Another SHTF story

[flagtag]

I tend to think of them as cliff hangers. It comes from my wasted years as a youth sitting in front of the TV too much! But at least I learned how to keep an audience. Although I did play a lot of cowboys and Indians with my "Matel shoot'n shell winchester. Plus I thought I was Sgt Saunders many times with my realistic Tommy gun!

I agree with the "cliffhanger" statement - absolutely. I also like the "Combat" reference - it was one of my favorite shows. One of my favorite episodes was "Head Count" - don't mess with the Sarge! Now THAT was television!! (sigh)

You DO have a fantastic writing style! Addictive!
Thanks

 

[nismoz33]

I hope you are keeping all these posts in a Word document & cleaning up the little errors & mistakes. When it's all finished, you need to publish it as a complete story. Excellent job so far! Can't wait for those updates from you.

 

[flagtag]

But, PLEASE, don't stop posting it here until the end. It won't affect future book sales. (example: Lights Out).

 

[pinshooter45]

I'll keep going till I run out of Ideas... And yes I am keeping it in a word document. I can't type fast enough to get some of the longer episodes in before this site wants my password again. Like the one comming up...

 

[Icarry2]

Pin, I had that issue, now I cut and paste, also if you select the keep you signed in it stayed on forever, until you log off..

Great story..


TJ

 

[pinshooter45]

that's what I do now, because it's better and the plot is getting more complex so I can have aa te time I need

 

[pinshooter45]

Just wanted to let you all know I have not gone any where. But have been busy preparing for the Prioritize "Boot Camp" from Work One. So I have not been able to finnish my half written next episode. I have one more day at Boot Camp, then it will be a waiting game till sometime Friday when I will be told whether I made it or not. So I will have nothing to do thursday aftrenoon and much of Friday and will complet the next episode. Would work on it today, but this Boot camp is designed to stress you out a little. So I'm going to install my newly purchased copy of DUKE NUKEM FOREVER, and blast some evil alien creatures for some stress releif. Wish me luck guys and Gals! I copuld use some!

 

[Icarry2]

Best of luck Pin, good story so far, not twitching too bad yet so you have some time before the demons start crying for more meat...

Hope your well,

TJ

 

[pinshooter45]

CHAPTER 2

The sun had set a few hours ago, and the rugged mountains hid most of the moonlight. It was silent except for the sound of a few diesel generators hidden in shelters to mask their heat signatures from spy satellites. There were a few dim lights on in the camp. One was deep inside a cave where cables and wires could be seen running along the ground to their power source. And others ran up the rugged and rocky slopes of the mountain to several small microwave dishes. This was the intelligence center and it was crammed full of the latest computers and satellite relay equipment Osama Bin Laden’s money could buy for various black market sources. Mostly the equipment was updated cold war technology from the former Soviet Union and other Eastern Bloc countries. The Russians had worked to update this equipment to levels just below their own high tech equipment. Then sold it to whoever had the money. It was an excellent revenue stream for them to rebuild up their collapsed economy when the USSR fell. And it continued to be very profitable for the Russian government and Crime Syndicates that had popped up like weeds in the aftermath.

The other light came from a large tent big enough to park two Humvee’s in. Activity was minimal on the grounds since night had fallen it was past 9 PM. But inside the cave there was a flurry of activity as several technicians were busy at their various screens franticly searching news sources and web pages while a young captain of Persian ancestry paced nervously back and forth behind them. The techs were a generous mix of multiple nationalities. All had left their native countries with Idealistic goals of fighting to rid the world of infidels. The young captain was in his late 20’s and had been a fighter since he was 14. He had left his native Iran soon after the United States began Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan. He was still filled with zeal and emotion to defeat "The Great Satan" that was the U.S'. He was growing impatient for the report he so anxiously wanted to deliver to his superiors. Finally one of the young intelligence officers said "It’s ready for you sir." He rushed over to the printer and snatched up the pages that had exited the machine. And he scurried out the cave and headed toward the tent.

The Tent was the commander’s headquarters, and it was nestled in the far corner of the camp under a large out cropping of rocks. These cliffs and some clever camouflage netting intertwined with native that helped obscure it’s presence from spy satellites and drones. Two older commanders sat in the tent making small talk. The older man was a Saudi national and former Coronel that was a fugitive from his own country for murdering his commanding officer during the first Gulf War. The other Commander was a former member of the Palestine Liberation Organization. He had deserted them after the death of Yasser Arafat, he was in his early teens at the time. He had become angry about the peace talks and a separate Palestinian state. He wanted nothing less than to drive the Israelis into the sea and reclaim the entire territory for the Palestinians.

