Tsunami Connection (23 page)

I was standing in front of a class of
thoroughly engaged teenagers a few years ago when my career took an unlikely
turn. One of my favorite students asked me about dancing tango with my wife. I
thought,
Amazing! Maybe I can teach basic English as a second language by
getting my students to learn some kind of line dancing tango steps. Who knows?
There are lots of kids from Latin America in the class. It might work. Anything
to remove those passive looks
. I went on to push the desks out of the way
and teach most of the curriculum for about a month, while instructing basic
tango classes in English.

That led to people in the class wanting to
put the lessons on the Internet, and one thing led to another before I moved to
another school. The school director drew the line at Internet tango.

Tango sparked
up my professional life for a month and woke up a dormant desire in me to live
a lifelong dream. I'd always wanted to write thrillers, and now I'd discovered
that tango was a contagious passion. The trick remained finding a way to
combine tango and espionage. Kefira, my ravishing sleeper agent in strapped
black stilettos, came to life on the page and my dream started taking shape.

I hope I was
able to communicate two of my passions to you with the book you're holding in
your hands, and that you've enjoyed reading it as much as I did writing it.

We'll be
partners for life when you take the time to create your own review here:
Amazon Book Reviews
.

If you take the time to send me
the link of your review to
[email protected]
,
I will offer you a free copy of
Diamond Rain,
Part One of The Science
Fiction Action Adventure Series. Free sample starting on the next page or
Pick it up
now!

I'd love to hear from you.
Please feel free to leave comments on my blog or send emails to
[email protected]
and I'll get back to you promptly. When you comment, I become a better writer
and we get to be partners. Thanks again.

Michael James Gallagher –
Michael's Inspiration

Turn the page to start reading your free sample of
Diamond Rain
…

Diamond Rain

Part One:  The Science Fiction Action
Adventure Series

By Michael James Gallagher
writing as Mike Gallagher

Thomas stood on a
ridge and peered through the viewfinder of his camera as he hustled for space
with journalists and dignitaries. He was transfixed by the mass of humanity in
front of him, a mass so big and eerie that just looking at all these people
resulted in an involuntary shudder. Something stirred deep within Thomas. He
suddenly heard his mentor’s voice in his head: 
“You’ve got it all, man. So
you have to give some back too. Don’t ever forget it.”
  It was ironic that
his life would come to this.

All he ever wanted was to be a wildlife
photographer, and all he wanted for company was solitude. Something told him
that life was about to change, life as he knew it, that he would have to play a
role in stopping these humanoids and if he just stood by and watched then they
would take civilization back to the stone ages.

Hastily organized international peace
negotiations kept the overlook busy, with visitors curious to see the invading
throng as it waited in Armageddon valley. Sue Ann Lee, Thomas’ professional
partner and Al Jazeera reporter, readied herself for a live broadcast. Thomas
occupied himself by working through his mental checklist as he tested his
camera equipment and laptop connections to be sure they would relay without a
hitch.

A short distance away from Thomas and Sue
Ann, Kefira was standing looking around critically at the mass before her. She
was focusing her telekinetic powers on all the visitors, particularly the
reporters and dignitaries in the crowd. Her Mossad special training kicked in. As
this group approached the overlook, the atypical, sudden, collective intake of
breath seemed deeper than usual. Kefira mustered her psionic ability to scan
the group. She halted as she encountered Thomas; she was puzzled, something about
him stood out and she found herself going back over that part of the crowd to
work out what was causing her powers to stumble. She refocused her energies on
Thomas and tried again.
Odd,
she thought,
I can’t read him.

With
her interest piqued she sauntered
closer until she stopped just a few feet away from him. At first she thought
Thomas was a Chinese agent cloaked within a nanosuit, but her own unique
diamond-molecule suit would have triggered a warning. She was puzzled. It could
be one of two things, she thought, either he’s gifted or he’s undergone special
training and has exceptional mental strength. Only once in the past two years
had Kefira encountered someone she couldn’t read.

