Lewis Perdue's Blog, page 32

February 26, 2012

Matching Military MREs & Wine?

In previous chapters, of DIE BY WIRE, Mira Longbow and Jackson Day have focused on the mission and done their best to ignore their past — the good and the bad. In this chapter, they're on the run. And as with all battles, there come breaks in the action. And everybody has to eat.

The right food wine match always makes for an enjoyable meal! Click here for a much larger (7MB) image).

The character named Qalila in this chapter is Qalila Sontag, a Pleiades colleague of Mira's. Qalila is deadly in her own right. But in this mission, she is in charge of weapons and supplies, functioning as a combination quartermaster, gunnery sergeant and transport specialist. She also acts as a sort of Bond-like "Q" to supply some pretty neat gadgets and weaponry (all of which actually exist)

Qalila seems to have had some sort of previous history with Day. Mira is not pleased with that. And not pleased with herself that she's not pleased with Day and Qalila's previous history.

In this chapter, ss they eat, we find Day and Mira finally ready to pick at — and maybe pick up — the threads of a relationship they have both hoped for since Al-Kut.

The right white wine to match their MRE moves things along nicely.

CHAPTER FIFTY SIX - DIE BY WIRE

Amsterdam

The bank of LCDs lit the Achtersluisstraat operations room like sunshine dancing through leaves. Shadows shifted constantly rearranged by incoming data re-drawing the lines and multicolored squares on the displays.

He washed it down with a sip of Vouvray from a plastic glass. Only Qalila would pair appropriate wines to bulletproof military-issue food.

And only Mira, he realized, could so thoroughly unhinge him with a word, a glance, a casual brush of fingertips; a laugh, a pout, a sensual combing of graceful fingers through unaccustomedly short hair.

Following his earlier inarticulate stammering they'd ripped open two pouches of his favorite MREs — menu five — and went for the bread and jalapeno cheese spread, while the water-activated chemical heaters warmed the entrees.

An awkward silence settled between them. Day searched for something, anything at all, to break the ice.

Growing up on a ranch in the sparsely populated rangeland and mountains of the eastern Sierras had never offered him an opportunity to develop smooth pick-up lines and the sort of glib gab that lubricated a conversation with the opposite sex.

Banalities served them pretty well until they washed the last of the cheese and bread down with the MRE's iced tea.

Day finally worked up his nerve.

CONTINUED IN DIE BY WIRE

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Published on February 26, 2012 11:56

February 25, 2012

God. No God. Love & Liquor.

Presented here, two of my favorite short chapters of Die By Wire that show how two intelligent people — Mira Longbow and Jackson Day — can fall in love over an obscure Dutch liquor and an argument about the existence (or not) of God.

Mira, for reasons described previously, has lost her faith in God. She's firmly agnostic. She's not ready to take the leap of faith back toward believing in God but not over the chasm to believing there is no God.

Day believes in God, despite the bitter lot he's been dealt. Mira finds that hard to … believe

And, yes, the MREs described are totally authentic. If you ever get a chance, NEVER, EVER turn down the clam chowder.

CHAPTER FIFTY SIX

Amsterdam

Jackson Day sat in a folding chair at one end of a folding table and watched Mira ransack a large cardboard box while he finished the last bite of stuffing from a grilled chicken breast and cornbread stuffing MRE. He washed it down with a sip of Vouvray from a plastic glass. Only Qalila would pair appropriate wines to bulletproof military-issue food.

An awkward silence settled between them. Day searched for something, anything at all, to break the ice.

Banalities served them pretty well until they washed the last of the cheese and bread down with the MRE's iced tea.

Day finally worked up his nerve.

"Helluva blog you've got."

Lame!

He stumbled on. "I never knew evil was so … had so much depth."

Lamer! You screwed the pooch, pal.

Then Mira smiled.

"Thank you." Gracious, accepting.

Encouraged, Day cleared his throat.

"How did you … the evil thing? What got you started?"

To his amazement, Mira told him. Unrestrained and mostly unprompted through the main course. She spoke easily, touching some bases lightly, others in detail and some — like Al-Kut, the court martial and her family tragedies — in such a cursory manner that he knew they held the sorts of unfathomed depths that would not countenance unsolicited questions.

Over French vanilla cappuccino, reconstituted from the MRE's inventory, Mira turned the questions on him.

She stopped him every time he tried to stick to a Cliff Notes summary of the pain, rehab, battles with the bureaucracy

Al Kut. MedeVac Blackhawk. Ramstein. Walter Reed. Transcendental pain.

He told her about the eyes of his men that no longer saw. The lips that no longer spoke. The great spreading gouts of blood darkening in the Al-Kut heat.

His disgrace.

"And then I met the man on the mountain." He said.

"What did he have to offer that the rest of the military couldn't?"

Mira offered him a look of such complete acceptance that he told her what he had never said before, never actually allowed himself to face.

"Redemption," Day said.

"Redemption?"

"I … when I — "

Day wiped at his face, pulled at his jaw, stretched his mouth.

Words stumbled off his lips, falling flat even to his own ears, challenging the life-changing decision that had shaped the previous years of his life.

