by Ira Tabankin
“I’ll see what I can work out with them. We discussed splitting up their flights so as to spread out their forces. We picked three airports, LAX, SFO and SeaTac. Nanny, you were the one who proposed SFO. Something about bringing much-needed revenue into the area.”
“I did; I thought they would arrive in normal planes and use the shops and restaurants in the airport. With the decline of air flights, the poor working in the airport has seen their incomes drop. I thought using SFO would help the small shops in the airport. I went there and promised them thousands of people would be using the airport. Many shops increased their inventory waiting for the planes to arrive. But they didn’t use the terminal; they landed and directly unloaded their own equipment and trucks. They’re not buying anything in the airport; they’re not eating in the restaurants, and they’re not renting cars. Nothing I promised the people at the airport is happening, they’re going to hold this against me.”
“Nanny, I’ll talk to their commander to see what I can arrange.”
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“Mr. President, troops from Cuba and Venezuela, are landing at LAX, SFO, and SeaTac. Here are images sent from LAX. Sir, they have equipment we haven’t seen before. Everything looks brand new.”
“How many have arrived?”
“Sir looks at the image of the people in front of the hanger; those are clearly Russian troops, look at their uniforms. Our best estimate is 5,000 if the flights continue at their current rate they’ll have in excess of 15,000 troops on the West Coast in three days.”
“Too many for the police force. I think the SEAL’s are correct, this the beginning of an invasion force. Call the national security group together, we need to create a clear set of plans when they begin breaking out of the LSA.”
“Sir, our best estimate is their first target is going to be San Diego.”
“I’ll call Admiral Zander.”
“Admiral, this is the President, I assume you’ve seen the images from LAX?”
“Yes sir, I’ve notified the Mayor of San Diego and General Jackson at Pendleton. The Marines are digging in preparing a warm welcome for our guests. The Mayor is preparing the citizens of San Diego; the Navy is flushing as many ships to sea as possible. They’ll be able to provide support, the Marines, and Air Force are prepping to generate as many fighters into the air as possible. We have sent them all of the parts they’ve asked for. Sir, should we start moving people out of the city?”
“Admiral, I think it would be a good idea to move people away from our military bases, I’m sure they’re going to be one of their first targets.”
“Mr. President, I agree, I’ll get on the horn with the Mayor right away.”
“Admiral, you have enough to do, I’ll call him. I want you to stop any attack on Sand Diego and also capture some of their new equipment so we can learn what new capabilities these weapons and armor have. Admiral see if you can get some of the SOF boys to sneak into their camp and grab one of their new rifles and body armor.”
“Yes sir, good idea, I’ll get right on it.”
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On the sixth day of the blackout New York City is tearing itself apart, people are hungry, cold and thirsty. Every store that may have had food, water and alcohol have been stripped bare. Gangs and flash mobs numbering in the thousands swarm into homes and apartments looking for food. The remains of NYPD have been hired by the wealthy to keep the gangs out of the Upper East Side. New York City received 27 inches of snow, with the sanitation department on strike, the streets resemble the arctic. People are getting around with cross country skies. A ladder company from New York’s fire department sets out to find out why the power is out, they have to travel nine miles to closest of the electrical plants. The two fire trucks set out from their station in Midtown, with chains on the truck’s tires. People along the truck’s route hearing them think help is coming, they run out of their apartments trying to get the attention of the Fire Trucks. Many run into the street waving their arms to stop the trucks. The Fire Department originally thought the trip would take them no more than two hours, with the trucks being stopped every few yards; they change their ETA from hours to days.
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President Obsma has slide into the life of the homeless, he sleeps in the tunnel at night and begs or does odd jobs for food during the day, unwashed and unshaved he no longer resembles the man he once was. He stays warm by wrapping any clothing he can around himself. He and Janice have become friends; they do everything together. People look at him and think they know him from someplace; some think he looks a little like President Obsma. No one puts one and one together to get two. His security detail is still searching the city for him. The lack of electricity and the deep snow slow their search to a crawl. They're looking on the east side of the city while he and Janice are on the west side. Obsma doesn’t know where he is or where he is, but he’s happy in this simple life.
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Screams and gunshots echo off of the walls of the mall. I don’t know which direction the gang went. If I guess wrong, I’ll be walking into their line of fire. Laying down, I creep on my stomach to the end of the entrance hallway. I peek around the corner. I don’t see anything to the right, moving to the left. I see the reflection in a store window of muzzle flashes, the AKs sound is echoing to the point I can’t use it to figure how far they may be. If the window is reflecting the flashes, they must be pretty close. I continue to crawl like a snake, hopefully presenting a very small target as I make my way to the left.
