As I mentioned in an earlier post, this is promo week. My newly released novel, “Tarnished – Surviving the American Dream”, is free, this week only!
Get your copy here if you’re in the US, and here if you’re in the UK. Live elsewhere? Please use one of these two stores. After the promo, dozens of other countries are supported worldwide. Thanks for understanding.
Still not motivated to grab this thriller from Amazon at no charge? As a further enticement, below is a sneak peek at a couple of scenes not in the “Amazon look-inside” preview.
Context: Early in the story our protagonist, George Janis, wrestles with his personal demons. They wear the faces of those poor souls’ lives he’s ruined by firing them. One turns out to be a psychopath bent on vengeance. Warning: this is a graphic horror scene, one of the few in the book, but demonstrates the depth of two characters, one of whom isn’t identified until later:
Clutched again in its grip, that dream, his personal coffin of despair, embraced George naked and trembling.
My ears ring in the profound silence. It smells musty wherever I am. How did I get here? The clinging blackness is the most terrifying of all. It feels like I’m buried alive, smothering in an all-consuming claustrophobia. How can this be?
Am I finally insane? Is there at least a shred remaining of who I thought I once was? Or is God finally pushing me over the edge to the hell I know I deserve?
Blinking my eyes, again and again, I try to chase away the ocean of guilt within which I’m drifting. It isn’t working. Worse, much worse, I’m unable to move my arms or legs. I remember often waking up in places with no memory of how I got there. Have I relapsed? No, this is no drunken blackout. Am I drugged? Possibly. Or am I now a permanent prisoner of my worst nightmare? Have I gone utterly and completely mad?
It seems my sense of smell is also mostly arrested, but pain and pressure are not. I’m experiencing waves of pain. There is both old and new pain. Something jars my entire body with violent resolve. Over and over again. I know I’m being lacerated with deep sweeping strokes.
“Remember me, George?” A cold and bitter voice laced with slivers of ice. “Remember how you ripped my heart out, and dumped on my soul, claiming you were just doing your job, you asshole? Remember what that cost me? You never knew or cared. It matters not. Tonight I return the favor.”
That voice…
His box cutter—a rusty and scarred blade, from his grim narrative—protrudes from a scratched gray metallic handle. It glints with a dull gleam in the ethereal glow of my imagination as it drips with… what?
“I need you to know what’s happening here, George. First, let’s be clear. You are about to die. Before you do, though, we’re going to have some fun. There… feel that? Ouch, that’s gotta hurt. Well, I suspect it’s too soon for you to feel much, but we’re getting you very wet, aren’t we? Feel that, George? That’s your filthy life dripping onto this dirty concrete floor.”
This madman continues to describe what is happening in a professorial tone. As he does so, his chipped blade drives through the delicate skin and the rough two-day stubble on my neck. As my nerve endings come alive, they give voice to my terror, as does the embarrassing stench of my bowels involuntarily giving up.
Oh God, I’m conscious and aware. And so very helpless. I’m drowning in waves of nausea and disgust. My head is lower than my body. Why? I struggle to comprehend and accept what is being done to me. Hearing only pieces of a grisly monologue, I am now aware of a taut blindfold that covers my eyes and nose. Not that it matters anymore. It does explain my lack of sight and smell, except that coarse heavy cloth… is that the stink of vomit? Mine?
I’m aware of the puddle spreading near my genitals—urine, or perhaps blood. I can hear whatever it is dripping, then splashing, onto the floor beneath the table.
“George, are you still with me? Let’s find out how much of a manipulator you are with no fingers. Feel that? …I’m sorry my trusty blade isn’t sharper.” A guttural snicker overlays the insistent crunching of bones and cartilage.
“One down, nine to go, asshole. Eight… seven…”
I can neither speak nor scream because of something large and round and fuzzy in my mouth. Is this an old half-bald tennis ball? It is crammed so very tight into my hyper-extended jaw. It presses so hard against the back of my front teeth that I’m sure they’re about to break. With the taste of my gums bleeding, my tongue is bunched up behind that awful ball. Some sort of tape is wrapped recklessly around my head and through my beard and hair…
“Are you ready now, George? Say hello to the devil for me, you sod.”
I feel what is sure to be the killing stroke of that blade drawing hard across my neck and throat. I can feel it severing what must be my windpipe and jugular as my breath gurgles and whistles through the cuts. The shock of that moment dances through my mind with lightning clarity.
It is still too soon to feel much pain, but I know the blade has achieved its highest purpose. It jerks my head and neck sideways, more than once. I think, Why is he still tearing into me? Lord, are you still there, after all these years?
