Chapter 364: God's Servant Lands Some More Punches

Wednesday, June 6, 2007 (Continued)

Next on the itinerary was Fairchild AFB, about two hundred miles north. According to Wikipedia, home of KC-135s and some Huey helicopters.

Soon after I left Mountain Home, on my way to Fairchild, I picked up two high flying radars ahead of me. Judging by the weakness of their signals, they were a long way away, but the signals were slowly getting 'brighter' in my vision-mapped detection system. They were on the same band as the F-15Es behind me had used. It was a commonly used band, but there were fifteen Mountain Home F-15Es unaccounted for so maybe these were two of them.

I decided it would impress the authorities more if I intercepted these two, plus I didn't want fighters flying around in the same airspace as me. I put the helmet back on, adjusted the sheet so it also blocked infrared sight from the direction the radars were coming from, and headed straight up, putting an airtight silo around myself when I got to about 5,000 feet.

I thought about dogfight issues while I climbed. There were a number of factors that seemed important to me:

• Detection systems. This was probably going to decide the battle, as they should never see me while I already knew the direction they were coming from. I wouldn't be able to tell their exact distance until I saw them, but that didn't matter much. Even if they turned their radar off and I lost sight of them, a max-sized radio blob would allow me to see them well before they saw me. Provided I was careful with how I positioned the sheet, my ability to detect them was a great deal better than their ability to detect me.

• Speed. Their top speed was Mach 2.5, three times faster than mine. They could easily get away from me and stop me getting away from them. If they were flying supersonically now, I'd have to act very quickly before they were out of range.

• Maneuverability. I was ALL over them for this. I knew enough about how planes flew to know that for a sustained maneuvering duel, power-to-weight ratio was a critical issue. All modern fighters have ratio of about 1.0; maybe as high as 1.3. I had 88! Sure they could pull high-g turns, but they did that by increasing wind resistance on one side of the plane, which slowed it down. Every time they turned, they traded away speed. With their low power-to-weight ratio, it'd take them a long time to rebuild that speed. After a few 'jiggles', they'd be going so slow that they'd be lame ducks compared to me. I could 'jiggle' all day long, and then accelerate after them far more rapidly than they could accelerate away. I'm particularly good at accelerating upward, whereas they can barely do it.

• Weapons. My best defense against their weapons would be to fool them into firing at the Guardian Angel(s) rather than my much harder to see physical body. Guardian Angels could move DAMNED fast, so they'd be a hellishly hard target to hit. That should keep the pilots busy for quite a while, until I lured them into passing within five hundred feet of me. Assuming they actually fired at my body, then missiles and bullets would be the worries (bombs, not so much). Self-guided missiles shouldn't be much of a threat as radar-guided missiles would wonder what to do, and heat-seekers could be led around by the nose by heat blobs; which would be invisible to the pilot's eyes, to further confuse him. Missiles that the pilots could guide, maybe by putting a laser designator on me, would be more serious, but I could jiggle like crazy. I could also hide behind a huge area of max-sized light blobs, like I had for the sniper that had shot Ava. Jiggling and hiding is what I'd have to do versus cannon fire too. In short, they'd have trouble taking me out with their weapons. On the other hand, my 'weapon' was only a short range one, but if they got within 450 feet of me, it'd be all over.

It'd be a very interesting duel, but my money would be on me, especially in an ambush situation like this.

[[A point of explanation: The Blinks Allowed Effect means I could look away for up to thirty two seconds and NP-fingertips and blobs would not self-cancel provided they remained within my maximum range. I could send NP-fingertips out beyond my 500-foot limit, and the Effect allowed them to coast along for the next thirty two seconds before they self-canceled. That wasn't the case with blobs; they self-canceled the moment they got out of range. NP is a physical force that persisted after it got out of range, like a stone continues to exist after its thrown beyond five hundred feet. Blobs had no physical presence; they were maintained by my mentally interacting with the Universe at the desired location, which I couldn't do beyond five hundred feet. That, unfortunately, meant I couldn't send a Guardian Angel flying away from me at Mach 3.0 to have the planes chase after it. Nor could I 'fire' Mach 50 max-heat blobs toward the planes from miles away, which was a pity. That also would've made destroying air bases far easier and safer. Firing NP-propelled, long-distance missiles didn't work because beyond five hundred feet gravity exerted its influence and air resistance would slow them down and blow them off course, because I couldn't apply any corrective force.]]

