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By Kim Cresswell

Written Words continues with daily publishing of excerpts from books by fellow author-members of the Jet and Lei Crime Kindle worlds. Today, crank up the tension with a peek into Kim Cresswell’s JET Kindle World novella featuring nuclear plant sabotage and dirty bombs.

California – November 17

Umar Sarouk glanced up at the over-sized wall clock in the sterile fifty-by-fifty-foot control room and exhaled a long steady breath. It was six-thirty in the morning, and his twelve hour shift at Diablo Canyon Nuclear Plant would end in thirty minutes.

After twenty years of marriage, he would not be returning home to his wife and two daughters. There would be no graduations, no weddings to attend, and he wouldn’t be celebrating his forty-seventh birthday next week. Nor would he meet his first grandchild due in three months, born to his eldest daughter, Jewel.

Any apprehension for what he was about to do had disappeared months ago, replaced with deep sorrow for the many things in life he would miss. His children. His wife. His friends.

He leaned back in the chair and looked around the horseshoe-shaped room cluttered with vertical panels, bench boards and control switches used to monitor the nuclear reactor’s coolant pumps, steam generator and pressurizer levels. A lifetime of memories flashed, fast-forwarding through his mind, and he held on to each of them like a life preserver.

He knew the time would come when he would be called upon to carry out a mission and he gladly accepted his fate.

After he was gone, the experts would argue that he had been “radicalized” to an unbending ideology; that specific signs were ignored before he’d reached the final plateau. They call it the “jumping-off point to terror”. But they wouldn’t uncover any of the typical signs.

He had done everything he had been ordered to do to stay off the FBI’s radar, including keeping his thoughts to himself, not once indulging his ideation, beliefs or fears to anyone, not even to his wife. He never lived a life of isolation and never posted messages on social media. More importantly, no one was aware of his link to al Qaeda. At least, not yet.

For the first time in his life, Umar felt whole—that he was part of something greater.

He wrung his hands together and noticed how his stubby fingers trembled slightly. It was almost time. He stood and faced the clock. His legs shook. He clutched the edge of the desk and held his head high.

Six-forty-nine. The calm before the storm.

For over eight months, he had smuggled all the necessary parts he needed into the facility, hiding pieces in his locker, behind the washroom hand dryer, in his lunch, and even in plastic bags submerged in the toilet tanks. As a nuclear engineer, he had access to restricted areas that were usually off limits to many of the employees. Every free moment he had, he secretly assembled the explosive devices and placed each one where he knew they would have the most impact.  

Six-fifty-five.

Sweat slid down his forehead and dripped onto the bridge of his nose. He swiped the wetness away with the back of his hand and thought about his wife, Afina, grateful for the many wonderful years they’d had together. She was a good woman. A good mother. She’d never forgive him.

About Jet – Oblivion

After a catastrophic terrorist attack at a nuclear plant in California, JET, Mossad’s former deadliest operative, is leading a quiet life off the grid two-hundred-and-seventy miles away with her young daughter. But peace is short-lived when former FBI agent, Hal Decker, and ex-intelligence officer, Angela Donahue, track Jet down and blackmail her into helping them stop a new threat.

In a race against the clock the team must hunt down an al Qaeda terrorist cell working with the Sur del Calle cartel before a dirty bomb is smuggled out of Colombia and into the United States unleashing a deadlier attack at a second nuclear facility.

About the author

Kim Cresswell lives in Ontario, Canada and is the bestselling author of the Whitney Steel series. Trained as a legal assistant, Kim has been a story-teller all her life but took many detours, including working in legal and adult education before returning to her first love, writing.

Her debut romantic suspense, Reflection, has won numerous awards:

• RomCon®’s 2014 Readers’ Crown Finalist (Romantic Suspense)
• InD’tale Magazine 2014 Rone Award Finalist (Suspense/Thriller)
• UP Authors Fiction Challenge Winner (2013)
• Silicon Valley’s Romance Writers of America (RWA) “Gotcha!” Romantic Suspense Winner (2004)
• Honourable Mention in Calgary’s (RWA) The Writer’s Voice Contest (2006).

Lethal Journey won RomCon®’s 2014 Readers’ Crown (Thriller) and was a finalist in From the Heart Romance Writers (FTHRW) Golden Gate Contest (2003).

Her action-packed thrillers have been highly praised by reviewers and readers. As one reviewer said, “Buckle up, Hang on tight!”

Kim recently entered the true crime writing arena. Real Life Evil — A True Crime Quickie (two short stories) was published in January 2014. You can read her latest true crime stories in Serial Killer Quarterly, a new quarterly e-magazine published by Grinning Man Press. She is also a general member of The American Investigative Society Of Cold Cases (AISOCC), a non-profit, volunteer based organization of professional investigators whose sole mission is to assist in solving cold cases.

Coming soon: Deadly Shadow, Book One of her paranormal thriller series.

Check out her blog, Facebook page or her Independent Author Network page,  or follow her on Twitter @kimcresswell.

About Amazon Kindle Worlds

Kindle Worlds is an Amazon initiative that allows authors to publish stories set in another author’s fictional universe. The Jet Kindle World is based on the character Jet, created by bestselling author Russell Blake.