Scary Story Time

How implausible is it that Russia possesses the capability to successfully imitate an Iranian submarine?
Diesel/electric boat presumably, something that puts out a mix of known Iranian boats drive and powerplant noises. Have it show up on US sonar technology initially somewhere in the south Atlantic. Finally goes silent west of the Azores maybe. Briefly heard for the last time due south of Cuba. Two to three days later a complex nuclear device detonates 100 miles due south of New Orleans, Louisiana. The resulting tsunami would stretch from Key West, Florida in an uninterrupted wall of water all the way to the north-eastern point of the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico. Cuba wouldn't actually cease to exist.

I sincerely doubt Iran has the capability to even approach pulling off a scenario like this, but I'm reasonably certain Russia does. 

I have heard others now describing what's happening in and around Ukraine as forcing Vladimir Putin into deploying tactical nukes in Ukraine, if only to have some expectation of surviving. At all, not just politically. According to that Fount of All Knowledge, Wikipedia, tactical nukes can range in explosive power between tens of kilotons to hundreds of kilotons and delivered by hand or, as noted above, torpedo. If two 500 KT tactical nuclear devices were situated approximately 200 feet from each other on a true east/west alignment and detonated simultaneously, the physics of the resulting mushroom cloud would make clear the number and thus the size of the devices involved to anyone 50 miles away or so. The point is, Ukraine might not be the most advantageous spot on the surface of the Earth for Vlad to pop off a nuke.

Plausibly pointing the finger of guilt at somebody else is a critical touch for long term success, but Vlad's almost 70, so maybe a Highly Important secondary consideration then.

To the extent any of these maunderings has any such thing, the point of all this is that, as the level of violence deemed acceptable ramps up, so too does the range at which inflicting that violence reach further. If Vladimir Putin decides that the end of Russia as an independent country is a possible result of the combat in Ukraine, then the potential target list expands beyond that country's borders. This is the point of the decision tree where things start to get messy.

A plausible story is essential to success. Obviously, the more plausible the better, but how much is enough? In how much time? Added to this, tactical nukes usually don't require National Command Authority for tactical release as prescribed by doctrine. Only Putin can decide if/when to detonate this weapon though, which circumstance already attracts too much attention as is. Presumably Russian bureaucratic lethargy is no worse then our own, so the mascarovka should mostly be in place. 

In order for a plausibly deniable story to exist the supporting elements have to be put in place which takes time even in bad fiction. If the Russian Navy needs 10 days to do their part, that means the Russian Army has to wander around Ukraine not winning anything for an extra week or so, at least. If that all starts to look a lot like losing, the device is already in place.  

Waiting For Godot A Title

Or, let's talk more about this premise.

What I have is, a "Mexican-American drug lord" who needs to find a place for his money that he can't get into Mexico (or his foreign bank accounts) any more.  I have "Our Hero" who pitches him the idea of funding a series of Krav Maga schools around the state of Texas which are intended to serve as the basis for his personal intelligence gathering and political action arm within the state and country.  Each school will have a specific group attached who are all students and have semi-legitimate jobs to satisfy public and official appearances.  The group members real job will be to identify all law enforcement and political office holders within a specified region, with the intended purpose of coercing or killing them "come the day".

I've settled on the group size as being: a buddy (comprised of two individuals working as a dedicated pair), who are members of a (fire)team of two buddies (four individuals, working in dedicated pairs), who in turn make up a class (two teams who attend KM class as a unit), who together with five other classes comprise a school (and are the basic operational unit formation for each intelligence gathering effort - several more are implied to be in operation throughout the state).  School members have strict rules; no gang signifiers in their personal lives (no tattoos or distinct social or other behavior that LE identifies as being gang associated), no direct action of an illegal nature (they don't deal or transport drugs or commit other crimes, but are familiar with those who do and report on them to the drug lord - act as his criminal QA inspectors as it were), work to achieve accentless language skills, work to acquire KM and other professional qualifications and certifications, acquire quality firearms and other weapons and become accredited as instructors/educators in their use.  There will be others, and every team will consist of a buddy of two females (paired together).  School members all have a business or self-employment job that serves as a means to wash drug money as well as provide the individual members with social and legal legitimacy, bicycle repair and sales, automotive maintenance and customization, almost anything IT, car wash, self storage, and maker-type manufacturing businesses (indeed, all of them will have some capability and professional capacity for doing so).