I rose to 50,000 feet before the radar beams were coming at me horizontally. I lay down with my feet toward the radar sources, moving the sheet to cover that direction. I flew myself to be where I judged directly in front of the planes to be, although that was a bit of a guess so far. I also raised myself another 2,000 feet, and had a max-sized radio blob about three hundred feet above me and closer to them, to see them more easily when they approached.

I adjusted my position as my opinion of their flight path changed.

Five minutes later, my radio blob saw them, as clear as day. That made it easy to get myself lined up nicely. I started accelerating in the same direction they were flying, like the receiver in a baton-passing relay race. I didn't want to get up to even half their speed as that'd give them too much time to see me. I just wanted to have some speed on to give me more time to find where their ejection handles were.

I heard them coming, which confirmed they weren't supersonic. Had they been, I would've squeezed their fuel lines instead since I've heard somewhere that ejecting at supersonic speeds is REALLY bad for pilots.

I sped up to about 300 mph, angling down at a good angle to be just a little slow for a collision, so they'd undertake me. I carefully watched them get closer and closer, waiting to see it they reacted to my presence. My being in front of them made it very easy to imagine that they'd spot me even with my feet-first attitude and sheet in place. If they did react, I was ready with some VERY bright, high speed, and highly distracting lighting effects designed to herd them back toward me, but they weren't necessary; the pilots never saw a thing - I pulled all four ejection handles simultaneously.

#12: <THIS if my idea of a dogfight! We fight; they roll over and play dead. Goodbye $100 million worth of fighters.>

One of me, that wasn't otherwise busy high-fiving himself, grabbed the planes' sticks, pulling back to make them climb steeply, then centering them again, making it easier for me to accelerate upward after them. If they flew above my range, I'd keep climbing until I caught them, as they'd slow down and stall soon. Going up also put me above the pilots, making it impossible for them to see me once their chutes deployed, not that I thought they had much chance of seeing me anyway. By the time they recovered from the shock of the ejection, and their world stopped tumbling around, I'd be a tiny dot.

I accelerated upward, braking my horizontal movement so the airmen would fly forward away from me.

The planes easily climbed out of my 500-foot range, but they were slowing down and I was accelerating, so I narrowed the gap quickly. They hadn't gone up in a tidy formation and were separating from each other, and one of them was spinning too. They were out of control, especially because the open cockpits had to be producing some messy drag.

I got within range of one plane, grabbed its stick, and tried to steer it closer to the other one, but flying one of these things was a hell of a lot trickier than flying my little two-seater training plane. I can't write, "I was all over the sky" because there hadn't been enough time for that yet, but I was working on it.

I was still struggling with the stick, when another of my minds suggested we 'manhandle' the whole damned thing. I grabbed hold of it with a great deal of NP, stabilized its spin and got it pointing in the right direction. It weighed more than I could lift, but it only required a fraction of my total force to push it around. I didn't bother with the stick, instead steering and pushing it with brute force as it caught up with the other one.

The other plane also required some manhandling to get stabilized, and then I pushed both sticks forward to put them into a shallow dive in the direction of the next base. It took a few adjustments (mostly the brute force way), but I eventually got them partnered and semi-stable; the open cockpits presumably the cause of the bouncing around they were still doing.

I would've LOVED to put a Guardian Angel in each front seat and fly it around the descending pilots, and maybe even buzz the next base with them. That'd be a superb distraction for my next attack. Unfortunately for that fantasy, the Guardian Angels would self-cancel five hundred feet from me, along with all my ability to control the planes. The planes' tightest turning circles were probably more than a thousand feet wide, and that'd be with a pilot who knew what he was doing. The only thing I was going to do with these planes was hold them in a controlled descent so I could crash them somewhere harmless (except for the planes).

