Today's Special Spotlight is about an intriguing and fast paced Techno-Political thriller titled Sleeping Dogs:The Awakening. This novel is written by the multi talented, creative and adventurous author John Wayne Falbey with a host of creative, managerial and professional achievements to his credit.
From the Author's Desk : Sleeping Dogs:The Awakening is the first book in a trilogy. The second volume, Endangered Species, is in process and is expected to be available in summer 2014.Author Links: Connect with author John Wayne Falbey
Author's Website : http://www.sleepingdogs.biz
Author's Bio : http://www.sleepingdogs.biz/author.html
Author's Twitter handle:@jwfalbey
Author's Facebook Page : https://www.facebook.com/wayne.falbey
Author's Goodreads page: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/16148431-sleeping-dogs-the-awakening
Author Bio: John Wayne Falbey writes techno-political spy thrillers and adventure novels. His debut novel, Sleeping Dogs: The Awakening, has been endorsed by Compulsory Reads. He also is the author of The Quixotics, a tale of gunrunning, guerilla warfare, and treachery in the Caribbean.
A native Floridian and former transactional attorney, he is a real estate investor and developer in Southwest Florida. The writers currently at the top of his reading list include Brad Thor, Alex Berenson, Lee Child, and David Baldacci, among others.
His latest novel, Sleeping Dogs: The Awakening, is the first in a planned trilogy about the deadly black ops group known as the Sleeping Dogs. Book Two in the series, Endangered Species, is planned for publication next summer.
In addition to the Juris Doctor degree, he earned Master and Doctoral degrees in business management.
He is a frequent lecturer, panelist, and moderator for professional symposiums in the real estate development industry, and is Managing Director of the Falbey Institute for the Development of Real Estate, as well as a Managing Director of Capital Four Advisors. In his spare time, he is a competitive cyclist and triathlete.
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Book Spotlight - Sleeping Dogs : The Awakening
Ebook : SLEEPING DOGS : THE AWAKENING ( A Techno-Political Thriller)
Author : John Wayne Falbey
Genre : Techno - Political Thriller
Amazon Stores : http://www.amazon.com/Sleeping-Dogs-John-Wayne-Falbey-ebook/dp/B008BUYMZA
Reviews : 22 ( 18 x 5 stars)
Achievements : Endorsed by Compulsion Reads - http://www.compulsionreads.com/book/213/Sleeping-Dogs:-The-Awakening
Book Synopsis
The President of the United States has been targeted for assassination—by his own party’s power structure. A national election is pending and the killing must look as if the opposition party is responsible. Desperate to prevent the crime and avoid an overwhelming defeat, the opposition turns to the only force that can stop it this late in the game—a mysterious hunter-killer team known only as the Sleeping Dogs.
This blackest of black ops units was formed to carry out the wettest, most illegal missions. But a U.S. President, fearing exposure of the unit’s existence could spark an international crisis, ordered its members terminated with extreme prejudice. They faked their deaths in a plane crash and went underground. Now, 20 years later, they are asked to leave the safety of their anonymity and risk their lives for their country one more time.
A seemingly unconnected car crash rapidly escalates into a series of plot twists and rising body count involving Russian agents, crooked politicians, Ukrainian gangsters, a billionaire international arbitrageur, a secret society of individuals in the military and intelligence communities, the CIA, a doggedly determined FBI agent, and the six deadliest men on earth—the surviving Sleeping Dogs.
Sleeping Dogs: The Awakening is a techno-political spy thriller that combines relentless action, crisp dialogue, fully drawn characters, and thought provoking plot twists. If you enjoy books by David Baldacci, Brad Thor, Lee Child and other best-selling thriller writers, this book is for you!
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Chapter Excerpt
“It is nought good a slepying
hound to wake.”
- Chaucer, Troilus
and Criseyde
PART ONE:
A STRAY DOG
1 Georgetown: Coincidence
The
tilting streetlight acted like a floodlight in the mist, focused on the Jeep. Through
the crazed pattern in the damaged windshield, Whelan saw that the
limo had stopped in the middle of the intersection. The limo driver and another
man got out. Both were large men, dressed in badly fitting, out of fashion dark
suits and solid color ties. Each wore an earbud. As they drew closer, he saw
that each was wearing a brass nametag pinned to a breast pocket. The limo
driver’s said “Borys.” His companion’s said “Vadim.”
As they approached on the driver’s side, Vadim
stopped near the rear of the vehicle. Borys leaned his six-foot-five-inch frame
down and peered carefully through the driver’s window. Whelan knew what he’d
see: an ordinary looking man. Except for his eyes. They were an icy blue, like
the color of a deep glacial crevasse, and they were locked onto Borys’s eyes
with no sign of emotion. Whelan saw that it unnerved Borys.
“You are all right, yes?” Borys said. Whelan
recognized an Eastern European accent.
“Yes.”
“You
have identification, yes?” Borys held out a meaty hand for emphasis.
With
his right hand, Whelan reached slowly into his front pocket and pulled out his
wallet. He removed a driver’s license and handed it to Borys. As the large man
took it, Whelan noticed the back of his hand was heavily tattooed, even his
fingers.
Borys
squinted at the ID in the poor light and said, “Walter Bailey. From Omaha,
Nebraska.” His W sounded more like a V. English was his second language.
Barely.
“That’s
right.”
Borys
spoke a single word in his native tongue and pointed to the ground next to the
Jeep. The word was foreign to Whelan but he understood the gesture. Get out of
the truck.
