“Frank is going to ruin our practice evacuation tomorrow.” The timer on the oven rang. She looked into the kitchen. “I’ve got cherry pie, French vanilla ice cream and coffee if you’re interested.”
Chief Dolan smiled. “An offer I can’t refuse.”
She served the pie ala mode and poured two cups of coffee. They sat at the kitchen table.
“Yeah, when I heard about Frank’s demonstration tomorrow I thought you could use some support,” he said.
“I could,” she replied. “Thanks.”
“I know you think you have to handle Frank tomorrow because you’re the mayor,” he said. “But I want you to consider that even though his demonstration tomorrow is political in nature, the way to handle it is through public safety. It becomes political only if you make it political.”
“But it is political,” she replied. “That’s the only reason he’s doing this.”
“And that’s the reason you need to stay out of it. Look, the election in November isn’t his to win; it’s yours to lose. The people like you, the season’s going well, and he can’t beat you unless you give it away to him. I’m just suggesting that you don’t cooperate with him. Stay out of it. Let me handle Frank.”
She tapped her fork against the plate several times, thinking. “You don’t think people will see me as being weak if I don’t confront Frank?”
“No,” he replied. “I think people will see you as being stronger than Frank if you ignore him.”
She sliced off a slender piece of ice cream and slid it on top of the cherry pie, “That would be stronger?” she asked, cutting off a piece of pie and putting it in her mouth.
“Anger is easy,” he said. “Inner peace is difficult. It’s one of the things they taught us in the police academy. The way to control an angry person isn’t to join him in his anger; it’s to balance out his anger with peace and calm. The angrier the person is, the calmer we have to be in response. It’s not an issue of force — it’s an issue of control. The one with the most self-control wins.”
“So you think Frank is doing this just to get me upset so he can be in control?”
“That’s exactly what I think,” he replied.
“And you think this is going to work?”
“It has for the last dozen or so years. It’ll work tomorrow. Just you wait and see.”
CHAPTER 20
Billingsly studied the large map of fault lines that covered the planet like an intricate spider’s web. Very few places in the world were immune to earthquakes. It was just a matter of where and how devastating they would be.
“Okay,” Billingsly said quietly to himself. “Sichuan, China was too obvious, so something smaller. But it has to be close to something nuclear. I don’t want them to miss the message.” He cross referenced Iran’s nuclear facilities with the fault lines. He chuckled to himself: Iran has dozens of fault lines that run through the country, many of them perilously close to their nuclear facilities. How smart did you have to be, after all?
He reminded himself that our own San Onofre nuclear power plant was built right next to the San Andreas Fault line. It was currently being decommissioned, but it ran for decades where it could have been easily damaged or destroyed by an earthquake. Back then, of course, no one knew how to artificially trigger an earthquake, but Billingsly knew exactly how to do that now. Hindsight always paints a much clearer picture.
Iran claimed that all of its nuclear ambitions were for peaceful, civil purposes, yet Iran had only one civilian nuclear power generating plant, and that was built by the Russians. No other civilian plants were being constructed. That incongruence needs to be brought forcefully to Iran’s attention. He went through the data on each of the fault lines calculating how far the fault line was from the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant, how deep the rupture zone would be, and what amount of damage would result. The area had a 6.7 Magnitude earthquake late last year in Kaki, 60 miles away, but it was too far from the Bushehr Plant to cause any damage to the plant itself. No. This would have to be closer. His finger followed the fault line across the map that was closest to the Bushehr Plant. It entered the sea at the city of Bandar Bushehr. He tapped his finger on the map and smiled. This will do. The target area was sparsely populated but the main effect would be felt where the Bushehr Plant was located. There and in the gulf city of Bandar Bushehr. He prepared the encoded document for the A4 facility in Alaska with the usual directions to destroy any record of the operation immediately after executing the order. He sent the order and went about the rest of his day.
Billingsly woke to the alarm set for 2:45 AM. Jessica rolled over and looked at him, sleep still heavy in her eyes.
“What are you doing?” she asked.
“Shhh,” he said quietly, “it’s nothing. Go back to sleep, I’ll be right back.”
She rolled back over and he went downstairs and tuned the TV to the British News. This had become a ritual for him. He knew the U.S. media wouldn’t carry the news immediately after the event and would do only a minimal job of reporting after the fact. The British News, however, had interests in the area and would provide sufficient coverage of the earthquake. The event would take place at noon in Iran, which would be three in the morning in Washington, DC. It would be eight in the morning in London and would hit the prime time news slot for the British News.
At 3:07 AM, the first mention of the earthquake hit the British News desk. Billingsly chuckled. He felt very satisfied being able to wield this kind of power. He called it Thor’s Hammer, named after the mythical Norse God whose hammer could cause earthquakes. At 3:13 AM, the first mention of the Bushehr Nuclear Power Plant was made. Some damage to the power plant was reported.
“Yes,” Billingsly shouted as he clapped his hands together. “Message delivered.”
He smiled as he watched the rest of the news. Initial reports indicated seven people were dead and up to thirty people were injured.
“Okay,” Billingsly said. “Now they will take negotiations with us more seriously.”
Billingsly rationalized what he was doing. After all, when France and Germany pulled out of the NATO operation in Afghanistan, he had used the A4 facility in Alaska to punish them by moving the Jet Stream so it would bring polar air down over Europe. That’s why they’d had record cold and heavy snow fall there for the last three winters.
Billingsly smiled and spoke quietly to himself, “When you are the only Super Power, you don’t have allies — you have minions. That’s what real power is all about. You don’t negotiate, you don’t compromise, you dictate, and you punish those who don’t comply.” Billingsly turned the TV off and headed back up to the bedroom.
CHAPTER 21
Willa and Jason spent Sunday morning setting up traffic cones where expected debris fields would be. Willa had to borrow 500 orange cones from the Oregon Department of Transportation. DO NOT CROSS police tape was strung across the Village Center, marking it as a dead end zone. Jason marked arrows on the streets and sidewalks with blue chalk so people could follow the evacuation route more easily.
At precisely one in the afternoon Willa watched people come out of their homes and follow the blue arrows. That’s also when she saw Frank and his followers appear carrying signs and shouting, “Hell no. We won’t go.” Frank and his followers stood across the narrow part of the evacuation route and blocked the entire street so no one could pass.