Revolution 3.0

Alaska/British Columbia Border

2 July, 2030 0500 hrs

Black Mike Sullivan held stopped dead in his tracks and held up his fist at about head height. He was crouched on one knee with the other boot on the ground, muscles wound up, ready to spring himself up to his feet in case of trouble.

I stopped in my tracks, Raised my fist for the guy behind me and stood stock still, my eyes scanning the forest between Mike and the ridge we were approaching. Nothing but old growth willows and the occasional towering fir, framing the green cacophony of mid-level plants and the leaf-brown and moss-green forest floor. I unfocused my eyes a little, not looking for details, but rather movement. It took me a minute, but I saw it. Off to the south, about 50 yards out, there was a large brown mass of fur rummaging around in a field of large, dark green bushes.

I crept up behind Mike. “Brown. What's he doing?”

“Something weird.” replied mike without taking his eyes off the bruin.

“Go around?”

“Hafta. He'll be at this for hours.”

I scanned the area and pulled up the map function on my diptych. “If we cut north for about 10 klicks we can run the ridge south until about a mile north of the target. Easy walk down the valley to do our recon.”

Sullivan grunted.

“Can't sit here all day Gunny.”

He grunted again “Your right about that sir. You lead the men on this leg ell-tee, I'm going to take a minute and watch our friend here, make sure he's not going to be a surprise for us later.”

I grunted, turned and waved my hand in front of my face.

New orders. Danger Close. Go left and form column on me. Noise discipline, move with stealth. Pass the word. I signed.

I saw thumbs ups from everyone I could see, which was only Lefty and Ace, the rest were either too far back in the line of march or too well hidden for me to see, but I knew that the word would be passed.

***

We humped up the gentle slope of the rising plateau, making good time after we were well away from the bear. Between my compass and my diptych I managed to keep us on course and in 6 hours we made the ridge. Through my Zeiss Optikas I could see the AlCan snake it's way along the broad valley with the widening blue bulk of the White River at the southern end.

The traffic this time of year was what I'd call heavy, but compared to pics I'd seen of highways in the lower 48 it was sparse. Perhaps a dozen Semis and a half-dozen cars per hour rolled past our bivouac as we dug in.

Oblong pop-up domes lined with thermally reflective material were scattered through the trees on the southern slope of the ridge, forming the base of the camp. Then ghillie netting was strung between the trees covering the tents, and a small area between them and along the southern flank. Beneath that thermally reflective and radio absorbent panels were strung. So long as we were under the panels and we didn't produce too much heat, we were invisible to anything except ground penetrating radar and ground-level, Mark-I eyeballs. Slit trenches dug and covered with the dirt and sod standing by to go back in the ground. Leave no trace was the SOP of the outfit.

On the military crest of the ridge, about 100 meters away I ordered an OP rigged (the same basic setup as the bivouac, but only for 2 guys and using only one tent. Clear lines of sight were formed through the brush using gardener's tape and forward and flanking cover was created using deadwood, rocks and some of the new Spectra panels we'd packed in. Not enough to hold up to sustained MG or sniper fire, but enough to deflect or trap the outdated 5.56 or 5.45 rounds that a reaction force or convoy guards would be rolling with. After all, this was Canada, eh? Not Islamabad or Tehran.

All the way down the slope was a forested valley of which about 50 meters ran between the beginning of the rise and the poorly maintained, two-lane blacktop of the Alaska-Canadian highway. The mission was, to set up a marking system on the north-bound side of the road. This would automatically mark military trucks that moved north bringing troops, supplies and materiels into Alaska.

Supposedly it was an automated system that used a pressure counter kind of like the DOT used to track road usage. A pressure-sensitive cable that did not respond to less than a certain weight or other than a certain wheel pattern ran across the road and into an unremarkable gray box. A cable from the box ran to the marking device which was basically a giant WD40 nozzle attached to a large reservoir of some kind of clear paint that absorbed sunlight and slowly released UVA. It was invisible to the naked eye save as some kind of transparent film and was supposedly indistinguishable from any of the other road shit that got on vehicles on long journeys.

However, to a UAV operator using a UV filter, the spay stood out like blood on a bridal gown. Made the trucks real easy to pick out and track. Or bomb.

We waited to set up the marking system until midnight.