"If I had gotten my way in the regular Army, then one day I'd be back outside the wire again with men trusting me to make the right decision." He shook his head. "I know now that I'm not good enough."

Mira watched his emotional struggle shift the taut angles of his face and work the hardened facets of the well-defined muscles.

"The man on the mountain gave me the chance to redeem myself — to finish the unfinished business — without risking any life but my own."

She compared his face to what she remembered from Al-Kut. Fundamentally the same rugged visage that had so thoroughly captivated her then. But now, the features were leaner, the sharp bones of his cheeks and square jaw closer to the surface, the network of wrinkles at the corners of his eyes deeper and the grit, set and determination lines around his lips stood in stark carved relief.

The cocky young warrior of Al-Kut had grown into a brave man born of painful experience.

You are good enough.

Day waved his hands, helpless in the face of errant thoughts that would not connect to the words and the words that would not find his lips.

With a nod and the most gentle of accepting glances, Mira encouraged him to continue.

"It's my mission," Day finally managed.

"Your ultimate mission," Mira's said.

"Don't laugh," he hedged. "But I think that this is what God wants me to do."

Oh, hell! Please no Jesus freak talk!

Mira wrestled with the bitter distaste of having God injected into a serious conversation.

Not from you. Especially not from you!

Day pressed, skipped from high point to high point. Then he ran out of words. The silence grew.

He had run out of words and Mira could think of nothing. The earnest struggle on his face was clear, the accomplishments monumental, but the religion thing raised the hair on the back of her neck.

"Wow," she said finally. "I need a drink."

Day reached for the Vouvray. She gave her head a little shake of dismissal.

"Thanks. But I need a real drink."

CHAPTER FIFTY SEVEN

Amsterdam

She ransacked one box after another in search of a "real drink."

"There!"

Mira stood up, victory in her voice. She made her way back to Day, brandishing a bottle of honey-colored liquid.

"Half om half." Mira set the bottle on the table, broke the seal and poured them each half a glass.

"My favorite."

Day took a tentative sip.

Sweet, spicy clove, bitter orange bite, warm on the way down and potent spicy heat that took his breath away.

Just like you.

Mira caught the smile on his face. That warmed her deeper than the half om half.

"You like?" She asked.

"Fantastic!"

Mira nodded, took a sip. Closed her eyes. Offered an approving "mmmm."

They sat in silence for a long moment.

When she finally opened her eyes, her gaze had so totally morphed that it generated the same gut rush he got every time he stepped out of a C-130 at 20,000 feet.

"So, how long are you going to wage this personal jihad until you redeem yourself?"

Ripcord! Where's my freaking ripcord?

The penetrating focus in her eyes terrified him with a most horrifying epiphany: after living his life on his own terms, answering only to his own life-or-death decisions, needing approval from no one, he suddenly had to have the approval of this woman.

Words escaped him. Day shrugged.

"How will you know?" She persisted.

"I'll know," Day said, suddenly without conviction.

Mira pulled a look of disbelief, turned toward the closest LCD while little Muckety boxes morphed around the display.

When she spoke again, her voice carried an edge, a jealousy, a mockery born of affronted sensibilities.

"So."

She nodded to herself.

"You're The True Believer with a divine mission to breath Hellfire and damnation on the unbelievers? Shouldn't you be thumping a Bible on the table or something?"

The pain on his face nailed her heart right to the back of her breastbone.

"I'm sorry," Mira said. "That was uncalled for. I — " Bands of guilt cinched her heart tight.

"Don't be," Day said, "I know how you feel about God and religion. I've read every word you've ever published over the years. Everything in print. On the Web. Your YouTube lectures. I read your dissertation. I have DVDs. You're aggressively up front about that."

It was Mira's turn to shrug. "It's pretty much driven my studies."

"And that other part of your life," he said.

"Pardon?"

"White Tights."

"What about it?"

"That's your mission. Fight evil."

"Yes, but — "

"So, just because I fight evil because I believe it's God's will, you think my fight's not as worthy as yours?"

"It's — I just don't understand how you can believe in God with all the evil in the world."

"And I don't understand how you can not believe in God," Day said. "Where did everything come from? Why is there something and not just nothing? I can't tell you how many nights I've stayed awake thinking about you, about how you feel about that. I've tried to wear your philosophical shoes, but — "

"You've stayed awake nights thinking about me?"

"Of course I have," Day said. "And just because I don't understand how you feel about that, it never stopped me from loving you."

Day's words landed a stunning round-house, left-hook punch that turned her thoughts to stone and everything else to disbelief. When words found her again, her voice sounded punch drunk and distant to her own ears.

"What did you say?"

"I said your beliefs never stopped me from loving you."

Mira drained the rest of her half om half in a single, deep, audible gulp.

"How could you possibly know that?" Mira asked. "You don't know me well enough, couldn't — "

"You put yourself in every letter," Day said. "You were all there. In every one."

Against her every good and righteous conviction and the near-supernatural control she exercised over her emotions, Day's face begin to blur. Mira turned quickly, wiped at the tears and struggled to compose her face.

"But why… didn't you write me back?"

"I did."

"You what!"

"I never mailed them. But I answered every one of them and put everything of myself into them just like you did. And I saved every one."

"Why didn't you mail them?"

