Wednesday, February 15, 2017

Tomorrow


 


"Seven".
The earpiece crackled in Jake's ear from one of the handheld radios they were each tuned to. They'd picked up a couple of dozen surplused Motorola LE-only encrypted radios on eBay, and after a lot of work, Gene had programmed them all to use a normally unused simplex channel reserved for the authorities for tonight. All anyone else would hear was a brief bit of static with the factory encryption, but they still stuck to brevity codes.
Jake calmed himself. He knew the signs of buck fever, and he took a few moments to stretch his whole body, starting with his toes, and ending with his fingers. It wouldn't be long now, and he didn't want to be fighting adrenaline when the moment came.
The van he was in was non-descript. It was the twin of one belonging to a local business the next city over, and the plates on it would be back in the morning, with any luck at all. Inside was dark and quiet, but he could already hear the noise of the protesters as they moved down the main street, closing at the speed of a 6000-footed caterpillar, fueled by youthful exuberance, and a healthy amount of stupidity. Well, they were about to get a lot more education than what they'd gotten at U Cal, and he was happy to be a teaching assistant tonight.
He focused on the intersection, and checked over his gear one last time inside the darkened vehicle, as the sounds of yet another leftist temper tantrum grew louder by the moment.

"Six."
Jim, hunkered down behind a load of cardboard boxes in a van much like Jake's, sat at right angles to the intersection.
His weapon too was identical to Jake's: the ubiquitous Ruger 10/22, modified for tonight.
It had a frame optimized for grown-ups, with one of those evil pistol grips that gave the state legislature hissy fits, going back to the late 1980s. Also a high-cap magazine, which torqued them out even worse. In this case, picked up out of state on a visit to relatives, and driven back across state lines into what Jim referred generally to as "Occupied Territory". He had several more loaded and waiting next to the stock. Also present was a heavy barrel, making the thing a tack-driver out to the limits of the relatively weak cartridge. And under the heading of "in for a penny, in for a pound", both rifles had custom home-made suppressors screwed on at the business end. They wouldn't be truly silent, but inside a can, inside a van, a couple of hundred yards away from a herd of screaming protesters, would be as near as. Just to be on the safe side, Jim screwed an earplug into the other ear, the one without the earbud.
Jim hadn't been in the military, and he wasn't the shooter Jake, who'd been a designated marksman when he served, was. But a lot of patient practice and range time had made him plenty good enough. And using the little pop-guns tonight wouldn't tax anyone's abilities at all. He checked the bipod legs to make sure they were securely locked. If they had failed, he had a beanbag rest for backup.
And when they returned, the barrels used tonight would come off, replaced by factory barrels again, and the heavys would go on a fishing trip, after being reamed out with a hardened bit. No evidence, no traces.

"Five".
Gene spoke in a monotone voice familiar to anyone with long hours in a ham shack. He was the geek in the bunch. He'd found and programmed their radios, made sure everyone understood how to use them, and how to communicate.
There wasn't a leader as such, but he was older than the others by a decade or so, and after raising three teenagers to adulthood, there wasn't much that fazed him or ruffled his feathers, so he made, if not a Daddy to the group, a good Friar Tuck: a bit more mature, thoughtful, and worldly-wise, when it was needed.
He focused on his screen, and his fingers moved the controls to guide the drone slowly and deliberately. It was unregistered (of course), blacked out, and over the din of the demonstration, almost as silent as Jim and Jake would be, on the moment.
He followed the mob's progress as they moved towards the intersection where all their flyers and internet blather had helpfully pinpointed they would end their rally.
The police scanners indicated that, exactly as before, the town cops would be studiously ignoring the protest except for a token presence, and the campus cops were half a mile behind, doing about the same thing.
No roadblocks, so he and the others, in separate vehicles, would take separate, easy, and rehearsed routes out of Moscow-Near-The-Bay, and back to the quiet semi-rural small community they lived in an hour or so back up California's lush Central Valley.
Not so lush now, with dumping the agricultural water formerly set aside to feeding the world now going to a Sacto Delta baitfish to appease the whims of the idiots Gene was watching, and their elected Foole, long known as Governor Moonbeam.
Gene focused his attention on the drone's power supply. He had four of them, and had alternated them in series, swapping  hot batteries for the depleted ones, so he wouldn't lose visual on the herd. Other than a minute or two between coverage, it had worked flawlessly, until one of his drones had a hiccup, and had to be retired from the relay. The others picked up the slack, but he was glad he was able to recover it without losing one of his numerous toys. The mob was now crossing the fourth street from the target intersection.

