Shanghaied - 2ACW

[James G]

126 – Maskirovka

Russians didn’t invent the concept of military deception. Since the beginning of time, when one caveman fought another, fighting has witnessed with it trickery and the art of deception. Armies have fought while disguising their true strength and what they intended to do while their opponents were led to believe something else. Feinting with the right while striking with the left, concealing a force in a forest, constructing false positions and using a fool to tell those on the other side a big fat lie has always gone on. During the Twentieth Century, Soviet military forces strategists what they called Maskirovka: a multi-dimension form of military deception combined all fields of warfare. They were very good at it, and it was a key feature of war and preparations for war both. Years after the fall of that regime in Russia, the term became fashionable abroad and the whole idea took on a mythical nature. Those in uniform around the world and outsiders interested in such things discovered what Maskirovka was and were often left in awe while the narrative that it was invented in Russia took hold. American military forces had long been doing the same thing, back since their first creations at the beginning of their country’s history: it was the same thing globally. The US Armed Forces in its many wars had used military deception just as well as the Russians ever had. Operation Fortitude South – making Hitler thing Normandy was a diversion for the ‘real’ landings in Pas-de-Calais, US Marines of the mouth of the Persian Gulf making Saddam believe Kuwait would be liberated via sea, pumping a ‘false sky’ picture into Egyptian military radars at the start of Operation Golden Eagle in 2026… that was all America’s own Maskirovka in-play. Time and time again, America had deceived and tricked its enemies abroad when fighting overseas. At home, when fighting each other, Americans with both the forces of the United States and the secessionist Democratic American Republic had been doing the same to one another since the battle began for control of the West. US forces used their own Maskirovka against the DAR once again, in Arizona during mid- to late-February 2029.

Employing an array of false radio signals and elaborate physical security measures to seemingly try and conceal the forward movement of heavy armoured forces in a ‘surprise attack’, the DAR’s Arizona Corps was successfully lead to believe that a major attack was to be directed towards Phoenix up from the Tucson area. The principal attacking force was to be the US Army’s V Corps, those troops which had so recently returned from Eastern Europe. The V Corps was being held in reserve by the United States Army North though and not even fully ready to make an attack like that after its trans-hemisphere deployment. Going towards Phoenix and trying to capture it wasn’t something that ARNORTH’s commander nor his superiors at US North Command & the Joint Chiefs wanted to see attempted. The air facilities around that Arizona city had been smashed to pieces by significant air attacks and so too had many of the transport links. Phoenix would be an urban slug-fest too with DAR troops dug in there even with parts of the city in open revolt behind them. Once it was confirmed through signals interception of their own that the DAR leadership up in Las Vegas were in a panic about the possible loss of Phoenix, the deception operation was stepped up a gear into how big it became overall with extra details attached to make it more real. Nonetheless, it was always going to be attempted anyway: the fact that the traitors who’d illegally formed their own country were so concerned about it and interfered in military affairs to have their own troops pulled from elsewhere to defend it only made that more of a worthy effort. The Arizona Corps was forced to move more assets to defend Phoenix when they received false intelligence that the city was about to be approached by the V Corps to seize it. That took away attention – some, not too much – from elsewhere where it was needed. When US and DAR forces were positioned in opposition to each other some distance away to both the north and south of Phoenix there remained a lot of focus in those areas yet the potential loss of Phoenix mattered in how the defenders arrayed their forces. The Maskirovka worked a treat.

The US VII attacked on the right in the general direction of heading towards the Grand Canyon – not as impassable as it might have seemed due to the modern age of warfare giving ‘options’ for that – as well as towards Flagstaff too. The road and communications links around that small city north of the far bigger Phoenix were captured soon enough by the 1st Infantry Division on the attack. They were all in a mess but were out of DAR hands and were afterwards to be made use of as best as possible by the US Army that had fully established itself in north-central Arizona. Interstate-17 ran down to Phoenix from Flagstaff leading to the Arizona Corps’ intelligence staff, still taken in by the Maskirovka, believing that that move only ‘confirmed’ the intelligence about the V Corps on the move. It took some time for that lie to be exposed. There was no push up from Tucson – somewhere which had been declared an open city by the city authorities but not at that time liberated/occupied – towards Phoenix from a multi-division force which was at that time still back in New Mexico forming up. The 2nd Cavalry Regiment, detached out of the US III Corps and with a supporting battalion-group of tanks for display purposed, did undertake a feint thrust yet that didn’t even get as far as the Casa Grande area due to extremely strong DAR air power employment alongside the blockage of the way ahead by the 11th Armored Cavalry Regiment. Where General Lambert and his ARNORTH threw their full weight on the attack was instead to the south. There the majority of the III Corps was sent forward on the offensive. The challenging tribal land belonging to the Tohono O’odham Nation was crossed in the face of enemy air power there that couldn’t really get at either the 1st Cavalry nor 48th Infantry Divisions properly. Friendly air cover above those advancing US forces allowed them to reach the better ground which was the Sonoran Desert. A clash occurred on the ground with the DAR’s 2nd Armored Division. The fighting erupted during the afternoon of February 23rd: each side had sought a night-time engagement rather than in daylight. The two opponents had the Mexican border on one flank and the east-west running Interstate-8 on the other. There were helicopters and drones lower down than the high-preformance jets up above. Neither engaged the other while stationary as they fought to stay mobile. Free-fire zones for fire support, lots of it, were established all over the place due to the lack of any civilians about. Full-scale warfare took place in the desert without anyone having to worry about killing anyone not in uniform. That was something that the III Corps and the right flank force of the Arizona Corps got busy doing.

For a unit no more than a month old, the Hell on Wheels did very well indeed during its first time in the fight. The 2nd Armored Division consisted of military gear and supplies taken from storage thrown together with reservists and retirees from the US Armed Forces who’d returned to uniform to fight for the DAR instead. Unit cohesion was pretty good despite the haste in assembly and morale was also high: a lot of that was due to how those serving had been isolated at Fort Irwin for so long and not seen what else was going on across their new country. Yet, alone the 2nd Armored Division didn’t fight. Away from the tankers, the mechanised infantry and the artillery units there were the combat support & service support elements. They weren’t up to the same standard. The DAR Army had had all that difficulty in getting those newly-created units ready for war and that had been why the Hell on Wheels, like other Arizona Corps units, had been kept out of the fighting further east. They were sent to Arizona when they weren’t fully ready because the need was so great. The inability of communications, intelligence, engineering and vehicle mechanical units to do as well crippled the fight for the 2nd Armored Division as it tried to fight to stop the V Corps from crossing the Sonoran Desert and heading in the direction of California. When night fell, the Hell on Wheels (on tracks in Arizona to be fair) began a retreat back towards Yuma and the Colorado River behind. The V Corps couldn’t chase them all the way to the edges of California but got far enough. Much of the 2nd Armored Division, especially so its supporting elements, was lost during the retreat. For a baptism of fire, the whole experience was devastating for them. They were left capable of fighting again, to hold the Arizona state line, but their retreat and being smashed up on the way created a huge bulge in the lines of the DAR defensive effort in Arizona. The Blackhorse Cav’ near Casa Grande had their whole flank exposed. Other newly-arriving Arizona Corps units coming into the state from their training bases along the West Coast were likewise in danger of having their flank turned and being cut off should the III Corps either alone or with reinforcements push north. Phoenix could be left as an island of resistance, cut off and left to wither on the vine, if that happened and the V Corps struck southwest too.

