At midnight, somewhere north of Kettleman City on Highway 5 a Cali Bureau of Investigation trooper approached a utility truck parked well off the freeway. The boom on the truck was augering an 8” hole deep into the ground.
The trooper asked, “What is going on?”
The “foreman”, thinking quickly, said “We had reports of a
natural gas leak. As you know, natural
gas is fifty times more potent than CO2 as a greenhouse gas. Our boss sent us out here to find the leak
and fix it.”
The officer nodded sagely and asked if they needed any
traffic control.
The “foreman” looked up and down the deserted stretch of
freeway and said, “Nope, I think we have this handled. We are quite a way off the pavement and the
traffic is pretty light. I think we are
good to go.”
The CBI trooper continued on his way.
The CBI trooper continued on his way.
The truck continued boring for another twenty minutes before
it reached the specified depth. Two
hundred pounds of ammonium nitrate and fuel oil explosive were packed into the
bottom of the hole and the next six feet of hole were packed with soil. The “foreman” set the redundant triggering
devices to detonate in two hours. One
explosion was going to deprive Northern California of 90% of its natural gas,
thus making it impossible for emergency generators to kick on.
***
Heavily laden trucks entered several petroleum storage
depots in the Bay area. Tanks had
already been assessed remotely. Infrared
cameras were used to determine the liquid level in each tank.
Teams broke up and set explosives low on the sides of the
tanks facing inward and set them high on the outward sides. It takes a long time for a tank to drain,
even if you blow a 30” hole in the side of the tank. The goal was to overwhelm the Cali emergency
response plans.
Completely outside of the Cartel war council’s plans,
Longshoremen and Mechanics gained entry to various warehouses and depots across
the northern part of the state. They had
gotten wind of part of the plan and were determined to strike back.
The warehouses and depots contained millions, nay, tens of
millions of new tires.
The Longshoremen’s and Mechanic’s efforts at sabotage were
clownishly ineffective and would have been quickly squashed except for the fact
that enormous fires were breaking out on the other side of town. The diesel oil pouring out of the 30” holes
had ignited and hundreds of acres of property were burning. It takes a long time for ten gallons of gas
to set fire to a million tires, but nobody had time to attend to the alarms
that were going off.
Another distraction for the first responders were the mortar
rounds that dropped into the transformer yards in the Bay area. The transformers were armored against ground
tremors but were not armored against high-explosive bursts 8’ above
ground. Fragile electronic parts burst
and millions of volts arced. Oil spilled
and ignited.
Guerillas do it with whatever they have on hand! :-)
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