JIm Mortimer

by Warren Bell

People, unless they be star-gazers, do not walk along, as a rule, with their faces turned towards the sky; hence it was that the slender telephone wire communicating between Dr Mortimer's private residence, "Pangora," and the doctor's private asylum, escaped the notice of all but a few who fared along the eight miles of high road dividing Threeways from Millingbourne, in the county of Eastfolkshire. And yet this slender wire, which showed up against the blue sky much like a substantial cobweb, was fraught with interest. It was barely 300 yards in length, its installation had been a comparatively cheap and simple undertaking, and it had paid for itself scores of times over. Messages of life and death passed across it constantly; instructions in cases of emergency, tingling over the white line of road, saved the time that would otherwise have been occupied in walking the 300 yards--for doctors do not often run; reprimands were roared across it, bulletins despatched by its agency, dietary altered, medicine prescribed. The sunshine was coquetting with the little wire, and the great oaks and elms were surveying the flirtation with affected indifference, one bright September morning, when Mr James Mortimer, the Doctor's grandson, who was known among his hospital intimates as the "Long 'Un," having breakfasted in trousers, shirt, and dressing-gown, rose from the table and ambled out into the surgery--for, in addition to an asylum, the doctor had a lucrative practice in that part of Eastfolkshire. The waiting-room adjoining the surgery was empty, save for one small, pale boy.

142 pages, Paperback

Published September 24, 2017

About the author

During over 25 years as a U.S. Naval Officer, including two combat tours in Vietnam, Warren Bell amassed a wealth of background for writing about military life and wartime operations. He experienced the exhilaration and perpetual stresses of command: felt the rush of adrenalin while under small arms fire in Vietcong ambushes; heard the soft whine of shrapnel zipping past his head during rocket attacks; and knew the gut-wrenching nausea of seeing men reduced to bloody slime by incoming artillery. While living in the Arctic, he braved the driving snowfall of Alaskan Williwaws; trekked and hunted the icy slopes of Kodiak Island; and experienced the coppery taste of terror during an earthquake measured at 9.2 on the Richter Scale.

Warren has visited or been stationed all over the world--East and Southeast Asia, the Pacific Islands, the Caribbean Islands, the United Kingdom, France and Germany. His two years on the staff of the Chief of Naval Operations were a postgraduate education in the bureaucratic infighting that occurs in the top echelons of military and political organizations. He served several years with Naval Aviation, becoming an expert on aviation facilities. He has seen much of the world from the air and known the elation of handling the controls of a propeller-driven aircraft. He lived many of the experiences attributed to the characters in his writing and saw the settings with his own eyes.

Following his Naval career, Warren became an environmental expert, specializing in water quality. He employed the strong research skills cultivated while earning advanced degrees in engineering and business administration to push forward the state-of-the-art in removing pollutants from stormwater runoff. He authored numerous published papers and articles on environmental quality (including the cover article of the July 1999 issue of Public Works) and performed pacesetting physical research. He applied these skills to thoroughly researching the state of German aircraft technology during the critical years of World War II. Avid participant in Internet aviation history discussion boards adds depth to his basic research. His education and experience give him a sound grasp of technical data.

Warren is by nature a storyteller. His travels and Navy duty assignments suggested numerous plot lines and settings, and he carefully cataloged these along with details he observed for future use. FALL Eagle One is the result of years of preparation to become a fiction writer in the genre of Tom Clancy, Frederick Forsyth, Jack Higgins, W.E.B. Griffin, and Clive Cussler.