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Chapter 5
I'm not sure I like this chapter - probabbly why it took so long
--------------------------------------------------------------
Lash Rambo loved being on talk radio. He considered himself a cross between, Howard Stern, Mancow Muller and Rush Limbaugh. He was a big man at this FM College radio station. Lash had started as a Comp Sci major the coding and hardware classes he liked but the higher math and theoretical classes killed his interest, not to mention his grade point average. He landed in the Journalism department pursuing a degree in broadcasting.
He especially excelled with his show "Ten Lashes in the Public Square" on the university's radio station. The station had a screaming 100 watts of power. Lash was the best board operator in the department but his love was his show. "Ten Lashes in the Public Square" was sort of a right wing, shock jock affair. It offended almost everyone given enough time. Fortunately the station had but a 5 mile range, unfortunately it was streamed over the internet live and archive on podcast. Lash gained quite a following.
He had on air feud going with some fellow student broadcasters. One target was an enormous vegan woman politically somewhere between Stalin and Chairman Mao. The others were two muslim students. One simply wanted to play music from his native India and do BBC type news, the other was Al Gezera but less reserved. Not content to battle on air where he suggested his listeners send individual serving packets of SPAM to his fellows. He used board operator and computer skills to pull further pranks. His cohorts had actually written down their passwords at their work stations making his work that much easier.
---
April
There was a sea bag ready for ED. It had one set each of several levels of dress uniforms but instead of the 'wash khaki' Ed expected there were blue and grey bdu's complete with name tape, collar rank, army jump wings and army craft oic badge. "What the hell are these?"
A deep voice from behind, "Those are the new Navy Working Uniforms." Ed turned to see Gen West in Air Force Tiger Strips. "Even though we're an office unit we wear BDU's daily here. Get settled then come down to the compound. You'll get a new ID and secure laptop. Tomorrow you and Alex go to the range in the morning..."
"The range? Why?"
"We're a Special Operations Command, you're going to be issued an M11 pistol and you have to be qualified with it. In fact you and Alex will be issued federal Marshall's credentials by the end of the week. I assume you'll be doing some work back in IL after this 90 days is up, you'll be legal to carry still. It an ounce of prevention thing. We Generals get to do these things."
Gen West turned to leave and Ed asked, "Do I get a beret to go with this too?"
Gen West didn't break stride, twisting his arm behind his back and flipping Ed the finger.
Ed and Alex settled in over the next few days. The noticed a large number of the active duty folks were missing something. Am arm, a leg, an eye. More than a few wheel chairs were about.
Alex was one of the few civilians around but took it in stride. By the start of the second week he'd adopted a uniform of his own, heavy duty khaki Carhart pants held up with a tan riggers belt, plain navy blue polo shirt and Danner Rat boots.
They were amazed at the mountains of data they had access too. Hours were spent sifting and sorting. Even better was the interaction with the other members of the team. Some were hard core computer pro's, many with advanced degrees. Others , mostly ones with missing limbs, were complete computer outsiders but being outsiders they brought different perspective to the problems.
Alex gravitated to a young Mexican-American Air Force captain . Captain Maria Zaragoza was a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy where she earned a degree in Software Engineering Suma *** Laude. On her tiger stripped air force BDU she sported pilots wings and jump wings. She was short and a bit stocky with beautiful eyes and a blistering smile. Her mind was like a steal trap and she had an annoying habit of speaking faster and faster when she got excited about something.
---
May
Ann missed Ed it seemed unfair that he was pulled back into the Navy or was it the Air Force so soon after their wedding. She had just logged five Sig Saur P228 pistols into her bound book. She immediately logged two of them back out one for Kay and one for Kelly. Double checking the serial numbers, BATFE was a real stickler on numbers, Ann worked the action on a new pistol to ensure it was safe. She's handled P228's before but only casually. Wow she thought these are nice. She set the Sig pistol down and drew her Bertetta 92, dropping the magazine and working the slide thus clearing the chamber. She pondered the two side by side and decided to take the Sig to the range. Since the other part of the building she was in was a gun store with a range she locked her office and went into the commercial side. She picked up a box of Winchester White Box 9mm and waived to Nicki at the cash register. She added the ammo and a range visit to Ann's monthly tab. A nice perk, since this was added to her rent she could exclude it from business taxes.
