Blinding Fear Read online

  Blinding

  Fear

  By

  Bruce Roland

  Copyright © June 2016

  by Bruce Roland

  All rights reserved.

  This book or any portion thereof may not be reproduced or used in any manner whatsoever without the express written permission of the Author. With the exception of the use of brief quotations in a review.

  It is a work of fiction. Names, characters, and incidents either are products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or events is entirely coincidental.

  Cover and Book Design by Fred Butson

  fredxDesign.com

  ISBN 978-0-9978843-0-2

  Digital books (epub and mobi) produced by Booknook.biz.

  To my wonderful wife and family

  Table of Contents

  Prologue

  Chapter 1: Seoul, South Korea, September 1958

  Chapter 2: Southern Kuwait, January 1991

  Chapter 3: Present Day

  Chapter 4

  Chapter 5

  Chapter 6

  Chapter 7

  Chapter 8

  Chapter 9

  Chapter 10

  Chapter 11

  Chapter 12

  Chapter 13

  Chapter 14

  Chapter 15

  Chapter 16

  Chapter 17

  Chapter 18

  Chapter 19

  Chapter 20

  Chapter 21

  Chapter 22

  Chapter 23

  Chapter 24

  Chapter 25

  Chapter 26

  Chapter 27

  Chapter 28

  Chapter 29

  Chapter 30

  Chapter 31

  Chapter 32

  Chapter 33

  Chapter 34

  Chapter 35

  Chapter 36

  Chapter 37

  Chapter 38

  Chapter 39

  Chapter 40

  Chapter 41

  Chapter 42

  Chapter 43

  Chapter 44

  Chapter 45

  Chapter 46

  Chapter 47

  Chapter 48

  About the Author

  Prologue

  It was an unusual asteroid.

  Made up of two, mostly iron and nickel, mountain-sized chunks of rock that orbited each other like a mini solar system, it—or perhaps they—had an eccentric, elliptical orbit around the sun that took it far out of the plane of the greater solar system and back again every 319 years.

  The asteroid was what some astronomers referred to as a Trojan. It looked, acted and had a composition not too far outside the norm. But ominously it had an orbit that intersected the middle planet’s orbits. It was a celestial object that looked benign, even peaceful when viewed from afar. But it had potential that carried destruction on an unimaginable scale for any planet or other solar system resident unfortunate enough to get in its way.

  One of the celestial partners looked vaguely like a misshapen pear and spanned approximately ten miles across its long axis. Its partner’s more normal shape had a diameter a bit over six miles. The smaller member of the asteroid team was as nearly spherical as any asteroid could be—perhaps resembling a golf ball; its heavily dimpled surface cratered by many, semi-catastrophic encounters with other, smaller asteroids and other space debris over countless eons.

  The pear’s surface dust—as is the case with most asteroids—was not thick and consequently its albedo, or brightness, was relatively high. The golf ball’s on the other hand was for some strange astronomical quirk, the opposite. Its layer of dust was improbably and impenetrably thick. Its ultra-low albedo made it something like an old-fashioned, spherical slate blackboard drifting through the solar system, sucking up—instead of reflecting—whatever photons of light happened to come its way.

  The asteroid couple was ultimately separated by one of the countless cosmological encounters that had governed its life for tens of millions of years. Another single but much larger asteroid—its orbit perturbed ever so slightly by Jupiter’s massive gravitational field—strayed just close enough for its gravitational field to cause the pear and golf ball’s orbits around each other to become progressively out of sync. The two began to drift closer to each other causing the orbital speed of the smaller golf ball to greatly increase. Over the course of unknown time the astral ballet around each other deteriorated to the point where the golf ball finally broke free and was flung away from its partner at a much higher velocity. The pear—now unfettered by its partner’s mass—settled into a new orbit around the sun that would, in a few dozen millennia, send it crashing into Jupiter leaving an ugly black stain in the multihued, striated clouds of the gas giant.

