You couldn’t call it a vacation home since Baker is anything but a resort town. More like a desert stop. There was enough traffic through to make it look like the IAG was part of the passing through crowd, only stopping to get one of the Big Boy hamburgers. The world’s tallest thermometer or so city officials said, was isolate between the town and the freeway and stood fourteen stories but was not in use any more. It was erected to celebrate the hottest temperature recorded of 134 degree, but 120 degrees was nothing on a normal day, just an average day for Baker. Today the time and temperature sign at the Chevron station showed 105 degrees, a nice cool day.
Jamison and the ten other members of the IAG were bunched around the table with maps and schematics draped like a table cloth, as he handed out assignments.
“Gentlemen and I use that term loosely,” they all laughed because they knew they were as close to gentlemen as the gutter rats that inhabited the underworld of the bridges and gutters of New York. All of these people, or parasites as they liked to call them, whom they despised for living off the state would disappear under the new America. “Here are the attack points for the first leg of our journey to restoring the U S of A to the people. We will separate into two groups, five members in each group, one team hitting the grid one and the other grid two. By doing it this way if one group is disabled the other can succeed and one will be ok, but two different locations at the same time will be atomic, it will also improve our chances for success and not being caught and if we get, and before anyone realize what’s happening the poles will have been decapitated. You know what’s really, really great about this; they’ll think it’s a cyber-attack at first when they find the laptops with an explosion code along with Wi-Fi information. There won’t be much left of the computers but they will recover enough information to misdirect them. By the time the CIA track down the phony leads, it will be over with and we’ll have disabled the whole power grid for the U S. Then after that they’ll realize that this was ruse and blame it on the Arabs, which is just fine with me.” They all cheered. Exhausted by their own confidence, they were indestructible.
“Henley, you and your men hit the target one at mile post twenty two. That is approximately fifty miles inland in California. Remember to use only enough C-4 to do the job and no more. We don’t have abundance. Also take a laptop with you strapping it to another leg. Make certain that most of the mounting leg attachment places the computer close enough to the blast, but not so close as to fry the whole thing.” The C-4 was laid out on the table in two separate stacks each one labeled for location and weighing about fifty pounds.
Between the two groups we should cause enough power interruption to enrage people into thinking and reacting, goodbye government for not standing up to terrorism and protecting the people. When this is done we move east. Then just keep going till we get their attention.”
“I’ll take the second section and go back toward Boulder City and hit the tower number two along I-95. If we have time later we will hit the transmission line in Arizona.” The IAG members were ready to move out, five members in each group and miles of dust terrain to traverse. The Ford F-250 four wheel drive vehicles with metal exterior storage were perfect. They were four wheel drive equipped with the 5.4L Triton motor with the 3V SOHC heads left no doubt about power and speed. They accommodated the team’s storage needs for the explosives as well as five Serbu Super-Shorty12 gauge shot guns, for close in combat. With the heavy load shells, they could halt three or four of any potential traitors who would try to stop them if they found out about IAG plans. They knew there was little chance of that since they were in the middle of no man’s land and they were the only ones who knew the plan.
The guns, trucks and C-4 had been purchased on the black market or from different parts the county, mainly Middle America. They had also acquired ten HK-USP handguns, which they found on the internet. They used stolen credit cards to purchase these and each member was given one. The HK’s were light semi-automatic pistols that were very reliable.
The fire power they had gathered was not overwhelming but sufficient to accommodate their needs. It would have been pleasant to have a longer range rifle, AK-47 would have done, but they didn’t have storage room and didn’t want to gather attention.
Before they headed out they all put on camouflage outfits, and looked the part of desert raider. “Mount up. Everyone get to your objectives. We have four hours of day light and we want to be ready to shake up this great country by dawn. I will be happy to deal a blow to these traitorous politicians.” They all gritted their teeth and moved to the trucks. Everything was loaded and ready to go.
All that was visible now was the deathly silence of deceit and fear.
It didn’t take them long to reach their targets. Apparently they went undetected or most probably no one cared about truck prowling the desert at night, it was nothing unusual and hunters loved to hunt at night so lights in the desert meant nothing. Besides that, this was free country and people traveled where they wanted to on and off road it made no difference.
The distance was shorter for Team I. The giant power pole hung from the sky and it appeared the clouds had to circle around them to pass.
“I’m sure as hell happy that we don’t have to climb that baby. I rather do what has to be done on the ground.” Stan was the demolition expert with this group.
“Are you claustrophobic shorty?”
“Na, you dummy, it’s not claustrophobic but acrophobic and I’m not afraid of heights, they just terrorize me.” They had a good laugh at this.
The truck was vacated in a hurry about two blocks from the tower, each man took his weapons while Stan got the C—4, about thirty pounds he thought would be enough. C-4 is a very stable explosive and wouldn’t explode by just handling it, but would ignite with an electrical charge sent by radio wave from the attached burner phone which was truncated to each leg where they packed the C-4 tightly. He placed a cell phone by the computer and ran connecting wires to the other legs which he packed the same way, with the igniter fuse. The explosion on both towers would happen simultaneously when the phone rang, which were setup with the same phone number. The computer was attached about two feet below the C-4 and some of it would survive. Thank goodness they had a veteran of the Iraqi war who had spent time in communications. Each crew had a burner phone and it didn’t take him long to get them to response to same receiving number.
Jamison said before they left, he had the cell phone to set off the explosions, “One call and that’s all,” he had heard that on a television ad for an attorney somewhere in Nevada. He had to smile; here he was using an ad from the lowest life form on the planet to explain his action. These so called Legal Beagles have had their day, the new US would not need them and his plan would be the beginning of the end for the tyranny of political self-interest groups. It was radical, just natures course, victory to the strong. He looked at the tattoo on his arm and knew the rest of his secret group had the same one. He could only smile; he never thought he would wear it.
Stan attached fifteen pounds to each leg of the tower and wired them in sequence with a low voltage detonating cap in each. They aligned so when the phone rang a low impulse charge would reach the C-4 and set them off simultaneous.
Henley stood watching the road on a little knoll with his half of the two way radios. The 20/80 power binoculars gave him enough reach of the flat landscape that if a tortoise moved he could spot it. They did not want to chance being seen.
Merely twenty minutes had passed and Stan signaled he was finished. Everyone piled in the truck and headed back only slowing enough to gather up Henley. There was no speed limit in the middle of the desert so doing sixty on the dirt road was legal and the roaster tail of dust that followed them would not be visible in the dark as they made for the road.