When Rome Stumbles

by David Kershner

  Foreign & Domestic

  Part I

  When Rome Stumbles

  Foreign and Domestic, Part I: When Rome Stumbles. No part of this publication may be used or reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form or by any means, without the prior written consent of the Publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical articles and reviews. For information address DJK Publishing House at djkpublishinghouse@gmail.com

  Second DJK Publication House edition published 2014.

  Copyright © 2014 by David J. Kershner

  This is a work of fiction. All characters, organizations, and events portrayed in this novel are either products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously.

  Cover Art designed by Pintado via 99Designs.com

  Copyright © 2013 DJK Publishing House

  Disclaimer: There are several survival and sustainability concepts expressed in this work. These topics and descriptions are not meant as instructions for the construction, use, or tactic of any concept noted. Readers should seek proper training with regard to best practices when employing any concepts noted herein especially with regard to the safe handling of weapons and explosive materials and, if at all possible, become certified from an accredited training facility or institution.

  All rights reserved.

  Published in the United States by

  DJK Publishing House

  ISBN 978-0-692-02011-1

  Printed in the United States by Create Space, an Amazon Company.

  Electronic Distribution by Amazon’s Kindle Direct Publishing.

  This book is fondly dedicated to my late father

  CDR Robert L. Kershner, USA, Retired

  U.S. Naval Academy, Class of 1957

  The embodiment of true sacrifice has no greater model.

  Foreign & Domestic

  Part I

  When Rome Stumbles

  By: David J. Kershner

  Acknowledgements

  As with any work of fiction, the material generated needed inspiration. Once that was generated, it needed to be fed and developed. This story could not have been written without the likes of those that came before me.

  My sincere gratitude to the other authors and researchers that motivated me to put pen to paper: William Forschten (One Second After), James Wesley Rawles (Patriots), and Scott B. Williams (The Pulse), as well as Michael Pollan (Omnivore’s Dilemma: The Secrets Behind What you Eat) and Karl Weber (Food, Inc.).

  I’d also like to thank the following individuals for their input and guidance:

  Major Matt and his military background, Mark S. for his assistance in understanding the railroad industry, Brian B. (1) for cultivating my desire for these types of events and his electrical engineering knowledge, Brian B. (2) for his expertise in the power industry. Lastly, I cannot thank Deb enough for her knowledge and assistance in understanding congressional procedure and the legislative branch of our government.

  I’d also like to extend a special thank you to Mr. Patrick J. Mooney at the National Museum of the Marine Corps for his assistance.

  While the breadth of their combined knowledge is not fully realized in Part I, the information gathered will contribute and pay dividends over the course of Part II and Part III.

  The second edition of When Rome Stumbles could not have been possible without the tireless efforts of editors from Kemah Bay Marketing. While this book wasn’t republished under their banner, I am grateful nonetheless.

  Preface

  The genesis for this story, believe it or not, began with an experiment involving cheese.

  I was unemployed and working on a cookbook for fun with a friend and chef. My co-author and I were having a discussion regarding natural vs. processed ingredients. Needless to say, he was very passionate about using natural, or organic, ingredients whenever possible. To prove his point, he had me perform the following home-based experiment.

  Buy a bag of pre-shredded cheese and a block of the same. Then place the pre-shredded and the block I shredded myself in separate but equal sized pots, on equal burners, over equal heat, and stir. The goal in all of this was to remove all of the lumps, think fondue.

  I stirred and stirred and no matter what I did, I couldn’t remove the lumps from the pre-shredded cheese pot. The block I shredded myself was rich and creamy and contained no lumps. I called my friend, dismayed with the results.

  That’s when he told me that the tiny bumps and lumps, akin to little grains of sand, were actually additives, preservatives, and anti-caking agents. Everything needed to make the product look appealing on the store shelf, but basically a bunch of junk your body neither needs nor knows what to do with.

  This experiment rattled around in my head, and when combined with my new interest in PAW fiction, eventually became Foreign and Domestic – Part I, When Rome Stumbles.

  Introduction

  January 18th, 2022

  Josh Simmons sat on the porch of his cabin taking stock of his life and enjoying the result of the latest arctic weather front. In the last two weeks, he had buried his ex-wife, Amanda, and spent the better part of a week looking for the bottom of the bottle. Amanda’s letter from the grave sent him over the edge.

  As he sat and enjoyed the eerie silence from the snowstorm, Josh reached into his coat pocket and pulled out a pouch of tobacco. Scanning the moonlit horizon, he began stuffing his pipe. Even though the winter blast had only cleared in the last few hours, he figured that the fourteen inches of snow had caused many a traveler to stay home. The distant tire noise from vehicle traffic was non-existent around his farm.

  He chuckled to himself thinking about the crush of patients that would descend on the labor and delivery rooms in about nine months if the snowplow crews didn’t get out soon. He always thought the human condition was an interesting paradigm. Power goes out, have sex. Roads are impassable, have sex. Bored, have sex. What a strange species we truly are, he thought.

