Globall War of Terror - F--- Me What?
Sep. 1st, 2018 09:11 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGloball War of Terror - F--- Me What?
The Ammunition Technical Working Group was doing our technical work, discussing ammunition and the storage thereof.
In fact we were sitting around a rough wooden picnic table having a nice group meltdown.
Doctor Betty Rize had brought us some intel that none of us wanted to believe. Especially not her.
A licensed clinical psychologist has certain advantages as an intelligence officer. She has a ready made excuse to meet with people in privacy and to take notes on their strengths and weaknesses.
When you add that she is 1) absolutely batshit crazy and 2) utterly blackmailed into cooperation by Yours Truly, bordering on Stockholm Syndrome, you get a very effective if unstable combination.
But she also knew better than to make stuff up, and what she was telling us now, was so far beyond her ability to make up, that we didn't know what to do with it.
With great difficulty, she had made a contact with some people living in the South San Jose area, who in turn were in tenuous contact with people in the Los Gatos and Saratoga areas, who had infrequent bicycle contact with people living in the Santa Cruz Mountains. One of them had shared a video via Bluetooth, and the video had passed hand to hand until it got to Betty.
Until very recently. The bicyclists were not coming down any more. Their little packages of cannabis were sorely missed.
We knew that a wildfire was burning in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The smoke continued to drift over the Bay Area, causing atrocious air quality as if we hadn't had enough smoke and fallout from burning San Francisco to last lifetimes.
But this kind of hand-held shaky video doesn't lie. Mo had been so shocked that he'd dropped the phone.
The bomb tech dropped the phone.
The phone came around to me again. I made myself watch the brief clip a second time. About four minutes.
I recognized the aircraft. An utterly ordinary California Department of Fire Protection and Forestry - Cal Fire to most - firefighting helicopter. Normally equipped to drop water, often configured to carry firefighters, once in a while rigged with a 'drip torch,' an arsonist's wet dream designed to set backfires.
As it was in this video.
But what you could see the helicopter doing in this video was so alien to everything CalFire stood for, that it had made our Fire Captain retch.
It was flying from house to house. Lighting the houses.
You read that right.
Lighting. The. Houses.
We knew that CalFire was no longer in business -- that its personnel had been reassigned, its apparatus given to local fire departments ... but its aircraft given to our affectionate friends at Homeland.
Who had apparently discovered a novel use for drip torches.
When a house in the wildland burns, it showers embers up to a mile downwind.
Homeland was burning out the Santa Cruz Mountains. On purpose and by design.
Effective if drastic - fighting an insurgency. Questionable under the laws of war. But so far out of line in domestic peacekeeping that it beggared the imagination.
Then I saw for the second time - the pilot had flown out of the way to drip over and light running figures, which briefly ran, windmilled and fell.
I knew perfectly well that the same helicopter was equipped with a PA system and a siren. The shocked gasp of disbelief from the unknown original videographer showed that the audio was recording. But the helicopter had made no effort to sound a warning or demand surrender.
People are soggy and hard to light.
I set down the phone.
"This should neatly remove any doubts about what we are doing."
Conspiring to commit aggravated treason, of course.
"What do we do with the video?" Sharon asked.
"Exactly nothing. It's not worth burning," I winced at the accidental irony, "a source over. I assume it's out in the wild."
"Very much so," Dr. Rize confirmed.
"Then we should expect an accelerated tempo of terrorist attacks."
It was another grossly unfair fact of life that as a symbol of law and order, the campus we were protecting was a prime target of those who felt they were fighting for freedom by fighting Homeland and all her ilk. We could neither disabuse them of the notion nor fail to protect ourselves from their attacks.
The video we just saw was itself an accelerant of another kind - an affirmation to those fighting Homeland that they were doing the right thing, and a test of loyalty for the majority who clung to "Country, drunk or sober."
"Where is it based now?" Janine asked.
"San Jose airport. The outlying airports are too insecure, and Moffett Field is both fixed wing and too high security for Homeland aircraft."
Ironic that. But the military was simultaneously trying to fight a war with China, and Homeland was somewhere between a necessary evil and an irritant to them. They certainly didn't want a half assed Homeland pilot anywhere near a C-130 full of troops.
"Could we?" she began as I interrupted.
"No."
"But ..."
"No. No direct attacks on Homeland assets. If you can do it without risking assets, you may attempt to find out names of crew. But that is all."
###
The wireline phone by the bed rang and rang and rang. It was the late morning; the bed's owner was late for duty.
He would not be reporting. His spouse hadn't woken him up either.
His night stand had a powerful handgun, untouched, and two secure photo IDs. One provided flight line access to SJC airport; the other identified him as a Homeland flight officer.
Neither would wake again.
Blood congealed and dripped from one corner of the bed, in thick globules.
Scrawled on the wall, with a bloody gloved finger were two words:
"Reprisal. RESISTANCE."