***

***BEGIN CHATLOG***

[IRC2][Dalnet: Grogan's Garden] [ALL AGES PLEASE WATCH YOUR LANGAGE SFW ONLY]
2037 hrs [UTC-0], 3 July 2030

FragileMouse [UTC-8]: Started doing roadwork today. So fucking tired....
Anishababy [UTC-7]: Roadworkers are so hot. Always hardbods but never the shitty attitude gymrats have.

Gogher [UTC+2]: Anishababy, you think everything is hot.
RangerDanger [UTC-5]: Yeah she does. Little tramp.
Anishababy[UTC-7]: I do not. And I am NOT a tramp you @$$hole!

Canucklehead [UTC-6]: You're gonna be sore AF tomorrow Mouse. Be sure to use some Tiger Balm or you're gonna have a hard time of it, yah?
Anisahbabay [UTC-7]: Tiger Balm is so hot.
FragileMouse [UTC-8]: Yeah, I know. I'm just glad this is a union gig, y'know? Lots of hours, good pay, can't really get fired.

RangerDanger [UTC-5]: Lol$lut.

Gogher [UTC+2]: kek

***END CHATLOG***

And that was how I informed my command structure that we were operational. Via a secure satellite uplink that let me use 4 year old tech to tell a room full of teens, dorks and nerds that I finally had a job. Except that Canucklehead wasn't a Canadian. He was a sixty-odd year old black man from Michigan who'd moved up to Willow 10 years ago, after spending 30 years in the US army signal corps. He'd bounced his access all over the fucking place until anyone looking into him would swear on a stack of bibles he was in Edmonton, Alberta.

After I logged off, I turned to Black Mike. “You want to sleep, I'm still kinda wired.” He'd rejoined us just about the time we'd just finished setting up the OP and he didn't look unpleased with my efforts. Yeah, I know I was the officer and her was the non-com, but I'm an air force brat. I've been around enough to realize that he knew better than I did how this op should go and what all to do. I asked his advice anytime I was uncertain of what to do. I usually followed it. Gunny Sullivan had been in the Corps a long time.

“No thanks, sir. After my quiet time with brother bear, I'm good for another 8 hours and you've been up and running since this time yesterday.”

“OK. What was wrong with him anyhow? Berries shouldn't be ripe for another month.”

“After a couple hours he moved off enough for me to check the patch. Half-ripe watermelon berries. About a half acre of them. The collapse of the pacific salmon fishery has fucked his life up the same as the rest of the Pacific Northwest. He headed off to the south. I don't expect to have any trouble from Mr. Bear.”

I grunted. I hadn't even thought about the bear being an issue. Damn. “Ok. I'm gonna rack out then. Wake me by 1700?”

“Aye-Aye sir.” he answered reflexively.

I crawled into my tent and closed my eyes, certain I would have trouble sleeping. My mind was awash with worries about the op. Would we be discovered? Would the marker work properly? Would someone notice it if it did work properly? There was always the threat of drone strikes. And now I was worrying if the Salmon fishery would recover in my lifetime? In my kids' lifetime? Fucking Japs. Fucking Fukushima. Fucking DNR. Fucking....

Revolution 2.1

Everett, WA, USA

2 June, 2030 1700 UTC-

The van was back where it belonged, behind the cultural center we'd “borrowed” it from. all the gear had been cleaned, packed away in water-tight pelican cases that had been secured to the pilings under a dockside warehouse somebody else owned. The squad was back operating under our legends as blue collar wage slaves and motorcycle enthusiasts.   Ensconced in the sprawling Victorian revival that Tobe and Mick owned everyone was decompressing, or at least trying to.

Mick was outside on the grill; steaks and salmon was the order of the day and I could smell the fragrant smoke all the way upstairs. I could hear Tobe in the kitchen cooking...something; probably everything else that wasn't meat. Bob and Jake were playing backgammon of all things, in the upstairs parlor so as to keep away from what they termed “noise”.

The noise was Fred on his 12 string and Sam on his U-bass attempting, with varying degrees of success, to wring out old Greta Van Fleet tunes. The air in the drawing room was hazy with reefer smoke, not improving their odds of success. Normally I would be down there with them, armed with my Harmonicas and enjoying the contact high and the fellowship that comes from a good jam session. But I had a problem.

My problem was a six-foot tall, 17 year-old Yupik kid named Ezekiel Bayayok. I sat in the armchair across from him on the bed. The thousand yard stare told me he was behind the recruiting station rather than in his room.

“Easy?” I asked.

“Yeah boss?”

“Talk to me.”

“I-I don't...”He trailed off.

“Consider it a hot wash. Tell me what happened up until the ball dropped.” The kid took a deep breath and closed his eyes.

