The Gambit

XV

Back on the west coast, more specifically, the Pacific Northwest, elements of Captain Sassani’s second wave roamed the Columbia River Basin. The single greatest exposures up here are obvious: the multitude of dams along the Columbia and Snake rivers. The greatest of these, the Grand Coulee Dam, is monstrous. To this day, there is only one larger concrete structure in the world. The volume of water that this dam holds is literally mind boggling. If this dam were to fail, the impact it would have throughout the entire Pacific Northwest is unimaginable: Virtually all of the irrigation for the entire state of Washington east of the Cascades comes from this dam. Without the water from the dam, most every farmer in eastern WA would be out of business. In addition, the power plants for this dam alone generate over 6,800 megawatts of electricity — more than three times the amount of electricity generated from the Hoover Dam! Electricity from the Grand Coulee Dam alone is supplied to eleven western states: Arizona, California, Colorado, Idaho, Montana, Nevada, New Mexico, Oregon, Utah, Washington, and Wyoming!

Clearly, for Rafsanjani, Grand Coulee Dam posed a tempting target all by itself; putting a hole in the Grand Coulee would make a huge statement. However, this dam in particular, is exceptionally well guarded, and especially would be in the wake of the first attacks on the west coast refineries. The armed guards here are not shy about brandishing their automatic weapons and reinforcements would not be far off. A separate assault force would be needed to carry the entrance to the dam and then they would need to hold it while a tremendous amount of explosives were set within the dam. His men could easily do this, and it would make a huge statement to the world, but there was a better — and an easier — way and one that would have an even larger impact.

Thermite; sometimes called TH3. According to chemists, thermite is a chemical composition of metal powder, fuel and a metal oxide that, when ignited, undergoes an exothermic reduction oxidation reaction. To the common lay person: thermite is a combination of rust and aluminum powder that, when properly formulated and ignited burns extremely hot — four thousand degrees hot! Add in some plaster to cast the metal powders and an igniter and a thermite “grenade” of sorts is the result. Thermite, however, is generally not considered an explosive; rather, it is an incendiary and is usually considered very stable. Moreover, it can be made quite easily in any backyard garage in the country as all of the components are readily available at any hardware store. Since thermite burns so incredibly hot, the proper placement of a thermite “grenade”, or charge, will easily cut through steel that is more than three-eighths of an inch thick.

Each of Captain Sassani’s forty individual teams consisted of a one ton pickup truck, two passengers, and a full load with apple crates stocked full of thermite plaster charges, each roughly the size of a large apple; a select few others had smaller ANFO charges as well. Rafsanjani had selected thirteen dams and Captain Sassani had teams assigned to each one of these. He had tasked seven teams to the Grand Coulee Dam and six more to the Chief Joseph Dam, both of which were clear up in north central Washington. Sassani took five teams with him as he had a special target.

For Sassani, though the Grand Coulee Dam presented an awesome target, and he assigned his executive officer, Lieutenant Mahdi Akhtar, to that task, another of the dams provided its own unique opportunity, though not nearly as well known. The Dalles Dam, located at The Dalles, OR, offered a very unique target indeed, known locally as “Big Eddy.” Big Eddy, officially known as the Celilo Converter Station, serves as the northern terminus of a 3,100 megawatt high voltage direct current power line; the southern terminus is located just outside of Los Angeles. This line carries enough electricity to serve close to three million households in LA and, at peak summertime capacity, provides almost half of LA’s Department of Water and Power’s electricity!

Sassani’s team of five trucks headed up US 197 through central Oregon. He pulled his team over at a view point outside of Tygh Valley for one last review with his team. At two thirty in the morning, he knew there would be very little traffic so he wasn’t too concerned about being noticed by anyone.

“As we approach The Dalles, there will be a sign indicating the route to the Celilo Converter Station. There’ll be a locked gate here but no guards. Lieutenant Nazari, Sergeant Abedini and Sergeant Kadivar will follow my team. Nazari’s team and mine will park our trucks inside the Big Eddy complex.” Unlike the rest of Sassani’s team, Lieutenant Nazari and his own truck were loaded with four 55 gallon barrel ANFO bombs — the same type of bomb used by his compatriots to take out the refineries.

“Abedini and Kadivar, you and your men will set your charges amongst the towers surrounding Big Eddy. Once you’ve set your charges, come back and pick us up. Sergeant Pahlavi, you will need to continue on the highway for about a kilometer until you see Columbia View Drive; it should be the second right after we get off of the highway. This will take you through a small residential area and will eventually take you away from town. As you proceed up the hill, you will see the towers — some of these will actually be right alongside the road. In all, there will be approximately fifty towers your three teams should target. Work quickly and remember to use the night vision goggles; we need to work in total darkness. There shouldn’t be any guards but we don’t want to raise any suspicion. At precisely 4:00 a.m., we’ll blow the two trucks at Big Eddy. Once the rest of you see this, blow your charges as well. Sergeant Pahlavi, once you and your team are done, meet us where you turned off of the highway. You should be finished first as there are only about ten towers where you are headed. Turn in behind us once you see us pass the turnoff. Three of us will take the freeway to make our escape; I don’t want all of us to retrace our route on the way back. Sergeant Abedini, you and your team will retrace our route and will follow up this attack and place your remaining charges on the towers outside of Maupin. Any questions?”

