AMERICA ONE Read online

  Suddenly there were loud screams as silenced bullets erupted from all three Glocks. Bradley, who had rolled out, shouted a warning, “Three hostages sitting in front of you! ” as he fired at anybody able to move. One of his shots hit the tall man in the left arm as he was trying to grab a machine pistol lying on the table in front of him; his arm went limp.

  Lieutenant Noble, suddenly hearing shouts from an office at the front of the building, looked further into the building and saw more bodies moving. He shot three of them, and his side was complete as he turned his Glock turned towards the office window, shot, and the last man in a line of three slumped to the floor as the glass exploded into millions of pieces.

  Within seconds it was all over, and the two tall marines ran around the debris and into the large open room, about a thousand square feet.

  “Men escaping out the front door! Gibbs, guard this room! Bradley, move towards the front! I want those men!”

  VIN and Sergeant Bradley reached the office within seconds; not one shot had been fired by the enemy. The smaller side door to the building was open as they entered the office. Bradley, a few feet in front of VIN, swiftly delivered a round into the groaning man’s leg, and rolled out the outer door into the night. There was no retaliation, but he saw two dark shapes heading down the road towards the east and out of range.

  “The drone should keep them in sight; they are out of range,” he explained to VIN as the lieutenant caught up with him a second later.

  “Text the drone a message” replied VIN “we should get back inside. I don’t think we have awakened many people yet. Let’s take stock.” And they re-entered the building through the brightly lit door, pulling it closed behind them.

  Within minutes of the beginning of the attack, the drone directed its thermal-imaging camera onto the eastern edge of the town and found what it was looking for: two human shapes running quickly in the direction the trucks had gone earlier towards the border.

  Inside was a mess. There was blood everywhere as both men reloaded with fresh magazines. Corporal Gibbs had already done so and was crouched in a corner, ready to shoot anybody that moved. He was told to cover the room while they frisked the injured man in the office. He wore the robes of a local and had died by the time they finished checking him over. Both men then looked around the small office, saw nothing of interest, and headed back to the main room.

  Bradley had shot well; the three men to the left of the tall man had most of their skulls in pieces on the bloody floor. So did the three men the lieutenant had shot. There were another two bodies on the floor on the other side of the table, near the back door where Gibbs rolled and hit them the same way. The tall man was lying on the ground groaning, probably in shock and, apart from three bound and hooded people still fidgeting on chairs close to the pile of bodies, the room was still.

  Lastly, VIN took stock of the three hooded and tied individuals sitting in front of him. One was dressed in bloody U.S. camouflage and looked female. The other two wore local dress and also looked female. He walked over and undid the black cloth covering the camouflaged girl and expected what he saw when he removed the hood.

  The poor girl’s face was badly beaten, she was semi-conscious, her head drooped, but she was alive.

  “Victor November (VIN Noble) to base, we have an American captive injured here, request immediate medi-vac and backup. The cat is out of the bag and the factory secure apart from two males heading east. Town is quiet so far,” he texted into his communicator. “Have three females and one prisoner, our job is done. Request transportation from our base location for two men and one prisoner, and immediate transport here in town for eight.”

  “Incoming to both locations; 30 minutes,” appeared as a reply on his handheld, and he looked at the girl. Half of her uniform was missing, and the rest was darkened by dried blood. Sergeant Bradley was kneeling in front of her and giving her medication.

  Lieutenant Noble then removed the hoods from the other two girls and found two local teenagers: fully dressed, unmarked, alive, and very scared.

  A few seconds later and three miles away, the two trucks exploded and lit up the surrounding desert as missiles from the drone ended their useful lives. The two men running as fast as they could two miles behind the trucks had several seconds more, seeing the eastern horizon light up with pretty colors as a third missile turned them into nothing more than a hot drizzle in the desert breeze.

  If the townsfolk heard any noises from the building or the explosions to the east of the city, nobody came out to see what was happening. The dogs suddenly went quiet, as if on orders, and everybody stayed where they were. The Americans were in town.

  As promised, thirty seconds later rotor blades could be heard approaching from the west, and three large twin-Rotors Sea Knights came in a few hundred yards away. Sergeant Gibbs let off a flare above the building to show where they were. It wasn’t necessary because the incoming chopper pilots already had plans of the town from the drone with the actual building marked.

  VIN continued to medicate and bandage his prisoner; the man was now unconscious and had lost a lot of blood. Within minutes a platoon of marines met up with the fourth team member still outside the back door and entered followed by medics and stretcher bearers.

  “Wow!” stated the marine captain in charge of the incoming troops. “Lieutenant, you have enough stuff here to start a good Fourth of July firework show.”

  “You are right there, Sir,” replied Noble standing up and quickly saluting. “Medics, the American girl and this tall guy here first! They need immediate treatment. Get them aboard ASAP. Captain, you are taking over, I hope?”

  “Roger. You are all heading back to base, Lieutenant. Get your men out of here, onto the choppers. You’ve done your job. Well done!”

  Three hours later, and with a hot mug of strong coffee, VIN entered the debriefing room back at their forward desert base 100 miles southeast of Baghdad.