Lucinda Gibson arrived in Tucson while there was extensive fighting far away from that city which had fallen behind the lines. A Republican, she was the previous Arizona Governor before Kyle Harper had been elected for the Democrats in 2026 to fully cement it as a Blue state. Gibson had been fled her home state when the secessionists went out of their way to make Arizona hostile for those like her and had spent some time in DC. She returned on February 24th and went into the state’s second largest city to meet with the city council at their invitation… well, one which they were browbeaten into offering her. US Army soldiers escorted her though the escort was reasonably light. It wasn’t an invasion, Gibson went out of her way to say, but just protection for her and then the local politicians too. None of that was eventually needed. No one in Tucson put up any real resistance. Texan national guardsmen with the 36th Infantry Division would later move in, coming from the airheads held outside, and likewise weren’t opposed by anyone in uniform or not. Tucson had previously been such a hotbed of revolt against the United States but when push came to shove, there was none of that. An executive order signed the day beforehand by President Mitchell had made her Acting Governor. The legality of that in constitutional terms federally and state-wise was dubious though there was congressional support for Gibson, from the so-called ‘war Democrats’ as well, back in DC and no one was going to be taking the matter through the Arizona nor federal courts. Once in Tucson and with the authorities there co-operating, Gibson established the temporary state capital in that city. Arizona was declared to be still in the United States, it had never legally left Gibson would affirm, and gubernatorial authority came from her. She made public calls for state-wise unity, from all Arizonans despite their politics. That unity was for the United States and against the DAR with she at the centre of that.

[James G]

How the front-lines of war have moved west.
Pink areas are occupied territory.
(click on map to enlarge)

[gillan1220]

May 24, 2021 18:22:46 GMT James G said:

May 23, 2021 22:27:27 GMT Brky2020 said:

So the DAR is slowly turning into the thing they would say they are not.

Yep. They escaped from a 'fascist state' only to slowly create one of their own.

May 24, 2021 1:04:51 GMT gillan1220 said:

Yeah. It reminds me of those CHAZ/CHOP or California secession movements that don't have a clear plan what to do next.

They had a plan but the US, and the rest of the world, refused to co-operate. Oh, and the people too, those ungrateful sods!

That's the problem of creating a new country. If no trade is established, it's gonna collapse from within. Since the U.S. told another countries not trade with the DAR less they suffer economic sanctions, then the DAR is on its own.

[James G]

May 25, 2021 2:01:33 GMT gillan1220 said:

May 24, 2021 18:22:46 GMT James G said:

Yep. They escaped from a 'fascist state' only to slowly create one of their own.

They had a plan but the US, and the rest of the world, refused to co-operate. Oh, and the people too, those ungrateful sods!

That's the problem of creating a new country. If no trade is established, it's gonna collapse from within. Since the U.S. told another countries not trade with the DAR less they suffer economic sanctions, then the DAR is on its own.

Economic sanctions, even military action.
Only China offered something, which those in Las Vegas were very weary of: beggars can be choosers!

[James G]

127 – The Point Mugu Eight

The Dry Combat Submersible (DCS) was a mini-sub in the service of the US Navy and available for operations by Navy SEALs. There were only a handful in service during 2029 with one of them deployed from the Virginia-class boat USS Delaware when the submarine came close to the Pacific Coast and deployed the vessel. A pair of crewmembers and eight passengers were aboard. Two separate rendezvous were tabled in for a post-mission meet so that the Delaware could head back out into deep water while the mini-sub took the SEALs towards their target. Their delivery was perfect. The DCS took them the significant distance to land and to the correct spot. The SEALs departed, leaving their ‘taxi’ behind, and undertook Operation Fairytale. Eight of them, from a platoon with SEAL Team Four, an East Coast unit sent to the Pacific just like the Atlantic-assigned Delaware, used scuba gear to make the final approach to land and then came out of the water unobserved. Where they made it to shore was located between Malibu and Santa Barbara, to the northwest of Los Angeles. Naval Base Ventura County was where they headed to once out of the water, the portion of that DAR-controlled facility which was NAS Point Mugu. It took them some time to get there when they travelled by night when first ashore and couldn’t move in daylight. Their route was long and careful: the avoidance of eyes, human and those of drones, was the reason for the length of time it took to get them in-place. They went first to an observation point where the SEALs confirmed what the satellites were seeing. Point Mugu was home to a trio of secret stealth bombers hidden within camouflaged shelters. The DAR Air Force was flying its B-21A Raiders from Point Mugu’s runway while hiding the aircraft on the grounds of the California Air National Guard a-joining portion of the coastal military base. Only at night did those aircraft fly and they weren’t always housed in those shelters during the day – it was unknown to the US military where else they were also flying from when it wasn’t from Point Mugu – but the naval airfield on the coast was one of their temporary home bases after they had been seized from Edwards AFB ahead of the civil war starting.

When two of the B-21s flew out of their hidden base, everything happened very fast. The SEALs were impressed with how quickly the access points to the well-built shelters were opened and the bombers were rolling down the runway. It took only a few minutes. Away they went afterwards, off to drop bombs or launch missiles against United States targets within North America. Everything seemed to return to normal afterwards. Nothing outward gave the impression that Point Mugu was anything other that a military base being used rather sparingly by the DAR Air Force. Those bombers went straight out over the water rather than above land and near quiet descended upon the place from where they left the other bomber behind. That aircraft wasn’t seen directly by the SEALs but where it was hidden was. They knew it was in the metal frame and canvas-covered improvised structure just like the two others had been in theirs with all three placed next to base housing. Those dwellings were empty though and the SEALs had been told to expect that during their mission brief for Fairytale. The head of Task Force Dustland himself, a three-star general conducting the remote briefing for them when they were aboard the Delaware, had told them that and his information had been correct like it was on so much else with regards to what could be observed going on at Point Mugu. Respectfully, the SEAL commander had asked why they were being sent in and the task of doing what Fairytale called for wasn’t given to stealth bombers in US Air Force service or the US Navy launching dozens upon dozens of cruise missiles. There was plentiful intelligence and did it really need them on the ground? SEALs would go anyway and do anything – within reason anyway – for their country if called upon... yet there was a time and a place for their operations: doing the job that a stand-off strike could do was something tactfully questioned. The general told them that he wanted them to destroy those bombers as well as killing as many aircrews as possible with there being an assurance that those mission goals were met. An air strike or a missile attack couldn’t provide such guarantees. One of the other SEALs afterwards took his commander aside and informed him that he didn’t believe that. There had to be another reason why an attack from above wouldn’t be something that would work, something that they weren’t being told about.