"Four."
Pete could barely hear his earpiece, turned up all the way, but he had the most dangerous job. He'd infiltrated one of the local bunches of miscreants some weeks prior, after the first riot. He wasn't one of their anarchists per se, just one of the multitudinous black-clad folks giving them cover.
He had several jobs.
First, on his way to the rally, he'd carefully dumped a couple of hundred pieces of wiped .22LR brass around the intersection; some in each direction, where later investigators would find it, for all the good it would do them. It had been collected off the ground and floor at half a dozen shooting ranges, separated by brand, and location. The consensus was it would look like between 4 and 8 close-in shooters, rather than just the two.
Second, he was the one with an interest in historical sabotage. Careful research on real manuals (not the tripe in The Anarchist's Cookbook, which he was sure had been written by BATFE to get amateur bomb makers to blow themselves up) and practice with real materials had taught him several time-honored ways of getting something to go up in flames or explosion, reliably timed, and without him being there to get the full effect in the face. Most, but not all of the materials would be consumed, making things that much harder for anyone looking into it afterwards, as he was sure they would. That's why after tonight, he wouldn't use that particular set-up again for some time, so as not to create a signature. And just for fun, the night before, he'd left enough parts and exemplars inside the garage of the witch organizing this event to see her off to a long odyssey through the federal courts and prison system, after one anonymous phone call. Life's a bitch, especially when you are one, he chuckled to himself as he salted the items among her possessions the night before.
Third, as the mob moved along, he would place his devices underneath several likely cars about a block behind the festivities, on both sides of the street. That mainly entailed tying his shoes a lot at the bumpers, and surreptitiously sliding his items under their gas tanks. Time and physics would do the rest, in about three minutes, once he set them in place.
Lastly, once he'd done that job, he was artillery.
He had a water balloon cannon ready to attach to poles on the sides of his pickup truck. Practice had taught him that he could hurl small-bottle Molotov cocktails a couple of city blocks with minimal effort, and hit minute of mob, in about thirty seconds. Three shots in 10 seconds, break it down, and then be gone in half a minute.
He was wearing the mob uniform black, head-to-toe: black combat boots, black baggy military-style cargo trousers, black long-sleeved t-shirt and black hoodie, with a black balaclava over his face, and black leather gloves with hard knuckles. On his back, a generic but sturdy nylon black backpack.
Underneath, hard soccer shin guards, knee pads, a cup, hard elbow pads, soft body armor, and lightweight HDPE Level III plates in a plate carrier. A homemade hard helmet shell under the balaclava. He would not be playing victim in the knockout game if he got confronted.
He also had OC spray, a stun gun, a cheap but sturdy full-tang knife, and a Glock 19 with several extra mags, as well as the CCW permit (from a more enlightened sheriff in the nearby county where he lived, but good statewide), to make him almost 100% legal. Well, except for the incendiaries in the backpack.
Like the others, he also had a generic camelback, a small IFAK, and a personal E&E kit, including colorful regular shirt and pants, maps and routes on a removable cell phone thumb drive that led to an alternate and contingency rendezvous, a burner cell phone with the battery removed, paper cash and change, energy bar, and a good plausible and backstopped cover story.
He was young enough to pass for a grad student, and a bit of an adrenaline junkie, hence his choice of assignment, but he was nobody's fool, and they all planned to get home quietly and safely, and had taken every precaution to make it so.

"Three."
Gene noted everything on the scanners normal, mob moving into position.

"Two."
Jake and Jim chambered the first rounds in their rifles, and stayed on their scopes.