The Young captain arrived and burst into the tent. I have great news Commanders. "The Great Satan has suffered a major catastrophe" He said without catching his breath. "The entire middle portion of their country has been struck by an earthquake. Most of their major cities in that region are destroyed. They are now more weak and vulnerable than ever. We now have a great opportunity to finally launch our greatest Jihad ever!" "Calm down Mahmud, and let me see your report" said the older of the two. "Catch your breath brother and have a drink while we look at what you have. The two seasoned terrorists took the papers from the young man and walked over to a makeshift table made of 2x4’s and plywood and spread the report out and studied what he brought.

After about an hour the younger of the two commanders said to the Captain, "Very good work Mahmud, I want you to return to the intelligence center and bring the satellite system online and send out the "Call to Prayer" signal so we can assess how many of our operatives have been affected by this incident." "Should we tell them to prepare for Jihad?" "Follow your orders Captain" said the older commander forcefully. The young Captain bowed and backed out of the tent without saying another word; and hurried off to where he had come from. The older commander looked at his counterpart and said, "These young ones are over eager and have no patience, don’t you agree Rahim?’ "Yes this is why it is so easy to get them to blow themselves up for the cause. I have known you along time Fahid; I know you are already having a plan in place for such a situation as we have now, what is it?" "Yes I do, but it requires patients. These American dogs never learn from their past. They have left Iraq, and began to withdraw from Afghanistan, their congress is already arguing over cutting their military budget. Soon we will be able to do as we please in this region, including driving the Zionists into the sea and reclaim Palestine for our brothers and destroy the weakling government of Iraq with the help of our Iranian brothers. They will now be forced to move more of their troops back to their soil. And their CIA will be busy chasing their own tails with all the misinformation that was planted on our great brother Osama’s computers. They never realized that Osama knew he would never be able to elude them forever, and decided to Martyr himself years ago. The last time I spoke to him he laughed that they could not find him while he was hiding in plain sight. And he planned his revenge before he was killed."

Fahid walked over to a small rusty safe that sat on the sandy bedrock floor. Bending down he entered a combination only he knew and removed a small locked metal container about the size of a shoe box. He reached into his pocket and removed some keys, and after selecting one he opened the box with it. Inside were a thumb drive and several vials of a liquid substance. He walked back to where Rahim was standing and showed him the contents. Placing the box on the plywood table he took a vial in one hand and the thumb drive in the other, and said "This Vial is the revenge, and on this drive is the plan. Soon every American Pig will regret the day they invaded our lands."

 

[sbsg2005]

And good story gets better.

 

[pinshooter45]

Thought I'd let you all know I got my ride to IVY Tech through Work One! Yea! Now you all are paying for my education with tax dollars you have already paid, or money the Uncle sam has borrowed from China!
That's going to be time consuming, but I'll do my best to keep this going, but I just may have to post less often. Don't start for a couple more weeks so I'll try to cram as much in as I can before I have to slow down.

 

[Icarry2]

Break out the NBC Suits boys, its about get real biblical...

 

[pinshooter45]

“Rahim we have been fighting alongside each other for many years, and I can think of no one else I can trust with these secrets than you my friend. I need someone else to have access to these plans in the event I am killed or captured. Of course if I am captured I would half to sacrifice myself, as would you. These plans cannot fall into the hands of the Americans or their Allies. Osama himself entrusted me with this mission,it was the last thing delivered to me by his personal courier.” “Of course Fahid you know I will never fail you or the cause” he replied. “Forget the cause my old friend that is for the young fools like the Mahmud. If we are successful we will both become very rich after we get rid of the Americans and clean out the infestation that exists in Palestine. We will move in along with our other longtime brothers and strip the Israeli’s of all their riches.” Rahim interrupted “I thought our brothers inI ran were planning to annihilate them with their Nuclear weapons they are developing” “No my friend another distraction for the rest of the world. We want their land, their infrastructure, and their wealth. Why would we want to turn that area into a nuclear wasteland for the next several hundred years? This will be much better I assure you. Once we have produced more of what is in these vials we can implement this plan, and we will control the entire gulf region. The Americans will be all but eliminated as a world power along with their allies. Then it will just be a matter of time before our organization has the rest of the world will be on their knees.” Fahid the reached for the ring of keys he used to open the old metal box. He removed a key identical to the one he used and handed it to Rahim. “Here my brother, here is your key to a rich and prosperous future guard it with your life.” A smile gradually grew across Rahim’s face that bore the scars of many years of war. “Tell me old friend” he said. Fahid also smiled, put everything back in the box, carefully locked it, and returned it to its resting place in the safe and locked it. “Come and sit and I will tell you everything.” Rahim sat down beside the makeshift table on and old worn wooden folding chair that had been cracked severely by the harsh desert environment. Fahid strode over to the tent opening summoned two guards and ordered them to allow no one in the tent, and directed them to stand far enough from the tent that they could not hear what was about to be discussed. He then secured the tent opening with several large zip ties. He walked over and sat down next to his trusted ally and said “Here is how it will begin…”

 

[pinshooter45]

Break out the NBC Suits boys, its about get real biblical...

