Death Cloud

About the Book

Death Cloud is a fictional story of the radical American Religious Expansion Front, AREF, that steals some of the deadliest viruses known to man from the Centers for Disease Control in Atlanta, GA. The group intends to ransom the world for five hundred billion dollars and the island of Malaita in the Solomon island chain by threatening to release deadly viruses at the 2004 Athens Olympic games and transporting the other viruses into outer space for release into a deadly cloud circling the globe. With the help of five of the richest industrialists and entrepreneurs in the world, the group pulls off the greatest and most daring robbery and act of terrorism in history.

The AREF has purchased former Soviet Union missiles that were not accounted for in the last SALT talks and not scheduled for systematic destruction per SALT and thus sold to the highest bidding arms dealers. The group overhauls the missiles, reconstructs the control and launch programs and uses the missiles to place the viruses strategically and will release the viruses worldwide if their ransom demands are not met.

The leader of the AREF, Earl Edward Cowan, known as the reverend since he is an ordained Baptist minister without a congregation, has a Ph.D. in nuclear physics from UCLA and was fired from the Los Alamos research facility for his radical political views and non conformity to the status quo expected of the facility’s employees.

Rich industrialists and others from Germany, Japan, Great Britain, France and the U.S. share the reverend’s radical political views for reasons dating back to World War II and provide the majority of the group’s financial support.

With the help of an insider at the Centers for Disease Control, the AREF successfully steals vials of the Ebola, Jungle Fever, Dungy, the new, more deadly Q virus and other deadly viruses including bacteria used by the military in its biological warfare research that is now ended, but are kept in a secure location for possible future research.

The group “plants” some of the vials of the deadly viruses in Athens and other world cities and transports the remainder to one of the group financial supporter’s factories in South America where the viruses and bacteria are loaded for launch into space and eventual release into the atmosphere.

The world’s leaders balk at the ransom demand, so the group tells the world of its intended launch of a missile at a major city in the Western Hemisphere. They do not indicate the payload of the last missile, a nuclear warhead that the reverend has constructed. They launch this missile as a last resort to show the world that they mean business.

The world’s leaders communicate via telephone and agree to work together to solve the problem presented by this new danger. The cooperation brought about by this danger to world well-being is unprecedented in history and serves to unite the nations of the world in a common bond of cooperation and friendship.

After delivering the ransom money, the world goes into panic and its leaders communicate to decide their course of action, to send crack troops made up of the best U.S. soldiers to capture the computer controlling the missiles and the viruses.

The world leaders, in spite the use of their various and numerous resources, fail to locate the South American missile base. The U.S. prevails in its attempts upon the group’s headquarters on U.S. soil. The U.S. is one of only a hand full of nations capable of a missile strike to destroy the warheads in space and the missile base in South America if the need arises.

A well trained force of crack U.S. soldiers, led by Tom Watkins and Cesar Avalos, manage to take the AREF’s compound in New Mexico at a considerable loss of resources and lives.

A long battle is waged at the AREF’s New Mexico “safe house” with the forces left there by the reverend and the other members of t

About the Author

Accountant and consultant. Born July 22, 1944, to Jose T. Morales and Dora Allison Morales. Graduated from Western New Mexico University in 1967 with a B. A. degree in accounting. Married Priscilla Melendrez August 6, 1966. Children include Lawrence David, Anna Martina and Eddye Lynn. Resides with wife in El Paso, TX. Member, Who’s Who in the South and Southwest. Enjoys writing and wrote The Plant, a fiction account of the enormity of the drug trade and the easy in which drugs flow across the US/Mexico border. Published by Xlibris in 2000.