by Peter Parken
She felt he was someone she could trust—sensed that when she’d first met him, when he seemed almost ashamed that his report said the opposite of what Shelby knew happened on that rollercoaster. She knew she could tell him the truth and, at that moment, after what he’d gone through, she felt he deserved that more than anything.
“I did, John. It’s a long story, but I did it to buy time. Some strange things have been going on and someone threatened me. A scary guy just came up to me one day, sat down, and told me that I had to testify that the lap bars disengaged at the point of impact. I intend to eventually drop off the lawsuit—I’m working with the executives at Flying Machines to try to get to the bottom of this. They’ve had some scares themselves.”
John reached out and grabbed onto her hand, squeezing gently. “I want to help. I’m sorry I stonewalled you when you came to see me. I knew that what you were telling me was correct. Those lap bars opened and they shouldn’t have—and that wasn’t caused by the impact. I also know that the track was melted, that it didn’t snap. But, at that time, I was being a realist. I was forced to sign a phony report. I wanted to keep my job, benefits and life insurance intact until I died. I needed Linda to be looked after.”
Shelby squeezed his hand too. “I understand.”
“I don’t know if you do. You see, now I’m not motivated anymore. I have nothing now. Nothing to live for; nothing and no one to care about. But I feel that I have to do the right thing—I’ve looked the other way before, but I can’t this time.”
He reached out with his other hand and squeezed both of hers. “Introduce me to your friends at Flying Machines. I want to join you folks.”
Shelby felt her heart soar. “John, that’s wonderful. I’ll let them know.”
John Fletcher nodded. “It’s not so wonderful, Shelby. You see, now I want revenge too.”
Chapter 28
Carl Masterson was staring at his computer. Not quite believing the latest assessments that had just been sent to him.
Opinions and predictions about the most dangerous national security crisis that the United States of America had ever faced.
No, it wasn’t terrorism. And no, it wasn’t Russia or China.
It was water. The lack of it.
A couple of years ago it was estimated that a full half of the world’s population would be facing severe water shortages by the year 2050. That assessment had now been accelerated to the year 2025. The latest assessments were coming from not just scientists and engineers within the United States, but also from the World Health Organization. It wasn’t science fiction, it was real.
And it didn’t take a rocket scientist to understand why. The damn world’s population tripled in the twentieth century and it was expected to increase by another fifty percent in the next fifty years. And the use and abuse of renewable water had grown six-fold. And there wasn’t any more fresh water in the world today than there was a million years ago. Some would be surprised to know that water just couldn’t be replaced.
India, one of the most populous countries in the world, was predicting now that their groundwater supplies in major sections of the country would be completely gone in about five years.
Several “think tanks” around the globe had already predicted that there would be ‘water wars’ in the not too distant future. In essence, water was ‘blue gold,’ very precious, and nothing could survive or thrive without it. Just like oil had been the motivation for numerous wars, now the world’s attention would turn to water. It would be the source of conflict at a scale that the world had never seen before. Global in nature—the infamous two World Wars would pale in comparison.
Well, the United States of America was still the world’s superpower, Carl thought. If anything, this crisis added credence to the investment in the military that the country had made over the last century. We can basically take what we want if push comes to shove.
The demands for water had not only increased due to world population growth, but also due to alternative forms of energy such as nuclear power. Fresh water was needed to cool the reactors and nuclear power was now a prominent energy source around the world. The ripple effect from not being able to cool reactors would be monumental. Not just loss of power for the cities of the world, but the catastrophic effect of meltdowns. The world had already seen three of these meltdowns—and a lack of water would guarantee a meltdown epidemic.
Aside from the effects of climate change, there was an incredible wastage of water from irrigation practices. Approximately sixty percent of water withdrawals were for irrigation—but in arid regions this rose to ninety percent. On top of that, industry drew down twenty percent for their purposes, households used ten percent, and four percent just evaporated away and got dropped somewhere else. And not always where it was most needed.
America’s two most populous states, California and Texas, had suffered through crippling droughts in the last several years, and there was no end in sight. Snowpacks in California’s Sierra Nevada, the source for the state’s greatest mountain reservoir, stood at only thirty percent of normal. Disastrous. And both of these states were usually abundant agricultural producers; now that was in jeopardy too. The water requirements were huge for agriculture—growing just one kilogram of potatoes required one hundred liters of water, but that paled in comparison to the thirteen thousand liters needed for just one kilogram of beef.
The water shortage could cause Americans to literally starve to death, if they didn’t parch to death first. And the wildfires in the southern states—it was so dry there that these monsters popped up with just the tiniest spark. Fresh water was needed to fight these—such a waste considering that the United States was desperate for water just to sustain life itself.
Carl scanned a list of cities and towns at imminent risk in America; there were about five hundred in total. Ones that were designated as being in danger of running out of fresh water within two years or less. He knew that this list would increase in size—he got these updates every week, and twenty more had been added since last week’s update.
