Amateur Night - Kindle Fiction

Amateur Night: A World War II Historical Adventure
C.P. McKechney


When German agents conspire to sabotage the Panama Canal in 1941, an unlikely team of lethal "amateurs" must stop them at all costs.

OPERATION BUCEPHALUS
Objective: Sabotage the Panama Canal

Late November, 1941--scant weeks prior to the Pearl Harbor attack--finds a team of incognito German Luftwaffe aircrew personnel, in company of an SS Special Operations unit, assuming residence in a remote autonomous region of Western Panama, less than two-hundred air-miles from the Canal Zone. Their purpose: Preparation for a clandestine mission which, if successfully executed, could indefinitely disrupt the passage of Allied maritime traffic through the inland waterway in the event of war with the United States.

But the enemy ploy has not gone undetected, and a lone British SIS (Secret Intelligence Service) operative succeeds in alerting the Americans shortly before he is waylaid by locally-implanted Gestapo agents.

Though fully aware of the potential menace posed by a Nazi presence in neutral neighboring territories, U.S. military authorities, with definitive proof of impending hostile actions, are confronted with the sensitive problem of protecting the Canal without employing armed force within a sovereign country--A response which could appear as overt aggression on part of the U.S., thereby creating a diplomatic debacle in Latin America. Further complicating this already perilous situation are the uncertain involvements of Panamanian officials, some of whom are known to be not only resentful of the 'Yanqui Imperialistas,' but decidedly pro-Axis in their political alignment.

Confounded by an effective means of discreetly neutralizing this looming threat, the Office of the Coordinator of Information--a fledgling American intelligence agency created under auspices of the Franklin Roosevelt White House--resorts to subterfuge. They recruit, through close partnership with SIS, the services of individuals with whom there exists no official connections to U.S. interests, their realm of operation extending well beyond the confines of orthodox military or political establishment.

The lethal survival skills of these "gifted, expendable amateurs," as one Allied intelligence director describes them, will greatly impress not only their arrogant overseers, but especially the Nazi agents situated within the Panamanian interior.

Inspired by first-hand accounts as well as documented fact, Amateur Night explores a little-known aspect of clandestine activities carried out during the early phases of World War II.

For the astute reader this story should be considered as strictly a work of historic fiction--or should it?

ENTER THE PLAYERS:

Leander Jamieson Gowrie, disgraced ex-officer of the Black Watch, deadly when sober. Participant in the Spanish Civil War prior to his desertion from the International Brigades, erstwhile soldier-of-fortune in the employ of Chinese warlords, Gowrie currently operates as a hired gun for SIS in the Western Hemisphere, and is furnished to the Americans with a one-way ticket to Panama.

Charley "Doc" Irvine, freelance American aviator. Former aerial duelist in the South China skies, arms smuggler to Haile Selassie's beleaguered Abyssinian troops, and, later, RAF Fighter Command Volunteer Pilot during the Battle of Britain, Irvine presently supplements the income from his Central American air transport business with U.S. and British currency paid in exchange for clandestine courier and recon flights.

Nigel Merriweather, late of the Indian Army and Shanghai Police Department. Scourge of bandits, dacoits, and Malay pirates, killer of over three-hundred Japanese military personnel while serving with Nationalist Chinese guerillas, he has recently raised and trained his own private army of Jamaican poachers for the task of raiding a secret German submarine refueling base located on a neutral Caribbean island; yet this main focus is soon to be redirected.


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