Thursday, October 26, 2017

Yunfakh Min Allah - Wind Of God



Ahmad checked his watch as he listened to the American baseball game on his earpiece. It was about an hour past sunset, with growing darkness as he watched from his vantage point, and listened to the announcer describing Game 6 of the World Series. Ahmad didn't understand the details of the game, just enough to plan the mission, but he knew he had at least another hour before it would end, more than enough for his purposes. From where he was situated, he could see down into Chavez Ravine, a couple of the nearby freeways, and the panorama of lights glistening in the growing nighttime scene of downtown Los Angeles.

In various places throughout the city, his teams waited. They were all his men, though few of them knew that, and he was the only one that knew all of them. His subordinates were all cutouts, few knowing anyone but him and their 2-4 teammates.

Ahmad had arrived some time prior to the operation, but was the necessary link to get it off the ground - so to speak. He chuckled at the memory. He had been delivered to America by the Americans themselves. He was actually Pakistani, and his real name wasn't even Ahmad, but that had been the Afghani name he'd adopted as an officer in the Afghan Army, shortly before he'd been selected to lead this operation in the heart of the Great Satan. The stupid Americans, he'd thought, had flown him to the United States for training. Once his contact was in place, he'd gone out one weekend on leave, and never come back. Even in this he blended with a hundred others, most economic opportunists, but more than a few, like himself, hand-picked to infiltrate and run operations like this one. The Americans hadn't been eager to broadcast that fact, which made his further movements all the easier to undertake.

His phone buzzed; the message let him know the game was back on live TV.
On his other phone he texted the codeword inshallah, which set in motion all that followed. Within a minute or two, motorcycle pairs entered all the surrounding freeways in both directions, dumping several pounds of metal caltrops on the freeways. In short order, tires were deflated or blown out, accidents ensued, and the legendary Los Angeles rush hour traffic snarl began an inexorable descent into a biblical amount of gridlock.

Simultaneously, four small drones lifted off east of downtown. They approached from different directions, but all were to converge on Piper Technical Center, a drab block arising several stories above and apart from the downtown skyline, upon the roof of which sat a dozen LAPD helicopters, at their otherwise-safe HQ high above the surrounding streets. When the drones arrived over their targets, they began their bombing drops. Two had homemade napalm: half aviation gasoline, half liquid dish soap, blended with aluminum flakes, contained in a pint glass bottle, and with a simple wick on the outside.

Ahmad recalled their maker pleased with himself for devising a way to re-purpose a simple automobile cigarette lighter to ignite the wicks, which were threaded under rubber bands holding the bottles, placed over foil-protected legs on the drones. The operator flipped a switch, and the igniters clicked on. When the wicks ignited, the bands would burn through and the bottles would drop; when they impacted, they'd create little fireballs that would stick to whatever they splashed, creating an instant inferno. Targeting was fairly simple on a windless night, requiring only hitting within a few feet of straight down for the helicopters, from a near motionless drone.

The other two had pint-sized soda cans, containing a mixture of iron oxide (essentially simple rust powder) and elemental aluminum powder. When the igniter set off a magnesium ribbon fuse, just like the napalm the payload would freefall. Once the magnesium ignited the thermite, oxygen bound in the rust would provide the air for the combustion that would take place. Its normal use was to weld railroad rails, and in the military to destroy things like howitzers, tanks, and radios. Once ignited, it burned hot enough to do either, at a temperature of around 4,000 degrees F., and the liquid molten metal produced would burn through anything as fragile as a fuselage in seconds.

Which they did, working exactly as they had when tested in the desert some weeks earlier, and helped along by fuel tanks with aviation gasoline on the parked aircraft.
The two napalm drops splashed all over the two target helos, setting them aflame immediately, as did one of the thermite drops. The other missed, but the ensuing plume of molten metal consuming itself on the concrete threw a shower of flaming embers that would prove hard to corral, even as the other targets combusted spectacularly.

They had bought all the drones and all the payload materials for less than $10,000, over the internet, using cash cards, over a span of some months, and sent to places in several states all vacated months before they operation began. And nothing they bought, and nothing they did, was illegal per se until the payloads ignited and began dropping.

As soon as the first four drones had dropped, a second wave was launched in seconds, and approximately a minute later two more helicopters were gloriously aflame. By the time the third wave struck a minute after that, nine helicopters and some ancillary equipment were fully-involved flaming junk heaps, and though there were several units airborne throughout the city, the LAPD's Astro Division would be hard-pressed to do much for the next few months, as several millions of dollars worth of high-priced ashes consumed themselves in plain view of the stranded commuters on the 101 freeway through downtown.

