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.