Don't miss the Rafflecopter giveaway at the end of this post!
In addition, this book is on sale for 99 cents during the tour!
In addition, this book is on sale for 99 cents during the tour!
The Tursiops Syndrome
by John C. Waite
GENRE: Thriller
A newspaper review described Tursiops thus: "The writing is, well, wonderful. Waite has a gift for dialogue and story-telling, and his plot is adventurous and perfectly paced. "
Excerpt
Red Logan hunkered down next to the Humvee's left front wheel. He folded his lanky frame in several places to assure that the vehicle shielded him from rifle fire emanating from the house a hundred feet away.
A furious fusillade had greeted A-Company, first battalion, 407th Special Forces when their vehicles pulled to a halt in front of what was a rather strange building for northern Afghanistan. In the early morning darkness it looked for all the world like a California ranch-style home.
But there was no BMW parked in the driveway.
The firefight lasted less than fifteen minutes. There was only an occasional round pinging off the slate-riddled soil and infrequent bursts of automatic fire keeping the soldiers from charging the structure. Red wondered why the squads weren’t using some of the heavier weapons. He knew the unit armament included shoulder-fired missiles and a Carl Gustav 84-mm recoilless rifle but so far, the big stuff had been silent.
The tip had placed Azam al-Zawahiri, Al-Qaeda's chief organizer for nine-eleven, in the house.
Numerous such tips over the past two years had come to nothing. Most of them originated in minds overly-motivated to garner the twenty million American dollars offered for the capture of several of the world’s most wanted terrorists.
At least one Osama bin Laden look-alike had been found dead. And it took weeks before authorities identified the body. The man had been killed and left in a house to which an Afghan citizen directed U.S. forces. Not only did he not get the reward he sought, but his countrymen also jailed him for mutilating the corpse by cutting off its hands and feet.
Army intelligence, a title Red thought oxymoronic, had considered tonight’s tip more credible than most since it had come in anonymously. The tipster hadn’t mentioned the reward. So the Special Forces unit had headed out in the predawn darkness for a two-hour drive north from Kabul into the mountainous terrain.
“Red?”
The voice belonged to the figure squeezed into the wheel well behind him.
He could barely see Jessie’s sinewy shape, strangely gawky where the video camera and its now-dark lights rested on her right thigh.
“Yeah, what?” he whispered.
“Should I get some video?” Jessie asked, cocking her left hand back over her shoulder.
“Hell no. We're reporters, not soldiers. CNN's not paying us to get shot. Just keep your ass down. There's nothing to shoot."
Before he could finish his sentence, an amplified Afghan voice rang out from the vicinity of the lead Humvee, imploring the occupants of the house to surrender. The answer was a three-shot rifle volley, the rounds pinging off the hard-pack and whining away into the darkness.
“Now,” Jessie said, pushing past Red and swinging the camera onto her shoulder, leaning on the Hummer’s hood.
“No.” Red yelled, trying to pull her to the ground. But it was too late. The light on Jessie’s camera flared brilliantly then died in a crash of glass and the harsh double bark of a Kalashnikov. The rounds zinged away into the darkness, but Red heard in the report the crunch of bone.
“Jessie.” he screamed.
Guest Post from John C. Waite
Growing
up in the suburbs of New Orleans (Kenner) I wasn’t aware of just how different
my youth was from the lives of kids who grew up in “middle America.” Those were
the days of the Marcello crime family, and the intimate mix of politics and the
underworld. But despite that there was little visible street crime, no thugs on
street corners selling stuff from paper bags. There was nothing to keep me
indoors (and out of trouble) and I “ran the streets” without fear of official
or parental rebuke. My friends and I prowled the woods and swamps without care,
garnering an intimate knowledge of woodlands and swamps, of geometric social
differentiations (the good part of town versus the bad part) and where to catch
the biggest snakes, which we would sell to the local snake farm for a quarter,
which was the price of a pack of Camels at the drugstore. Of course, I was
buying them for my father.
The
drug store also had a soda fountain, which often got the little we earned
stomping the wilds. It often got also the allowance provided by my parents who
thought such was a necessity for an elementary school kid. In retrospect, it
was a grand and free childhood, one that I now cherish in memory, which, I’m
sure, paints the time in brighter colors than the time deserves.
Yes, I loved it.
My
younger brother would often, figuratively, hang onto my coattails when I headed
out with my friends, and to this day I regret not giving him more time. If
anything, he was smarter than I was, but we fought a lot and I thought of him as
a burden on my social life, particularly when I began to find girls interesting
and attractive. The thing about girls was, I didn’t know why they were so
different. So I developed the hobby of spending a lot of time at the local
library, sneaking into the adult sections, and reading books about sex. I got
caught doing that a couple of times and had my library privileges temporarily
revoked. But I learned the basics about anatomical differences. What the books
didn’t teach me, however, was the social and emotional impacts of those
differences. I’m still not sure about them.
