The Linc Malloy Legacies
2021 Chanticleer Fiction Series Finalist in the Global Thriller Awards for High Stakes Fiction
LIBERATOR LEGACY
Linc Malloy Book One
2017 Clive Cussler Collector’s Society Adventure Writer’s Competition Top 10 Semifinalist
2018 Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society Faulkner–Wisdom Competition Semifinalist
2019 Chanticleer Book Reviews Somerset Finalist
Major Lincoln James Malloy III, US Air Force A-10 pilot, resigned his commission and returned home as the third generation to pick up the mantle of the family business—a small airport in the Cascade foothills east of Seattle. In a quest to save his family legacy from destruction, Linc races to uncover the truth behind his grandfather’s World War II plane crash. Against a backdrop of Washington State’s rugged mountains, glaciers, rivers, and waters, Linc roams the sky above, dives deep glacial lakes, and with his two sisters, struggles to find the means to redeem their past and secure their future. Will they all survive a traitor’s treachery in time to beat their deadline, or will Linc see the end of his family legacy?
In the sky . . .
The tachometer wavered, oil temperature pegged in the red, oil pressure almost non-existent. The whining became a keening wail. The keening became a shrieking squeal. A loud bang jolted the engine compartment. The airframe shuddered, once, twice, and the propeller came to a jerky stop.
On the road . . .
The black truck’s engine roared. Jerking right, it slammed into the trailer’s wheel well, throwing sparks into the night. The trailer swerved right. Its brake lights flashed. Smoke and debris poured off the tires.
Beneath the waves . . .
In the darkness, she hovered in silence fifty feet above the dim bottom. A studded tableau of dark, forlorn stumps rose in the green mist. With their straight cut tops, it seemed they had all been cut in a single giant scythe stroke. Left undisturbed in the icy water for seventy years, neither growing nor decaying, they had simply endured.
MINIDOKA LEGACY
Linc Malloy Book Two
2017 Clive Cussler Collector’s Society Adventure Writer’s Competition Top 3 Finalist
2018 Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society Faulkner–Wisdom Competition Semifinalist
Before his WWII internment, a Yakuza accountant joins others in stashing his family’s most precious belongings in the basement of Seattle’s Salvador Hotel. Seventy-five years later, while ex-Air Force pilot Lincoln James Malloy III works as an undercover pilot for the Washington State Patrol, his sisters, Alex and Skylar, follow the clues hinted at by the accountant’s basement legacy. The Yakuza closes in on the girls’ trail and is intent on beating them to their goal. Murder, drug smuggling, human trafficking, and unrequited love weave a deadly story whose threads converge in a long-abandoned aircraft hangar.
Long ago . . .
The pick slammed into the hard-packed earth. He levered it up, loosening the dirt. Raising the pick again, he pulled it down hard, with all his strength and anger into the ground. Again, and again, he punished the earth with the pick until he was breathless and sweating in the cool night air.
Far from home . . .
The pilot turned and stared into the big black hole of a short black pistol. The muzzle rocked. Startled, he realized he was being ordered to get out. He pulled on the parking brake, lifted off his headset, and opened the door.
Atonement . . .
The blade lay across his pinky just past the twine wrap. A tiny line of dark blood welled from under the honed edge. He picked up the sake bottle and took a long, slow pull of the slightly sweet, floral liquid. He paused, savoring the moment, and slammed the bottle down on the knife.
SURINAME LEGACY
Linc Malloy Book Three
2017 Clive Cussler Collector’s Society Adventure Writer’s Competition Top 10 Semifinalist
2018 Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society Faulkner–Wisdom Competition Semifinalist
2019 Chanticleer Book Reviews Somerset Semifinalist
Ex-Air Force pilot Lincoln James Malloy III and his former Crew Chief meet in Suriname to repossess a Beechcraft King Air C90. Stealing the aircraft, they take off and turn for Trinidad. Bullets rip through the thin skin of the airplane. They crash land into dense rainforest where they discover an unlikely surprise in the plane’s lavatory. Rebel soldiers appear from the jungle. Stuck between the jungle rebellion and old government enemies turned uneasy allies, they have only their wits to survive the wild jungle dangers and the treacherous political intrigue of powerful forces.
Going home . . .