An hour later Ann was back in her office logging the Sig out of her bound book and into her own name. She called Kay and Kelly, inviting them to Ed's, well now her place she thought, for pizza and girl time and to hand over pistols.
Dinner could have been considered odd for other women. Although the pizza was gourmet chicken, spinach, artichoke the conversation was of guns and shooting. Kelly and Kay announced plans to attend as week-long pistol course together at the famed 'Thunder Ranch'. Ann told of her plans to attend a week long M4 sniper class at Saurez international. Cindy was going to be sent with Chesty to a course taught by the United States Air Force in SWAT / K9 integration. She hoped to become part of the department SWAT team.
---
May
The semester was almost over and Lash had been upping his pranks and rants. He had written a bit of malware that messed with the bumper tracks and even the music of his victims. A very few tracks were replaced with some of Lash's tracks. The beauty of it was once the swapped track was played it would revert back to the original and another track would be replaced.
In one case the vegan woman's into music was replaced with Rush Limbaugh's "Animal Rights Update" into, "Born Free" overlaid with gun fire. She was unable to break into the track and was forced to let the whole clip run. She was furious.
The real trouble came when the muslim call to prayer was replaced with Donnie McClurkin's Victory Chant. When the fiery Al Gezera wanabe opened his program with 'Hail Jesus you're my King.' He frantically tried to kill the track but was unable. By the time, "We will conquer in your name, and proclaim that Jesus reigns." He was red faced and screaming. He was so incensed he used all of the seven words that can't be used on the radio. Due to the extreme low power of the college station not more than 50 people probably heard it. The college had no choice but to 'fire' the student, failing him from the class and disenrolling him. But the pod cast had been on the station web site for over 18 hours before it was taken down. Copies of it made it to many interesting places.
Lash actually felt bad and tried to apologize. It was not accepted and Lash moved on. One evening he was doing his show and was in commercial break when his cell rang.
"Dude you gotta get out of there."
"Huh?"
"Look out the window."
Lash looked out, a protest was forming but this was different. Then it hit him, he knew by face and often by name most the al Gezera hot heads on campus. He recognized a few of these folks but not many. The crowd looked older and maybe harder. Lash fumbled with the phone to call 911.
The 911 operator contacted the campus police. They college police sent a `car over to break it up. On arriving the officer promptly made a u-turn drove off calling for backup.
Things then went really badly. A rookie on one of his first solo patrols arrived on the scene rather than at the staging area. He left his car and was set upon by the crowd. He hit his panic button, calling in the clans.
Cindy and Chesty arrived on scene in the middle of a hot mess. Once the officer down call came Cindy diverted from the staging area and went straight to the scene. Seeing the officer on the ground being kicked by four men Cindy released Chesty and waded in with her own baton. Chesty placed himself almost on top of the down officer biting savagely in all directions. They were shortly followed by two other officers and the tide was starting to turn when amazingly more demonstrators rushed into the melee. Chesty was kicked and stunned, the man who hit him lifted a booted foot to finish the dog when Cindy jabbed the helmeted man in the throat with her baton crushing his wind pipe.
Finally overwhelming police presence and large bottles of pepper spray broke the riot. Cindy had rushed Chesty to Rusty's office. Rusty checked the dog when a sergeant and an shift supervisor arrived at the vet clinic. They took Cindy's badge and gun.
A month later Cindy was un-employed. The police union screamed bloody murder, dozens of officers from other agencies called and sent letters of support. But it was clear the word had come down from 'on high' either she went or Federal Money would dry up.
----
July
Kay found that she really enjoyed Service Rifle matches. The challenge of offhand shooting at 200 yards, rapid fire in sitting and prone positions at 300 yards and especially the 600 yard prone stage appealed to her greatly. She didn't mind be strapped into a heavy shooting coat under the blazing summer sun. She was solidly ranked as an Expert shooter in no time. Next summer she vowed to shoot the National Matches at Camp Perry Ohio.
