anyone else.

The center racetrack was to guarantee rapid reaction, that we could access any point in the Camp in under two minutes, and that the Camp could be defended from the outside but never, ever from us. The "no firearms" policy was for the same reason. But we did permit bows and melee weapons.

It was no accident that we had recreated feudalism, in only a few months of desperation. But this was corporate feudalism, and benign, and the worst abuses mitigated.

Or so I told myself when I walked in on one of my guards -- my guards! -- fucking a clearly frightened survivor, bent over her own bed.

Well, actually, raping. During an inspection raid. A friendly.

I turned to Sharon, who was standing next to me with her mouth open and hand tightening on her pistol grip until it turned white.

"Is this what it looks like?" I asked very quietly.

She nodded.

I thought about what I should do. Subdue him. Separate them. Investigate. Take statements. Try him. Strip him naked and kick him out -- with a guard's knowledge of our defenses.

I glanced around. Only Betty and I were witnesses. I signaled her with a palm. _Stay_.

I drew my knife.

###

"Hands up! Hands up!" I screamed at the terrified woman. "React! React!"

The guard teams came running with their weapons. What they saw:

- Sharon covering us with her pistol.
- The guard with his throat cut neatly from ear to ear, and his blood all over a screaming woman.
- Me, tossing the knife away from her and putting her in a control hold, also covered in blood.
- An obvious crime scene.

I gave orders. Take her into custody. Don't talk to her, don't let her talk. Take pictures. Remove his body. Did we have any HIV tests left? No. Damn.

Rough decontamination of my face and hands with a few precious wet wipes, give a verbal statement. Much later it would be an E-mailed report.

As Sharon and I made entry, we had seen the guard attempting to rape the woman. She had defended herself, using a small serrated knife. I had been splattered with blood trying to save the guard, but had failed.

We would have to adjudicate but it looked like clear cut self defense. Emphasis on cut.

I made my way back to site with Betty about ten feet from me the entire time. I pushed a point of personal privilege and helped myself to the motor pool mechanic's hot shower. It would need to be decontaminated afterwards. I brought my gear in with me.

I again used hand signal, not trusting myself to speak, to have Betty cover the door.

I did not expect her to lock the door with her on the inside.

I continued stripping down, but first held my knife and sheath under the flowing shower water until it ran clear.

She looked at me, I looked at her.

I don't know how to explain what happened next.

But we both took off all our clothes and showered together. Nothing more, nothing less. No sex. But very sexually charged. I will spare the gentle reader specifics, assuming that he has been raised in Western society where a naked knife is less obscene than a naked person, and murder less obscene than arousal.

Sharon whispered as she scrubbed my back, the only time either of us spoke.

"Thank you," she said.

Only she and I knew the truth of what had happened in that room.

By the time we were done with the victim, she herself would be convinced that she had defended herself.

I could not tolerate rot in the security force. Especially not during Apocalypse.