Thirty-four thousand feet. Four hundred sixty knots. The thrum of the paired Honeywell turbofans was the only sound in the aircraft.The pilot hung limp in his harness, dead. Beside him the co-pilot took his last unconscious breath. Frost coated the inside of the windows.
Going down . . .
He spread his legs wide, staring at a bullet hole in the floor between his feet. Ragged carpet threads fringed the hole. Raising his eyes to the overhead, blue sky peeked through a clean, round hole in the headliner.
Going back . . .
Both hands clutching the wheel, he aimed for the barest spots in the brush. The car bottomed out with a crushing jolt. A moment of peaceful weightlessness. Headlight beams stabbed high into the night air. A spine-wrenching drop to hard-packed earth, and in the sudden quiet, a cloud of dust swirled in the windows.
ANGEL’S SALVATION
Linc Malloy Book Four
2019 Pirate’s Alley Faulkner Society Faulkner–Wisdom Competition Finalist
2019 Chanticleer Book Reviews Somerset Long List
Eighteen years ago, Shellie Ann Krueger saw her acrobatic pilot husband crash and burn. A year later, in a drunken fog, she walked away from her life, abandoning her daughter, Skylar, to her friends and business partners, the Malloys. What should have been a short bender became seventeen years. A missing duffel and Shellie’s sudden emergence from a quiet, Albuquerque desert compound sends ex-Air Force pilot Lincoln James Malloy III and his father on a mission to find Shellie’s rescuer. Political connections and powerful men protect what goes on behind the barbed wire. Helicopters, airplanes, and white tape help Linc and his father risk everything and stop at nothing to rescue the innocent and uncover the truth.
Years on the run . . .
Eighteen years ago, she watched her pilot husband smear himself across a Midwest runway. Vodka and a guilty love muted his haunting screams from the burning wreckage. What should have been a week became seventeen years. Then, one meal changed her life.
A torch carried . . .
He found her outside Albuquerque in a barbed wire compound where she cared for young girls enjoying a taste of the country life. It was a simple rescue and a chance at redemption. But he found something else.
A secret unearthed . . .
He stepped through the hallway. It led to a deep rectangular stairwell. Flights of rusted metal stairs descended from wall to wall with short landings between flights. A quick glance with flashlight and pistol revealed a deep center shaft.
ANGEL’S LEGACY
Linc Malloy Book Five
Twelve-year-old orphan, Angela Puentes, has a secret.
A secret even she does not know she holds.
After last year’s rescue from human traffickers in New Mexico by Linc Malloy and his clan, they attempt to adopt her into their family. Tragically, her US asylum application is denied. She is captured and returned to her uncle in Guatemala.
Angela, now held a virtual prisoner at her uncle’s highland hacienda, yearns to be reunited with the Malloys, as her uncle and his men desperately search for the secret she unknowingly holds.
Should he discover the truth, what fate awaits young Angela?
With an uncertain ally, a tiny bush plane, a battered teddy bear, and more guts than sense, ex-Air Force pilot Lincoln James Malloy III and his crew chief Marshall Grahame struggle to save little Angela before her secret is revealed.
From the rolling hills of northeast Washington State, over subtropical seas, and across Central American skies, they descend into Guatemala’s highland cloud forest facing wild country, a private army, and a CIA rogue, to try once again to rescue a young girl who has stolen their hearts and to save Angel’s Legacy.
Above . . .
Gunshots and hurried footsteps filled the house. Clutching her teddy bear, she ran, the flashlight beam chaotically leading the way. Heavy, musty air filled the long tunnel. Water stains painted the walls in abstract patterns. Her feet slapped on wet concrete, damp from seeping cracks. She could feel the dense forest looming somewhere above.
All alone . . .
She ran as fast as she could toward the trees. Breathing hard, she looked back. The man was running after her. Dressed all in black, his face hidden by a mask. Like the death squads back home. He was gaining. She had to make the trees.
With the short shovel . . .
He dug deeper as the man’s rifle urged him on. His Italian mother had always said, a sudden shiver meant someone had just walked over your grave. He wondered if that applied to himself. Gingerly stepping into the hole, his feet sank into the damp loam. He shivered from his cold, wet clothes.