  The golf ball, however, managed to stabilize itself in an orbit that strangely enough was nearly the same as its old, with only a few, tiny arc-seconds of difference between them. On the grand scale of the solar system it was a nearly infinitesimal fifty-thousand miles of difference at any point in its new orbit; overall nearly nothing when compared to the millions of miles of its orbital journey through the solar system and its environs.

  And now, having lost its symbiotic relationship with the pear and gained a new orbit of seeming insignificance, it began its own, new solitary life around the Sun.

  Chapter 1

  Seoul, South Korea, September 1958

  “I won’t go!” Five year-old Kayode wailed, tears rolling down his cheeks in steady rivulets. “I hate Kindergarten!”

  His mother continued to dress him in preparation for her son’s first day of his second year in the country’s compulsory preschool system. She sat on his youth bed in the small bedroom where he slept alone each night. He stood in front of her, quivering in despair and anger, stomping his feet, folding his arms across his chest, making her job of dressing him all the more difficult.

  “Kayode, you know you have to go to school,” she soothed as she finally managed to finish buttoning his white shirt and begin working on getting the knot in his little black necktie just right. “This year will be different. You’ll see. I’m sure you’ll make all kinds of friends.”

  “No, I won’t! They hate me!” he shrilled, raising the decibel and pitch level to even greater heights. “When I went to school before they called me bad names! They called you bad names! They called daddy bad names because he married you!”

  “What’s going on, Martha?” Kayode’s father said in Korean-accented English, poking his head around the corner of the door. “The neighbors will complain again if we don’t keep the volume down.”

  “I’m sorry, Joo-Won. Give him a minute. He’ll calm down. Won’t you sweetie?” She stopped dressing him for a moment, took his face in her hands and gently kissed each cheek, then tenderly smoothed the tears away with her long, graceful fingers.

  Joo-Won stepped into the room and stood over both of them as his wife finished the arduous task of dressing their son. “Kayode, I thought we decided last night that you were going to be really strong and brave when you went to school today?” he asked quietly.

  “But you and mommy don’t understand! The other kids were so mean to me last time I went to school!” He paused for a second, his voice quavering. “Sometimes the teacher was sort of mean, too.”

  “Mommy and I are sad that school is hard for you. But we promise that everything is going to be better this year. We have already talked to your new teacher to make sure.” He tousled his son’s dark brown, tightly curled hair. “Hey,” he said looking at his watch. “The bus will be here any minute. Is his lunch ready, Martha?”

  “Yes, I just need to get the thermos out of the refrigerator and put it in his lunchbo
x.” She got up and slipped out the door past her husband.

  Joo-Won reached down and picked up Kayode, held him close for a second, gave him a hug and a kiss on his cheek, then asked, “Do you know what our family name, Seok, means in Korean?”

  The boy barely shook his head, swiping at another tear that was swiftly sliding toward his chin. “No.”

  “It means ‘Like a Rock.’ Do you know what your name means?”

  Again, a nearly imperceptible shake.

  “Well, the name comes from the country mommy’s parents and their parents came from a long time ago. It is in Africa. Kayode means ‘He brought joy.’”

  “Really. That’s neat!” he replied, brightening slightly.

  “Yes, it is. So, here is what you need to do today when you go to school. Remember our name every time something bad happens or if somebody says something mean to you. Be like a rock. Do not let them make you angry or sad because when you do they win and you lose. Be like a rock whenever you need to and then do whatever you can to bring happiness to as many kids in your class as you can, just like you bring joy to your mommy and me. Can you do both?”

  “Okay. I think I can be strong, daddy, but how do I make other kids happy?”

  “Say nice things to them. Tell them how nice they look, what pretty clothes they have, how smart they are, what good football players they are. Everybody likes to hear those kind of things. Do you understand?”

  Kayode smiled and reached around his father’s neck to give him a hug. “Yes, daddy. I’ll try,” he whispered.

  “Great! Now let’s see if mommy has your lunch ready.”

  Joo-Won carried his son out of the bedroom into the kitchen where she was just finishing packing his Mickey Mouse School Bus lunch box.