“We- Jake and I,” he stumbled “We stacked up at the door, I was beside it and Jake was behind the dumpster. The music started and we waited just like you said. After a minute, man it must have been seconds because the music was still playing, the guy came barreling out the door. It opened away from me and I just stuck my foot out, kinda by instinct. He tripped and hit his head on the ground. Musta knocked him silly because he didn't try to get up.”

“Probably. The sudden impact after the sensory overstimulation probably shut him down like flipping a light switch.”

“And then you called clear and...” he trailed off again.

“And I told you to kill him.” I said gently

“Yeah.” He looked at me with a mixture of fear and disgust. I understood and didn't begrudge him the feelings.

“OK. How did that make you feel?”

He stared at me uncomprehendingly. “What?”

“What was the first thing you felt when you knew he was alive after he hit the ground?”

“Relieved.” he sighed.

“Because?”

“Because I hadn't really hurt him.”

“Killed him, you mean. You hadn't killed him.”

“Easy's hangdog expression said more than his whispered “Yeah.”

“OK, tell me about what happened next.”

His face went very still and he took a long breath. “You said to do it quietly, and in ACT they told us that a man with a cut throat make a lot of noise. So I took out my 'hawk and I thought about where to hit him. I thought hitting him in the body would cause him to make as much noise as a cut throat and make a huge mess.”

“Why not his neck?” I asked

“I didn't-I didn't want his parents to have to see that. I figured that they might have to ID the body or something and I thought how horrible it would be for them to come in and see his-his-his..” He broke down sobbing.

After a minute I passed him my handkerchief and he took it, using it to wipe at his eyes and nose.

After he calmed down I asked “OK, so why the back of the head?”

A shuddering breath and then “The occipital lobe in in the back. It controls all the autonomic functions, breathing, heartbeat, like that. If I hit him there- When I hit him there, he'd die pretty quickly and wouldn't make much noise. I set the blade against his head, just above his neck and then...”

“Tell me how it felt. Not emotionally, tell me about the physical sensation.”

“It was like...It was like splitting shakes for the barn roof when I was a boy. Just up and down with a snap of the wrist at the end of a the swing. Felt kinda like hitting a king crab with a seal club to make it let go of my coat. Just a crunching sensation with something soft behind it.” He looked sick. “And then-then it wouldn't come out.”

“The axe?”

“Yeah. I had to put my foot on his back and use both hands to pry it loose. That was the worst part. When I stepped on him, he didn't feel like a person anymore. It was like...like he just became a person-shaped machine that ran outta juice. The joints moved, but there was nothing there to make them go and I could see his-his..” He began weeping again.

“His brain. Yeah I saw.”

“Why did I do that to him?”

“WE did that to them because they are the tools with which the feds try to enslave us. He had to die because he made the choice to let immoral men dictate his actions.”

“Are we any better?” He asked in a hushed tone.

“Yes. We don't kill civilians. We don't enslave people. And we don't tell people how to live their lives. We want what any sane person wants; to be left in peace to raise our families and do our work and find our own happiness. That kid I ordered you to kill, he would have helped to recruit hundreds, if not thousands of people to murder us and people like us all over the world. The ONLY place we're fighting is HERE, for our freedom, so NAMDO pulls out of The Zone and leaves us alone.” I realized I was starting to rant and forced myself to calm down. “I know you feel bad for the guy, and I know you feel like it wasn't a fair fight.” 

Easy's face showed first surprise and nodded “You need to realize that there ARE no fair fights kid. Fair fights are for duels and kids on the schoolyard. This is about life and death, mine, yours, your family's, your tribe's, everyone back home's.”

He stared at me bleakly

“And when this much in on the line, “fair” don't enter into it. You do what you have to to keep your people safe.”

I could see him mulling it over in his head. “They- The instructors I mean, at ACT told us-”

“-If you ain't cheatin', you ain't tryin'” I interrupted and he smiled for the first time in hours.

“Yeah.”

“That was probably ol' Gunny Havisham, wasn't it?” I asked with a grin.

Easy's eyes widened a little “Yeah, it was. You know the Gunny?”

Now I smiled. “Who do you think taught me how to do this, lo, many moons ago.”

Easy sighed. “So what do I do?”

“With what?”

“With this...feeling.”

“Feeling?”

“I feel...dirty. Like I need a shower. Like I'll never be clean again. Like the dirt is under my skin.”