George jolted himself awake as if tased. Of all his dreams, he only ever remembered this one. Covered in sweat and soaked in fear, he forced himself out of bed and showered to wash off the memory of all that blood and viscera.
Context: Later in the story, an American covert operations team, twelve strong, orchestrates a retaliatory strike deep into Mother Soviet Russia, below the radar. Under orders of US President John W. Stevens, they are to “make an unambiguous statement to foreign actors who have chosen to mess with our American election process. Rules of engagement: minimal casualties.” They are about to attack a troll hole with a hundred or so “disinformationists” inside:
October 2008
Novye Cheryomushki, Russia
Security outside the institute at Nosy Cherry was heavier than anticipated. This was no private team of rent-a-cops. These guys were hard-core Russian regulars. Derek guessed Spetsnaz, elite troops of special purpose from Russia’s Main Intelligence Department known as the GRU.
They made American special forces look like candy-asses by comparison, if you were to ask one of them. Same sort of training, but rumored to possess zero ethical boundaries to restrain them–only love for Mother Russia and unconstrained hatred of her enemies.
Their special purpose was killing efficiently, without mercy. This seemed overkill for nerd guard duty, Derek thought. Somebody was serious about protecting this facility. There were six that he could see. Perhaps more inside. This was not good news.
The team spent the next ten minutes patiently observing the funky facade of this building in the heart of this dilapidated industrial district. Every member of the team knew time was of the essence, but impetuous action at this stage of any mission invariably foreshadowed failure.
A few nerds sauntered up the wide stairs between columns and entered. Each was challenged by one of the stationary guards with the other looking on, weapons at the ready. Nobody exited. The few women they saw were young, plain, and unadorned.
“Darla, got any makeup with you? What am I saying? Of course, you do. Thank God you speak decent Russian.” Derek grinned. She smirked, a non-verbal “kiss my darling ass” sort of expression. She could put down half the guys on the team between applying lipstick and delivering her kiss of death.
“Okay, go time. Darla and Mick, decoy.”
All knew their assignments and moved into position.
It had taken Darla ninety seconds to look hot enough to tempt a eunuch. Mick looked goofier than a gold-plated ruble. She led the way, he trailed behind, bashfully.
As they neared the two grizzly monsters at the institute’s front entrance, Darla smiled playfully and asked for help adjusting her backpack precisely where it compressed one ample bosom begging to bust out, barely constrained behind several truant buttons on her split jersey top. The two guards closed in like starving wolves on a raw ribeye.
Mick was still half a dozen respectful paces behind but closing fast, appearing fearful of the weapon-toting wildlife. She provocatively shifted her right boob upward and inward with the palm and heel of her right hand where it was being compressed by the strap of her backpack… they didn’t notice Mick’s surreptitious scan for other roaming guards.
In seconds, both guards were down hard with killing blows that drove their nose cartilage into their brain pans with the heel of the operators’ hands. Darla, one. Mick, one. Guards came in dead last.
They dragged the bodies behind the huge ornate columns just outside the eight-foot-tall double entrance doors at the top of the steps and scavenged everything useful.
Four teammates, including Derek, rushed to reinforce Mick and Darla before they entered the facility and fanned out. Classic two by three offensive formation through the wide double-doors. Derek had directed Flack Jackson to lead the six remaining team members to lay in ambush. Objective: decommission any other roving guards currently elsewhere on the grounds.
Not much cover once through the doors. A triple-burst echoed through the antechamber. Mick spun off his feet. More shots—another triple. Derek neutralized the shooter with a single shot from one of the guard’s captured rifles. All fell silent.
Mick arose and sheepishly shook off a flesh wound to his right bicep, but winced in pain after a grateful nod to his boss. Darla assessed the wound in less than five seconds before lightly punching it. Mick winced again. She grinned at him good-naturedly and said, “Pussy.” He grinned.
They fanned out. No more guards inside. Flack rushed in less than a minute later while Derek was slapping a compression pad on Mick’s arm. After grinning at the sight of only one corpse, the opposition’s, and just a bit of blood on Mick’s sleeve, Flash quickly reported, “All guards outside down and concealed, all external phone and computer cables cut, both SUVs now parked nearby, noses out. We have no gear to jam wi-fi or cell signals, though.”
Before tending to Mick, Derek had peeked through a set of ornamental ballroom doors and now said, “Copy. Bring in the rest of the team. We’re gonna need lots of hands.”
