GWOT VI - Bear Safe
Aug. 29th, 2022 08:29 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
drewkittyGWOT VI - Bear Safe
"Panoptes, this is Mammoth Lakes. Period of maximum alert."
"Copy," groaned the controller and bent back to her scope. "The elephant wants us to pucker up. No idea why."
"Bears," someone murmured.
"Bears," was the general agreement.
###
Des Moines was a very Christian city. Everyone in the street wore at least two or three crosses. Covered up was in. Business suits were in. Bibles were very in.
There usually wasn't actual violence if a woman wore a knee length skirt. But there were stares.
It was still post-Firecracker America. Homeland wasn't patrolling; Homeland's hand had been very light in Iowa, and nonexistent now. But the police were in pairs of two, or squads of three to five, and carrying heavy. They looked at everyone two and three times.
Sunday afternoons were very quiet. The morning, people walked to church. Noon was picnics, but not always even that. Afternoon was for quiet reflections. Perhaps a football game in the early evening, but not so soon after church.
So the sudden explosions caught everyone's attention. People turned on their TVs and their radios.
And as often turned them off again. Women and children went inside and locked the doors. Men reported to their duty stations.
The war was here now.
###
"This is Refugee Free Radio, broadcasting from Des Moines, Iowa. The truth has a right to be free, and so do we."
The Bear Force operative ignored the recording just as he ignored the pool of blood spreading under the door of the broadcast studio.
He disconnected the controls from the transmitter. Until they found the recorder or cut the power, the message would continue.
Objective achieved. Go to the next objective.
He took care not to get blood on his shoes. He had more assignments today and did not want any tells.
###
After the third explosion, no one dared move anywhere within two blocks of the shattered police station. Groaning wounded moaned and crawled, but no one dared go to help them.
The burning ambulance, dead paramedics and toppled gurney were not deliberate targets. But they had been trying to do their jobs when the second explosion went off.
The technical term is, depending on one's perspective, "secondary device" or "collateral damage."
###
The Iowa State Police held their positions. They had safed the Capitol grounds. They had bomb dogs. Also attack dogs. No intruder had ever gotten in. They'd shot first, and a lot.
Trapped in an endless loop between his office and his suite, the Governor of Iowa could only listen as more explosions punctuated from time to time, the utter helplessness of his position.
He was a tired, old, sick man in a room. He happened to wear a suit and had been elected to a position. The title blinded some people, but not the ones he most wanted to influence.
The ones doing the killing.
He'd known from the first that killings elsewhere in the state would come here sooner or later.
He almost longed to go meet his fate. But he knew his own State Police guard wouldn't allow it, deriving their own power and the safety of their own families from the illusion that Iowa was still a secular rather than a religious state, and that the balance of power was not tilted towards pulpits and tithes and pimps in frocks.
So he waited. Waited for this horrible day to be over.
###
There is a certain horrible simplicity to a bombing campaign. Bombs blow up. They are of a certain size. They can be delivered by many means - as if packages, disguised as any of hundreds of common objects, put into place long ago and 'completed' with a detonator or a connection.
Bear Force taught how to carry out such campaigns. They could do it themselves, but it would be too easy. Also, California had to keep her hands clean.
California's Governor could tell the United Nations, "California has never carried out terrorist attacks with bombs in Iowa," and it would even be true.
California just trained and equipped those who did.
This was the graduation exercise for their new cubs. Refuge's fledgling special operations personnel. More valuable than gold in this kind of war.
The cubs themselves were relatively safe. Following safe routes and scripts, discreetly guarded by Bear Force covert specialists. Inquisitive police officer? Suddenly taken ill by a dosing. Route problem? A terse message, authenticated, telling them another way. Church counter-terrorism operative? A heavy knife knows no religion and will dispute the power of any faith no matter how closely held.
The specialists themselves, not so much with the safety part.
"You have joined the Bear Force to die. California will send you where you can die."
###
In the movies, when a special operative is discovered, an enormous fight takes place.
In the real world, the fight is brief. Numbers tell. "Even Hercules cannot fight two."
A brief victory or a brief defeat. Usually a victory, when the police officer checking the ID slumps in silenced death.
"Sometimes, the dragon wins."