As an engineer she found reloading to be very relaxing as opposed to a tedious chore. She enjoyed it to the point she purchased a top of the line Dillon 650 loading machine. She found a fellow online selling powder by the 100 lbs. barrel. She inquired and it was commercial 'data' powder. That is a load would have to be worked up for each batch. After a bit of back and forth she found out he had several varieties available including some suitable for 9 mm pistol and another suitable for 5.56 mm rifle.
Kay made the mistake of mentioning this to John over lunch one day. John went into full overdrive and almost melted down his smart phone googling it. He offered to help in 'working up' loads.
Kay and Tim took a long weekend to drive to Michigan to complete the purchase. The man even provided ,unofficially of course, load data for .223 in 55, 62 and 69 grain flavors as well as 9 mm in 124 and 147 grain flavors. He also treated them to lunch at a diner run by his sister. They returned from the trip about $1,500 poorer but with enough powder to load 30,000 rounds of 5.56 and over 100,000 rounds of 9 mm.
---- November
Since her 'resignation' Cindy had been doing a lot of thinking. She was glad to be working for Ann it gave her something to do. Indeed her notoriety had been a boon to Ann's police supply business. She was doing some consulting work for smaller departments, training, helping them write proposals for federal grants.
Ann bought a MKA-1919 from a dristributer and gave it to Cindy to check out. The MKA-1919 shotgun, Ann nicknamed it the AR12 because it looked for all the world like a 12 gauge AR15 style rifle. Cindy thought the identical controls of the Turkish made gun and the removable box magazine would be favored by police departments. Since the shotguns were made in Turkey so the fit and finish was a bit spotty. The manufacturer recommended 150 rounds to break in.
John got put on a two week 'rolling layoff' and was bumming around the shop. In the back room John took the gun completely apart, noting pieces that needed a little attention. Ever the engineer he even took measurements and digital photos.
"You know the machining on this is actually pretty good. Not exactly Benelli or even Mossberg but it's as good as, maybe even better than Saiga." John said.
The thing to do was to shoot it of course. A trip to Wal-Mart for bulk Winchester 12 ga trap loads, a box of 5 cheap Remington slugs and another box of 5 cheap Remington OO buck shot. They didn't go to the Bluffs to shoot, not wanting to upset the deer before deer season. Instead they went to the Ft Lincoln Gun Club. It was empty save for two old timers ringing a deer gong target at 200 yards with muzzle loaders.
The shotgun came with two five round magazines, one for 3" and one for standard 2 3/4" shells. Since they had only standard shells John of course loaded the 3" magazine first. Cindy rolled her eyes. John found out that indeed the standard shells didn't run well in that magazine.
"Give me that!" Cindy took it and fired 5 rounds from the regular magazine with better results. They took turns loading and firing. At first there were frequent stoppages but they got better. By the time 100 rounds had been used up there were no stoppages with the regular magazine and if John was careful to stagger the rims just so he could get a whole magazine out of the three inch without a stoppage as well.
The last two mags were buckshot and slugs. John dropped 5 'Pepper Popper' targets easy as you please. Cindy put a simple 25 yard pistol target at 50 yards and fired off the bench using a jacket as a rest. She was rewarded with 4 holes in a ragged cluster and the last one a bare 1/8th inch from touching the others.
On the way back John swung by a scrap yard. Cindy gave him an odd look but John shook hands with a bearded guy in faded Carhart coveralls. He pulled what looked like a ray gun and touched it to several parts of the MKA-1919. A paper tape came out and was handed to John. He started to pull his wallet but the bearded man waved him off.
"What was all that about?" Cindy asked.
"Alloy list for the follower, spring and magazine body." John replied.
"Ohhhh kay, why?"
"I am going to design and manufacture 10 or maybe 13 round magazines for these!"
"What? Really?"
"Sure, can't be too hard. I think these are going to take off. Kelly can sell them in the preps store and I bet you start selling them to police departments. I'll be rich."
"I hope to, but departments are going to want them ready to run right from the box."
"Yah, I expect so. I'm thinking I can compare the part now that it's broke in. You know what you could do?"
"What's that?"
"There's couple guys down at the VA Hospital, ex-navy gunner's mates and Air Force armorers. Between the 5 of them you could probably put together 3 whole guys. I bet based on my before and after measurements I could come up with a list of things they could do with some files and a Dremmel. I saw we run 50 rounds through them out of the box. Set the armorers on them then run another 50 through. They tear them down clean and run a final 50 through. Heck you even video the test and send it with the gun on a thumb drive! "
"Hmmmm, I think I like that thought!"