There were no other radars currently emitting that I needed to worry about, only the very long range, metal-detecting emissions that the air is permanently full of, but I didn't want to be nursemaiding these planes for long so I made their descents steeper. If they got too fast for me, I could lift their noses for a little while.

On the way down I fiddled with one of the backseat controls to find out how to use it, so I could find out how good the infrared vision is. It took about 20,000 feet of altitude, but I found a way to display the infrared vision on one of the two screens.

I flew four hundred feet ahead of that plane and looked at its screen. With the sheet in place and my feet pointing at the plane, I couldn't be seen. With the sheet removed there was a faint smudge. I enlarged the sled so it could continue to fly directly ahead stably, while I turned my body sideways on it. The image that formed would have alerted the pilots. Taking my helmet off and facing the plane was even more noticeable. I was only four hundred feet away and the obvious human shape shouldn't be so bad at more usual ranges, but it was still scary how much I stood out. I kept my body position and interposed the sheet, seeing that it hid me very well again even without my wearing the helmet. I put it back on anyway. First chance I get, I'm going to buy something dark and sheet-like that folds up tightly, to carry around with me on these types of missions.

#23: <Ahh, I just thought of something. That was a very interesting experiment, but what about if the plane's image of us was recorded in its black box?>

#All: <Oops.>

#16: <I doubt they're recording everything for an entire flight because that'd be a phenomenal amount of data. Chances are they just record the camera footage when they're doing an attack, but we should search the plane for their storage facility and wreck it anyway.>

Locating the IR camera was simply a matter of creating a small heat blob near me and keeping it centered on the screen as I moved it toward the plane until it was right in front of the camera. Then we searched the cabling from the camera back through the plane. It merged into other things, but it wasn't that hard to find a cable that ran into a small, very strongly constructed box containing electronic chips. We removed that box from the plane, opened it up, and scattered very small pieces of chips across the countryside. I did the same to the other plane just in case its camera had got a shot of me during the struggle I'd had to get control of these things.

The planes and I descended to 8,000 feet and leveled off. I didn't bother increasing their throttles, just pushed them harder and somewhat upward with more NP-points, as I could control those precisely. We flew with me looking for a suitable crash site. The terrain under me was very hilly with lots of forest. At this time of year, forest was definitely not a good place to crash two high-explosive jet fighters. I kept heading west looking for a suitable spot.

I was getting worried how long it was taking, because if any other plane came to investigate, they'd be eyeballing the two empty planes carefully, and they might see me flying nearby.

I finally found a small lake. More like a temporary widening of a mountain river, but it'd do. It wouldn't burn and there were no humans or houses in it, as could be the case with the forest. I steered the planes in an arc so they could get into a good position for a side-by-side dive into the lake. I got them oriented properly with their wings lining up with the long axis of the lake, tilted their noses down, and guided them all the way down.

Their dual impact splashed a HELL of a lot of the water out of the lake, damned near emptying it, but it rapidly refilled. Wreckage had broken off and scattered all over the place, but none of it ignited, saving me from having to scoop up tons of water to dump on any fires. It would've been a lot less trouble if I'd cut the fuel instead of ejecting the pilots, but I wanted the Guardian Angel's destruction to be total. I wanted: Shock, Awe, Respect and Terror. Plus some Big-Titted Girls please, that being something to think about for the next settlement agreement.

I headed west again. I was a little confused about where I was, as the little dogfight and subsequent struggle to recover and control the two planes had made me lose my bearings somewhat because I'd stopped keeping track of my sense of direction. When I saw the lights of a town in the distance I angled toward it, read signs to find its name, then searched through cars parked in out of the way places to find one with a map. I found where I was, where Fairchild was, got a new compass heading, and headed that way.

I'd just got up to speed when two more radars lit up ahead of me. Two more of the missing F-15Es, presumably.

