Synopsis
Charlie Perkins is having a very strange year. Prospecting in the Black Range Mountains of southern New Mexico has only been so-so, but that’s not the problem. When he finds someone else’s stash of gold then a body crushed under a tree what does he do? Why he works the claim, of course, like any self-respecting desert rat would do, no sense in a perfectly good claim going to waste just because its owner is deceased! There’s the issue of the late claim owner’s partner, who sees the stash and all the rest of the gold Charlie mines out of the dig as his and his attitude is getting right down homicidal since Charlie has the gold and the partner is on the run for killing his mentor. Then there’s the alien probe. Designed to scoop up and discard indigenous life forms until it finds the right one possessed of enough intelligence to understand the probe’s message, it finds Charlie or Charlie finds it and he is changed forever. The probe endows Charlie with not only information about its source but it greatly enhances his brain’s ability to function and his latent psionic abilities. Unfortunately the homicidal partner has been in the probe too and has the same abilities and that’s not a good thing because all the partner wants is to kill Charlie and take his gold.. Finally there’s the Air Force. Charlie leads them to the probe early on but it takes longer for them to catch on to Charlie’s “other” abilities and when they do, the intelligence community is rocked into a dither trying to marshal Charlie’s talents for the good of the nation.. Now it’s up to Charlie to get himself out of this mess or at least make the best of it.
About the Author
Terry L. Shaffer grew up near Oregon City, about twenty miles south of Portland, Oregon. He graduated from Oregon City High School and Clackamas Community College before moving on to Portland State University, majoring in Political Science. Between high school and college, Terry spent four years in the United States Navy, and was assigned duty stations in Long Beach, California, and Naval Intelligence billets in Washington, D.C. and Alameda, California, from where he sailed to the Western Pacific aboard an aircraft carrier and earned both the Vietnam Service Medal and the Vietnam Campaign Medal. During his college days at Portland State, Terry joined the Clackamas County Sheriff’s Department where he was assigned a variety of positions including patrol, detectives and narcotics. He retired in 2000 after twenty-five years’ service. After writing thousands of pages of police reports and search warrant affidavits, he likes to say that he has twenty-five years’ experience writing in the true crime genre. Terry began his writing career in fiction shortly before he retired and has been at it ever since. He lives full time in his motorhome and divides his time between his home in Colton, Oregon, and various locations in the American Southwest where he spends his time writing and exploring. Terry travels with his miniature Dachshund, Emma, and enjoys off-roading, photography, reading and, of course, writing.
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