Oh you have no Idea what your in for....

 

[Icarry2]

Oh you have no Idea what your in for....

 

[pinshooter45]

Back in Washington…

It had been several hours since the news conference, and the Speaker was beginning to show his fatigue. Hours of meetings and briefings since he was awakened early this morning was beginning to show on his face and his demeanor. He had precious little sleep due to the late night budget meetings the night before. The major meetings to plan and coordinate the relief effort had ended for the time being. He had retired to the Oval office with just the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, the national security advisor, The White house chief of staff, the head of the CIA, and the Head of Homeland security. Fresh satellite images were spread out all over the floor and the table that sat in the middle of the room. And each member was studying them intently. It was eerily quiet for such a dire situation. But a sharp rap at the oval office door broke the silence. They all looked at each other to see who would answer the knock since there was no junior staffer around to handle such duties. A second louder knock erupted followed by an anxious voice that announced "I have a new intelligence report for the President." The CIA chief stood and turned around and walked over to the door and opened it. A young man that looked only about year out of graduate school stood at the doorway holding a report in a simple pocket folder. Pages could be seen sticking out of the top and sides suggesting that the report had been put together in a rushed manner. The chief recognized the young man and asked "What is it George?" "We have some unusual chatter on the regular Terrorist networks." The CIA chief flipped through the short report. "This is nothing unusual we know that the "Call to Prayer" is simply their check in signal" "Yes sir" George replied, "but it’s the timing that concerns the rest of us." "Yes, Yes, Yes, they have probably been monitoring the news feeds and are trying to find out how many of their agents survived the quake." "But if you look further this was a worldwide alert, we there may be something more to this." George protested. "Very well continue to monitor, and give me an update if something more substantial comes up." The young analyst facial expression changed to one of frustration, but reluctantly followed his orders, and left the Oval office, and rushed back to where he had come from,

"What was that all about?" said the Speaker. "Nothing important Mr. President, just a little unusual chatter on the terrorist networks." "Don’t call me that the president is still alive, and in this situation I don’t want to be addressed that way. The press might have a field day claiming I’m power hungry, and I don’t want to give any one any extra ammunition to send my way while we are dealing with this catastrophe." "Sorry Mr. Speaker, they are just sending out their usual check in signal at a different time of day." "Fill me in" said the Speaker. "They just sent out the "Call to Prayer" It is usually sent out twice a day at the correct time in each time zone. This one went out all at once across all time zones." "How often does that happen?" queried the Speaker. "Uh never, to my knowledge Mr. Speaker." "And you did not think that was important enough to tell me?" "They are simply trying to find out how many of their operatives have been effected by the quake Mr. Speaker." "Well that may be, but the last thing we need is a terrorist attack right now…stay on top of it!" "Of course we will." the Chief replied matter of factly.

"Now back to the problem at hand gentlemen." began the Speaker. "Just how bad off are we?" "Pretty damn bad" replied the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. "As you can see in these more detailed photos there does not seem to be a bridge across the Mississippi that is still intact. "If you look here and here you can see that about half of Memphis and St Louis have been flooded by the river. The epicenter was so close to St Louis we believe that much of this flooded area has sunk into the earth and will be permanently lost. In this close up the interstate system in and around St, Louis looks to be nearly totally destroyed. This will make relief efforts very difficult. We’ll have to Chopper everything in and that will slow us down significantly. We are still trying to contact the Governor, the National Guard and Reserve units to see how close we can set up a forward command center to get relief in. If we are lucky the St Louis airport is still usable. Memphis is not any better. Some of the bridges across the Ohio are still intact up towards Indiana and Ohio. We should be able to stage from Fort Knox, and If not we can use the 101st airborne out of Ft Campbell. It looks like we should establish a major relief center in Indianapolis. We can assemble a task force at Wright Patterson and roll out I70 straight into Indy, that road looks like its intact pretty flat land. Plus we can commandeer Washington Square, an old shopping center on the east side of the city for a major relief center. We are waiting on replies from Grissom and Camp Atterbury as to how much damage they sustained. We believe they are in usable condition. The big thing is we’re going to need more personnel, we should accelerate our withdrawal from Iraq; skip the usual stay in Kuwait, and get them here ASAP!"

