Black Flagged Apex

Acknowledgments

In the spirit of tighter writing, I'm going to keep the acknowledgments to a minimum. This is also an effort to keep them on one page (or two), instead of ten, which is where they were headed.

First and foremost to my wife, who spent countless hours reading and taking notes. Once again, she provided several essential course corrections that better served the storyline, and you can thank her for the twist at the very end. She has become my primary sounding board for story ideas and a continuous voice of reason throughout the writing process. Best of all, she can't avoid me.

To the beta reader crew. Bill for his "Caesar-like" thumbs up or thumbs down assessment. I'm always tense waiting to hear from him. Trent and Nancy for reading with enthusiasm and providing an exhaustive list of typos, word suggestions and reality checks. Joe S. for keeping me from writing a novel within a novel. You can thank him for Black Flagged VEKTOR, the next book in the series. Bruce, Marcia and Glen for their read through and suggestions, despite their insanely busy schedules. Jon, for his valued insight as a one of my earliest readers and reviewers. I believe he read this book somewhere in the Bering Straits. To everyone in my writing group, which has served as a guiding light for the critical aspects of character development and narrative. Beyond the furious gun battles and technological intrigue, the Black Flagged series is driven by characters, which is all too easy to forget. Finally, I want to welcome Joe Bunich to the crew. He volunteered to "informally" proof all three of my previous books, and caught errors missed by everyone. He is living proof that the "right" extra set of eyes can make a huge difference.

To the formal production crew, starting with Felicia A. Sullivan, my ever faithful editor. She's been really patient with all of my covert ops, technothriller stuff…and my deadlines. Jeroen ten Berge for the overall Black Flagged series cover concept. I can't wait to see all three covers side by side. Stef for professionally formatting all versions of this novel, in addition to my entire backlist. Trust me, we all win with Stef on the job. His product is flawless. Pauline for proofing all of my books. She's proofed over 500K words for me at this point. Just the thought of that makes me want to turn off my computer.