Silent Ripple: An Ellie O'Conner Prequel Novella by Jack Hardin

Author:Jack Hardin [Hardin, Jack]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Publisher: The Salty Mangrove Press
Published: 2018-07-28T22:00:00+00:00

Read on for a preview from Chapter 1 of BROKEN STERN, the first installment in the Pine Island Coast Suspense Series.

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Preview of ‘Broken Stern’

No one had told her time could be compressed, that experiencing the phenomenon almost made one dizzy.

Ellie O’Conner closed her eyes and saw their faces. Her heart rate ticked higher. She was always calm, composed. Only an IED could shake her up. But today. Today was different.

The ring of the phone snapped her from a nostalgic trance, and she snatched it up.

“Tough waiting like this, isn’t it?”

“What?”

“The wait. It sucks.”

“What? Who is━“ She was cut off by sharp laughter that came through the phone’s receiver and drifted across the room from behind her. She turned to see Kurt “Buck” Rogers with his field boots on his cluttered desk, clearly pleased with his own antics.

She turned back to her desk, slamming the phone back on its cradle. Buck. He would never learn the meaning of tact, timing, or keeping a phone line clear. One day it was going to get him killed. If not by a hostile, then certainly by a co-worker who’d lost patience with him.

The phone rang again.

Ellie rolled her eyes and looked back over her shoulder. Kurt’s desk was vacant, and he was headed toward the cold coffee pot. Her body straightened. She closed her eyes, took a deep breath, and grabbed up the receiver.

“Go. Fifteen minutes.”

She jumped to her feet, grabbed her canvas rucksack, and set her sunglasses on the bridge of her nose as she thrust her hip against the heavy metal door that opened to the bright Afghanistan afternoon. Her Sig Sauer P320 was tucked away at the small of her back, ten rounds nestled patiently in the magazine. She pulled open the door to the desert-colored Humvee where her driver sat with the engine running. The vehicle was moving before her door slammed shut, leaving a cloud of fine desert dust billowing in the rearview mirror. Within thirty seconds they were speeding past Camp Phoenix’s checkpoint where two heavily armed soldiers in sunglasses nodded at them.

“How long?” her driver asked.

“Fourteen.”

He glanced at his watch and flicked his sober eyes back on the road ahead, taking a sharp left onto Kabul-Nangarhar Highway. They sped east toward the outskirts of the capital city and the snow-tipped Hindu Kush mountains that loomed far ahead of them.

Ellie slid in her earpiece. There would be no chatter until their arrival at the predetermined pickup. She steadied her breathing and looked out the window at the small buildings set off the highway. It still intrigued her that so many chose to make their home in the middle of the desert. Almost four million people out of every ethnic group in the region lived in Kabul. But today, for Ellie, there were only four.

She was rounding out her second year

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