"Because I knew that would be the end of my mission."

"Oh my God," Mira whispered to herself.

"For the same reason that no matter how much I'd like to stay with you, after we finish here, I have to return to my mission."

Mira gazed at him and saw in his eyes a level of determination, longing and… love that matched her own.

"Then hold me while you can," she said.

And he did.

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Published on February 25, 2012 21:23

Afghanistan Quran Violence: Strategic Incompetence, Criminal Stupidity

Any religion that can only be maintained through violence, coercion and death cannot truly be considered religion because it lacks faith in faith.

I wrote extensively about this and how it relates to Die By Wire several weeks ago in a post: Is Islam Evil?

AND NOW, QURAN VIOLENCE IN AFGHANISTAN

The violence in Afghanistan over the burning of Qurans raises the issue anew. But more than the irrationality of unenlightened Islamists eager to kill over insults to Islam, the situation raises the issue of criminal negligence and strategic incompetence among those charged with running the war.

TONE DEAFNESS IN AFGHANISTAN

As I've written extensively in Die By Wire, the totally irrational, berserk, knee-jerk violence of too many Muslims is really no different from Christianity of 500 or a thousand years ago or of Judaism from even earlier days.

That, of course, does not excuse the theological tone-deafness behind the burning of the Quran in Afghanistan. The killing aand rioting were absolutely predictable. Absolutely.

The burning reflected an inexcusable tone deafness in a strategic situation that requires perfect pitch. Face it, Islamic extremists — which includes most of Afghanistan, Iraq, Pakistan and a lot of other countries — are like old nitroglycerine — ready to explode at the slightest touch (or for no good reason at all).

From long experience, the U.S. military knows that fact. And if you are fighting a war surrounded by legions of old nitro, you have to be aware and careful or something blows. But the military has failed to hammer that fact into EVERY service member. That is criminal negligence. And lethal.

IRRATIONALITY IS REALITY OUTSIDE THE WIRE

To Americans raised in an atmosphere of religious tolerance and a respect for free speech, violence in the name of offensive cartoons or errors in handling religious texts is irrational.

Yes, it IS irrational. But is IS reality on the ground. Just because some people choose to live in an insane parallel universe doesn't mean they can't reach out and kill you.

CRIMINAL NEGLIGENCE WORTHY OF COURT MARTIAL

That is why the Quran burnings reflect a failing of U.SA. policy and training at the highest levels including the White House.

Criminal negligence.
Dereliction of duty.
Incompetence that gets people killed.
An own goal.
Fraticide.

NOT KNOWING YOUR ENEMY IS CRIMINALLY STUPID

After a decade of war in Afghanistan, the U.S. military still does not know its enemy. People are dying as a result. What's more, failing to recognize that — at every level — failing to incorporate hair-trigger religious irrationality into military training and strategy is nothing less than criminal negligence that should be prosecuted.

Failing to work with the irrational reality on the ground should mean the loss of stars for the generals in charge. If you are going to war in an irrational environment, only the criminally stupid fail to take account of every factor that affects victory and the safety of your troops.

And a skeptical look at the Commander In Chief's competency to oversee the military. As much as President Obama like to try and blame others for his shortcomings, he IS he Commander In Chief and the buck stops with him.

Forget about the debate over whether he should have apologized. The situation NEVER would have happened if the war had been prosecuted with all the important strategic factors in mind.

Multiple butts need to be nailed to multiple trees for this remarkably stupid, incompetent, negligent lapse of judgment.

THE PLIGHT OF ENLIGHTENED MUSLIMS

Yes, enlightened Muslims exist. I have several as friends Sadly, their voices are drowned out by the violence and coercion of evil Islamists willing to kill, rape, mutilate, burn and loot rational believers. The enlightened are terrified to speak out because their voices are quickly silenced. Death threats come instantly even for those who dare to suggest that every word in the Quran is not the perfect, inerrant word of God. But, then, such was the case for Christians centuries back when Christianity was an awkward adolescent.

Fear backed by violence, death and instant retribution can silence good people and allow evil to prevail.

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Published on February 25, 2012 12:06

February 24, 2012

Evil, Chocolate, Karamazov, Mira,Amsterdam

An excerpt from Die By Wire, following heroine Mira Longbow.

Subconsciously, Mira let her feet follow her heart, tracking faint memory traces of a long-past summer day. Her feet soon carried her into an afternoon-shaded passageway. A score of steps later, she gazed at a ghost from her first visit to Amsterdam: a delightful pastry shop that made the best hot chocolate on the planet.

Mira slipped inside and breathed in an intoxicating fragrance of chocolate and freshly baked pastry that spun her head with a past pleasure now made present again.

People crowded the three tables that stood by the wall of small-paned windows that gazed out on an architect's office on the steeg's opposite side.

Bicycles passed. A motorcycle messenger. A tiny three-wheeled delivery van pulled up on the sidewalk in front of the windows and unloaded flour.

When the little van pulled away, Mira took her hot chocolate out to the only unoccupied sidewalk table. She settled into the seat, took a generous sip. Behind closed lids, she communed with a sensuous intensity that managed to vanquish the day's every negative emotion.