  “What kind of lunch have you prepared for Kayode today, honey?” he asked brightly.

  “His favorite. A baloney sandwich on Wonder Bread with mustard and Miracle Whip, sliced apples, carrots, potato chips and a Twinkie.”

  “Oh, boy!” Kayode cried.

  She handed him the lunch box and added, “But remember: Don’t let other kids take your food and don’t forget to drink all your milk. Okay?”

  He grew serious again. “Okay.”

  Just then they heard a horn blare from in front of their on-base married officers quarters. Together they walked out to see a drab, grayish-green Kunsan Air Base school bus idling at the curb, children of many different ages chattering nosily inside, its door open, waiting for Kayode. The driver was a young corporal in the Republic of Korea Air Force.

  Before his son could get on, Joo-Won stepped into the bus door and fixed the man with a deadly serious glare. The driver instantly stood to attention as Joo-Won, dressed in his full ROK military uniform, loudly addressed him in Korean. “You will do everything in your power to ensure my son has a peaceful transit to and from school today and for the rest of the school year! You will also inform any replacement drivers of my orders! If I or my wife hear that something—anything—other than that has happened, I will make your life a living hell! Have I made myself clear!”

  “Yes, Major!” he crisply and just as loudly responded, snapping off a smart salute. The driver knew the threat was real. As the senior Korean military attache to the U.S. commander of the base, Major Joo-Won Seok wielded considerable power and influence

  “Good!” Calming himself Joo-Won smiled and turned to his son. “All right Kayode. It’s time to go.” He took the boy’s hand and carefully guided him up the steps, then stepped back to stand next to his wife. In spite of what Joo-Won had said to the driver, they watched with some trepidation as Kayode stood absolutely still at the head of the seat aisle, his lunch box gripped tightly in one hand, trying to see where he could sit. Finally, he slowly walked to a vacant seat halfway toward the rear. They also watched as the other children stared silently at him. None greeted him. The door closed and the bus pulled noisily away in a cloud of diesel smoke. Joo-Won and Martha smiled and waved as he peeped out the window to look at them, his face expressionless. His small hand appeared above the window ledge barely waving in response.

  Back inside the house Martha and Joo-Won sat down at the dining table. Both were silent, deep in thought about their son and what he would face at the civilian, off-base Korean school.

  “Will it ever get any better?” Martha plaintively asked after several minutes.

  Joo-Won sighed deeply. “I don’t know. Korean cultural barriers are hard to break down. Mixed-race marriages have been severely frowned upon for generations. Children of them face....,” he paused trying to find the least inflammatory word to use,.”....difficulties.” He paused again. “I guess we can only hope our conferences with the principle and teachers will have some effect.”

  They were silent again for several minutes.

  “What about you?” she asked. “You’ve been stationed here for three years. There’s been no hint of a promotion or advancement. The Lt. Colonel List came out last week and you weren’t on it.....again. There are times when I can’t help but think you would have been better off not marrying me.”

  Joo-Won could see tears welling up in her beautiful brown eyes. “No, no, no, no! Do not ever think like that!” he said, gently taking her hand. “I love you more than anything! If I do not get a promotion that is a very small price to pay to be married to the most wonderful woman in the world! Yes, we are facing struggles but we can overcome them. Now we must be strong for Kayode. He is extremely intelligent. We must make sure he has every opportunity to use that intelligence so he will have a better future than we do. And if so, maybe he will grow up to make a positive difference in the world.”

  Chapter 2

  Southern Kuwait, January 1991

  The four-plane formation of U.S. Air Force A-10 “Warthog” ground-attack aircraft flew through the patchy clouds and intensely blue winter skies 15,000 feet above the trackless sands of Kuwait. Captain Harold Eugene Ramond (call-sign “Herc”), and the three other pilots of Eagle Flight guiding their Hogs in close formation to his, had just completed their “killbox” mission. They thought they could now relax, allowing adrenaline levels to subside to normal and enjoy their return flight home.

