The Spiraling Worm

The Jack Dixon / Harrison Peel Series


THE AGENTS

 

Jack Dixon

 

John Dixon grew up in Springfield, Illinois, the son of a City Councilman, and attended Southern Illinois University in Carbondale, majoring in Sociology with a minor in History.  Upon graduation, and after the murder of his father (which remains unsolved), he moved to Chicago and became a policeman.  He quickly rose through the ranks, attaining his detective's badge at the age of twenty-five and joining Homicide shortly thereafter.  While working in the Windy City, acheiving a solve rate of over eighty percent on the cases he worked on, he came to the attention of the National Security Agency and was recruited into their ranks in the mid-Nineties.

 

Initially a codebreaker, Dixon fortuitously became involved in the interrogation of a suspected terrorist and managed to extract several key details that had escaped his superiors from the captured subject, averting an imminent bombing of a US embassy in Cairo.  Josh Plenary, one of the NSA's mandarins and the agency's liaison with the CIA, took an interest in young Dixon and promoted him to field agent, and over the next few years Dixon was posted in offices all over the United States, including Seattle, St. Louis and New Orleans.

 

It was also at this time that the NSA, under secret directives from the Executive, expanded its charter to cover security in foreign nations.  Though this activity has always been under the blackest of black operational guidelines, rumors have occasionally leaked out.  Part of Dixon's job was to put out brushfires springing up in America's media, and he performed his duties with exemplary skill.  Eventually, Plenary entrusted his favorite lieutenant with a black ops mission to London to liaise with an MI6 agent about some strange goings-on in Siberia...and Jack Dixon's world changed.

 

Though Dixon is only slightly above-average in intelligence, though his physical characteristics are nothing out of the ordinary, and though he has an unfortunate proclivity towards insubordination and sarcasm, he has become one of the most important men in the world  because he has gone up against the insane forces threatening our planet not once, not twice, but multiple times, and has managed not only to retain his sanity but to prevail, at astronomical odds, against those forces.  NSA psychologists have determined that Dixon's mental state is so stable and flexible that it acts not only as an armor against impossibilities, but even as a weapon - and now Plenary has resigned himself to the fact that, if he wants Dixon to remain effective as an agent against the horrors that face the world on a daily basis, he has to put up with the wisecracks and impulsive shifting of mission parameters that his pet agent is so prone to.

 

And the fact that Dixon has formed a strong, brotherly alliance with an Australian ex-Army man gives Plenary heartburn; allies are all well and good, but the NSA worries that if push ever comes down to shove, Dixon will act to protect and help Harrison Peel even at the expense of national security.  In fact, there is a strong suspicion that Dixon broke security in the Sydney affair, but no proof has ever surfaced.

 

Dixon sees several women on a social basis, but currently seems to be focusing his attentions exclusively on a young scientist at the Smithsonian, Jessica Garvey - in fact, they share a small house in Maryland and have a cat.  He enjoys watching the Orioles, the Nationals and the Redskins when he has a chance to get to the stadium, and he reads trash fiction whenever he gets the chance, especially enjoying the works of Poe, Chandler, Dickens and Henderson.  His drink is single-malt scotch, though he also enjoys beer, and he occasionally smokes Cuban cigars smuggled in on his occasional trip to Aruba to gamble.

 

 

Harrison Peel

 

Harrison Peel was born to a working class family in Sydney Australia, the eldest of two children. In 1989 is enlisted in the Australian Army at the Australian Defence Force Academy (ADFA) in Canberra. Three years later he qualified with a Bachelor of Arts majoring in history and politics and the rank of Lieutenant. Peel demonstrated a flair for languages and was accepted into an honors degree, which he completed in 1992.

 

He was assigned to 1st Battalion, Royal Australian Regiment (1RAR), a light infantry battalion based in Townsville, Queensland. Three weeks later because of the growing unrest in Somalia, Peel was deployed to the Horn of Africa. Based in Mogadishu, the battalion was involved in seven major operations and humanitarian relief in southern Central Somalia. Peels quick command of the Arabic, Somali and Kiswahili languages saw him assigned to military intelligence and interrogation.

