While Big Springs Airport was just a small regional facility, it too stored hundreds of gallons of fuel. Not much jet fuel, but plenty of small plane fuel for the prominently small plane fleet. Contrary to popular belief, small plane fuel is much more combustible than jet fuel. Just because jets are bigger and faster, doesn’t necessarily mean they need a more flammable source of energy. It was a fact not lost on two brothers looking to get the biggest bang for their buck.
The fuel tanks at Big Springs were above ground. Harish and Ahmed worked together to place the explosive devices on the two large tanks. They placed a large and a small explosive charge for each tank. One at the supply line leading out of the tank, intended to blow the valve off and allow fuel to leak out. The second charge positioned to ignite the spilled fuel released from the first charge. Ahmed placed the charges and the timers as Harish handed him the devices and tools from his backpack. About halfway through their task, they could hear the security guard cursing his bad luck when he realized he would have to walk around to the front of the building to get in. They paused momentarily till they were sure the guard was gone.
The second tank went quicker, and before long Harish and Ahmed were making their way through the service gate and into their vehicle. As Harish drove away, Ahmed went through the checklist one more time of the places they’d have to visit that night. They’d already been to both gas stations; one on the north side of town, and one on the south. Small towns didn’t have many 24-hour gas stations, which was another reason why Big Springs was an ideal location for them. Working under cover of night with no one around was ideal. Diverting the security guard at the airport was considered an acceptable risk. The grocery store was a different sort of operation. While the burning fuel at the airport and gas station tanks would escalate the damage, the grocery store attack was intended to strike directly at civilians. Damaging an already crippled population’s main source of food, was physiologically devastating. Nobody was flying these days, but everyone needed to eat.
The last target however was the most heart-wrenching of all. Harish was uncomfortable with it, but Ahmed was not. Ahmed understood the stakes, and he knew this would strike to the very core of every infidel’s fear. The elementary school was an obvious and easy target for many reasons. Lack of security was why they left it for last on their list. The sheer gut-wrenching atrocity of it was what resonated with Ahmed; he could be very pragmatic about some things. People would be outraged and devastated. When they discovered the real reason for the attacks, their fear would compound exponentially. Ahmed hid from Harish his respect for the outright genius of such an attack. His leaders truly were inspired by Allah. During moments like this, Ahmed believed he truly was on the right side of the coming war.
A hint of sunrise began to appear over the treetops as they approached the newly constructed Big Springs Elementary School. Its modern twin blue steel roofs curved over the main entrance and drop-off zone. It was one of those designs that reminded Ahmed of a shopping mall. What kind of sacrilege did these infidels inflict on their own children? Ahmed thought. A school should be a place where young minds are taught the ways of the world. They should be taught faith, to respect their parents, and to value what is important in life. They should learn to give back to the planet, and Allah. Instead, here the infidels begin their indoctrination into a culture where the almighty dollar is everything. Where it’s more important to learn how to buy things and to consume vast resources, instead of being a better person that cares for those less fortunate. The seeds of greed are planted here. They learn to be better than their fellow peers, to compete for things that have no importance. Games, and gadgets, and clothing. They teach their young girls to be promiscuous, instead of assuming their proper role in society under the faithful guidance of the men of their family.
Harish initially insisted that they skip the school. He refused to take any part in the attack. Ahmed had to reassure him that the children wouldn’t come to any harm in the attack. The explosion would take place in the early hours of the day, long before the children arrived at school. Now, however, they were running behind schedule. They should have been done an hour ago, but there were patrol cars around the gas stations slowing them down. Harish had tried again to get Ahmed to skip the school, but he wouldn’t. The list was fixed and calculated by their leaders for maximum impact. It was meant to be followed implicitly. Nothing was to be left off the list. It was not up for negotiation.
On the way from the grocery store to the elementary school, they passed by the school bus depot. Ahmed noticed one car in the parking lot. The infidels already had some of their vehicles working again. They are a persistent bunch. It was important to strike now, before they gained any more momentum, Ahmed thought.
The drivers wouldn’t be arriving for a while, and it would take even longer before they picked up the children and headed for school. Ahmed assured Harish they would have plenty of time to finish their work. “Besides, how many kids are really going to school these days?” he asked Harish. “They’re all too busy lamenting the loss of their precious gadgets and toys during the power outage.”
Ahmed harbored no remorse for the devastation they were about to inflict upon this city. Children may be innocent for a while, but eventually they become part of the evil that is this corrupted society. If a few were lost in the attack, he was sure Harish would be upset, but it was a small price to pay. Very small indeed.
Chapter 24 ~ Just Watch
Michael stepped out of the transport with a cell phone to his ear and a flushed face.
“Yes, sir, I totally understand what you’re saying, sir.” Michael listened to the raised voice coming from the cell phone, nodding his head in agreement. “No, sir, I didn’t mean any disrespect. Yes, sir, I do understand the chain of command.”
