Acknowledgments
In this book, and my other books "The Dreadful Alchemist" and "The Dreadful Renegade", I have tried to imagine the unimaginable. Fortunately these are works of fiction and hopefully they will remain so.
First and foremost I would like to thank you for reading this book. I hope you enjoyed it despite the scientific jargon that I really tried to minimize.
I dearly appreciate your comments, so please send them to:
[email protected]
I would be especially grateful if you would post a review on the Amazon website.
You may want to read my previous books "The Dreadful Alchemist" and "The Dreadful Renegade" that were published on Amazon Kindle Books in 2015.
Like my other books, this book would not have been possible without the help of Dr. Wikipedia and Professor Google and Magister Google Earth. I also found a wealth of information in scientific articles and books. However, any misinterpretation of the technical and geographical information from those sources is my own responsibility.
It is unnecessary to declare that this book is a work of fiction and any resemblance to real events or people is not to be understood as anything but a coincidence. I apologize in advance in case any person feels offended by the plot.
Special thanks are due to Glenda Sacks Jaffe who meticulously edited this book.
Finally, I am grateful to my family and friends who read the manuscript and enabled me to improve the text thanks to their astute comments.
Please see the Prologue for my next exciting thriller "The Dreadful Rocket Man", due in September, 2016.
The Dreadful Rocket Man
Charles Z. David
Prologue
The standard 40' shipping container was secured to a flatbed trailer that was towed by powerful tractor. All three items were purchased for ridiculously low prices on the net from a large Chinese vendor and were assembled in the Syrian port city of Tartos. There were three things that would have looked odd to anyone observing the truck. Firstly, the color of the container and tractor appeared to be rusty but was in fact a camouflage pattern that would have been difficult to spot in the daytime even by a satellite with advanced imaging software. Secondly, there was no port nearby, or even a large city to where such a container would normally be shipped. Thirdly, the content of the container was the harbinger of death on such a grand scale that it would surpass all acts of terror of the last 100 years, combined. However, only a few stray camels that had escaped from their owners, and perhaps a jackal or two, looked curiously at the strange truck, and then got back to their daily business, finding something to eat and survive in the desert.
Dr. Musa Muallem, known only as "the rocket man" to the organization that had hired him, sat next to Selim, the young driver. Murad, the man in charge of mission, wearing a nondescript uniform and brandishing an automatic rifle, sat near the other door. Musa kept fussing and telling the driver to slow down and mind the irregular surface of the track they were following. It wasn't even a dirt road but more like an imaginary line drawn between the two most prominent features in the landscape. Behind them there was a cliff of red-colored sandstone and a lone tree, really just a large bush, stood ahead of them.
As opposed to outdated common wisdom, they travelled at day and stopped an hour before sunset for a meal. This was in order to allow the engine to cool down to avoid leaving a thermal signature that would be easily spotted by satellites equipped with infrared cameras. For that reason they didn't even light a fire to make coffee or warm food after dark. The trip was a long one and they were getting on each other's nerves. They slept through the night without even bothering to stand guard – the area was so remote and unpopulated that they had no fear of being attacked by nomads or terrorists.
Musa was the only one who was told what the deadly cargo could do, but even he wasn't confident that he knew its true nature. After all, his task was to make sure that it reached its intended target – he was the rocket man – and in order to do that the truck had to travel as far west as possible and passable. The range of the rocket he had designed and built was limited because of the large payload it had to carry, so every kilometer increased the probability of reaching the target. The exact distance depended on his location but it was about 430 km at an azimuth of 265 degrees.
Their destination was the desolate area called Umm Chamain depression in western Iraq, near the border triangle with Jordan and with Saudi Arabia. They had avoided the busy highway that led to the official border crossing. Musa's instructions were to go as far west as he could but not cross into Jordanian or Saudi territory. The Jordanians had increased the number of patrols along their border with Iraq and supplemented the ground forces with aerial reconnaissance drones. Ever since the disintegration of the central government of Iraq the greatest fear in the Hashemite Kingdom was from Islamic State supporters infiltrating into Jordan.
Murad checked his GPS navigation system and said something to the driver. The truck stopped and Musa and Murad got out of the air conditioned cabin and gingerly set foot on the hot desert soil that was badly eroded. Musa examined the smooth surface and tested it first with his foot and then with sharp metal rod. He nodded to Murad and together they opened the double doors of the shipping container. They used the truck's crane to download the cargo and started setting up the launcher. Then they climbed to the container's roof and patiently watched the large ball of orange turn to red as the sun set in the west. Musa couldn't help but wonder if there would be two balls of fire in the west in the following evening.
The Dreadful Patriot: A Thrilling Conspiracy Novel (Techno thriller, Mystery & Suspense Book 3) Page 24
