AZ2016 Neo

By Ben Boyd, Jr

The President of the United States, AARON RUBEN THOMAS, is not interested in keeping the economy and the defense of America intact. His only interest is his plan to extend his stay as leader of his country or make him the leader of the new super country he is secretly creating known as The United Socialist States of the Americas.
Dr. JONG KI NGHIEM, Director of Science at the University of Science and Technology in Pyongyang, is planning on using President Thomas’ gift of the radar laser technology to test the feasibility of rerouting meteors. If successful, he will turn AZ2016 NEO, a mini asteroid, into a weapon of mass destruction.
HAPPLE JACK KING and his wife, MARILYN, whom he calls SHUG, are living their dream raising performance horses on their little 20 acre horse ranch. They are shocked when they learn AZ2016 NEO is coming close to Earth. They worry something catastrophic is going to happen and devise a plan to head to the North Carolina High Country via the Appalachian Trail via horseback to escape the potentially worst catastrophe the world has seen in 15,000 years.
OOSAH and her daughter KAWA, two people from the FIRST CLAN are innocent bystanders caught in the struggle to escape the pending catastrophe. They struggle constantly to remain unseen as they travel to the Sacred Mountain of her clan.
GENERAL LEROY EDWIN ALEXANDER tries to convince the U.S. government of the horrors of nuclear war after learning AZ2016 NEO would create a ten megaton TNT explosion if it struck land. He tells of the horrors and damage inflicted by an atomic blast. He remembers stories of the innocent Japanese non-combatants disintegrated by the bomb. His words fall on deaf ears and he fears the U.S. will be unprepared if AZ2016 NEO, suddenly and mysteriously changes direction. A crash in the Bermuda Triangle would create a 1200 foot tsunami which would wipe out the east coast from Miami to the St. Lawrence River and the gulf coast from Florida to the Yucatan Peninsula. This would be the beginning of the worst catastrophe the world has seen in 15,000 years.
Dr. SHU QI CHAN, a Chinese research professor, discovers a deep frozen cave in Northeast China that houses the Black Shiny Death virus renamed the Qixi Virus. Dr. SUN CHOW WEI, the premier authority on genetics and virology at Beijing University believes the virus caused the end of the Neanderthal subspecies and makes an alarming discover which leads to his plan to create the end of mankind biological weapon of mass destruction.
COMRADE PILOT CAPTAIN DENG is flying a specially equipped transport, on a TOP SECRET mission from China to Canada. He is shot down in the Rugged Range Mountains in the Northeast Territories, near Yellowknife, NT, Canada. His aircraft is carrying test specimens. A joint U.S./Canadian commando team must beat Japanese, North Korean, and Chinese commando teams in a race to find the specimens.

• Language: English
• Publisher: Ben Boyd, Jr
• Release date: Jun 10, 2015
• ISBN: 9781310037016

Ben Boyd, Jr

Hello, my name is Ben Boyd, Jr. I am a freelance author and a screen writer. I write science fiction/fantasy novels, short stories, and flash fiction. I also am developing screenplays for each book in the series. Currently, I have written and published AZ2016 NEO and The Qixi Virus, books one and two in The Fall of the Americas series. The rest of the series is being edited and will be published at regular intervals throughout this year and next. A tentative schedule and title of each novel is listed for your convenience at the end of each published novel. My website is www.benboydjr.comI live, with my wife, on a horse farm in Tennessee near The Great Smoky Mountain National Park. Our farm is named Rooster-Cat Ridge Farm, after our first competition registered quarter horse. When I am not writing or editing, with my wife's help, I grow vegetables, make and bottle fruit wine from our orchard, and grow hay for the horses. I appreciate your comments on my novels if you have the time to spare.

Book preview

AZ2016 NEO

Ben Boyd, Jr.

Copyright 2015 by Ben Boyd, Jr.

Smashwords Edition

This ebook is licensed for your personal enjoyment only. This ebook may not be re-sold or given away to other people. If you would like to share this book with another person, please purchase an additional copy for each recipient. If you’re reading this book and did not purchase it, or it was not purchased for your use only, then please purchase your own copy. Thank you for respecting the hard work of this author.