I leaned back in my seat. “Start by taking a shower. Then go downstairs and hang with Fred and Sam for a while. Do what they're doing. It's not a permanent fix, but it'll take the edge off. This is your first active operation, right?”

“Yeah. Six weeks ago I walked at ACT and shook the Commandant's hand and then I was here.” He said, looking me in the eyes.

“I've been telling them for a couple of years now to only put blooded troops into active ops. This is a different kinda war than the passive stuff they get up to in The Zone.”

“Whadda you mean boss?”

“I mean that fighting a defensive war, where it's you and your mates trying to keep THEM from getting in your home is a far cry from us being out here on the sharp end, surrounded my millions of THEM and ambushing people who think they're safe. Did you notice that not a single one of the civs had a piece today? And only one of the Tangos was under arms? When was the last time you saw 20 people in a room at home and there wasn't at least a dozen firearms?”

He thought for a moment “I think the last tribal meeting I went to was firearm-free, but there were more than a couple of harpoons and everyone had a knife on them.”

“High-trust society.” I said a little impressed. “Means your people don't worry much about being robbed or assaulted by each other. The knives are just tools and everyone carries one of those anywhere outside of A-Town or Squarebanks.”

He chuckled a little at my mockery of the big college town.

“The harpoons were probably a status thing. Whalers making a point that their voice is still heard, or at least that it had better be heard.”

“Yeah, my Uncle Charlie is a whaler and he was carrying one there.”

“But here, no one carries, not for years. Ever since the Dems made the hat trick back in 2020 and then managed to use their presence in both houses and the executive to stack the courts. No one has legally carried a firearm in the US since 2022.”

“So they have a high-trust society?”

“Not according to the crime statistics.” I said with a wry smile. “But that's neither here nor there. You take a shower and go get high and connect with your mates. I'll do what I can to help you get through this. Sorry this was your first op kid.”

His face fell and he nodded. “Sure boss.”

After Easy had gone into the head, I pulled my phone out and booted up an app that didn't appear on the screen. This brought up a security screen. If I (or anyone else) entered the wrong code, it would activate a thermite charge in the phone that would turn the entire thing into slag in less than 5 seconds.

The app allowed me to use the Polaris Secure Satellite Network that kept my  data stream off the local ISP's 6G network (and thus out of the NSA's grasping clutches). Then I booted up the Llolth darkweb app (fucking geeks, right?) and looked around for an outcall service in the Seattle area. After a couple of minutes I found exactly what I was looking for.

Revolution 2.0

Redmond, WA, USA

2 June, 2030

“ONETWOTHREEFOUR!”

The chant was deafening, literally. Mick had just thrown a perfect spiral through the closed glass window of the Marine recruiting station. Officially designated the “Multisensory Overload Device, Type 3 Mark 4”, the plummet-shaped object had fins to help stabilize it and to protect the strobes mounted behind the tail. The nose was a 16 cm HDPE blunt with a 12mm chisel-tip tungsten spike in the center. Overall the thing looked like what Warner Bros. thought an aerial bomb looked like. The sides were an HDPE screen that covered three highly efficient (meaning very loud) speakers that were currently blaring Pantera's “Fucking Hostile” at 200 decibels while the three tail-mounted strobes splashed 600,000 candelas of flickering red, blue and white light around the room. We called it a Party Bomb.
The remaining windows of the room, the entire front wall of which was a series of floor to ceiling windows, did not blow out. They did vibrate in time to the music though. Even through my “active protection” earplugs I could hear it as though I was at a concert. The screams of those inside were mostly drowned out by the beat and the sound of Phil Anselmo's rage.
“Go on three.” I subvocalized and the throat mike dutifully transmitted my words to the rest of my eight man squad. “One...Two...THREE!”

Bob and I leaned into the window's gaping frame from opposite sides, our Thompson M200's at the ready. I fired first as my sight picture settled on a back lit figure still wearing a dress cover. The three .460 Rowland hollow point rounds blew through the figure in a welter of black gore, the compensator flaring a dull yellow-orange against the blinding parti-color of the strobes. The figure dropped like a sack of potatoes and I started searching for more targets.

The ROE was “No civilians killed” so we passed over anyone not obviously in uniform. Orange flared in the corner of my vision as Bob Partridge fired on a target. I saw a figure with a pistol out crouched behind one of the flimsy sheet metal and particle board desks, just his weapon and part of his head visible.
I caressed the trigger twice with the front sight centered on the front of the desk about where I figured his body would be. The six holes appeared in the black metal and the gun dropped below the level of the desk.
“ITFITSTHEATTITUDE, IFYOUCOULDSEEYOURSELF, YOUPUTYOUONASHELF” the overwhelming blare of thrash metal overwhelmed even the sound of gunfire.

