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duty assignment for his six years in the Air Force was The Hole -- the USAF Cyber Command’s “Cyber Warfighting Platform” at Offut Air Force Base, ten miles south of Omaha, near the town of Bellevue. This extensive underground bunker was built early in the Cold War and was the former home of the U.S Strategic Command (USSTRATCOM), and even earlier it had housed the Strategic Air Command (SAC). In 2025, after USSTRATCOM relocated to Colorado, AFCYBER relocated from Lackland Air Force Base to Offut and took over most of the empty office space in The Hole.
    There was a delay of six months after he graduated while Rick waited for his full-scope security clearance Special Background Investigation (SBI) to be completed. He spent most of that time working on online officer development courses. The next five and half years while based in Eastern Nebraska went by in a blur. He was hip-deep in joint service data mining, database fusion, Computer Network Exploitation (CNE), Computer Network Attack (CNA), and database exploitation, at the tactical, operational, and strategic levels. He always lived on base and never had much of a social life. He held a Top Secret security clearance with SCI access and was read onto numerous intelligence and cyber compartmented programs.
    In his second year at Offut, the Ebola DRC pandemic made its outbreak in Kinshasa, the capital city of the Democratic Republic of the Congo (DRC). It was the world’s most devastating pandemic since the Black Death. It depleted the world’s overall population by 15% overall and a devastating 60% in Africa. Hardest hit were the sub-Saharan regions that had already been decimated by HIV/AIDS. The new Ebola strain had a 45% mortality rate in Africa’s general population, but a 95% mortality rate among those who were immuno-suppressed. .
    The worldwide economic effects of the pandemic were profound. The prices of many commodities went into slumps, and currency inflation briefly abated. Demand for durable goods such as automobiles, appliances, and factory machinery sagged. Skilled workers and even manual laborers were more highly valued. Drone aircraft and autonomous ground vehicles became increasingly important.
    The Ebola DRC outbreak also gave a huge boost to the growing dominance of the Thirdist movement. For the five preceding years, the Thirdist mullahs had been prophesying a global pandemic “in the near future” that would cleanse the world of unrighteousness. They called the predicted pandemic “The Great Cleansing.” And when it did come, they smugly crowed about it.
    Rick felt relatively safe at Offut since pandemic precautions were scrupulously maintained by the active components of the US military. But he lost one aunt and one grandfather, both on his mother’s side of the family, to Ebola DRC. The pandemic had nearly burned itself out by the time Rick was promoted to Captain, in his third year of service. And by the time Rick left the Air Force, new Ebola DRC cases were no longer reported in 190 countries, with just a few isolated hot spots in China and Mongolia.
    Even before he left the Air Force, Rick had been eyeing GlobalMAP as a potential employer. He liked the fact that it had an outspokenly Christian management team. He also thought that CEO Harry Heston’s pro-gun stance was admirable. Rick had read that Heston often joined his security guards at the shooting range. And the thought of moving to Scotland, now perhaps the freest nation on earth, appealed to his libertarian sensibilities. Rick considered himself a Life First libertarian, meaning that the sanctity of life was paramount to individual liberty, and hence true libertarians could not consider themselves “pro-choice” if that choice resulted in the death of a baby. To wit: The baby’s life trumps the liberty of the mother or the whims of a eugenicist government. Rick also considered himself a staunch individualist. He rejected collectivism and all “progressive” schemes,