“Yes, Jenaab,” Afshin said for the third time.
“Very well. Please bring the device to my airplane.”
Afshin lifted the bomb with a small electric winch hanging from the metal rafters and lowered it onto a pallet truck. He wheeled the bomb out the large door of the hangar, the dying man resting his hand on the younger man’s shoulder. The bomb rolled across the tarmac into the sunlight, toward the waiting Cessna.
1
“A black swan is an event or occurrence that deviates beyond what is normally expected of a situation and is extremely difficult to predict; the term was popularized by Nassim Nicholas Taleb, a finance professor, writer and former Wall Street trader. Black swan events are typically random and are unexpected.”
Ross Homestead
Oakwood, Utah
August 16, 2016
“WE NEED TO BURN DOWN the forest to open our fields of fire,” Jeff Kirkham declared as he scanned the hills over Oakwood, a suburb of Salt Lake City, Utah.
Jason Ross smiled, but his brow furrowed. “Why is it always burning stuff down with you special ops guys? That’s the same thing Chad said—burn the forest down to open up fields of fire. I brought you up here to tell us where to dig defenses, not to burn down my forest. Jesus, we do have neighbors. That’s a town down there and I don’t think they’d be happy with a forest fire.”
Jeff stared out at the foothills of the Rocky Mountains, but his eyes hardened, as though searching the hills of Afghanistan and Northern Iraq. Those places had left their mark—Jeff’s face had endured so much windburn and sunburn that he had developed a permanent squint—not to mention the deeper marks they had probably left.
“Well, then, Chad and I agree on one thing, at least,” Jeff said, dropping the subject of burning the forest for the time being. “I don’t like this location for an OP/LP,” he stated flatly. Jeff was the kind of man who didn’t flinch when it came to contradicting another person and upsetting his applecart.
Jason’s voice jumped a bit, betraying his frustration. “What’s an OP/LP?” He had already marked out locations for the defensive fortifications, based on his best guess while Jeff was overseas.
“Observation post/listening post,” Jeff explained. “If we’re going to build defensive positions, we need to start by setting up early detection. Then we can figure out fixed defensive positions, but right now we need to work on communication, roving patrols and a Quick Reaction Force.”
Jason sighed, mentally abandoning the work he had already done and conceding to Jeff’s knowledge and experience. “I only understood half of what you just said,” Jason told Jeff. “Just tell me what we need to do next.”
Jason Ross owned the Homestead, as well as the land around it, for hundreds of acres. Both men were on the Homestead steering committee, and Jeff had been invited to handle security and defense. So, while Jason actually owned everything the eye could see, he was reluctant to countermand Jeff. After all, Jeff had been asked to join the Homestead for his expertise in mountain warfare.
“What’s on top of that ridge?” Jeff pointed east.
“It looks down into Tellers Canyon, and Tellers Canyon drops into Salt Lake City, but it doesn’t matter, because that’s all Forest Service land. I don’t own it.” Jason waved generally eastward.
“Who gives a crap what you own and don’t own?” Jeff looked straight at Jason. “We’ll own whatever we want to own if the stock market keeps dropping. Let’s head up top. That’s where we should place the OP/LP.”
“Okay.” Jason surrendered. Jeff might occasionally be wrong about this kind of thing but, if he was wrong, there were probably only a dozen men in the world with enough knowledge to credibly disagree with him.
After all, Jeff had seen the Apocalypse firsthand in a dozen countries. He had trained armies—small armies to be sure—but armies nonetheless. He had taken life with every weapon known to the modern battlefield. With the help of his Green Beret buddy, Evan, Jeff developed some of the most advanced gunfighting training in the era of the assault rifle.
To say Jeff was a twenty-eight-year Green Beret wouldn’t come close to describing just how much warfighting he had survived. There were volumes about Jeff that Jason didn’t know—much of Jeff’s past was shrouded in the kind of secrecy that demanded don’t ask, don’t tell.
“Is this really going to happen?” Jason shouted over the engine of their off-highway vehicle (OHV) as they rattled and bounced to the top of the canyon.
“Is what going to happen?” Jeff shouted back. Half the time, Jeff Kirkham guessed at what other people were saying. He had been left nearly deaf in one ear from too many intimate encounters with Karl Gustav rifles and C4 plastic explosives.
“Is society really going to collapse?” Jason asked as they emerged from the oak forest. A 100,000-acre panorama opened up before them.
“It’s happened throughout history,” Jeff explained as they climbed out of the OHV and took in the view. “Just because we haven’t seen civil disorder in the U.S. in a long time doesn’t mean we’re immune to it.” He counted on his fingers. “The Revolutionary War. The Civil War. The Great Depression. We came very close to a nuclear holocaust during the Cuban Missile Crisis. We enjoy the patina of security here. It’s an illusion, a trick of human psychology. Just because we don’t see chaos in our daily lives doesn’t mean it’s not right below the surface. Plus, who says we’re entitled to safety? The rest of the world doesn’t have safety. Why should we?”
“That dirty bomb that went off last night in Saudi Arabia… You think the effects could reach us here?” Jason asked again.
“We’ll see. Almost everything you can think of comes from oil. Plastic, roads, heat. Even your OHV vehicle is eighty percent oil in one form or another. The price of oil affects everything in our modern world. If Costco closes, we’re fucked.” Jeff finished his lecture, pulling out a small pair of binos to check something out on the horizon.
Jeff had two modes: stony silence and meticulous lecture―holding forth on historical and geopolitical nuances of one thing or another. For a quiet person, he had unusually big opinions.
“Costco? What’s Costco got to do with anything?”
Jeff lowered the binos but kept gazing at a spot on the mountainside.
“We’re too weak as a nation. If we were hardened, like Afghanis or Kurds―or even our grandparents who made it through the Great Depression―a failure of the stock market wouldn’t be such a game changer. We would go back to growing food in our yards and raising goats in city parks. But we’re the weakest society the world has ever seen. If the system fails, people will go ape shit. Any cop will tell you: there is a fine line between civility and savagery. When Costco closes in the middle of the day, that’ll be our cue that the credit card machines aren’t running and we’re screwed.”
“I hope you’re wrong.” Jason shook his head.
“I would love to be wrong, but I’m not.” Jeff dialed in the binoculars again, scoping a distant target. “Who’s that?” He passed the binos to Jason.
Jason picked out two figures standing beside four-wheelers higher on the mountain. “Oh, yeah. Those guys are the Beringers. They own cabin land a couple of canyons over.”