Chapter 365: I Acquire the Knockout Punch

Thursday, June 7, 2007

Almost immediately after I crossed into America, when not diverting around the many missile silos there were, I was searching for the things I needed for my various contingency plans. I had several of those:

• Three different ways of flying away with my ill-gotten gains afterward: by Flying Sled, by taking over an Air Force plane, or by covertly flying immediately under an independent Air Force plane so our radar images merged. With the loot I was hoping to grab, I'd be creating a substantial radar echo.

• Hiding places if I decided to stay in the area for any reason (underwater, digging a hole and burying the bombs and maybe me too, letting myself into someone's house, etc.)

• Leaving by car, motorcycle or truck; possibly an Air Force vehicle, or possibly not.

• Hiding the loot in a good location nearby and coming back for it later.

• Whether or not to attack the base. There were quite a few pros and cons; for example, if I stole an Air Force car, I could hide its loss for at least several hours by tossing several other vehicles into burning buildings.

• I needed some more dark sheets, some large plastic bags and a backpack big enough to carry a bomb in.

I stopped to check my hope that putting light blobs inside a parked car's light fittings would look sufficiently like its lights were on, which it did. They didn't cast a very good beam because to radiate enough light they had to be larger than the usual bulb, but that didn't matter much.

I thought having to drive away was quite a strong possibility, as I suspected there'd be too many planes above me with what's called "look down radar". Those radars can track targets moving on the ground. I wouldn't personally show up on their radars, not being metallic, but my loot certainly would. When I got close to Minot, I identified several houses that had cars at home, parked in places where I could roll them silently away without anyone seeing, and with the keys in accessible places. Ditto for motorcycles. If I needed transport, a motorcycle would be good because wearing a face-hiding crash helmet wouldn't be suspicious. I could easily carry a W80 in a backpack.

Before I approached the base itself, I flew a circle around it at an average of a ten-mile radius but with a fair amount of zigzagging, covering most of the area from five to fifteen miles from the base. I was looking for good hiding places for myself or for the bombs, looking for any sign of a trap, and generally just looking. It was better to look now when there was no pressure on me. There were four planes circling above in close formation, almost certainly F-15s again, I thought. I didn't much care at the moment, as I knew neither their radar nor infrared could detect me. I'd have to take care of them later, but there was no need to announce my presence yet.

Minot AFB is isolated from the wider community. To be metaphorical, it's an Air Force island in a sea of farmland. Part of the base is a large residential area, nicely distinct from the rest of the base although quite close to it, starting about three-quarters of a mile north and northeast from the runway. I was coming from the north, so I reached the residential area first, which suited me nicely. This was going to be a very serious operation, so I put myself inside an almost airtight box to reduce the chance of any of my stray hairs floating down into the soon-to-be-crime scene. The box was only a little larger than me so it wouldn't create much air resistance if I needed to fly fast, and it had just a few small holes on the top for fresh air, and perhaps more importantly, so I could hear any external noises, such as sirens going off.

I searched the residential area to locate the items I might need, depending on which plan I ended up choosing to use. Finding them was easy because sight blobs are REALLY good at searching for stuff.

Directly east of the runway was the area I wanted to check out next: the Weapons Storage Area. I drifted south across their golf course, approaching the north wall of the WSA.

I had one radio blob searching the ground several yards ahead of me (for trip wires, seismic sensors, electric eye beams, etc.), while the other blob was higher and looking farther ahead. The high blob located a large truck beyond the far side of the WSA. It had a big box angled upward and pointing west. It was too far away for my blob to move for a good look, but I was pretty sure it was some sort of SAM (Surface to Air Missile) launcher.

I doubted it was infrared guided, as it didn't make sense to use that sort of guidance against enemies coming at you [[actually, IR seeking technology can guide nose-on attacks against planes these days. My nose's IR was blocked by my crash helmet, so it was safe]]. It was probably radar-guided, and it'd be in the same band the fighters used, which didn't worry me. Its radar was either off or radiating away from me because I couldn't sense any radar from it. I'd check it out more thoroughly when I got closer later.

The WSA had a VERY impressively strong wall all the way around it, which didn't make the slightest difference to me. The high-flying radio blob confirmed Google Earth's photo that three hundred feet south of the WSA was a very strong and secure looking guardhouse complex. Road access to the WSA required passing that detached guardhouse complex then driving north into the main gate of the WSA, although "gate" is a highly misleading word as it was a covered building, so more of a "gatehouse", or perhaps "gate-castle" would be a more informative term.