The SEALs got ready to strike while the pair missing aircraft were off doing whatever they were doing. A trio of two-man detachments infiltrated Point Mugu leaving the last two SEALs outside in over-watch positions with long-range sniper rifles. There was security at Point Mugu in the form of DAR Marines. Those ‘jarheads’ weren’t real marines though as far as the SEALs were concerned. Instead, they were from that security battalion that had been at Bangor in Washington state guarding the nuclear stockpile there when it was taken over back in January. Without a fight, those there had rolled over and given up the mass of nukes. The unit had been broken up – why would anyone trust them to keep on guarding such weapons they’d readily given up? – with detachments spread across the West on guard duty all over the place. The SEALs who infiltrated Point Mugu knew that it was the battalion commander who gave in without a fight at Bangor rather than his marines but they still didn’t have much regard for those they easily evaded to get inside Point Mugu proper. Several exfil routes were selected and the plan of action to deal with any conceivable situation was followed. The SEALs then waited for the missing B-21s to return. That wait wasn’t that long. Everything sprung to life just ahead of the two inbound bombers and in they came one after the other. Once down, they taxied fast up the runway towards where their shelters were, at that corner of the base not used by the DAR Navy but supposedly only a transport unit of the California Air National Guard. The two empty shelters were opened up ready to receive them and get them out of sight. At the allotted time, when everything looked ready, the SEALs struck. They did just what they had been sent to Point Mugu to do. Using single shot, man-portable anti-armour projectiles in the form of AT4s (similar to an RPG) the two B-21s which had just landed where taken out. Those bombers had avoided missiles and stealth fighters while in the air yet on the ground they were blown up by cheap yet dependable low-tech weaponry. Billions of dollars worth of the very best aircraft ever built were so easily destroyed. The third bomber was no safer in its shelter. The SEALs smashed in there and threw a couple of satchel charges underneath it. Shouts of ‘fire in the hole!’ came before the third and last bomber was destroyed as well. The DAR Air Force no longer had a stealth bomber force capable of repeating anything like its recent attack to devastate the Pentagon.

Security marines were engaged with several of them setting off carefully-positioned anti-personnel mines before they managed to get into action. A stand-by accommodation facility for B-21 aircrews, where they rested right next to where their aircraft were so if called upon they could race to get into them, was attacked by two SEALs using their SAW light machine guns and throwing grenades into sleeping quarters. The aircraft which those aircrew flew were all destroyed but almost a dozen of them were killed without knowing what was really going on. Aided by the snipers doing their best from afar, out of Point Mugu went the six SEALs who had gone in. One SEAL had a serious wound to a hand after a bullet had gone clean through but that was the extend of their casualties. They’d taken out three priceless aircraft and killed dozens upon dozens of the enemy. The getaway was clean too. They made it out of Point Mugu and towards the rally point. When a DAR drone was getting ready to lift off and try to track them from above, it was taken out by a lone shot from distance before it could get off the ground. A fuel truck was also snipped at and the blast from its contents did wonders to aid the SEALs in their escape. They went back to the shoreline and into the water to meet the DCS and, ultimately, the Delaware too. Their mission would later become one of legend. Those eight SEALs at Point Mugu had pulled off a first-class operation and gotten away clean after doing so much strategic damage to their opponents. In later years, there would be a book and talk of a film too about the whole escapade.


There were other Navy SEALs active on the Pacific Coastline acting against the Democratic American Republic. More SEAL Team Four operators were sent to cause chaos around San Diego to keep drawing attention towards there. The multi-faced deception about a possible US landing there using paratroopers and marines out of Hawaii was continued. That came in many forms – ‘intercepted’ communications and naval manoeuvres mostly – though the SEALs there did their bit too. In addition, a whole platoon of SEAL Team Five remained up near Bangor. They had been in Alaska when the rest of their unit went over to the secessionists in the DAR and later made that jump into the Olympic Peninsula to keep watch upon the strategic missile submarine at anchor partially submerged within the outer reaches of the Puget Sound. That boat was the USS Nebraska as far as those SEALs were concerned though it had been renamed the DARNS Las Vegas by the DAR Navy. A full load of Trident missiles, each with multiple independently-targeted nuclear warheads, was aboard the Las Vegas. The SEALs were there to observe and prepare for action against the boat should the need arise. For several weeks, those watching the submarine reported-in that it was still where it was. The day that Point Mugu was struck at though, there was extensive activity which they were able to see. Minehunters were active and the boat prepared to set sail. With haste, an emergency message was sent out via a burst satellite transmission requesting permission to strike. The time window was short for them to act. They were told not to though. Instead, the SEALs there were to use other equipment that they had with them, the non-lethal kind, to guide an air strike reportedly coming in from a carrier. Those jets didn’t show up. No bombs nor mines fell from attacking aircraft. Out away from them, past un-primed weapons they’d laid, went the Las Vegas without the SEALs there knowing what had gone wrong. Those men and women up there in the Puget Sound missed the only opportunity that they had, one given to those down at Point Mugu to also eliminate such significant enemy weapons of war.

Minister for Defence & Security Eleanor Rawlings gave the order for the Las Vegas to set sail. The Council of Twelve signed off on that deployment to put her out in the open ocean, and risk an attack coming during that which could possibly turn the situation into a runaway nuclear war scenario as they had long feared, following the elimination of the B-21s. A major dispute had occurred during their deliberations, one where a lot of things long unsaid were spoken aloud. Personal animosity had been displayed by certain members towards others in scenes which Rawlings knew had been long in the making. She, as General Fuller did too, pushed and rushed the leadership to get that submarine to sea less it be disabled or destroyed while exposed. That had been going on for a long time and permission was only given after that attack at Point Mugu and then the argument among Council members. Other bad news had also come at the same time, something which had helped sway those unsure of the wisdom of the deployment that they really had no choice. Right after the stealth bombers were destroyed while on the ground, some of those US forces from Hawaii which a recognisable lie (in her opinion and that of Fuller too) had suggested were going after San Diego had instead struck on the other side of the Pacific. Guam had been the scene of the landings which went near unopposed. Guam and the Marinas was the eleventh DAR state to join their nation with that larger island being the key component. There were few DAR military forces there at that outpost in the Western Pacific but a submarine, the DARNS Hampton, was nearby off-shore along with a few aircraft on the ground and recently-raised Territorial Guard militia. The submarine was sunk and the militia had faced fully-trained, combat-blooded US Army paratroopers who’d conducted a landing. Rawlings was told that it wasn’t a parachute jump but rather an airmobile operation following Green Beret action to open an airhead. Regardless, Guam was at that time being overrun. Hawaii had been lost by the DAR with much of Colorado, most of New Mexico and growing portions of Arizona too falling to those supposedly ‘liberating’ the West.

