AMERICA ONE
Authors: T. I. Wade
Tags: #Sci-fi, space travel, action-adventure, fiction, America, new president
AMERICA ONE
By
T. I. WADE
Ryan Richmond dreamed about going to space since the age of seven. Reading about space advancement, and especially Neil Armstrong on the lunar surface in National Geographic, was the ignition of this dream.
At nineteen, after he sold his first company, he recruited the remnants of the Russian Space Program—three of the best space brains in the world.
In his twenties he founded and sold two more companies and hired most of the best scientists and engineers in the European Space Authority.
During his thirties, after selling his third company, he invested heavily in Internet start-ups like Google, netting billions.
Then, he patiently waited until NASA’s shuttle program came to a sad end and contracted the best brains in the U.S. Space program.
Now Ryan Richmond is in his forties, and still wants to go to space; the only problem is that the newly elected U.S. government doesn’t have a current space program of their own—and wants his!
AMERICA ONE
Copyright © 2012 by T I Wade
All Rights Reserved.
Published in the United States of America
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Editor–Sherry Emanuel, Raleigh, North Carolina
Final Editor–Brad Theado, Stuarts Draft, Virginia
Cover design–Jack Hillman, Hillman Design Group, Sedona, Arizona
eBook edition layout by eBooks by Barb for booknook.biz
Font COM4t Sans Medium by Hideki Katayama
AMERICA ONE
is dedicated to Neil Armstrong.
Neil Armstrong
Outside in space there are no boundaries,
but within this rocket several walls surround me.
We are the first to reach the great outer space,
and I guess that means we’ve won this important race.
Of this land we are the kings,
and I feel as if I can spread my wings,
and fly through the dark, cold nothingness of space
until I feel the warmth of the sun caressing my face.
We are explorers sailing across this infinite sea,
in search of adventure and mystery.
In search of information about the unknown,
this trip represents the seeds of history we’ve sown.
As we head farther from warmth travelling to the moon,
I find comfort and safety in this space cocoon.
As I step onto the moon I think in my mind,
that this is one step for man and one giant leap for mankind.
Our exploration eventually comes to a conclusion,
and back home this will probably feel like a dream or elusion.
Back at home to this voyage my name is signed,
this great feat, the result of technology and human power combined!
Tischan Anne Wade, 11
th
Grade.
North Carolina School of Science and Mathematics.
This novel is only a story—a story of fiction, which could or might come true sometime in the future.
The people in this story are mostly fictitious, but since the story takes place in our present day, some of the people mentioned are real people.
There were no thoughts to treat these people as good or bad people, just people who are living at the time the story is written.
The author is not an expert in the field of space travel. The author is only a storyteller.
Even though hundreds of hours of Internet research were done to write this story, many might find the scientific description of space travel lacking, simple, or simply not 100 percent accurate. The fuels, gases, metals, and the results of using these components are as accurate as the author could describe them.
Very few of us really understand what it is like to travel or live in space for extended periods. Very few of us ever will in our lifetimes.
Neil Armstrong knew, and understood as much as anybody the hardships of space and that is why this action-adventure, science-fiction story is dedicated to him.
The Author would like to gratefully thank Alexander Wade (13), his son, for his many hours of research into nuclear reactors, space flight and astro-engineering to make this story as close to reality as possible for you the reader.
Alexander—a big THANK-YOU!
Do I see a C-5 Galaxy over there?
Nellis Air Force Base, Las Vegas
A lot of water goes under the bridge
The second last Christmas for many
The Russian “Beer Can” goes high!
DX2014 – Can we get them back?
Iraq
Victor Isaac Noble, or Lieutenant VIN as his men called him, was a million miles away from the U.S. space race when the Humvee he was hitching a ride back to Baghdad in blew up around him.
He was returning from a couple of months in the desert, west-north-west of Baghdad, tracking known Iranian insurgents; their mission was to transport IED-making equipment for pro-Iranian explosive experts who would lay waste to U.S. military vehicles on the major highways around the capital city.
VIN, a lieutenant with the United States Marine Corps, Force Reconnaissance, or Force Recon for short, was in charge of a five-man team searching a large desolate area of desert around a small Iraqi town called Balad Ruz. The dusty, desert town was northwest of Baghdad with direct road access to the Iranian border.