The entire WSA was very well lit, was guarded and patrolled by many soldiers, with especially large numbers of them at the detached guardhouse and the gate, and the latter also had two outward facing, manned tanks. None of the guards were wearing night-vision goggles. That wouldn't have worked as the entire area was extremely well lit. The lighting pleased me greatly because my body was never going to be in that area, so all the guards' night visions would be ruined and they'd never be able to spot me flying around overhead.

I slowly drifted closer to the north wall at an altitude of three feet above the ground, so I'd be hidden by the wall but far enough off the ground to have a good chance of not triggering anything I didn't want to trigger. When I was close enough, I sent the leading radio blob to the wall, to examine it for any sensors. It was dumber than our wall at home, only having wires running along the top of it.

Having assured myself that the wall wasn't anything special, I let myself get closer to it while I sent the radio blob through it to have a closer look at the guards and buildings. I didn't see anything that concerned me. A lot of heavily armed guards, with a surprisingly large number of dogs, a few sandbagged machine gun and small missile emplacement pits, but that was all. Nothing to worry me.

When I got within one hundred feet of the wall, I circled around it to the east - the side away from the rest of the base - still seeing nothing to worry about.

When I'd gone all the way down the east side, where to go any farther would have exposed me to the detached guardhouse, I stopped and reversed myself. I went north up the east wall, then along the top of the north wall and down the west side. Everything still looked fine.

I'd been looking through the buildings inside the walls that were within my range. The WSA was so large that most of the buildings were out of my range, but circumnavigating most of the perimeter let me search quite a few of them. Even if I'd been moving right next to the wall, which I didn't want to risk, I'd still be unable to see the noticeably more interesting looking buildings in the center. The internal buildings I had managed to see inside of were nearly all for weapons storage. The procedure was to use lots of small buildings to hold explosion-causing weapons, rather than one big building. It seemed wise not to keep all the exploding eggs in one basket. There were quite a few buildings for other purposes too: an office area, some facilities for the guards, garages for the specialist vehicles they used, and several maintenance workshops: some vehicular, some armament, and some that just appeared to be general engineering facilities.

Hiding behind the southwestern corner of the wall was the closest I could get to the detached guardhouse, the SAM launcher, and the southern wall's gatehouse, without exposing myself to any of them. The buildings were hundreds of feet beyond my maximum range, and the SAM launcher was about fifteen hundred feet away, but the land between me and them was mostly flat grassland.

I sent a radio blob as close as I could get to the front of the launcher, and it didn't detect any radar emissions. The crew were alert, but nothing was happening. They weren't wearing IR goggles either. It looked to be a non-issue.

I sent radio blobs four hundred feet toward the gatehouse and detached guardhouse, searching for any sign that either set of guys had infrared sensors going. There was no one at the windows wearing them, and no TV cameras pointed in my direction; just up and down the access road and driveway. I was pleasantly surprised that no one was using infrared detectors.

It was a small risk, but if there was anywhere which had very good all-around sensors, it'd be in the detached guardhouse buildings, so I had to get closer to look. I quickly lifted myself up a hundred feet then flew toward them, ready to flee if sirens started wailing. Nothing happened, and as soon as I was close enough, a quick look inside the buildings showed the guards to have just an ordinary level of alertness. Nor was the SAM launcher's crew reacting in any way, so that was all good. A slower search of the guardhouse revealed surprisingly few sensor systems. Our home had better sensors, which seemed incompetent of the Air Force. I couldn't think of anything likely for the sensors to be guarding against, but you'd think with 1,254 nuclear warheads there'd be every defensive measure known to mankind, whether or not it could be imagined as being useful. On the other hand, anyone other than me would have a MAJOR battle to fight their way into the WSA and God knows how they'd be able to escape with any booty, so the existing defenses were more than adequate.

Having established that it was okay for me to fly around over the WSA, I did exactly that, passing over the wall and into the area at three hundred feet AGL, heading to the center where there were several strangely shaped buildings. They had wide front doors, and the roof was a reasonable height over the front door, but then the roof sloped back and down to the ground level, like some small hikers' tents do. The implication was that these buildings didn't need headroom because they were just an access point for underground areas. If Minot AFB had 1,254 nuclear weapons, and every one of them was more powerful than Nagasaki's, then I was sure the Air Force wouldn't keep them on the surface. Quite a few of them were presumably in ICBM silos scattered around the wider area, but there should still be hundreds of them under my feet. Or more meaningfully, under the guards' feet.