As he watched the second wave begin its attack on the police department's airbase, Ahmad texted the main attack to commence. Another dozen drones lifted off from all points of the compass, headed for the sellout crowd in Dodger Stadium watching the game. Each man had a section of the stadium assigned, including both outfield pavilions. All of them carried the napalm bottles. The drone bodies had been painted black so as to be far less visible to those on the ground, and with the blaze of nighttime lights illuminating the game, no one would see anything until their flaming payloads began to fall. They fell randomly, hither and yon all around the seats, bursting immediately into flaming gasoline balls, the stuff of nightmares, and sending more than 65,000 people fleeing in all directions in a stampeding panic to escape. One, by design, was dropped in front of each of the team dugouts, sending players scrambling onto the field or down the tunnels to escape the conflagrations. All of it was captured on live TV and broadcast around the world in seconds.

Originally, the plan had been to use a football game as the target, but dwindling audiences for those, and the draw of a World Series broadcast had led Ahmad and the planners to select the baseball game instead.

As soon as the first wave of drones dropped its payload, they were program recalled to a central spot, and landed in an industrial park, next to a garbage truck driven by one of two teams also organized for the purpose. Their only job was to collect the surviving drones, load them into the truck, and depart. All useable data and serial numbers had been meticulously removed long before the missions, and given their cost, the drones themselves weren't critical. But Ahmad had learned, just as some of his former colleagues, not to underestimate the thoroughness of American investigations and intelligence gathering after the fact. The less they were left to work with, the better.

His pilots each rode in on motorcycles and scooters, the better to thread their way through traffic and exfiltrate afterwards. Each had pulled up to one of several vans, or vice versa, some hours beforehand, been handed his drones and controllers, and the empty vans departed. Once they had launched their second waves and dropped, they plunked controllers into backpacks or saddlebags, and drove off, helmeted, invisible, and nondescript.

The second wave of drops went as well as the first, with several set to land amongst the main exits, surveyed beforehand, and now awash in a sea of people. Now, with no small number of flaming people, furiously trying to roll, or batter the flames out, and in a few cases, running faster, which only intensified the flames for the few seconds before they succumbed amidst hundreds of their fellows in screaming agony, and a horrible gasoline and flesh-stenched barbeque from hell. This last was mainly for effect, but the bulk of the second wave was still directed inside the stadium at alternate points not already hit, because that's where the TV cameras would be focused. And were, as millions of people across the country watched in speechless horror the spectacle before them.

Ahmad waited until a minute or so after the second wave had completed, then texted the signal for all his teams to depart, which they did. The cell monitoring the television broadcast and internet news sent him the best news of all: the response was off the charts, both on TV, and internationally. He whispered a brief thanks to Allah, then kicked his motorcycle into life, and rode off sedately into the night.

He had given the infidel Americans a Halloween to remember with dread for decades.

On Wednesday at 3AM they did the same thing over the refineries near the harbor, mainly with thermite bombs. 30 giant fuel and oil tanks, widely dispersed, had set 24 more adjoining ones on fire, in an inferno that would take two weeks to extinguish, and send the price of gasoline locally to the moon.

On Friday night, they hit crowds at Disneyland with napalm during the nighttime fireworks.

The exodus out of state began with a vengeance.

Early Sunday morning, they hit 25 separate power distribution complexes, and blacked out most of the state of California, and parts of Arizona and Nevada for a week and a half.

On Monday morning, martial law was declared in all three states.

"There." thought Ahmad.
"See how you like fighting a war in your country for a change."

22 comments:

Badger said...

Good thing Ahmed has more than 1 play since the Astros are going to finish it up on the 29th. (just a jab for whimsy's sake)
:)

Aesop said...

Uh huh.
Good luck besting Kershaw.
;)

Anonymous said...

In a joint press conference the morning after the terror attack, the Governor and Mayor cautioned everyone not to jump to premature conclusions. "There is no reason to implicate religion in these heinous acts which we condemn unequivocally," Brown said.

Garcetti added that he had doubled police patrols protecting mosques across the city from irate Angelenos blaming innocents for the crimes of a few misguided individuals. He said he was dropping his opposition to designating L.A. a sanctuary city as a pro-active measure to combat "Islamophobia". He also blamed President Trump for enraging Muslims to the point where some could feel they had to turn to violence in "self-defense".

Irish said...

I'm sure someone will say that you shouldn't give them ideas but these scenarios are probably already off the drawing board and in play. They are have a lot of patience.

Aesop said...

Anyone who thinks anything I can concoct hasn't already been kicked around some cave full of goathumpers months or years ago, needs to get out more.

@Anonymous 2:38P
"Get out of my head! And stop going though my desk!"

Anonymous said...

A,

Did you mean railroad ties or rails?

Aesop said...

Rails. Nice catch.

Anonymous said...

