No Man’s Land – A Russell Carter Thriller
Roland Fishman
Author Bio
Roland Fishman lives in Sydney, Australia with his partner Kathleen Allen, who was integral to the writing of No Man’s Land.
In 1992, Roland founded The Writers’ Studio, a creative writing school based in the Sydney suburb of Bronte. Since then, thousands of people have completed his courses both Live and Online.
Roland and Kathleen continue to teach the live classes and have conducted three sold-out workshops at The Sydney Writers’ Festival.
In creating the program, Roland drew on his own extensive career as a writer, as well as his experiences travelling around the world learning the art and craft of writing from bestselling authors and elite teachers.
AUTHOR WEBSITE: www.rolandfishman.com.au (entry form would not accept URL – neither .com.au nor .com)
Description
Special operative Russell Carter has turned his back on everything he ever believed in. A year ago he walked away from the order and its leader, Thomas Wing, a man he once regarded as a father. Since then he’s been living the good life, surfing at Lennox Head and trying to forget his past.
On Christmas Day Thomas is kidnapped from a remote bush property near the Queensland border, and Carter is sucked straight back into the violent world he left behind. Now an Indonesian terrorist cell is trying to kill him – and every other member of the order.
With Carter and the order out of the way, the terrorists hope to carry off a daring attack on Sydney Harbour on New Year’s Eve – just days away – when huge crowds gather on the water and foreshore to celebrate.
Carter is forced to team up with Thomas’s daughter, Erina – the only woman he has ever loved, and who he abandoned without saying goodbye. Together they must travel into the wilds of Indonesia and back again in a desperate bid to save Thomas – and the lives of thousands of others.
“Several of the action sequences are portrayed in such granular detail that often time dilates … As it draws to its conclusion the conflict explodes like a display of fireworks.” Nick Lathouris – Co-writer Mad Max IV
Book excerpt
Lennox Head, the far north coast of New South Wales, Australia,
5.30 a.m., Christmas Day
A breaking wave thumped into the sandbank a few feet from where he stood and a fine cool mist of spray washed over him. He tightened his low-slung board shorts and shifted his six-footer from under his left arm to his right. The surf was pumping. It was shaping up as a solid day and he was itching to get amongst it.
But a man like Russell Carter knew when someone intended doing him serious bodily harm. Something about those three guys who’d pulled up next to him in the parking lot a few minutes earlier had triggered his internal alarm. It rarely let him down.
And it wouldn’t shut up.
Full light was five to ten minutes away. The rising sun sat just below the ocean’s horizon, hovering between the darkness and the light, the past and the future. He was standing alone on the jagged rocks, studying the break he’d been surfing since he was a kid, trying to get a read on it.
He took a deep breath and exhaled. The surf was his church, the one place where he found solace and the world made sense.
Since returning to his childhood home, more than a year ago now, he’d surfed this break every morning. Life was good. His past had stayed where it belonged.
He glanced over his shoulder. From where he stood, he couldn’t see the parking lot. But nobody was coming down the dirt track toward him.
He was hung-over and hadn’t had much sleep, and he’d been out of the game for over a year – perhaps there was nothing more to it than that. There was no reason to suspect trouble.
A huge wave boomed out to sea. He pushed his long black hair out of his eyes and watched the bubbling foam surge over the rocks below before retreating.
Then the ocean went quiet, as if holding its breath.
The lull between sets presented the window of calm he was waiting for.
He launched himself board first off the rocks and hit the water with a thud. He started stroking hard and deep, heading for the still-water channel that ran to the left of the break. The cool of the ocean and the feel of his board ploughing through the water helped to clear his head.
It took him five minutes to fight his way through the oncoming walls of surging foam and reach calm water. When he was halfway toward the take-off zone where the other surfers sat in a pack, he stopped paddling and looked toward the shore.
The three guys were already in the water, powering their boards through the first set of broken waves. They were heading toward him, negotiating the challenging surf like pros.
He lay back down and started stroking out to sea at a steady pace. He’d find out soon enough whether his instincts about them were on the mark or if it was just his hangover talking.
Author website
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