January 14, 2015
11:00pm
Tel Aviv, Israel
“That was a wonderful meal, Ephraim, you make me want to stay longer,” Hawkins said to his host as he gazed out the window of the high rise apartment near downtown Tel Aviv.
“You are always welcome here for as long as you want to stay my friend,” replied Ephraim Ben Ami, currently the Assistant Director, Mossad. “I am looking forward to meeting your friend, Peter Wallis. Our dossier on him reflects a very accomplished and formidable man.”
“He is all of that and a great believer in Israel’s right to peacefully exist. I know you two will like each other when you meet,” asserted Hawkins. “But back to the business at hand, have you picked a location in Yemen from which to send the message?”
“Our man has selected a location in the desert about thirty miles northwest of Sana’a. It is almost on the border of the rebel controlled area and the government controlled province,” answered Ben Ami.
Hawkins took leave from his friend and sometimes comrade in arms and began the long journey back to St. Louis, satisfied that the desired communications shortly following the events of April 4 would be flawlessly carried out.
March 21, 2015
2:20pm
Santa Monica Municipal Airport
Santa Monica, California
The Beechcraft Super King Air slowly taxied into the hangar and shut off its engines. Four people departed with their luggage and began loading into a waiting Range Rover. The pilot, Paul Marcus, stopped by the hanger manager’s office for a few words before joining his passengers.
The pilot and owner, Paul Marcus, just wanted to let the hanger manager know that his aircraft would be picked up on Friday, April 3, to be flown to an airplane customizing company called Planefitters in Las Vegas. Marcus signed the release documents and left the name of the pilot and crew that would be taking his airplane to Las Vegas. Planefitters would perform the customizing of the cabin and keep custody of the aircraft until Marcus returned from his sailing trip to Hawaii. Marcus advised the manager that he and his guests would not be returning from the Hawaii trip until sometime around the first part of September.
Paul Marcus had become very wealthy by starting his own software development company and going public in 2012. At the age of thirty-two he had amassed a fortune of over three hundred million and could afford the expensive hobbies of airplane and yacht ownership. He, along with his girlfriend, his cousin and her boyfriend, were planning to sail to Hawaii and visit the individual islands as the mood struck them. Paul and his girlfriend had just flown up to San Francisco to pick up his cousin and her boyfriend and now had returned to Santa Monica. In the morning they would all depart from Marina Del Ray on Paul’s ninety-foot yawl named, “Soft Seas,” and head west towards the Hawaiian Islands. Since he was going to be gone for several months, Paul had decided to get his airplane renovated to add some of the latest creature comforts to the cabin.
March 31, 2015
4:15pm
Beverly Hills, California
Andreas Dumont was, as usual, screaming at his staff about the preparations for the catering job scheduled for the upcoming Saturday evening at the Bel Air mansion of Bettina Streicher. “No no no, that caviar is just atrocious and we’ll be laughed out of town for serving it, call the supplier and tell his lazy ignorant ass to get his best Beluga over here by close of business today or I’m done with him!” bellowed Andreas Dumont. At forty-two years old, Andreas had become the top caterer in Beverly Hills and somewhat of a celebrity himself. His well-heeled clients were unaware that he had once been known as Izzy Weinberg in his birthplace of Chicago. He grew up as the son of a delicatessen owner and had left the Windy City behind at the age of eighteen to make his fame and fortune in Hollywood. Luck and some hard work had brought him to his current station in life and he relished being the “Caterer to the Stars,” as the local and national food magazines referred to him. The affair at Madame Streicher’s this weekend was strictly for the movers and shakers, posers and social climbers need not apply. After dressing down the subordinate who was in charge of providing the wine, Andreas turned his attention to the guest list. The list made him drool with anticipation since so many of the rich and powerful was included.
“La Bettina,” as she was known in Hollywood circles was an absolute pain to deal with, but her access to powerful people made the catering of one of her events a much sought after and prestigious piece of business for any caterer. Bettina Streicher had been a huge star as a singer and actress and now at the age of sixty-eight she stayed in the limelight by holding highly publicized events for the rich and famous. This party would be small by Hollywood standards as only fifty people were invited. The security would be extremely tight as some very important people other than celebrities would be in attendance. The guest list included:
Janos Stavros: A multi-billionaire who funded many projects and candidates of the political left. He would be solicited to provide even more funding for the cause of the evening.
Hannah Fondelais: At seventy-six she was no longer a diva and the large number of her plastic surgeries gave one the impression of a raccoon who was permanently smiling, but she still commanded publicity and had her own fortune to offer. She had come a long way from the days when she had been known as Hanoi Hannah for her opposition to the Vietnam War. Somehow she had avoided treason charges despite giving aid and comfort to the enemy.
George Compton: The political director of the National Education Association.
Jonathon Goldfarb: A retired hedge fund billionaire who was in the process of handing out tens of millions for any candidate and project that would save the planet from the threat of fossil fuels.
Devon Clarke: A Hollywood heartthrob who had suddenly become an economic expert due to the recent substantial wealth provided by his movies. Despite not even possessing a college undergraduate degree, Clarke considered himself an expert in international trade, environmental science, and income inequality.