Getting the Las Vegas to sea had to be done. The ‘options’ discussed about what those could mean over the matter of whether they should later decide to employ them had caused all that uproar among the leadership. Rawlings had just wanted the boat at sea. Options, the ones which came with the missiles aboard, were for later. Those Tridents were soon aboard the Las Vegas when it disappeared into the depths of the Eastern Pacific ready to be called upon if an option to ensure the independence of the West was to threaten to use them. No attack came upon the boat as it made its way out. There was protection on-hand for that from aircraft, ships and a friendly submarine. No knowledge within the DAR military high command was of those SEALs though they did detect a US Navy submarine which was chased off without either side managing to spill blood. Then there was the lack of action too from the USS Theodore Roosevelt. Northwards that carrier had sailed at speed after previous victories against the fledging DAR Navy much further south. The carrier had stayed far offshore when avoiding DAR air power out of California and Rawlings had feared (correctly, though she didn’t know that) that it was heading towards the Pacific North-West. The Las Vegas got to sea fast but not fast enough for a broadcast to have been made by that chased away US Navy submarine. Rawlings didn’t know why the Roosevelt didn’t launch an air strike. The carrier could have, should have Fuller had told her, but it didn’t. It took some time but later, when their ballistic missile submarine was at sea, were they told by the head of the Directorate of State Intelligence that that appeared to be a case of ‘Glow-worm Plus’ beginning to show itself.

That computer virus had meant that Point Mugu wasn’t bombed and why the Las Vegas while it was getting to sea wasn’t either. The United States was unable to use the very best of its military firepower where it was greatly needed.

[gillan1220]

Great chapter! Now that the DARNS Las Vegas escaped, the DAR now could hold the USA hostage in a similar manner in The Man in the High Castle when General Witchcroft told John Smith the American Reich could declare independence by using nuclear weapons.

[James G]

May 26, 2021 5:04:47 GMT gillan1220 said:

Great chapter! Now that the DARNS Las Vegas escaped, the DAR now could hold the USA hostage in a similar manner in The Man in the High Castle when General Witchcroft told John Smith the American Reich could declare independence by using nuclear weapons.

Thank you.
Nukes, the use of or the threat, has been an option for the DAR since its UDI. That sub could have fired where it was and there are other weapons.
However, its president is a noted passivist and she doesn't want to fight a conventional war let alone a nuclear one. In DC they know that. The United States want to liberate the West and the DAR wants to keep its independence. Neither can be done with nukes being used and the leadership in each know that. Use on American soil is just what no one sensible wants to do.
What sailing that SSBN does though is gives the DAR 'options'. They believe they are being assassinated - two governors on the Council have died - and they are losing the war. A sub at sea could have any orders, those in DC will fear, and that will limit how far they can push things. It will make things dangerous now for the US to keep on doing what it is. Its movement too is part of a power play by those who - stupidly - don't think that using nukes could be the very worst thing. 

[James G]

128 – Grounded

The US Air Force’s fleet of B-2A Spirit stealth bombers had been grounded starting Valentine’s Day to be followed by the larger force of F-22A Raptors starting on February 25th 2029. Keeping the secret that it was impossible for the former to safety fly was far easier than the case with the latter. The B-2 operations were secretive and also selective too. Where they were flying from, their targets and everything about the bombers was out of view from almost everyone else unless they were directly involved in sending them into action. When it came to the F-22s, that wasn’t the case at all. They too were stealth aircraft yet had a greater presence in the skies during the Second American Civil War. The force was split up all over the place from Alaska to Hawaii, from Colorado to New Mexico. They flew missions with by themselves or alongside other combat aircraft. The F-22s were tasked to keep the skies clear of enemy fighters and also range ahead hitting high-value airborne targets such as AWACS aircraft, ELINT platforms and airborne tankers. Once they became absent, notice was taken. Questions were asked about why they weren’t showing up due to how much of a vital role they played. The grounding of both types of US Air Force aircraft was classified as Top Secret yet the news of them being missing from the taking to war to the Democratic American Republic that others were making got out soon enough, especially in the case of the more numerous F-22s. It was just too difficult to hide when it came to keeping no one from finding out about all of that.

The issue with the B-2s had started when one of those returning from a bomb run over Nevada – it had struck at NAS Fallon and the DAR Navy aircraft using that base – had crashed on final approach to Wright-Patterson AFB in Ohio. The 509th Bomb Wing had moved to Ohio at the beginning of the fighting after Whiteman AFB in Missouri had been attacked and had been making much use of Wright-Patterson. A dozen miles out, the flight computer within the bat-shaped black bomber ‘fizzled’: it went on the blink effecting all systems. The auto-pilot then kicked in, something that refused to be turned off when that was tried manually, and sent the aircraft in a nose-dive towards the Great Miami River (big name, less of a waterway as that might seem) just to the south of the city of Dayton. The ejection systems for the two crew worked though only one of them survived. At first, what exactly had happened wasn’t something that the US Air Force could be sure of. The pilot had told investigators his version of events but there was doubt with that because it just didn’t seem possible. When the following night another B-2, that one flying over Nebraska heading for targets in distant Oregon, crashed in a similar manner then it became apparent that the survivor from the first air crash wasn’t ‘confused’ nor ‘emotional’. Both aboard the second bomber ejected safety and confirmed the matter of the flight computer going on and off, and then the autopilot taking full control to send the aircraft towards the ground. The 509th Bomb Wing was a unit at war and a previous accident, nothing malicious about it, had happened during the fighting due the high tempo of operations for those in the air flying the bombers and those on the ground servicing them. Two crashes in seemingly identical circumstances a night apart where the aircraft had smashed itself into the ground on purpose had stopped the flights though. Through investigation of the other B-2 bombers when they were on the ground at Wright-Patterson found unknown lines of code within the computers. That was cleared, the flight computers were restarted and another diagnostics check done. The same code reappeared. Those noughts and ones were identified as being what had caused the two crashes. Nothing could get rid of the infection via a virus that each and every B-2 had. If they went airborne again, it was predicted that at any given moment during their flights, the aircraft would be smashed into the ground. Everything was removed in terms of the flight computer and associated systems. Spare units were put in and a check was run. At first, there were no signs of that virus. A reboot was done... and those lines of code reappeared. The software of the aircraft’s systems, not just the flight computers themselves, had been infected. The code kept reappeared no matter what was replaced. It replicated itself and popped up again when all efforts were made to get rid of it. The B-2s couldn’t fly, not with the near certainty that they would come crashing down either before or after a bomb run. Everything to do with the flight systems had to be replaced with it all removed, and isolated from contamination, in each aircraft. What was new going in wasn’t all at-hand though: it needed manufacturing. There was the issue too with the massive task of doing that. And thus, the B-2s were grounded while that complete internal replacement of everything that allowed those bombers to fly took place.