Editors: Dr. Tiffany Ellen Boyd-Hodgson, PhD

D.M. Hammett, Chief Technical Officer

Formatting by Marti Dobkins

Cover design by Melody Simmons

Acknowledgements

It has taken three years to write these words for your entertainment and thoughtful consideration. Time will tell if my story is prophetic or merely entertaining science fiction/fantasy. With these thoughts in mind, I want to humbly acknowledge and thank the following wonderful folks for the contributions they made to this effort:

First and foremost, my utmost thanks, as well as all of my love and devotion, goes to my wife, Donna. Her inspiration, support, and guidance, along with her masterful editing allowed me to move the story along to its completion. Without her help, this story would never have reached you.

Another first thank you goes to Dr. Tiffany Boyd-Hodgson, PhD, my publicist. She is a scientist, author, editor, as well as my social media manager. She is also my beautiful, multi-talented daughter.

Thank you so much also goes to my most excellent alpha reader, editor, and idea person - D.M. Hammett. Your timeless attention is appreciated more than you will ever know… or be paid for. A special thank you goes to fellow authors and members of the Maryville Writers’ Workshop: Alan Coulter (Leader), Joyce Leo, Bob Weis, Jan Hazel, Marilyn Mascaro, and Margo Bott, for their unselfish time given to this project as reviewers.

Next I want to thank my writing consultants Tom Bird and Rama Jon Hogan and my beta readers, Michele Morgan, Don Grissom, Sallee Smith, and Charlotte Hunt Doyle. A special thank you to Mike and Jill Marsh, two lifelong friends that allowed me to use the panoramic pictures they took on a visit to my farm in 2013.

Finally, thank you Dr. Marilyn Irene Holmes and her husband, Wes Holmes, a champion reining competitor and horse trainer for allowing me to use their horses in the development of the story.

In conclusion, my wife and I do own a farm. Several of the events I have included in the story are fictionalized accounts of actual places. It is my fervent prayer, that when you have read the final chapter in this story, you will say first, ‘what would I do, if I had to face these problems’, and then say to someone that can make things happen, ‘what can you do to make sure this never happens for real’.

Thank you for reading my novel and I hope you are interested enough to read the next episode.

Ben Boyd, Jr., Author

Dedication

To Donna for her patience, guidance and love.

Preface

AZ2016 NEO is a 3,000 foot wide mini-asteroid. It has an elliptical orbit which brings it by the Earth every eight years. In 2016, it will pass 20,000 miles close. Except this time the enemies of America plan to make this trip AZ2016 NEO’s last.

The Fall of the Americas series is a story about a nation and a family’s efforts to survive physical and economic history changing catastrophic events of a magnitude unlike any the modern world has ever experienced. It is also a story of how personal political agendas can turn ambition into madness and end a country’s culture and its very existence. Time will tell if the story is prophetic or merely entertaining science fiction/fantasy.

Table of Contents

Prologue

Chapter One: A Winter Mystery Begins

Chapter Two: The First News

Chapter Three: Planning Interconnects

Chapter Four: The Newspaper Issue

Chapter Five: The Power Grid Plan

Chapter Six: Hypothetical Damage

Chapter Seven: A Night Journey

Chapter Eight: An Earlier Time

Chapter Nine: First Official Notice

Chapter Ten: Disaster Remembered

Chapter Eleven: A Story Remembered

Chapter Twelve: Asami’s Story

Chapter Thirteen: Hellashima

Chapter Fourteen: Advice Plainly Spoken

Chapter Fifteen: Baiting the Hook

Chapter Sixteen: Secret Gift

Chapter Seventeen: Virus Discovery

Chapter Eighteen: Cave Diving

Chapter Nineteen: Bringer of Life

Chapter Twenty: The Black Shiny Death

Chapter Twenty-One: The Brazilian/Canadian Project

Epilogue

About the Author

Also by Ben Boyd, Jr.

Prologue

Oval Office

Washington D.C.

February 24, 2015

10:00AM

Water and electricity do not mix. Yet, electricity is the life-blood of the United States economy and water is the life-blood of humanity. One would think the people running the government would know this about water and electricity since most of them, except the current President, came from a business background before they were elected. Almost everyone agrees, except for the current President, the United States has the largest free economy in the world. The reason given by most is due to an abundance of clean water and a plentiful supply of reasonably priced electricity.

I wonder what AZ2016 NEO would do if it hit us instead of flying on by. The President of the United States thought as he continued to read.

Both are needed in order for the United States economy to continue to grow. The unfriendly blog continued. These constructs are not hidden mystical concepts, except to the current President. They are facts borne out by hard financial evidence. More importantly for the United States to continue being the leader of the global free economy and maintain its national security standard, electricity must continue to flow to homes uninterrupted. Most everyone in the United States today, has never had to live without electricity. Take it away for a month and your everyday life turns into a minor disaster.

