by Jeff Kirkham
Somewhere in the back of his mind, the same place where he kept information on how to operate his microwave oven, Afshin knew he would go to paradise by sacrificing his life, if it came to that. He accepted the information without any particular interest.
Some might look at Afshin’s story and draw the conclusion he had been imprisoned by a cruel government, a regime that would shackle a mentally challenged, but genius young man to an ignorant religion. In their rush to repudiate Islam, they would miss the point.
Truth was, Afshin already lived in paradise, and his government was doing him a favor by confining him to a workshop with a prototype nuclear device. Every morning he awoke with a burning desire to move the project one step closer to completion, and every night he lay down deeply satisfied by the work he had completed. On any given day, he might have tested a candidate polystyrene as a suspension material, or machined a new trial shield panel. Each small step toward completion scratched an itch deep in his soul, and he went to sleep happy as a man could be—in his case, as happy as an autistic man could be.
Five years previously, as Afshin studied at Amirkabir University of Technology in Tehran, one of his professors had asked him to visit during office hours. When Afshin arrived at the meeting in his professor’s office—more a cubbyhole than an office—another man was wedged into a seat in the corner between piles of papers. The strange man wore a crumpled suit coat and a yellowing dress shirt. He was balding and peered over a pair of thick-framed glasses.
The stranger introduced himself, and Afshin failed to note his name, more interested in the big Western-made calculator poking out of the man’s shirt pocket. Calculator Man peppered Afshin with engineering and physics questions, beginning simple and moving toward more complex. Afshin answered plainly, without wondering for a single second about the purpose of the meeting.
More than a month later, the same man interrupted a Thermal Engineering lecture. The teacher’s aide pulled Afshin from class and Calculator Man showed him out the front door of the university to a waiting taxi. Afshin never saw the school, nor his family, again.
He might have enjoyed seeing his family, but he never requested it. Afshin feared interrupting the work, worried they might pull him off the intensely gratifying process of designing and building an entirely novel type of nuclear weapon. Nobody had ever exploded a dirty bomb before and the technical requirements for the explosive, and the radioactive shielding, ran deep into the speculative.
Afshin’s father had served in the Iran-Iraq War, and his mother was a nomadic Iranian exposed to “yellow rain” during the war. His mother died of bone cancer, and his father was revered by their town as a war hero, though it only seemed to matter during patriotic holidays.
Afshin had no assistants and almost no supervision. His food and support were provided by government people who appeared occasionally to make sure his tools ran properly and that he was alive and well. When he needed a new end mill or, on the rare occasion when he wanted a pornographic magazine, he placed the order. Nobody bothered him about the pornography, even though it was technically illegal in Iran. The Lebanese porno magazines simply showed up in the bottom of the next box of tooling and raw materials. But the work was almost always more satisfying than the porn, and he took little time off to masturbate.
One day, after five years of laboring over the Russian surplus strontium-90 thermal generator he had been provided as a source for radioactive material, Afshin looked down at his stainless steel workbench and beheld a completed, highly sophisticated dirty bomb. It was no larger than the mini-refrigerator where he kept his sodas, and it weighed just under ninety kilos. The radiation pouring off the casing measured barely more than exposure to the sun in the upper atmosphere.
Two days after completing his bomb, Afshin heard the buzz of a small aircraft taxiing outside. The sounds of small aircraft were commonplace, since his workshop and living quarters were located in an airplane hangar. But this airplane approached his building, heralding the coming of his boss, Calculator Man.
By now, Afshin knew the professor’s name: Ostãd Mumtãz Shahin Nazari. Professor Nazari had visited Afshin many times over the last years, receiving updates on progress and vetting Afshin’s data and material requests. Afshin assumed the professor held some rank in the science or military ministry, though Iranian state government interested Afshin about as much as women’s magazines which, was to say, not at all.