------ Day before Thanksgiving
In the compound the attack began. Operators in a dark room entered commands on keyboards following precise written instructions.
The victim didn't even notice he was under attack. It was either one or two am, depending on the time zone, at the site of the attack. In four larger but not mega sized airports the security video surveillance went down for just under three minutes. It wasn't even noticed in three of the four airports. The staff on this shift normally small was even smaller this morning as the next two shifts were being augmented to the chaos that was day before Thanksgiving travel. The surveillance returned seemingly of its own accord. One young agent, recently having left the Navy and alert at his post logged the incident.
The operators leaned back in their chairs and reached for cups of tea as the attack concluded. The man in blue blazer, khaki pants and a black turtleneck who had come to witness smiled and said, "Well done, complete your evaluations of the exercise and then please enjoy as few days off. We shall reconvene on Monday. Off you go now."
Hours later in an executive conference room the man in the blue blazer was watching a pair of high end lap top computers with his boss. One screen showed a parking lot at an American Airport, the other showed the entrance to the Departures area of the airport, Chicago Midway. Both the feeds were being pirated from Homeland security. The crush of people at the departure area on this most busy travel day was not unlike daily life here in Mumbai.
"Do you think we will see the shot first or the impact?"
"I should think the impact."
"And the shells, it's to be four is it not?"
"You are correct. The first three will be explosive the last will be a choking gas agent."
"Gas? Poisonous? And why?" concern and interest in the voice.
"Not poisonous per se more like the tear gas used to break up riots. The gas is to incite panic , as if the explosives won't. It will complicate response to it as they can not be sure ..."
On one monitor an explosion could be seen. It landed directly on a shuttle bus full of arriving passengers. Windows to the airport terminal shattered throwing glass shards into the crowd inside. A second shell burst, this one causing 20 feet of the elevated roadway that separated arrivals from departures to fall onto people and traffic below. The third shell fell quite a bit short bursting on the roof of a packed but mostly empty of people parking deck. It did manage to rupture fuel tanks and start a large fire. The final shell disbursed over a gallon of an Iraqi developed agent similar to CS. Except the Iraqi's gas was more dangerous, they had not taken steps to prevent the gas from causing permanent injury or death.
The result was an apocalyptic hell. Fire, choking gas. It happened within minutes at 4 separate airports, Charlotte NC, Chicago Midway, Denver Sky Harbor and San Francisco. Immediately all commercial air traffic was halted on the absolute busiest day of the year. First response was hampered by reports of chemical agents.
Dozens of flights in the air were rerouted away from the attacked airports. All on the busiest air travel day of the year.
------ Thanksgiving
They gathered at Cindy and Rusty's home for a Thanksgiving dinner. There were two small turkeys bought from neighbors down the road from the Bluff, one was deep fried the other was done in a smoker with apple wood and grape vines. The meal was excellent. The heritage turkeys were so much better than the store bought. There were homemade rolls and corn bread, cranberry and orange relish, garlic mashed potatoes with the skins left on. The pumpkin pies were from pumpkins grown on the Pitt's. It was the first year for this. John introduced his home brewed hard apple cider.
After dinner they decided to 'work off' the food before the next football game. Cindy and Rusty's basement was largely empty. Cindy and Chesty worked out down here in bad weather. There were also 'tracks' in the ceiling, using bulldog clips and a large supply of tarps the basement could be subdivided into several 'rooms'. Then using the supply of quite realistic 'soft air' replica firearms the friends spent a few hours entering and clearing rooms.
They caught a little news before the next game fresh hard ciders in hand. The news was the chaos in the aftermath of the air ports.
"You know how they could have made it worse?" , Kay said.
"How?" was a more or less universal reply.
"If they held off and attacked today."
John said, " But there is a lot less travel today."
"No I get it," said Cindy. "If they attacked today all those people who didn't make it to their destinations would be trapped at their destinations."
Tim whistled, "Yikes that would be a cluster. So are you ladies buying us stuff on Black Friday?"
A chorus of no and heck no, then the game started ...
