Unwanted Power

Cold Blooded

Heather smiled at Bill's attempt to make light of this as well as give a nod to her intentional misdirection as to where she gets her power from. She was still hot under the collar. Heather pulled up a map of Texas with a peremptory electromagnetic wave at her tablet. She looked at the location of the supposed bomb. "This is not that far from our cabin! Surely they don't suspect I'm out there. I have been super careful not to be seen there."

"Doubt it, Heather. The one-star briefing us only focused on the Texas sightings that were really Jessie. Eyewitness accounts he changed around to be terrorist sightings. That supposed bomb location is in Texas but nowhere near Houston. I am pretty sure they still think Texas is one of your favorite US haunts. If nothing else, you fly over it often. Texas is a big place. That bomb location is way out there. Lowest population density area of Texas. 700 miles from the last Houston sighting. If a bomb goes off way out there, it hurts the least number of people. It's far enough away from the Midland Odessa oilfields that it doesn't threaten the economy. Even a small nuclear explosion at the location would shut down tourism to Big Bend. Big Bend is a national park. I doubt the Air Force cares about tourism. I think these guys would put The Grand Canyon, Yellowstone, or Mount Rushmore in the crosshairs if they thought it would flush Jessie out." Bill offered.

"That is cold-blooded as hell!" Heather growled in equal proportions of disgust and unhappiness. She tapped on her screen. "There is a little town with about..." Heather looked up the census data. "... 1,000 people near the supposed bomb location. Least populated part of Texas does not mean unpopulated! This place would get fallout! Or worse: depending on how many megatons the bomb is. Are they abandoning the town?"

"Heather: Be serious. This is Texas. They are trying to get people to leave, but many are not. Lots of rugged individuals live out there. Hell: That is why they live out there. Grumblings about government conspiracies and land grabs. 5G cell phone towers and Vaccines caused this. Rugged? Yes. Rational? Not so much. Every day is opposite day for some of these folks. I got radiation poisoning because the government told me to leave. I didn't. Instead, because I'm smarter than the guvies are, I'll smear some dewormer on my radiation burns. Hah! They don't know that I know that ivermectin is secretly good for ionizing radiation burns and sickness! Then I'll get in my jacked-up truck and form a parade protesting that the government told me to do things I did not want to hear."

"To be fair, it turns out all the preppers and conspiracy theorists are right. There is a plot. Not the one they thought, feared and got ready for. The result is the same. There is a bomb in the backyard. Time to go into their expensive underground bunker. Watch re-runs of The Beverly Hillbillies on my laptop. Eat canned and freeze-dried food for a few years." Heather said.

"Yum." Bill commented.

"Fine." Heather finally decided grumpily. "I'll go have a damn look."

Bill was taken aback. "You are going to show your face? Jessie's face, I mean."

"Hell No. Thanks to Cristine, I'll be invisible. A pair of pupils floating around in the sky at this location." Heather tapped the coordinates on the map before her. Bill could not see it from his angle but had a pretty good idea of what she was tapping. "I want to scope this area out. Have a look at the supposed bomb. I need to know how far they are going with this charade. If Jessie has made them so crazy, they have lost their collective minds."

"What will you do if the bomb is real?" Bill asked. He did not sound thrilled with this plan.

"Cross that bridge when I come to it. Chris Reeve's Superman would throw a Nuc into the sun, right? Or this could be a real bomb and not a Nuc. It's the Air Force. They could grab a warhead off of an air-to-air missile of a jet fighter. Snag a warhead out of a bomb from a stealth bomber. Take something out of a cruise missile. Those guys have lots of bomb choices. The bomb part of a warhead probably looks the same on the outside. Warhead shaped to fit inside warhead delivery devices. It could be a dummy round or filled with whatever they put in warheads these days. Military-grade C4 or something. If there is something out there? It might be an all for show kind of thing." Heather reassured him.