I could sense the flashing muzzles of the Tobe's team coming through the front door, firing at uniformed figures out of my field of vision. Today's op was about sending a message. And send it we would by God. Scanning from right to left and back again I could see no one standing and no one in uniform that wasn't leaking claret like a crushed tomato.
Mercifully the auditory and visual assault wound down after a few more seconds as the capacitor in the core of the Party Bomb drained. The party that rages twice as hard, rages for half as long.
Bob and I called out “CLEAR!” as the room returned to normal illumination and the whimpering and crying of the wounded and the partially deafened could finally be heard.

“Clear.” came the muted response from Tobe.

“One prisoner.” came a third response from Eazy. I'd stationed Easy and Jake at the rear of the building to catch anyone who tried to leg it out the back.

“Tango or Charley?” I asked

“Service. A lance corporal who understood the better part of valor.”

Christ, we're not set up to hold or care for prisoners.

“Kill him. Quietly.”

A pause, “Sir?”

“You have your orders Troop.”

“Aye-Aye sir.”

A few seconds went by.

Jake commed “Clear.”.

“Tobe, card the dead and distribute the gold. Mick, you and Bob start tagging the exterior. Easy, get to tagging the interior.”
I got an acknowledgment from Tobe, but dead air from Easy.

“Easy?” I asked.

Nothing.

“Easy god damn it, respond.” I tried to push as much of my command voice through the throat mic as I could. Subvoalization does not lend itself to a command presence.

“W-WILCO, sir.” came the stammered response from the young Yupik.

“Be quick people we have 60 seconds to wrap up and bail.”

Mick and Bob were already breaking out the cans of red and black spraypaint. I used the barrel of my piece to clear the remaining glass from the window, then hoisted myself through the gaping maw and into the cordite-hazed abattoir of the recruiting station.

Tobe's team was busy with Tobe checking the dead and making sure the civs were all alive and at least semi-conscious, Fred dropping death cards on the dead and stripping one rank insignia from each corpse while Sam pressed a one ounce gold heart into the hands of each civilian. The hearts were cast with bas relief words on he front;

IN SYMPATHY

AND WITH GREAT

SORROW FOR

YOUR TRAUMA.

.999 PURE

2 OZ

and on the back

THIS GIFT IS

UNTAXABLE.

THIS GIFT DOES NOT

CONSTITUTE AN

ADMISSION OF

LIABILITY FOR ANY

INJURY.

The death cards were all aces and eights and all spades. The backs were Alaska blue with gold bordering and a gold-limned faceless reaper on the back, a sword in one hand and a scythe in the other.

I started working my way through the back offices checking for hiding civs and marines. Easy and Jake passed me coming down the hall, having swept the rooms automatically as they came. Easy looked bad, like someone had just killed his puppy.

As they broke out their paint, I finished sweeping the offices, checking under desks and in cabinetry. I found a civ in the last office.

Thirtyish, dirty blonde and terrified; an ID card on a red lanyard stood out against her cream blouse. Her legs covered by a knee-length navy blue skirt as she crouched underneath her desk.

“Ma'am, can you hear me?” I said loudly.

Nod.

“Ma'am, I need you to respond verbally.”

“Y-Yes, I can hear you” she said with the slightly overloud tone of a person whose hearing hasn't yet returned to normal.

“Good, I need you to come out from there, slowly with your hands up please.”

She complied and I got a good look at her. She was tall for a woman, blue eyed behind the large-framed spectacles that had become fashionable a couple of years back.

“I'm going to look at your ID, please do not move.”

She nodded and held her hands up higher, but she flinched when I reached for her ID. It was pale blue and in addition to her mugshot it was printed;

SANDERSON, JUDITH

CIVILIAN EMPLOYEE

876541328

I let the card swing back to her as I backed away. “Judy? I need you to walk to the front room with your hands up, OK? No one will hurt you if you move slowly and make no trouble. OK?”

She nodded nervously, then caught herself and said “Yes. OK.”

I spoke into the throat mike “One Charley coming out. Unarmed, low threat, sit her down and pay her.”

“WILCO” came Tobe's response.