With the F-22s, similar problems erupted almost at once with multiple aircraft flying over Arizona and New Mexico. The 1st Fighter Wing had moved its operating base from McConnell AFB in Kansas to the recaptured Kirtland AFB outside of Albuquerque. All three squadrons had aircraft up when they received a download of the radar picture from an AWACS aircraft flying over Texas once they ‘checked in’ under its combat control. Minutes after that, all sorts of issues cropped up for the pilots flying those fighters. Their radar screens were first filled with hundreds of imaginary targets, doing all sorts of things and disappearing before reappearing. It looked like a False Sky picture, something that DAR Air Force might have been doing to them. Yet it wasn’t. Their own computers did that. Those flight computers then started shutting down some systems while engaging others. It was done in a random fashion. Pilots made mayday calls and sought safety on the ground. Most of them got down though a couple crashed. A few others were shot down when their haywire computers activated electronic systems that the enemy could spot or opened weapons bay doors to ruin their stealth configuration. The 325th Fighter Wing had a squadron of F-22s (another of F-35As) flying over Arizona later that same day as the 1st Fighter Wing had all of those issues. Soon after connecting with the on-station AWACS, near identical problems happened with their F-22’s flight computers too. The aircraft were ordered to make emergency landings with all but one making it down safety. To be up in the sky when the aircraft’s systems were making a serious effort to kill the pilots was what none of them wanted.

It was the first version of the Glow-worm virus which grounded the B-2s. When the Pentagon’s own intelligence operation to secure the original source code for the virus was uploaded after being declared safe into the computers there, the US Air Force themselves inadvertently spread the second version. Wider it went too, striking faster as well. Back when Glow-worm had first been detected, it degraded – slowly at first – guidance systems for cruise missiles before it eventually moved to bringing down B-2s. Those at the National Security Agency who had built the weapon, one to use against foreign adversaries but had conducted a secret test run on the US Armed Forces, and then had it stolen from them by the DAR, had said that the virus would eventually move to that stage. The doom-laden warnings were that at the end game, warships and even tanks would be trying to self-destruct. As crazy as that sounded, that was what Glow-worm was designed to do. It was a booster which the DAR had given to the Pentagon, not a ‘pure’ version to be studied to look for how to overcome it. Like wildfire, it had spread outwards without being noticed – just like the first time – and increasing its lethality. No one on the other end was controlling its spread because the virus was an AI-driven weapon of war. It just needed a target which it knew how to navigate through. The NSA held no responsibility for that second wave: the DAR had crafted that themselves… but they had invented the damn thing in the first place and then allowed it stolen from them.

When the F-22s were grounded, there were many voices of doubt raised that that had been caused by Glow-worm. A different form of enemy action was raised as a possibility. Such a foolish notion held no water though. Quickly, what had happened was realised with no doubt washing away the truth. Those at the Pentagon – at Raven Rock to be fair – had been taken in by a DAR intelligence operation of quite the magnitude. Back to that defector key people from Project SPEEDWAGON went. When questioned, he understood what was happening. He laughed in the face of the red-faced general in the interrogation room with him. A physical altercation occurred, one that left the defector badly banged about. Of course, he wasn’t and never had been a defector. The recent death of his wife and son, not long before he ‘defected’, was something he blamed on the Pentagon and thus the United States. His revenge was personal, undertaken at the behest of the new country which he served. Should his fingernails have been pulled out, if he was beaten to death or if he was thrown down the deepest & darkest of holes never to be seen again, nothing could change what had happened either. He, and especially those who had sent him on his mission, had done what they had without any way that the United States could change that. What had one day might have been done to the armed forces of China, Russia or maybe Iran had instead been done to those of the country which created a weapon worthy of being held alongside in future history as the first use of gun powder, the rifled barrel, the dreadnought and the hydrogen bomb.

It wasn’t just the US Air Force having significant problems with their fancy weapons of war. The US Army operated the Tomahawk land-attack cruise missile and their accuracy had been degraded enough to make them useless. The same problems spread to their SM-6 surface-to-air missiles and there soon became the issue of those projectiles self-destructing in-flight. The US Navy’s cruise missiles couldn’t be used either with a growing fear that soon enough their own SM-6s would be worthless. Beyond missiles, when the US Air Force’s F-22s were grounded, two different carrier groups, in two different oceans, had temporary ‘fizzles’ of their computer systems. The aircraft carrier USS George H. W. Bush operating in the Norwegian Sea, helping to protect European NATO allies from the Russian threat, had everything die for a period of eleven excruciating long minutes. A recent downloaded intelligence data dump had brought aboard Glow-worm. The same happened to the USS Theodore Roosevelt operating in the Pacific though for more than an hour everything went on the blink aboard that carrier. Air missions were about to be launched at that moment of the computers all going down to undertake a strike over Puget Sound where aircraft involved would drop a whole load of mines to block passage out of a DAR Navy missile submarine. That strike didn’t get off the deck from the carrier which had been left dead in the water.

Glow-worm kept on spreading, faster even that those who – twice – unleashed it even understood it would. The US Air Force looked at their Minutemen ICBMs and, while they could detect any malicious code, knew that it wouldn’t be long before they too were useless. Then what would defend the United States from the gravest of all threats?

[gillan1220]

Glow-worm is like SkyNet. Holy shit. I guess some defense experts would have pointed out the U.S. could have used Glow-worm during the Taiwan conflict. Would have hurt the PLA even more.

[James G]

May 27, 2021 1:39:30 GMT gillan1220 said:

Glow-worm is like SkyNet. Holy shit. I guess some defense experts would have pointed out the U.S. could have used Glow-worm during the Taiwan conflict. Would have hurt the PLA even more.

Good comparison. In its AI actions it is like that though the inspiration is Stuxnet: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stuxnet 
They wish they had it then. They also wish that the NSA hadn't done a secret test against the Pentagon beforehand, to allow the worm-virus to navigate better, so that when it was employed it didn't know exactly what to do!  