I soon found out the reason why there weren't a large number of sensors around the facility: the place was built like Fort Knox inside. If the BIG underground doors were shut, you'd need a nuclear bomb to blast your way in. It was "business as usual" now though, a surprising number of workers moving around for the time of night it was, and the buildings were surprisingly accessible as workers buzzed around all over the place.

I had imagined that all the nuclear bombs would be in one building for each type, and that building would be sealed shut, but it wasn't like that at all. Mainly, I guessed, because there were far too many bomb types. From what I could see, every model of weapon came in several configurations: its normal explosive payload, a nuclear payload, a training load, a sensor pack load (I wasn't sure what that meant, but that's what some of the signs said), some with laser guidance packages installed, some had parachute options, some had choices of different tail assemblies, etc. There were so many combinations that they'd need half of North Dakota if they wanted to give each of them their own building.

I watched their operation for a several minutes, seeing how they had to swipe their cards to call an elevator, what their pin numbers were, etc. I also wanted to make sure which were the W80s with the real warheads rather than the various training options. If I ran the Air Force, I'd have had all the real bombs painted red with skull & crossbones stickers all over them, but they hadn't done something obvious like that. It was easy for me to make sure though; I just sent a sight blob inside each one. It was VERY obvious which warheads were nuclear bombs.

Having found the bombs I wanted, it was time for some light reading. I wanted to sound knowledgeable about these things, so I sent one sight blob in search of something useful in the currently unoccupied nuclear weapon maintenance area. The other radio blob was on overwatch and staying there. The last thing I wanted was a surface to air missile up my ass unawares. Or even awares, come to that. If the nearby launcher turned to point at me, I wanted to know about it immediately!

I found some sets of technical documentation inside an extremely strong looking safe. I didn't bother trying to open the safe; merely flicked through the "W80 Mod 1" material where it was. In a couple of minutes I'd learned enough for my purposes. I didn't need to know much, just enough to be able to pretend I did.

I'd seen enough of the WSA, so I moved closer to the SAM launcher, from behind it. I got close enough to read over the operator's shoulder. Its radar control panel was powered up, but the radar was not radiating. There was no indication that it was receiving or displaying IR data. No "Infrared" written on any switches, for example.

I though it likely that if there was one of these at the east end of the runway pointing west, then there could be one at the west end pointing east, which would pick me up if it had infrared, so I spent a couple of minutes carefully reading and thinking about everything that I could see about how it operated, and I was pretty sure it was radar only.

I created a zero-output heat blob in front of it, then flashed it on for about quarter of a second. Nothing happened. I decided it was probably safe, but I'd steer a wide path around it.

I moved back north, approaching the air base's main buildings from their northeast. As I got closer I saw an anti-aircraft machinegun and crew. They were scanning the sky looking for something to shoot. The guy holding the gun was using his naked eyes, a loader wasn't doing much, and a third guy had big binoculars. I crept close so I could check, and I confirmed that his binoc's were light-amplifiers. They probably wouldn't see me if I flew overhead with the sheet covering me, but a probability of 80 to 90% left a worrying 10 to 20% chance of my ass getting shot off.

They were looking up, so I dropped lower and slid closer. Fifty yards farther on was a team of two guys. On the ground beside them was one of those shoulder mounted missile launcher tubes and several missiles for it.

#27: < The defenses inside the WSA don't matter, but their having so much outside it is getting a little scary. I think I remember a movie where the operator of one of those things was talking about getting an infrared lock. We haven't even seen 20% of the base area yet, and there's far too much dangerous stuff for our body to be flying around above it.>

#15: <I'm surprised there's not more of it around.>

[[Most of the Patriot and Stinger missile systems were overseas. The few that were in America had to be spread around all the country's bases, and there weren't nearly enough for that. I'd seen the only Patriot battery this base had, positioned to cover the WSA and airbase; mostly the base since the Guardian Angel had just been destructive so far. There were more Stinger teams available, with three of them deployed here: the one that I'd found about halfway between the WSA and base proper, another halfway down the runway on the side opposite the buildings, and the last at the far end of the runway. There were also quite a few antiaircraft machineguns set up around the base. Not around the WSA as it gave out so much light that it would ruin the night vision of anyone near it (I presumed the workers needed so much light to make sure they didn't make mistakes or drop things best not dropped). The above defenses were very recent additions, as a result of last night's Guardian Angel attacks. The tanks near the gatehouse and the extra dog teams and sandbagged emplacements inside the WSA had been among the defenses added after Archangel Michael had raided Andrews AFB and Norfolk Naval Station. The Air Force's not knowing either angel's capabilities had left them taking guesses about how to respond, and some of those guesses were fairly silly in my opinion. Did they really think guard dogs would help?]]

