John T. Cullen has authored over 20 books, including The Generals of October (Simon & Schuster, 2004)—pulse-pounding political-military suspense fiction set in a near-future U.S. Constitutional crisis.
|
John T. Cullen also writes screenplays, including one for Nebula Express (adapted from his SF novel) and the violent, darkly glistening, utterly strange tale of a serial killer in Scorpion.
|
If you like what you read here, please send at least two other avid readers here so a growing readership can enjoy these books. That would be a great, painless, easy way to provide a huge assist. If you'd like to do more...click.
|
Doom Spore
a novel
by John T. Cullen
|
|
6.
San Diego, current time—On a typical clear, sunny day with a playful breeze ruffling the water, Lima Voyager passed her Coast Guard inspection. With a harbor master's pilot on board to guide her, she clanked slowly past Point Cabrillo, past the nuclear submarine pens and other Federal installations on the north side of the harbor entrance, and North Island Naval Air Station and the aircraft carrier berths on the south lip. Lima Voyager was one of a constant stream of ships making the journey in or out of one of the best salt water ports on the West Coast, and, aside from a few Harbor Police, nobody took much notice. And why should they? Looking on the bright side, her paint was reasonably fresh, if a little rusty around the seams, and her engines throbbed with quiet strength, and thin streams of water spouted from two or three bilge ports to signal that all was working well in her guts. She looked as though she were simply heading to port for a refurbishing.
Two other persons watched her arrival with considerable interest. Standing stock still on the docks on Harbor Drive that had once been home to the greatest tuna fishing fleet on the North Pacific, a man and a woman stood like statues. He was an elderly, white-haired man with a dented round hat and baggy, dark clothing, while she was a slender, still youthful woman wearing jeans and a dark T-shirt along with a simple red baseball cap. Both had strongly delineated, pure Indian features. They stared at the passing freighter, which clanked like the forges of hell, and in their eyes was written bleak prophecy of a great evil entombed within those rusting black steel plates. Rusty bilge water spewed out as if gargoyles were taunting the two on the dock. But the two had disappeared—melted away into the heights of the city above India Street toward Cortez Hill and the vast urban groves of Balboa Park.
Lima Voyager bypassed the Coast Guard station and former tuna fleet docks, on one side, the aircraft carrier berths at North Island Naval Air Station on the other side. She clanked past the tourist attractions around the B Street Pier—like the Star of India iron-hulled sailing ship dating to 1863— and under the Coronado Bay Bridge. Slowly, she angled left, portside, and disappeared into the mass of mostly gray Navy vessels laid up around the 32nd Street Naval Yards. Somewhere in there, at a small civilian cargo dock surrounded by high wire fences topped with barbed wire, she had a civilian harbor tug nudge her to rest. Engines off, she coasted silently as crew members readied for tying up.
After the harbor master's pilot went ashore, nobody else left the ship. Mariachi and song could be heard echoing across the steel decks from someone's large radio—a Tijuana station—and several sailors could be seen cleaning and securing the decks after their ocean voyage from deep in the Amazon. For Lima Voyager had not just steamed north from Peru. She had also been halfway up the Amazon River on the other side of the South American continent—a river that at times seemed like an ocean in itself, in that one could sit on its currents in an ocean-going steamship and not see land in any direction. She had left the Amazon Basin by its great estuary near Belem, had crossed through the Panama Canal, and briefly journeyed south to Lima before turning north toward the U.S.
That night—as related to Lt. Linsey Simon and other investigators by a U.S. Navy Shore Patrol petty officer who happened by on routine duties—the heavily fortified wire gate opened briefly. Almost furtively, the captain and his two dozen complement left in civilian clothing, carrying sea bags, and locking the facility behind them. They left the ship totally unmanned, with lights on and radios playing as if men were living on board.
Only one other figure saw them do this, and he would never testify.
|
If you like what you're reading, please send at least two other avid readers to this website.
—Thank you! …Your grateful author, John T. Cullen.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Other gripping books by the author:
Copyright © 2005 by John T. Cullen. All Rights Reserved.
John T. Cullen has been a pioneer in digital publishing since 1996. He is listed by digital publishing historian Karen Wiesner as the sixth digital publisher in history, and the second person to publish serialized chapters on line (starting 1996). His web magazine Deep Outside SFFH was the first to be listed along with the professional pulps in Writer's Market (1999) and was at one time the oldest professional SFFH magazine in the world. John T. Cullen continues to explore new ways to adapt the primordial power of storytelling to emerging new digital opportunities as the Third Millennium springs to light.
|
|
|
A Walk in Ancient Rome John T. Cullen (Simon&Schuster May 2005) innovative, acclaimed walking & teaching tour—explore every corner of the Imperial capital at its zenith almost 2000 years ago; learn its history—smell and taste the very air of Classical Rome.
|
= Summer 2008 =
A Walk in Ancient Rome, Second Edition John T. Cullen (Clocktower Books 2008)—New! Many new maps; images from the unique scale model of AndréCaron of Quebec. Read this innovative book, with its acclaimed walking & teaching tour. Explore every corner of the Imperial capital at its zenith almost 2000 years ago; learn its history. Smell and taste the very air of Classical Rome. The new edition is bigger, like an atlas. Some people have carried the 1st edition with them to Rome, and found it greatly enhanced their experience.
Dead Move: Kate Morgan and the Haunting Mystery of Coronado, 2nd Ed. John T. Cullen (Clocktower Books, San Diego, Summer 2008). John T. Cullen has tackled the mystery of the ghost at the Hotel del Coronado. He has assembled a dramatic new theory about how and why she violently died on the back steps of the hotel in 1892. A first-class ghost story and whodunit wrapped in one.
|