“Okay, very good. We’ll be there in about an hour.”

“What was that?” Lieutenant Akhtar asked.

“Blowout. We must have hit something,” replied Sergeant Mokri.

“I thought you checked everything before we left,” the lieutenant demanded.

“I did,” Mokri replied. “Sir, these are rural highways and all kinds of farm tractors and vehicles travel these roads. Let me check what happened…. As I suspected, sir, looks like about a 10cm spike.”

“Great! How long is it going to take to change the tire? We don’t have any time to lose.”

“I know that, sir, but it’s going to put us about twenty minutes behind schedule.”

“Hossein, try and raise the others while Mokri and I change the tire. Let them know what has happened and that we are running about twenty minutes late. They are not to wait for us; we still have sixty miles to the target so if we are lucky, we might still catch up with them.”

“Ah, sir, didn’t Captain Sassani order total emcon? (emission’s control)” Hossein replied.

“Yes he did, but at this point, I don’t think it will matter. Go ahead and try to raise them.”

“Will do, sir,” Hossein replied, “but I don’t think we’ll be able to reach them. They’re in the midst of this canyon that we’re just entering and there’s only about a twenty minute window where we’ll be able to reach them as they emerge from this canyon south of Coulee City; sir, just as we get this fixed and get back on the road again, we’ll be entering this canyon as they’ll be coming out of it. Once we start coming out of this one, they’ll be entering the Banks Lake gorge, and we won’t be able to reach them there, either. Lieutenant, I think we’re on our own at this point.”

“Damn it. At least we have three other ANFO charges in the group. Lieutenant Darvish knows that if we get separated, he’s to assign someone else to take the primary target along with him. Let’s just hope he does that. Once we get back on the road, we’ll take the secondary one if he has followed the plan.”

“It’s three twenty; let’s pull off at Steamboat Rock up here and get organized; it looks like we’re missing one vehicle,” Lieutenant Darvish told his driver.

As Darvish’s pickup pulled into the wayside, five others quickly followed. “It looks like we’re missing the lieutenant,” Darvish told his little group. “Sergeant Abbasi, in the lieutenant’s absence, you and I will take the 500kV switchyard up by Fiddle Butte. Sergeant Lajani, you will take the secondary switchyard just north of town, as will Lieutenant Akhtar, if — or when he arrives. If he doesn’t catch up with us, we hit it anyway. The rest of you know your targets; nothing has changed there. Any questions?”

Seeing none, and expecting none, Darvish continued. “It’ll still take us about ten minutes to get to the target area just north of Grand Coulee so we can’t wait for the lieutenant. Once you’ve placed your charges, come up to the switchyards to pick us up and we’ll head out. We can’t wait around; there’s simply too many guards up there. At precisely 4:00 a.m., we’ll blow everything.”

“Mokri, it looks like Lieutenant Darvish followed instructions and didn’t wait for us. When we come to the Highway 174 junction, let’s take that and proceed to the secondary target just north of town. If everything else has gone according to plan, the primary target should be destroyed and the secondary one at least damaged.”

“Will do, sir” Mokri replied.

“Lieutenant, it looks like we just missed Lieutenant Darvish. Look up there, off to the left! See that bright orange glow up on the hillside!?!”

“Beautiful, Mokri, just beautiful! I don’t see anything up at the secondary target just yet. We’ll proceed up there as planned.”

“Yes, sir, but, ah… how are we going to get back to the ranch?”

“Well, Mokri….”

“Lieutenant! Look! I thought Captain Sassani said there wouldn’t be any guards! Where did they come from?” Hossein cried out all of a sudden.

“Sir, we have an unidentified truck approaching the perimeter.”

“Another one? We aren’t expecting anyone from the BPA yet so don’t take any chances; fire a few warning shots to get them to stop. If they don’t stop, you are authorized to use all means necessary to stop that truck!”

“They’re shooting at us!” Hossein cried out.

“No, those are warning shots, telling us to stop and turn back. Well, Mokri, I don’t think we need to worry about how we’re getting back to the ranch.”

“No, sir; I don’t think we do. What do I do?”

“Go ahead and stop. Hossein, grab one of the rifles; on my mark get out on the driver’s side and engage as many of the guards on your side as you can; I’ll do the same on this side. Mokri, as soon as we begin to fire, try and break through the guards and get to the target. If we can take out all of the guards, we’ll run up and join you. Okay, Hossein? Let’s go… now!”