The ambush had worked before, and after my experiments with the plane's infrared sensor, I had even more confidence in the wonderful effectiveness of my $5 sheet versus $100 million worth of fighters. Plus I knew where a suitable lake was to put my soon-to-be-acquired toys after I hijacked them. I climbed rapidly.

A few seconds later I could tell that the new radar sources were heading to the previous planes' graveyard, no doubt to find out what had happened to them.

Long story short: a few minutes later, there were four planes in that little lake.

#5: <I wouldn't be surprised if ejection handles get disconnected one day soon. We shouldn't be surprised if that ever doesn't work, and not have ourselves in a position where we don't have time for a Plan B.>

^

When I finally managed to get close to Fairchild, I saw two more F-15Es flying a circuit over it. It would've been rude to exclude them from the fun, and they were flying circuits in a neat formation, which made it SO easy. I didn't want to waste time trying to control the two planes, and I couldn't let them fall to earth themselves as there were many houses in this area, so I crimped their fuel lines. I'd let the pilots glide them down for me, then I'd destroy them on the ground.

There were no fighter aircraft at Fairchild, just a couple dozen KC-135s and a few helicopters. It looked like the order had gone out to evacuate the base, because everything that could get into the air was lining up to do so as fast as possible. The first few of the choppers were already rising into the air and the others weren't far behind joining them with pilots and ground crew running flat out to get that done.

I had a bright Guardian Angel rise from the tarmac at one end of the helicopter area and fly along its length while I followed it a few hundred feet above pulling fuel lines out of their sockets. One after the other all the chopper engines died. Those in the air already weren't for much longer, returning to the ground fairly quickly after their engines died. Quite roughly in a few cases, but I'd been confident that none of the landings would be so hard as to injure anyone. The impacts might be hard enough to damage a few of the choppers, but that wasn't going to matter in a few minutes.

The first KC was just starting to lumber down the runway, with the rest lined up behind it like a lumbering line of elephants. The Guardian Angel accelerated across the airfield to intercept the leading KC. The angel slowed down when it neared its destination, flying into the middle of the first plane's large cockpit by passing through the glass and pilot at a speed slow enough that the crew could see it happening. I imagine that'd give them nightmares, especially the pilot, and the story will scare the shit out of everyone that hears it.

I used several tons of force to push the cockpit's instruments and controls out of the sides and front of the aircraft. There wasn't even a yoke left for the pilot to hold. They were left sitting in their seats with the front and sides of the cockpit missing and the breeze blowing straight in. A second later, the roof was missing too. I held the three crewmen firmly, unbuckled their harnesses, and lifted them out; placing them a hundred feet away while I was slicing, dicing and then burning their ex-aircraft.

The other KCs were lined up going nowhere, blocked by the burning wreck. They weren't the sort of aircraft that could make a quick cross-country getaway, but they tried. The Guardian Angel flew from cockpit to cockpit, quickly repeating what it'd done to the first plane. There were only twenty four KCs, and it only took a few seconds to destroy each cockpit, so the most successful evaders only managed to get about twenty yards cross-country. Sadly for them, that was much shorter than their minimum takeoff distance.

Soon there was a VERY big bonfire going because they'd been quite close to each other and chopped up airborne tankers burn REALLY well.

There were the usual fire trucks, which suffered the usual fate. And when the last KC was alight, the buildings, helicopters and any Air Force cars and trucks got dealt with in the usual way too. It was just business as usual. The base didn't have much in the way of aggressive attack options, only small arms, which did the usual damage to the angel. Wiping out Fairchild AFB had been quick and easy.

^

Last on the night's itinerary was McChord AFB, about two hundred miles west. Dad's parents' lived in Seattle, only thirty miles north of McChord, but popping in for a visit after destroying the base probably wouldn't be a good idea.

McChord is home to quite a few C-17 Globemaster IIIs. At $250 million each, it was going to be an expensive visit.

Or not, because when I arrived there wasn't a plane to be seen, not even any F-15s on patrol.