"One."
Now it got hairiest for Pete, and as he entered the last block, he started dropping off his packages, pushing them well under gas tanks, and making sure to trip the chemical chain to start the ball.
The first two were easy, then he had to work his way quickly through the mob as it congealed, to get to the other side of the packed street, and his alley exit. The front end was in the target zone already.
"Target 1. Target 1."
"Target 2. Target 2."
"Confirm Target 1. Confirm target 2."
Jake and Jim both had eyes on the front of the herd in their crosshairs.
Pete pulled out his last timer, and shoved his package delicately along the asphalt under an SUV.
As he hit the alley and made his way along it, he gave the all clear.
"Thunder. Thunder."
"Confirm Thunder."
"Waiting for ignition."
As Pete jogged towards his truck, the chemical chain ignited his first package. A fire blossomed underneath a sedan on the far side of the intersection.
The drone confirmed it as the orange blossom grew.
"Ignition."
"Weapons close. Weapons close."
Two safeties were snapped off, and two pairs of eyes searched for targets.
A second package ignited, as flames from the first began to engulf the first car.
Pete got to his truck, jumped into the bed, and limbered the poles into place.
"Drone's off. Drone's off."
Gene guided his drone back towards his vehicle. When it was well away from the zone of interest, he dropped it to 100 feet, set it on homing, and turned on his burner phone.
He punched in a number, and a previously selected landline rang.
It was connected to a timer, and the timer to an Israeli-made cell phone jammer sitting in a phony generic utility box as camouflage, on the roof of a building on the near side of the intersection.
For the next 10 minutes, no one would be connecting any calls within 100 yards of the site. All streaming video from the riot stopped. Texts bounced to nowhere. No 911 calls would be going out.

The crowd pushed into the intersection, some of them cheering the fires they thought their own thugs had started.
"Shot out. Shot out."
Pete called the first of three launches of lit Molotovs now arcing towards their target, labeled "to whom it may concern."
The first bottle bloomed into fire amidst the mob. There were screams; they weren't expecting this.
"Splash. Splash."
"Splash. Splash."
Both shooters confirmed the impacts.

Gene was recovering his drone; he closed the sliding side door as he made the call.
"Weapons free. Weapons free."
Inside the two vans, the shooters began plinking through their 25-round magazines. The rounds might kill, maim, or just leave a painful but survivable wound, but in less than half a minute, they were all on their way. Inside the vans, the rounds tick-tick-ticked off, and the brass went into catch-pouches.

The mob was careening around the intersection now. Panic set in with a vengeance as people started to go down. The herd started to stampede back the way they'd come when the first vehicle's gas tank went up with a "Whoompph!", and sent them in new directions. The third package ignited across the street, just as the last of three molotovs landed in the confusion and screaming terror, amplifying it.

"Rounds complete. Rounds complete."
Both shooters changed magazines, and began to send the second batch of 25 shots into the fleeing mob. They both aimed low; a lot of knees and legs were hit.
"Three, Tally Ho."
Gene was already on the road and outbound.
"Four, Tally ho."
Pete had dropped his poles, and was on his way out too.

"Winchester 1."
"Winchester 2."
Jake and Jim had gone through their second magazine apiece. They each dropped the hinged windows back into place and secured them there. The rifles were dropped into hide boxes, then covered with a couple of heavy crates.
"Two, Tally Ho."
Everyone waited breathlessly for Jake to announce he was rolling as well.
"One, Tally Ho."
Three other hearts started to slow down to normal.

NOW the idiots would know what a "WAR" was. None of the men driving away thought they'd like it very much in reality. And the authorities were still trying to figure out WTF had already happened. They wouldn't learn anything useful, though the anonymous call the next day that snitched out the organizer of the violence for cooking her own people "for the greater good" would come as a great PR boost, rather than their usual "we're investigating all leads" B.S.

The cards on their steering wheels led them to separate freeway entrances. After that, the routes were in their heads. Cruise control kept them driving at the speed limit. Radios were switched off. Each drove silently into the night. Behind, the screaming continued, and the nightmare for the protesters, and TPTB, was just beginning.

One hour later, the radios came back on.
They each checked in by number, and verified from different directions their primary rendezvous site was clear and uncompromised.
There, the rifle barrels would come off, the brass would be policed, and they'd switch to the cold license plates. 
The rifles were put back to original configuration. Jake took the weapons. Jim took the silencers, and the custom stocks.
Gene got the hot barrels. Pete got the brass.
Everyone changed clothes. Gene took these to an all-night laundromat.
The other three, in sweat clothes, hit the 24-hour gym next door, and took long showers, scrubbing every trace of residue from their bodies. Then they changed into their normal attire.
Pete took the hot plates back to the lot where the delivery vans they'd borrowed them from were parked, and put them back on without incident.

