But what did they know about low altitude jet operation? From the limited test flight data, Roger calculated a range of around 1,200 nautical miles. With a Great Circle distance of 1,112 nautical miles between the two points, taking into account the curvature of the earth, that was less than a ten percent reserve factor. And even that involved considerable speculation.
Fortunately, at 25,000 feet and well ahead of the storm, the jet stream would not be as much of an issue as it would be in another twenty-four hours. But he would still have a long flight. He calculated that his maximum range would be at a ground speed of just 400 knots. Captain Brown would have a pleasant flight with plenty of sightseeing for just under three hours. For Roger, in “his” time frame, he had to stay awake and alert for almost twelve. He was glad he remembered to bring an empty water bottle!
With little else to do, Roger thought back through some of what he’d learned.
One: My reality is “clocking” four times faster.
Two: There’s also a dimensional shift of some kind…I can walk through walls.
Three: The transition even affects sound and electromagnetic radiation, or at least what I’m able to perceive of those frequencies.
Four: Even with the faster clock rate, my lower frequencies of sound and light should be discernible to others….
Five: But they aren’t….
Six: So, my sound and electromagnetic frequencies not only shift, but also transition between dimensions to such an extent that they are further attenuated, or cloaked, or whatever.…
The flight seemed to go on forever. Eventually, emotional darkness began to descend.
I’ll never again have any direct contact with another living person…
A deep ache welled up in his chest. Not only the perpetual emptiness after the loss of his family, but now also the profound loneliness of his unique condition. At least a prisoner in solitary confinement could hold onto the hope of one day again being with other people.
Roger wanted to close his eyes one last time, push the stick forward, and nose into the countryside. He took a deep breath and thanked God for the assurance that no matter how he felt, he knew that he would never truly be alone. Whatever time he had left…
Time? That train of thought prompted Roger to glance at the chronometer and instruments.
He stared at his fuel indicator. Then at his course plot. He ran the numbers and checked his fuel indicator again. Yes, the reading was decrementing—the indicator was working—but very slowly.
Either he had a hurricane for a tailwind, or he was burning fuel at half the expected rate.
He shifted to “engineer mode.”
So…maybe the air converts as it enters the zone around Guardian, the Bernoulli effect provides lift, then converts back as it leaves the zone behind us—and reduces drag?
“What in the world would this baby do with the ion drive at full altitude, wide open!?” he exclaimed out loud, to himself.
Would it even work?
34. ON STATION
After the uneventful flight to Grand Forks, an exhausted Roger Brandon was glad to taxi into the waiting hangar. As at Robins, Grand Forks Air Force Base had once hosted huge aircraft like strategic B-52 bombers and KC-135 tankers. It still had hangars. Very large hangars. It also had a robust drone mission. But Roger taxied to a much smaller assigned hangar. He was just able to lock a wheel and do a “one-eighty” inside to face the aircraft nose back toward the entrance. He powered down, walked to the hangar door, and “hovered” his finger against the “CLOSE” button until he could push it and secure the facility.
The closed door just accentuated his feeling of isolation.
Roger knew his earthly time was limited, if for no other reason than his age. But there was more. The sudden pandemonium of the EMP and NUDET had somehow healed the damage to his spinal cord. And it seemed that his heart rate was steadier; he couldn’t remember any episode of A-Fib since the transformation. But there was something else. The occasional twinge in his side reminded him of his ailing gall bladder. Now in his isolation, those or countless other health problems could quickly become fatal. No doctor would ever see him again. Nor will anyone else.
His crushing emptiness went beyond even the health concerns. He was more than ready to join his Lord, his family, and other loved ones who had gone before. He’d experienced a deep sense of anticipation as he was lowered and strapped into Guardian just a few nights earlier. It was a matter of both humility and honor to follow his Lord in giving his own life to save many.
Now, he couldn’t even have fellowship and corporate worship with other Christians. Nor would he be able to join his church prayer meetings. He and many others had made it a priority to meet and wrestle in prayer over marriages, families, and continuing cultural degradation in America and around the world. They began seeing some remarkable breakthroughs.
After a long sigh, he willed himself to refocus.
“Let’s check out the accommodations,” he said as he walked over to the side.
To his delight, the pantry was well-stocked.
Back in the cockpit, Roger sent a quick email to announce his successful arrival. He painfully climbed back down, had a quick meal, and then collapsed exhausted on the “soft” concrete floor.
Eight months early, Guardian System One was on base.
He was fast asleep in moments. This time, he remembered no dreams. He awoke rested and grateful that the soreness in his legs was less intense. Curious of the time, he climbed up enough to look into the cockpit. He had only slept two hours! A circadian rhythm completely separate from “their” twenty-four-hour schedule.