###
She panted, trying to catch her breath, with the police in hot pursuit. Two of them dead behind her, but radio squawks and sirens told the story.
In a fight between her and the city's police, she would live as long as she had ammunition. And she had already changed to her second and last magazine.
Also unlike the movies, there was no chance to take a fallen police officer's firearm. A knot of police formed around each casualty, an angry knot of people firing back at her.
She rounded the corner to be confronted by a line of armor, even shields, and pointed rifles.
"POLICE! DROP YOUR WEAPON AND PUT YOUR HANDS ON... um.... shit."
You cannot put your hands on your head if you no longer have one.
And thanks to the last bullet in her pistol, and a total lack of hesitation, she no longer had one.
###
Eighteen of the twenty Refuge special operations trainees survived to leave the city.
Eight of their twelve trainers were with them. Another two extracted by more difficult means.
This left the people of Iowa trying to understand how four dead terrorists had inflicted so much destruction in such a short period of time.
This called the power of their government into question.
As intended.
###
"That's a wrap," Mammoth Lakes said finally, so many hours later. "Get some rest."
Five of the six crew immediately fell asleep.
The one who had done little work went to each, helped turn them to a more comfortable position, put tiny pillows under their heads and wrapped them with mylar blankets.
Then he plugged his headset into a station to monitor the radio.
He was bored. He liked being bored.
He knew what had been happening in Des Moines. Had done it himself, a time or two, on one coast and also the other.
The analysts were exhausted and needed sleep.
He was wide awake. He longed for caffeine. He wondered who among his friends hadn't made it out of the city. The police radio chatter made it clear that they'd "Got some."
To paralyze a city at the right moment, it was worth the effort. And the lives.
He could use the console after a fashion.
It was something to do.
So he noticed the track of the helicopter entering Iowa airspace from the north.
It was squawking a valid Red Lion IFF code, so he ignored it.
It wasn't his fault.
He wasn't an analyst.
This helicopter was coming south at dusk.
Red Lion did not fly at night in the Iowa zone.
Therefore the IFF, however electronically valid, was not and could not be a Red Lion aircraft.
So it was that a Bear Force operative actually watched his American counterparts entering Iowa without knowing it.
"Panoptes, this is Mammoth Lakes. Period of maximum alert."
"Copy," groaned the controller and bent back to her scope. "The elephant wants us to pucker up. No idea why."
"Bears," someone murmured.
"Bears," was the general agreement.
###
Des Moines was a very Christian city. Everyone in the street wore at least two or three crosses. Covered up was in. Business suits were in. Bibles were very in.
There usually wasn't actual violence if a woman wore a knee length skirt. But there were stares.
It was still post-Firecracker America. Homeland wasn't patrolling; Homeland's hand had been very light in Iowa, and nonexistent now. But the police were in pairs of two, or squads of three to five, and carrying heavy. They looked at everyone two and three times.
Sunday afternoons were very quiet. The morning, people walked to church. Noon was picnics, but not always even that. Afternoon was for quiet reflections. Perhaps a football game in the early evening, but not so soon after church.
So the sudden explosions caught everyone's attention. People turned on their TVs and their radios.
And as often turned them off again. Women and children went inside and locked the doors. Men reported to their duty stations.
The war was here now.
###
"This is Refugee Free Radio, broadcasting from Des Moines, Iowa. The truth has a right to be free, and so do we."
The Bear Force operative ignored the recording just as he ignored the pool of blood spreading under the door of the broadcast studio.
He disconnected the controls from the transmitter. Until they found the recorder or cut the power, the message would continue.
Objective achieved. Go to the next objective.
He took care not to get blood on his shoes. He had more assignments today and did not want any tells.
###
After the third explosion, no one dared move anywhere within two blocks of the shattered police station. Groaning wounded moaned and crawled, but no one dared go to help them.
The burning ambulance, dead paramedics and toppled gurney were not deliberate targets. But they had been trying to do their jobs when the second explosion went off.
The technical term is, depending on one's perspective, "secondary device" or "collateral damage."
###
The Iowa State Police held their positions. They had safed the Capitol grounds. They had bomb dogs. Also attack dogs. No intruder had ever gotten in. They'd shot first, and a lot.
