Джон Шеттлер: Able Fire: The Next War - 2025 and Beyond

Dear Readers,

“May you live in interesting times….”

With the Coronavirus on a rampage, the stock market tumbling, over 25 million filing for unemployment, Infections and deaths mounting, and the election campaigns trying to adapt and still carry their respective fights into November, things have sure gotten “interesting” in the world this year. Few could have seen the whirlwind that would soon overtake the world way back in October and November when the only thing gripping the news headlines was the impeachment process. Now, as of this writing, Americans are in “lockdown” mode as they did in China when the outbreak first occurred, and for many it’s a question of how far the money will go to pay rent, utilities and keep food on the table. The unprecedented relief package will likely top $3 trillion, to say nothing of the multi-trillion expansion of the Fed’s balance sheet too.

In recent decades our nation has lived through the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Kennedy assassination, Vietnam War, Watergate, 9/11, the Gulf Wars like those underway now in this story, the earlier stock market crashes, and the “Great Recession,” but brothers, we ain’t never see nuthin’ like this! The economic hit will be three to five times deeper than the Great Recession, and as a society we will be profoundly changed by this virus. It’s a most unusual time when you look at the google traffic map and see its all green at rush hour, even in places where driving is a real nightmare like LA. The empty freeways in California are almost eerily silent.

It will be hard to measure the scope and scale of the economic damage alone that this pandemic will cause, or the loss of life, particularly in vulnerable populations. The “boomer” generation built this world, but many aged badly, and they are very vulnerable now. It’s up to the younger folks out there to protect them, all the moms, dads, grandads and grandma’s that might be infected by an unknowing younger person, who felt fine but was still carrying the virus without having symptoms.

What may happen next is anybody’s guess. There’s a push to reopen the economy and get people back to work, yet that will come with renewed risk if this infection spreading. Will we see a resurgence in the fall? Many or most medical experts think we will. The killer “Spanish Flu” of 1918 came in a series of waves. (Though it did not start in Spain. They just called it that because Spain got hit so hard with it.) That Pandemic began in Europe and the US, and then consumed the entire world, infecting a third of the earth’s population, killing an estimated 50 million, of which 675,000 were in the US. 40% of the US Navy came down with it and 36% of the US Army, where more American soldiers died from that flu than they did from WWI.

That bug was in the H1N1 virus class, a kind of mixed beast with characteristics of both “swine flu” and “bird flu.” This time, COVID-19 is a kind of “bat flu.” When recovery of damaged lung tissue was found in buried victims, we finally decoded the genome of the 1918 pandemic flu, and discovered that it had mutated from milder strains that were circulating in the population between 1900 and 1915. The pandemic it caused endured for three long years, from January of 1918 until December of 1920. Then that monster mercifully vanished after its rampage, and did not return. No one yet knows what COVID-19 will do, as I write this about the time cases were making their initial “peak” in the US.

Just a few months earlier, we had only one confirmed case, and the rest were all in an off shore cruise liner. Now look what happened. Evidence of a death as early as Feb 6 was found to have the virus after autopsy. With the long incubation period and slow progression of the disease once infected, that meant the person could have contracted the bug a full month sooner, in early January, in Santa Clara County California. That means the beast was already here, quietly circulating in its stealth mode, where people have it without symptoms.

It shows you just how vulnerable the world is in our highly mobile society, where a person can be in Italy one moment, and New York City a few hours later. After just a few weeks in “lockdown” mode, we are all wanting to get back to normal, but considering the duration of that Spanish Flu pandemic is sobering. We may only be at the start of this war against the virus, though I hope it passes soon.

Now, at this hour, we must all stand up and do our part for the nation, our families, and our friends. We must do our best to see that everyone is taken care of. There can be no greater national calling. Patriotism isn’t about politics, reds and blues, or anything remotely like that. Patriotism now means participation, in every respect, in the effort to contain and suppress this virus so we can return to the way of life we knew before it struck.

Now, in this time of national crisis, it is my hope that the country that has been so bitterly divided into the reds and blues forgets all that nonsense, and that we realize we are one nation. The virus respects no state borders, ignores all political leanings, disdains the rich and poor alike. So let’s step up, take care of each other, protect the vulnerable, show the country and the world what our citizens can do.

And please don’t blame it on China. That’s nonsense too. This virus was out there, aggressive, and looking to find any vector it could into our population. There are signs that it may have been quietly circulating in numbers far greater than we knew, and that “confirmed” cases were just the tip of the iceberg. It came out of the world, and it matters not where it started , just like the 1918 flu where many of the first cases appeared in the US. It was going to find us one day, and that day has come.

There will be long hours at home that will need filling, and Netflix only takes you so far. So for those of you who have been with this story for so long, I’ll keep them coming. While I realize an epic about the great world wars, past and future, might not be seen as comforting, heck, it’s a story, and a damn good read. World War Three might make worries over the pandemic, or your bank account, seem a little less threatening. I spend half my time on another Meridian, this one, where I vanish into the heads and hearts of the characters in this epic story, and carry on the tale. You come too.

Karpov and Fedorov face old fears and harrowing events in their struggle to shape the future they helped build. As you will soon see, they have left room for self-doubt. They will soon begin to face the disturbing recurrence of “missing men” on the ship, signs Fedorov will now recount for Karpov when the very first ship and crew faced the coming of Paradox Hour.

They came to this Meridian thinking it was the world they had created, but Fedorov has always feared one thing in all of his ruminations, that they would reach a future where the ship itself had never been built, and where their place and existence in that world has no underpinnings at all. This is what he fears now, and that possibility will only be worsened with the scheming’s of one Ivan Volkov, as you will see by the end of this volume.

After stopping the offensives in the Middle East, and reopening the Suez Canal, the Western Coalition now transitions from Able Sentry to Able Fire in this volume, and goes on the offense. At sea, the Chinese are beginning to see the limitations of their naval strategy, and now attempt maneuvers aimed at consolidating their remaining strength while they attempt to bring new weapons to the fight.