He
kept his right hand visible on the steering wheel. With his left, he slowly
reached down and opened the door. In the process, he nicked his little finger
on a piece of glass from the broken windshield. A small trickle of blood began
to ooze from the cut.
Borys
motioned Whelan out into the street. The three men stopped directly beneath the
tilting streetlight. As they did, Borys suddenly raised a hand to his earbud.
It drew Whelan’s attention to the additional tattoos on Borys’s neck. He
glanced quickly at Vadim and saw similar body graffiti. He recognized them as gang
symbols—for an especially ruthless Ukrainian crime syndicate.
Borys
listened for a few moments to the voice coming through the earpiece then
glanced at Vadim. They each took a step backward, swiftly pulling Glock 17s
from the waistband of their pants. Borys
said, “You are not this man, Bailey.”
Whelan
said nothing.
Borys
stepped closer and raised the Glock so that it was angled about 45 degrees with
the ground and pointing just to the outside of Whelan’s left kneecap.
“I
have good nose for bullshit,” said Borys, tapping the side of his thick nose
with a meaty forefinger. He turned slightly to smirk at Vadim. When he did, the
muzzle of the weapon edged away from Whelan’s knee. It was his moment of
opportunity.
Whelan
moved faster than Borys’s brain could relay a message from his eyes to his
trigger finger. He wrapped his left hand around Borys’s thick right wrist just
above the gun in his hand. Half turning to his left, he wrapped his right arm
over and around the big man’s right arm. His forearm was just above Borys’s elbow.
Borys, like a hound with a flea, tried to shake free of the man who was more
than 50 pounds lighter. To his shock, he couldn’t.
Whelan
swiftly brought his right knee up, then drove the heel of his shoe down and
into the outside of Borys’s right knee. The technique forced the tibia out of
the knee socket, destroying the tibial collateral and anterior cruciate
ligaments and ripping the meniscus. He heard the satisfying pop as Borys’s knee
buckled at a grotesque angle. He quickly and smoothly swung Borys’s bulk into Vadim’s
line of fire.
Seamlessly,
Whelan’s left hand pulled down forcefully on Borys’s wrist while he
simultaneously drove his forearm upward against the big man’s upper arm. With
another popping sound, Borys’s elbow joint dislocated and the weapon fell from
his hand. Its polymer frame made a dull clattering sound as it hit the pavement.
As Borys screamed in agony and began to collapse, Whelan literally threw the
300-pound man at Vadim. He sprinted up Borys’s massive falling body like a
running back scaling linemen at the goal line. At the top, he launched a flying
kick, his right heel smashing Vadim’s nose, nearly ripping it from his face. It
snapped his head back. Stunned, Vadim staggered backward and almost fell.
Before
Vadim could recover and refocus his weapon, Whelan closed the gap and grabbed
his gun hand, thrusting a finger behind the trigger to prevent firing. He drove
a knee forcefully into Vadim’s groin. A loud grunt exploded from the injured
man’s lips. His knees buckled and he grabbed desperately at his assailant for
support. But Whelan was too quick. He had both hands on Vadim’s right wrist and
swung it up and around, careful to keep the weapon pointing away from him. He
continued to sweep the arm backward and up, a difficult maneuver for ordinary
people with a man as large as Vadim. But, genetically, Whelan was far from ordinary.
He
tugged Vadim toward him, forcing him to shift his weight to his right foot,
which Whelan swept from under him. The big man did a forward somersault and
landed on the back of his neck. Before he could recover, Whelan drove the heel
of his right shoe deep onto the soft tissue of Vadim’s unprotected throat,
destroying his windpipe, larynx, and the scream that tried to rise from it.
Unable to breathe, he quickly lost consciousness and would be dead in less than
three minutes.
Whelan
turned back to Borys, who was writhing in pain on the street. He picked up both
men’s Glocks, then bent over Borys for an instant and brought the butt of one
of the Glocks down, crushing the man’s forehead and driving bone splinters into
his frontal lobes. It may not have been a deathblow, but at the very least it was
enough to destroy motor skills, libido, and problem-solving and creative
thought processes. Borys, if he survived, would be in a vegetative state for
his remaining years.
Whelan
shifted his attention to the black limo, knowing that time was running very
short. Neighbors would have heard the crash. By now, they would have called the
authorities. He walked swiftly, but cautiously, toward the car, keeping one
Glock focused on the middle of the windshield and the other on the left rear
window. When he was still fifteen feet away, the right rear door opened and
another large man climbed out. He was dressed similarly to Borys and Vadim. He brought
his weapon up, bracing his arms on the limo’s roof for stability. Whelan opened
fire with both of the 9mm Glocks. One hollow-point round pierced the bodyguard’s
left eye and exited the back of his skull, taking much of his brain matter with
it. His head snapped backward, and his body countered by toppling forward. The
corpse slid clumsily down the side of the limo, leaving a bloody streak all the
way to the rocker panel.
As
Whelan drew close to the limo, the left rear window began to slide down. He
aimed both Glocks into the darkness behind it. A face slowly emerged. He kept
both weapons trained on it and made a quick scan of the car’s interior. The
passenger was alone. He was wearing a dark brown double-breasted Burberry
trench coat and clutching a cordovan leather attaché case in his hands. His
face had collected more wrinkles and his hair, still parted in the same style,
was much grayer and thinner, but the years had been kind to him and Whelan
recognized him immediately.
“My
God! It is you!” the older man said.
“But…you’re dead!” And then it was he who was dead; shot in the middle of the
forehead by a slug from one of the Glocks.
