My readers send me emails asking what parts of my fiction novels are based on reality. To answer that for everyone, I put together a list pertaining to each novel. This one was quite long, so I posted it here.
Note: The following list contains spoilers, so I advise everyone to please read the book before reading this list.
First, what is not real:
There is no angry dog catcher with a grudge against a Golden Retriever who bit him on the thigh. Most animal control employees are good-hearted people doing a very difficult job and I thank them for their efforts to help pets get adopted.
As in every book, names, characters, places, events, incidents, and dialogue are all products of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons living or dead, businesses, organizations, events, or locales is entirely unintended and coincidental.
Second, what is real:
The following things really do exist but are used fictitiously in this novel:
Scientists from the Center for Disease Control exhumed an Inuit body from the permafrost in Alaska to take a sample of diseased lung tissue infected with the 1918 Flu virus strain. The scientists put their sample into a thermos and carried it aboard a commercial airline flight to Atlanta.
There really was a group named the Secret Society. British multimillionaire Cecil Rhodes set it up with the goal of establishing a new world order that would reclaim the United States for England and bring the entire planet under British colonial rule.
Rhodes founded the De Beers diamond-mining conglomerate which held a global monopoly over 90% of diamond production, helped develop the British South Africa Company, and secretly bought cheap land near Johannesburg which held the richest mother lode of gold on the planet. Rhodes became one of the wealthiest men in the world and used his vast diamond and gold fortune to build the Secret Society into a global network.
In the past, the governments of the US and UK sprayed clouds of bacteria and chemicals onto their unsuspecting populations. The incidents I noted were real, and there are many more examples.
Russian scientists developed bioweapons of mass destruction in their germ warfare departments. The Soviet biological weapons program designed warheads so deadly that one missile hitting one major US city could result in the deaths of up to 3 million civilians. A single SS-18 missile could wipe out the population of New York City. The Soviets produced a stockpile of these missiles, along with hundreds of tons of anthrax, smallpox, encephalitis and many more toxic agents including a plague more virulent than the bubonic plague which killed one quarter of the population of Europe in the Middle Ages.
The Soviets had a contingency plan to use the bioweapons against civilians in the United States and its Western allies. One scientist who worked on the secret project and then defected to the US testified that many of the other scientists who worked with him have been lured away from low-paying Russian labs to earn big money working for rogue regimes around the world.
In World War II, the Japanese military used biological warfare to create pandemics in China. This included poisoning wells with typhus, and dropping thousands of plague-infested fleas onto the civilian population.
It’s true that some bats in China have been found to carry 400+ new strains of coronaviruses with the potential to spark further outbreaks.
A pilotless single engine Cessna plane crashed onto the shore of Lake Superior, leaving no trace anyone had landed with the plane, and no footprints in the snow. The only way in and out of the aircraft was through the two main cabin doors, and those doors were both closed. The plane was not equipped with a roof hatch, nor did it possess flight recording equipment.
The four-seater Skyhawk was presumably flying on autopilot and crashed after it ran out of fuel. Nobody knows what happened, but one theory is the pilot exited the aircraft in flight and managed to hang on and close the door before jumping with a parachute. The unanswered question is: Why?
Canada’s Hyperstealth Corporation invented a Patent Pending Invisibility Cloak. There is no power source. It is paper-thin and inexpensive. It can hide a person, a vehicle, a ship, spacecraft and buildings. One piece of Quantum Stealth can work in any environment, in any season at any time of the day or night.
Near the end of WWII, Germany sent U-boat number U-234 on a secret mission to aid Japan’s war effort. The submarine carried several high-ranking Nazi officers including General Ulrich Kessler, assigned as the Luftwaffe liaison in Tokyo. Also on board were several weapons technicians, 1,232 pounds of uranium oxide produced by the German atomic weapons program, two Japanese scientists, two disassembled Messerschmitt Me 262 jet fighters, 10 jet engines, plus sufficient diesel fuel and provisions for a six to nine month voyage.
The uranium was meant to help Japan build atomic bombs, which would be dropped on targets in the United States using the replicated Messerschmitts, the world’s first jet-powered fighters.
In a remarkable reversal of fortune, Hitler committed suicide, Germany surrendered, and Admiral Karl Dönitz radioed every U-boat to surface and hoist a white flag. General Kessler surrendered U-234 to US Navy destroyer escort USS Sutton as it passed the east coast of the United States. Both Japanese scientists on board committed suicide rather than be taken prisoner. US scientists secretly used the Nazi uranium in the Manhattan Project for the atomic bombs which were dropped on Japan and ended the war.
For this novel, I asked “what if” the Germans sent two U-boats, instead of betting on only one? What if the other submarine didn’t receive the radio message to surrender, or the captain ignored the order and kept on going toward Imperial Japan?
The Russian ADS amphibious assault rifle is designed for underwater combat. The weapon fires specially designed 5.45×39mm PSP cartridges. Range depends upon depth. The weapon’s effective underwater firing range is approximately 25 meters at a depth of 5 meters and 18 meters at a depth of 20 meters. When used above the surface it fires standard 5.45×39mm cartridges, and is also equipped with a 40 mm grenade launcher.
People do use commercial drones in attempted murders. For example, on August 4, 2018 an assassination attempt was made on Venezuelan President Nicolás Maduro in Caracas using commercial drones that were bought online.
Meanwhile, the Skyborne Cerberus revolving grenade launcher drone is an actual weapon that is armed with three 40mm grenades. In this novel I had someone custom modify it to fire six rounds.
The Osprey tilt-rotor aircraft changes from a helicopter into a plane and back again. My son flew in Ospreys several times when he served in the Marines. On his first flight, the pilot deliberately gave the Marines a thrill ride none of them will ever forget. I wondered what a war dog like Cody might have felt on that kind of wild ride, and how the dog might always remember it.
U.S. Marine Corps Recapture Tactics Teams (RTT) specialize in police-like SWAT procedures and are tasked with guarding nuclear weapons aboard US naval installations. They are also trained to violently recapture and take back by force, United States personnel and property that has been stolen or otherwise compromised. After going through Close Quarters Battle School, they earn the nickname “Cowboys.”
The Black Plague of 1347 swept across nations and killed over half of Europe’s population. Two female biologists analyzed ancient DNA and proteins from plague pits, the mass burial grounds across Europe. Their findings, published in the journal PLoS Pathogens, proved once and for all that the Black Death of Europe was caused by Yersinia pestis bacterium from Yunnan, China, which is only about 800 miles from Wuhan. This news was also reported in a New York Times article titled, “Europe’s Plagues Came From China, Study Finds.”
In a frightening coincidence, Yunnan, China is also the location where scientists have found a cave inhabited by wild bats that carry over 500 viruses, including one strain that is 96 per cent similar to the novel coronavirus that spread from Wuhan to other nations. One scientist from an international team visiting the cave site in Yunnan reported that people were “hunting bats in the wild and selling them directly to restaurants.” A medical article once warned about this risk of bat viruses in China spreading to humans. “Bat Coronaviruses in China” published online Mar 2, 2019 by PubMed, National Institutes of Health, National Library of Medicine, National Center for Biotechnology Information, PMID: 30832341.
“Humanity has but three great enemies: fever, famine and war. Of these by far the greatest, by far the most terrible, is fever.” —Sir William Osler, MD