The soft warmth of the chocolate warmed her heart and settled below her breastbone. Mira waited until all the pieces in her mind reached a peaceful equilibrium. Then she opened her eyes, took another sip, picked up Karamazov.

Instead of starting on page one, Mira flipped toward her favorite chapter — Rebellion.

Here, brother Ivan Karamazov berates God for creating a world so plagued by evil that even innocent children must endure the most horrible pain and suffering.

"Listen," Ivan says, "if everyone must suffer to buy eternal harmony with their suffering, pray tell me what have children to do with it?"

Unconsciously nodding to herself, Mira sipped again at her chocolate and scanned forward. Mira skimmed the part about babies being tossed in the air and caught on bayonets, past Dostoyevsky's other graphic atrocities and to Karamazov's ultimate truth that resonated in her heart:

If the final act of history were a play in which God reveals the harmony created by innocent suffering, Ivan says he'd return his ticket because the price is too high.

"I absolutely renounce all higher harmony," Ivan says. "It is not worth one little tear of even that one tormented child …. I'd rather remain with my unrequited suffering and my unquenched indignation …. I hasten to return my ticket, And it is my duty, if only as an honest man …."

The growl of a motorcycle engine competed for her attention.

Watch out!

A voice, a tug. A hand. She looked around.

No one near!

Behind you!

Mira whirled.

A massive BMW motorcycle hurtled down the narrow street, its rider clad all in black leather and a full-face, black helmet, its visor down. A second later, it leapt the curb, came straight like a missile.

Directly at Mira.

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Published on February 24, 2012 19:44

Jackson Day's "Listen & Destroy" Mission In The Iranian Boondocks

In an earlier post (Die By Wire's Wounded Warrior Hero: Sleepless Before The Mission), I wrote about the beginning of Jackson Day's listen-and-destroy mission in the Iranian boonies. It offered you some background about him and his Iraq firefight history with heroine Mira Longbow.

CHAPTER FOUR

Northeast of Kuleh Sangi, Iran

Day struggled through the night, his sleep strewn with rocks, visions of Mira and the accusing faces of dead squad members who visited him in a set-piece nightmare that played over and over every night.

As he did each day since Al-Kut, Day spent his first waking moments apologizing to his men, promising justice. Moving past the accusing grimaces on their bloody torn faces had developed into its own ritual that allowed him to make it through the day.

He settled down in his rock tomb and monitored the house and the numerous minions who had arrived to prepare the house for visitors. The pain in his leg grew worse throughout the day. Inactivity did that.

Walter Reed Hospital's physical therapists coached him through months of unmerciful pain. But penance for Al-Kut pushed him farther than they dared. When the therapist called for four reps at the quad machine, Day gave her twelve; when a half-hour session ended, he pushed through another hour. The faces of those who had died under his command compelled him through very excruciating, raw-nerved, slashing-broken-glass agony.

His physical therapy sessions gained a certain notoriety among a mostly female audience that appreciated a tall, broad-shouldered, aggressively fit Alpha male with a well-chiseled profile and six-pack abs.

Despite his phenomenal recovery, a steady stream of staff officers and physicians tried to quench his burning desire to return to active duty.

"You're lucky to walk again," said a senior surgeon who wrote a medical journal article on Day's leg repair. "Don't push your luck. Put your heart into the new training. You have a quick mind and an innate ability to understand how gadgets and computers work. I can't guarantee what might happen in combat to all the metal patches you have."

Cyberwarfare command had provided a modified Alienware laptop, a personal tutor and the promise of a promotion and cash bonus. But Day knew he would never spend the rest of his career in the glow of a computer screen.

Avenging the loss of his squad mattered more than life itself.

Upon his discharge from Walter Reed, the Army promoted him to master sergeant, transferred him to a new unit tasked with field testing future generation combat technologies. Day enjoyed the work and even earned an associate's degree along the way.

But no matter what he did, he felt he had abandoned the men who had died under his command. Just thinking about that made his leg hurt worse.

* * * * *

Darkness gathered over the desolate VEVAK safe house.

The first convoy brought the buyer in a Toyota SUV. Using a Russian-built night vision monocular, Day counted seven armed guards in the back of a pick-up behind the SUV.

Next came the hawaladar in a Land Rover accompanied by two well-waxed Toyota Titan pick-ups, both packed with his security forces. One truck had a machine gun mounted in the rear.

Heavily armed men fanned out, swarmed over the tight confines of the narrow ravine.

The Iranian arrived last, riding in a convoy of five armored Suburbans. If the fragments of intercepted satellite phone conversations were correct, he had come to sell more of his country's leading exports: misery, death, destruction and chaos.

Day would determine which instrument of terror would be sold, along with the buyer's identity, and the hawaladar's name.

Then he would kill them.

The eavesdropper trawled the house below, filling Day's earpiece with a tangle of Farsi, Arabic with a Waziri Pashto accent, and something that might have been Ghazni Pashto spoken like a native of the Punjab.

Day understood little but the Pashto. Not that it mattered. A real-time satellite link fed everything from the eavesdropper to a room full of translators.

The little Day did understand, frightened him. Some new weapon created by Iranian and Pakistani physicists and financed by rich Wahabi Saudis who had bought the main components from U.S., German and French manufacturers. Day got the impression a prototype had been tested on a Turkish airliner in Holland.

