The Human Bullet

Joaquin De Torres

Description

Billionaire, visionary, architect and engineer, Dr. Marko Marmilic, has changed the world in unimaginable ways. From his cutting-edge inventions in bio-genetics and cellular rejuvenation, to mechanical design and space-age metallurgy, he's been labeled "the Nikola Tesla of the modern age."

But his newest technological breakthrough is, by far, his most ambitious, and most controversial. Marmilic has been commissioned to develop a machine that will change the entire geopolitical landscape in a way no one could possibly envision.

He has developed a land vehicle that can travel at Hypersonic speeds - an alien-looking super cycle called the Sonic One, that can reach Mach 15 by harnessing the Earth's magnetic fields.

Invisible to radar, exponentially faster than any fighter jet, drone, or missile - and it can do this – without making a sound. Equally impressive is the rider's revolutionary suit of bio-synthetic armor that can protect a human body from incineration at those speeds.

In his eyes, a fleet of Sonic vehicles could transport food, medical supplies and life-saving equipment to the neediest countries in a matter of minutes, saving hundreds of millions of lives the world over.

But to those financing this TOP SECRET scientific miracle, there is a more insidious objective, and to them there is only one person who will operate the machine - Chris Kordell, a full-torso quadriplegic who has just awoken from a two-year coma.

He has no idea where he is, what happened to him, or why he's surrounded by strange scientists. Worst still, he has no clue that he's been chosen to transform Marmilic's vision of altruistic life into one of the most deadly instruments of war ever imagined.

Sujets

• Policier & Thriller
• Thriller
• Policier
• Thrillers
• Crime
• Fiction

Informations

• Publié par: eBookIt.com
• Date de parution: 14 octobre 2017
• Nombre de lectures: 0
• EAN13: 9781456629175
• Langue: English
• Poids de l'ouvrage: 2 Mo

Extrait

THE HUMAN BULLET
 
by
 
Joaquin De Torres
 
Edited by:
 
Dr. Joseph De Torres

Copyright 2017 Joaquin De Torres,
All rights reserved.
Published in eBook format by eBookIt.com
http://www.eBookIt.com
ISBN-13: 978-1-4566-2917-5
No part of this book may be reproduced in any form or by any electronic or mechanical means including information storage and retrieval systems, without permission in writing from the author. The only exception is by a reviewer, who may quote short excerpts in a review.

This novel is dedicated to
MaryJane Coy
To my Aunt MJ, who cared and comforted me
and my brothers, alongside her own children,
when our world was young, carefree and timeless.
You taught us to understand that there is no such thing
as a color barrier in a family. There is only love.
 

 
(9/29/1936 – 5/14/2017)

 
 
 
It is not by muscle, speed, or physical dexterity that great things are achieved, but by reflection, force of character, and judgment.
Marcus Tullius Cicero
DISCLAIMER
This is a work of fiction. The names, characters, places, and incidents are the products of the author's imagination or are used fictitiously.
Permission to use actual names of real people who have a relationship with the author, and are characters in the book, was granted beforehand by the actual people via personal correspondence, and/or per their requests.
Any resemblance to actual events, locales, controversies, conspiracies, or real persons– living or dead-is entirely coincidental.
Names of known people, i.e. public figures, celebrities and national personalities were taken from the free press and open-sources.
Content of this work is protected by the 1st Amendment of the Constitution of the United States:
The First Amendment to the United States Constitution prohibits the making of any law respecting an establishment of religion, impeding the free exercise of religion, abridging the freedom of speech, infringing on the freedom of the press. . .
ACKNOWLEDGEMENT
I would like to personally thank Gary Bell for his dedication and in-depth assistance in this book.
His experience as a NASA engineer phenomenally aided me in details pertaining to aeronautics and physics, which are the critical of this story. His mathematical calculations for the technical facets of this novel were crucial in demonstrating my commitment to literary authenticity and credibility.
Simply put, Gary injected scientific reality and plausibility to fully illustrate the scenes I envisioned.
Thank you, Gary, for fusing your science with my fiction to accomplish this explosive and exciting piece of storytelling.
 
