GWOT II - Door To Door, Redux
Dec. 15th, 2019 08:03 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyWe are having a meeting of the Ammunition Technical Working Group, and sharing our latest hard won intelligence.
"Homeland is going door to door," Betty started without preamble.
That was going to be interesting. We'd gone door to door in the first days of the FIrecracker, but we'd been doing something very specific. Rescuing employees, removing their personal effects, and doing a little looting.
The military had gone door to door as well, but like us had been working from a list. They'd been reminding veterans and retirees of their obligations under the law to report for extremely hazardous duty, whether Four-Eff or Fifty.
Neither of our organizations had gone from address to address. In addition to being time intensive and very expensive in fuel, it promised to be hideously dangerous if you weren't driving something armored. And sometimes even then.
That promised to be fun, for values of fun that involved other people in deep shit far away.
"So, what's their protocol?" I asked.
"Knock and talk, with an MRAP idling in the background. Census questions. Who lives here, what are their ages, what do they do? Then a packet of forms to fill out and turn in at the Neighborhood Reconstruction Office. And would you terribly mind putting your thumb on this little reader?"
"People hunting."
"Got it in one."
"Any word on what happens when they find one?"
"If it's just one, zip tie and drag away. If it's more than one..." and Betty made a thumbs down gesture. "Sidewalked."
"How are people taking it?"
"Very, very scared. If you don't answer the door, sometimes that's enough, and sometimes they come back and break it down. They've set several houses on fire when no one was home; San Jose Fire is pissed about it, because they don't warn in advance so they can protect exposures."
The unspoken question was, when would they come to Site and do approximately the same thing?
We'd already sent in our lists. So they had all the names already, within a calculated range of error that I hoped would save a number of lives within.
Math, kids. Not just for science and engineering.
"What do the local police think?"
"As little as possible. Homeland pulled an audit on the Sheriff's Department last week. Shot a sergeant for not having destructive device permits for some stuff in the explosives shed."
Now that was interesting, and fertile ground for driving a wedge in between. I said as much.
"The problem is logistics and numbers. Call it about five thousand police in the South Bay," about half the pre-War number, "and about ten thousand Homeland organized into three brigades and a detainee processing section. One at Moffett Field, one in downtown, one in Cupertino at the former headquarters of a high technology firm. Detainee processing at the airport."
Said high technology firm had given Homeland some static about compromising its technology ecosystem. Homeland had literally moved into their HQ and took over.
We'd never run on i-products anyway. But some of our employees still had them, and it was a problem we were working on. They were no longer allowed on the Client wifi network, "due to a lack of security updates," but we had to assume they still had the same voice and track that the other major ecosystem of phones did.
Airports are a great place to process detainees. I still found it bitterly morbid that the parking garage of San Jose airport, pre War, had an art exhibit of creepy 'hands' reaching out as if trapped within. Now it was real, and literal.
"Is Homeland doing any confiscations?" Sharon asked. That's right, she was a pre-War gun nut.
"They don't need to. You can't buy ammo anywhere for any price, unless you have black market connections. If you fight Homeland, they bloop your house and you're done."
Bloop (v.): to use a short range grenade launcher to destroy. After the sound the launcher makes when fired. Also see "bloop gun."
Good thing we had stockpiled as soon as we did, as much as we did. Even if Saratoga Gun Exchange vowed to have my literal head on a silver platter, in no metaphorical sense, for stiffing them with greenbacks two days before the currency changeover.
"The ration system is starting to settle down. But that little ration card has an RFID chip in it, and readers literally all over the place. And carried by Homeland patrols. As the cellular network is still spotty, they can't make people download the Homeland app, but they can and do scan that card."
"Any luck on spoofing or cloning it?"
"Some. We, I mean I hear, that it can be reliably cloned. Spoofing is a lot harder. Even a Homeland goon will notice when you hand him a card with wires attached to it."
"What if you lose your card? Or get mugged for it?"
"They might make you a new one. They might intern you. It seems to be about fifty-fifty."
"Are they making cops get cards?"
"So far, no. Same scheme as for the other enclaves, your enclave vouches for you, you get the ration and your bluebacks through them."
"Hold on..." interrupted Arturo. "You said the MRAPs were _idling_ in the background. Not turning off their engines to save on fuel."
"Correct."
His eyes and mine met. Fuel shortage my ass. Combat troops prefer to leave the engine running so they don't have to bet their lives on a starter working. Bean counters prefer to have engines shut down to save gas; and usually win if fuel is expensive or hard to get. In peacetime, of course, air conditioning or heating for troop comfort trumps both concerns, but this wasn't peacetime.
"Let's ask Facilities to ask for diesel again. We might get it this time."
We weren't high on Homeland's radar, which was both good and bad. Not much in terms of priority, but also mostly left us alone.
"Also, let's work up some numbers. How many MRAPs? Where garaged? How maintained? Spare parts?"
Betty smiled. and recited from memory.
