Balance of Power Shifted
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Authors: Victor Karl
Balance of Power Shifted
By Victor Karl
© 2012 "Copyright by" Victor A. Karl.
"All rights reserved."
ISBN
978-1-4675-3948-7
This is a fictional book. Use of names, places and characters are not based on real people. Any similarity to real individuals or events is purely coincidental.
Book Cover Image by: Stephen Nowakowski
Dedicated
to my Dad
Victor A. Karl Sr. (1932-2012)
Because of him, when I came to a fork in the road I took it…
Chapter 2: Life Changing Events
Chapter 6: A Shocking Discovery
Chapter 10: Solving the Riddle
Chapter 14: Building a Company
Chapter 15: Cat Is Out Of the Bag
Chapter 16: Showcasing Electricus
Chapter 19: Careful What You Wish For
Chapter 21: Money Tests Resolve
Chapter 23: Operating At the Speed of Light
Chapter 30: The Noose Tightens
Chapter 31: Taking Out the Trash
S
ometimes you wonder how you got to where you are today and ponder the millions of little events and decisions that shape our destiny. Any change to those life-shaping events can have altered my very birth and existence. If my mother and father had never met, would I still be born to another couple? Well my immediate ponderings did not go that deep but it did come into mind as three large individuals tried to grab me as I entered my office and lab building. I was sure I knew the exact moment in time certain events had happened leading me to be running in the dark, across the maze that was my shop floor, and out the rear door…
January
15, 2012 2:00 PM Local Time
Lieutenant
Matt Ronabe was enjoying the milk run flight from the Philippines to Guam. Flying at 18,000 feet, the sky was clear and virtually no wind. The C2 was moderately loaded with supplies and new computer gear for delivery to their base in Guam. Suddenly, every alarm in the cockpit started to flash or blare as the plane simultaneously lost power in all engines. Yelling shit and damn as he grabbed the cockpit controls he leveled the plane off into a powerless glide. Yelling over to his co-pilot, Lieutenant Junior Grade Glenn, he instructed him to try to restart the engines. He then intently concentrated on maintaining control of the plane while keeping as much altitude as possible. Glancing over the controls, it did not appear good at all. Even though it was not supposed to happen, it looked like all primary, secondary and tertiary systems were completely down.
Glenn was feverishly pressing buttons and flipping switches trying to get some idea of the cause
, but with no luck. In his mind, Matt briefly acknowledged how controlled and methodical Glenn was being this at a time when most people would have been shittin in their pants and calling for their momma. Good old Navy training was kickin in and that is when you gave all those asswipe Navy instructors their due. The incessant repetition and grinding on each little detail had allowed the training to takeover and not mindless panic, as would not have been the case otherwise. Grabbing the radio, and thanking God that at least the radio still worked, Lieutenant Matt informed the Guam base of their predicament as well as their last known coordinates. While keeping an open channel to the base, he notified the two other crew members of the situation and told them to get ready to bail out. After only 3-minutes, which seemed like forever, Matt made the determination the plane’s engines were not restorable, and informed Guam that he and the crew were going to bail out.
After y
elling at Glenn to go to the rear and coordinate opening the hatch, he realized there was no need to yell. Except for the whispering of the wind over the plane’s surface there was no sound whatsoever. Even the alarms had stopped sounding. Matt remained at the controls until Glenn told him that the two aviators had parachuted out and he was just about to bail. Matt said a quick Hail Mary, grabbed the picture of his young wife Danielle, then exited the pilot seat and rushed to the rear of the plane. Once leaving the controls, there was no automated pilot to stabilize the plane, so it started to nose slightly over.
Matt had to
grab cargo netting to maintain his feet as he scampered to the rear. Just as he reached the hatch, the plane made a sharp roll and Matt was unceremoniously ejected from the plane. After stabilizing himself as he spiraled in the clear sky, he quickly checked himself making sure all the pieces were there. He began to get his bearings and a feel for the altitude. He thought he was just about at 10,000 feet and verified the actual number using his chute altimeter, which showed 9650 feet. With a tug of the cord, the chute flawlessly deployed and Matt uttered a quick thank you Lord. Immediately, Matt tried to see if he could pick up the chutes of his crew. Looking backwards from the path of the plane, he looked to no avail for sign of the other parachutes. Turning back to the flight path, he was just in time to see his 'home away from home,’ splash into the sea and break up into a few large pieces, which were all out of site in less than 30 seconds.