Day failed to understand the weapon , but he did make out the names of more than a dozen international airports including the usual targets: JFK, Narita, De Gaulle, Heathrow, Schiphol, LAX, O'Hare, DFW, Hartsfield, Barcelona. Rio De Janeiro, Dulles, Boston, Milan.

Then the scrape and thud of chairs, a rustle of cloth and sharp shuffle of shoes on tile. The meeting had ended.

Showtime.

Out front, engines turned over, guards gathered, all wary, twitchy and hair-trigger alert.

Day pulled out his earpiece, tucked the touchscreen keyboard into its holster on the eavesdropper and activated the thermite destruction timer. He had two minutes before the awesome 5,000-degree flames reduced the ultra-secret device to vapors and ash.

Ignoring protests from muscles and joints immobile for so long, Day levered himself toward the jagged, pinched lips of the rock womb that had concealed him. Seconds later, a wan breeze carried a whiff of cigarette smoke.

Crap.

Day froze. The thermite timer counted down. Light flared to the right of his rock coffin. Then a cigarette flared less than ten feet away. Day raised the AK-47. Hesitated. Gunfire would send the men below into flight faster than his strategy required. He had the recording, but had to kill the participants.

Strategy never survives the first encounter of the enemy.

From down below, orders were barked, preparations were made. Failure loomed.

Improvise!

What would keep the main participants in the house longer?

Putting the AK aside, Day opened his pack and pulled out a mass of TV remotes, each one duct-taped to a garage-door opener. All the EFPs he had planted the previous day could be detonated by radio frequency or the infrared signals from the amped-up TV remotes.

Day pulled out number fourteen. That matched up perfectly with the location marked on the map in his head.

When in doubt, create a diversion.

With the thermite ticking down just inches from Day's feet, he pressed the button.

Nothing.

Crap!

As an icy calm ran through his veins, Day checked off the options: dead battery, transmitter malfunction, jammer in operation, weak signal from being buried in a pile of fucking rocks.

More voices from below. More cigarette smoke. Less time.

He worked his arm up through a crevice. Prayed. Pressed the button.

Nothing.

He prayed harder, pressed harder, held the button down longer.

The ground finally shook.

Down below, one of the Iranian-made Explosively Formed Penetrators, exploded. The EFPs the Iranians had supplied to the Taliban to kill Americans now launched a hypersonic jet of vaporized copper heated to more than 20,000 degrees and traveling eight miles per second. The jet could slice a hole through an M-1 main battle tank like a white hot nail through butter.

Then the slug-like copper projectile hurtling at 6,000 feet per second slammed through all the melted metal and armor, spraying lethally liquid metal.

The men and vehicles parked nearby stood no chance.

Using the distraction, Day raised his AK-47 and shot the jihadi with the cigarette.

"If I can smell you, I can kill you," Day said quietly. Pushing the grenade launcher and AK-47 ahead of him Day had nearly reached the mouth of his little cave when the rocks began to shift.

All of them. All around him.

Day scrambled.

Not fast enough.

A stone fist clenched his right knee with a white-hot grasp that shot up his leg.

Oh God!

Fighting back the nightmare images of Al-Kut, Day tried to pull himself free. He cleared the pain from his mind. Focused on the coming few seconds when the boulders around him could all come down. Mere seconds before the thermite just inches away from his foot would ignite and turn the nearest flesh and bone to ash. He pulled and jerked his leg. Nothing.

Desperate, Day slid the AK-47 along his leg, muzzle end down. The iron sight dug into his flesh. Day ignored that too. Jammed the muzzle deeper and deeper, he forced it under the rock that pinned his knee to the earth.

He levered the stock, felt the stony vise ease its grip. He labored harder. Other boulders shifted. Dust and stony debris showered down on his head.

Now or never. All or nothing.

Shoving the Shmel-M and his pack ahead, Day steeled himself against new pain to come. Then he leaned on the AK-47′s stock shoved it upward. After a lifetime in Hell, the knee slipped free.

Day scrambled desperately.

The rocky grotto imploded.

Thermite lit up the night.

Pain propelled Day forward.

Into a hail of gunfire.

The thermite lit up the night and attracted a hail of automatic weapons fire. Day lay flat, frantically searching for the remote he had configured to detonate all of the EFPs simultaneously.

In seconds, his hand closed around an opener with a thin block of wood duct-taped over the button. He whipped it out, ripped off the tape and tripped the remaining twenty-two EFPs.

Payback time!

Explosions rocked the ground like an artillery barrage. Gunfire ceased. The ancient landslide that had formed Day's hiding place turned into a deadly landslide, wiping out men, vehicles. Two massive boulders smashed through the fortified walls of the house.

Day grabbed the Shmel-M, loaded a thermobaric round.

Thermobaric explosives operate the same way that dust can blow up a grain elevator or a bakery, the same way a leaking gas line can fill up a basement and leave half a block of rubble. Instead of blasting something from the outside like regular explosives, thermobarics vaporized the explosive into a cloud then ignited it — turning the target into one big bomb that blows itself up.