Joaquin De Torres
Introduction
The man, wearing strange clothing colored dark red from his helmet to his boots, took aim down the sights of his rifle.
The victim, unaware that his life was in any danger that day, was a very powerful man. He was a man of vision, fairness, and possessed a passion for the people and community he served.
Judge Kellen Murphy was selected to be a Supreme Court justice when the 8-year term of Justice Theo Jackson was completed. Jackson’s retirement was the first of the new Supreme Court and Congressional Term Limit Laws, written by the Director of Education, Dr. John Belleci, under the late President Turo Marin Sanchez. Belleci’s writings worked to galvanize the retooled and remodeled New Progressive Congress now working for President Ericka Hedlin.
The New Progressive Congress was as controversial as it was historic. It was repopulated by nation-wide special elections brought on by the actions of PIPER’S, Inc. - the secret society of assassins that ruthlessly killed or forcibly retired the most corrupt and polarizing senators and representatives from the old governmental body.
In order to rip out the cancer of Congressional plutocracy, cronyism and corruption, PIPER’S, Inc. physically eliminated all corporate-owned or oligarch-serving members, lobbyists, and special interest representatives which amounted to almost 65 percent of Capitol Hill.
The organization used all means necessary – ruthless and merciless - in the purging of leaders who created laws to benefit the wealthy, while eliminating laws that guaranteed relief for the poor. It had to end. And it did with the advent of PIPER’S, Inc. The country’s most corrupt Congress in history was unapologetically slaughtered.
Initially, the citizens were shocked to the core; but gradually, they would clearly see the promise of a new and dedicated political framework emerging from the lakes of blood and mountains of corpses.
The nation-wide special elections to repopulate this void were the most diverse and dynamic in the history of the country. Independents, Progressives, Socialist-Democrats, Green Party, Libertarians, Liberal Republicans, Log Cabin Republicans, and other coalitions ran to rebuild their jurisdictions without corporate interference. Neo-Conservatism, Neo-Liberalism, Regan Republicans, Blue Dog Democrats, and Christian Right parties were utterly demolished.
It was PIPER’S, Inc. that erased redistricting lines, dissolved corporate money from election campaigns, and made sure the interests and welfare of the people – the common and most neglected American citizen – were put first. They forced every elected official to put their efforts into their constituents, districts and states, and reject corporate interests or else he or she would ‘pay the Piper,’ and everyone knew what that meant.
It was a 5-year merciless onslaught against every form of corruption and injustice suffered by the common people. It was coined “The New Civil War” and “The New American Revolution,” and it involved violence in its most gruesome forms, including economic.
Through PIPER’S, Inc.’s high-tech cyber techniques, massive amounts of assets and whole fortunes of the oligarchs were erased from their off-shore banks, and transferred into the accounts of individuals, programs, and institutions to elevate society as a whole. This would be known as “Robin Hood Economics.”
The forced redistribution of hundreds of billions of dollars into the coffers of newly elected superintendents, ushered in the rebuilding of the nation’s infrastructure, school system, social services, veterans care, medical advances, and the cutting of unemployment and homelessness by 35 percent.
Oligarchs, corporate-owned politicians, and corrupt CEOs were by no means the only groups targeted by PIPER’S, Inc. Wall Street manipulators, governors, mayors, legislators, judges, lawyers, brutal police officers, rapists, pedophiles, radical media mouthpieces, and racist groups – all, felt the hammer of America’s new Big Brother.
And in those five bloody years, PIPER’S, Inc. did the unthinkable – it transformed an entire nation controlled by wretched Capitalistic plutocrats, into a world-respected and economically thriving superpower.
 
* * * * *
 
Judge Kellen Murphy, only 52, a Baltimore 1 st District Court judge, was to benefit under these historic national revisions. He was an obvious choice for President Ericka Hedlin, who had been working with three new Progressive Supreme Court justices who replaced the previous three assassinated by PIPER’S, Inc.
But on February 25 th , a mysterious person dressed in red, skintight clothing of strange design and material, laid his crosshairs on Murphy as he stood outside his home in Columbia, Maryland. The judge enjoyed taking a steaming cup of coffee onto his porch on Sunday mornings, lounging on his rocking chair with the Baltimore Sun in his lap, and enjoying the view of his verdant cul-de-sac, nestled in the woods just 20 miles from Baltimore.
Standing more than 400 yards away in those same woods, the helmeted stranger squeezed his trigger, and the head of the man who fought for decades for the rights of the LGBTQ community and inner-city education, exploded like a watermelon hit by a sledgehammer.
Kellen Murphy didn’t die because he did anything wrong or owed anybody a debt. He died because he was chosen by President Ericka Hedlin, a person the country who sent the assassin, feared and despised. They wanted to weaken her administration by taking away her best and brightest colleagues, her most loyal custodians, and those who helped shape her policy.
Murphy was the first. And for more than a year, more of Hedlin’s cabinet choices and staff members would be hunted in a similar fashion. They never knew who this assassin was, nor imagined who he could be. Those lucky enough to catch a glimpse of him said he was dressed all in red, riding some sort of beefed-up, red hover cycle. They could never get a good look or capture it on their phone cameras for it would disappear in a blur and a roar.
By the time he made his third killing, he already had a codename given by Hedlin’s Intel agencies who were hunting him. They called him - The Red Ghost .
Foreword
There is no limit to how fast a man can travel.
If there is a speed barrier, whether it be scientific, dimensional, theoretical or mythical – Man will find a way to break through it.
Speed has always been the greatest and most rewarding challenge to Humanity. Not height, not length, not depth, not endurance or distance – but speed! Nothing slow has ever been rewarded. But the fastest anything is always celebrated, remembered, anticipated.
Why is this? What’s with Man’s obsession with speed? Perhaps the answer lies in the very fabric of our humanity. Maybe it’s because we all acknowledge, to our great sadness and denial, that our time on Earth is limited. It moves so fast, that there never seems to be enough of it to fulfill our goals, our needs, our fantasies, our passions.
The end comes too quickly, sometimes abruptly; the speed of our deaths becomes horrifying in relation to how long it takes to build anything meaningful.
Dr. John Belleci, one of the great educational minds of our time, once said: Time is a cruel master. It is a villain and a thief. . .like karma, they are both un