#14: <Chickens! Why didn't they stay and fight like men. Men versus angel is fun, haha.>

#28: <I think we can safely conclude that the Air Force is running scared. Shall we leave quietly as if we were never here, or destroy whatever we can?>

The pattern of my movements had been fairly obvious: all the airbases around Corvallis, going counterclockwise starting from Beale in California and finishing in McChord in Washington state. That was three sides of a square around Corvallis, the Pacific Ocean being the western side. That pattern was somewhat risky, but the whole thing had been very quick, needing only about two hours from the start of Beale to now. In terms of the risk I'd been taking, Beale shouldn't really be counted because the first attack doesn't reveal a movement pattern, especially when it was so deserving of attack. It wasn't until the second or even third attack that the Air Force could've spotted that there was a pattern to my attacks, after which my risk started climbing.

By the look of how they'd responded, they seem to have suspected the pattern when I was about halfway to Mountain Home, so they'd had only a few minutes more than an hour between then and now, which wasn't time to do much. Deploy some of Mountain Home's F-15Es to Fairchild and McChord, it seemed, and get the C-17's away somewhere.

I could think of only three things the Air Force could do that worried me now: launch a nuclear missile at McChord the moment I started causing any damage to it, have snipers with night-vision goggles around the area, or put some sort of reconnaissance above McChord to spot me while I was here and follow me after I left.

The reconnaissance threat was possibly in play already, so I wouldn't let it affect my "Attack or Leave?" question. One good thing about having McChord as the last base on my itinerary was that it's very close to water, giving me the option of submerging and sneaking away if I thought it necessary.

I could search for snipers or another trap before I revealed the Guardian Angel's presence here. Snipers were a fairly unlikely threat as the Guardian Angel had taken thousands of rounds already, so a few more would seem pointless.

The nuclear option was surely unthinkable for an inhabited area, but I could minimize the risk by wrecking the place very quickly and then heading for the water as fast as possible, flying low over it so I could dive at the first sign of trouble.

I didn't think the Air Force had time to set up anything that could cause me grief. There were no suspicious radars above me, for example, and almost everything the Air Force does involves radars. They had no idea that I could detect them, so their absence strongly implied there wasn't an Air Force attack waiting for me.

Because my movement pattern was obvious now, the Guardian Angel's not destroying McChord would look weak, which Guardian Angels should never appear to be. I decided to do a search, and if all looked fine I'd wreck the place. I made sure the sheet was obscuring me all around and from above because I was sure there'd be long-range observation of this base, probably from men with binoculars through to overhead satellites. Reassured that I was covered, and careful not to pass over any lights or light-colored surfaces, I moved closer.

Searching was easy because the base was almost deserted. A few guards stationed just outside the perimeter was all. Even the tower was unmanned. The only discovery of note was that three C-17's had been left behind. They were stripped down to various degrees for maintenance. They'll be needing a great deal more of that shortly.

No snipers, no automated heat-seeking missiles, no super-patriotic base commander holding a dead-man's switch to a nuclear bomb; just a nearly deserted Air Force base. It wasn't really going to be an attack as such, more an act of vandalism.

An invisible sight blob zipped from hangar to hangar for me to do all the quiet, internal preparation that I could first, so any external reaction would get the minimum warning time. When I'd done all of that, I started setting the fires. The Guardian Angel appeared in the sky, flying around distractingly, smashing the control tower, tossing some vehicles into the burning buildings, and generally made a quick, big mess. It was over very quickly.

The last attack of the night finished about 2:15am, two and a quarter hours after the first had started.

^

Fearing any counterattack or surveillance measures the Air Force might have coming my way, I fled northwest while the Guardian Angel flew east as if going toward more Air Force bases in that direction. I hadn't bothered googling any other bases, but there must be some that way, and it made sense for the angel to head inland now that it'd taken out the base closest to the Pacific. As the angel's and my separation neared five hundred feet, I had it angle down into the ground, still heading east. It self-canceled immediately thereafter as I'd moved too far away.