Michael lowered the cell phone from his ear, looking at the screen. The call had been terminated. Michael paced around the parking lot, all but deserted except for the transport. There was no denying the logic of the decision his commanding officer was making. But, Michael thought, there is no actual substitute for being out in the field. Sure, the commander is going by the book. That makes perfect sense. I’d probably go by the book too, he thought to himself, if I was up on the 26th floor sitting in a cushy chair behind a big desk. But I’m not, I’m actually out here in the field watching everything firsthand. Has that guy even read my field reports? He wondered. Maybe my reports just suck? Not likely. If anything, Michael’s reports were far too detailed and precise for his commanding officer to bother reading. I can’t just think my way out of this one. If I don’t follow orders, I’ll probably have my ass dragged up to command and kicked nine different ways till Sunday. But if I do follow orders this entire operation could go south in a hurry. In which case I’m suddenly get my butt kicked twenty-seven ways till Sunday. Dammit! Michael threw the cell phone across the parking lot and continued pacing.
A voice called out from the transport, “Sir, that’s government property. We can’t be leaving that lying around a parking lot, sir.”
“Yeah, yeah, Humphries,” Michael yelled back. “Get your ass back in the transport. I’ll get this sorted out.”
Michael retrieved the phone and walked back to the transport. Inside Humphries and Jeffreys had their eyes glued to their monitors.
Not a word was said between the three of them. Jeffreys had only been out in the field for a few months, and this was the first real mission he’d been on. He wasn’t about to screw it up by questioning his commanding officer and risk facing disciplinary action, no matter what he thought of his orders. As far as he was concerned, Humphries was a jackass. I’m sure the sergeant knows full well what is government property and what isn’t. There’s no point in pissing off the people on your side. My daddy didn’t raise no fool. What he did raise, was a man that knew when to follow orders.
Right now, headquarters had told Sergeant Michael to simply observe the actions of the suspected terrorist cell. They were on a fact-f
inding mission. There would be no engaging the suspects today.
Jeffreys considered himself pretty lucky to have drawn this mission in the first place. It’s not like he was the top of his class. There were smarter techs than him with more experience who would have been drooling to get a chance to work inside this new vehicle. It was one of the agency’s next generation of surveillance vehicles that were meant to blend into urban settings. That itself wasn’t anything special. Cops have been running surveillance ops in civilian streets since before Starsky and Hutch.
This was different though. There weren’t any rules governing the agency to prevent them from gathering whatever information they felt necessary. As a quasi non-government contract agency, they only had to answer to themselves. If things went south, which had happened before, then the government politicos had an easy out. They simply fired the rogue contractors. Contractors that acted like a bunch of cowboys as they trampled the rights and civil liberties of fine US citizens. No politicians had to have their reputation smeared, or worse yet jeopardize their chances for re-election.
Getting busted and called out was to be avoided, but if they did it wasn’t the end of the world. They simply closed up shop. Six months later, they’d spring up with a whole new name, new personnel, and a new contract. Security couldn’t just be abandoned because a bunch of cowboy contractors had screwed up. Nope. Those terrorists were out there, threatening the lives of Americans everywhere, and they needed to be dealt with. Rules could be flexible. The agency could act with impunity.
They didn’t teach Jeffreys all that in training camp, but he’d done his time with the regular military fighting in the Gulf War. He knew this was different. Sure, there was a chain of command, but it was more like corporate ladder-climbing than the army obstacle courses he was used to running. The agency was big politics, not big guns.
Humphries piped up again. “We’re not gonna just sit here and watch this cocksucker are we, Sergeant? I mean, look at this guy. He’s guilty as all fuck of some anti-American behavior for sure. If not, I’m sure this fancy rig has got enough database connections that we could make up something to arrest him for.”
“That’s enough, Humphries. We’re not here to fabricate and falsely arrest people. The bosses want us to be sure of who we have before we take any serious actions. Those kind of decisions have real world consequences. Especially if we’re wrong.”
“C’mon, Sarge. Can you remember the last time the government actually admitted they were wrong?”
Michael grabbed the back of Humphries’ chair and spun it around so they were face to face. “Is there some reason you want me to kick your ass, cadet! Is there something I’ve said or done to lead you to believe that this is a democratic mission and that everyone in this vehicle gets a say in how things are done?” Veins in Michael's neck were bulging ever so slightly.
“No,” Humphries answered.
“No what?” Michael said sternly.
“No, sir.”
“That’s right. Sir. This may not be the army, but there is a chain of command in existence.” Michael paused for a second as he looked over to Jeffreys. Jeffreys remained silent. “If there is any doubt from either of you as to who is sitting at the top of that chain of command, then I suggest you express it now.”
