I wrote this book because nobody else would.
For years I carried the weight of a simple, terrifying truth: the systems that keep planes in the sky, that route thousands of flights across crowded airspace every single day, are far more fragile than anyone outside the industry wants to admit. I know this because I lived inside those systems. I sat in the chair. I watched the radar. And I saw the cracks that nobody talks about at press conferences or congressional hearings.
Vector Strike is the result of that knowledge — and the fear that comes with it. It is the first book in The CRITICOM Files series, and it is available now.
Three Planes. Fifteen Minutes. One Man.
The clock starts ticking on page one.
Daniel Ochieng is a former air traffic controller with a rare and dangerous gift: he sees patterns where others see noise. He can look at a scope full of transponder codes and blinking altitude readouts and sense, almost before the data confirms it, when something is wrong. It is the kind of instinct that kept him sharp during the most demanding years of his career, the kind that earned him the quiet respect of everyone in the tower.
But Daniel walked away from that life. He thought he was done with the pressure, done with the gut-twisting responsibility of holding lives in his hands with nothing but a radio and a screen.
Then his sister is murdered.
Not in some random act of violence. Not in some tragic accident. She is killed because she discovered something she was never supposed to find — a sprawling, invisible network embedded inside the country’s most critical infrastructure. A network built not to defend, but to destroy. And it is aimed squarely at the national aviation system.
Daniel is pulled into the orbit of CRITICOM, an elite cybersecurity unit that operates in the shadows between intelligence agencies, tasked with protecting the systems that hold modern civilization together. With CRITICOM, Daniel confronts a conspiracy that is already in motion: a coordinated attack designed to seize control of three commercial aircraft simultaneously. The attackers do not need bombs. They do not need weapons. All they need is access — and they already have it.
Fifteen minutes. That is how long Daniel has once the attack begins. Fifteen minutes to unravel a plot that has been years in the making, to outthink adversaries who understand the system as well as he does, and to do the one thing no algorithm or failsafe can do — make the impossible call when everything is falling apart at once.
“The radar showed three planes converging on the same corridor at the same altitude. That doesn’t happen by accident. That happens when someone with root access to the routing servers decides that today is the day four hundred and twelve people stop being passengers and start being leverage.”
Why I Wrote This Book
I spent years working in air traffic control. I have spent additional years immersed in cybersecurity. These are not casual interests or topics I researched for a weekend before sitting down to write. They are the disciplines that shaped my professional life, and they gave me a front-row seat to a reality that most thriller writers only guess at.
Here is what I can tell you: the gap between fiction and reality in this space is razor thin. The vulnerabilities I write about in Vector Strike are not invented. The attack vectors are not imagined. The bureaucratic inertia, the turf wars between agencies, the terrifying lag between discovering a breach and actually stopping it — all of it is drawn from the world as it exists right now. I changed names, locations, and specific technical details for obvious reasons, but the architecture of the threat is real.
I wrote Vector Strike because I wanted to put readers inside the room when everything goes wrong. Not the sanitized, Hollywood version where someone barks orders into a headset and the crisis resolves in a neat climax. The real version. The version where you are staring at a screen and your hands are shaking because you know that the next decision you make will either save hundreds of lives or end them, and there is no one standing behind you to tell you which choice is right.
Daniel Ochieng carries that weight through every chapter of this book. He is not a superhero. He is not a special forces operative with a mysterious past. He is a man with a specific set of skills, an unshakable conscience, and the terrible clarity that comes from understanding exactly how bad things can get.
Formats and Pricing
Vector Strike is available now in four formats, so you can experience the story however you prefer:
- Paperback — $19.99
- Hardcover — $29.99
- Premium Hardcover — $34.99
- Ebook — $9.99
- Audiobook — $29.99 (16 hours of narration)
The audiobook clocks in at sixteen hours because this is not a book that cuts corners. Every detail of the aviation system, every layer of the cyber operation, every moment of Daniel’s reckoning with the forces arrayed against him — it is all there, fully realized.
You can find all formats and purchase options on the book’s dedicated page: Vector Strike.
The CRITICOM Files — Five Books, One War
Vector Strike is only the beginning.
The CRITICOM Files is a five-book series, and each installment targets a different sector of America’s critical infrastructure. The threats evolve. The stakes escalate. And Daniel Ochieng is pulled deeper into a shadow war that most citizens will never know is being fought on their behalf.
Here is the full series:
- Vector Strike — Aviation (Available Now)
- Radar Shadow — Surveillance and Intelligence Networks (Coming Soon)
- Dark Current — Power Grid and Energy Infrastructure (Coming Soon)
- Splitwire — Telecommunications and Data Systems (Coming Soon)
- Terminal Approach — The Final Convergence (Coming Soon)
Each book is designed to stand on its own while building toward a larger confrontation that spans the entire series. You will meet new allies, new enemies, and new systems under siege — but the through line is always Daniel, always CRITICOM, and always the question that haunts every page: how do you protect a country whose greatest vulnerabilities are the systems it cannot live without?
I have poured everything I know into this series. The technical authenticity is not a selling point — it is a promise. When you read a CRITICOM Files novel, you are getting the real thing, filtered through a narrative designed to keep you turning pages long past midnight.
This Is Just the Start
I will not pretend that launching Vector Strike has been anything other than a deeply personal experience. This book represents years of knowledge, months of writing, and a lifetime of watching the intersection between technology and human frailty from a vantage point that very few people occupy. I wrote it for the readers who want their thrillers grounded in the truth — who want to feel the sweat on the controller’s palms, hear the static crackle of a frequency that has gone ominously silent, and understand what it actually costs to stand between a nation and the forces trying to bring it down.
Daniel Ochieng’s story starts here. The CRITICOM Files start here. And once you step inside this world, I do not think you will want to leave.
Keep Reading
- Vector Strike — Book Page — Formats, pricing, retailer links, and sample chapters.
- The CRITICOM Files Series — The full five-book series overview and reading order.
- About the Author: Martin Balome — Background, credentials, and the experience behind the fiction.