The Ammunition Technical Working Group was doing our technical work, discussing ammunition and the storage thereof.
In fact we were sitting around a rough wooden picnic table having a nice group meltdown.
Doctor Betty Rize had brought us some intel that none of us wanted to believe. Especially not her.
A licensed clinical psychologist has certain advantages as an intelligence officer. She has a ready made excuse to meet with people in privacy and to take notes on their strengths and weaknesses.
When you add that she is 1) absolutely batshit crazy and 2) utterly blackmailed into cooperation by Yours Truly, bordering on Stockholm Syndrome, you get a very effective if unstable combination.
But she also knew better than to make stuff up, and what she was telling us now, was so far beyond her ability to make up, that we didn't know what to do with it.
With great difficulty, she had made a contact with some people living in the South San Jose area, who in turn were in tenuous contact with people in the Los Gatos and Saratoga areas, who had infrequent bicycle contact with people living in the Santa Cruz Mountains. One of them had shared a video via Bluetooth, and the video had passed hand to hand until it got to Betty.
Until very recently. The bicyclists were not coming down any more. Their little packages of cannabis were sorely missed.
We knew that a wildfire was burning in the Santa Cruz Mountains. The smoke continued to drift over the Bay Area, causing atrocious air quality as if we hadn't had enough smoke and fallout from burning San Francisco to last lifetimes.
But this kind of hand-held shaky video doesn't lie. Mo had been so shocked that he'd dropped the phone.
The bomb tech dropped the phone.
The phone came around to me again. I made myself watch the brief clip a second time. About four minutes.
I recognized the aircraft. An utterly ordinary California Department of Fire Protection and Forestry - Cal Fire to most - firefighting helicopter. Normally equipped to drop water, often configured to carry firefighters, once in a while rigged with a 'drip torch,' an arsonist's wet dream designed to set backfires.
As it was in this video.
But what you could see the helicopter doing in this video was so alien to everything CalFire stood for, that it had made our Fire Captain retch.
It was flying from house to house. Lighting the houses.
You read that right.
Lighting. The. Houses.
We knew that CalFire was no longer in business -- that its personnel had been reassigned, its apparatus given to local fire departments ... but its aircraft given to our affectionate friends at Homeland.
Who had apparently discovered a novel use for drip torches.
When a house in the wildland burns, it showers embers up to a mile downwind.
Homeland was burning out the Santa Cruz Mountains. On purpose and by design.
Effective if drastic - fighting an insurgency. Questionable under the laws of war. But so far out of line in domestic peacekeeping that it beggared the imagination.
Then I saw for the second time - the pilot had flown out of the way to drip over and light running figures, which briefly ran, windmilled and fell.
I knew perfectly well that the same helicopter was equipped with a PA system and a siren. The shocked gasp of disbelief from the unknown original videographer showed that the audio was recording. But the helicopter had made no effort to sound a warning or demand surrender.
People are soggy and hard to light.
I set down the phone.
"This should neatly remove any doubts about what we are doing."
Conspiring to commit aggravated treason, of course.
"What do we do with the video?" Sharon asked.
"Exactly nothing. It's not worth burning," I winced at the accidental irony, "a source over. I assume it's out in the wild."
"Very much so," Dr. Rize confirmed.
"Then we should expect an accelerated tempo of terrorist attacks."
It was another grossly unfair fact of life that as a symbol of law and order, the campus we were protecting was a prime target of those who felt they were fighting for freedom by fighting Homeland and all her ilk. We could neither disabuse them of the notion nor fail to protect ourselves from their attacks.
The video we just saw was itself an accelerant of another kind - an affirmation to those fighting Homeland that they were doing the right thing, and a test of loyalty for the majority who clung to "Country, drunk or sober."
"Where is it based now?" Janine asked.
"San Jose airport. The outlying airports are too insecure, and Moffett Field is both fixed wing and too high security for Homeland aircraft."
Ironic that. But the military was simultaneously trying to fight a war with China, and Homeland was somewhere between a necessary evil and an irritant to them. They certainly didn't want a half assed Homeland pilot anywhere near a C-130 full of troops.
"Could we?" she began as I interrupted.
"No."
"But ..."
"No. No direct attacks on Homeland assets. If you can do it without risking assets, you may attempt to find out names of crew. But that is all."
###
The wireline phone by the bed rang and rang and rang. It was the late morning; the bed's owner was late for duty.
He would not be reporting. His spouse hadn't woken him up either.
His night stand had a powerful handgun, untouched, and two secure photo IDs. One provided flight line access to SJC airport; the other identified him as a Homeland flight officer.
Neither would wake again.
Blood congealed and dripped from one corner of the bed, in thick globules.
Scrawled on the wall, with a bloody gloved finger were two words:
"Reprisal. RESISTANCE."