This visit was different from previous visits. For one thing, the bomb was complete. For another, Professor Nazari appeared to be dying. Afshin didn’t ask, but he guessed that cancer was consuming his supervisor. For two reasons, Afshin’s life was about to change, and that stressed him to distraction.
“Salaam alaikum,” the professor greeted him and took his hand. Afshin looked downward in a show of respect.
“Salaam, Professor. I am finished.” Afshin continued to gaze at the concrete, uncomfortable with looking directly at other peoples’ faces.
“Yes, my young friend, you are.” The professor released Afshin’s hand and shuffled to the work table. “It is beautiful. Allahu Akbar.”
Afshin felt his face flush red with pleasure. Indeed, the device was beautiful and it was gratifying for the professor to say so. Afshin had nothing to say, so he remained silent.
“Are you prepared to test it?” the professor asked, caressing the aluminum casing.
“Yes, Jenaab.” Afshin applied the honorific, pleased to have his work acknowledged.
“Afshin, I feel I must tell you, what we are about to do is more than a test. It is a victory for Islam. We shall detonate the device on the Wahhabis and their American pipeline. As we kill the pipeline, we kill the link between the Americans and the Saudis, and we force Persia to finally take a stand. Our government has lost the will to act and, like during the war with Iraq, they hold back, afraid of the West. The Saudis push their Wahhabist agenda across the globe, building schools and mosques in every corner of Islam: Afghanistan, Pakistan, Russia, and even America itself. They are the true enemy, but our government refuses to strike. With this bomb, we shall force the ayatollahs to take up the sword Allah has given them. Then the Persian Empire can resume its rightful place. Will you give your life to that cause?”
Afshin understood every word. He was a genius, after all. At the same time, he couldn’t care less about religion or the Persian Empire. What he cared about, above all else, was seeing the device tested. He couldn’t continue living without seeing the bomb detonate. If he died in the process, that concerned him very little.
“Yes, Jenaab,” Afshin answered.
“Good, my son. I do consider you my son.” The professor smiled. “I must also tell you this. The Guardian Council has not authorized this detonation. We will move forward without approval. My own time is at an end and I am afraid that, without me, our leaders will endlessly dither. We know the righteous path, you and I, and we must act for our country’s future. Do you agree, pesar?”
“Yes, Jenaab,” Afshin said for the third time.
“Very well. Please bring the device to my airplane.”
Afshin lifted the bomb with a small electric winch hanging from the metal rafters and lowered it onto a pallet truck. He wheeled the bomb out the large door of the hangar, the dying man resting his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. The bomb rolled across the tarmac into the sunlight, toward the waiting Cessna.
1
“A black swan is an event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and is extremely difficult to predict; the term was popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a finance professor, writer and former Wall Street trader. Black swan events are typically random and are unexpected.”
—The Event Chronicle
Ross Homestead
Oakwood, Utah
August 16, 2016
“WE NEED TO BURN DOWN the forest to open our fields of fire,” Jeff Kirkham declared as he scanned the hills over Oakwood, a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah
.
Jason Ross smiled, but his brow furrowed. “Why is it always burning stuff down with you special ops guys? That’s the same thing Chad said—burn the forest down to open up fields of fire. I brought you up here to tell us where to dig defenses, not to burn down my forest. Jesus, we do have neighbors. That’s a town down there and I don’t think they’d be happy with a forest fire.”
Jeff stared out at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, but his eyes hardened, as though searching the hills of Afghanistan and Northern Iraq. Those places had left their mark—Jeff’s face had endured so much windburn and sunburn that he had developed a permanent squint—not to mention the deeper marks they had probably left.
“Well, then, Chad and I agree on one thing, at least,” Jeff said, dropping the subject of burning the forest for the time being. “I don’t like this location for an OP/LP,” he stated flatly. Jeff was the kind of man who didn’t flinch when it came to contradicting another person and upsetting his applecart.
Jason’s voice jumped a bit, betraying his frustration. “What’s an OP/LP?” He had already marked out locations for the defensive fortifications, based on his best guess while Jeff was overseas.