They drove home individually, at intervals, and by separate routes. Gene drilled out the barrels; next deep sea trip, they'd fall off the boat at night on the ride out. Jim cleaned and stashed the other parts, and Jake cleaned the weapons thoroughly. Pete took the brass home, where he pounded it into lumps of scrap with a sledgehammer, then shot off a bridge into the tule marshes with a slingshot.

And they all slept like babies.




This is entirely a piece of fiction. And a cautionary tale. Hopefully it stays that way, but I wouldn't put chips on that square. If it gets your panties all twisted, too fucking bad. Get over it.
It took about twenty minutes to type out, and I haven't even been thinking about this much.
If I can come up with this off the cuff, so can five hundred thousand other people. Some already have.
Bet your ass on that.
And if you're one of the erstwhile protesters, many of them wouldn't be as merciful towards you and yours as I was in this little tale. You ARE betting your ass on that, every time you show up for another piece of street theatre. And when it actually happens, 100:1 they'll see that YOU get the blame for it. Win-win.

So, contrary to all experience thus far, you all could grow the fuck up, knock your silly shit off, and just suck it.
Or keep pushing your luck.
Call the toss in the air, kids.
-A.

41 comments:

  1. When this all comes to a head it's gonna get ugly.
    Thanks for my morning read :)

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  2. I think you missed your calling.
    For something you slammed out in twenty minutes, that was a hell of a good read.
    You make a good point though. Four or five guys can do a lot of damage when they put their minds to it.

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    1. Four or five WHITE guys raised by gun owning fathers.

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  3. These snowflakes think they've got the monopoly on random violence. When they are confronted by those of us who are trained in targeted, pinpoint violence they'll learn an interesting lesson. If they survive it.

    Fuck with our republic at your peril.

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  4. Need a different comms plan, ALL things are collected, voice recognition does the rest, otherwise, yep.

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  5. Balkanization is our future. The civil war will not look like Gettysburg. It will look like Sarajevo.

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  6. One man, one 10-round magazine of .22LR. All it would take to stop the protests, in a given city anyway. But why stop them? They are alienating middle America more every day, doing our work for us. "Never interrupt an enemy in the process of making a mistake."

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  7. Out f*ing standing...
    Yes, hundreds if not thousands are thinking this exact scenario.
    I would love to see 'Fake News' grafitied on the side of every MSM news building... with a fire set to send a message. Hanging a few up by their petard's wouldn't hurt either.
    Have quit watching the news... all of it, even Fox's Shep Smith has finally crossed from journalist to antitrumper... f* him, I used to like him, I see now, he's dancing to somebody elses tune.
    They think if they repeat something a thousand times, it becomes 'truth'.
    We must teach them otherwise. MAGA or Die MF's.

    Old Vet.

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  8. Aesop,

    What an excellent piece you wrote. In fact, I see you in an entire, different light after reading your short story. As you know, I've M-F'ed you once or twice over the years. I apologize for doing so.

    Great job on "Tomorrow".

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  9. Very good and likely prescient, young man. Much the same as Dan, you and I have exchanged barbs in the past; here's hoping we're passed that as we move toward - probably - this. Although, we do agree that tfAt is an ignorant asshat and blowhard, lol.
    Bravo Zulu, brother. - Grandpa

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  10. I read this and was not only entertained by it, but also found it somehow real. Like I would read it on the morning news. As far as the comms go, I disagree that they are not realistic, although more than necessarily hidden. If you want to be truly ignored, stand out in plain sight. Don't bother to encrypt, just use FMRS and use plain every day language, and place your numbers within your normal language. If you don't have anything to hide, don't hide it. And I am actually afraid that doing something like this will hurt the cause of freedom. The leftists are slowly bring the battle to us. Let them, if they must. A civil war is not something we need. Defend your own corner and your own people. If you go looking to kill someone else, you are going to find that the country that we hold so dear, and it's freedoms that we love are no more. But always keep an eye to the horizon.

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  11. Hi Aesop,
    Different scenario, but reminds me of Ch. 1 of the Late Mike Vanderboeghs', "Resolved" were "Phil Gordon" takes out those who try to take him out...and also there's Charlie Kintard.... the Chapters are floating somewhere.... unfortunately Mike died before he could print it!!
    Got Gunz.......OUTLAW!!!,
    skybill-out

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  12. Your story is worthy of a movie. Directed by Tarantino or the Coen Brothers of course.

