Amazon
Oaktree Press
Amazon
Oaktree Press
Category:
Action/Thriller
Publisher: Oaktree Press
ISBN-10: 1610092171
Pages: 266
Copyright: Dec 7 2015
ISBN-13: 9781610092173
Price: $15.95 (eBook)
A fast-paced international political suspense/thriller.
Douglas Wheeler worked for the NSA as a Systems Analysis and wanted to leave. The NSA would not allow him to quit, so he stole some very damning documents on some very important people from the NSA and blackmailed the Agency into allowing him to depart. Douglas had traveled to England many times previous and when he won his freedom he immigrated there to write books. The NSA began a program of clandestine investigation into Douglas and where he had stored his files so they could retrieve them and prosecute Douglas for his crime. They could not kill Douglas, because they feared he had a trigger on the information. If they killed him the trigger would release the info to news and other organizations around the world, much like Edward Snowden (Douglas, in fact, trained Edward Snowden when Snowden came to work at the NSA). As long as Douglas was alive they could take their time in their investigation. But Douglas dies accidentally. And this sets in motion an intensive hunt for Douglas’ stolen files.
A few very powerful men from Political Action Committees used their connections at the FBI to send a rogue team of FBI agents to intercept Douglas’ stolen documents from the formal Security Council’s investigators and destroy certain specific files incriminating their possible presidential candidate before the official investigative team can retrieve them. However, since the FBI only has National authority, not International authority, and could not legally investigate for themselves, the Rogue team manipulated our hero, the celebrated investigative reporter, Elliott Lawder, into going to England, under the guise of investigating a bogus drug ring, to see what he could uncover. In the midst of his own personal crisis – parents living with him and in failing health, Elliott battling the onset of alcoholism, a brother that also lives with him that hates him - Elliott moves from working with the legitimate Security Councils team and the Rogue team in investigating the only link to Douglas Wheeler, a streetwise, black British female flim-flam artist, to the teams searching for him and wanting to eliminate him and the British female. Elliott is on the run and in a fight for his life with the British female until he can figure out what is really going on. Of course Elliott solves the puzzle of Douglas’ stolen NSA Documents, exposes the rogue FBI agents as the bad guys that they are and falls in love with and lives happily ever after with the black British female.
Excerpt
Sussex, England
. . . a shooting . . . ? a stabbing . . . ? a drowning . . . ?
Once again Douglas Wheeler relaxed into position in the chair, forced his brain free of clutter, commanded total concentration. Now, individually and at some length, he considered his choices. He tried to zero in on the virtues of each approach, tried to pinpoint inherent complications. He remained, for the longest time, motionless, evaluating each method again and again, concentrating, con – cen – trat – ing . . .
Shit!
Douglas flung the pencil to the desktop, shoved his thin frame away from the desk, stood, charged off in the direction of the terrace doors. He simply could not understand it. He had been at it now for days, from dawn till dusk, but so far, nothing he had come up with came even remotely close to approaching the objective. He had tried everything, everything, and still he could not formulate a suitable scheme with which to commit the murder. It was bloody frustrating, was what it was.
Douglas came to a halt at the windowed terrace-doors. How, how, can you ever hope to gain their notice, he thought to himself. How can you ever hope to be taken seriously when you can’t even manage a little thing like this? He shook his head in disgust. What hopelessly glaring ineptitude.
He glared out of the terrace doors now. “I’ll bet you would know, wouldn’t you?” he said aloud, staring into the distance to the lush green English countryside. “You would have no trouble at all with this – after all, murder is your business, isn’t it?”
He stayed for a moment at the doors, staring out. There was no movement from the trees near the back road behind his home, no quick flashes of clothing, no sunlight reflecting off of automobile doors or metal bumpers. But Douglas knew they were there. They were always there, ensconced, watching him.
Douglas turned now, stalked back to the large oak desk, sat. Without thought he picked up one of the many Number Two pencils strewn across the desktop and placed it between his teeth. They were a habit, the pencils. He never actually put them to paper; pens were his instrument of choice now. But the pencils were a carry-over from his early years, and he knew, without a shadow of a doubt, that no serious thought could be realized with their absence.
He stared down at the typewriter keys. He had not come up with a title yet and he wasn’t exactly sure how the thing would end, but aside from that and the actual writing, everything else concerning his first attempt at long fiction was pretty much fulfilled.
Everything, that is, except the murder.
Thus, Douglas’ dilemma: how to do the deed.
He had tried guns and knives, car crashes and falls from tall buildings, he had even toyed with the notion of bows and arrows. But up till now, nothing he’d devised was new or unique, nothing felt . . . right.
And it had to feel right.
It had to be right.
All but the previous five-plus years of Douglas’ adult life had been spent in an office; in America, Washington, The National Security Agency, a Government Computer Man. And through it all, all he had ever been prior to now, was an outsider. A Government Contractor. A Technician. Competent, yes, without question, that - more than competent, much more, one of the best Systems Analysts the Government had to offer, but, alas, a drone nonetheless. So this now, what he’d waited all his life to attain an opportunity to do, what he felt he was born to do, just had to be right.
It had to be perfect.
You can’t settle for just anything, Douglas cautioned himself. It can’t be just any old murder, not your everyday shooting or stabbing - no no, that simply will not do. It must be singular, it must be unique.
Douglas placed his fingers on the keyboard now, let his teeth sink into the soft wood of the pencil between his teeth, waited for inspiration to strike.
And waited.
And waited.
Nothing!
There were no lightning bolts flashing, no light bulbs popping on above his head.
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