  Major Roberts, his company commander, would be in charge of the team’s debriefing, reporting directly to Colonel Jackson in Baghdad.

  For an hour each man in the team gave a report on what happened, what they observed, and any possible losses of civilians due to their actions. The reports were good, the lieutenant had done well; no losses, military or civilian were due to any of his actions and the report was then added to, from other areas, where the three hostages were being interrogated.

  The American girl, a sergeant from a U.S. military transport company, had disappeared from an attacked convoy heading north on the main Basra-Baghdad highway several days earlier. She was in good shape, apart from her beatings. No bones were broken and she had already reported that the intentions of the bomb-makers were to strap a suicide device on her, under her combat fatigues, and then drop her close to the Green Area in Baghdad. A timer on the explosive device would trigger it to explode after she was released. It looked like the bad guys were hoping she would be picked up and taken into the densely populated area where they would detonate her device.

  The two girls had been kidnapped from the neighboring village and were to be dropped off in other parts of Baghdad with suicide bombs under their clothing; the plan was for all three bombs to cause big problems for the exiting army. The bomb-makers didn’t seem to care about the lives of the local girls, or whether they actually wanted to participate.

  The report on the tall captive was that he was of Russian origin. He had several Russian prison tattoos on his body and his facial portrait had already been wired to the CIA, Interpol and the FBI. It came back as a positive match to a Gregory Sanototovich, a master bomb-maker who was on loan from a branch of the Russian military to terrorist agencies. He had been connected to the bombing of the U.S. Embassy in Nairobi, Kenya, and one of the underground train bombings in London a couple of years earlier. He was a good catch and would be taken back to Baghdad and finally sent to the U.S.

  Unfortunately, the individual they caught in the outhouse was Iraqi, not Iranian, and the
interrogators believed him to be a member of the new Iraqi Baghdad police force. He would also be escorted back to Baghdad. Papers found scattered around the two missile attack sites did produce badly burnt Iranian cigarettes packs, coins, and part of an Iranian military fuel ID card; but the names and any other important information were demolished in the blasts.

  “Noble, your current tour is coming to an end. The Russian is flying back by chopper tonight, they want him back immediately. The second prisoner’s return trip can be put off for a day or two. If you want, you can escort the prisoner back to Baghdad and then head stateside. What do you think?”

  The explosion was hot and it hurt badly. Time slowed and any movement seemed to be happening in slow motion. He felt the seat beneath him lift him up and toss him around like a roller coaster.

  The Humvee’s left front tire had detonated the IED, and Lieutenant Noble was lucky that he was sitting in the right-hand rear seat; his upper body was protected by the prisoner who was between him and the explosion. He felt like the whole vehicle was airborne for a few seconds. His legs suddenly hurt like hell. Just before he felt and heard the vehicle crash down on its roof, he thought how ironic it was that he had helped disarm hundreds of these roadside bombs; and then one got him. Then, peace, as his head hit the roof, knocking him out.

  VIN was suddenly back in the car repair shop he had attacked with his men in the town. He watched in shock as the men he had shot suddenly come alive over and over again. They rose from the bloody floor, pointed their fingers and laughed at him. They laughed hard and loud, until his befuddled brain realized that their laughing sounded like a beep and not a human laugh. A beeping monitor, something he had heard before, sometime a long time ago, in an intensive ward of a hospital.

  The beeping sounds he heard around him, three different ones, slowly brought him back to consciousness. He tried to move, but he was pinned in the bed. The light on the other side of his closed eyelids was extremely bright; he tried to open one eye slightly and peek outside. Somebody must have noticed his eye twitch as he heard a female voice.

  “Captain, I think he’s coming around.”

  “Lieutenant Noble, can you hear me? Move a finger, or try and nod if you can hear me,” added a second female voice.

  He tried to open an eye, but it was too heavy. So he tried to move an arm. That also felt too heavy, so he tried to move the smallest part of his body he could think of, a pinky finger, and that got a response.

  “Well done,” he heard the second voice say. “Now move your pinky finger on your other hand for me.” He tried hard and he felt it move.

  “Well done, soldier! I’m going to put you back to sleep. Just relax, you are on R&R,” was all he heard until the building with the laughing dead men returned to taunt him.

  Chapter 2

  The Private Space Race

  Ryan Richmond was a successful man in his early forties. At 17, he started his first business, a mail-order company, with a $1,500 loan from his father, a car salesman, after convincing him that his idea was a good one. He grew up in a strict family, his father a quiet, but successful salesman, his mother a new computer software designer, and the real brains of the marriage.

  Both parents were quiet thinkers and Ryan grew up to be the same. He learned always to be extremely polite, say “yes sir”, “no ma’am”, and tell people only what was necessary. His father often stated that the only way to sell a car was to say one word—yes—to everything the customer asked.

  His parents, tall and slim and both over six feet, spent most weekends at home enjoying their free time reading books and weekly magazines. This gave Ryan the opportunity to read his space engineering and computer magazines.