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  13. I like it when a well and thoroughly thought out plan comes together. The attention to detail, the discipline, the rehearsal, it's all good. I like that you have shown it in a way to exemplify the professional character needed in carrying out a serious mission. We need that. And a lot less of the half-assed stuff.

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  14. Bring it. The Left & their Antifa snowflake rioters so deserve this, & more, much much more.

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  15. Good job! The thoughts of many crystallized...

    must have super reliable 10/22 mags though.

    The future is - slings.


    Tomorrow, tomorrow I love you tomorrow, you're only a day away

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  16. What amazes me is that the precious little snowflakes have no idea how easy it would be to set this up, and make it work just as planned. Or how easy it would be to find 7 or 8 (or 15 or 20) guys who could pull it off as easy as changing socks.

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  17. What can I say RS, I write what I know. ;)

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  18. While such actions are amusing to contemplate, the simple truth is that the actions of the Left are more detrimental to their cause than anything that the opposition might do. In fact, such an attack would only confirm their victimhood and encourage them to redouble their efforts. Rather than attacking these fools, a better strategy would be to continually trigger them to exhaustion. For instance, one could repeatedly announce (false) Milo Yiannopoulos speaking engagements at Berkeley. Mr. Yiannopoulos doesn't even have to be involved. The Lefties would soon lose any claim of legitimacy as they burn their college down and assault the curious bystanders repeatedly. School bureaucrats would soon have to stop these outbreaks or lose their cushy bureaucratic sinecures.

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  19. Of course, Jay Dee.

    Scroll back a few days and read exactly that when I first wrote about the event:
    http://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2017/02/get-fing-grip.html

    My point is, if the lunatards continue assault and battery, arson, and felonious conspiracies to deprive other people of their constitutional rights to free speech and peaceable assembly, try this in less leftist areas, and/or TPTB continue to deliberately look the other way, Nature abhors a vacuum, thus an equal and opposite response is almost a metaphysical certainty.

    And when it starts costing them teeth, and body parts, they won't much care for an actual "WAR" when it's handed to them at several thousand feet per second, delivered on a platter by people who've seen the real thing.

    And once we open that toothpaste tube, there's no squeezing it back in, and no telling where it goes.

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  20. Nice. Although not at this level of action, I have a theory that older men can be valuable in this war. We know the history and we know clearly why the fight must be taken up and the worst of the rot surgically cut out

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  21. sounds like a plan!

    LOL

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  22. In reality you get four guys like this together to plan something along these lines and eventually one of the guys finds out that of the other three one is an undercover BATFEces mole, another an undercover FBI agent and the third an investigative reporter looking to be the next Horrendo Revolver. And that guy ends up doing life plus 50.

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  23. Only when the Bundys are running the circus.

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  24. I've envisioned this sort of scenario, but not for protests. Rather setting it up in advance as a response to rioting, as in Baltimore and Berkeley. A couple of vehicles with one or two shooters (van, pickup with camper shell, etc.) could put paid to quite a few rioters, flash mob attacks, and such. You probably already know this, Aesop, but the Israelis use to use suppressed 10/22s on Arab/muslim rioters. I can't recall if it was their local police, IDF, or Mossad, but they were busted eventually and - supposedly, at least - stopped doing it.

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  25. Interesting work of fiction. Some criticism of that fictional account. For a more believable book you are writing, of course.

    Highly complex plans usually do not go well. Murphy will remind you.

    3+ people cannot silence a secret. Cannot

    The moment the LE types realize it was a hit, all the stops get pulled out to catch the very scary hit team. National-class investigators will be on this one. The mob organizers will pay pros to find the hitters.

    All that salvaged brass dropped as a red herring? All kinds of traceable evidence on it. Traced back where? Places the hit team visited. Loose thread - pull!

    Firebugs have signatures. The hit team wrote one all over the place in setup and delivery. Loose thread - pull!

    Anyone in the protest who remembers an 'odd duck' will speak of it. The firebug was seen. His -face- was seen by others in the mob. If not, he is doubly memorable. Loose thread - pull!

    All that ammo expended in the vans? GSR all over them, ditto the brass that leaked out of any collection gadgets. Shooters scrubbed down, but what about the vans? Loose thread to be found.

    No one saw a pickup truck hurling firebombs? Near a mob? Loose thread - pull!

    Nice video of the shooters at the gyms where they bathed. Surveillance cams on the lot of the borrowed plates? Lot probably closer to home AO than away from it? Loose threads to be found.