Harold Viner: The executive director of the Vanishing Planet environmental advocacy group.
Lucille Aberost: An eighty year old dowager who just couldn’t find enough worthy left-wing causes to fund with her inherited fortune. No one noticed the irony her of anti-business crusade that she pursued with the money left to her by her grandfather who made his fortune in the timber business.
In addition to these luminaries there would be senior staff members from both California Senators and the Governor. Three Assistant Secretaries from the US Departments of Labor, Housing and Urban Development, and Education would also be in attendance.
This gathering was designed to kick off a massive fund raising effort for the 2016 election cycle. The results of the 2014 elections had not pleased this group of people and they were determined to change the results for 2016. Despite having some different agendas, all the attendees believed in the greatness of government and the evils of the free markets. Life was just too important to leave to the everyday decisions of the slobs living in Boise, Muleshoe, Oklahoma City, Moline, Louisville, or Knoxville.
March 31, 2015
4:45pm
Las Vegas
David Swenson, sales manager for Planefitters, opened the email from his client, Paul Marcus, and was disappointed to learn that Paul was postponing the cabin upgrade to his King Air 350. Paul stated that he would be out of pocket until September and wanted to make a few changes in the upgrade. Swenson was comforted with the knowledge that this wasn’t a cancellation of business but only a postponement. Paul would probably spend even more money on the cabin upgrade that was originally specified. He then called the pilot and co-pilot that he had scheduled to go to Santa Monica to bring back the King Air 350 and told them of the change in plans. The Collective had been thorough.
April 3, 2015
4:30pm
St. Louis
Lawrence Carson nodded approvingly as he read the report on his desk. He was reviewing the last quarter’s
numbers on asset forfeitures. Lawrence, “Larry,” Carson, was the United States Attorney for the Eastern District of Missouri. The forfeitures were the result of the enforcement of the Civil Asset Forfeiture Reform Act which allowed Federal, State, and local law enforcement agencies to seize property of citizens without the niceties of due process.
So far the Federal Courts had not seen fit to throw out the act for violating the Fourth Amendment’s prohibition on unreasonable search and seizure, the Fourteenth Amendment’s dictum of due process, or the Constitution’s Appropriations Clause found in Article 1, section 9, clause 7.
Carson was pleased with the pace of the asset forfeitures in his district and noted that he was leading all other US Attorneys in the amount of annual forfeitures. The Federal Government was collecting well over a billion dollars per year and the funds were placed in the Department of Justice’s (DOJ) Asset Forfeiture Fund. The DOJ was free to disperse money from this fund without any approval from Congress. The Federal, State, and local law enforcement organizations saw civil asset seizures as a good substitute for taxpayer approved funding. The violation of citizens’ constitutional rights did not enter into their thinking.
Carson closed the file and headed to the parking lot at the Federal Building. He was anxious to get on the road to Paducah, Kentucky. Carson had planned a weekend fishing trip to the Land Between The Lakes in Kentucky. He was an avid fisherman and owned a small cabin and boathouse that he frequented on weekends and holidays. With any luck the smallmouth bass would be biting this week. Now divorced, Larry Carson spent most of his free time fishing. He did not have a lot of free time since he was ambitious and married to his job. As much as he liked serving as the US Attorney, Carson had his eye on a bigger job in Washington, DC. The high rate of asset seizures in his district was getting him noticed by the right people in Washington. The Lambert-St Louis International Airport was a gold mine for seizures as many people stopped in St; Louis for connecting flights to other parts of the country. Carson made sure that Federal agents paid special attention to anyone making a connecting flight to Las Vegas because those travelers were likely to be carrying cash.
Carson started his car and headed out into the St. Louis traffic. He had already packed his fishing gear so he could begin the three hour drive direct from his office with no need to stop by his house. His departure was duly noted and one of the Collective’s vehicles spotted him on I-64 and began following as Carson headed east, stopping for gas and a quick meal at one of the plazas.
This vehicle was replaced by another as Carson made the turn from I-64 onto I-57 south. A third vehicle replaced the second as Carson turned off of I-57 onto I-24 near Paducah. A man in the third vehicle made a call to the three man team waiting at Carson’s cabin on the lake.
It was now close to eleven pm and Carson unloaded his gear and supplies from his car. The cabin was dark and in an isolated area of the lake. He was looking forward to a stiff drink and a good night’s sleep before firing up the outboard in the early morning and going after those wonderful smallmouth bass. He would get the good night’s sleep but not the drink. As he entered the cabin Carson felt a sharp stabbing pain in his neck. That would be all that he would remember until he regained consciousness several hours later near Bardstown, Kentucky. The team of operatives worked quickly at Carson’s cabin. The supplies were unloaded and placed in the refrigerator, the fishing gear was placed in the small boat, and several beer cans were opened, drained, and placed in the wastebasket. Finally, a vial of blood was taken from Carson. The blood was splattered on the seat of the boat. The boat was driven to a small isolated cove six miles away and run aground on some rocks near the shore. The operatives returned to the cabin in their boat, loaded it up on a trailer and disappeared without a trace. At 3:45 am Hawkins received the message: “Miscreant now under control at designation.”
