The clock is ticking down to an attack on America’s most vulnerable natural resource: Water.
Our nation’s water resources are high on terrorist target lists, but low on America’s
consciousness. Water sources are largely unprotected, providing open access to
any enemy with chemicals and biotoxins.
So far we’ve been lucky. But that luck won’t last.This is the all-too-real-and-present danger facing President Morgan Taylor and Secret Service Agent Scott Roarke as they desperately try to prevent hell-bent terrorists from destroying America and its infrastructure city by city, and state by state.
Fact-based in frightening detail, Executive Command is a political thriller that will leave you pondering its strong possibility the next time you pour a glass of water.
Excerpt
Houston, TX
3 January
He
tried not to look nervous.
“Step forward.”
At first, the man didn’t hear the
order. The thick, bulletproof glass of
the U.S. Customs and Border Protection officer’s booth muffled the sound.
“Step forward,” the agent at the Houston terminal repeated.
The man wanted to be invisible. Mistake.
His instructions were to blend in, act casually, and make small talk. He
was five-eight, clean shaven. He kept
his black hair medium length; normal.
Except for a small scar under his chin, there was nothing memorable
about his look. Nothing distinctive.
“Step forward!”
He tensed.
Not good. He should have smiled
politely and done as he was told.
However, the man was not used to being told what to do by a woman. He hesitated again and was slow to hand over
his passport.
The agent didn’t know how much harder the
president had just made her job.
Generally, work came down to evaluate, stamp, and pass. Sometimes it took longer, but it was usually
the same thing every hour of every day.
Evaluate, stamp, and pass. In
twelve years, she’d probably only flagged twenty people, principally because
they were belligerent to her and not a real threat. It was different today. Houston was beta testing a new system that was sure to be on a
fast track everywhere. But right now it
was slow, and Agent Carlita Deluca was already feeling p--d off.
The man finally passed his papers under
the glass in the booth. With the
Argentine passport finally in hand, she studied the picture; then the man
before her. The evaluate part. She made
quick assessments. Recent scabs on his
face. Cuts from shaving? Sloppy
knot on his tie. Not a professional. She rose
up from her chair and examined his rolling suitcase. Brand
new. Then Deluca looked at the
passport more closely. Armenian name, but citizen of Argentina. She checked whether he had traveled in the Middle East. No stamps.
“State your business in the United States.”
The man cleared his throat. A bad signal, but he didn’t know it.
“Job interview.”
She listened to the accent. Carlita Deluca had become pretty good at
detecting certain regionalisms. Not
Armenian. German? She needed more.
“Where?”
“University. I’m a professor.” He put his hand out impatiently, expecting
his passport, which Deluca didn’t return.
“Of what?”
The man shifted his weight from one foot
to another. “Philosophy. Comparative religions.”
“Have you taught here before?”
“No.”
“And where is your interview?”
“New York.”
Deluca nodded, scanned the passport
through her computer and waited while the photo traveled as data bits across
the Internet. The accent? Definitely not German. Not European at all. More….
A video camera also captured the man’s image at the
booth. The new image and picture on the
passport were instantly cross-referenced against millions of other photos
through FRT or FERET[DC1] —Facial Recognition Technology. Some of the process was standard post 9/11;
some as recent as the president’s last sentence.
“What school?”
“Universidad Nacional De
Cordoba,”
he
answered, almost too quickly.
“No,
where is your job interview?”
“Oh, New York
University.”
Middle
Eastern? She couldn’t quite peg it
yet. So, Deluca continued to study the
man. It also gave the computer—which she
understood very little about—time to talk to whatever it talked to. It was definitely sluggish, and the line
behind the man was growing longer. She
stamped the passport and wondered whether the computer was even working. It was.
A 2004
report to Congress concluded that America’s intelligence and law enforcement agencies missed,
ignored, or failed to identify key conspirators responsible for the September 11, 2001, terrorist attacks.