Down below, shouts and orders came; survivors reorganized. Time raced again.

As Day aimed the Shmel-M at the nearest boulder hole, he thought of Mira Longbow and prayed some of her skill would guide him now.

He fired.

With a modest whump! the thermobaric dispersed the fuel powder. Almost simultaneously a huge wave of pressure thudded into Day's chest. Finally, the flames.

The roof canted insanely; the house knelt to the right.

Day reloaded, fired into what remained of the structure. Seconds later, the house pancaked.

Day reloaded with a high-explosive round. The explosion splintered the roof remains and fed oxygen to the flames inside.

Day reloaded with an incendiary round to make sure the splinters and debris burned completely.

Day reloaded a final time with a high-explosive round he placed among the only guards still standing.

Then he ran like hell.

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Published on February 24, 2012 14:59

February 21, 2012

The Warrior Gets Schooled By His Heart

EXCERPT FROM CHAPTER THIRTY – DIE BY WIRE

Amsterdam

The pain in Jackson Day's right thigh eased off toward nothing as he jogged along the Emmastraat.

What the hell are you doing?

The what came easily: after leaving Mira, he checked out of the Schiphol Sheraton and into the Leideseplain Marriott.

The why eluded him.

He told himself the move got him closer to his mission.

He knew he was lying.

After check in, his leg pain headed for unbearable. So, he changed into running gear and charted a killing pace past the Rijksmuseum, the PC Hooftstraat, down the Valeriustraat.

He looked up at her windows, saw nothing, kept running.

Cut her some slack. She saved your life.

Ten paces.

You just saved her life. Score's even.

Everything logical told him to quit. Emotion urged him on.

Emotions get people killed.

Feelings simmered like old nitroglycerine, just sitting on a shelf, waiting to go off at the lightest vibration. Or for no damned reason at all.

The second time he jogged past Mira's apartment, she stood by the front windows. He watched her, referring to a sheet of paper, pacing thoughtfully, framed by first one window, then the next.

Buried deep in shadow, he stopped. Followed her every movement, tried to steady his breathing.

Emotion and logic flip-flopped in his chest. He had been wrong to hold on to a fantasy for so long.

She needed to be his mission and nothing more. Longbow was world-class brilliant and likely the only person on the planet who could make sense of the thumb drive.

In the next instant, all of his best efforts to elevate reason over emotion collapsed.

Mira looked down and seemed to connect directly with his eyes. Day knew he was unseen and deep in the shadows, but it seemed like her eyes had somehow drilled right into his own.

His heart tripped over itself. Fell. Fell again.

Then she turned away.

And left his heart as empty as the window that had framed her.

Day ran. Faster. Broke into a sprint. Trying to outrun what might have been.

He wondered how different things might have turned out had he mailed any of the letters he had written to her.

Shoulda-coulda-wouldas are for losers, pal.

REST OF CHAPTER TO BE CONTINUED

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Published on February 21, 2012 19:41

Die By Wire's Wounded Warrior Hero: Sleepless Before The Mission

Jackson Day is a wounded warrior in two ways.

If you read heroine Mira Longbow's account of how medics brought him back from multiple flatlines after an ambush in Al-Kut, Iraq (described here on her Facebook page) you'll see that Day was in a mortally bad way even though Mira's actions prevented his certain death.

But he's recovered physically to an extent that no one ever expected. And in a way we wish that every wounded warrior could. His rehab was brutal, but what still hurts him even worse are the faces of the men who died under his command.

In this brief chapter, below, Day lays in wait outside a remote Iranian safe house. His mission is to use sophisticated surveillance equipment to record a high-level terror planning session.

And then kill all involved.

We see him set up his mission and then try to sleep.

But it's Mira Longbow — not worries about the mission's success — that keeps him awake.

CHAPTER TWO FROM DIE BY WIRE

Northeast of Kuleh Sangi, Iran

On a cold, moonless evening in the wasteland where the borders of Iran, Pakistan and Afghanistan intersect, Capt. Jackson Day huddled in a coffin-sized grotto of truck-sized boulders jumbled at the base of a steep ravine.

Beyond, heavily armed men patrolled the boulder-strewn slope between Day and a modest stone house less than fifty feet away. Voices spewed from an earpiece that connected his right ear to a small, tripod-mounted cylinder aimed at the house.

The Shah of Iran's SAVAK had originally built the house. The infamously brutal security and intelligence organization camouflaged the modest structure and equipped it with armored glass windows, air conditioning and a well-muffled electrical generator. The house now belonged to VEVAK — the ayatollah's even crueler intelligence service.

Intelligence suggested yet another high-ranking Iranian official with a taste for Western currency would be meeting with a major Pakistani hawaladar who could move millions around the world outside the established channels that authorities could easily monitor.

Six days earlier, Day had walked out of Herat, Afghanistan, with three donkeys and another impossible mission from the Asymmetric Warfare Command, whose motto was, "Never fight fair."

Along with food, water, ammunition and money for bribes, Day's pack animals carried a Russian Shmel-M grenade launcher, a large bag of television remote controls and garage door openers, three large sacks of ceramic tile adhesive, an astonishingly sensitive eavesdropping device, twenty-three Iranian-made Explosively Formed Penetrators the size of gallon paint cans with concave copper bottoms, and a well-thumbed Pashto language Qu'ran he had read over and over.