 

During his stay in Somalia and during his breaks in Nairobi, Peel developed an on again off again relationship with Royal Australian Airforce pilot Samantha Young. He stayed on for two more years after his battalions return home in 1993, aiding the United Nations Forces in their intelligence capabilities.

 

In Townsville, Peel returns to his Regiment undertaking training in the basics of SCUBA diving, parachuting and mountaineering, while participating in defense exercises in Australia’s Northern Territory and Queensland.

 

1995 saw Peel complete a graduate diploma in political studies specializing in terrorism. From this point in his career onwards, Peel is sent on various anti-terrorism assignments in South-East Asia and particularly Africa, developing a reputation as an expert in the field, and is promoted to Captain. He also spent time in Ethiopia, the Sudan and Uganda assisting aid relief with 1RAR.

 

In 2000 Peel’s relationship with Samantha Young finally came to an end, when she resigned from the RAAF and took a commercial pilot’s role in the Caribbean. Figuring that they would rarely see each other again, not that they saw each other much beforehand, they agreed upon a mutual split, although they never lost feelings for each other. 

 

During East Timor’s transition from Indonesian rule to independence, Peel with the 1RAR Group transferred to the tiny island country in 2000, to provide security to the local people while infrastructure and government systems were reestablished. Peel now a Major, was responsible for hunting down militia terrorists and worked closely with the UN officials on the island. Peel had many successes, which brought him to the notice of General Hyatt with whom he would later cross paths. This would be Peel’s last role with his Battalion. Returning to Canberra he took a desk position with the Department of Defence in counter-terrorism.

 

In 2003 Peel was sent to Malaysia to teach the local military counter-terrorism tactics. It was during his time in Asia that Peel encountered the Tcho-Tcho hill tribes and their worshipped of alien gods. He met the British MI6 spy James Figgs and together they ran several operations against the Tcho-Tcho in Cambodia. After completing an arduous assignment in hostile territory in 2004, Peel requested and received a six months training assignment in the United States, assisting the US Military Intelligence develop strategies for identifying and predicting the terror tactics of subversive organizations.

 

Returning to Australia, Peel’s experience now labeled him as an ‘expert’ on alien and other dimensional intrusions. These skills awarded him a promotion as head of security at the Impossible Object project in outback Western Australia. This led to a joint alien research project with the United States’ Department of Defense and the NSA, resulting in an industrial accident in Nevada in 2005 which Peel, aided by EPA case officer Nicola Mulvany, only just managed to contain. After these events, Peel and Mulvany began dating.

 

In 2006 Peel was involved in an incident involving Antarctica and an attack on Sydney, which ended in a massive explosion, the death of thousands and his discharge from the Australian Army. Without an employer, Peel currently works as a consultant to the American NSA, specifically in relations to threats originating in Antarctica and the Congo, and splits his time between Sydney and Baltimore.

 

Harrison Peel often finds himself distrusting authority and is often disappointed by the power plays of his superiors. This belief has led him to run his operations close to the chest. Burnt too many times in the past, he chooses his friends carefully, but when he makes a close and trusted friend, such as Jack Dixon or Nicola Mulvany, he will do all in his power to help and support their needs. As a soldier, Peel still finds him putting the needs of his country before his own, a sentiment he now applies to all people of the world.

CHRONOLOGY

 

Reading order and years in which the Harrison Peel and Jack Dixon stories occur.

 

2004

"Made of Meat"

 

2005

"To What Green Altar"

"Impossible Object"

"False Containment"

 

2006

"Resurgence"

"Weapon Grade"

"The Spiraling Worm"

 

2007

"Not What One Does"

 

2008+

"Stomach Acid"

"Reversed Terror"

Create a free website at Webs.com