Get rid of unwanted page break here!
Get rid of unwanted page break here!
All Fall Down
Copyright © 2011 by Vernon E. McGeorge, Jr.
Cover Design Copyright © 2011 by David Ward
Illustrations Copyright © 2011 by TBD
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 publisher except in the case of brief quotations embodied in critical reviews and certain other noncommercial uses permitted by copyright law.
Spark of Ideation Press
sparkofideation.com
Printed in the United States of America
First Printing, 2011
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, places, events and incidents are either the products of the author's imagination or used in a fictitious manner. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, or actual events is purely coincidental.
| Colonel Roberto di Vincente | Commanding Officer of the Paramilitary Strike Force |
| Alan Kenyon | CIA Analyst assigned to the South America desk |
| Marcus Gant | Deputy Chief of Security, Port Sheffield |
| Stephanie Petersen | Lead Engineer, Port Sheffield and estranged wife of Tom |
| Tom Petersen | Lead Engineer, Clarke Station and estranged husband of Stephanie |
| Senator Frederick Simons | US Senator and former USMC Major |
| Major Eduardo Vieira | Executive Officer of the Paramilitary Strike Force |
| Everett Baker | General Manager, TOSTS |
| Barbara Diesner | Pod Maintenance Technician |
| Bill Penrod | Chief of Security, Port Sheffield |
| Jesus Rodriguez | Forklift Operator and former Army Ranger |
| Benjamin Rosenberg | Pod Launch Supervisor |
| Paul Skyzinski | Security Officer and former Navy SEAL |
| Lt. Leslie Urbana | Platoon leader—SEAL Team Four |
| Peter Ferguson | Construction Crew Chief |
| Teri Hansen | Operations Chief |
| John Haung | Construction Crew Chief |
| Admiral Peter Auerbach | Chief of Naval Operations and Chairman of the JCS |
| Anish Majumdar | Chief of Staff |
| General Anthony Patterson | Air Force Chief of Staff |
| Linda Pham | National Science Advisor |
| Brian Reddell | National Security Advisor |
| William J. Travis | President |
| Erik Torgerson | Director of Central Intelligence |
| Commander Aceveda | Captain of the USS Syracuse |
| Captain Bernstrom | Captain of the Memphis Venture |
| Adriana di Vincente | Wife of Colonel Roberto di Vincente |
| Daniel Falcao | Brazilian Industrialist |
| Lt. Col. Francis "Frannie" Gwynn | F62 Pilot |
| Chief Petty Officer Cody "Cowboy" Morgenstern | US Coast Guard Rescue Swimmer |
| Captain Paulo Rabello | Brazilian Federal Police Officer |
| Major Rebecca "Bec" Salinger | F62 Weapons Systems Officer |
| Minister Katarina Bruggeman | German Federal Minister of Education, Science, Research and Technology |
| Administrator Ernesto Cardenas | Brazil's Minister of Science and Technology |
| Bennett Jeffers | TOSTS Public Relations |
| Michael Slone | Saboteur |
| Hiroto Tomisura | Representative for Japanese Prime Minister Takashi Sato |
The demolition charge on the GlobalStar E6 up-link was more destructive than intended. In the first twenty-eight milliseconds after ignition, the pressure inside the insulation of the feed horn caused the outer skin to fracture along a series of jagged and scorched cracks. Six milliseconds before the pressure was relieved, a weak spot in the seam of the inner skin allowed a jet of hot gas to play across one of the circuit boards. At the point nearest the jet's impact, several solder joints were largely, but not completely melted away, resulting in increased electrical resistance across those contacts and an intermittent failure in the amplification circuit.
At the TOSTS project center in Houston, Texas, Jennifer Wilson was the first to notice a problem with GlobalStar E6. If these links had passed their acceptance tests and gone into operation as scheduled, this failure would have resulted in rapid escalation up through the TOSTS management hierarchy. Unfortunately, this was the nineteenth failure in the past eight weeks. Intermittent failures had already delayed the Go Live date for the GlobalStar 6 link three times.
After verifying that the problem was not at her end, Jennifer sent email messages to Amir Golabi in Alexandria, Egypt and to Clarke Station noting the failure and asking them to send her their diagnostic logs. It was almost 7:00 PM in Egypt; Jennifer couldn't expect a response until Monday.
Ten minutes later, Clarke Station replied.
Get rid of unwanted page break here!
To: "Jennifer Wilson" <jwilson@hq.tosts.com>
From: "Sarah Perkins" <sarah.perkins@cs.tosts.com>
Subject: RE: GlobalStar E6 Link Failure Please Send Logs
Jennifer,
Will send ASAP after we resolve current failure of Port Sheffield up-link. Sorry to make you wait.
–– Sarah
Jennifer turned to other tasks but continued to monitor the GlobalStar 6 loop back test for the rest of the afternoon. She never heard back from Clarke Station but a little after 3:00 PM, the E6 link came back on-line. It continued to operate normally until she went home. After two intermittent failures on Saturday, it dropped off-line for good Sunday morning.
When she noticed the failure Monday morning, she tried to contact Clarke Station by phone. Then she checked with her coworkers and discovered that aside from a handful of emails, there had been no direct contact with Clarke Station or Port Sheffield since mid-day Friday. She reported this immediately. By then, of course, it was too late.