[James G]

129 – Quit

Excellent quality propaganda directed against citizens and soldiers of the Democratic American Republic was released late in February 2029 to try to bring about the collapse of that illegal country and its war effort from within. Funded specially by Congress and produced by the wartime-raised Public Information Agency (PIA), broadcasts of United States propaganda were sent towards those in the West. Multiple mediums were used to get the message to those who had found themselves within the DAR either by accident or design that the war was lost and that the cause which they were fighting for was the wrong one. It was white propaganda: its source was clear and the truth was told. Other government agencies were doing separate things, with both grey and black propaganda, respectively partial truths and outright lies, but what the PIA sent to the West was honest. That it might have been but it was hardly unbiased. The messages were designed to play on emotions and only told one side of things. Getting people to openly oppose the war and for those in uniform to quit was the desired outcome. There wasn’t any wish by those behind the propaganda for those on the receiving end to consider what was happening with the DAR was wrong yet might have some justification. Instead, it was a case of everything about that nation ruled from Las Vegas was morally wrong on every level and needed to be opposed from within.

The propaganda beamed towards those in the service of the DAR Armed Forces came over hi-jacked communications links as well as the odd ‘leafleting attack’ too. With the latter, a select few flights of US Air Force lone aircraft would bombard DAR service-personnel with paper rather than bombs: on more than a few occasions, troops in the field used such material for cleaning their behinds where there were shortages of the right paper for that yet they did often read what was printed first. In the main though, it was electronic communication that was used to reach DAR soldiers. Radio messages and internet pop-ups urged them to give up the cause for which they were fighting for. The messages were delivered often in the form of words coming from former fellow personnel who had defected back to the US Armed Forces. Colonel Guillermo Cuarón Cacho became a major part of that effort following the surrender of his unit in New Mexico. He was a well-presented and articulate California Army National Guard officer. Cuarón called upon those out West to do as he had done while explaining in detail as to why he had done what he had. In other broadcasts, there was quite the range of people involved in them. None of them were actors or were telling lies. Enlisted personnel, volunteer part-timers and senior officers all explained the mistakes they had made in believing that the DAR cause was the right one. Their eyes had been opened though and they urged the same to be done by their former comrades-in-arms. Quit the war, the messages kept on saying, either by yourself or with your units. Desertion was encouraged as well should defection not be something that those listening would want to do.

The basketball superstar Cleo Brady made appearances in propaganda directed towards citizens of the DAR. He was a point guard for the LA Lakers though hadn’t played for them – and their games had been cancelled too – since he had left Los Angeles back in January. Brady was the sport’s Most Valuable Player and a household name across both the United States and the DAR. Born in Connecticut, the young African-American had had a fantastic career before secessionist activity in the West angered him and he had gone back East. The previous year, he had been a high-profile campaign surrogate for Maria Arreola Rodriguez in her race for the presidency. Brady had long been an outspoken progressive and MAR and he had made many appearances together too when he wasn’t off speaking at events on her behalf. In the propaganda broadcasts he made, Brady assured those out in the West that he hadn’t turned his back on his political beliefs nor all of those people he had spent his career (and cash) supporting with his extensive charitable donations. What he was a supporter of too was democracy. The Democratic American Republic wasn’t a democracy: it had moved to become fascist, a complete betrayal of the people it claimed to represent. He wanted all of his fans, and those people who didn’t even like basketball either, to show their opposition to the regime in Las Vegas in any way possible. Liberate yourself, Brady urged them, even with small steps.

Using information supplied from the US Intelligence Community, all of it true too, there were PIA broadcasts directed at the people of the West which concerned Felix Jesus Carrillo Morales. Carrillo was no household name like Brady was. His face and biographical details were shown, and then there were allegations made against him. Those were of the businessman's illegal drug smuggling empire, the blackmail hold he had over Governor Pierce from California and how it had been Carrillo who had arranged for the death in federal custody on Shauna McCleary before the New Year. It was (briefly) explained that the criminal Carrillo had Pierce under his thumb and had murdered McCleary while she was then being held on federal charges so he could use the public outrage at that death for political and personal gain. Carrillo was said to be still smuggling drugs across the border, causing death and misery both sides of it with that activity. He was alleged to have manipulated public opinion and inflamed tensions by overseeing the death of McCleary – a mother of young children left as orphans too – so he could expand his business empire. The callousness of the man’s actions, and how he had wrapped Pierce around his little finger, was laid out in broadcasts directed at further DAR citizens in a different manner to what Brady’s ones did. More claims came that Carrillo’s private security company, the Vaqueros, had undertake terrorist actions in the West before independence was declared with those heinous murders being blamed on others to encourage the argument that the DAR needed founding. Carrillo had tricked so many with what he had done. Evidence to back up those allegations against Carrillo was presented as well. Californians, everyone in the West in fact, was asked to consider whether they wanted to support Pierce after he allowed all of this to happen and then helped to found a country using the circumstances of such infamy as those.


Far away from the West, the FBI made a string of arrests in Washington DC where a spy ring was broken up. Nine suspects ended up in detention in the first round of simultaneous arrests before another five were taken into custody in follow-up activities by agents within the capital district and the further afield into Maryland, New Jersey & Virginia. Three further suspects evaded immediate capture though significant effort was deployed into located them so they too could be brought into custody like the others. A couple of them confessed to their activities after being caught red-handed. Treason against the United States in wartime was a death penalty offence, though that ultimate outcome could be averted by cooperating with the federal government against co-conspirators. Those who weren’t willing to cooperate, or who were too late to the party to give up any useful information after a long period of refection, weren’t offered the same leniency as those willing to talk straight away. Those with in the spy ring were involved in gained secret intelligence of a political nature and supplying that to the DAR. Their targets were the FBI itself in addition to government departments & agencies such as the Departments of Energy and Transportation as well as FEMA and the Federal Communications Commission. One of them was involved in gathering intelligence upon the Senate Armed Services Committee too where the DAR had tried to get at top secret information from Congressional figures. The FBI had those confessions plus a whole load of further evidence of their activities. There was video surveillance of brush-passes, confirmation of electronic data theft and the surveillance of dead-drops where more information was also passed on from person-to-person. Getting the intelligence out to those on the other end had been done by those spying upon their own country and the FBI could prove how much of that had been done as well. Confidence was pretty high that that spy ring had been thoroughly smashed. There was a shut down of secret political intelligence coming out of DC to end up in the hands of those in Las Vegas, so said the FBI Director when he reported to President Mitchell and the National Security Council following the wave of arrests.