Trapped in an endless loop between his office and his suite, the Governor of Iowa could only listen as more explosions punctuated from time to time, the utter helplessness of his position.
He was a tired, old, sick man in a room. He happened to wear a suit and had been elected to a position. The title blinded some people, but not the ones he most wanted to influence.
The ones doing the killing.
He'd known from the first that killings elsewhere in the state would come here sooner or later.
He almost longed to go meet his fate. But he knew his own State Police guard wouldn't allow it, deriving their own power and the safety of their own families from the illusion that Iowa was still a secular rather than a religious state, and that the balance of power was not tilted towards pulpits and tithes and pimps in frocks.
So he waited. Waited for this horrible day to be over.
###
There is a certain horrible simplicity to a bombing campaign. Bombs blow up. They are of a certain size. They can be delivered by many means - as if packages, disguised as any of hundreds of common objects, put into place long ago and 'completed' with a detonator or a connection.
Bear Force taught how to carry out such campaigns. They could do it themselves, but it would be too easy. Also, California had to keep her hands clean.
California's Governor could tell the United Nations, "California has never carried out terrorist attacks with bombs in Iowa," and it would even be true.
California just trained and equipped those who did.
This was the graduation exercise for their new cubs. Refuge's fledgling special operations personnel. More valuable than gold in this kind of war.
The cubs themselves were relatively safe. Following safe routes and scripts, discreetly guarded by Bear Force covert specialists. Inquisitive police officer? Suddenly taken ill by a dosing. Route problem? A terse message, authenticated, telling them another way. Church counter-terrorism operative? A heavy knife knows no religion and will dispute the power of any faith no matter how closely held.
The specialists themselves, not so much with the safety part.
"You have joined the Bear Force to die. California will send you where you can die."
###
In the movies, when a special operative is discovered, an enormous fight takes place.
In the real world, the fight is brief. Numbers tell. "Even Hercules cannot fight two."
A brief victory or a brief defeat. Usually a victory, when the police officer checking the ID slumps in silenced death.
"Sometimes, the dragon wins."
###
She panted, trying to catch her breath, with the police in hot pursuit. Two of them dead behind her, but radio squawks and sirens told the story.
In a fight between her and the city's police, she would live as long as she had ammunition. And she had already changed to her second and last magazine.
Also unlike the movies, there was no chance to take a fallen police officer's firearm. A knot of police formed around each casualty, an angry knot of people firing back at her.
She rounded the corner to be confronted by a line of armor, even shields, and pointed rifles.
"POLICE! DROP YOUR WEAPON AND PUT YOUR HANDS ON... um.... shit."
You cannot put your hands on your head if you no longer have one.
And thanks to the last bullet in her pistol, and a total lack of hesitation, she no longer had one.
###
Eighteen of the twenty Refuge special operations trainees survived to leave the city.
Eight of their twelve trainers were with them. Another two extracted by more difficult means.
This left the people of Iowa trying to understand how four dead terrorists had inflicted so much destruction in such a short period of time.
This called the power of their government into question.
As intended.
###
"That's a wrap," Mammoth Lakes said finally, so many hours later. "Get some rest."
Five of the six crew immediately fell asleep.
The one who had done little work went to each, helped turn them to a more comfortable position, put tiny pillows under their heads and wrapped them with mylar blankets.
Then he plugged his headset into a station to monitor the radio.
He was bored. He liked being bored.
He knew what had been happening in Des Moines. Had done it himself, a time or two, on one coast and also the other.
The analysts were exhausted and needed sleep.
He was wide awake. He longed for caffeine. He wondered who among his friends hadn't made it out of the city. The police radio chatter made it clear that they'd "Got some."
To paralyze a city at the right moment, it was worth the effort. And the lives.
He could use the console after a fashion.
It was something to do.
So he noticed the track of the helicopter entering Iowa airspace from the north.
It was squawking a valid Red Lion IFF code, so he ignored it.
It wasn't his fault.
He wasn't an analyst.
This helicopter was coming south at dusk.
Red Lion did not fly at night in the Iowa zone.
Therefore the IFF, however electronically valid, was not and could not be a Red Lion aircraft.
So it was that a Bear Force operative actually watched his American counterparts entering Iowa without knowing it.