As a thought experiment, it strikes me that the Kaaba often resembles a World Series in full throat and is just as flammable.

Anonymous said...

And, also early on Monday morning, the much-delayed end to the 1400-year war happened as President Trump gave one order - and two cities in Saudi Arabia were visited by the light of a thousand suns.

Aesop said...

That event would be known as the Dawning Of Enlightenment And Wisdom.

Look how smart its use made the last batch of militant religious fanatics it was used upon.
They haven't notably misbehaved in 72 years and counting, and are now some of the politest people on the planet.

MMinWA said...

Well, that was sobering. Well written. Very Matt Brackenish. Entirely possible too but as mentioned above, don't you think that the Ahmed would know the ramifications would be terrible? Would that matter?

Aesop said...

All warfare is one-sided until somebody finally gets a clue, and decides to join in.

So, since 9/11/2001, have there been more terrorist attacks on US soil, or less?

We not only don't have their attention yet, they aren't even listening yet.

Retired Spook said...

"We not only don't have their attention yet, they aren't even listening yet."

In the immortal words of the late Curtis LeMay, "If you kill enough of them, they'll stop fighting." We just have to find the stones to make it worth their effort to cull their nuts.

Anonymous said...

Oh, I am sure bombing Kaaba would delight Ahmads handlers from "Random Army of Mujahideen" and their handlers from Peshawar which in turn were handled from Tehran, Beijing, Moscow, Doha, Washington DC, Proxima Centauri or all those places at once. To think of that, who handles the handlers? The problem with dropping A-Bomb is that one or two will not be enough. Islam is not a country. They also do not have God-Emperor or Pope or any kind of Council of Acknowldeged Wise Men to parle with. You terrorize the Grand Ayatollah of Iran into submission and tens of thousands of sunni circlejerking groups around the world will just chuckle with delight and go on with car bombings. They were about 72 million Japanese in 1945, but there are 1,8 billion muslims now. And Arabs or Persians, with whom we apparently have ongoing problems from only fraction of the whole number. Outlawing a religion? Well, ask the Romans how that worked out for them. They had all the institutional and technological advantage over ragtag group of loony Jews and slaves. The jihad is an idea, and it is only as strong as our western ideas are weak. Who is going to sacrifice his life for Frankfurter Schule, Bitcoin or Pepe the Sad Frog? Because apparently those are among our gods now.

Aesop said...

Islam needn't be outlawed.

Merely culled and cudgeled back into its permanent playpen.
When the lemon isn't worth squeezing, they'll stop.

We've tried accommodation, and mitigation. Both have failed.
At this point, I'm willing to give "bombing them all back to the stone age" a really good try. Of historical note is that no one mourns the passing of Carthage.

Nations which have shown no ability to work and play well with others, just like pre-schoolers, need a good time out until they mature.
If that lesson is taught via the half-lives of certain isotopes, so be it.

And after Mecca and Medina are suitably enlightened, in a manner observable from space, you inform the fuck-nut dictators left standing that the next time anyone from the civilized world so much as stubs their toes, we expect to see a semi-trailer load of the heads of the Usual Suspects delivered to the closest embassy within 24 hours, or else suffer the same fate, and it will suddenly be in their interests to stop the bullshit once and for all.

First, you have to get the mule's attention.

Japan, being both brighter and smaller, required only two such lessons before the meaning dawned on them.

If anyone thinks Islam might need ten or so to reach the same sensible point of view, I would not presume to dispute that logic.

G Russell said...

Too real. The next big target hit will be a airport.

Anonymous said...

Well, the significant reason You did not experience Japanese blowing themselves up with suicide belts inside brothels set up for GI clientele was that said chink pagans had chosen to believe You instead of their own courtiers and generals. The idea of racial superiority and Emperor descended from Sun Goddess was successfully countered by American democracy backed by power to destroy, but also will to help its erstwhile enemies. Do Americans still believe in American Dream, or are they only in for the dough? Do we, Europeans, still endorse western civilization, or is it only out of habit and coziness? Communist and Fascism kinda lost, but they left us with bunch of retarded philosophers, backed by some serious money and publicity, and hellbent on devising most idiotic and suicidal notions, that apparently served only to make more money and obtain more power over the stupefied masses. If there exists such a void, better not be filled with Allah - at least for the sake of figurative arts and women suffrage, the much good the latter brought us anyway. Man, I root for America to pull itself out of corporate quagmire it is in now. In my corner of Central Europe You were considered the paragon of freedom and chance pf decent life for common man. It would be tough to live without an example.

Matt Bracken said...

Outstanding contribution, if I wasn't on a 30-day Facebook ban (for being rude to moslem rape excusers) I'd post it over there. Instead I posted it on Twitter, FWIW.