I
rode buses to school until I became a senior, then acquired a hand-me-down car,
a 1954 Crosley, a tiny station wagon with a bad clutch. But it was a car and
having that put me in a more socially acceptable status, particularly when it
came to dating. And having the car enabled me to put to use some of the things
I had learned about sex from the books I had read several years before sneaking
around the library. Luckily there were benevolent parents on both sides, and a
church wedding legalized everything.
While
in high school my best friend and I had seriously considered becoming a marine
biologists, but things changed as we entered college and we went our separate
ways, He graduated as a US Marine ROTC candidate and joined the corps, and
wound up dying in Vietnam. I discovered my love of the English language and
earned a degree in journalism. I then went from there to both broadcast and
print journalism, eventually winding up back in deep south Louisiana, New
Orleans, and lesser known communities further south, in Cajun country.
During
those years I won a number of awards for journalistic endeavors both in print and in broadcast formats. Those were
still tumultuous years socially, with one marriage ending and another following
a couple of years later. Those marriages produced four great kids, three girls
and one boy, now healthy and active adults.
Perhaps
I’m getting a bit too personal.
So,
I’ve been writing all of my life, professionally. I always thought I would
write a book or three, but always put most of that energy into my reporting. At
a point when I felt I wasn’t being sufficiently rewarded for my efforts, I quit
the profession and became a merchant mariner, a field that paid much better
than journalism. I drove big boats for the next almost twenty years. I have
visited most ports on both the east and west coasts, traversed the Panama Canal
a couple of times, sailed to Hawaii and back, and spent time offshore and
inland in the Pacific northwest. And, of course, some of those experiences have
found their way into my fiction. While I started writing my novels years ago, I
published them, plus a book of short stories and a middle-grade youth sci-fi
adventure only a couple of years ago. Still have quite a few projects in the
works.
As
for the actual writing, I have a studio in my apartment where I assemble most
of my projects. It’s a pleasant place with a view of a golf course across the
way, and quick access to downtown Pensacola, a city that has grown from a
sleepy sort of village into a bustling almost metropolis. The condo is on the
bay, and I confess that all to often I catch myself just sitting and dreaming
instead of plotting.
Plotting
is one of the sunniest parts of writing fiction. I believe in the Elmore
Leonard approach. Design the character and the situation, and the action will
flow from there. Some things I have written started with the plot, but usually
the plot stems from what the character will do on the stage you have set for
him or her. When I am starting a book I sketch the opening, then the close.
Sometimes the plot won’t let you end it the way you planned, but the plan will
still affect the end.
I
try to write daily, even if it is only a few graphs. I think that’s necessary
just to keep an edge on Occam's Razor. Simple solutions are better than complex
ones. Thus part of the author’s work is to simplify. And that can be tough.
Writing
should also be enjoyable. I started to say it should be fun, but that implies
something that might lack meaning. You want the story to have meaning, and you
want to enjoy creating that meaning. I have some fun with things that I don’t
actually publish. I have a part time job working for a funeral home as a
driver. We transport corpses, sometimes locally and sometimes long distant.
When I’m driving I often initiate conversations with the person who once
occupied the body i’m moving. Yeah, I know it sounds strange, but those talks have
helped me pass many hours on the road,
and given me insights into my motivations and feelings.
In my writing I am not trying to preach,
politicize, or criticize. I am merely trying to tell a tale someone would
enjoy. If I help someone enjoy a part of his or her day, I’m satisfied.
 |
| John C. Waite |
Thousands of author John C Waite’s words flew past Alpha Centauri years ago, heading for the center of the galaxy, perhaps sparking an arthropod’s grin in route. Waite, a degreed journalist and retired Merchant Mariner has numerous writing and broadcasting awards to his credit, and millions of words in print and broadcast media. Originally from New Orleans he has called Panhandle Florida his home for fifty years, but still retains a taste for things Creole and Cajun. A recreational and professional sailor, his travels have covered the Caribbean, the Atlantic and Pacific coasts, portions of south and Central America, Canada, Hawaii, Ireland, Britain, and Europe. John resides in Pensacola, Florida. He is a father to four, and grandfather to four. His books are available on Amazon.
http://johncwaite.com/
https://www.facebook.com/johngllgskns
https://twitter.com/johngllgskns1
The book will be on sale for $0.99 during the tour!
https://www.amazon.com/Tursiops-Syndrome-John-Waite-ebook/dp/B01MQVDUF1/ref=sr_1_1
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