The public agreed. People who
should have been flagged as dangerous or, at the very least, undesirable,
entered the United
States[DC2] undetected. Once
here, they engaged in highly suspect activity that went unchecked.
It’s not that the system didn’t work. There was no effective system. That changed with the establishment of
Homeland Security Presidential Directive 6.
In Beltway speak—HSPD-6. The
White House directive, issued September 16, 2003, consolidated interagency information sharing. The avowed goal—to put the right
intelligence into the hands of the right people; securely and in a timely
manner.
At the center of HSPD-6 is TSC—the Terrorist
Screening Center. The department has
been charged with identifying, screening, and tracking known or suspected
terrorists and their supporters. Feeding
TSC is the FTTTF, the Foreign Terrorist Tracking Task Force, and TTIC, the Terrorism
Threat Integration Center, all administered by the FBI.
In addition to establishing the TSC, HSPD-6
effectively rerouted watch lists and terrorist identification programs through
another service called TIPOFF.
This is precisely where the photograph of
the man at the airport was being examined electronically against hundreds of
thousands of other pictures.
TIPOFF began in 1987 with little more than
a shoe box full of three-by-five-inch index cards. Now it ran through a complex computer
network; one of the most secretive in the world. Every nanosecond, search engines mine data
from CIA deep cover reports, to Customs photo scans, right down to
Google, Yahoo, and Bing images. Until
recently, the subjects in the TIPOFF database were primarily non-U.S.
persons. Out of necessity, that changed. Today, the program cross-references records
of American citizens and even legal permanent residents who are “of
interest.” It feeds that information to
the U.S. Customs Service, now administered by the Department of Homeland
Security.
The
man’s “biometrics”—the physical characteristics including facial geometry—were
being interpreted at the speed of light by the TIPOFF computers. The nation’s interlocked FRT programs
rejected more than 99.999999 percent of the matches. That took less time than
the next step. The program kicked the
photograph back into the database for further analysis when it registered
positive against some fourteen other pictures.
“Can you tell me where I can find
Southwest Airlines?” the man asked as politely as possible. He was beginning to feel this was taking too
much time.
“After baggage claim, go outside. There’s a tram.”
“Thank you.” The man shifted his weight again and forced a
smile, hoping this would speed things up.
Egyptian. Deluca decided. But the computer’s identity program still
hadn’t given her any reason to hold the man.
She reluctantly returned his passport.
“Proceed to your right and straight
through the doors.”
The man smiled again and then let out a
breath.
A
sigh of relief? Deluca could hold
him, however travelers behind him were growing impatient after their long
international flights. But still.
“One more question.”
The fifty-nine-year-old mother of four was clearly stalling. Agent Deluca wanted to give the computer
another moment. That’s when a short
pinging sound indicated an incoming message onscreen. She checked the monitor. One word appeared under the picture captured
by the new Customs surveillance program.
DETAIN
Grossman has been partnered with Robb Weller in Los Angeles-based Weller/Grossman Productions, a prolific television production company. Together, they produced more than 9,000 programs and earned numerous awards including the prestigious Governor’s Emmy Award for their USA Network special, “Healing the Hate,” and an Emmy for Best Informational series with the production of “Wolfgang Puck” for Food Network. Their documentary “Beyond the Da Vinci Code” (History Channel) earned two national Emmy nominations. In all, Grossman has received 14 Emmy nominations.
In addition, Gary Grossman is now a principal in World Media Strategies, a new International branded entertainment marketing content company with offices in Los Angeles and Miami. WMS produces television specials and series for travel destinations, corporate clients and government entities.
Grossman earned a Bachelor’s Degree in Communications from Emerson
College in Boston
and a Master’s Degree in Urban Affairs from Boston
University.
He began his broadcasting career as a rock disc jockey at WHUC, in Hudson,
New York. He worked at Boston
television station, WBZ; joined The Boston Globe as a special
contributor, and then became the television critic and media columnist at The
Boston Herald American. His freelance articles have appeared in The
New York Times and numerous magazines. He taught journalism and
media at Emerson College,
Boston University,
and USC and guest lectured at colleges and universities across the country.