Thomas noticed Kefira’s scent before he
turned to face her. Although she was smiling engagingly, he noticed that the
smile stopped at her eyes. Interesting. His journalistic antennae went to full
alert; it was a warning to him that she may be military or at the very least a
threat. But what sort of threat he couldn’t determine; the one clear signal was
that she certainly had a unique perfume. It was disarming. He smiled back and
they both spoke at once. They both paused and laughed. Thomas decided to let
her speak first. He acknowledged her with an open right hand and a tilt of his
head while his left had remained on his camera.

“Impressive dust storm, isn’t it?” said
Kefira.

“I’ll say. Where’d an Israeli guide get
such a great American accent?”

For an instant, Thomas thought a cloud had
passed over the sun, but when he looked up at the sky he saw no clouds.
Strange,
he thought. His professional instinct had him reaching for his light meter to
validate his observation.
Nothing.
That was very odd. Kefira’s nanofog
now engulfed both of them. She probed deeper. Thomas felt peculiar, and he
found himself rubbing one of his temples as though he was about to get a
migraine. His neck gave him the same signal.
The last thing I need right now
is a migraine. At least there’s no halo of light.

High above the masses of Chinese nanosuited
invaders, an invisible drone darted over Armageddon Valley. General Chou’s
drones provided eyes and ears as well as nanofog seed. Millions of miniscule
foglets tumbled in a controlled, directed manner towards the aura of the heat
signature raised by Kefira’s suit.

The general’s second-in-command, Colonel
Lau, studied the information provided by a high definition nose camera in the drone.
His brilliance at coordinating such an attack was widely acknowledged in the
military hierarchy and his actions were closely coordinated with several
Chinese asynchronous military satellites. Stealth technology kept his
machinations invisible to even high powered Israeli radar.

The focus of his interest was apparently a
rogue Chinese agent wearing a nanosuit and doubtless providing intelligence to
the enemy. Lau was mistaken. The signature was that of Kefira herself. Lau had
already made up his mind:  
The scoundrel had to be stopped and contained
immediately
.
We’ll have that traitor back and be gone before they know
what hit them,
he thought.

Kefira’s Israeli masters were confident
that her top secret nanosuit would be invisible to advanced monitoring technology.
They would find out a little too late that it wasn’t, at least not at this time.
Soon, though, the situation would change with the next owner of the nanosuit.

General Chou stood behind Colonel Lau at
his cubicle. Chinese cunning pleased the general. During a thaw in Sino
American relations in 2008, joint manoeuvres made technology exchanges common. Chou
laughed aloud. Startled, Lau turned to see his commander muttering under his
breath.
Such weakness. Giving us this technology in the name of fair play. Fools!
 
Lau had grown accustomed to Chou’s outbursts and, as had become his habit, he
parroted the last word he heard. “Fools, Sir. Fools.”  From their perch in
central China, Lau coordinated the first nano intrusion into Israeli airspace.

At the overlook, and totally unaware of the
nano storm approaching from above, Kefira sidled up to Thomas. She interrupted
his train of thought. Thomas inhaled deeply, savoring the unique, feminine
scent.
Shame if it’s her perfume sparking my headache.

Kefira spun a layer of nanofog around
Thomas.
Can’t understand this,
she thought. She still couldn’t read him,
even when he was completely inside her suit’s nanofog.

“Your perfume’s subtle,” said Thomas.

Thomas’ headache disappeared and, relieved
of the pressure, he did a double take of the green-eyed, amber-skinned woman
dressed in olive green silk beside him. She looked at him but did not speak
immediately.

“That’s a neat trick, whatever it is,”
Thomas continued slowly, sensing that all was not as it seemed.

“More than meets the eye.”   Kefira gave an
enigmatic smile.

“Mysterious too.”

“Do you have some kind of special
training?” Kefira asked. She was more than curious now.

“Years of practice. I’m a photographer.”

“No, I mean psychological preparation?”

“Well, you could say that. My adopted
grandfather helped toughen me up mentally when I had trouble with some bullies
in school, but that was long ago.”

