Ships of the Desert

By Tim Parise

Sir Charles Grosley is a wildly successful billionaire banker. There is no apparent reason why he should suddenly decide to invest his fortune in mining ventures in the war-torn Central African Republic. Maybe he did help the Seleka rebels sweep to power a few years after the former government almost eradicated them, and maybe they are inclined to cut him a deal on his concessions as a result, but that's not a sufficient reason by itself. It certainly doesn't explain why he's flying all over the neighboring state of Chad, holding meetings with the local sultans and disturbing the tribal balances of power. Nor does it account for his large purchases of tunneling equipment through a retired Chinese general, or for the sudden influx of foreign aid workers into a certain region of the CAR, or for the private regiment of Sikh veterans that he's raised to protect his holdings. And Captain Mbala, acting head of counterintelligence for the Central African Armed Forces, would very much like to know what his true motivation is. Mark Andover collects airplanes. He'll buy them if he has to, although he prefers to smuggle them out of forgotten corners of the world and then pay off inspectors to look the other way. His museum at Homestead AFB is filled with his illicit, one-of-a-kind rescue projects. So when a couple of Tuareg tribesmen turn up with evidence of a WWII Lancaster bomber that made a forced landing in the Chadian desert and was hidden beneath the sand until recently, he buys it from them on the spot. His plan to salvage the plane is an audacious one, but as his crew digs the bomber out of the Sahara, he begins to realize he may be engaged in a race against time that he can't win: a race with Sir Charles Grosley. Meanwhile, in a laboratory beneath the desert, a group of engineers is at work on a spaceship that will break the technological stagnation that has endured since the last Apollo mission and finally deliver on the optimistic promises of the 1950s. The Space Age will be reborn and humanity will reach out to colonize the planets in a single stride. But to make the ship fly, two governments must first be destroyed. (Paperback edition includes two explanatory maps.)

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 1518846416
• ISBN13: 9781518846410
• Release Date: November 2015
• Publisher: CreateSpace Independent Publishing Platform
• Length: 300 Pages
• Weight: 1.14 lbs.
• Dimensions: 9.0" x 0.7" x 6.0"