At twenty-six, he was a young man like all the team members around him, and exactly six feet tall. His parents—his father of English and his mother of Irish descent—hailed from New Jersey, over the river from Manhattan. VIN’s brown hair was from his father’s side of the family. His slightly darker skin tone and bright blue eyes from his mother’s side, as was his Irish build: strong, broad and muscular, as she told him the Irish were.
He and his men were camouflaged by night atop a dark rocky ridge waiting for any movement from the direction of Iran. The moon hadn’t risen yet, but they could just hear the sound of truck engines faintly echoing down the valley in front of them. It was known that several high-ranking Iraqi officers came from the surrounding area, and there could be ties to them and the Iranians over the border.
The year was 2010. U.S. forces were beginning to leave Iraq and several politicians in Iraq and the neighboring countries wanted to expedite the American’s willingness to leave.
During the several weeks Lieutenant Noble and his men had spent in the area, they had noticed tracks of American-made tires coming across the desolate hilly border westwards under the cover of darkness every eight days; the trucks were loaded with explosives.
Several hundred feet below them on the narrow valley floor, two unmarked, desert-camouflaged five-ton American M939 gun-trucks slowly negotiated their way along the rough and dusty fifteen-mile stretch of dirt road from the border towards Balad Ruz. The truck was preceding without lights, the driver using night goggles.
“We can take them out here?” whispered his second-in-command next to him.
“No, we need to keep them in sight and find out where they are going. If we are lucky we can take them out on the next trip, or on their way home,” Lieutenant Noble replied. “The UAV can do the work for us and track the trucks, but I think it’s possible to get more information from live prisoners at their destination before we take them out.”
Lieutenant Noble continued to watch the slow moving vehicles through his night vision goggles while his second-in-command texted on his communication device, sending the trucks’ coordinates to the ever-present UAV, the unmanned MQ-1 Predator drone several miles to their south and 20,000 feet above them.
For the next hour, the drone, which had computed the information, had moved north to position the trucks on its night-vision video feed, and to monitor where the vehicles were heading.
An hour before dawn, the slow moving trucks entered the small town of Balad Ruz and within minutes had disappeared into one of the larger buildings in the center of town. The UAV’s live feed was being seen by VIN and his men, and his commander back at base, through their communications devices. The building was noted and they headed back five miles towards town.
It was dawn by the time they reached the outskirts of the town. VIN and his desert team were already dressed in attire to make them look like local villagers, and it was easy to walk through the dirty streets of the town. If the townsfolk were up and about, very few would notice or talk to strangers.
When they entered the area four weeks earlier, Force Recon had set them up with three camels to carry their long-range supplies. Unbeknownst to the last camel, it carried enough explosives to blow the group to bits.
The town was quiet as the men walked through the slowly awakening streets. Like a cowboy movie, they were silhouetted by the sun rising over the horizon; they were looking for the building they had seen on their communicator’s live feed. The team had walked through the same town three times in the last couple of weeks and hadn’t seen anything out of the ordinary.
Within thirty minutes they found the building, a shabby car repair shop with a door big enough to allow the military trucks through. Lieutenant Noble noticed two men hanging around and talking outside the front of the building’s closed door, and they passed by, hardly looking in that direction.
Lieutenant Noble, with a small video cam hidden in the jewel of his cloth headdress, sent more live feed to the drone as he walked the first camel past the two men. Sergeant Bradley, the team’s second-in-command, took waypoints of the location of the building on his communication devise held underneath his robes as he led the second camel with his other hand.
They stopped for water at the well and an hour later left town at the western edge to go back into the hills. Hopefully the two men they passed had not noticed anything out of place.
“How do you want to take out the building?” texted VIN several hours later, once they had hidden themselves in a cave. It was time for their daily report.
“How far are the closest locals’ houses from the target?”
texted back Colonel Mike Jackson from central headquarters in Baghdad. The colonel had seen everything through the “eyes” of the drone, but needed more information before making a decision.
“Just one street, twenty feet wide,”
was the reply.
“Too close for comfort. I think it’s better if you guys go in and dismantle the factory after dark. I would prefer a captive from the transport vehicles, but I think that the men inside the building could know as much as the drivers. I suspect they and the drivers are from the other side of the border. You take care of the building tonight and the guy above you can take out the trucks. I will send a team chopper in once the vehicles are dealt with. Get some rest and plan to go in an hour after the trucks leave. The trucks certainly won’t leave before nightfall, and we can take them out at around the same time you go in. Get in close after dark and I’ll call you when they leave.”