With his unruly black beard now streaked with gray, naturally dark skin sun-toasted to a deep chestnut, and traditional clothing, Day attracted no attention at all beyond his unusual stature. Even if stopped, questioned and searched, everything he carried verified his cover as an earnest, well-supplied Talibani on his way to kill infidels.

Day traveled with his head covered by a modest sand-colored Khosti turban and dressed in white shalwar qameez — a comfortable, loose-fitting, pajama-like outfit with baggy pants covered by a very long-tailed shirt. He completed his in-country couture with a long, light-gray waskat vest.

A battered AK-47 slung over his shoulder complemented the far more devastating armament concealed beneath the loose folds of the shalwar qameez. Day greeted the scant few people he encountered with Pashto delivered in a Kandahar accent.

Traveling at night and resting in the day to avoid the heat, Day covered the final 120 miles in an easy three days. Two nights before, he and his donkeys had wound their way along a goat path across the border from Afghanistan, up the north face of a 1,500-meter slope and finally to an overlook where he could make out the well-camouflaged roof of the house.

Without pausing to rest, Day scouted the only mountain track leading to the house. He stopped nine times. The donkeys' packs got lighter each time.

He unloaded the animals in a nearly inaccessible ravine half a mile way. After feeding and watering the donkeys, Day streaked camouflage paint across his face and the back of his hands. Next, he grabbed the AK-47, and the Shmel-M. A, then stuffed thermobaric rounds and extra ammo in his pack along with the eavesdropper. Finally, Day slithered the last half mile to the house on his belly to avoid security cameras.

At the dead-end of the ravine nearly level with the house's roof, Day squirmed into a cocoon among the boulders of an ancient landslide. He aimed the eavesdropper through a jagged slit that overlooked the side of the house, plugged in a touch-screen keyboard display and made sure the ultra-secret technology's destruct system remained off. It came encased in a shell of destructive thermite, a special powdered metal incendiary that burned at more than 5,000 degrees and could vaporize armored steel, concrete, rocks, ceramic heat tiles.

Fairly sure he would not cremate himself along with the eavesdropper, Day inserted an earpiece and logged in.

Minutes later, the sophisticated surveillance system — capable of capturing electromagnetic emissions as well as sound — informed him that a single person slept inside the house, snoring. An episode of the Kardashians played on a flat-screen, LCD television (Samsung) connected to a satellite dish. Twelve security cameras and a perimeter alarm system guarded the house.

Finally, he shut the system down to save the batteries, stretched out and squinted at the multitude of stars trickling through the cracks of the rocks.

His right thigh ached as it had nonstop from the moment he regained consciousness. Two surgical teams had cut, cleaned, lavaged, sliced, diced, dissected, sawed, drilled, trimmed and sweated over that leg for more than twelve hours then bound him together with stainless steel plates, pins, screws, wire, and rods — everything short of duct tape and cable ties.

The leg worked fine now, but almost never stopped aching.

He struggled to rest, to sleep, to recharge for the mission.

But sleep evaded him. He wrestled with faces of his men parading before him. They let him alone when he promised vengeance. Again.

But as soon as their faces had faded, Mira Longbow's appeared with heartbreaking clarity.

No. The mission is everything. Forget about her.

No matter how hard he had tried to armor his heart, she always managed to shatter his focus with a confused tangle of emotions.

Gratitude for saving his life.

Admiration for her skill and courage.

Guilt for not thanking her.

Regret for never mailing all the letters he wrote to her.

And worst of all, an excruciating torment that raised every muscle in his body to full attention whenever he fantasized about the two of them naked. Together.

Mira's face was the last thing in his mind when he fell asleep, wrapped in a bed of rocks that would be either his fortress or his grave depending on how this mission unfolded.

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Published on February 21, 2012 15:56

February 20, 2012

Die By Wire: Romantic Thriller or Thriller With Romance?

DIE BY WIRE KINDLE VERSION IS FREE UNTIL MIDNIGHT TONIGHT (FEB. 20).
CLICK HERE TO GET YOUR COPY

TOP AMAZON REVIEWER WRITES:

"Die By Wire is a top drawer novel of suspense with many interwoven elements from the risks the public is unaware of in aviation to child brides and the gradual introduction of Sharia law in other countries (and soon here?).

An engrossing thriller that really IS thrilling.

I was turning the pages to find out what would happen next to Longbow the heroine and I loved the conflicts in the relationships, the deeper emotions than one typically sees in suspense novels. Definitely worth buying!! Highly recommended." [Bold emphasis added]

That's the most recent review of Die By Wire. It comes from thewordlover and has a number of very cool aspects that have made my day.

Okay, I love the enthusiastic five stars. But there are some other pretty wonderful aspects.If you pop over to thewordlover's profile, you find a wide variety of books reviewed. Mostly fiction, but some non-fiction. All concisely, but very thoughtfully reviewed

WORDLOVER REVIEWS: 78% HELPFUL & "GOT" DIE BY WIRE

And perhaps, most importantly, 78% of other readers took the time to judge the wordlover's reviews as "helpful."