Despite the inconveniences associated with water conservation, the average American still didn’t realize how serious the situation was. They still watered their lawns, expected golf courses to be emerald green, and fully anticipated that their utility bills would come down. And complained when they didn’t. They were living in a dream world.
The ones who really knew how serious it was were the farmers. They were fully aware that the end of the world was fast approaching—it was only logical. If countries couldn’t feed themselves, then…
Climate change was the wild card. Despite the world population explosion and the increases in demand for water to nurture all the new energy and industrial sources that the world had ushered in, there was this ‘thing’ going on with the climate. Glaciers in massive retreat, rainfall that wasn’t falling in the areas that were usually dependable. Heatwaves that were breaking records, causing more need for water and energy, while worsening the drought situation at the same time. Let alone the massive forest and grass fires caused by the heatwaves.
The world was in crisis. But the United States didn’t have to join the world in this crisis. The country was strong and perfectly capable of taking what it needed. It just had to make it look like it was being done for other reasons; or that something horrible drove them to do it for honorable reasons. A ‘false flag.’
Carl turned off his computer. He remembered back to when Operation Backwash was first conceived. It was way ahead of its time back then, and progressive in its thinking. And now things were so serious that it had to be put into action. Carl had no doubts about that and neither did the people who signed his paycheck.
He turned his thoughts back to John Fletcher; a ‘loose end’ that he hadn’t anticipated. Fletcher was a dead man walking. Such a man would not experience fear. And this was what was worrying Carl. A man without fear was a dangerous man indeed.
Chapter 29
Tom Fost
er was looking over the list in his hand as he walked into Nate’s office. “Okay, buddy, we have it. The list of riders on the rollercoaster along with their brief bios. Wanna go over it together?”
“Great news, Tom! But no, I’ll study it on my own—I’m in a bit of a hurry. Have to finish up here and then get home to change—I have a date tonight.”
Tom grinned at him. “I’m glad to hear that you’re getting out again. Anyone I know?”
Nate laughed. “A gentleman never tells, Tom. And if I told you, you’d be hounding me for details—and as I said, a gentleman never tells!”
“Okay, okay Mr. Privacy. I’ll respect that. But…if you do hitch up with this mystery woman one day, I expect to the ‘best man.’”
“Did you ever have any doubts? But—you were the best man at my first marriage and look how that turned out. Maybe you’re a bad omen!”
Tom laughed. “Not fair! No, I think you can blame yourself for that one. I think Stephanie’s low-cut blouses blinded your judgment!”
“Could be. Hey, sit down for a second—a couple questions for you.”
Tom walked over to the living room area of Nate’s office and took his usual seat. “What’s wrong with this picture? It’s a beautiful Sunday and you and I are here in the office working.”
Nate stretched out on the couch. “I know, I know—we must be mad.”
“So, what are these burning questions you have for me, Nate old buddy?”
“Well, I was looking through the maintenance logs for the Black Mamba and I noticed that two days before the accident your team did the final mechanical inspections on the train and the track. Did you notice anything unusual at all?”
“No—well, not that was reported to me anyway. I never personally do those inspections—I just oversee, as you know. All my hands-on work is done in the factory prior to the erection. But my team was all over the track and the train that day, and no one reported anything unusual.”
“So, you weren’t out at the site that day?”
“Sure, I was there—but my team were the ones up high. As you know, heights aren’t my thing anyway.”
“Yeah, I know that now.”
Tom laughed. “Yeah, my secret’s out. But, at my level, I think you pay me too much to be crawling around scaffolding and hanging from trestles anyway. We have ‘people’ for that. But, speaking of ‘people,’ there is something I found out that I need to tell you about. It may be nothing but it’s just one more strange thing in this whole affair.”
Nate stiffened. “Uh-oh, I’m afraid to hear this.”
“As I said—may be nothing. But one of our maintenance crew, in fact one of the guys who was up in a sling for that final inspection, took vacation right after the accident. But—he never came back. There’s no sign of him. We’ve tried to reach him with no success. I reported him missing to the police this morning—it’s just been too long now to assume that he went on a simple little bender.”
Nate wrung his hands together. “What’s his name? Have I met him?”
“Bill Shanahan. No, I don’t think you’ve met him. He’s an engineer we hired out of Cal Tech. A good guy, too—this seems out of character for him. Which worries me—you’ll recall that we presumed that there had to be an ‘inside man’ for this. If indeed Thermate was painted onto the underside of the track and the remote radio frequency for the lap bars was given out to someone, there had to be someone either at our end or at Adventureland who did those things.”
Nate nodded, pausing for a few seconds before answering. “Okay, this may be good news and bad news. If he is the one and we can find him, we can get some answers—or at least the police can. If Bill is a witness to or a participant in sabotage, then that will clear us and maybe lead to who planned this and why. But if we can’t find him, it’s another dead end that we can’t prove.”
“Yes. I’ll keep on top of it. The police will be searching his home today—promised they’d get back to me.”