Too bad the boys and girls down in the fusion centers are now SJWs with degrees in Gender Diversity Studies. They will file this story under "Alt Right Hate Speech," totally missing the point, with all the comprehension of cud-chewing cows staring at a passing train. (They are still trying to figure out what happened in Las Vegas, and how best to hide the staggering incompetence of both local LE and the FLEAs in that case.)

Where I depart from the plot is the teamwork required. Mohammed Atta's are, thank God, few and far between in that inbred gene pool. Even Famous But Incompetent might tumble to the scheme with so many moving parts involved. They still have some older honest G-men out in the field offices who never made it to DC HQ, where they specialize in Faking Bogus Investigations.

I think the greater danger is that of a single actor. As has been said, "three men can keep a secret if two of them are dead." One terrorist, and not necessarily an Islamist, could pull off an attack, with multiple drones attacking a stadium at one time. The drones don't need to be radio-controlled, but can be sent to designated GPS locations. In a stadium, the real killer will be the panic stampede, especially among those trying to escape packed upper decks. They take an hour to fill before a game, and if there is a panic, thousands may be pushed right over the edge to fall 100 feet to the lower stands. All that is required is a trigger for a panic, and even a spray can releasing a smelly mist could do the trick. The most fearful in the crowd would start yelling "Is that poison gas?" and the hysteria would then bloom, leading to a panic stampede.

Too bad the SJW boys and girls down in the fusion centers are going to totally miss the point of this story.

Anybody who wants to see what one drone with one thermite grenade can do should do a youtube search for Ukraine arms depot explosion.

https://www.youtube.com/results?search_query=ukraine+ammo+depot+explosion


After the fact, folks will be amazed that drones were ever made legal for sale. Fun as they are, they are potentially far more dangerous than freely available Thompson submachineguns were in the 1930s. At least that will be the conclusion after some of the events described in this story take place.

GamegetterII said...

At some point we'll hear BATFEIEIO and/ or FCC demanding more control over drone sales. The first will insist on background checks prior to purchase of any drone or certain parts to make one, the second will demand drones be registered with FCC and carry some type of transponder and flight data recorder.
Neither of which will prevent anyone from "rolling their own".
Parts for other easily available items can be substituted.
Anyone with a few funcioning brain cells can make homemade firearms.
Some of the kids who grew up with technology can get around anything BATFEIEIO or FCC can enact. There's plenty of kids from the religion of pieces who grew up here with tech.
Only a matter of time until such scenarios become reality.
Sucks for anyone living in large metro areas- which is most of the FUSA population.
The caltrops would shut down SoCal traffic, which sucked in 1988 which is the last time I drove in that clusterfuck. Del Mar fairgrounds to Orange county fairgrounds in Costa Mesa,up the 405 driving a 4 speed standard trans. box truck towing a 30' concession trailer of which the entire front and both ends were made of glass.
Fuck that- it was a freakin nightmare back then- has to be at least 10 times worse by now.
Just dropping caltrops in enough places could shut down all traffic in SoCal for a few days.

Aesop said...

@Matt:
Thanks for the kind words.

I know there's a couple decent G-men out there; my former platoon cmdr (the only other guy in the regiment with a GT score that equaled mine) is in charge of an entire state for a three-letter FLEA. The fact that he isn't a DC guy gives me some small hope.

As for the complexity of the op, I tried to stay within a notional size no larger than 9/11 was.
Two dozen guys doing one job apiece isn't that hard, even for the Religion of Not-So-Smart-Bombs. And a little compartmentalization goes a long way.

I learned my tradecraft in junior high, reading Heinlein's The Moon Is A Harsh Mistress, and everything I suggested (just like Tom Clancy's best work*) comes straight out of open sources. It's just that I play what-if for a living.

Which is why it literally should scare hell out of anybody with any sense.

@gamegetter:
The FCC has functionally zero input on drones.
Both de facto and statutorily, they belong to the FAA. The upside of that is your local idiots have no say in what happens with them.
The downside of that is your local idiots have no say in what happens with them.
532 people (out of 535) you didn't elect or even have the opportunity to vote for, and thousands of faceless FAA bureaucrats that no one elected, do.



*(All time fave was how he came up with the nitrocellulose-casing bomb plot point for Clear And Present Danger: his inspiration was the Hush-A-Bomb from Rocky and Bullwinkle. Boris Badenov and Jay Ward writers for the win.)

Anonymous said...

add some facts: http://www.thefirearmblog.com/blog/2017/11/01/suicide-ied-drones-now-mexico/

Aesop said...

Your "facts" were covered here six days ago.
https://raconteurreport.blogspot.com/2017/10/welcome-to-my-nightmare.html

But thanks anyways.