“Sir, the truck has stopped. Wait, two men are getting out and… they’re shooting at us!”

“Fire at will! Stop that truck; do not let that truck through!”

No sooner than had Lieutenant Akhtar left the pickup than a hail of gunfire erupted — from up ahead and on both sides of Mokri. He saw a couple of the guards go down, then his lieutenant fell, followed by Hossein. Almost simultaneously, a barrage of bullets hit the truck. Mokri tried to set off the charges… but slumped to the floor of the truck before he could hit the detonator.

The Buchanan dairy had been in the family close to seventy years. Doug Buchanan’s grandfather had moved to the Mattawa area shortly after WW II and began the dairy with one hundred cows and a full section. Doug’s dad had taken over the operation in the mid-70’s and began to expand the operation: irrigation rights from the Columbia Basin Irrigation System had yet to become the issue they would for his generation so his dad would expand dairy to about nine hundred head. Ten years ago Doug took over the dairy and built it up to a herd of 4,500 dairy cows. However, the world had become a drastically different place than his father had known: Environmentalists posed a serious problem both for maintaining long established water rights as well as the increasingly restrictive pollution controls they managed to get through the EPA. One of his neighbors actually had been sued by the EPA, costing him over fifty thousand dollars just in attorney’s fees — and it was still tied up in court! Doug knew his turn was next and now he had no funds available to defend himself as milk prices had suddenly dropped to half of what they had been only a few years ago. He had already begun to lay off much of his staff as he simply could not afford to keep them on board; some had been replaced with cheaper, less experienced workers. If things kept up, he knew he’d have to downsize his operation, if not completely sell out.

Doug’s alarm went off at three thirty these days as he was now taking the place of one of the workers he had to let go. This morning he had seen a pair of headlights go roaring past their place a little before four o’clock in the morning. Immediately after that, he had seen several small, extremely bright flashes out in the distance near the Priest Rapids Dam, followed very quickly by the power going out. He didn’t know what had happened — there was no explosion — but there obviously could have been some arcing amongst the power lines; that had happened before but he had never lost power in those instances. His generators hadn’t kicked on, either, as he expected they would. Upon checking them out, the fuel tank for the generators was empty — his new farm hand hadn’t informed him that they had been refueling the equipment from the generator tank as the main diesel tank had been emptied and no one let him know. He had a real problem — with 4,500 cows, he could not afford for the power to be out for more than an hour. His dairy milked around the clock; if the cows couldn’t be milked, he’d really be hurting. If the power didn’t come on soon, he’d have to give the Wilco Coop a call as soon as they opened to have them deliver a load of diesel. He had no idea that neither would be coming any time soon.

“Ah, sir,” one of Scott’s firefighters said, trying to get his attention.

“Yeah, what is it?”

“We seem to have lost water pressure at about half of the fire hydrants.”

“What? Did some of the water lines rupture in all of this as well?”

“We don’t think so. We still have water in the pipes, just no pressure. It seems that all of the hydrants west of Road 10 have lost water pressure — and this is where the tank farm is located. We don’t have any reports of ruptures in the water line anywhere. We’ve been working with Conoco’s staff and they can’t figure it out either. We have full pressure for the refinery itself, and we’ll get that under control relatively soon, but the fires in the tank farm will be burning unchecked. We’re purely defensive anyway and we may simply have to let those fires burn themselves out — but that’s a ton of gasoline and diesel left to burn.”

“Okay, I’ll let Division know and see if they know anything about this.”

Ten minutes later, Scott called his battalion officers in to his command post.

“It seems a major power line coming out of Oregon has been severed leaving almost half of LA without power. This includes about a third of the pumping stations for the water district. Folks up at Carson and El Segundo are reporting similar issues with a loss of water pressure. We’ll have to make do and string hoses as best we can. Tell your men they are not to take any unnecessary chances. At this point, we are simply looking at property values. I don’t want to add the loss of life to this disaster. This isn’t over by a long shot, but we will get through it.”

By 4:10 a.m., on the morning of the third day since the Israeli attack on his country’s nuclear facilities, Rafsanjani’s second wave had been delivered. All forty of Captain Sassani’s teams had delivered as expected. The thermite charges, properly fixed on two legs — and in a few cases, just one leg — of a power-line tower proved more than capable of cutting through the steel legs of the towers. In addition, in almost every case, as one tower collapsed, the neighboring towers collapsed simply due to the weight of the power lines from the collapsed tower. When Sassani’s teams had completed their mission, more than one thousand power-line towers had collapsed along each of the thirteen targeted dams on the Columbia and Snake rivers. Big Eddy and the 500kV switchyard at the Grand Coulee Dam had been destroyed as well. Rafsanjani’s one-two punch had been delivered: The west coast of the United States was out of gas and in the dark!