As I walked out of the room, I took a carbon fiber cylinder out of my warbag and placed it on the desk. Grasping the handle on the top, I twisted and pulled the top off, placing it back in the bag. From the open container I slid out a dingy white cylinder made of styrofoam, it was a little less than a half meter tall and 16 cm across and aside from the initiator and small blasting charge it was filled with 2 kilos of human excrement. The top was a clear plastic dome with a motion sensor and an RFID receiver under it.

I placed the shit bomb on the center of the desk and then put the container back in the bag. I closed the door on my way out and then flipped the switch on the activator. The next person to open that door would get a BIG surprise.

Returning to the front office I saw all the survivors lined up against the wall, each clutching, with varying degrees of trepidation and alertness, their golden hearts. The two largest walls were covered in sloppy spray paint letters;

NO MORE TOOLS

NO MORE WAR

and

WHO IS YOUR REAL ENEMY?

END THE INVASION!

I knew similar slogans were going up on the exterior of the building.

“Ladies and gentlemen” I shouted

“Boss we have Charlies inbound” Bob's voice sibilant in my earwig.

“We are sorry that you had to witness this today, please exit the building in an orderly fashion to reduce the risk of injury. Help each other and be safe. Do not return to or stay in the building, it is about to be unsafe for human habitation.”

Tobe's team and Easy's team were already on their way out the back, having delivered their shit bombs to the offices, break room and supply closet. Judy was up with her eyes streaming tears as she tried to help the less coherent civs up and chivying them out the front door. She seemed to be trying very hard not to look at any of the bodies.

I trotted out the back, passing the body of a young man in the khaki blouse and blue trousers of a Marine dress uniform, his head had been split open with what looked like an axe. I could see his brain through the rent in the back of his skull. The red smears on the back of his blouse showed where Easy had wiped off his 'hawk.

All eight of us loaded up into a white van with tinted windows, marked in maroon English and Arabic words identifying it as belonging to the Western Islamic Cultural Center and the crescent and star. As Tobe rolled off into traffic, Easy began to weep quietly.

Revolution 1.0

“I'm too old for this shit.” Bobby looked like he didn't quite need to shave yet.

“Dude, you're nineteen.” I responded

“Yeah, and this is a job for a 12 year old. Someone who has no concept of their own mortality.” He wasn't looking at me, but out the rear of the modified F350 we were riding in.

He had to look out the back because the sides were covered with angled steel plates covered with canvas tied to cleats mounted on the body panels of the truck. The canvas was marked in direct contravention of the laws of land warfare and several international treaties with a large white square and a big red cross.

“Well, you're not wrong. I said ruefully. I was only 28 myself.

We were riding in an illegally marked vehicle one of a dozen that made up a convoy of similarly marked vehicles because with the exception of federal forces and humanitarian efforts, the feds bombed the shit out of groups of more than three vehicles or groups of more than 10 people. Violation of the regulations effected when martial law was declared a few years ago.

Between the drones and real-time satellite data being fed to the local air wing and army aviation moving between cities in convoy was a suicidal act. And moving en mass inside a city drew the attention of the white mice and the pigs. So usually we traveled in dribs and drabs. One squad at a time either in foot or in a couple of cars, and let me tell you son, spending 10 hours in a Honda Civic with four other guys is not an enjoyable act. But vans got inspected at every checkpoint and border. Ditto large commercial trucks. In the early days of the war we tried moving entire companies in semis but once the feds got wise any vehicle not inspected and RFID tagged by a federal proctor wound up with a 200lb bomb through it's roof or got cored by a tank or chewed up by an IFV at the next checkpoint. I guess losing a major urban center and the majority of the flag and field grade officer corps for a division will make you paranoid.

On the other hand, every innocent trucker killed as a result of the paranoia drove thousands of people to the cause.

Our current mission was to covertly insert a company of rangers into Seattle and pursue asymmetric warfare operations against the local government and any federal agents in the area. Since moving 200+ men and their basic combat load was not an easy task and the likelihood of losing half the force by moving in small units, we were disguised as a humanitarian convoy returning for resupply. I know, it seemed stupid to me too. But it had worked so far.

I turned my gaze to parallel Bobby's and saw that we were being followed by a Lincoln town car.

“How's it going buddy, see anything interesting.” I thought as I stared at the dark blue sedan. All the sedan's driver would see was the false wall made of a porous material that allowed us to look out, but no one else to look in decorated to look like a stack of crates and medical equipment cases. Bobby fingered a grenade.

“Terrible idea.” I said, watching his face out of the corner of my eye.