He took a moment to assess the big picture. Since System Two wouldn’t be ready for months, and the international scene continued to degrade, General Alvarez needed to know how soon Roger could go on alert.
Yes, Roger, a “senior citizen” civilian, was the only one able to fly or even see System One. So he would be on alert at “Center Field,” in striking distance to protect either coast, as well as attacks over the North Pole, or up from “down under” if there were another FOBS missile.
Time for my punch list.
Years of engineering had taught Roger to organize an outline first, then fill in the details later. For now:
One: Personal needs
Clothes, socks, shoes
A jacket and gloves? NOTE: Walk outside; see if I’m impervious to North Dakota cold like at Warner Robins
Toiletries
Data drive from home – Bible study, pictures, etcetera
Comfortable recliner
Supplements; make list
Medicine, such as:
Low dose aspirin
Meds for occasional A-Fib
Meds for gall bladder, for what little good they’ve done
Two: Food and fixings
Table and microwave, stocked refrigerator, pantry goods; everything on wheels so I can roll it near rear of the aircraft to convert, but not in the way of an alert
Wish list of food, beverages, snacks, condiments
Three: Alert
Pressure and G-suit to fit me, and a better-fitting helmet
Supplies and maintenance instructions:
Oxygen generator
Lubricants
Fuel for scramjet/ion drive
JP-8
Slugs for the rail gun
Tools
Maintenance instructions from DPI
SRBs and a trailer I can operate to raise and secure them in place
He paused after the last. He needed a test run. But he strongly suspected that with the unexpected low drag, Guardian could use the lower thrust “flight test” SRBs, cutting several more months off the alert schedule.
As soon as the supplies arrive, he’d conduct his own test flight. He began a new list:
Optimal climb angle with “flight test” SRBs?
Will ion drive work in the “new reality?”
How?
Range?
Speed?
Altitude?
Will the now off-frequency LIDAR work?
The rail gun: Will it work? Accuracy? Lethality?
Again, he paused. Roger checked the time. One a.m. Eastern. He’d wait till Justin was at work in another six hours, then send him an email using Enigma. It was time to check the recalibration routine. And he’d need to download final “non-test” operational software into the aircraft, with Justin’s modifications to allow him to fly without a back-seater.
Software. He’d need Justin to program alert notifications. Since “his” reality couldn’t accommodate him having a cell phone, he depended on Guardian for communications. And, so, began another list:
Need cockpit to remain “hot” at all times to receive comms and alerts
Therefore, need ground power cart with quick disconnect
Because of weird sleep schedule, need important alerts to wake me:
I’ll sleep in front of Guardian
Flash landing lights if urgent message
Flash landing lights fast and auto-start engine upon order to launch
The discipline of writing lists and organizing his thoughts brought something else to mind. I’ll be operating up to four times faster than NORAD. Somebody’s got to figure out how I’m going to fly through this airspace. Air Traffic Control didn’t need to see him, even if they could. His exorbitant speeds would cause Air Traffic Control to casually dismiss any transponder pings as equipment malfunctions and complain to service personnel to fix perfectly functioning equipment. But he needed to avoid other aircraft during slower, lower altitude launch and recovery.
There was more. I can’t be reading emails while flying. We’ll have to use speech recognition.
The challenges just went on and on. Like timing. Guardian was designed to be on “warm alert,” ready to be airborne in under five minutes at the first sign of a potential hostile launch. This meant having a crew suited up, in the hangar, and the first crewmember in the aircraft within two minutes of alert, starting the engine and opening the hangar. The second crewmember had exactly one more minute. Wheels-up in under five, hypersonic in another two, and ready to engage a warhead as it began re-entry. An inertial kill with the ten-pound slug at a combined speed of several thousand miles an hour…well, modeling showed that all known and foreseen weapon designs would be destroyed. Any explosion would be non-nuclear, and most of the warhead would vaporize as the pieces re-entered without the protection of an intact heat shield.
How in the world can a single person stay on alert indefinitely? How fast can I respond, even at my enhanced speed?
Another more compelling thought occurred. Time for…what? With his new circadian rhythm, there was no such thing as breakfast, lunch, or dinner according to a set time of day. He decided to keep it simple:
Time to eat.
+ + +
About the time Roger had his MRE in his new Grand Forks, North Dakota home, Cindy was half-way through her drive around Charleston, South Carolina. Her itinerary had her scheduled to travel over 120 miles, stopping for several minutes at each of over three dozen locations. She used the reusable Pole Climbers to position Video Spots on trees or poles. The Video Spots would secure in-place and “borrow” cellular service to link up. She’d retrieve the Pole Climber and move on to the next location.