  One weekend, he saw an advertisement for bright red lady’s underwear in one of his computer magazines. It was actually the first time he had ever seen a scantily dressed pretty girl. The pictures depicted smiling half-naked ladies strutting around in their underwear. For the first time in his life his business mind began operating. What girls could refuse to look so nice underneath their dresses? And his first business deal broke the surface of his non-stop mind.

  It was quite a shock when Ryan asked his father for a loan for his first business venture, sexy ladies underwear of all things. But after seeing the interesting underwear in the magazine Ryan showed him, he smiled wishing he had found the same opportunity when he was a kid.

  Ryan sold the sexy lady’s underwear advertised by a British-based company through their own small catalog. Every piece of lingerie, small panties and bikini bottoms, was in Ferrari red, as the company called it. After Ryan did the math and realized that bulk orders of fifty sets of the same item had a price reduction of seventy percent, he doubled the price and sold cheap. He also made a few cents on shipping and handling, setting up a UPS account.

  The young man enjoyed his first business. Who wouldn’t? It wasn’t that he was a pervert, or loved seeing scantily dressed women. The business was colorful, exciting, and it seemed the ladies loved his wares. He wasn’t really a ladies’ man. He had very little interest in the opposite sex. Even at eighteen, he just considered them to be nice, pretty, very interesting individuals to talk to, and he was sure one would just arrive out of the blue one day and want to be married. Ryan was uneducated in the opposite sex department.

  After his third Valentine’s Day, having added a second line of edible chocolate underwear, he was doing tens of thousands of dollars of business each week, and was offered $200,000 for the business by his largest customer, the owner of a local hotel chain. By then he had graduated from high school and had started in his first year of an engineering degree at the university closest to his home, so that he could study and run his company.

  A slender young man with brown hair, brown eyes and fair skin, Ryan was tall, at two inches over six feet. The glasses he always wore were thick, and made him look studious. At nineteen, and having already repaid the initial loan to his father a couple of times over just to show his gratitude, he had $200,000 in the bank.

  During his first year at the university he often sat in on lectures by visiting scientists from around the world. One of these scientists, a 29-year-old Russian man named Boris, was one of the young, fresh brains who had worked for the Russian Space Authority. Unfortunately he was now unemployed, as he had lost just his job a few months earlier. Ryan enjoyed talking to this man.

  Boris had been brought over by the university to lecture on Russian space travel and ideas for the future. He was extremely educated in the field of space travel, and after listening to his third lecture by this man, Ryan asked Boris if he could afford to employ him to discuss his own future designs.

  Boris was desperate to live in the U.S., and readily agreed if Ryan could arrange a Visa so he could stay. Boris also told Ryan of two other young men worth hiring, both single, and who would do anything to get to the U.S. They would all work for peanuts.

  Several weeks later, with legitimate three-year HB-1 work permits, the three Russian scientists flew into JFK.

  Ryan formed Astermine, Inc. a space mining research company so that he could have a company to offer the work permits. Astermine, Inc. was based in an unused and empty corner shop a few blocks from the house where he still lived with his parents. There were a few rooms upstairs above the shop, and the happy three scientists moved in and spent a lot of time with Ryan brainstorming about future space travel.

  As these men began research projects at Astermine, Inc., Ryan, still in his second year of university studies, started a computer software production company in the garage of his large, newly purchased brownstone closer to the university. Ryan’s clever mother was the instigator of this idea; she understood the direction the new computer industry was heading and what the new industry would need.

  Three years later, once the Russians received their Green Cards, Ryan moved Astermine, Inc. and its five employees to California. The team now included a fourth Russian computer genius and an American friend of Ryan’s from
university.

  Ryan received his own PhD at the USC Viterbi School of Engineering in Los Angeles, California two years later. By the time he received his Doctorate, the company was moving into its own newly-constructed building in Silicon Valley. The company had grown to 100 employees, and was projected by Forbes magazine to double its workforce every month for the foreseeable future. His four Russian scientists were still with him and he had purchased a large house close by for him and his team to enjoy life.

  A year after he and his company developed into a profitable venture, and was beginning to control a large share of the personal computer market, his mother, who was a fifty-fifty partner in the business, offered him a substantial sum to take over his company. They were making a lot of money and his space hobby, as she called it, took him away from running the computer business. Ryan allowed her to take the reins—for a couple million dollars and a dinner to celebrate.

  He then began to look at the new and emerging internet. All the while, Ryan Richmond spent his free time with the Russian team. Not only did they stay with him, they championed the passion he indulged in, drawing and designing crafts to fly into space.

  During that same year, he and two university friends raised enough capital to set up an internet search company and went through millions of dollars of his own money, before the new company made its first penny.

  At the age of thirty-two, he again was bought out, this time by his two friends, and Ryan decided to explore new ideas. He still hadn’t been in love, but had learned about the female species after his first Russian female scientist arrived from St. Petersburg, Russia to join the team. She was a very pretty Russian blonde who had the largest eyes he had ever seen on a girl. That was not the only part of her anatomy that was large, and Ryan learned the delights a girl could offer.