His eyes flicked downwards and widened slightly in surprise, as though he didn't realize that he was touching the 1 lb cylinder of scored cast iron and RDX. His hand shook a little as he swiftly moved his hand away from the grenade.

“I'm too old for this shit.” he reiterated.

Privately I had to agree with him, we all were.

It seemed like it never fully stopped raining in Seattle. My squad was based in an industrial park out in Redmond using a pamphlet stuffing scam as our cover. You know those “Make up to $500 a week from the comfort of your living room!” ads you see on the classifieds page? That was us. The scam was that you got paid five cents per pamphlet that you folded and stuffed in an envelope then dropped in the mail. If you really applied yourself you actually could make $500 a week.

Now most of the pamphlets would get tossed in the recycling by their recipients. Who opens junk mail, right? And of the few who did open them, most would toss them in the recycling too. But maybe three percent would open the letters and actually pay attention to the message within. Those three percent would be curious enough to check the website or call us directly. And that was where the money came from.

The website was black and had it's own IC to keep the feds and lesser LEOs out. Any name or ISP associated with a cop, fed or LEO office was redirected to the website of that company that makes anthropomorphic sex toys. The rest were given the usual pitch and shown how to use an anonymous browser client to purchase...well just about anything. The only things we didn't sell was child pornography and wetwork. People who paid for a murder, almost never got their hit fulfilled. Occasionally the order would be by an abused spouse to make the abuser dissapear. Those generally happened, everyone else we just kept the money.

People who ordered child pornography were sent a virus disguised as an order confirmation email that erased the contents of their hard drive then physically cooked the hardware. Shortly before the virus activated a discrete package was sent to their mailing address that that contained some racy photos of jailbait treated with a light-sensitive neurotoxin one of the research guys back home cooked up. The perv opened the envelope, handled the pics and then died of an apparent stroke. After a few minutes of exposure to light the toxin broke down and evaporated.

The rest of it was drugs, restricted electronics, weapons, illegal literature and kink paraphenalia. The “House” handled all transactions, took 5% off the top and guaranteed delivery. The receipts were a lot higher than you'd expect. Enough that each squad was able to support their activities in the field. After the first month we'd established ourselves enough to build twenty-five submersible drones. fifty quadrotors and buy an old fishing trawler.

I'd set Felix up with a lab on the second floor and he had been busily making RDX, PETN and the associated stabilizers and plasticizers.

“How's it going Felix?” I asked from the false safety of the hallway.

“Pretty good boss!” Felix sang out, his Afrikaaner accent making it come out as “Priddy goot bus” to my American ear.

“Got 135 Kilos of Semtex, 10 kilos of straight RDX and 5 kilos each of lead styphenate and lead azide in the magazine boss.” he said cheerfully.

I swallowed. It's not that explosives terrify me, but rather that I disliked the idea of having 145 kilos of HE as a roommate. I dislike loud neighbors of all types.

“Ok, well wrap up what you're doing and then start on the thermate charges. I want to be ready to go by Monday. Let me have the lead and the RDX and I'll take them down to Jeff.”

“Sure thing boss.” He said and walked away from what looked like a stand mixer with a plastic whisk attached to it. It was mixing something a rich brown color. I eyed it warily.

“Here you go boss.” Felix said as he opened the air-tight vinyl door and handed me a Pelican case about the size of a large attaché case. I was treated to a blast of chocolate scented air.

“You're not making food in the lab again are you?” I asked. He'd done that once before and the entire squad had been out of commission for 2 days with hallucinations.

“Nah, I leaned my lesson. You know how the sniffer dogs are trained not to hit on food smells?”

Oh shit...I couldn't help but laugh ”OK, so we're now blowing shit up and killing people with chocolate scented Semtex. I love this job.”

He laughed. Now you need to understand that Felix's laugh is...unique. I've never heard a “maniacal laugh” outside of a movie, but Felix's qualified. Now that I think of it, Felix may just qualify as a mad scientist, or at least as a mad chemical engineer. I waved as I left and walked downstairs to the electrical shop.

Jeff was working on one of the limpet systems for the submersibles. It was a PVC ring 18 inches across with six electromagnets spaced around it mounted to the edge of a copper bowl. The whole thing would be filled with Semtex, the magnets wired to a capacitor bank and mounted to the underside of a submersible for transport. Once at the launch site the initiator caps would be installed and water proofed then the sub would be in the water and away from us.