A couple of minutes later
, Matt braced himself for impact with the ocean and prepared to disengage his harness. In an effort to avoid entanglement in the chute lines, or wrapped up in the parachute material, Matt released the harness about 20 feet from the surface. Taking a huge breath of air, Matt’s boots made first impact with the water and the rest of him disappeared beneath the shiny surface. After what seemed like minute to Matt, but was only about 10 seconds, his head and arms burst to the surface with a relieved gasp for air. Settling down, he inflated his vest and settled down for the rescue team to show up.
Using the flyer’s
radio beacons to hone in on, the rescue choppers out of Guam ended up picking up Lieutenant Ronabe first. He was only in the water for about two and half hours, which in his mind was pretty darn good. Within the next half hour, they picked up Lieutenant Junior Grade Glenn and continued to follow the fight path right to the final two aviators who were found hooked together.
T
here were a dozen or so people crowded around the big winch staring at the blue emerald Pacific water in patient excitement. Suddenly, the water erupted as bright yellow lift balloons thrust out of the water and settled on the surface. One of the excited onlookers yelled out that he could see the outline of it. The ‘it’ was a large section of the fuselage of a US Navy Grumman C-2 Greyhound cargo plane that had gone down 2-months prior in route to Guam from an unknown catastrophic mechanical failure. After the pilot and the crew recapped the events that transpired, the Navy had no reasonable explanation for the broad based failure and wanted to recover the plane to try to determine the cause. Normally the Navy would not waste their time if there were a plausible reason; however, the nature of the failure and the Navy’s reliance on this particular model of plane provided enough of an impetus to get the plane salvaged from the watery deep.
A few feet below the surface
, the huge piece of the aircraft floated and swayed as the waves played with the lift balloons on the surface. A couple of divers jumped into the water to coordinate the securing of lift straps around the debris so that the massive crane could gently lift it out of the water and place it on the large deck of the ship. As the others on the ship watched, the ship’s submersible 2-man sub surfaced just behind the divers. The 2-man crew patiently sat and waited for the crane to deposit the object on the boat deck before coming alongside for their ride on the ship’s crane. They were looking forward to the spaciousness of the ship after spending 4 hours cramped in their sub, while 1245 feet below the surface.
The ship
’s loudspeaker system started blaring, woot woot woot, and amber warning lights started flashing. Shortly after, the deck master’s voice came over the speakers and started to repeat, “All hands clear the loading deck; all hands clear the loading deck.” With a scurry to higher-level decks, all crew and visitors quickly exited the recovery deck. With an all clear from the divers, the winch operator slowly lifted the object out of the water. Initially barely perceptible under the water, the plane’s remains became more visible and then parts broke the surface. At this point, the crane operator let it sit until the divers gave it a second all clear.
Slowly, inch
-by-inch, the piece of plane junk that was once part of a sleek aerodynamic wonder, came out of the water shedding multiple shimmering waterfalls as it emerged in the late afternoon sun. Swinging 15 feet over the emerald water, and swaying in a slight breeze, it began to swing closer to the ship until it was over the center of the deck. A few deckhands, grabbed the ends of the tethering ropes, attached by the divers, to straighten out the wreckage as the crane operator gently placed it on the deck.
For the next
hour, the crew secured the object against rolling on the deck in the event of a sudden storm or squall. After securing the object, the captain gave permission for general access to the recovery deck. Just about everyone, including a college student named William (Bill) Bates, came to walk around the first recovered remains of the plane. There was nothing particularly fascinating about it. It was a 15-foot section of the fuselage with no real interior characteristics except for electrical wires and cargo webbing hanging in all directions, which probably explained why the crowd dissipated quickly except for one person.
Bill was intently staring at a large moss like plant that was clinging to a jagged edge of the plane just out of his reach. The strip of plant was about 8 inches wide
, 2 and one half feet long, with a very faint tint of green and the composition looked similar to an interwoven mesh mat. The young college student then placed his right foot into one of the cargo straps at the edge of the plane and used it to elevate himself enough to reach the plant. Using his left hand, he lifted it up, removed it from the plane, and while stepping back down onto the ship’s deck, grunted in surprise and dropped the ocean plant to the deck. Bill grabbed his left hand and started to massage his fingers while contemplating the wet object lying on the deck.