Chapter 25 ~ The Big Bang
The big day for Ahmed and Harish went both incredibly well, and incredibly badly. It started off as planned, albeit behind schedule at the airport. The security guard, Andre, was just heading home from his night shift. He was walking, as his car had been disabled from the CME. The first explosion was quiet enough to make Andre think that he was hearing things. He was tired, and it had been a long shift. At first he thought it sounded like a car accident at slow speed. It was enough to make him pause, wondering what cars could possibly be at the airport that he wasn’t aware of.
The second muffled explosion had Andre returning to the terminal to investigate, concerned that something was up. He was definitely not hearing things. By now, the fuel from both tanks was leaking freely and spreading in all directions. The next two explosive charges would light the spreading fuel and threaten the entire airport. Andre first tried the phone in the office, on the off chance that it might be working. It wasn’t; repair crews were still trying to repair essential emergency communication within the city, and the airport wasn’t high on their list. All flights had been grounded, as people were more concerned about having enough food and water than taking a flight anywhere.
Andre headed in the direction from which he had heard the crash noises. He smelled the fumes almost immediately, and saw the slick spreading across the runway. The airport usually had its own unique smell, which included oil, black tar heated from the Texas sun, and airplane fuel. Right now, the smell of airplane fuel overpowered everything else. Luckily for Andre, the first big charge malfunctioned as he headed for the hanger where the fuel spill kits were stored. The airport had just passed its Blue Flag environmental certification last year, and part of it was training all employees to deal with low volume toxic spills. As Andre donned the protective hazmat suit, the second big charge went off.
The tanks had dumped all their fuel by now, and the first of the two secondary charges worked exactly as planned. A sea of fire surrounded the tank farm, spread across the runway and headed for the main terminal. Looking through the hangar door, Andre watched as the burning fuel intensified the early morning sunrise. The burning flames reached the last secondary charge, and it fired. The sea of flame doubled in size, and within seconds the outer walls of the terminal were on fire. Andre dropped the spill kit and made a beeline for the airport gates in his bright yellow hazmat suit, with the unfastened head piece flopping loosely behind him.
The most important thing to consider when blowing up a gas station is not what most people think it is. Normally, people think you need a lot of fuel to get maximum devastation, so they assume that dropping a match down an underground tank should suffice. Not the case. What you want is a lot of fumes. Contrary to what most Hollywood movies would have you believe, gasoline is not nearly as flammable in its liquid state as it is in its gaseous state. A fuel tank that is mostly empty of liquid gasoline but full of gaseous fumes is far more volatile. Luckily for Ahmed and Harish, the fuel supply truck that was on its way with its just-in-time fuel delivery to Big Springs was currently sitting stranded seventy-five miles out of town; another victim of the CME.
The other thing that any good gas station fire needs is time. The longer a fire above the surface can burn, the better chance it has of igniting fuel in the pumps and tanks below the surface. At the first gas station, Ahmed and Harish had decided to place their charges in an abandoned vehicle still parked at the pumps. When the CME struck and people began to realize that ninety percent of their vehicles wouldn’t work, they just deserted them and walked away. Vehicles were abandoned in the road, at traffic lights, in car washes, at 24-hour beer drive-throughs, and at gas stations.
The first vehicle burned slow. An elderly couple passing by took notice, but by the time word of mouth reached the fire department, it was already too late. Multiple vehicles at the station were burning, and the pumps blew. Shortly after that the flames and the heat reached the tanks below the ground, and the entire block shook from the explosion. Every car alarm in the neighborhood would have gone off, if the CME hadn’t already killed them. There was only one lone dispatcher at the fire station anyways, and the crew were already en route to the airport with the only working truck.
The next target was a disappointment for Harish and Ahmed. The propane tanks sold at the grocery store were always kept outside in a locked cage. There had been a rush on tanks earlier, when people realized that their grills might be the only appliances they had for cooking over the next few days. All the tanks in the cage were empty ones. Ahmed and Harish had assumed they were full, hoping to ignite a chain reaction of exploding tanks. Instead, the tanks did hardly more than rattle around in their cage like restless an
imals at the zoo.
At the power station, an attentive watchman noticed the unusual package sitting near the now quiet transformers and moved it to the hazardous materials vault. He made a note in the log for his morning supervisor. The repair crews were already working around the clock, and he didn’t want to have to bother them with one more thing. The charge went off as the watchman was briefing his supervisor. The vault held, and luckily there were no other materials inside at the time.
People who weren’t already awake that morning soon would be. Even the heaviest sleepers couldn’t have slept through what happened next. If you want to be remembered, it’s essential to be dramatic. Nobody remembers the boring minor problems. Everyone remembers and talks about the perfect storm type disasters. They write books, make movies, and sing songs about the Titanic. Today, Ahmed planned to introduce the people of Big Springs to their perfect storm; their Titanic. Today, he left the biggest target till the end.
America's Sunset: A Post Apocalyptic Fight for Survival Page 12