  For the past half-hour they had, with brutal, ruthless efficiency, attacked an armored column of Iraqi vehicles moving south as they attempted to reinforce their comrades already dug into fortified positions in Kuwait. Ramond’s team of ugly, twin-engined “flying cannons” had swooped down in pass after pass raking the column with cannon rounds, rockets, missiles and bombs with deadly accuracy. They had shredded machines and men so that by the time they were finished there was little left except greasy smoke and shattered remains—both human and machine—spread across the desert floor. The only men left alive were those who had fled in all directions at the first sight and sound of impending, certain death plunging down on them.

  Ramond’s estimate had him and his band of airborne brothers destroying 7 tanks, 8 armored cars, 13 miscellaneous other vehicles and killing somewhere close to a hundred unfortunate Iraqi conscripts.

  He couldn’t help but pity them.

  Saddam Hussein and his sycophant generals had sent them on a suicide mission. To expect semi-literate, poorly trained, poorly motivated Iraqi farmers and shopkeepers to take on the best and brightest of the U.S. Air Force and its highly efficient killing machines was quite literally insane.

  As they headed back to their home-away-from-home at Dhahran Air Base in eastern Saudi Arabia, Ramond took stock of his plane’s remaining armaments and fuel. He’d dropped all eight of his general purpose 500-pound “dumb” bombs, used both of his Maverick air-to-ground missiles, about half of his 1,350 rounds of 30-millimeter high-explosive cannon rounds and all of his unguided 2.5 inch rockets. He had a little over half of his fuel remaining to get him back to base an hour away at 300 knots.

  One thing all combat pilots hated was returning with unexpended ordinance and fuel. Besides making landing more difficult and hazardous it could
also indicate to post-mission debriefers, inefficiency, poor performance or just plain stupidity in the heat of battle; the last thing a newly minted 25 year-old mission commander wanted on his record. This day and this battle he was confident he and his wing-mates could claim that they had performed as efficiently and well as any who had taken to the sky during the conflict.

  At that moment one of his pilots interrupted his train of thought.

  “Eagle leader, Eagle two.”

  “Eagle leader, what’s up Doc?” He added a small chuckle at yet again using the constantly used Bugs Bunny call sign joke for Eagle two.

  “Check out the new smoke to the Northeast.”

  Ramond turned his head slightly to the left and down and saw four new columns of black smoke rising from what he knew to be one of the many Kuwaiti oil fields seized by Hussein’s occupying forces.

  “Intel was right,” Ramond said. “They’ve started blowing up the wells.”

  “Gonna make our life a lot more dicey,” Eagle Two replied. “Won’t be able to see crap.”

  Ramond heard his other two pilots agree with simple clicks of their microphone buttons.

  Without warning a new voice shouted over his radio.

  “Eagle flight we have multiple missile launches! SA-2s coming your way!”

  He instantly knew the voice was one of his controllers aboard the E-3 AWACS early warning and command aircraft circling 30,000 feet above the region. The man was telling him at least two, highly lethal, Russian-made, surface-to-air missiles had been launched at Mach-3 toward his formation

  A split second later he heard his own aircraft’s missile-lock warning alarm shrieking. He knew he and his command had less than seven seconds to take evasive action or face being blown out of the sky.

  Without hesitation he yelled out, “Eagle flight, evasive break....now!” He yanked back on his control stick, kicked his rudder pedals and shoved the throttle all the way forward. His commands immediately caused the two General Electric GT-34 engines that had been pushing the Hog along at an easy pace to roar to full military power and launch him into a steep, left-hand climb. At the same moment he used his other hand to begin ejecting “chaff” flares in the hope the heat-seeking function of the SAMs would lock onto one of them and miss the aircraft. He immediately felt the force of gravity times five begin to press him into his seat. He could feel his g-suit begin to inflate, forcing blood back into his brain to prevent blackout. At the same time he strained and panted as if doing an abdominal “crunch.” In spite of the technology and muscle control, his field of vision began to fade at the edges. He prayed that the other three planes were going through their similar, pre-rehearsed, carefully orchestrated maneuvers to avoid the SAMs and each other at the same time.