I was almost positive that my body was invisible to every form of surveillance that could have been focused on McChord, and that all that surveillance would have been fooled into concentrating on the angel. When it disappeared they'd be worried about it heading east, so I imagined the bases in that direction would be scrambling to evacuate, if they weren't already doing so. The surveillers should have no way of picking me up now as I was already off the base and very rapidly getting farther away from it. Nonetheless, I would take EXTREME measures to shake any possible tail.

I headed for the nearest part of Puget Sound, only five miles away, then flew so low up Henderson Bay that I was almost walking on water, then when the Bay ran out, the 70 miles cross-country directly west to the Pacific Ocean. I submerged gently to avoid causing a splash, then headed northwest.

After a couple of hours of submarine travel, I surfaced with a water shield above me, careful to make the minimum amount of disturbance as I surfaced. Still flying upright to minimize any outline I might have through the water shield, I flew north for about an hour, turning inland near Prince Rupert, British Columbia, Canada. I flew inland to Prince George, a moderate-sized city - by Canadian standards - in British Columbia, descending into an alley just before daybreak.

I rolled the ski mask up into a hat then walked down the street until I was under a store's overhead cover while other people were walking under it too. I quickly took my hat and black shirt off, revealing my light-colored shirt. Carrying my removed clothes, I changed direction to emerge from under the awning as part of the group. They gave me some funny looks, but funny looks from them versus what the Government would give me was no contest.

A couple more activities like that, and I was positive that any overhead observation would've lost me. I walked to an area of town with less foot traffic but a decent amount of vehicular traffic. I waited until a suitable truck was driving past with no cars behind it, then I 'jumped' onto its back, letting myself into it.

I kept a very careful sight blob search going around me in case my leaping onto the truck had been observed and baddies were about to intercept the truck, but there was no sign of that. Half an hour took me far enough away that I could 'jump' out again when it was passing through a little 'canyon' where the road had been cut through a hill, so only observation from directly overhead would be able to see me.

A small amount of cross-country flying took me to an empty house on the outskirts of a nearby town. I would spend the day in it. Hearing or proximity would let me sense someone several seconds before they got to the front door, giving me plenty of time to slip out the back.

The four parents and I had discussed whether I should have any communication with them, such as my sending them an "I'm okay" message. I could use a random house's phone to dial a prepaid cellphone they'd turned on at 5am, letting it ring once, then hanging up (presuming I chose to put them in a cabin that got cellphone service). They'd decided against that. They'd be unable to help me in any way, and a reassurance wasn't worth the risk. They had a portable radio and spare batteries with them, which I'd known would work in the cabin I was going to take them to because I can see radio frequencies, so they'd be fairly sure I hadn't been shot down, especially as I'd completed a tidy circle of attacks, which was something I had warned them might not happen.

I got myself a drink of water, using an NP-cup to avoid leaving any dishes. I was wearing gloves so fingerprints weren't an issue; I just wanted to be very tidy so no one would ever suspect that anyone had been here. I settled down to watch TV.

Despite being in Canada, I had no trouble picking up American channels. The networks had all the facts:

• "At 10pm Pacific Standard Time, Steven and Felicity Anderson, parents of Mark Anderson, the resurrected boy, narrowly escaped death when their bedroom was rammed by a US Air Force stealth unmanned drone a few minutes after they went to bed." Pictures showed the mess, including where the bed had ended up. The bed frame was a mangled wreck, the clear implication being that the Andersons would've been too. Being hit by a multi-ton UAV going 600 mph will do that to you. The TV summarized our history versus the Government: my kidnapping by the DHS and CIA, my consequent death, the Army's aborted attack on our previous home, our lawsuits and settlements, including that we still had one inching forward against the CIA. That MAF had already several times publicly trumpeted and pursued Government employee illegalities was included too. The description of my families ending with: "The Anderson and Williams families have been taken into hiding by their Guardian Angel," with an unspoken but loudly obvious, "hardly surprising, with the Government trying to kill them again."

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