Voices, speaking Spanish, laughing followed by a woman screaming, this must be the right direction. I pass four bodies, all with multiple bullet wounds. From the bullet holes in the mall’s walls, it looks like the gang “sprayed and prayed.” They swept the aisle of the mall on full auto. BANG BANG BANGGGGGGG. More shooting, Wait, I see movement, I lay behind a bench, raise my AR, yup I see two of them, try to calm myself, aim and fire two quick shots, one is wounded, and I’m pretty sure the other one is dead. I hit him in his chest.
BANG BANG BANG, they’re returning fire, thank God they haven’t seen me. All of their shots are high and to my right. I think they’re firing in the hope they hit someone. The only benefit their shooting is having for them is I don’t want to move and call attention to myself. I have to wait for them to move on or help to arrive.
Three minutes pass without any more shots being fired, I hear sirens, all of the local police must be arriving. I really hope Ron passed my message about the color of my T-shirt along or the Calvary is going to arrive and shoot me.
Chapter 28
“Sarge, you sure you can trust these kids?”
“Yes, when I was younger I was one of them, I’ll show them my tattoo. If we’re going to sneak into one of the armed camps, we’re going to need help. The local gangs have feet on the street; they know what the layout of our friend’s camp and they’ll know the soldier's schedule. They’ll know their comings and goings. Trust me on this one.”
Three young men approach the Marines who are standing in the dark on the side of an office building; this was the agreed upon meeting location.
“Homeboy don’t you look spiffy being all you can be.”
“Asshole, that’s the Army; I’m one of the “Few and the Proud” I work for a living, I’m a Marine.”
“Whatever, both green to me. What’s you want from us?”
“We need your help.”
“Help, what’s you got to pay for our help?”
“What do you want?”
“Food and a couple of your rifles and the bullets.”
“I think we can work out a deal, we want access to one of the Cuban’s camps.”
“We can do that; a few of our ladies work there. Why you want to get into their camp?”
“We need to borrow something from them.”
“Don’t go ruining it for us. We got us a good thing going with them Cubans. We trade with them.”
“Swear, no harm will come to you.”
“
Cool. We’ll go now, about a mile to one of their camps.”
The gang leads the Marine squad through the alleys and shadows of LA; they’re about to round a corner when the gang leader holds his hand up. “Wait here, their camp is around the building to our right. They took over the parking garage.”
“Thanks, we can take it from here.”
“Don’t go ruining my gig now, remember you gave me your word.”
“My word’s good bro, thanks.”
The Marine force recon squad stays in the shadows against the office building wall, they hear footsteps and talking, the sergeant holds his right hand up; the squad stops in mid-step. The voices pass the Marine’s inch forward. A Cuban guard is walking their way, the sergeant decides to change their mission when the Cuban gets close the sergeant knocks him out. The Marines tie and strip him of his uniform, helmet, rifle, everything. They leave him in his underwear arms and legs tied together in zip ties and gagged with gray duct tape wrapped around his head.
The sergeant says, “We got what we came for, let’s slip away and go home.”
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“Mr. President, General Jackson and Admiral Zander are on the phone.”
“Gentlemen, what can I do for you?”
The General begins, “Mr. President, one of our recon teams returned a few hours ago with a complete Cuban soldier’s uniform, armor, helmet, hell, sir they got everything except for his shorts.”
“General, that’s good news, I can hear the other shoe ready to drop, so tell me what’s the bad news?”
“Mr. President, the short answer is, their new armor stops our bullets. Even our so called penetrators don’t break their armor. It’s a combination of ceramic, metal and plastic. It’s something new. Lighter than ours, and much stronger. We tested their rifle against our standard body armor; their new rounds will breach our armor.”
“You’re telling me our bullets won’t penetrate their armor, and theirs will penetrate ours?”
“Yes sir, that’s it in a nutshell. Our boys are screwed.”
“General, will their bullets penetrate their new body armor?”
“Mr. President, that’s a very good questions, let us run a quick test, we’ll get back to you in a few minutes.”
“General, also see if multiple hits on their armor make any difference. See if our old M14s and M1s breach their armor.”
“Sir will do.”
Ted Cruize, who was listening, turns to face the President, “Is this as bad as it sounds? And if it is, how did they get so far ahead of us?”
“I’m willing to bet that while we got bogged down in the sandbox, Puten learned lessons from what we were doing. He spent Russia’s oil money on reequipping the Russian army while we played at nation building and bought thousands of MRAPs, most of which got left behind since we didn’t know what to do with them here. Ted, this is very bad, they can kill our boys and our boys will only be able to wound them by shooting them in the legs under their armor or killing them with a face shot. While they’ll be able to kill our boys with ease.”
“What’ll we do?”
If their own rifles defeat their armor, the quickest plan may be to steal their rifles, if they won’t penetrate their armor, then we need to copy their formula real quick and in the mean time we need to steal as many sets of their armor as possible.”
“Neither sound easy.”
“That’s because neither is.”