As an author, what I found most rewarding were the fact that thewordlover:

Enjoyed the interpersonal relationships and emotional aspects which were the hardest parts to write well ("… I loved the conflicts in the relationships, the deeper emotions than one typically sees in suspense novels.")
"Got" what the book was about, including the non-fiction aspects ("… aviation to child brides and the gradual introduction of Sharia law ….")

I have no idea who this reviewer is. And that makes the warm feeling even warmer, knowing it came from a stranger.

TOUGH TO BRING THREE-DIMENSIONAL CHARACTERS TO LIFE

When I write a thriller, I try very hard to bring the characters to life, to flesh them out as humans, not just comic book action heroes. That's hard as hell because too much character development … or in the wrong place … slows down the action.

But too little leaves us with two-dimensional people. We know too many of those in real life, no need to hang out with more of them in a good read.

Not to go all literary on you here, but Faulkner was right when he said that the only things worth writing about are the human heart in conflict with itself. But think about it: every conflict in the world from nuclear proliferation to wars, and political races right down to the aches in our hearts about romance, God, happiness and sadness — are all about the human heart in conflict with itself.

GETTING IT RIGHT BRINGS CROSS-GENRE SUCCESS

That's why all my thrillers have had a serious measure of heart-yearning, starting with romance and reaching for universal doubts and ponderings about evil, religion and the like. When I succeed, I come up with bestsellers that cross genres: thrillers where the romance succeeds.

My thriller Daughter of God, for example, got four stars from Romantic Times, received great reviews from action/thriller fans all while wrapping the action around the religious aspects of the feminine divine that was ultimately the core of The Da Vinci Code.

As I went through all the other books reviewed by thewordlover, I found that Daughter of God had also gotten five stars. I don't always succeed to the extent I'd like, but when I do I get reviews like these, I realize have succeeded to some extent in bringing my characters to life.

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Published on February 20, 2012 10:01

February 19, 2012

Mira Wrestles With Evil, Wins. Sort Of.

FREE KINDLE OFFER ENDS MIDNIGHT FEB. 20

DIE BY WIRE – CHAPTER ONE – CONTINUED

Click here for previous excerpt from Chapter Three.

Amsterdam

Mira whirled, took the killer to the pavement then wrenched the knife from her hand. The killer shrieked, then bit Mira's ear.

Don't tear. Don't!

Mira felt blood trickling down the left side of her neck

Instead of pulling away, Mira pressed her hand into the woman's face, covering her nose and shutting off her air for a moment.

The woman opened her mouth to breath. Mira whipped her head around and smashed her assailant's nose with a furious head-butt. The bone snapped with a dull wet crack. Blood flew.

"Charrira!" The woman screamed in Arabic. Bitch.

"Nika mok qahhba!" Fuck you, you stupid whore bitch.

With all her considerable strength Mira brought her left knee up and thrust it deep into her crazed assailant's solar plexus. The woman fell, crumpled into a fetal position. Her mouth worked like a fish out of water.

Mira stood, raised her left hand and tentatively explored her ear, relieved to find nothing felt ripped, torn.

From a distance came a siren's shrill, urgent call.

Then a voice.

"Here." She turned, found Jan bare from the waist up, offering his tee-shirt.

When Mira didn't take the tee-shirt immediately, Jan leaned forward and wiped at the blood on her face and neck. When he stood back, Mira noted his ripped pecs and deltoids. She combed her fingers through her hair, tugged at the hem of her skirt and smoothed it with the palms of her hands.

Gazing through a pale vermilion haze, she looked down at the pile of gray cloth at her feet. She saw a shrunken husk, empty of the malignant fury that had driven the woman. A young, unlined face with smooth cafe au lait skin lay buried in the cloth. High cheekbones and prominent eyebrows framed the woman's large, dark almond-shaped eyes. Tendrils of black hair, deranged by the attack, had escaped from the hijab and framed her face with a wraith-like gentleness.

Only the misshapen nose and blood marred a face so obviously beautiful. Mira's anger welled again, directed toward twisted men who had concocted an evil brew of religious hatred and force-fed it as the will of God. Whether Taliban, medieval Crusaders or ancient Israelites butchering their way into the Promised Land, wanton slaughter and hatred in the name of God represented ultimate evil — blasphemy without bounds.

The young woman's nose could be easily fixed, her physical beauty restored. But the bestial evil that fed on her soul would not yield half as easily. Or ever.

A profound sadness shrouded Mira's thoughts. She felt pity, concern.

For just an instant.

Then the woman regained her breath.

"Rape!" She shrieked, first in Dutch, then in Arabic, then back to Dutch.

She transfixed Mira with a hellish glare, her eyes clear, unadorned windows to a Stygian landscape painted by the worst of the human spirit. Despite the summer evening's warmth, Mira shivered.

"Murder! Help me! Save me! Rape! Rape!"

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Published on February 19, 2012 15:39

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5.0 out of 5 stars A great thriller,February 14, 2012

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TonyM – See all my reviews

This review is from: Die By Wire (Paperback)

This one really sucked me in and was very hard to put down. Its a little disturbing to know how much non-fiction is in there. Don't think I'll be getting on a plane anytime soon.