#6: <Agreed. Let's back off and stop flying above the base. We can do a motorcycle run along it later to create more chaos to distract them with.>

I backed off, keeping low and double-checking that the sheet was wrapped around me properly. It was pinned in place between two layers of NP-plates, but this seemed like a good time to be paranoid. (Important safety tip: if you're ever intending to destroy USAF bases, make sure your dark sheet is tucked in properly.)

I went back to the residential area, gathering the additional resources I'd need for what I'd decided to do: five more dark sheets (after taking a while to find the first two, I settled for the next three being bulkier dark blankets instead), a couple dozen large garbage bags, a motorcycle with its keys, a large backpack, a large-sized Air Force shirt, and four dozen dark-colored socks. The small items I kept in their own airtight NP-box, taking ridiculous precautions that nothing of me got anywhere near them, not even a windblown hair. I wouldn't go within four hundred feet of these items unless they and I were in a sealed box and I'd keep them upwind of me as much as possible. I also found a conveniently located car, and I'm pretty sure I disabled the alarms so I could open the door later if necessary.

The motorcycle I pushed away, tested it to make sure it started, then hid it just off the road behind some of the golf course's bushes northwest of the WSA. I left the keys and shirt with it. The socks I filled with sand from a convenient sand trap, making the socks into what I think is called a "sap". I've seen them used to hit people on the head in movies and the victim invariably goes straight to sleep, so they're obviously very effective (I'm being facetious about movies, but I'll check how good saps are for real soon). Hitting people with NP alone works, but it requires a very hard push against the skull to get it to knock the person out. I worried about pushing so hard in case I did so when someone's head was at a bad angle and their neck got broken. A sap to the noggin seemed better to me, based on my less-than-extensive medical knowledge. The sheets/blankets and garbage bags I placed near the northeast corner of the WSA.

[[It occurs to me in hindsight that I never mentioned that I'd learned to ride a motorcycle. By this stage of my autobiography I've mentioned riding one several times, but never that I'd gotten my license. Ron did that as there were several dirt bikes and motorcycles at home and he was often bored. My failing to mention that demonstrates that your new God isn't infallible. That's not as bad as it seems, as I think you would have a great deal more reason to worry if your God considered himself infallible. And imagine how bad it'd be if I also considered myself "inerrant and authoritative".]]

Because I had a suspicion that not everything I've seen in Hollywood movies is factually correct, I returned to the home of the owner of the motorcycle I was borrowing. I'd borrowed his of the many that'd been available because he was alone and lived on the nearest edge of the residential area, so it was easy for me to access his place. I flew a sap in through his bathroom window, grabbed his arms and legs to pin him in place while I also expanded an NP-fingertip inside his trachea so he couldn't yell. Then I practiced hitting him with the sap, getting a feel for where on heads to hit and how hard. He had a few seconds of terror, but only a few seconds because hitting just behind an ear works very well. He was inside my proximity range, so I saw his lights go out. I hit him again behind the other ear just to play safe as the clock was running now.

I took half a second to wreck the guy's phones, then my sap and I flew back to the WSA.

The detached guardhouse just south of the WSA had security camera screens showing the inside of the WSA, but there weren't any cameras working in the opposite direction, not even in the gate-castle, so the southern guards had to be the first to go. My saps led the way with me following, to keep me downwind of the saps so they wouldn't pick up any of my stray hairs. They and I were in airtight NP-boxes too (not quite airtight in my case, so I could hear any sirens). I was being VERY careful.

There were no vehicles approaching or leaving the WSA, so I could make my move right away. All the guards in the eastern building simultaneously got a much faster version of the same treatment my test subject had: they were pinned, their voices muted, and saps flew into the room and banged them all on the heads pretty damned hard. I didn't want these guys to wake up for a fair while.