RIP CITY LEGACY
Linc Malloy Book Six
Years ago, ex Air Force A-10 pilot, Major Lincoln Malloy rained down hell on a Taliban stronghold in Kunar Province. Regrettably, he missed the CIA’s primary target, The Engineer, but killed his soldier son, Waleed.
Now, with a terminally ill daughter and an insatiable thirst for revenge, The Engineer trades his Taliban knowledge for entry into the United States and a kidney transplant for his daughter.
A Washington DC lawyer insists Linc Malloy is the only pilot to deliver a kidney to a dying child. With no experience in organ transport, Linc first refuses then reluctantly accepts the confidential mercy flight contract. Clandestine forces from Linc’s Afghan past conspire to prevent the delivery.
Who would want a child dead?
A smoke trail arcs upward toward the heat plume of a tiny jet.
Bullets thump into an army sedan.
An engine surges. A car flips. A kidney is lost.
Trusting in Allah, he pried up the lining of one shoe, and slipped the key under.
As a bureaucratic, multi-agency taskforce spins its wheels, Linc and Marsh risk it all in a coast-to-coast quest through Anarchist enclaves to save a little girl and stop a horrifying Rip City Legacy.
From the sky . . .
An unseen hand swept him back, slamming him into the rear shelves, showering him with broken bricks and wooden splinters from the front wall. A pulsing whine rang in his ears. Dust choked his throat. Grit stung his eyes.
From the ground . . .
A smoke trail rose from a freeway overpass. Jamming the throttle to full, he pulled back on the stick into a hard-climbing left bank. Three Gs pressed him into his seat. If it was an old stinger, it could be confused by flares, but he didn’t have any flares.
From twisted metal . . .
He yanked. The man yanked back. A loud click and a black, four-inch tactical blade appeared in the man’s hand. Tightly holding the OrganBox, the man leaned back. The shoulder strap grew taut. The knife flashed, the strap parted, and the man vanished with the kidney.
In the desert . . .
Loose cables struck the downslope. Sparks exploded upward, sizzling as five-hundred-thousand-volts of direct current drilled itself back home to ground. The tight cables behind melted under the tremendous current and parted. The tower plunged toward the canyon.
SHANGHAI LEGACY
Linc Malloy Book Seven
2024 Pacific Northwest Writers Association Literary Contest Finalist
Ex-Air Force pilot, Lincoln James Malloy, answers a plea from his marine biologist sister to help her out of a jam. About to sail from Guayaquil, Ecuador on the Royal Research Ship Pacifica, their required EMS helicopter pilot has gotten himself arrested. Reluctantly, Linc agrees to rendezvous in Ecuador and ferry the EMS helicopter out to Pacifica, bound for the Galapagos Spreading Zone, a volcanic hotspot hundreds of miles north of the islands.
During the night, three black Zodiacs skim across the dark, equatorial sea approaching Pacifica. Grapples sail over the gunnel. A squad of well-trained pirates climb aboard, commandeer the ship, and hold the crew and scientific staff hostage in the mess. The leader’s message to the fifty captive souls, “Stay here. Stay quiet. And stay alive.”
Not on the ship’s personnel manifest, alone and weaponless, Linc steals through the hundred-meter-long rat’s maze of a ship, dodging pirates and stealthily observing their mission. Soon he realizes this is not a simple hijacking for ransom, but a much more deadly operation.
What could a Royal Research Ship have on board justifying the risk and expense of an international hijacking?
When Linc uncovers their true mission, the stakes escalate beyond anything he has confronted before. Facing death from above and below, with a rebellion simmering in the mess, he fights to thwart the deadly operation. Will the pirates discover his Achilles heel before he can save the crew, the ship, and the world from the Shanghai Legacy?
A ruthless offer . . .
Two men walked stiffly to the stern scupper where the gunnel was cut away for the aft winch’s hauling cable. Together they glanced back and stepped overboard.
Over the rail . . .
Forty feet below, the bow sliced through the swells as easily as it would slice through him should he fall.
At the rail . . .
Half his smoke gone, he turned astern, gazing toward the streaming wake. The plasma torch popped. He spun back, and stopped, staring directly at the rail. His eyes followed the line down. Shock flashed across his face. He fumbled for his pistol.
A small voice said . . .
“Oh, dear. I seem to have been shot.”