"Over sixty, San Jose Airport, maintained on airside under gates not in use, spare parts occasionally flown in, Homeland teams raiding auto parts stores for specific part numbers. Mostly filters."
###
The MRAP was burning. I looked more carefully. Nope, photoshopped.
"Homeland reports anti-American partisans damaged a Homeland vehicle on patrol today. In retaliation, conspirators and associates of the partisans were interned..."
Mid shot of detainees being pushed onto buses. One briefly resisted and was shot.
"Capture," I said calmly.
"Got it," Wyatt confirmed.
We blew up the video stills, from our little bubble of safety in the Room.
The fire was very fake. The actual damage to the MRAP was a leaking heavy stain from under the left front wheel.
"Someone knows their brakes," I muttered.
The detainee operation was a new one, not one of the standard clips. And, interesting escalation, poor censorship or simply not caring anymore, boldly showing a straight up murder too.
"Are they getting arrogant or desperate?" Wyatt murmured out loud.
"Arrogant," I asserted.
###
The skylight had been left open. But he still had to lower a rope and climb down, with the rope tied off enough to be able to climb back up.
The first thing he did was to check the alarm panel. It glowed a reassuring "READY TO ARM" meaning that it was not in fact armed.
Police didn't respond to alarms with sirens any more. They snuck up quietly, borrowed the keys from the manager, searched, and shot first.
He went to the back, to the shelves with little labeled boxes.
He checked carefully with a flash of his penlight, and took all the boxes under that SKU.
He then replaced them with the boxes he'd brought with him, in the backpack.
He tied off the rope to the backpack and waved, and the backpack now filled with the stolen parts went back up.
It was always tense until the rope end came back down. He did NOT want to be in the store come the morning.
But tomorrow night, he'd be doing it again, at the next store in the chain.
Swapping out parts.
###
"Shit, shit, shit!" the driver cursed as the OIL HOT light lit on the dashboard and the coolant temperature also spiked.
They slowed to a stop. Radio traffic was exchanged.
Soon the officer demanded that the driver get out and open the reverse-hinged hood, to check the systems himself.
As they debated with each other, heads under the hood and hatch-mounted machine gunner on overwatch, a crowd started to gather.
Short bursts warned them away, and they retreated muttering.
The convoy was just as delayed as if it had been ambushed.
And just to keep them honest, every once in a while, there were ambuscades too.
###
On a crowded street, two men brushed against each other.
One was mugged of the $2000 in bluebacks he had been carrying in a jacket pocket.
But he now had three new cards in RFID protective sleeves in a back pocket instead.
People need to eat.
And other people need to hustle.
"Homeland is going door to door," Betty started without preamble.
That was going to be interesting. We'd gone door to door in the first days of the FIrecracker, but we'd been doing something very specific. Rescuing employees, removing their personal effects, and doing a little looting.
The military had gone door to door as well, but like us had been working from a list. They'd been reminding veterans and retirees of their obligations under the law to report for extremely hazardous duty, whether Four-Eff or Fifty.
Neither of our organizations had gone from address to address. In addition to being time intensive and very expensive in fuel, it promised to be hideously dangerous if you weren't driving something armored. And sometimes even then.
That promised to be fun, for values of fun that involved other people in deep shit far away.
"So, what's their protocol?" I asked.
"Knock and talk, with an MRAP idling in the background. Census questions. Who lives here, what are their ages, what do they do? Then a packet of forms to fill out and turn in at the Neighborhood Reconstruction Office. And would you terribly mind putting your thumb on this little reader?"
"People hunting."
"Got it in one."
"Any word on what happens when they find one?"
"If it's just one, zip tie and drag away. If it's more than one..." and Betty made a thumbs down gesture. "Sidewalked."
"How are people taking it?"
"Very, very scared. If you don't answer the door, sometimes that's enough, and sometimes they come back and break it down. They've set several houses on fire when no one was home; San Jose Fire is pissed about it, because they don't warn in advance so they can protect exposures."
The unspoken question was, when would they come to Site and do approximately the same thing?
We'd already sent in our lists. So they had all the names already, within a calculated range of error that I hoped would save a number of lives within.
Math, kids. Not just for science and engineering.
"What do the local police think?"
"As little as possible. Homeland pulled an audit on the Sheriff's Department last week. Shot a sergeant for not having destructive device permits for some stuff in the explosives shed."
Now that was interesting, and fertile ground for driving a wedge in between. I said as much.
"The problem is logistics and numbers. Call it about five thousand police in the South Bay," about half the pre-War number, "and about ten thousand Homeland organized into three brigades and a detainee processing section. One at Moffett Field, one in downtown, one in Cupertino at the former headquarters of a high technology firm. Detainee processing at the airport."
Said high technology firm had given Homeland some static about compromising its technology ecosystem. Homeland had literally moved into their HQ and took over.
We'd never run on i-products anyway. But some of our employees still had them, and it was a problem we were working on. They were no longer allowed on the Client wifi network, "due to a lack of security updates," but we had to assume they still had the same voice and track that the other major ecosystem of phones did.