“Observation post/listening post,” Jeff explained. “If we’re going to build defensive positions, we need to start by setting up early detection. Then we can figure out fixed defensive positions, but right now we need to work on communication, roving patrols and a Quick Reaction Force.”
Jason sighed, mentally abandoning the work he had already done and conceding to Jeff’s knowledge and experience. “I only understood half of what you just said,” Jason told Jeff. “Just tell me what we need to do next.”
Jason Ross owned the Homestead, as well as the land around it, for hundreds of acres. Both men were on the Homestead steering committee, and Jeff had been invited to handle security and defense. So, while Jason actually owned everything the eye could see, he was reluctant to countermand Jeff. After all, Jeff had been asked to join the Homestead for his expertise in mountain warfare.
“What’s on top of that ridge?” Jeff pointed east.
“It looks down into Tellers Canyon, and Tellers Canyon drops into Salt Lake City, but it doesn’t matter, because that’s all Forest Service land. I don’t own it.” Jason waved generally eastward.
“Who gives a crap what you own and don’t own?” Jeff looked straight at Jason. “We’ll own whatever we want to own if the stock market keeps dropping. Let’s head up top. That’s where we should place the OP/LP.”
“Okay.” Jason surrendered. Jeff might occasionally be wrong about this kind of thing but, if he was wrong, there were probably only a dozen men in the world with enough knowledge to credibly disagree with him.
After all, Jeff had seen the Apocalypse firsthand in a dozen countries. He had trained armies—small armies to be sure—but armies nonetheless. He had taken life with every weapon known to the modern battlefield. With the help of his Green Beret buddy, Evan, Jeff developed some of the most advanced gunfighting training in the era of the assault rifle.
To say Jeff was a twenty-eight-year Green Beret wouldn’t come close to describing just how much warfighting he had survived. There were volumes about Jeff that Jason didn’t know—much of Jeff’s past was shrouded in the kind of secrecy that demanded don’t ask, don’t tell.
“Is this really going to happen?” Jason shouted over the engine of their off-highway vehicle (OHV) as they rattled and bounced to the top of the canyon.
“Is what going to happen?” Jeff shouted back. Half the time, Jeff Kirkham guessed at what other people were saying. He had been left nearly deaf in one ear from too many intimate encounters with Karl Gustav rifles and C4 plastic explosives.
“Is society really going to collapse?” Jason asked as they emerged from the oak forest. A 100,000-acre panorama opened up before them.
“It’s happened throughout history,” Jeff explained as they climbed out of the OHV and took in the view. “Just because we haven’t seen civil disorder in the U.S. in a long time doesn’t mean we’re immune to it.” He counted on his fingers. “The Revolutionary War. The Civil War. The Great Depression. We came very close to a nuclear holocaust during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We enjoy the patina of security here. It’s an illusion, a trick of human psychology. Just because we don’t see chaos in our daily lives doesn’t mean it’s not right below the surface. Plus, who says we’re entitled to safety? The rest of the world doesn’t have safety. Why should we?”
“That dirty bomb that went off last night in Saudi Arabia… You think the effects could reach us here?” Jason asked again.
“We’ll see. Almost everything you can think of comes from oil. Plastic, roads, heat. Even your OHV vehicle is eighty percent oil in one form or another. The price of oil affects everything in our modern world. If Costco closes, we’re fucked.” Jeff finished his lecture, pulling out a small pair of binos to check something out on the horizon.
Jeff had two modes: stony silence and meticulous lecture―holding forth on historical and geopolitical nuances of one thing or another. For a quiet person, he had unusually big opinions.
“Costco? What’s Costco got to do with anything?”
Jeff lowered the binos but kept gazing at a spot on the mountainside.