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I don’t want to move for fear of being shot by the good guys coming up behind me. “Don’t move asshole. Don’t even think about it. If you do, you’re dead. Push your weapon away from you and put your hands up, and then turn around and slowly stand up, got it?”
“I got it; I’m not one of the bad guys; I came to help stop them. I’m…”
“If I wanted you to talk, I’d have told you to. Shut up before I shoot you.”
“Two of you search him, cuff him and bring him outside.”
I’m grabbed by two large guys dressed in all black with SWAT printed on their backs. They pull my arms behind my back, zip tying my wrists together. I’m dragged outside; a third officer is carrying my AR.
“We caught one.”
Four men wearing blue jackets with FBI printed on back in large yellow letters grab me saying, “I can’t wait to make you talk.”
“I’d be happy to talk right now. My wallet is in my right-hand rear pocket; I live across the street.”
An FBI agent grabs my wallet, looking at my driver’s license he says, “Why did you join the terrorists? Where were you trained? Who’s your commander? What are your plans?”
“Hey guys, my name is Brad, I’m a good guy, I saw the mob arrive, check my phone, I called one of you, I called in the 911 call. I admit to firing my AR, I killed four of the sons of bitches.”
Then-FBI Special Agent in Charge takes my cell, he reviews the numbers and times I placed calls, he’s right; he called a local police officer, the time stamp on his 911 call matches the first call that came in. He turns to look into my eyes, “Asshole, mind telling me if your middle name is Rambo? Why the fuck did you run into the mall looking for trouble? Why didn’t you do what you were told to? Stay outside and report? You think you’re some kind of hero?”
“Agent, I saw them arrive, I’d been tipped off last night they might come today, I had the means to stop a few of them, and so I did. Is that a crime?”
“It used to be, but no longer. Your story matches, plus I have a report from one of the local police officers describing you to a T, telling us you most likely went into the mall after the terrorists. Brad that was a really brave and a really dumb thing to do. You might have gotten yourself killed in the process.”
“Special agent, I had to do something, the people in the mall were sitting ducks.”
“You’re very lucky you didn’t get yourself killed. Never, I repeat never go into a situation like that again. It’s a miracle my people didn’t shoot you, or you didn’t get shot by the mob.”
“How many innocents got killed?”
“We don’t know yet; our people are still searching the mall, so far we’ve found the four mob members you killed, and 91 we shot. There are bodies’ all over the mall. It appears they split up, some going to each level shooting everyone they encountered. Frankly it’s a mess inside.”
“By the way, would you mind cutting my zip ties off?”
“Cut him loose, just don’t let him get away, someone is on their way here who wants to speak with him.”
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Tuesday, January 12, 2016, is a black day for America; twelve shopping malls are attacked by terrorists hired by the LSA, the attacks killed 562 people and wounded 374. Had they attacked on a weekend the death toll would have been much higher. One group got lost; they couldn’t find a shopping mall, so they attacked a high school where they killed 92 teenagers and ten teachers. The LSA wasn’t as interested in the number killed as they were in making sure the public’s perception of their security was nil. Their goal was to harm the economy, which they succeeded in doing. People stop going to enclosed locations where they have no escape. Shopping malls sales drop like a lead balloon. Retail workers are laid off by the thousands. Delivery services are in lower demand, so they lay off drivers and warehouse staff. Restaurants that located themselves close to shopping malls hoping to capture the shoppers going in or out of the mall realize that no shoppers equal a large drop off in hungry people to visit their locations. Thousands of additional people are laid off.
President Brownstone and Steve Forbas meet in the Oval Office to discuss the situation, “Mr. President the LSA succeeded in harming our economy and making our people afraid to go out. Many have stopped taking their children to school; many have stayed home from work and of course tens of thousands have been laid off.”
“Steve, this is an unacceptable situation. Let’s see if Ted can join us.”
The President asks his Vice President if he can join the discussion; shortly Ted joi
ns them in the Oval Office.
“Ted, thanks for joining us, I assume you’re up to date on the situation.”
“Yes, sir.”
“I’d like your thoughts on some ideas I have, I think the best way to protect our kids in school is to hire off-duty police officers, retired police officers and retired military to guard the schools; these people are all trained in the use of weapons, they all have knowledge how to respond. I suggest we hire at least one per school. We’ll hire enough guards to make sure no one can ever break into the school and kill our children again.”
Ted says, “Sir, some parents won’t like the idea of armed guards at their children’s schools.”
“Ted, the only way to stop a bad person with a gun is a good man with a gun. The parents who object are going to have to accept armed security if they want their children secure. I agree this isn’t the optimum solution, it’s the only one I think we can implement quickly and show we’re serious about protecting our children. Shopping malls are more difficult; they are much larger, and they have more doors to guard. It would be very expensive to post guards at every door. I really don’t know what to do.”