I'm not sure I like this chapter - probabbly why it took so long
--------------------------------------------------------------
Lash Rambo loved being on talk radio. He considered himself a cross between, Howard Stern, Mancow Muller and Rush Limbaugh. He was a big man at this FM College radio station. Lash had started as a Comp Sci major the coding and hardware classes he liked but the higher math and theoretical classes killed his interest, not to mention his grade point average. He landed in the Journalism department pursuing a degree in broadcasting.
He especially excelled with his show "Ten Lashes in the Public Square" on the university's radio station. The station had a screaming 100 watts of power. Lash was the best board operator in the department but his love was his show. "Ten Lashes in the Public Square" was sort of a right wing, shock jock affair. It offended almost everyone given enough time. Fortunately the station had but a 5 mile range, unfortunately it was streamed over the internet live and archive on podcast. Lash gained quite a following.
He had on air feud going with some fellow student broadcasters. One target was an enormous vegan woman politically somewhere between Stalin and Chairman Mao. The others were two muslim students. One simply wanted to play music from his native India and do BBC type news, the other was Al Gezera but less reserved. Not content to battle on air where he suggested his listeners send individual serving packets of SPAM to his fellows. He used board operator and computer skills to pull further pranks. His cohorts had actually written down their passwords at their work stations making his work that much easier.
---
April
There was a sea bag ready for ED. It had one set each of several levels of dress uniforms but instead of the 'wash khaki' Ed expected there were blue and grey bdu's complete with name tape, collar rank, army jump wings and army craft oic badge. "What the hell are these?"
A deep voice from behind, "Those are the new Navy Working Uniforms." Ed turned to see Gen West in Air Force Tiger Strips. "Even though we're an office unit we wear BDU's daily here. Get settled then come down to the compound. You'll get a new ID and secure laptop. Tomorrow you and Alex go to the range in the morning..."
"The range? Why?"
"We're a Special Operations Command, you're going to be issued an M11 pistol and you have to be qualified with it. In fact you and Alex will be issued federal Marshall's credentials by the end of the week. I assume you'll be doing some work back in IL after this 90 days is up, you'll be legal to carry still. It an ounce of prevention thing. We Generals get to do these things."
Gen West turned to leave and Ed asked, "Do I get a beret to go with this too?"
Gen West didn't break stride, twisting his arm behind his back and flipping Ed the finger.
Ed and Alex settled in over the next few days. The noticed a large number of the active duty folks were missing something. Am arm, a leg, an eye. More than a few wheel chairs were about.
Alex was one of the few civilians around but took it in stride. By the start of the second week he'd adopted a uniform of his own, heavy duty khaki Carhart pants held up with a tan riggers belt, plain navy blue polo shirt and Danner Rat boots.
They were amazed at the mountains of data they had access too. Hours were spent sifting and sorting. Even better was the interaction with the other members of the team. Some were hard core computer pro's, many with advanced degrees. Others , mostly ones with missing limbs, were complete computer outsiders but being outsiders they brought different perspective to the problems.
Alex gravitated to a young Mexican-American Air Force captain . Captain Maria Zaragoza was a graduate of the United States Air Force Academy where she earned a degree in Software Engineering Suma *** Laude. On her tiger stripped air force BDU she sported pilots wings and jump wings. She was short and a bit stocky with beautiful eyes and a blistering smile. Her mind was like a steal trap and she had an annoying habit of speaking faster and faster when she got excited about something.
---
May
Ann missed Ed it seemed unfair that he was pulled back into the Navy or was it the Air Force so soon after their wedding. She had just logged five Sig Saur P228 pistols into her bound book. She immediately logged two of them back out one for Kay and one for Kelly. Double checking the serial numbers, BATFE was a real stickler on numbers, Ann worked the action on a new pistol to ensure it was safe. She's handled P228's before but only casually. Wow she thought these are nice. She set the Sig pistol down and drew her Bertetta 92, dropping the magazine and working the slide thus clearing the chamber. She pondered the two side by side and decided to take the Sig to the range. Since the other part of the building she was in was a gun store with a range she locked her office and went into the commercial side. She picked up a box of Winchester White Box 9mm and waived to Nicki at the cash register. She added the ammo and a range visit to Ann's monthly tab. A nice perk, since this was added to her rent she could exclude it from business taxes.
