Kindle Edition
Tom Gauthier Welcome to My World
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: ToMar Associates, Publishing
ISBN-10: 0692403396
Type: Fiction
Pages: 230
Copyright: March 8, 2015
ISBN-13: 9780692403396
Price: $3.99 (eBook)
The Korean War is underway.
An aircraft flown by the CIA has crashed in Manchuria,its crew taken prisoner—A Broken Arrow alert is called by the US Air Force at Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa--An Atomic Bomb has been stolen.
Force Three Rises is the fourth novel in the Amos Mead Adventure series.
The Korean War is underway, the Americans fighting for their lives in the Pusan Perimeter.
An aircraft flown by the CIA has crashed in Manchuria and two of its crew taken prisoner—but whether by the Communist Chinese or the Soviet KGB is not known.
One of the prisoners is a high level US government official.
A Broken Arrow alert is called by the US Air Force at Kadena Air Force Base in Okinawa--An Atomic Bomb has been stolen.
The President of the United States has a private unit of “spies” at his disposal.
Since 1938 FORCE THREE served as the eyes and ears of the American President in Asia, Europe and the Soviet Union during war and peace, and once again they are called to serve. And now a second President has this highly secret force.
Since they operate outside of treaties and conventional channels, the President calls on them to unravel what is evolving into a deadly dance of the CIA, the KGB and the Red Chinese—and a fourth, more sinister player, a cabal of mid-level Chinese and Russians who seek wealth and riches from manipulation of the combatants on the Korean Peninsula.
Amos Mead is the one person all parties see as able to cross the lines and seek the truth—he’s been called on before and the President trusts him to find out if governments are plotting, or individuals are seeking chaos—with the kidnapping of an American official—or with an atomic bomb.
We follow Mead to Moscow as he unravels the situation Harmon Wetmore, Deputy Director of the CIA, has gotten into—ending in his imprisonment by the KGB. Mead is also tasked with breaking up a cabal of Russian and Chinese “bandits” who seek to blackmail the free world by threatening to explode an atomic bomb in an unknown location.
The trail leads to action in Pyongyang and on the Korean Island of Jeju.
At the same time, Mead’s wife, Dr. Brigit O’Hare Mead has been recruited to reconnect with a Chinese General she aided as an intelligence officer in WWII. The General is now a part of Mao Tse-Tung’s Communist Forces. Dr. Mead gains information—and sows discontent.
Follow the action as Mead struggles with outside forces—and his own ghosts of past and current friends. In this time of the infancy of the atomic age, unknown dangers lurk with dire consequences for both friend and foe as FORCE THREE RISES.
Excerpt
On the final pass the C-119 came in low at tree-top level for the pickup, flying just over its stall speed. Wetmore felt the rush of adrenalin clearing his head as he braced for the unfamiliar action. Seldom—maybe never—did he feel not in complete command of a situation. This time he was the rookie.
As he peered down, the scene began to change before his eyes.
The world seemed to go into slow motion as he finally realized what was about to happen.
Suddenly, the mounds erupted.
White tarps camouflaging two antiaircraft guns on the snow-flecked terrain flew off.
Blinding gunfire flashed into the night, arcing death toward him.
Straddling the plane’s flight path, they raked a murderous crossfire into the defenseless aircraft.
A crowd of men emerged from the woods, firing AK-47s at the lumbering plane.
Wetmore went to his knees, trying to be as small as possible as bullets stitched the forward cargo space, splinters from the plywood deck flying with the errant red hot lead up through the plane’s overhead. The holes traced their way forward to flight deck, tracers igniting the fuel that leaked from the wing. The nose of the sinking aircraft came up as the pilot tried to miss the trees ahead—and an imminent crash.
The plane’s speed fell below stalling and it mushed into a grinding controlled crash in the clearing beyond the trees, the twin booms of the C-119 snapping off and dropping the tail to the ground.
Wetmore and the crewman were secured to the plane with safety lines to keep them from falling out during the winching operation. As the plane impacted the ground in a grinding cacophony of screeching metal and blinding dirt and debris they both slid along the wooden floor to the end of the tethers, partially cushioned by their heavy winter flight suits.
The crewman’s tether broke sending him on into the bulkhead aft of the nose wheel-well and knocking him out.
Wetmore, groggy from the impact but with adrenalin coursing through his body, released his tether and got to the crewman just as he woke. With the same thought, they both rushed to the ladder going up to the flight deck, yelling for the flight crew. The flight deck above them burned fiercely and the smell of burning flesh reeking through the hellish heat forcing the pair back. The Chinese gunfire had targeted the flight deck and Wetmore was sure the crew had died in their seats.
Clearing his head with the need to survive, he realized they had to get out quickly before the Chinese covered the ground between the ambush site and where they had hit the ground beyond the trees. Wetmore pointed at the flames and yelled, “We can’t help them!”
He grabbed the arm of the crewman who was backing away from the horror in a trancelike state, yelling again, “Come on! We need to get clear before those bastards get here.”
Both men jumped the few feet out the open rear cargo bay to the ground and stumbled to their feet, turning to head toward the trees to the left of their downed plane. Wetmore ducked under the wrecked tail boom as they heard the Chinese soldiers whooping and hollering, randomly firing wild rounds from their AK-47’s as they came crashing through the woods along the gouged earth end-of-flight path of the wrecked plane. Wetmore hit the edge of the woods and kept his pace to move deeper as he fended off branches with his forearms.
Behind him, the other crewman turned at the sound of their pursuers and missed ducking under the tail boom, taking a nasty crack on the head and dropping to the ground. Reflexively he bounded to his feet, but as he reached the tree-line a Chinese AK-47 opened up with its distinctive report. Dirt flew all around him and tree branches were clipped off in front of the American. He slid to a stop, raised his hands, and awaited the inevitable.
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