  He flipped open the Zippo to the familiar click-ping sound and began working the flame around the bowl of the pipe. As he began drawing in the relaxing smoke, the calming silence of the brisk winter night was broken by the distant whine of an airplane.

  “That’s odd,” Josh said to himself as he stood and walked to the railing in an effort to visually locate the offending sound. Engine noise, let alone the hallmark contrail, was a rare sight. He took another pull from his pipe as he leaned over, scanning the cloudless, nighttime sky. It didn’t take him long to spot the smoke trail at eleven o’clock on the horizon.

  The damaged aircraft was traveling west to east and, as his eyes followed the airborne track, the plane appeared to be spiraling counter clockwise and descending as it did so. That pilot sure is doing his damnedest to keep the thing from turning over and coming straight down, Josh thought as he continued to watch the rapid decent. It was difficult for Josh to accurately determine the altitude of the aircraft, but if he had to guess it’d be around fifteen thousand feet. He should be low enough to parachute to safety, he thought.

  With a sudden whoosh of air, a military jet roared over the cabin from the south several hundred yards above the tree tops. A second later, the deafening scream of the engines caused Josh to cover his ears in protest. He could feel the thundering of the sound reverberate throughout his body as he tried to regain his purchase on the porch.

  “What the hell!” Josh said in astonishment.

  Quickly regaining his composure, Josh turned his head toward the night sky to see the screaming war bird ascend towards its prey. Seconds later, he saw the telltale signs of the murderous cannon coming to life as it bore down on the crippled aircraft.

  “Holy crap!” Josh exclaimed out loud as he watched the unarmed je
t being toyed with by the assailant. Heavier smoke began pouring from every exhaust vent and gaping port hole struck by the cannon’s incessant pounding.

  The small damaged plane took the fight to the enemy and abruptly banked hard left, rapidly descending toward its armed foe. He had turned directly into the path of the abusive fire.

  “Turn you idiot,” Josh screamed into the night sky. “Get the hell out of there! What are you doing? Evade! Evade! Evade!”

  It was apparent that the pilot had lost sway of the aircraft. There was simply too much damage on the control surfaces. The crippled plane continued to corkscrew through the night air. Josh could hear the increased pitch of the engines as the person at the controls throttled up. He’s stalling, Josh thought, as the victim started to nose over. He figured that if the captain wasn’t already dead or severely wounded from the cannon fire, he was most certainly unconscious from the violent spinning. He’s a goner.

  The corporate plane spun in and exploded on impact somewhere northwest of Josh’s cabin. The war bird slowed and appeared to circle the crash site before it leveled off, banked west, and engaged its afterburners. A few seconds later, Josh was able to hear the sonic boom as the military hunter broke through the sound barrier.

  As Josh stared transfixed on the glow in the distance, he saw the distinct shape of a canopy opening. My God, someone actually jumped from that thing.

  Two years earlier...

  Chapter 1

  September 6th, 2020 - December 5th, 2020

  The report on the computer monitor claimed that over eighty percent of the pollinating bee colonies in North and South America had been wiped out. The insect genocide, and resulting food shortages, was due to a microbial pesticide called bacillus thuringiensis, or Bt. Crops didn’t grow without pollination, and Mother Nature’s hives of hard working insects were disappearing.

  The document went on to state the obvious; what DDT had done to the bird population during the 1960’s and 70’s was being repeated all over again, this time to the bees.

  The summary concluded with a dark prediction, estimating low harvest yields, civil unrest, and ultimately the failure of modern-day commercial agribusiness industry.

  Dr. Emily Chastain looked away from the monitor, the weight of the world bearing down on her soul. The walls of her office seemed to be closing in on her now more than ever. This suffocating feeling was only accentuated by being so close to the end of a long, exhausting journey. She moved to the window, hoping the view outside would provide relief. She had the answer, had developed the cure – if only the test results panned out. Waiting on the lab work and predictive analysis models was always the most agonizing part.

  Some years earlier she had been tasked with the creation of the next generation of synthetic agrochemical, a new less potent microbial pesticide, to replace the abomination Bt.

  Dr. Chastain had pushed the envelope, dedicating her professional career to the task. She had succeeded, and the new synthetic was called EC31. Now all that remained was the analysis of the test results.

  The view from the Health and Life Sciences wing of Bathemore Research Institute showed the lighted skyline of Columbus, Ohio. ‘Em’, as her friends and coworkers informally referred to her, stood for a moment, taking in the forest of high-rise office buildings and twinkling lights. The change in scenery outside her window did little to improve her foul mood.

  Em glanced at her watch. “I’ve been here for fourteen hours,” she stated to no one. “I’m going home.”

  The grueling day was, in part, a ‘welcome back’ from enjoying the first long weekend since she didn’t know when. The pressure she put on herself, combined with her workload for test analysis and the publishing of her research, continued to grind her down. She needed EC31 to work with the latest incarnation of genetically modified (GMO) seed. Bathemore was staring at the loss of billions of dollars in federal research money if she couldn’t get it right. The project was so taxing, she never took the time to ponder if she should be messing with Mother Nature, only if she could.