An hour later Ann was back in her office logging the Sig out of her bound book and into her own name. She called Kay and Kelly, inviting them to Ed's, well now her place she thought, for pizza and girl time and to hand over pistols.
Dinner could have been considered odd for other women. Although the pizza was gourmet chicken, spinach, artichoke the conversation was of guns and shooting. Kelly and Kay announced plans to attend as week-long pistol course together at the famed 'Thunder Ranch'. Ann told of her plans to attend a week long M4 sniper class at Saurez international. Cindy was going to be sent with Chesty to a course taught by the United States Air Force in SWAT / K9 integration. She hoped to become part of the department SWAT team.
---
May
The semester was almost over and Lash had been upping his pranks and rants. He had written a bit of malware that messed with the bumper tracks and even the music of his victims. A very few tracks were replaced with some of Lash's tracks. The beauty of it was once the swapped track was played it would revert back to the original and another track would be replaced.
In one case the vegan woman's into music was replaced with Rush Limbaugh's "Animal Rights Update" into, "Born Free" overlaid with gun fire. She was unable to break into the track and was forced to let the whole clip run. She was furious.
The real trouble came when the muslim call to prayer was replaced with Donnie McClurkin's Victory Chant. When the fiery Al Gezera wanabe opened his program with 'Hail Jesus you're my King.' He frantically tried to kill the track but was unable. By the time, "We will conquer in your name, and proclaim that Jesus reigns." He was red faced and screaming. He was so incensed he used all of the seven words that can't be used on the radio. Due to the extreme low power of the college station not more than 50 people probably heard it. The college had no choice but to 'fire' the student, failing him from the class and disenrolling him. But the pod cast had been on the station web site for over 18 hours before it was taken down. Copies of it made it to many interesting places.
Lash actually felt bad and tried to apologize. It was not accepted and Lash moved on. One evening he was doing his show and was in commercial break when his cell rang.
"Dude you gotta get out of there."
"Huh?"
"Look out the window."
Lash looked out, a protest was forming but this was different. Then it hit him, he knew by face and often by name most the al Gezera hot heads on campus. He recognized a few of these folks but not many. The crowd looked older and maybe harder. Lash fumbled with the phone to call 911.
The 911 operator contacted the campus police. They college police sent a `car over to break it up. On arriving the officer promptly made a u-turn drove off calling for backup.
Things then went really badly. A rookie on one of his first solo patrols arrived on the scene rather than at the staging area. He left his car and was set upon by the crowd. He hit his panic button, calling in the clans.
Cindy and Chesty arrived on scene in the middle of a hot mess. Once the officer down call came Cindy diverted from the staging area and went straight to the scene. Seeing the officer on the ground being kicked by four men Cindy released Chesty and waded in with her own baton. Chesty placed himself almost on top of the down officer biting savagely in all directions. They were shortly followed by two other officers and the tide was starting to turn when amazingly more demonstrators rushed into the melee. Chesty was kicked and stunned, the man who hit him lifted a booted foot to finish the dog when Cindy jabbed the helmeted man in the throat with her baton crushing his wind pipe.
Finally overwhelming police presence and large bottles of pepper spray broke the riot. Cindy had rushed Chesty to Rusty's office. Rusty checked the dog when a sergeant and an shift supervisor arrived at the vet clinic. They took Cindy's badge and gun.
A month later Cindy was un-employed. The police union screamed bloody murder, dozens of officers from other agencies called and sent letters of support. But it was clear the word had come down from 'on high' either she went or Federal Money would dry up.
----
July
Kay found that she really enjoyed Service Rifle matches. The challenge of offhand shooting at 200 yards, rapid fire in sitting and prone positions at 300 yards and especially the 600 yard prone stage appealed to her greatly. She didn't mind be strapped into a heavy shooting coat under the blazing summer sun. She was solidly ranked as an Expert shooter in no time. Next summer she vowed to shoot the National Matches at Camp Perry Ohio.