Grossman helped formulate, program and launch television cable networks
including HGTV, Fit TV, National Geographic Channel, and The Africa Channel.Grossman serves on the Emerson College Board of Trustees and chairs the Academic Affairs Committee.
He is also a member of the Boston University Metropolitan College Advisory Board. For was chair of the Government Affairs Committee for the Caucus for Television Producers, Directors & Writers, a Hollywood-based media activist group and a member of The International Thriller Writers Association.
His latest book is the political thriller, Executive Command.
Visit Gary on the web at www.GaryGrossman.com.
TIME TO PAY ATTENTION
Blog
by Gary Grossman www.garygrossman.com
Author,
EXECUTIVE COMMAND (Diversion
Books/ebook all platforms)
I have two job that nobody gave
me. I write thrillers and I sound
warning bells. Hopefully because of both
we’ll be more ready when the shrieking sound of the alarm comes – again.
Not that I’m a conspiracy theorist
or paranoid. I’m honestly not, though I
love the old line that Sometimes someone
is really following you.
However, the truth is the world has
shrunk. Now, the old metaphor is more
true than ever. When a butterfly flaps
its wings in Asia it does have an
effect here. That’s central to my
writing, and key to “take-away” for readers and fans.
For example, action in EXECUTIVE COMMAND constantly intercuts
from Washington, DC to small towns across the nation, to the home of the
Russia’s intelligence service in Moscow to the fortress of a terrorist in the
most dangerous, lawless city in the Western Hemisphere. It’s all related, whether the story is
following the president of the United States, a CIA operative, a master
terrorist, a skilled assassin, the speaker of the House on Capitol Hill, or a
young woman who tries to infiltrate the inner-workings of Washington to get to
Secret Service Agent Scott Roarke. With
multiple plots constantly intersecting, my goal is to engage readers and to keep
them guessing.
The farthest reaches of the globe
are only a few key strokes away. Almost any question can be answered within a
three-parameter search. However, research also leads to the discovery of more
questions than answers – which is the sense of discover I enjoy the most.
I’ve delved into the developing
science of facial recognition technology (FERET), technology as small as a
“Snakebot” and as huge as the C-17 Globemastertransport,theInternet as a spy
tool, America’s
most treacherous gang and the dangers that await in Ciudad
del Este, Paraguay.
All of this comes forward through
page turning novels I like to describe as “political reality.” Some examples from EXECUTIVE ACTIONS, EXECUTIVE TREASON and now EXECUTIVE COMMAND:
Sleeper cell spies working in the
U.S.? They’re as old as the America is,
through the Cold War and as recent as today.
The presidency targeted in a Seven Days in May-type coup? It nearly happened with Franklin Roosevelt in
the sights of a 1930s military/Wall Street inspired junta. The FBI investigates similar threats every
day.
Talk show hosts with immense
power? Read about Fr. Charles Coughlin
in the 1930s and listen to the voices on the air today. Tell me they’re not there and could, with the
wrong order, set horrible things in motion.
The enemy poisoning supplies? Go back to ancient Greece for early records
and think about how vulnerable our water resources are this very moment…from
backyard wells to bottled water in public places. All exposed, all possible targets.
Gary Grossman can be
reached through www.garygrossman.com
or Follow him through
Twitter @garygrossman1
While I hope EXECUTIVE COMMANDdelivers as a fast and exciting eBook for fans
(fans I really listen to), I believe the thriller rises above and beyond just
fiction. I lay out intriguing history and the disturbing weaknesses currently
in our infrastructure. There’s drama and there’s that warning
bell. It’s impossible not to hear
it. I hit it pretty often. Water is being targeted and it is time to pay
attention.
So how would you like to win $100? You can by entering the rafflecopter below. It is open to U.S., and you must enter by February 28!
a Rafflecopter giveaway
liked the excerpt thanks for the giveaway! - regnod(at)yahoo(d0t)com
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