“Okay, let me know as soon as you hear anything.” Nate stood. “Now, it’s time for me to go get ready for my date! Don’t ask…”
*****
Tom Foster got the usual ecstatic greeting from his two kids when he came in the front door of his expensive home in the ritzy Del Mar area of Alexandria. Joey was five and Katy was four. Darling kids—he loved them dearly. Sophie called out to him from the kitchen. “Hi, sweetie! Dinner will be ready in about an hour.”
Tom bounded into the kitchen and gave her a big wet kiss on the back of her neck. “What are we having tonight?”
“Well, it is Sunday, you know. The day you’re not supposed to be working! But…despite my anger about that, I’m making our traditional roast beef and Yorkshire. Okay? Happy?”
Tom smiled and kissed her on the lips this time. “You bet! I’ve just got a few things to do—an hour will be plenty of time for me to get them done. Then I’m all yours for the rest of the night.”
Sophie kissed him back. “I’ll hold you to that!”
Tom turned and headed back down the hall. “I’ll just be in my study, hon.”
He headed into his office and closed the door. Took off his suit jacket and threw it over the stool. Then he poured himself a tall scotch and stretched out on the sofa. Tom took a long sip of the burning liquid, winced at the sting, and then sighed.
And he started thinking.
Things were such a mess—his life was a mess, and with each day it seemed to be spinning more out of control.
He knew that the police would never find Bill Shanahan. Bill was the convenient ‘patsy,’ and the powers at work had made sure that Bill would never be found again. He would simply be labeled as a ‘missing person.’ No proof that he had done anything wrong, and no proof that he hadn’t. He was just like the wreckage of the Black Mamba that was dumped in the Caribbean. If you can’t find it you can’t prove anything, either way.
When Tom had chosen Bill Shanahan to be the patsy, it was merely a case of “eeny, meeny, miney, moe.” There was nothing bad about Bill, nothing particularly special about him. He was chosen simply to draw attention away from Tom. On that day of the final inspection, two days before the accident, Bill hadn’t even been there. In fact, Tom was the only one up there hanging from a sling, at that spot, on that day. He’d doctored the records to make it look as if Bill and a team of two other engineers had done the inspection.
Those two other engineers had indeed been there, but they were doing work in the mechanical room—they hadn’t been up underneath the track. And no one yet had dug any deeper. Now, with Bill gone, they probably wouldn’t. The records showed that he was there and now he was gone. The Flying Machines executives would assume that Bill was the ‘inside man,’ but of course wouldn’t be able to prove a damn thing—because he was probably at the bottom of the Potomac.
Tom wasn’t afraid of heights—he loved heights. But he needed everyone to think that he was terrified of being up high. That was all an act—to take him off the list. And now with Bill as the patsy, he was reasonably confident that no one would suspect him.
And the list of riders on the doomed rollercoaster that he’d just given to Nate today did indeed contain all of the names—but there was one name that was deliberately misspelled. And, as a result, had a different bio. That other person was indeed dead, too, but from a heart attack a couple of months ago, not from a rollercoaster accident. So the bio would be for the dead man, but the list would indicate he died on the coaster, not from a heart attack. Tom couldn’t invent a totally different name—it had to be similar in case anyone did any checking. If the spelling mistake was discovered, it would simply be written off as just a spelling mistake. It was a difficult name, after all, and an easy mistake to make.
Shelby was still the wild card. No one was supposed to survive that day—the main reason why Tom had faked the vertigo attack. He was hoping that Nate would not climb up the superstructure by himself. And that Shelby would eventually tire and tumble to her death.
> But, true to his friend’s hero nature, he went anyway. Shelby’s assertions about the lap bars disengaging before the impact had opened up a can of worms. If she hadn’t survived, that wreckage could have been dumped in the ocean without anyone being able to testify that something went wrong with the lap bars. Now, if she managed to get people to listen to her, that would certainly cast suspicion on the entire accident.
And the way she went stomping into John Fletcher’s office had caused poor John to have a moment of conscience—resulting in the man’s late wife making an anonymous phone call to Tom himself.
Tom had no choice but to disclose that anonymous tip to his partners—all phone calls at Flying Machines Inc., as with a lot of companies, are recorded for customer service reasons. A warning comes over the phone to the caller just before they speak, advising about the recording. Fairly common practice now.
So, Tom was put in a tough position, and had been forced to share the phone tip with his partners. If he hadn’t, they would have found out anyway when the recordings were listened to in the tech department, and Tom would have had some serious questions to answer.
And while his partners had no idea it was Fletcher’s wife who gave the tip, Tom knew. His contact at the NSA had told him who it was.
His ‘contact’—a man whose name he still didn’t know. Tom had met him, but still had no idea who he was, except that he was from the shadowy NSA. And while it sounded like the man who Nate had seen and whom Shelby had met were one and the same person—what those two didn’t know was that their descriptions of him sounded bang-on with the guy who Tom had met, too.
The man had simply slid into the booth that Tom was sitting in at a restaurant three months ago. It was shortly after the announcement had been made about the inaugural ride of the Black Mamba, and the list made public of the lucky Coaster Crazies members who were chosen for the honor of the first ride.