We are delighted to welcome back thriller writer Thomas Waite to Omnimystery News.
Thomas's third thriller to feature former NSA operative Lana Elkins, Unholy Code (Marlborough Press; July 2016 trade paperback and ebook formats), is published this week and we are excited to share with you a short excerpt from it.
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LOOK AT THE WATER, BOY."
Vinko peered at its smooth surface and saw his reflection.
"Your face is white as the clouds, isn't it? Just like everyone else you see around here."
Vinko understood. He'd never known anybody who wasn't white.
They'd fished until sundown. After gathering up their gear, his father told him to look at the water again. The blood-red colors had appeared, darkening the boy's face.
"You're no longer white. That's what's going to happen if we let the sun set on America. The white will disappear, and we'll pay for it with blood."
His father had been right. The men in his family had all known that the most important threat of all wasn't a gun or a knife, or even the mongrel races raging to get everything that belonged to whites. But it was all about blood.
A seventeen-year-old is impulsive.
A seventeen-year-old feels immortal.
A seventeen-year-old doesn't understand that death can come in a whisper.
Emma. I imagine my hot breath on her ear. I can help you.
So her parents will be right to shudder at the fact that Em is now vulnerable to the scores of terrorists stalking American cities and hinterlands, hunting for ever more horrors to visit upon the nation.
But don't worry about all that.
Those are the exact words I would tell them if I could. They need only worry about me. And it's too late for that. Their only child is trying to free herself of too much too soon, and all she's really done is seal her fate.
The one I've planned for her.
And you shall share it, Lana.
The chainsaws are oiled and calling. Can you hear them? Here, I'll start one.
How about that? Can you hear it now? The blade sounds angry, doesn't it? Like it could cut through skin and bone and the last scraps of hope in a dying girl's heart. I won't let you die without seeing that, Lana. I promise.
That's how a mother gets to die twice.
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Photo provided courtesy of
Thomas Waite
Thomas Waite was born in the seaside town of Ipswich, Massachusetts, once home to the authors John Updike (who was a patient of his Dad, which enabled Tom to build a nice collection of signed first edition novels), Adele Robertson, John Norton, and the poet Anne Bradstreet. Perhaps it was the history of the town, but from an early age Tom developed a love of writing and left Ipswich to earn his degree in English Literature at the University of Wisconsin-Madison. There he focused on creative writing and was selected by the English Department to participate in an international study program at the University of Oxford.
After college Tom lived in New York City and Boston and published non-fiction in such publications as The New York Times and the Harvard Business Review. He embarked on a career in technology culminating in his starting, building, and selling a technology strategy consulting firm. Tom then turned his attention to combining his work experience and his life-long dream and began writing cyber thrillers.
In addition to writing fiction, Tom is the board director of, and an advisor to, technology companies in the cyber security, media, data analytics, cloud computing, mobile, social intelligence, and information technology businesses. He now lives in Boston.
For more information about the author, please visit his website at ThomasWaite.com and his author page on Goodreads, or find him on Facebook and Twitter.
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Unholy Code by Thomas Waite
A Lana Elkins Thriller
Publisher: Marlborough Press
The "Summer of Blood" explodes. The U.S. is under siege from foreign jihadists and domestic terrorists. When a brilliant exploit strikes at the heart of the National Security Agency's own network, former NSA operative Lana Elkins discovers that it came from within the United States itself. More surprising still is the attacker: "Steel Fist," a cyber-savvy radical white supremacist whose legions feed on his anti-Islamic exhortations. His popularity only grows when a jihadist team carries out a bold, but baffling, attack on the Louisiana coast, bringing ashore a lethal invader no one can see.
Most mysterious of all are Golden Voice, a hacker of unparalleled skill with a murderous agenda and a secret past, and Tahir Hijazi, a Muslim refugee from Sudan with his own shadowy history. When Tahir's young nephew starts dating Lana's daughter Emma, Steel Fist calls upon his fans to embark on a new mission: assassinate the entire Elkins family.
As extremists battle each other — with Lana fighting both ends from the middle — the conflict becomes deeply personal, the stakes tragically high.
— Unholy Code by Thomas Waite
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