A Matter of Timing
by
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Bob hadn’t moved his gaze off the trees on the far side of the valley for the past hour. It seemed the sun was coming up excruciatingly slow this morning. The heavy cloud cover was contributing to night’s grasp on the countryside and the wind prevented his voice from carrying to Ty without risk of someone else hearing him. He’d already given up the position once and didn’t want to do it again.
Bob considered moving to his friend’s spot to get a different angle on the sparse trees they’d been watching for hours, convinced that whoever had been there had managed to slip out away from them. Assuming that, Bob thought they should get back to the cabin as soon as possible.
Just down the ridge, Ty was still nestled up under the fallen tree with the barrel of the Sendero sticking out among several dead branches. He was certain nobody had moved out from behind the trees in the darkness, although there had been a good hour of nearly-complete dark after the moon had set. His right eye was getting fatigued looking through the scope and he had a headache, but knew that any less vigilance could be life threatening.
Ty scooted back from the rifle for a moment and rolled over on his back to look up at the sky. The storm would be upon them soon and he was hoping it would force whoever was on the far side to move from his position and possibly provide him with a clue as to who the adversary was.
Bob made up his mind to move down to wherever Ty was and suggest they make a bee-line for the cabin. He slid back away from the ridge’s berm, and on hands and knees, began crawling west towards where he had seen his friend disappear into the darkness hours before.
Korchenko’s heartbeat suddenly accelerated and the long-familiar adrenaline surge which accompanied seeing someone in the crosshairs was upon him. He couldn’t make out anything definitive, but he was sure there had been motion near one of the trees on top of the ridge he’d been watching.
His scope’s vision blurred. It cleared up again, then blurred out where Korchenko couldn’t see anything through his scope. He pulled his head back from the rifle and saw the problem; a small clump of grass swaying in the gusty wind was obscuring his vision when it bent over in front of the scope’s lens. Korchenko was forced to change his shooting position. He pulled himself up to a kneeling position and anchored the rifle against the side of the tree. This wasn’t as easy to hold a steady shot, but at least he could see through the scope. He aimed the rifle where he’d seen motion. There it was again. Someone moving in the trees, still considerably dark where the sun wasn’t reaching yet, on the top of the ridge. Korchenko cursed the wind gusts and clump of grass which had prevented him from taking the shot prone.
Bob reached a big tree fallen across his path. The land flattened out here a little and it would take a long time to crawl all the way around its top. Instead of wasting the time, Bob decided to belly crawl over its trunk and take the short route. But taking the short way was a mistake. Without fully standing upright, he pulled himself up onto the top of the trunk.
Three seconds later, the bullet came screaming in well ahead of the report of the rifle. Ty saw the muzzle flash the instant Korchenko fired, well off to the side of where he thought it should be. But Bob was looking the opposite direction as he shimmied over the log and didn’t know he was centered in a Russian sniper’s scope. When the bullet reached him it was still traveling faster than a thousand feet-per-second.
Pushed slightly off course from the gusting wind, it had drifted a few inches further left than Korchenko had adjusted for, and it nearly missed the mark. In the sniper’s scope, Bob had been a target presenting little more than torso and legs, and at this extreme distance, Korchenko was lucky to get a shot off at all. He was too far away to see exactly where the bullet had struck, but he did see the target react when the bullet arrived, as he had so many times before.
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About the Book
The New Madrid fault line is one of the deepest, most deadly earthquake zones anywhere in the world. It runs from Memphis to St. Louis, along the Mississippi River. The last time it woke from slumber in 1811 and 1812, it rattled the Earth over 1,000 times throughout a 2-year period, and based upon testimonials from the few people then living in the area, at least 8 of the quakes were 8 or better on today’s Richter scale.
Geologists had been predicting the New Madrid would shake again, most giving it better than a 50/50 chance by 2025.
But Mother Nature didn't want to wait until then. For the residents of Memphis and St. Louis, and all the towns along the Mighty Mississippi, chaos and anarchy were waiting in the wings.
With the United States fully involved militarily in the Middle East, making enemies of Islam throughout the World, some had been plotting to strike America when it wasn’t expecting it. September 11, 2001 was a sad day, but those now plotting against the “Western Babylon” would seize the opportunity created by a massive earthquake on the New Madrid. And this attack would make 9-11 look like a practice run.
A decorated American hero from Desert Storm with three friends, one CNN reporter, a Russian mercenary sniper hired to overturn the table of world power, and anarchy reigning supreme in the Midwest sets the stage as good versus evil and the “haves” versus the “have-nots”. With United Nations troops setting up camps on American sovereign soil, the battle lines are drawn and only the strong will survive.
As one of our heroines in the story says, “Perhaps the meek will inherit the Earth, but I don’t see it happening any time soon.”
425 pages of action-packed adventure.
About the Author
G.E. Miller was fortunate enough to see life behind the Iron Curtain in 1970 in his late teens, when invited along with a civil engineering group from Canada. He spent weeks behind the Iron Curtain touring Leningrad, Moscow and East Berlin, observing life under the fist of tyranny. He saw first-hand a majority of the Communist’s people oppressed and dirt poor, standing in long lines just for a loaf of bread, thousands of empty shelves in Moscow’s largest department store in Red Square. He returned home to America deeply appreciating the freedoms and liberty that living in a Republic and a free society offer.
A life-long dedication to history study, mixed with a fascination with sciences that mankind currently has very little understanding of, creates a unique combination of old age and new age journeys for the reader’s enjoyment.
“The New Madrid Trilogy”, comprised of “A Matter of Timing”, “The Cataclysm Scroll”, and “Killing the Eagle”, reflect the author’s passions of life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness entitled to all people throughout the world – regardless of race, religion or geographical location.
You can chat interactively with the author himself while he's continuing work on the last book in the trilogy. Just visit www.gmillercompanies.com and if the green "Author is Online" button is enabled, click and chat. You're invited to ask availability status of the sequel, or provide ideas you'd like to see included with the 3rd novel, Killing the Eagle. G.E. Miller believes authors should make themselves available to their readers, and this is one way of demonstrating that commitment.