"Do you think that’s wise, taking war zone troops straight into a civilian relief effort?" asked the Speaker. "We really don’t have much of a choice, we’re calling up every available National Guard unit in the rest of the country, but it may not be enough. We’ll have issues because some of these troops have families in the affected areas. The plan is to try to keep them in support roles instead of direct involvement that may keep the stress level down, but some are want to get to their families. That will be that major cause of strife these soldiers have been out 1-2 years and are not going to be happy that they can’t get to their relatives that need help. But they are all well trained and I’m confident that they will follow orders and do their duty." "Let’s hope so General" replied the Speaker. "Damn it Atlas why did you have to drop it!"

 

[pinshooter45]

Back in Afghanistan…
"So Fahid what do you have in store for the Americans?" Fahid smiled and said "We will give them a nightmare straight out of their own Hollywood movies. Do you know what PRIONS are Rahim?" "No" he replied. "They are a protein that occurs normally in harmless forms but when they fold into aberrant shapes they become rogue biological agents. It then co-opts other prions into rogue prions. These are mainly found in the brain and it is rare in humans, but in Cattle it is known as Mad Cow disease. It has a long incubation period and is always fatal. And there is no known cure." "This is very interesting Fahid but with a long incubation period how does this help us?" Fahid smiled like the Devil himself about to claim a soul. "A little gift from a genetic and biological engineer formerly employed by Saddam Hussein, our friends in Iraq helped him escape and he finished his research here with us. He was working on a way to better weaponize Anthrax and accidentally developed this agent. I don’t know all the scientific details, but he was constantly re-engineering the anthrax, and injecting it into cattle to test its effectiveness. A few of the cattle were unknowingly infected with Mad Cow disease. The Prions readily attached themselves to one of the strains of Anthrax bacillus spores and that greatly shortened the incubation time. The end results were that the cattle began to rapidly develop a particularly nasty form of Anthrax and Mad Cow disease. The Engineer realized how effective this agent was when several of his assistants died of the disease. The spores mutated in to an airborne form and it was inhaled by a few that did not observe the proper precautions. The assistants developed massive open sores and fell into a deep coma giving the appearance of death. But after 24-48 hours they would awaken and would wander around aimlessly infecting anything they came in contact with. In humans the Mad Cow disease is known as Creutzfeldt-Jakob disease, but the American public has nicknamed it the Zombie Disease. Ideas planted in their minds by their own Movies will cause mass panic where ever this disease breaks out!" "Brilliant!" exclaimed Rahim.

 

[SSGSAD]

Brilliant !!!!! Outstanding !!!!!

 

[VERT]

Natural disaster, terrorists, and now zombies. This might be the perfect INGO story! When you are done you should get it published for the Kindle. I am told it is easy and free or at least very cheap.

 

[pinshooter45]

“The real beauty of this plan is contained on the flash drive Rahim” Continued Fahid. “During WWII the Germans developed the Enigma Machine to code their messages. The code was nearly impossible to break, because it had nearly 22 million possible combinations. But early in the 1930's the Poles broke the code and gave it to the British and later the Americans. But they were never 100% able to break every single message because each machine had to have the same ground setting, which was the key to deciphering the encoded message. After WWII all the allies got their hands on this technology and tried to use it but it was quickly abandoned because all the allies had access to the same information and no one could get the upper hand. After the fall of the Soviet Union and the Cold war ended one of our brotherhoods in what was East Germany stole the Soviet research and that information ended up in the hands of the intelligence agencies of the Iraqis. Saddam used it in the Iran Iraq war with the help of the Americans. It was old technology so the Americans did not care that he had this information. But during the first Invasion of our lands by the Americans and their allies many of those intelligence officers fled to Iran with the knowledge. They were turned away, and were eventually recruited by Osama and continued to refine the research and the results are on this drive. But now with the help of modern computer technology we have a code that can never be broken, because instead of the old 22 million combinations we now have billions and billions of combinations!”

Rahim began to be very excited, and could barely contain himself with the information being shared. But he kept himself under control and allowed Fahid to continue. “Each of our operatives around the world has satellite receivers encoded with their own cipher key for this code. When we decide begin the operation we send out the code phrase “Begin your pilgrimage to Mecca”, and that activates the cipher key and unlocks their initial instructions on how to release the biological agent. It also contains information on how to make more. The sheer beauty of this agent is that it is relatively stable easy to replicate. And it can be deployed into food factories where we have operatives and into the water supply or simply sprinkled onto a restraunt buffet. And the American’s and their allies will never know what hit them or break the code because each operatives cipher key changes each time a message is received.” “It is as fool proof as it is brilliant Fahid!” Exclaimed Rahim as he could no longer contain himself. The years of war fatigue seemed to almost magically melt away from his face and for the first time in many years he was regaining his youthful enthusiasm that had left him so long time ago. “Come Rahim we need to make you a backup copy of this drive.” said Fahid. “And the only place I can do that is the Intelligence center, besides I need to check on Mahmud’s progress."