This guy’s one tough nut to crack. He’s
not giving an inch, but he seems unaware of his ability.
She stopped, suddenly annoyed at allowing herself to be sidetracked.
Trying to figure Thomas’ ability to resist her probing was diverting her
resources when she needed to be getting as much information from this crowd as
possible. A routine procedure was turning into a frustrating activity.

Sue Ann’s voice interrupted them both.

“Thomas, we’re about to go live.”

Thomas nodded. Sue Ann held up a hand,
fingers extended.

“Live in five, four, three, two, one.”

Thomas went into action. The seasoned
professional in him took over. Sue Ann panned the dramatic sight before them
with her right hand. She turned to show her audience a panorama of an enormous
dust cloud, hundreds of feet high and kilometers wide that would have been
familiar to anyone in Oklahoma in the 1930s. Her narrative related the story of
the thousands upon thousands of nanosuited Chinese invaders who were stirring
up this dust in Armageddon Valley and all along Israel’s frontier.

Just how they got there and why they had
chosen to stop where they did remained a mystery. They hung there like
deadweight making everyone’s blood curdle;  everybody knew – or at least
suspected beyond reasonable doubt - that they were just waiting for orders to
strike. Just before Sue Ann finished speaking, a flash of light arrested her
broadcast.

Kefira’s subconscious noticed an unusual
darkness in the sky and a gray line of nanofog heading her way. An oppressive
sense of doom overcame her. Not knowing why, but trusting her gut instinct, she
twisted the knob on her wrist device and it sucked her nanosuit into its
receptacle. Just before she removed her special watch and thrust it into
Thomas’ hand, Kefira penetrated Thomas’ psychic shield with a barrage of
instructions.

The force of the assault caught Thomas
completely off guard. He stumbled over and dropped his camera before rolling
over to protect himself from a massive onslaught of noise and light. His hand
tightened around Kefira’s device as a childhood memory of a nightmarish
kidnapping repeated itself, leaving him stunned and speechless.
Won’t the
world ever leave me be?  Not this again.

On the visual plane everything had changed.
No longer was anything certain or dependable from Thomas’ perspective. A vortex
of deafening sounds and flashing lights was incapacitating everyone on the
ridge. Thomas pulled his head into his shoulders and covered his ears with his
arms while he tightly closed his eyes. Before he passed out, a woman’s voice
communicated a long series of instructions directly into his head and then all
went black. One command - ‘to hold the watch tight in his hand’ was repeated
continuously.

Hazy ninja fighters surrounded the
dignitaries and reporters on the Mount Carmel lookout. Percussion grenades
sensation created by the nano concussed all nearby. One of the landing figments
scanned for suit residue and stopped at an unconscious Kefira. The fog
swallowed her and dissipated as quickly as it had appeared, leaving witnesses
stunned and groggy but otherwise unhurt.

Thomas was confused but his instinct told
him to follow the set of instructions by rote. In the split second before he
rolled over, he had wrapped the device around his wrist and attached its secure
clasp as the instructions to flee and get to safety reverberated in his mind.
I
should stay, fight. I can’t always run like mother always ran.

Thomas looked around and saw Sue Ann
sprawled on the desert floor. He walked over and gently flipped her around, and
her eyes began opening slowly. She was conscious but shaken.

“Are you ok, Sue Ann?”  His tone was one of
concern.

“What the hell happened?” she replied,
brushing herself down.

“Everyone is asking the same question.”

Thomas helped her to her feet and she
staggered slightly as she regained her balance.

“How about you?” she said, noting his
distant expression.

“Oh, I’m fine,” he replied as he snapped
back to the present.

Thomas cursed when he noticed his broken
camera. As he looked out at the valley the mind implant engaged and he
understood his role for the first time. He knew he had to find Kefira and stop
the Chinese or nothing would ever be the same.
All my life I have been
running away,
he thought as he turned back towards the stairwell. His hand
touched the device Kefira had given him just before she disappeared. Her
sensuous voice echoed in his mind, a voice that fired up his soul and strummed
his heart strings. He had to find Kefira, he couldn’t run away anymore.