As an engineer she found reloading to be very relaxing as opposed to a tedious chore. She enjoyed it to the point she purchased a top of the line Dillon 650 loading machine. She found a fellow online selling powder by the 100 lbs. barrel. She inquired and it was commercial 'data' powder. That is a load would have to be worked up for each batch. After a bit of back and forth she found out he had several varieties available including some suitable for 9 mm pistol and another suitable for 5.56 mm rifle.
Kay made the mistake of mentioning this to John over lunch one day. John went into full overdrive and almost melted down his smart phone googling it. He offered to help in 'working up' loads.
Kay and Tim took a long weekend to drive to Michigan to complete the purchase. The man even provided ,unofficially of course, load data for .223 in 55, 62 and 69 grain flavors as well as 9 mm in 124 and 147 grain flavors. He also treated them to lunch at a diner run by his sister. They returned from the trip about $1,500 poorer but with enough powder to load 30,000 rounds of 5.56 and over 100,000 rounds of 9 mm.
---- November
Since her 'resignation' Cindy had been doing a lot of thinking. She was glad to be working for Ann it gave her something to do. Indeed her notoriety had been a boon to Ann's police supply business. She was doing some consulting work for smaller departments, training, helping them write proposals for federal grants.
Ann bought a MKA-1919 from a dristributer and gave it to Cindy to check out. The MKA-1919 shotgun, Ann nicknamed it the AR12 because it looked for all the world like a 12 gauge AR15 style rifle. Cindy thought the identical controls of the Turkish made gun and the removable box magazine would be favored by police departments. Since the shotguns were made in Turkey so the fit and finish was a bit spotty. The manufacturer recommended 150 rounds to break in.
John got put on a two week 'rolling layoff' and was bumming around the shop. In the back room John took the gun completely apart, noting pieces that needed a little attention. Ever the engineer he even took measurements and digital photos.
"You know the machining on this is actually pretty good. Not exactly Benelli or even Mossberg but it's as good as, maybe even better than Saiga." John said.
The thing to do was to shoot it of course. A trip to Wal-Mart for bulk Winchester 12 ga trap loads, a box of 5 cheap Remington slugs and another box of 5 cheap Remington OO buck shot. They didn't go to the Bluffs to shoot, not wanting to upset the deer before deer season. Instead they went to the Ft Lincoln Gun Club. It was empty save for two old timers ringing a deer gong target at 200 yards with muzzle loaders.
The shotgun came with two five round magazines, one for 3" and one for standard 2 3/4" shells. Since they had only standard shells John of course loaded the 3" magazine first. Cindy rolled her eyes. John found out that indeed the standard shells didn't run well in that magazine.
"Give me that!" Cindy took it and fired 5 rounds from the regular magazine with better results. They took turns loading and firing. At first there were frequent stoppages but they got better. By the time 100 rounds had been used up there were no stoppages with the regular magazine and if John was careful to stagger the rims just so he could get a whole magazine out of the three inch without a stoppage as well.
The last two mags were buckshot and slugs. John dropped 5 'Pepper Popper' targets easy as you please. Cindy put a simple 25 yard pistol target at 50 yards and fired off the bench using a jacket as a rest. She was rewarded with 4 holes in a ragged cluster and the last one a bare 1/8th inch from touching the others.
On the way back John swung by a scrap yard. Cindy gave him an odd look but John shook hands with a bearded guy in faded Carhart coveralls. He pulled what looked like a ray gun and touched it to several parts of the MKA-1919. A paper tape came out and was handed to John. He started to pull his wallet but the bearded man waved him off.
"What was all that about?" Cindy asked.
"Alloy list for the follower, spring and magazine body." John replied.
"Ohhhh kay, why?"
"I am going to design and manufacture 10 or maybe 13 round magazines for these!"
"What? Really?"
"Sure, can't be too hard. I think these are going to take off. Kelly can sell them in the preps store and I bet you start selling them to police departments. I'll be rich."
"I hope to, but departments are going to want them ready to run right from the box."
"Yah, I expect so. I'm thinking I can compare the part now that it's broke in. You know what you could do?"
"What's that?"
"There's couple guys down at the VA Hospital, ex-navy gunner's mates and Air Force armorers. Between the 5 of them you could probably put together 3 whole guys. I bet based on my before and after measurements I could come up with a list of things they could do with some files and a Dremmel. I saw we run 50 rounds through them out of the box. Set the armorers on them then run another 50 through. They tear them down clean and run a final 50 through. Heck you even video the test and send it with the gun on a thumb drive! "
"Hmmmm, I think I like that thought!"