    The jammer was abandoned? Are you sure it is sterile? Loose thread - pull!

    The call to rat our the Head Lefty will be a big red cape waved in front of the LEs, who will appreciate the fresh clue. Loose thread - pull!

    Are the team members all solo, or do they have family and friends who usually know their habits, schedules, and most importantly attitudes? Loose thread to be found.

    Nothing went wrong? With that level of complexity?


    Too complex. Too many loose threads. Too many people involved. Too high a signature. The whole band gets rolled up inside one year, max.

    This is why a cautious lone actor, or at most a bonded pair, get away with so much mayhem.

    Re-think that scenario for your book, this time with one actor, simple actions, and absolutely minimal threads to pull.

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  26. Thousands of ordinary people kept the U-2 and SR-71 projects secret for years.
    Hundreds to thousands of submariners have kept decades of operations a secret.
    And on and on.
    Secrecy is not impossible. It's not really all that hard. It merely requires commitment.
    The bromides about "Three can keep a secret, if two are dead" address the fact that most people are uncommitted and untutored idiots and blabbermouths.
    With minimal instruction, they are not.


    The very scary hit team handed the police the culprit, next day. Case closed.
    She either falsely rats out innocent accomplices, or valiantly clams up, and takes the full rap. Boo frickin' hoo.

    Traceable evidence: .22LR brass. Best wishes there. Upwards of 2,000,000,000 rounds produced per year. Millions of firearms using it, for a century. Markings completely unrelated to actual weapons. Total wild goose chase. (And BTW, forensics is far less scientific than you've been led to believe, as defense attorneys and juries are finding out daily.)

    The firebug "signature" was a one-off, as noted. Dead end.

    Odd duck: Youngish guy, all in black, incl. balaclava, in a crowd full of same. That's the signature of a ninja. Nada.

    Vans: three counties away, untraceable. Cleaning it: marginally useful, but if they get that far, the jig is well and truly up anyway. And a van in a rural area, with a piece of brass and gunpowder residue? Geez, that's only about 10,000 people hereabouts, any given weekend. "You caught me Sherlock; I wuz out plinkin' at the quarry with my kids last month.". Game over.

    Pick-up truck: block away, not amidst the riot (which was the entire point). Over in seconds. Changed plates, user in black. Dead end. Untraceable.

    Video of non-descript members stopping for a workout/shower, at one of hundreds of such gyms, in another county. Really reaching at straws there. Look at a map of NorCal. They'd have 50,000 suspects to question, to all points of the compass. Assuming they could make the nineteen illogical leaps across evidentiary barriers to get to that point, first.

    Borrowed plates: closer to incident than home. If the digging goes/gets that far and wide. Only proves license plates were switched, by not from what, to what, or by whom. Dead end. Worse, they'll be looking at the actual vans with those plates, and burning time investigating those leads. Genius.
    Maybe I should have had them drop some false evidence there too, but I figured the guys in the story wouldn't bring any more heat on innocent third parties than absolutely necessary.

    Jammer: sacrificial. Dead end. Didn't need to go into details.

    99% of criminals really are dumb. Cops aren't PhDs either, because they generally don't have to be. In the absence of other leads, DAs want to clear cases. Head Lefty is a convenient fall girl, with a good circumstantial case, which ties up two loose ends for the price of one for TPTB. They like that. And it's tough to convict someone else for a crime if you've already got someone in prison for it, without ironclad exculpatory proof. Which in this case is all gone in hours, forever. How...sad.

    Team members' attitudes mirror that of only 50-100M Americans, at this point. Best of luck with that search. (Bear in mind that if psychopath Timothy McVeigh hadn't been inconveniently pulled over for speeding or whatever, the OKC bombing would still be unsolved.)

    Nothing went wrong?: Drone failed. One of the guys was slow getting out.
    Level of complexity? Set off four incendiaries amidst a riot. Launch three more. On cue, fire 100 rounds of .22LR. All drive away.
    That's the level of complexity many thousands of Bubbas accomplish at a single day of plinking at tannerite targets in Greater Bubbaville, every Saturday and Sunday. With no notable difficulty whatsoever.
    If this seems hard to you, you need to get out more.

    The whole band sits back and laughs about the incident all the way to senility, a la Secondhand Lions.