  Looking back at the stacks of documents and white papers piled on her desk, she had to wonder if it was all worth it.

  “Yes,” she said to the cluttered mess, “If EC31 passes all of the USDA trials, it will have been. I’m going to make a difference in the world,” she told herself confidently. “And when I do, it’ll all seem so trivial.”

  Stuffing the untouched brown-bag lunch into her briefcase, she reached for the cell phone to call Gregg, but stopped. Her husband wasn’t home – he’d deployed a week earlier.

  “Maybe that’s why I’m working so many hours,” she commented to the desk, already knowing it wasn’t true. “I hate going home to an empty house. I’m not cut out to be a military wife.”

  Emily and Gregg had been married five years earlier while she was pursuing her doctorate at NC State. She had literally run into him in the middle of Raleigh Durham International airport. Hustling through the terminal to catch a flight back to Ohio, she had rounded a corner and ended up pinned against his chest.

  Something in his eyes froze her momentarily, a connection furthered by his smile. Time and her heart paused for a moment, his handsome face flashing concern for the harried girl he now held in his arms.

  She had quickly learned that he was based out of Ft. Bragg, just two short hours south of Raleigh. Their courtship had been an intense, whirlwind affair highlighted by long Saturday afternoon walks on the campus of NC State and rushed, late night rendezvous whenever the couple’s busy schedule allowed. The type-A personalities managed to overcome the distance by meeting in either town when possible. However, as with any relationship, it wasn’t perfect.

  Before leaving on his latest deployment, they had argued about, what she believed to be, his unwillingness to retire after twenty plus years in the Army.

  Long ago before they met, Gregg had immersed himself in the various Middle Eastern customs, languages, and traditions. He had gone so far as to begin teaching himself the Arabic, Persian (Farsi), and Kurdish languages. His proficiency helped the young soldier land a coveted spot in the military’s world famous language schools.

  His natural athletic ability, unyielding motivation, and high aptitude scores funneled Gregg’s military career into an elite path – Special Forces. Upon completion of the rigorous qualification process, and the various training courses and regimens, Gregg was officially listed as a Weapons Sergeant. He had never confided the full truth of his occupation to Emily. Many operators don’t.

  As far as she knew, he was a linguistics instructor for the Army who commonly trained soldiers overseas. She was naïve in her belief that his job called for travel to exotic lands, often with little advance notice.

  Their inability to conceive and Gregg’s reluctance to become a civilian were trivial in comparison to the delays in the development of EC31. The constant retooling of the formula was simply icing on top of her primordial frustration cake. Emily was ovulating and her work was at the pinnacle of criticality, and he was gone… again.

  Her carefully mapped out life trajectory said she should be a mother by now. Mostly though, she just wanted someone to talk to. She needed a spouse that would be around when she needed to vent her frustrations.

  On most occasions, she was resigned to the fact that many of Gregg’s deployments were simply bad timing. On others, Emily was convinced that either the Army, or Gregg, was conspiring to keep her from becoming a mother.

  The day before he’d left, she was feeling particularly vulnerable. She had no idea what had set her off, but she had snapped and screamed, ‘It would be easier to become pregnant if you were home once in a while! I don’t see the hand of God coming down to touch my womb!’

  She had regretted the comment as soon as she made it. They eventually reconciled when Gregg starting feverishly searching the house screaming, ‘No ‘hand of God’ in here!’, as he exited each room.

  She saw him to the plane the next morning and then did what she alwa
ys did in front of co-workers. She bottled it up, put a smile on her face, and pretended as if everything was just... fine.

  Once the last bit of data finished processing, she could start the computer on the overnight task of generating new predictive harvest models. These would be ready when her assistant and the two interns arrived in the morning.

  Their home was near her office in the Victorian Village suburb of Columbus. This location was ideal for several factors, but mainly due to the housing crash and the Israel Iran War. Many of the nation’s residents had uprooted and moved back to urban environments. Driving, alone or in a carpool, simply became too expensive for middle class families to bear.

  Their address was only a few blocks from both her office and Ohio State. Gregg would be able to ride his bike or, in inclement weather, take the bus to OSU for classes. The last few times he had been home on leave, he had begun to make inroads in both the History and Foreign Language departments. Gregg had a valuable skillset given his multilingual abilities in Middle Eastern languages and extreme knowledge and understanding of the cultures and customs. A bidding war of sorts would ensue if he could make the right connections. However, as was the case with most institutions of higher learning, he would find it difficult to land a teaching position without having a degree himself.

  Emily secretly hoped that they would be able to upgrade their modest furnishings with her husband in the private sector and publishing royalties from her research. In a far off dream, the burgeoning lecture circuit would provide enough for a vacation to somewhere exotic.

  In preparation for the recently completed first round of USDA field trials, Emily had designed a series of tests in order to understand the cause and effect of the new synthetic on the surrounding ecosystems. Each was purpose-built to not only determine crop yields, but also gather information regarding any potential side effects on the insects that were repelled and attracted. She wasn’t going to repeat the mistakes made with Bt.