April 4, 2015
9:10am
Santa Monica Municipal Airport
The pilot and co-pilot walked into the office of the hanger manager and deposited several forms that authorized them to take Paul Marcus’ airplane to Las Vegas. They also showed their identification and FAA licenses which the manager made a photo copy of and added to the transfer file. “Are you going to file a flight plan?” asked the manager. The pilot replied, “No, it’s a perfect VFR day and only a short flight. We’ll have the manager of Planefitters call you when we arrive at his facility to confirm that we arrived safely.” The hanger manager nodded and directed the pilots to the waiting King Air 350. It had been fueled and undergone a safety inspection.
The pilots quickly finished their pre-flight checklist and contacted the tower for taxi and takeoff instructions. They were airborne by 9:50 am, heading northeast towards Las Vegas. The hanger manager received a phone call from the Planefitters manager at 10:45 am confirming the arrival of the Marcus aircraft. It would be months before the identities of the pilots, their paperwork, and the confirmation call from Planefitters would be determined to have been falsified.
10:16am
Fifteen miles northeast of Barstow, California
Mojave Desert
The pilot eased the King Air 350 onto the hard and flat surface of the Mojave Desert and slowly taxied towards an outcropping of boulders. The plane disappeared under a camouflaged net near the boulders. Six men emerged from three vans parked under the camouflaged netting and began working. First the cabin of the plane was reconfigured, utilizing the convenient Flexcabin option that this model employed. Seats were folded into a flat surface. Four cylinders that weighted two hundred pounds each and were five foot long were strapped carefully into the passenger cabin. The TAMES unit that Snyder and Hawkins had obtained from their October 2014 visit to the Mole Works was imbedded into the flight controls and communications systems in the cockpit. After two hours of testing and re-testing the TAMES unit was operational. As an added precaution twenty pounds of thermite had been placed in the cockpit. The men then got comfortable and settled in for the wait until operations were scheduled to start. The risk of detection was minimal due the effectiveness of the camouflage and the fact that nobody would be looking for the aircraft for at least five months.
9:11pm
George Washington National Forest
Three miles east of Lost City, West Virginia
Three olive drab vans marked, “US National Park Service,” pulled off of Highway 59 onto a gravel road. One hundred yards up the road a man got out of the lead van and picked the lock on the gate that was designated, “Authorized Vehicles Only.”
The three vans continued up the road after securing the gate behind them. One of the men remained secluded near the gate. The vans drove for another half of a mile and stopped in a flat area that was surrounded by wooded hills. Two men with night vision goggles scanned the area for any signs of human presence. There was none. Five men began unloading sixteen MAIMS units that were configured in the three fuselage mode that totaled nine feet in total length. Within thirty minutes all sixteen MAIMS were inserted into their launch tubes and connected to the fire control computer in the lead van. The automatic launch sequence would begin in three and a half hours.
7:30pm
The home of Bettina Streicher
Bel Air section of Los Angeles
The guests had begun to arrive and Andreas Dumont and his staff were well prepared. The finest of food and wine would be presented in the most tasteful and elegant of fashion. Andreas loved the meeting and greeting of the guests and the compliments paid to his preparations. Reputation and access was everything in his line of work and tonight he would have the opportunity to impress some very important people. He glowed with anticipation. By 8:45 all of the guests had arrived and were in the midst of partaking of the food, drink, and conversation. Bettina had called everyone together in the ballroom at 9:15 to make her pitch for supporting candidates and legislative programs that would relieve the commoners from making their own decisions and instead give that power to the elites on the east and we
st coasts of the country. The challenge was to keep the people in flyover country in check. The guests were in unanimous agreement with Bettina. They all considered themselves to be morally and intellectually superior to the masses. One common denominator among the guests was the complete lack of the humility that comes from realizing that one’s tenure on the planet is indeed tenuous. Common people realized this as it was part of their everyday existence, but to the elite the thought that anything bad could happened to them in their privileged lives was unthinkable.
9:29pm
Mojave Desert
The King Air 350 taxied onto the flat ground of the desert and began a thirty-four hundred foot takeoff roll. The TAMES worked perfectly and the aircraft headed southeast and started a slow climb to eleven thousand feet to clear the San Gabriel Mountains before entering the Los Angeles basin. The TAMES monitor in one of the vans beneath the camouflage net showed all systems operational and functioning according to the programmed commands. The camouflage netting was disassembled and loaded into the vans. By 10:16 the vans had reached Highway 58 and turned east. They would later pass through Barstow and take I-40 east. The vans would disperse in the early morning hours at Flagstaff, Arizona.
9:58pm
The control tower at Santa Monica Municipal Airport
The FAA air traffic controller spoke excitedly into his radio, “Unidentified aircraft please identify and confirm your heading.” For the last two minutes the control tower had been trying to communicate with the blip on their radar screen to no avail. Suddenly there came a chilling response in Arabic, “We are Allah’s Lightning sent to strike the unholy.” The towers at nearby Bob Hope Airport and Los Angeles International Airport both picked up the transmission and notified Homeland Security immediately.
Patriots Versus Bureaucrats Page 14