Airports are a great place to process detainees. I still found it bitterly morbid that the parking garage of San Jose airport, pre War, had an art exhibit of creepy 'hands' reaching out as if trapped within. Now it was real, and literal.
"Is Homeland doing any confiscations?" Sharon asked. That's right, she was a pre-War gun nut.
"They don't need to. You can't buy ammo anywhere for any price, unless you have black market connections. If you fight Homeland, they bloop your house and you're done."
Bloop (v.): to use a short range grenade launcher to destroy. After the sound the launcher makes when fired. Also see "bloop gun."
Good thing we had stockpiled as soon as we did, as much as we did. Even if Saratoga Gun Exchange vowed to have my literal head on a silver platter, in no metaphorical sense, for stiffing them with greenbacks two days before the currency changeover.
"The ration system is starting to settle down. But that little ration card has an RFID chip in it, and readers literally all over the place. And carried by Homeland patrols. As the cellular network is still spotty, they can't make people download the Homeland app, but they can and do scan that card."
"Any luck on spoofing or cloning it?"
"Some. We, I mean I hear, that it can be reliably cloned. Spoofing is a lot harder. Even a Homeland goon will notice when you hand him a card with wires attached to it."
"What if you lose your card? Or get mugged for it?"
"They might make you a new one. They might intern you. It seems to be about fifty-fifty."
"Are they making cops get cards?"
"So far, no. Same scheme as for the other enclaves, your enclave vouches for you, you get the ration and your bluebacks through them."
"Hold on..." interrupted Arturo. "You said the MRAPs were _idling_ in the background. Not turning off their engines to save on fuel."
"Correct."
His eyes and mine met. Fuel shortage my ass. Combat troops prefer to leave the engine running so they don't have to bet their lives on a starter working. Bean counters prefer to have engines shut down to save gas; and usually win if fuel is expensive or hard to get. In peacetime, of course, air conditioning or heating for troop comfort trumps both concerns, but this wasn't peacetime.
"Let's ask Facilities to ask for diesel again. We might get it this time."
We weren't high on Homeland's radar, which was both good and bad. Not much in terms of priority, but also mostly left us alone.
"Also, let's work up some numbers. How many MRAPs? Where garaged? How maintained? Spare parts?"
Betty smiled. and recited from memory.
"Over sixty, San Jose Airport, maintained on airside under gates not in use, spare parts occasionally flown in, Homeland teams raiding auto parts stores for specific part numbers. Mostly filters."
###
The MRAP was burning. I looked more carefully. Nope, photoshopped.
"Homeland reports anti-American partisans damaged a Homeland vehicle on patrol today. In retaliation, conspirators and associates of the partisans were interned..."
Mid shot of detainees being pushed onto buses. One briefly resisted and was shot.
"Capture," I said calmly.
"Got it," Wyatt confirmed.
We blew up the video stills, from our little bubble of safety in the Room.
The fire was very fake. The actual damage to the MRAP was a leaking heavy stain from under the left front wheel.
"Someone knows their brakes," I muttered.
The detainee operation was a new one, not one of the standard clips. And, interesting escalation, poor censorship or simply not caring anymore, boldly showing a straight up murder too.
"Are they getting arrogant or desperate?" Wyatt murmured out loud.
"Arrogant," I asserted.
###
The skylight had been left open. But he still had to lower a rope and climb down, with the rope tied off enough to be able to climb back up.
The first thing he did was to check the alarm panel. It glowed a reassuring "READY TO ARM" meaning that it was not in fact armed.
Police didn't respond to alarms with sirens any more. They snuck up quietly, borrowed the keys from the manager, searched, and shot first.
He went to the back, to the shelves with little labeled boxes.
He checked carefully with a flash of his penlight, and took all the boxes under that SKU.
He then replaced them with the boxes he'd brought with him, in the backpack.
He tied off the rope to the backpack and waved, and the backpack now filled with the stolen parts went back up.
It was always tense until the rope end came back down. He did NOT want to be in the store come the morning.
But tomorrow night, he'd be doing it again, at the next store in the chain.
Swapping out parts.
###
"Shit, shit, shit!" the driver cursed as the OIL HOT light lit on the dashboard and the coolant temperature also spiked.
They slowed to a stop. Radio traffic was exchanged.
Soon the officer demanded that the driver get out and open the reverse-hinged hood, to check the systems himself.
As they debated with each other, heads under the hood and hatch-mounted machine gunner on overwatch, a crowd started to gather.
Short bursts warned them away, and they retreated muttering.
The convoy was just as delayed as if it had been ambushed.
And just to keep them honest, every once in a while, there were ambuscades too.
###
On a crowded street, two men brushed against each other.
One was mugged of the $2000 in bluebacks he had been carrying in a jacket pocket.
But he now had three new cards in RFID protective sleeves in a back pocket instead.
People need to eat.
And other people need to hustle.
