"We know how," Detective Steed answered, "but not the who."
"So give me the how," Chief Scott ordered.
"The bomber," Detective Steed explained, "hacked into the computers of various targets. How many we're not sure. Then he placed orders to specific companies he had also hacked for the items he needed."
"How did he get it delivered and installed without getting caught?" Scott asked.
"Fake e-mails, fake IP Addresses, dozens of freight forwardarders from all over the world and fake work orders issued to local companies to do the delivery and installation," Steed answered.
"In other words," Scott said, "this guy could be anywhere."
"He could be sitting in this room and we'd not know it," Detective Mark Steed agreed.
*********
The Reverend Nelson Johnson was known throughout the nation for his roll in leading what was then called the Communist Worker's Party in a Death To the Klan rally that resulted in five CWP members' deaths in the African-American community of Morningside Homes in East Greensboro in 1979 at the hands of members of the KKK and Nazi Party in shootings sanctioned by the Greensboro Police Department and then Mayor Jim Melvin.
Nelson Johnson had spend his life paying for the mistakes of his youth and mistakes he'd never committed and still thousands in and around Greensboro hated him. As they say here in the Southland, 'one ah shit wipes out a thousand 'attaboys.'
It was on a Monday morning when the Reverend Johnson felt the explosion rock the Beloved Community Center, a mixed race church and center of community activism where he was executive director and pastor. He ran from his office towards the direction of the explosion only to find the hallway completely engulfed in flames. There was no way he could get through and no way out for the classroom of kindergartners trapped inside.
Despite being in his seventies, Nelson ran to the outside of the building and using a baseball bat one of the kids had left lying on the ground knocked the window out of the classroom. He climbed in the window where he found the teacher and many of the children already passed out from smoke inhalation.
Witnesses said they saw children flying out the window as if someone were throwing them. Then they got a glimpse of the Reverend Johnson's face as he struggled to push the teacher up and out the window. The Reverend Nelson Johnson never came out of the burning building.
Three known KKK agitators from Idaho were arrested in Greensboro the night of the bombing but had to be released as it could never be proven they were involved with the bombing. They had to be escorted to Piedmont Triad International Airport under heavy guard to get them out of town alive.
Reverend Johnson had been very involved in Greensboro's Black Lives Matter movement and for Greensboro BLM this was the final straw-- something had to be done and done now. Even many white people who had previously had nothing good to say about Reverend Johnson now considered him a hero and joined in the movement as well as the Beloved Community Center.
Plans for a protest were made. The local NAACP had no choice but to finally get fully on board or risk loosing everything. The Simpkins PAC, under pressure from its funders, poured money into promoting the march. Even Mayor Vaughan and the Greensboro City Council announced they would be participating in the march. Peaceful protesters black and white showed up from around the world.
The Greensboro Police and Guilford County Sheriff's Department were in full force the day of the march. All days off and all vacations had been cancelled.
The march began at North Carolina A&T University on East Market Street and headed west into downtown. People sang hymns between performances by Cakalak Thunder, the A&T Marching Band and others. Remnants of what was once Occupy Greensboro performed street theater. It was indeed the beginning of a glorious day and a fitting tribute to a man who had, with a few tragic mistakes, spent his life working to help others.
As the crowd approached the corner of Market and Greene a group of young men, teenagers probably not more than fifteen or sixteen years old began shouting obscenities at the police and throwing rocks and things from their backpacks!
The police chased them but the teens ran through the crowds of protesters knocking people down along the way as did the police who were chasing them. The protesters started screaming and shouting, pushing, trying to get out of the way. A police officer caught one of the teens but the teen pulled a knife and attempted to stab the officer. A single shot from a .40 caliper Glock rang out and protesters panicked running in every direction.
It was then the Greensboro Police Department deployed their new LRAD or long-range acoustic device to get the crowds under control, but they quickly learned that trying to talk 100,000 screaming people into following instructions-- even with an LRAD-- is tantamount to herding cats. It simply doesn't work. The officers attempted to direct the protesters using street names as to tell them which direction to go but with so many people being from out of town the efforts were wasted. The same was true of using directions on the compass-- people simply don't carry compasses in their pockets. As a crowd control device the LRAD was useless.
Someone whose name was never made public by GPD gave the order to switch the LRAD to its deterrent tone. People immediately were forced to cover their ears, fall to the ground and seek shelter. Others pushed in windows and doors on buildings in hopes of being able to hide from the noise and the pain it brought.
Suddenly a single tiny drone appeared in the skies overhead. As the officers were also holding their hands over their heads none of them could reach for their guns. The drone dived in a fast spiral crashing into the LRAD equipped patrol car and exploded!
While no one knew who the Gate City Bomber was it was now apparent to Greensboro's status quo where he stood and the Elites knew that even if they captured him he had sparked a revolution they could never put down.
*********
Interlude:
Terrorism has nothing to do with religion. Terrorists simply use religion as an excuse for doing what they find to be morally unacceptable. People turn to religion, drugs and alcohol when times are at their worst. The history books and even the Bible are full of references of tribes attacking other tribes in times of drought and famine. None of this is new. Don't like something? Find an old outdated verse in the Bible or the Koran to use as an excuse to eradicate it and everyone who loves it. But just because you can justify it with some verse in some old book whose true origins can't be proven despite well over a thousand years of research doesn't make your actions right. Or excusable.
But what is excusable is fighting for your survival when others are holding you down. The true causes of terrorism in the modern age are poverty, the greed of those who control our governments, and those who corrupt the systems. And poverty, greed and corruption threaten your very survival. Fight for those reasons and you've no need to mask your fight with religious extremism and hypocrisy. Just remember: you cannot pick and chose which truths you wish to make known. You must expose all.
I chose certain individuals in this story because of their actions. Everyone who has kept up with GPD for the last decade knows about Captain James Hinson. And Mayor Vaughan? I personally sat in a booth across from her at Bernie's BBQ on East Bessemer Avenue before she became Mayor and warned her that East Greensboro was starving, troubled and set to explode. And she did nothing except push the agenda of Greensboro's elites while Greensboro went from the 4th Hungriest Metropolitan Statistical Area in the USA to the #1 Hungriest Metropolitan Statistical Area under her watch.
Yes, the preceding story is a work of fiction but like every revolution Greensboro's revolution will only require one man or one woman to start it. I'm not that person, never was. Try as I might I simply don't have what it takes. But something tells me that person is out there and once he or she begins there will be no turning back. Someone will lead the revolution. Every great religious text speaks of a great leader coming to lead their people because it is the one truth of every religion that can be proven time and time again throughout history. It will happen because history always repeats itself.
And that, my friends, is the reality we all have to face like it or not.Are you going to be the ones to stand in the way of history?
There's nothing in this for me. I don't make anything from my efforts. I can't legally sell a book that uses real names without their permission and it's probably not that good of a book anyway. I'm too old to reap the long term rewards that turning the city around might bring. And with the death of my son, Jason on December 11, 2012, I have no heirs to leave anything to. My political activities are solely for Greensboro's working classes, nothing more. And like I've said since I started my own efforts to change Greensboro, "Change one city and the world will follow."
Buy hey, don't take my word for it, pick yourself up a copy of the 1951 book The True Believer by Eric Hoffer who was able to escape from the USSR to come to the United States under a communist regime of true believers. I think you'll then understand how easily this story or something like it could come true.
And with the lull in the storm now passed please continue reading Chapter XII. The Bomber Returns
