LOS ANGELES: The giant, remote-controlled vehicle – somewhere between a tractor trailer, a tank and a Zamboni in appearance – slowly rolled across the dry, brittle grass growing between the tangle of freeways making up the 101 and 23 interchange in Thousand Oaks.
Inside the beast, fire churned. And as it rolled over the land, that fire incinerated any brush it encountered, leaving only a thin smoke cloud billowing from the top of the machine, some flashes of orange and red from behind its metal skirt and, in its wake, a desolate, smoldering black line.
