THE TURSIOPS SYNDROME

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!

The Tursiops Syndrome

by John C. Waite

GENRE: Thriller

How do you get a nuke into the heart of the city? Maybe a dolphin can help. From Author John Waite, the tale of a police detective who matches wits with a mad scientist and terrorists intent on destroying America. When detective Hickory Logan joins Park Ranger Kevin Whitehead investigating the mysterious death of a dolphin she finds herself sucked into a far deeper whirlpool. Can she and Kevin stop the tide of terror that threatens to kill thousands or will they be fodder for a nuclear fireball?

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.

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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

GIVEAWAY INFORMATION

John C. Waite will be awarding a $50 Gift Certificate to Nuts.com to a randomly drawn winner via rafflecopter during the tour.

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