Our Hero is probably going to be more of an anti-hero in nature (and certainly in behavior) and is the KM school founder (not sure yet how the drug money gets legitimized - may resort to handwavium as needed) and is completely in the know; he proposes this concept initially as a means to a socio-political end as a result of his personal conviction that "anarchy approaches" or some such schiesse.  The KM school legitimately teaches firearms use and defense as part of the curriculum for "more advanced" students (which is an effective means of access to the regional law enforcement community) as well as offering CHL training.

While not all members of the School are Hispanic (Our Hero isn't for one), most are and there will be a good deal of blatant racism displayed, not to mention sexism and all the rest of the PC cant (which sums up the basic attitude toward such belief within the School).  School members learn/display respect for each other (if in a quite disturbing fashion), but this is based upon either a personal relationship or an "us vs them" context.

I want to make the initial meeting between Our Hero and the drug lord believable, but I'm not writing a "how to .." manual here.  I'm attracted to them knowing (or at least knowing of) each other many years prior when both were either members of the US .mil or, and I like this better, both were employed as contractors working out of the US following their separate stints in the service (again, many years earlier - both are older men).  In late-summer 2009, Our Hero discovers the whereabouts and legal circumstances of the drug lord from online news sources and gets in touch with him, again online.  At the subsequent meeting, the initial proposition was presented and developed over the succeeding moths and years.  That's the opening, I think, and events resume in the summer of 2015.  I need to start building bios for both men (names would certainly be less ungainly) and what was Google Maps/ Earth like in early summer 2009?

That's the start of a workable outline I think.

And Now For Something Completely Different ...

... and maybe even original.

I've decided to try an experiment on this blog.  Before we get to all that, first some back story.

In the last couple months (since my return from Oregon in October), I was invited by Amazon.com to become one of the reviewers of stories under development by them. 

Frankly I have no real idea why they did such a thing.

The barely-restrained conspiracy theorist in me is certain it all has to do with the frequency with which I take Jeff Bezos' name in vain here and elsewhere around the web.  And, while there may actually be something to that, my somewhat more firmly grounded suspicion is that someone at Amazon decided there just might be something to the proposition that the amateur opinion is the audience and figured anyone who buys as many books and DVD's - and presumably reads/watches them - as I do, probably has an arguably informed opinion to offer there-on. 

In any event, I accepted and thereby discovered Amazon Studios, which is their in-house effort to create original content for them to produce and sell.  I should note that the two Amazon-related activities aren't directly linked to each other, in that you don't have to be an aspiring story teller to talk trash offer an opinion about anyone else's story.   Or, at least, I didn't; I was offered the review thing before signing up to have my own efforts put to the question. 

Someday.

Whereby we close the bloggish circle.  I'm having difficulty getting started with the story I want to tell first, so I'm going to try telling (at least a good portion of) a different story here on the blog.  To that end I've created a new label, "my original fiction", which I will be using exclusively for this project.  My hope is to use the Blogger format I'm reasonably familiar with to develop the basic writers habit of writing something every day.  Yes, I know, how is that different from ordinary blogging?  Well, aside from the obvious distinction that this will be deliberate fiction, as inflammatory as what will appear is going to be, I hope to avoid at least some of the sillier accusations and suspicions that might otherwise arise if it wasn't labeled as explicit fiction.

I expect to write as much about my experience of the process of writing a story as I do actually telling a story.  [It's my blog; go write your own if you want it done differently.]   As introductory, what follows is my not-too-terribly-original premise:

At some undeclared point in the near future, there will be an explicit effort made to take advantage of the current societal discontent within the United States.  This effort will comprise an organized group of criminals funding the creation of a "resistance" (based rather loosely on my understanding of the experience of the French efforts during WW II) aimed at continuing their (probably drug related - at least in part) criminal enterprise, whatever the political climate within the US.

All details subject to authorial whim and inspiration, but I intend to use real people's names in a "ripped from the headlines" style of story context.  If you are also a blogger and wouldcare to risk your reputation'nt mind having your name taken in vain also, please let me know; one of the many problems I'm experiencing is coming up with character names (the bios are actually much less trouble - more on that anon).

Topics I hope to excite discussion on will include: story formatting, character development and presentation, quirks and idiosyncrasies of some specific aspect of life (law, motorcycle mechanics, welding, what-have-you, etc, etc, etc.), proper grammar ... well, you get the idea.  As to the story itself, it is what it will be; I kinda don't care if you care for it or not, and I'm quite confident you can write a better one, but I want to tell this one so as to get good enough to tell the one that's sloshing around inside my head and won't come out yet.  If I offend you (as seems likely) I'm not all that sorry.  Its not that I want to especially, it's just in the nature of this particular story, that's all.

More tomorrow ...