Entering a huge hall, divided only with chest-high movable partitions to create a gigantic array of small modular offices, sat a crowd of petrified computer users. Dozens of deer in the headlights. Nobody had dared leave their chairs after the shots rang out. The only operators here were keyboard operators. Some ducked and stayed down. These people, the nerds, were genuinely terror-stricken. Flack and Sanchez, another teammate, visibly dragged the exsanguinated interior guard by his armpits. More than half his body was drenched in blood from a pumping arterial wound. Half his neck was gone. The captured guard’s rifle must have chambered hollow point rounds. This poor schmuck’s bloody corpse was a billboard declaring, “Don’t even consider messing with us!”
Within seconds of entering the room, Darla screamed a guttural warning, almost masculine, definitely chilling. “Ruki v vozdukhe! Teper’! I derzhite ikh, ili vy mertvy!”. Derek wasn’t sure but thought Darla’s command of the Russian language must be pretty good because he saw a forest of arms shoot straight up and stay there, all at the same instant. He didn’t know she’d been privately rehearsing that line… “Hands in the air! Now! And keep them up, or you’re dead!”, and couldn’t wait to show it off.
Without another word, they rapidly searched pockets and drawers for cell phones and anything else that looked capable of calling out or signaling. Before leaving each cubicle they efficiently zip-tied hands and legs.
Since Darla was the only one who spoke passable Russian, the others agreed to pantomime their directions by holding a pistol finger to the center of each captive’s forehead (without pulling the “trigger”) while shaking their own head side-to-side during the restraint process. Then that same gun finger transformed to a hush-hush finger in front of their own puckered lips. The message was clear: you won’t be killed if you just keep quiet.
Most bobbed their heads up and down eagerly. They hadn’t signed up to die. So they laid on the floor of their cubicles, quiet as a pulverized pager. This process took longer than expected. The second hand on the clock was moving entirely too fast.
Several rack-mounted servers sat humming in an unpartitioned back corner at the far end of the long and narrow hall with high unadorned ceilings. While the crew secured the nerds, Derek calmly but quickly pulled a handful of compact hard drives from their racks and stuffed them into his U of M backpack before deploying rudimentary fused charges they’d extracted from their luggage on the drive South.
He also found a couple of newer Toshiba laptops on what appeared to be the desks of supervisors near the server farm. One had a flash drive, a memory stick, protruding from its side. The laptops and stick went into his backpack as well.
They had also agreed to leave a few subtle messages behind. With only a little discomfort from his injured arm, Mick made good use of two small aerosol cans of spray paint that had not been confiscated at the airport.
The team then assembled by the entry door waiting for Derek who had the honor of lighting several fuses with his inexpensive Zippo-clone lighter. He took just a moment to admire Mick’s crude but taunting graffiti: PB Sucks! and DU Forever! and Mess with the Best! Those would only be understood by higher pay grades. That would take time. Perfect. There was even a drawing of a hand with a particular gesture, the meaning of which anyone could instantly recognize.
As they sped away, kicking up the driveway gravel, they were rewarded with a rapid series of satisfying WUMPs behind them. The clock was still ticking, still way too fast. They had been at the site for almost an hour.
They reached the airport in their stolen SUVs less than ninety minutes later; however, the security lines were lengthy. The tension was escalating, even for these experienced operators. Time continued to be their most deadly enemy.
Derek had disposed of all but one compact hard drive, one laptop, and a memory stick en route. More would increase the risk of exposure. One or the other might contain useful intel.
The laptop was easy. It was such a common item that its presence in Derek’s student backpack went unquestioned through the X-ray. The more unusual naked hard drive, however, wasn’t easily concealed, so they’d agreed to also just hide it in plain sight in Darla’s backpack. She’d claim that it was in her pack when they entered the country, part of her studies at University in America.
This ploy worked, partially because of a long line of irritable passengers behind them, impatiently shuffling, and partially because of Darla’s winning ways. She playfully scolded one of the TSA-type security guys, “Privet! Moi glaza zdes’!”, which roughly meant, “Hey! My eyes are up here!” And oh, that sparkling but lethal smile.
The memory stick went undetected.
Twenty minutes later, their old Boeing 717 emblazoned with the fictitious moniker of BridgeCraft Charters was granted clearance by Departure Control, en route to St. Petersburg. Moscow to St. Pete was an extremely popular sixty-minute flight for tourists. Number three for take-off, they spent less than ten minutes on the tarmac before lifting off. All seemed normal. So far so good. Until…
Enticed yet? Lots more. Get the eBook. Read it on your Kindle or any device (tablet, phone, laptop, desktop…) with the free Kindle reader app on the Amazon page.
After reading the book, I’d be very much in your debt if you’d post a brief (or long) review on Amazon. Fair enough?
Thanks, team!
With pen in hand… Gene
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With Pen in Hand 