“We’re too weak as a nation. If we were hardened, like Afghanis or Kurds―or even our grandparents who made it through the Great Depression―a failure of the stock market wouldn’t be such a game changer. We would go back to growing food in our yards and raising goats in city parks. But we’re the weakest society the world has ever seen. If the system fails, people will go ape shit. Any cop will tell you: there is a fine line between civility and savagery. When Costco closes in the middle of the day, that’ll be our cue that the credit card machines aren’t running and we’re screwed.”
“I hope you’re wrong.” Jason shook his head.
“I would love to be wrong, but I’m not.” Jeff dialed in the binoculars again, scoping a distant target. “Who’s that?” He passed the binos to Jason.
Jason picked out two figures standing beside four-wheelers higher on the mountain. “Oh, yeah. Those guys are the Beringers. They own cabin land a couple of canyons over.”
“Are they friends of yours?”
“No, not friends. We’ve had a couple of nasty run-ins over the years.”
“Run-ins?” Jeff reached for the binoculars again.
“Long story. They’re locals. They’ve lived here in Oakwood for a few generations. They were offended when I bought this land. They used to think of it as their own private hunting preserve.”
“Tell me about the run-ins,” Jeff persisted.
“We used to keep a hunting tent at the top of the canyon. After we asked them to stop trespassing, one of their clan broke into our equipment locker and crapped all over the handles.”
Jeff lowered the binos. “They literally shit on your equipment locker?”
Jason shrugged. “They’re rednecks. Down on their land, they’ve built a ghetto survival retreat—they’ve got foxholes, buildings made out of pallets, tripwires. It’s like a scene out of Deliverance.”
“What did you do about them shitting on your locker?” Jeff drilled down.
“We let it go. Eventually they quit coming over the mountain to hunt.” Jason’s answer made him feel self-conscious, like he had compromised his “man card” by not making the Beringers face consequences for their disrespect.
By all accounts, Jason was a man’s man. Tall and broad of shoulder, he had taken care of himself, working out daily, lifting weights and completing a handful of half-ironman triathlons over the years. He had been an Eagle Scout and, since boyhood, he had spent a large chunk of his life in the woods. But even a “man’s man” felt self-conscious around Jeff Kirkham. No amount of civilized outdoorsmanship compared with two-and-a-half decades living in the muck as a Green Beret.
“Those Beringer people can’t stay,” Jeff concluded, not inviting discussion.
“I’d like them gone, too, but they own that land. I don’t see how we can run them off their own land without inviting others to do the same to us.”
“Where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Jeff handed back the binoculars with a blank smile.
That smile made Jason uncomfortable. It implied gamesmanship. It hinted at a desire for a chess match, like something out of a Kipling novel, a penchant for cheating, a pleasure at defeating others through superior maneuvering. Nothing implied by that smile put Jason at ease with Jeff Kirkham.
Jason was well aware that American Special Forces operators cheated. They fought at night with night vision and air support. They used technological advantage to win with grotesque dominance over the enemy. Top-tier Green Berets were often loaned to the CIA, where the deeds ran dark and deep. Jeff had almost certainly triggered foreign insurgencies by employing carefully set layers of intrigue and connivance. He had spent a lifetime in the mind-bending juxtaposition where an operator’s personal reputation and integrity among Americans was everything. That same operator would smile at a terrorist across the table, call him brother, use him like a dishrag, then radio in an air strike to kill him.
During the decades Jeff fought for his country using every trick in the book, Jason built wealth and honed his ability as a leader of enterprise. He made a career out of full disclosure and fair dealing. He had been taught early on that virtue won most battles on the fields of commerce and had made a great deal of money through cooperation, collaboration and respect.
Jason didn’t know the half of Jeff’s career, and he suspected Jeff had spent time within the shadowy elements of the United States government. Jason worried that the same subterfuge might someday be turned on him.
He looked at Jeff for a long moment. What’s good for the goose is good for the gander. What befell the Beringers could easily befall the Ross family, Jason thought to himself.
“What?” Jeff’s thin smile broke a little wider. He seemed to have an idea of what Jason was thinking.