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  27. A solo actor could do less, for longer, but every time you do, you square the chances of accident, incident, or inadvertently tying a lit rag and tin can to your tail that leads everyone back to you.

    Appreciate the thoughts, but it was nothing but a fictional hypothetical, with enough detail to make it plausible. Not a manual.
    In fact, the entire point is to not create a template, because investigators love signatures. Think "The Wet Bandits." Don't be those guys.
    Unless you generate a hundred exact copycats, because the internet is a thing. Investigators hate that.

    And the underlying message is that the only thing protecting violent riots right now, is ongoing asinine official complicity in them, and the good will of people who are otherwise law-abiding.

    Once someone dissolves the latter thing, the former evaporates of necessity, and the entire problem goes away, and becomes a police thing, like it should have been from the outset.

    Even if not, either way, the lemon is no longer worth the newly-costly squeeze to the anarcho-communist agitators who think they have a license to pull the entire civilization down in order to remake it into their own favorite dystopian paradise.
    And some of them will die to drive the lesson points home.

    No down side in any of that. Dulce et decorum est...

    Either society enforces all the laws equally, or we all get to try out the natural results of anarchy. I like my side's odds in that experiment, but I'd rather not test the hypothesis.

    Judging by the head-cracking crackdown on the protests since then, the police have figured that out in most places too.

    Once again, boo frickin' hoo.

    Best wishes, and thanks for reading.

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  28. I suspect that further discussion is futile. Suggested follow up is with successful investigators of such things.

    You might be surprised. I was.

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  29. Successful investigators of what such things?
    Fifty years out, there's still no consensus on how many people shot JFK.
    The experts laid end to end point in all directions.
    AFAIK, such a thing as described has never happened, so we're already into unicorn territory from the outset. Mass shootings are frequently people either deranged, or trying for martyrdom, so there's little doubt about whodunit.
    Whereas the number of unsolved drive-by shootings nationwide is into five to six figures since the 1980s, at a SWAG.

    Unless we assume a priori they'd throw the entire FBI at this, indefinitely, to the exclusion of everything else, and scour every detail of 30,000,000 Californians' lives on the notional day in question, and pull them all in for questioning, you have no suspects, no descriptions, no fingerprints, no DNA, no vehicle information, no license plates, no weapons, and no real idea how many people you're looking for, from where, or why.

    It would be easier to fire 500,000 parts from separate cannons at one spot simultaneously and expect them to spontaneously assemble into a 747 aircraft as to expect with nothing but slugs and incendiary residue, anyone could winkle out so much as a single suspect, unless someone was stupid enough to keep on doing it over and over until caught.

    Even Jack the Ripper was smart enough to call it quits after six outings, and he was never caught, nor even identified.
    Closer to home, there was never the slightest idea of a culprit in the infamous Black Dahlia case, and there likely never will be.
    You can't solve a puzzle that's missing most of the pieces.

    Only blind chance could take a hand at that point.

    But just for fun, I'll run this by as many folks as I can find from the other side of things, and see what they have to say. I run into a fair number over time, and it would be interesting to see if they have something unexpected to offer.

    I'm always up for a challenge, and you're right: I might be surprised.

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  30. I'm inspired. Going to cite this as the seed of a spec-fic piece.

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  31. Not my normal handle, duh!February 19, 2018 at 2:40 PM

    Regarding the Police, FBI and other letter agencies, they actively acknowledge (when amongst themselves) that they only catch the stupid ones. Really. Sat in many meetings watching and listening to them discuss how to catch the smart ones, and the answer comes back, "We won't.")

    I have seen/heard of cops standing over bombs, piles of explosives and igniters and other things that go boom, and get on the frickin RADIO to announce what they just found. That is the level of education and training our 'boys in blue' have.

    As to the Ragnarok moment, I have always thought it was going to be some old white guy who has lost everything, friends, family, wife, and who just doesn't give a frack at all anymore. Someone with a serious lack of caring, and has the means to go all out, even unto death.

    Referencing horrible repeatable crimes, take a look at the DC Sniper(s). How long would they have been able to continue if they hadn't started making mistakes. Or worse, would they have ever been caught if they had quit earlier and gone back to being 'normals'? So the thought of a non-repeatable attack like the one in the story is very plausible. Really. Police departments everywhere have tons of unsolved cases that will never be solved, no matter how investigative work will occur. Most crooks who pull of successful heists or attacks are done in by their inability to STFU, especially now in the Facebook generation (really, Facebook is a big tool of the authorities. If you are on probation, don't post a photo of you flashing drugs, guns and cash while smoking a big fatty. Or, do, please, as your lack of intelligence shows you need to be behind bars for a long time.)

