As dawn broke, the house veritably hummed with the frantic activity. The cats all went to the two bedrooms to escape the activity disrupting their napping. Bekka was cataloging all the faces from the memory cards Kara brought back, trying to get an accurate headcount of the hostiles. Garen had been printing out maps of the park structures so they could drop all the data onto the outlines. He was now working on blowups of the city areas, focusing on the sections surrounding where Bekka and Kara saw the glow when they were on the roof of the Center. Allyson and Angelique were at the training building doing a few different training elements.
Since Allyson had done SWAT, and Angelique was a rock climber, if only at the gym, they were assembling the ropes, harnesses, pulleys and other gear. Allyson was also getting breaching gear pulled. They were looking at things such as cutting through walls and locks, securing doors from entry and a whole host of mechanical elements.
They pulled cordless drivers and sawzalls with plenty of batteries chargers, and spare blades. Self-tapping screws for metal and wood were gathered in decent quantity. Allyson tested the noise levels of them, then getting a pillow to wrap around them to muffle the noise. This would work as long as they didn’t work them too hard, since this blocked the cooling vents.
Allyson was figuring they would do all the prep and move up, recon and stay for the mission rather than coming back to the house first. Kara had made it clear that time was people. Besides, every trip back to the house risked bringing something home they didn’t want.
Kara was translating and organizing all her notes from her trip. She was also working with Bekka developing more of the plan. They all knew it would change at least some once they got to town.
There were two trains of thought. The first was to work out of the Center as far as sleep, eat and operate. This had some serious advantages and disadvantages. It would probably be the fallback location instead of the primary as they kept working though the plans. The alternate idea, the one gaining more traction, was to find a building with overwatch close in to the main compound the badguys were working out of. If they could find an office building to work from, even better. Offices compared to apartments or hotels, would have less people. Less people meant less reason for sweeps through the building by the bad guys. They might even be able to get direct observation of the badguys staging area in addition to the mass of people they were holding. They then could confirm the numbers and develop a concrete next step instead of the notional plan they had so far. The one thing they had not been able to find was an accurate map of the sewer and storm drain tunnels. Garen figured they would be a good way to move around, and most if not all the sewage should be cleared out with the serious flushing it got draining off the water from the tsunami.
Kara was throwing out some unconventional psychological warfare stuff. She had a list of stuff to bring. Garen wasn’t sure what all the stuff was for so he had to ask.
“Why a bucket of golf balls, Kara? And if your bringing golf balls, why no putter?”
‘I figure we take the surgical tubing and make a crew-served water balloon slingshot, like you had when we were in Salt Lake. We were able to get 250-200 meters with a baseball, so I figure we could clear 300 with a golf ball. If we crank out a few from the roof at night, they won’t see them flying, no launch signature, and they will get bangs, thumps and other such noise off in a different direction from where we are. If they ignore, we have just determined their radius of response. If they keep investigating, we can get them split up, moving around and all worn out with the continuous response. And all we are out is some golf balls. We can also use the sling shot to launch other things as needed. A pouch full of the little IR strobes that fit on the 9 volts are my plan if they actually have night vision gear. We can sling a half a dozen at them, the strobing will shut down the intensifiers, making them blind, yet won’t be visible to the naked eye, then we shoot them. The cartons of BBs are to toss down a hallway to cut down on speed of running towards us in a building. I also saw a few things on your list though.”
“Well, the self-tapping screws are so we can secure the fire doors and such to deny access to stairwells and the upper floors quickly. I even think I have a roll or two of concertina to pitch in the stairwells. I have a bushel basket of those motion sensitive lights and alarms as well. I figure if we put some of the lights set to react, their night vision will be toast and any light or noise would give us a heads up on inbounds. Bekka has a stack of the ‘high school paintball team’ peel and sticks to make them think they are up against kids. I have a pile of treble hooks and fishing line to string from ceiling tiles and all kinds of places for trip lines, wait-a-minutes and such. I haven’t seen Bekka’s nasty list but I’m sure there’s some stuff we would never think of.”
After Angelique finished with the ropes and harnesses, she began clearing out Terry’s SUV. It was large enough to haul all of them and most of the gear. It was also one of the most expendable. They were hoping the building Garen was thinking of was in the right place and they could get in unobserved. It was a mutual fund company building that was up for lease the last eight months. It had a couple parking levels, which was one of the big attractions. They could roll up to the second or third floor to avoid leaving the SUV on the street to be noticed. Once it was in and parked, it shouldn’t attract too much attention on a casual sweep, if it was seen at all. They could then get in and go up several floors, set up shop, and make their final observations and plans. She was humming as she worked. It took a minute for Allyson to catch the tune she was humming.
“Making a List, Checking it Twice,……..”