“Anything wrong kid?” I asked. One of the electromagnets was dissected and splayed out over the workbench.

“Nah, just not getting enough of a field out of number 4. I think it's a problem with the composition of the base magnet. Don't have the equipment to fix it so I'm just going to replace it.”

“Quality control in the Chinese magnet factories has gone to shit has it?” He looked up, his grin blinding in his coal-black face.

His eyes flicked down to my hand. “That the initiator materials?”

I nodded. “You gonna be done soon? I can take it back up if you're going to be a while.”

He shook his head. “I'll have this done in a jiff. Leave it over there in the plastic cabinet and I'll have them built by 1900.”

“Good man.” I said as I turned and headed for the door.

“You did what?” I stared in exasperation at JT and Bobby.

“We dismantle de engine on de Hurricane.” JT's Cajun drawl made it sound as though it were an everyday occurrence.

Bobby just smiled through the grease, oil, rust and grime that coated his face and torso except where the goggle had fit over his eyes.

“We're supposed to start operations in 4 days you damned Coonass! And the boat's named the Skipjack.” I shouted, visions of failing to make our exfil after the attack or worse, not being on time for the attack fogging my vision.

“Me an' Bobby decide dat stupid name. Hurricane much better. Beside, we already repaint 'er. Ain't no worry about de engine sergeant, me 'an Bobby have 'er in tip top shape come time for trials and have the bugs worked out before the op.”

I looked at him sceptically “You'd better. You need anymore hands for this evolution?”

Bobby snickered and JT just laughed “Mais no boss-man. None of the loose fellahs know the difference b'tween an injector port an' exhaust manifold. Bobby may not know boats but he know engines.”

“My people race stock cars Sergeant and back during the first prohibition we ran 'shine out of the Kentucky hollers. I grew up with a torque wrench as a rattle.” Bobby's delight at surprising me was evident in his boyish grin.

“Ok. What about the Q section?” I asked.

“Done.” came the reply “and the deployment crane is rigged and ready.”.

“Good.” At 2 feet wide and 4 feet long the 200 lb submersible drones were too heavy and bulky to manhandle overboard by hand. Thus the necessity of a 10 foot tall boom crane with a 15 foot arm that would allow us to winch the drones out of the hold and over the side into the water.

“And the scuttling charges?”

“Also done, 'do I really hope we don' have to use 'em boss. 'De Hurricane be a fine boat to go shrimpin' in after 'de war be over.”

“I hope so to JT. Carry on.”

Saturday came around and sure enough, JT and Bobby had the engine rebuilt and reinstalled. I sent them out with Thorson and Fuches to put her though her paces since they both claimed to have some boat handling experience..

Our part of the plan was fairly simple. At 0200 hours we were to maneuver our sub-drones away from our trawler and into the harbor at Naval Station Everett, lock two 5 Kilo limpets on to the hull of each vessel and set the timers to detonate at 0600 hours. One man would monitor the the area via another drone submersible outfitted with radio intercept and relay gear and a cleverly disguised periscope. The whole thing looked like a piece of floating driftwood.

Once that was accomplished, we would use the quadrotors to deliver several charges of thermite gel with an initiator onto every aircraft we could manage at NAS Whidby Island. Whenever the quadrotors were noticed or as soon as we managed to dope every aircraft was when we were to detonate all our charges. Expectation was that we would sink every naval vessel in the port and burn a foot wide hole straight through 50-75% of the aircraft. If we were lucky, we'd detonate or ignite some of the jet fuel and burn the hangars to the ground, taking all the aircraft with them. Once out attack was completed, we were to dump all our gear including the crane in the sound and then go back to our base. In case we were ordered to heave to for boarding we had the Q section in reserve.

The Q section consisted of an antique 40mm lvakan m/48 cannon we'd rigged on a platform in the hold. In less than 60 seconds we could raise her and get her into action, laying 240 rounds per minute onto any target to either side or the aft of the boat. The arms dealer had happened to have both contact fused shells as well as VT shells on hand so we took both. In case we had to fire the thing we'd outfitted the hull with scuttling charges and thermite charges to destroy the Hurricane's hulk entirely. Hard for the feds to trace us if they have nothing to work with for forensic evidence.

Simultaneously, 24 other squads would launch their own attacks on local military installations, federal Law enforcement offices, the office of the Mayor and his staff, and the FEMA branch offices. RoE specifically were to leave the Coast Guard, Fire Department and EMTs alone. No sense in targeting people who actually do good work.

44 hours to the jump off point.