President Aaron Ruben Thomas, the second black man to hold the highest office in America, stopped reading the unfriendly blog written by one of his many adversaries. He shook his head in both frustration and disgust and said to himself, Yeah I know it. Take it away for a week and see if your wife starts talking about finding another husband. That’s what my first one did! She told me the last time the power went out to fix it or get out! I thought she was just kidding me. He laughed a little and continued reading. A fourth of the world, has either no electricity or not enough to sustain its needs. Those people would love to come live in my home even if it was just for a week. Unless they had to eat dinner my wife cooks. How hard is it to fry chicken? I don’t get it! He thought.

Then he said out loud, What keeps them from doing just that? What keeps those two billion Chinese heathens from taking over this country? He still didn’t know the answer was simply a strong economy and a stronger military. As anyone over the age of eighteen can easily surmise every four years, the health of the economy is one of the highest priorities of any United States President, except the current President. This priority is well below his main priority of finding a way to stay in power after his final term expires.

Aaron Ruben Thomas first came to power seven years ago as a result of a successful suicide bomber attack on Congress which killed America’s first black President, the Vice-President, and the next three people in line. The rules of succession gave the job to the Secretary of Treasury for no other reason than because he was fifth in line. Thomas missed the attack because he was absent supposedly being treated that morning for a thyroid condition. Was it his good luck? No. It was due to timing. His second term election was really his good luck. Losing in the polls three to one, his no chance to return to office miraculously turned into a second term after the opposing party’s candidate was arrested two weeks prior to the election and charged with lewd conduct with a minor. There were pictures. Aaron Ruben Thomas became Lucky T, as he was called thereafter. The job had not changed him in the slightest. He was and always would be a political hack. His career had been bouncing from one state job to another in Iowa. It paid off when he became the National Democratic Party Chair and ended up as Secretary of Treasury thanks to the gratitude of the first black President for helping him get elected.

Only Lucky T’s personal physician knew about his dark secret. He was psychotic and had been for 15 years. His psychosis was delusion of grandiosity. He had another dark secret nobody else knew about. He helped his first wife, a confirmed alcoholic, fall off a two story balcony. The accident happened when he handed, actually pushed, her a fifth cocktail at the end of a forty five minute cocktail reception in his honor after being chosen Party Chair. The fall fractured her skull killing her almost instantly. When a man is destined for greatness, who needs a mean loud mouthed drunk for a wife? As it happens, drunks accidently fall off two story balconies every month or two in Des Moines, the capital of Iowa. Nobody important would miss her. He thought.

Nobody missed the fact the United States does not have a President for Life like some countries. For the current President, who is scheduled to leave office on January 23, 2017, this business of leaving is not acceptable. He and only three others had learned months ago from foreign intelligence reports a potential threat exists that could destroy the United States economy. Its short name is AZ2016 NEO. He knows if he works it right, his power will not lessen. It will increase, but only IF the crisis he expects to happen actually becomes the worst world changing-catastrophe it could become. He hopes it does because President for Life is more to his liking. He had been working diligently to get that ball rolling for the last three years. Now the ultra-secret confirmation news from the National Aeronautics Space Agency (NASA) Sky Watch Program two days ago about this potential catastrophe will make the work easier. The catastrophe could be bigger than the world has seen in over 15,000 years.

Thomas sat in his office waiting for his handpicked accomplices, Lieutenant General Allan Grisson, United States Air Force, Vice President Andre De Garza Espinosa, and Dan Black, Director of the Office of Science and Technology (OST), to arrive. He thought about all the work and planning that would need to go into project Feed the Needy, his code name for the change he was planning. He was certain the plan would work if the expected catastrophe could assist. Even if the threat lasted for only a few weeks, it might be enough. He feared only one thing. Could the United States take the punch this asteroid threat might throw? How could he stay in power without this overwhelming issue giving him the leverage he needed? NASA reported if the 3,000 foot asteroid, traveling at 40,000 miles an hour changed courses and struck the ocean, it would create a tsunami between 1,000 and 2,500 feet high. If it struck land, the force might equal the destructive power the atomic bomb released when it struck Hiroshima, Japan, times ten million. This threat was big enough that the entire country would buy into it and it might be enough to help him seize power if Congress