Taking down that pipeline of information back to Las Vegas was just one source for the DAR though. They had other networks, ones not so widespread as that one and thus likely to be broken open once exposed. Working inside the Defence Department – though not the Pentagon itself following the missile strike against it – and also the Department of Homeland Security where people betraying their country. The DAR had someone at the CIA and two more at the NSA as well. Unbeknown to him, the president himself was in regular contact with someone feeding intelligence back to the West in quite the personal betrayal. Those who spied against the United States and sought to aid its enemy did so for a whole variety of reasons. The ones which the FBI caught in their round up worked for the DAR either willingly or, in two of the cases, unwillingly: they were being forced to do so using blackmail. Politics was the motivation for most of them though money, a sense of self-righteousness and (in the case of one) a desire to see an end to the war no matter what. The same motivations were among those others which were still active and unknown about. There were a good number of people prepared to act against the United States while pretending loyalty so they could further the aims of those who had left the union and were fighting against it. They were unwilling to quit doing that unless either stopped or they witnessed the ultimate outcome which they wanted to see occur.

[gillan1220]

I'd imagine alternate history forum in this timeline would come up with the following:
- What if MAR really did become president only to be found that she is not a natural-born American?
- What if MAR's campaign adviser did not say "So what if she is a Mexican?"

On the other hand, right-wing outlets would blare anti-leftist, anti-SJW, pro-populist propaganda to the DAR. Lastly, what to Eastern Democrats think of the DAR?

[James G]

May 28, 2021 3:53:09 GMT gillan1220 said:

I'd imagine alternate history forum in this timeline would come up with the following:
- What if MAR really did become president only to be found that she is not a natural-born American?
- What if MAR's campaign adviser did not say "So what if she is a Mexican?"

On the other hand, right-wing outlets would blare anti-leftist, anti-SJW, pro-populist propaganda to the DAR. Lastly, what to Eastern Democrats think of the DAR?

Good choices with those there: I like them.
Maybe too:
What if Governor Cook from Florida wasn't so damn determined to correct the mistake voters in her state made?
What if Walsh hadn't tried to defend Taiwan? What if Walsh had been removed in that cabinet coup days before his term of office was up?
What if the FBI & DEA knew about Carrillo, and the CIA didn't keep that secret for their own reasons?
What if Winter Storms Ulysses and Ted had hit the western half of America earlier?
There are likely loads more I could think of given time.

I agree. Independent propaganda efforts, even the crude and actually unhelpful kind, going West will be made in abundance.
The rest of the Democrats have disowned those out West. They called them Jacobeans, as well as traitors, to hopefully make voters forget the connection. The secession, civil war and wartime actions are seen as the worst disaster the Democrats have ever faced: some in their party are calling for a name change (the name survived ACW 1, Jim Crow and so much more but this is just too much).
The top-level of the party are acting as War Democrats and supporting the war to restore the union while shutting down noise from lower levels who argue that while the DAR is wrong, the Gov is still in the wrong too. No matter what Democrats in the East do, even if Senators & Congresspeople were on the frontlines with M-16s in their hands, Republicans and the right-wing media are still tearing them to pieces in unjust guilt by association. They can support the war all they want but still get criticised. Every legitimate concern expressed by a Democrat about how the war is going is met with howls of 'treason!'. The Republicans are having a field day.

[James G]

130 – Enhanced interrogation

Boatswain’s Mate Noel Reed was tortured by the United States Government.

Not a single hair on the head of the former US Navy SEAL was harmed though. The torture wasn’t of a physical nature. He wasn’t waterboarded, neither did he have his privates hocked up to an electrical mains supply nor had his fingernails pulled out. The deserter who had joined the American Insurgent Army in 2027 and gave that terror group his all wasn’t put in stress positions and he wasn’t subject to any other direct harm against his body. Instead, the torture was psychological. Enhanced interrogation methods from the War On Terror era of the Noughties and early Teens were put to use though without the infamous waterboarding being a feature of that. Reed was subject to extensive sensory deprivation at times – white room torture – and then everything would change up with sensory overload done instead. While the latter was happening, when he was barraged with bright lights, intense vibrations (his whole cell shook) and the rotten-most of smells unleashed to target him, Reed had to deal with an absolute horror of his: Teen Pop. Headphones were placed over his ears while recordings of the utmost pathetic attempts at making demo recordings by wannabe young stars were blasted into him at full volume. Heavy metal had once been favoured against Middle Eastern terrorists yet Teen Pop was used against Reed. When at other times he was left in complete darkness with no sounds, no smells and nothing else, he was delivered the blandest food at wholly irregular hours. Efforts by him to try and sleep properly were thwarted by the deliberate disturbance of that, the lack of visual cues that it was night-time and that irregular feeding. He hadn’t have any human contact. There was no one who communicated with him directly who he could place as a person, who he could put a face to. His meals were delivered by a mechanical device, the sensory deprivation & overload was done remotely and when it came to interrogations, those were likewise done without any true human interaction with him. A computer-created voice asked questions of him in a ceaseless fashion until those on the other end were satisfied. The specially-designed cell which Reed was held in was fitted with an ‘internal wash’ function where it, everything inside it, and Reed himself were bathed in water without any warning of that coming. The temperature inside was turned up and down at will. Reed was inside a chair and secured to it. Meeting his human needs was done while in that chair, one which moved around his cell without any input from him. It spent the majority of the time having him positioned in the seating position yet it would lay him down flat and even position him upside down. Like with everything else, Reed had no control over when that would happen.

Absent of anything invasive against him, so much of his treatment when held at the black site in West Virginia known as Location D by the Department of Homeland Security was something out of a science fiction horror movie. Everything was designed to break him. He had been trained in SERE, the SEAL version of that too, and had spent a lot of time as a wanted man fully committed to a murderous cause which required quite the mental character. Adversary was something the Reed had always met head on and overcame. His initial detention at Location D hadn’t broken him where he got the ‘standard special’ treatment for high-value captives. Where he ended up was build for someone like him though, those who it was realised would take a lot to break. Before him, others had broken and given up what the DHS wanted form them when subject to what Reed eventually was. Just like them, Reed did too. It took some time but he eventually gave up the will to resist any more when faced with the seemingly timeless, endless psychological pressures that he was when strapped into that chair and on the receiving end of the hell that was unleashed upon his mind.

Everyone breaks under torture in the end. No one can hold out for good, not matter what inner strength they possess.

