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With US intelligence agencies wracked by internal power struggles and paralyzed by bureaucracy the president has been forced to establish his own clandestine group--Covert-One Its activated only as a last resort when the threat is on a global scale and time is running outTHE UTOPIA EXPERIMENTWhen Dresner Industries unveils the Merge a device that is destined to revolutionize the world and make the personal computer and smartphone obsolete Covert-One operative Colonel Jon Smith is assigned to assess its military potential He discovers that enhanced vision real-time battlefield displays unbreakable security and near-perfect marksmanship are only the beginning of a technology that will change the face of warfare forever--and one that must be kept out of the hands of Americas enemies at all costsMeanwhile in the mountains of Afghanistan CIA operative Randi Russell encounters an entire village of murdered Afghans--all equipped with enhanced Merge technology that even the Agency didnt know existed As Smith and Russell delve into the circumstances surrounding the Afghans deaths theyre quickly blocked by someone who seems to have access to the highest levels of the military--a person that even the president knows nothing aboutIs the Merge really as secure as its creator claims And what secrets about its development is the Pentagon so desperate to hide Smith and Russell are determined to learn the truth But they may pay for it with their lives.
About the Author
I grew up in Oregon but have lived all over - D.C., Virginia, Maryland, London, Wyoming. My father was an FBI agent and I was a bureau kid, which is similar to being an army brat. You tend to spend your time with other bureau kids and get transferred around a lot, though, I fared better on that front than many others.One positive aspect of this lifestyle is that you can't help but absorb an enormous amount about the FBI, CIA, Special Forces, etc. Like most young boys, I was endlessly fascinated with talk of chasing criminals and, of course, pictured it in the most romantic terms possible. Who would have thought that all this esoteric knowledge would end up being so useful?I came into writing from kind of a strange angle. When I graduated from college in the late eighties, I had the same dream as everyone else at the time - a corporate job, a nice car, and a house with lots of square footage.It turns out that none of that really suited me. While I did go for the corporate job, Idrove a beat-up Jeep and lived in a tiny house in a so-so Baltimore neighborhood. Most of the money I made just kind of accumulated in my checking account and I found myself increasingly drawn to the unconventional, artistic people who lived around me. I was completely enamored with anyone who could create something from nothing because I felt like it was beyond me. Enter rock climbing. I'd read an article on climbing when I was in college and thought it looked like an incredible thing to do. Someday, I told myself, I would give it a try. So one weekend in the early '90s, I packed up my car, drove to West Virginia, and spent aweekend taking lessons. Unknown to me at the time, this would be the start of anobsession that still hangs with me today. I began dating a girl who liked to climb and we decided we wanted to live somewhere with taller rocks and more open space. Moving to Wyoming was the best decision we ever made. The place is full of the most amazing people. You might meet someone on a bike ride and find out they were in the Olympics, or climbed Everest, or just got back from two months trekking in Nepal. In a roundabout way, it was these people who made it possible for me to write a novel. They seemed to have no limitations. Everything was possible for them and I wanted to be that type of person, too.I was working for a little bank in Jackson Hole, spending my days making business loans and my afternoons and weekends climbing. For some reason, it finally occurred to me that I'd never actually tried to be creative. Maybe I could make something from nothing. Why not give it a shot?My first bright idea was to learn to build furniture. That plan had some drawbacks, the most obviou