It was 3:00 a.m. when she finally returned to her apartment and organized all the feeds. The forty cameras came up live on her multitablet. She then streamed their feeds to her large flat screen TV and adjusted the feed to run as a slide show. She set eight feeds for each screen, for a total of five screens. Each screen displayed for twelve seconds at a time. She named the feeds by location, organized the sets based on those locations, and set up background recording on her eight-terabyte solid state drive.
Cindy sat back and watched as the screen morphed from eight video feeds from the north, then from the east, then south, west, and center, each displayed for twelve seconds and repeated every minute. The clarity was full HD. And that was with IR at night.
She took a long, deep breath, lay back in her couch, and shut her eyes for a quick two-hour nap. She would be up by six, shower, and have her morning smoothie breakfast. She would then wait for pandemonium to break loose sometime in the next few weeks.
35. MAKE THEM SUFFER
Taylor al-Amriki drove in silence. Every minute or so, he would wipe his sweaty hands on his shirt, despite his windows being down on that cool afternoon. Daylight Savings Time had ended weeks earlier, and at 4:00 p.m. it was already late afternoon. The traffic was heavier than normal for a Wednesday, but he had left early to make sure he wasn’t late. He would park and sit until it was time to move.
He silently gave thanks to Allah for smiling upon their holy mission with cold weather. Their long winter coats were entirely appropriate. They were also perfect for hiding weapons and their vests.
Six heavily armed men were on their way to an appointment with destiny, each driving a separate car and traveling a different route. The Great Satan would be knocked to its knees more brutally than at any time since September 11, 2001. And he would be a part of it. On earth, soldiers of the True Jihad would remember and honor his name forever. Eternally, he would receive his reward and be welcomed by the merciful Allah. His Imam assured him that this was the most noble, courageous, sacrificial act he could possibly accomplish in his few years on earth.
A lot of Americans are about to die.
Sure, he was an American, too. But he was no longer an infidel. He thought his citizenship would help them get weapons and ammo, but the truth was that firearms laws on the books for decades, were finally being enforced. Any investigation would quickly set off alarms that would affect the whole cell group. So, he helped get firearms, explosives, and everything else the old-fashioned way; the black market. In just a few weeks they had all they could possibly need. He couldn’t help but smile at the thought that a few weapons might have come back across the border years before during “Operation Fast and Furious”.
Now if only Demon Dad was in the line of fire! I’d pull the trigger myself.
+ + +
Cindy’s heart sank as she read the secure email from Sam.
“Lord help us, we were wrong! Are you watching the news?”
Cindy quickly re-configured her TV to compress the live video streams to just the top half, and then scanned through local and national news sources on the bottom half. In moments she heard a report from a blonde, thirty-something newswoman sitting behind a desk at a local station. The news anchor reported breathlessly:
“A deadly attack has apparently just occurred in Mt. Pleasant. We have unconfirmed reports of at least a dozen casualties, and possibly hundreds of injuries. No word from officials yet, and it’s too early to speculate, but one woman on the scene has described it as a terrorist attack. This is a developing story and still a potentially dangerous situation. If you are in the area, please stay indoors.
“Our Trevor Wright is over at the Union Terminal, and we go now to him live. Trevor, what do we know?”
“Susan, we were here at Union Terminal doing a story on a new Carnival cruise, when what appears to be a planned attack occurred. This is what we know so far. At about 4:20 p.m., there was an explosion at the Wando Welch Terminal in Mt. Pleasant. According to my source at the South Carolina Port Authority, a device, possibly a remote-control submarine, exploded between two container ships. Waves from the blast apparently nearly capsized some smaller vessels on Wando River, and we could hear the blast all the way over here at Union Pier.
“No other damage from this initial blast has been reported. But I just spoke to one official who said it appears the initial explosion was simply to attract attention and draw people outside. We have reports that a few minutes after the initial blast, an unauthorized unmanned aerial vehicle, or UAV, flew in to the area at somewhere around 100 feet above the ground, possibly lower. We have some cell phone footage. It’s grainy, but you can see it appears to be
towing something. It looks like maybe a dirigible, you know, like a smaller version of the Hindenburg—I’m guessing maybe fourteen to twenty-foot-long…”
“Jason, I’m sorry to interrupt. I am on the phone with an eyewitness. Ma’am? Can you describe what you saw?”
Cindy listened as the voice of an obviously distraught woman filled in more details.
“We—me and my husband—we were outside when we heard this explosion down at the terminal. At first, we thought there had been a terrible accident. Then we saw this drone thing. It was almost like a small helicopter towing a long balloon or something. Of course, a lot of people were heading over to the explosion to see what happened and if they could help. We help each other around here. And then…and then…”
The woman broke down in tears, and Cindy had to wipe tears from her own eyes.
The Guardian Collection (End of the Sixth Age Book 2) Page 17