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The Nereus Deception: Book 2 of The Pluss & Kinn Naval Mystery Series
Paperback
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ISBN13: 9798274113939
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Nov 11 2025
Pages: 126
Weight: 0.39
Height: 0.27 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
Publisher: Independently Published
Published: Nov 11 2025
Pages: 126
Weight: 0.39
Height: 0.27 Width: 6.00 Depth: 9.00
Language: English
The Law Can't Touch Him. The System Protects Him. They'll Have to Break Both to Bring Him Down.
In the deep, quiet corridors of the Pentagon, a decorated Rear Admiral hides a secret that could burn the U.S. Navy to the waterline. Four years ago, off the coast of San Diego, a submarine tender accidentally collided with a fleet oiler. It was a minor footnote in naval history.
In the deep, quiet corridors of the Pentagon, a decorated Rear Admiral hides a secret that could burn the U.S. Navy to the waterline. Four years ago, off the coast of San Diego, a submarine tender accidentally collided with a fleet oiler. It was a minor footnote in naval history.
But it wasn't an accident. It was murder.
The case begins with a whisper from the grave. A Navy chaplain, bound by the sacred seal of confession, hears the last words of a dying sailor-a terrified man named Weedman who admits he intentionally caused the 1963 collision on his captain's orders. It was a staged disaster to silence a young lookout, Seaman David Miller, who saw something he shouldn't have. Weedman's payment for his part in the killing: a single silver dollar.
The chaplain's anonymous, untraceable note lands on the one desk in the Navy that can act on it: Admiral Fletcher's. He summons his secret weapon, the off-the-books investigative team that exposed the Point Defiance conspiracy.
Lieutenant Commander Joe Pluss, the quiet, methodical lawyer, is tasked with working the official channels. He pulls the perfect four-year-old report and immediately finds the inch that's out of place. The minor collision was a cover for two catastrophic, buried secrets: the murder of Seaman Miller and the accidental loss of a prototype nuclear depth charge component.
Mr. Earl Kinn, the civilian operative and former Earl of Mischief, is sent to hunt the unofficial truth. Working the smoky, dockside bars, he discovers the real story from an old Chief. The helmsman, Little Abner Weedman, was a screw-up facing a court-martial for theft. The day after the fatal collision, his record was mysteriously scrubbed clean, and he was honorably transferred to the other side of the world. It was a payoff.
The trail leads Pluss and Kinn to the dead sailor's grieving family in Iowa, who provide the case's smoking gun: David Miller's last letter home.
The two investigations merge on a single, chilling fact. The silver dollar given to Weedman is the exact same tell used by the assassin in their previous case-proving the murder of Seaman Miller wasn't an isolated crime. It was another hit by the same shadowy network that has infiltrated the Navy, a network run by the elusive Mr. Gray.
But this time, the man who gave the order, Captain Garvey, is no longer a captain. He is Rear Admiral Garvey, a powerful, untouchable flag officer in a fortress of power at the Pentagon.
When Pluss's official inquiry rattles Garvey's cage, the Admiral panics, ordering his patriotic young aide, Yeoman Sarah Jenkins, to illegally bury the evidence. In a desperate act of conscience, she makes an anonymous, secure call to Pluss, giving him the final piece of the puzzle: the real crime wasn't just the nuke. It was a ghost ledger-a massive, illegal sale of 50,000 barrels of Navy fuel to a civilian tanker owned by Argus Maritime, the same front corporation from their first case.
To catch a traitor this powerful, they must stage their most audacious prank yet. They must become the ghosts.
In a brilliant, high-stakes con, Kinn, disguised as a maintenance man, shorts the power to Garvey's entire Pentagon office wing. In the ensuing chaos, Pluss, the ranking officer on the scene, invokes security protocols to inventory the Admiral's unsecured personal safe. And in a masterful sleight-of-hand, he plants the ghost-the silver dollar-for the official witnesses to discover.
In The Nereus Deception, the lawyer and the prankster must risk their careers and their freedom to take on the system itself. They have the truth. They have the con. Now, they just have to get out of the Pentagon alive.
The case begins with a whisper from the grave. A Navy chaplain, bound by the sacred seal of confession, hears the last words of a dying sailor-a terrified man named Weedman who admits he intentionally caused the 1963 collision on his captain's orders. It was a staged disaster to silence a young lookout, Seaman David Miller, who saw something he shouldn't have. Weedman's payment for his part in the killing: a single silver dollar.
The chaplain's anonymous, untraceable note lands on the one desk in the Navy that can act on it: Admiral Fletcher's. He summons his secret weapon, the off-the-books investigative team that exposed the Point Defiance conspiracy.
Lieutenant Commander Joe Pluss, the quiet, methodical lawyer, is tasked with working the official channels. He pulls the perfect four-year-old report and immediately finds the inch that's out of place. The minor collision was a cover for two catastrophic, buried secrets: the murder of Seaman Miller and the accidental loss of a prototype nuclear depth charge component.
Mr. Earl Kinn, the civilian operative and former Earl of Mischief, is sent to hunt the unofficial truth. Working the smoky, dockside bars, he discovers the real story from an old Chief. The helmsman, Little Abner Weedman, was a screw-up facing a court-martial for theft. The day after the fatal collision, his record was mysteriously scrubbed clean, and he was honorably transferred to the other side of the world. It was a payoff.
The trail leads Pluss and Kinn to the dead sailor's grieving family in Iowa, who provide the case's smoking gun: David Miller's last letter home.
The two investigations merge on a single, chilling fact. The silver dollar given to Weedman is the exact same tell used by the assassin in their previous case-proving the murder of Seaman Miller wasn't an isolated crime. It was another hit by the same shadowy network that has infiltrated the Navy, a network run by the elusive Mr. Gray.
But this time, the man who gave the order, Captain Garvey, is no longer a captain. He is Rear Admiral Garvey, a powerful, untouchable flag officer in a fortress of power at the Pentagon.
When Pluss's official inquiry rattles Garvey's cage, the Admiral panics, ordering his patriotic young aide, Yeoman Sarah Jenkins, to illegally bury the evidence. In a desperate act of conscience, she makes an anonymous, secure call to Pluss, giving him the final piece of the puzzle: the real crime wasn't just the nuke. It was a ghost ledger-a massive, illegal sale of 50,000 barrels of Navy fuel to a civilian tanker owned by Argus Maritime, the same front corporation from their first case.
To catch a traitor this powerful, they must stage their most audacious prank yet. They must become the ghosts.
In a brilliant, high-stakes con, Kinn, disguised as a maintenance man, shorts the power to Garvey's entire Pentagon office wing. In the ensuing chaos, Pluss, the ranking officer on the scene, invokes security protocols to inventory the Admiral's unsecured personal safe. And in a masterful sleight-of-hand, he plants the ghost-the silver dollar-for the official witnesses to discover.
In The Nereus Deception, the lawyer and the prankster must risk their careers and their freedom to take on the system itself. They have the truth. They have the con. Now, they just have to get out of the Pentagon alive.
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