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  32. Get rid of all evidence on the brass by using a bit of polish and some sandpaper on the bolt faces of the 10-22's and replacing the extractors (which, after meeting a file, go along with the barrels). the magazines died in a terrible fire, leaving nothing but the brass, which you took care of anyway.

    All the other clothing fell prey to that same fire, BTW, if you want to make those loose ends go away as well. No one even has any of that type of clothing, unless a single piece that they have a need for.

    Truly, though, with that many folks it is likely that one is either a plant or an informant.....

    But a good story, nonetheless. and not impossible, should the time come for that type of action.

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  33. It's fiction, not a trade manual.

    But if you think one person in four, far from the madding crowds, is a plant or an informant, you're well past the time you should have started doing this, if you're right, and in need of some serious reality orientation, if you're wrong.

    Leviathan isn't everywhere, and if you use even half a brain, you can weed out the problem children with a little forethought.

    Everybody can make a mistake, but the people who get caught, overwhelmingly, make a few dozen to a few hundred. Starting with being average 80-IQs, for the brains of the operations.

    But glad you liked the read. That's - mostly - why it was written.

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  34. None Given, None offered.March 4, 2018 at 1:07 AM

    I've read this a few times to try and poke holes in your plan, I know what the intention of the story was (and very well written it is too, you should do more of this type, AmericanMercenary was excellent at this with his Freedom Camp stories) and I've got a few notes.

    The biggest hole you've got is that someone would very easily intercept the drone's video downlink, someone equipped like me to deal with most signals up to 10GHz and regularly searching the airwaves would locate it and demodulate it.

    You can of course do a long range set up but then you're either abandoning traceable and expensive equipment when you depart the place or you're involving another person to get up on a roof top with the relay equipment.

    Depending on the type of drone it is also highly possible to intercept the metrics that the telemetry is sending back and even re-transmit it. That said; whilst stuff like that would get my attention I'm unlikely to do anything about it other than note what I'd seen and the presence of a drone doesn't actually mean shit other than someone is watching somewhere.

    It should also be noted that so called "anti-drone rifles" are exceptionally easy and cheap to build (the price tag on them is obscene when you actually realize how they're built but that's the free market for you) and you should rely on OPFOR having these available to them. One way to mitigate that would be only ever programming the drone to autopilot somewhere and only taking control of it during the final approach back to wherever your hide is. Also do not ever rely on manufacturers like DJI and Parrot for your drones, have your covert outfitter/Q build it and operate it themselves.

    There's a ton of other shit to pick apart but it's pointless to the point of being pedantic about things. Good story anyway, write more, you're a solid writer.

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  35. I'll admit up front to not knowing much, if anything, about the tactics and equipment discussed here, but in regard to that last comment, I would ask, wouldn't all that stuff about the drone only matter if the protesters were *expecting* someone to ambush and barbecue them? If no one's expecting that to happen, they've got no reason to scan for hostile drones and take them down. Maybe if this sort of thing were to happen a few times, the Leftards would wise up, but this is clearly a first-time scenario, so it doesn't seem to me to apply here.

    Anyway, I too really enjoyed reading. It's both informative and dramatic.

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  36. Some people are John Malkovich in R.E.D., they just don't know it.
    Someone switched the flip, and they're still having acid flashbacks.

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  37. None Given, None offered.March 9, 2018 at 10:17 AM

    As Aesop said, some of us are just weird like that, my hobby just so happens to be finding strange signals to investigate, not even from a conspiracy point of view. Rely on OPFOR having someone like me near by and I'm not unique by any means.

    The presence of a drone doesn't actually mean shit, there were drones at Charlottesville and there have been other drones at other protests, if anything they may be mistaken for OPFOR's own drones but as I said don't rely on that to happen. Conversely, as I also noted commercial drones are very fucking easy to bring down which I personally feel as though it's by design.

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  38. This sounded familiar. Then I remembered Matt Bracken's essay: "When The Music Stops..." https://www.americanpartisan.org/2020/05/when-the-music-stops-how-americas-cities-may-explode-in-violence/

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