Reed started talking. He’d refused to say anything beforehand, about any subject at all. To put an end to all of the mental anguish that it felt like years which had had been suffering from, and to break his vow made to never give up on the cause of the AIA, he began answering questions put to him. He betrayed his fellow comrades-in-arms who had fought for the same ideology as he did and told those who questioned him everything that he knew. He had human contact when doing that. There were interrogators who sat and listened while he related his political views and defended his behaviour. They didn’t interrupt him during his long monologues where the apparent justification for all that he done were given. His excuses might have turned their stomachs and inflamed their patriotic passions but, because they were experts in their fields, they shut that down and let him talk. With all of that, came what they were really interested in: the terror network which Reed had been such a shining light in and the identities of those else involved within the AIA. When the AIA had first shown up – before Reed had started murdering vice presidential candidates, Cabinet members, Members of Congress, government officials… oh and a whole load of innocent civilians too –, the motives and the actions of that group had flummoxed the DHS, the FBI and the rest of the US Intelligence Community. The cause which they had been fighting for and the future utopia foreseen by members had been utterly insane to hear about. Reed wasn’t the first important AIA figure who’d been captured and broken though. It had been all heard before, just described in a different manner from different men and women. He said all that he did about that to those who were thus unsurprised at it all. What they wanted to hear was the ‘good stuff’, the details about AIA members and activities which he knew about.

The terror group was created and manned by military and intelligence personnel who had extensive experience of fighting insurgents in occupied territory overseas. AIA people had been involved in fights against the Taliban, Mujahideen of various incarnations, Al Qaeda, Islamic State, Abu Sayyaf, the Islamic Brotherhood and so on. Their methods of fighting a war on American home soil, against the US Government, had been taken from how those groups fought within their own homelands. Combatting the organs of state against all odds, trusting no one and a pure dedication to the cause in the face of everything thrown against them wasn’t for everyone. Only those whose commitment was certain and were up to the task had every made it with the AIA. They fought like those foreign groups and defended themselves just the same too. The AIA attack in Phoenix during October 2028 against the FBI field office hunting the terror group was a classic example of such a thing. So too was the breaking down into cells doing their own thing without central command: not just isolated from each other but independent of orders for their terror activities too. Traitors to the cause, real and suspected, had been brutally killed often with them sent on a fatal last terror mission first. The AIA hadn’t acted like a rebel group fighting oppression seeking to win allies or public support. There had been the purposeful targeting of innocents among their activities not with a careless disregard for life but instead the desire to maximise those casualties. They didn’t want public support, even sympathy or understanding: they were just held bent on bring everything down in their twisted sort of anarchism to ‘liberate’ the American people from the mighty Big Brother which was the federal government.

When Reed talked, those who listened to his idealogical ramblings and excuses for his actions also took their time to question him about what they really wanted to know. When he provided names, dates and places, that was what they were really interested in. The thing was though that they needed to know if he was telling the truth. While it was a universal truth that everyone broke under torture given a long enough timeframe, many of those who did didn’t tell the truth. Critics of torture, even the non-invasive kind practised against Reed and others at hidden black sites such as Location D, had always argued that under torture, those who it was inflicted upon would say anything to make it all stop. Partial truth, half truths and even lies would come from those utterly desperate to make all of the pain stop. Even if they knew that their falsehoods would be exposed, and the torture would return, lies would still be told due to the desperation within to see no more pain, physical or mental. Big, complicated lies would be told by some aware that there would be a return to the torture to delay that. Thus, that was why, among the more impassioned moral arguments, torture was the subject of such opposition. Interrogators would be tied in knots and there would just be a helpless circle done with a return to the torture. That wasn’t always the case, some people broke for good and told the full truth with nothing omitted, but the onus was on those holding them to try and work out whether the particular detainee was in either the first or second category.

There was one name among many which Reed gave those those who held him at Location D that caused those holding him to be unsure whether he was deceiving them or fully cooperating. It was clear that he had no wish to return to the torture but it was unknown whether he was leading them on or not. If he was lying, it was one of those big & complicated lies so feared that a detainee subjected to torture would tell so as to dumbfound those who had inflicted that upon them, protect the cause which they were still allied to and ensure than any return to pain would be long coming… maybe even never. The DHS had to consider that Reed had anticipated one day being captured even if he had no idea of the circumstances of how that would go. He could have constructed and rehearsed a lie to be ready to unleash that when all other hope was lost. Moreover, it could be a subconscious thing in his case. They had done things to his mind that no one should ever have to suffer and Reed might not even be fully aware that what he revealed was even false due to the state which they had reduced him too. The name was the identity of ‘K’.

There was no public face of the AIA. No one was releasing video or audio statements from the top of the AIA to encourage its member’s actions, threaten the enemy nor make a call to arms. Whether it was one person or a group of people at the top, no one in the US Intelligence Community had ever known since the AIA had sprung onto the scene during the very late stages of the Years of Lead. Low-ranking people taken into federal custody had referred to both being at at the top instead of the other: there was either a single mastermind or a leadership cabal. The considered opinion, more likely a Scientific Wild-Ass Guess (SWAG), had been formed that K was just the one person. Detractors of that SWAG declared that that was likely to be an AIA deception… but they too made their own SWAG there. No one knew. Reed said that he did though. He gave the identity of whom he said K was. That name wasn’t of someone anonymous, some one without a public profile. Right up to the top of the DHS went Reed’s revelation, all the way to Admiral Miller at the top of the US Government department. He’d been out to Location D – a portion of the West Virginia Army National Guard’s Camp Dawson fenced off for DHS use – on the day when Reed arrived to have a look at the country’s #1 wanted terrorist. His interest in Reed was significant and the interrogators had been under immense pressure from him to get results. Miller was told the reputed identity of K.

His jaw dropped in disbelief… before his mind starting connecting the dots and seeing how that all fitted into place.

[gillan1220]

I'm sure Reed was tortured with annoying songs like I'm Sexy and I Know It by LMFAO, Friday by Rebecca Black, and Albatross by AronChupa. The interrogators could even use the Filipino twisted genre known as budots on repeat (sample here, warning ear rape coming). Even someone as tough as Reed would break. He is a fallen angel just like the Capitol Hill rioters. I'm even more curious who this certain "K" is.

May 29, 2021 14:29:29 GMT James G said:

What if Governor Cook from Florida wasn't so damn determined to correct the mistake voters in her state made?
What if Walsh hadn't tried to defend Taiwan? What if Walsh had been removed in that cabinet coup days before his term of office was up?
What if the FBI & DEA knew about Carrillo, and the CIA didn't keep that secret for their own reasons?
What if Winter Storms Ulysses and Ted had hit the western half of America earlier?

Even more:
What if the US Constitution was amended to let naturalized Americans or dreamers to run for office?
What if Walsh ordered Glow-worm to be used against China?
What if World War III erupted over the Baltics while America suffers a civil war?

Unfortunately, the genie has all been out of the bottle now. The fact that MAR, a naturalized American, almost made it to the White House just strengthened the birther movement even more. Forget the 44th President conspiracy theories, MAR's dilemma was correct all along although she was unaware in the 39 years of her life.