------ Day before Thanksgiving
In the compound the attack began. Operators in a dark room entered commands on keyboards following precise written instructions.
The victim didn't even notice he was under attack. It was either one or two am, depending on the time zone, at the site of the attack. In four larger but not mega sized airports the security video surveillance went down for just under three minutes. It wasn't even noticed in three of the four airports. The staff on this shift normally small was even smaller this morning as the next two shifts were being augmented to the chaos that was day before Thanksgiving travel. The surveillance returned seemingly of its own accord. One young agent, recently having left the Navy and alert at his post logged the incident.
The operators leaned back in their chairs and reached for cups of tea as the attack concluded. The man in blue blazer, khaki pants and a black turtleneck who had come to witness smiled and said, "Well done, complete your evaluations of the exercise and then please enjoy as few days off. We shall reconvene on Monday. Off you go now."
Hours later in an executive conference room the man in the blue blazer was watching a pair of high end lap top computers with his boss. One screen showed a parking lot at an American Airport, the other showed the entrance to the Departures area of the airport, Chicago Midway. Both the feeds were being pirated from Homeland security. The crush of people at the departure area on this most busy travel day was not unlike daily life here in Mumbai.
"Do you think we will see the shot first or the impact?"
"I should think the impact."
"And the shells, it's to be four is it not?"
"You are correct. The first three will be explosive the last will be a choking gas agent."
"Gas? Poisonous? And why?" concern and interest in the voice.
"Not poisonous per se more like the tear gas used to break up riots. The gas is to incite panic , as if the explosives won't. It will complicate response to it as they can not be sure ..."
On one monitor an explosion could be seen. It landed directly on a shuttle bus full of arriving passengers. Windows to the airport terminal shattered throwing glass shards into the crowd inside. A second shell burst, this one causing 20 feet of the elevated roadway that separated arrivals from departures to fall onto people and traffic below. The third shell fell quite a bit short bursting on the roof of a packed but mostly empty of people parking deck. It did manage to rupture fuel tanks and start a large fire. The final shell disbursed over a gallon of an Iraqi developed agent similar to CS. Except the Iraqi's gas was more dangerous, they had not taken steps to prevent the gas from causing permanent injury or death.
The result was an apocalyptic hell. Fire, choking gas. It happened within minutes at 4 separate airports, Charlotte NC, Chicago Midway, Denver Sky Harbor and San Francisco. Immediately all commercial air traffic was halted on the absolute busiest day of the year. First response was hampered by reports of chemical agents.
Dozens of flights in the air were rerouted away from the attacked airports. All on the busiest air travel day of the year.
------ Thanksgiving
They gathered at Cindy and Rusty's home for a Thanksgiving dinner. There were two small turkeys bought from neighbors down the road from the Bluff, one was deep fried the other was done in a smoker with apple wood and grape vines. The meal was excellent. The heritage turkeys were so much better than the store bought. There were homemade rolls and corn bread, cranberry and orange relish, garlic mashed potatoes with the skins left on. The pumpkin pies were from pumpkins grown on the Pitt's. It was the first year for this. John introduced his home brewed hard apple cider.
After dinner they decided to 'work off' the food before the next football game. Cindy and Rusty's basement was largely empty. Cindy and Chesty worked out down here in bad weather. There were also 'tracks' in the ceiling, using bulldog clips and a large supply of tarps the basement could be subdivided into several 'rooms'. Then using the supply of quite realistic 'soft air' replica firearms the friends spent a few hours entering and clearing rooms.
They caught a little news before the next game fresh hard ciders in hand. The news was the chaos in the aftermath of the air ports.
"You know how they could have made it worse?" , Kay said.
"How?" was a more or less universal reply.
"If they held off and attacked today."
John said, " But there is a lot less travel today."
"No I get it," said Cindy. "If they attacked today all those people who didn't make it to their destinations would be trapped at their destinations."
Tim whistled, "Yikes that would be a cluster. So are you ladies buying us stuff on Black Friday?"
A chorus of no and heck no, then the game started ...
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