Mike Drake spent twenty-three years as a naval intelligence officer, serving aboard surface combatants and in joint commands across the Pacific and the Middle East. He held watches in combat information centers, briefed admirals on submarine threats, and learned to read a magnetic compass in waters where the electronic charts sometimes whispered the wrong things.

After retiring from active duty, he worked as a consultant on maritime cybersecurity and integrated bridge system vulnerabilities?a field he found more frightening than any torpedo. He lives in Virginia with his wife and two Labrador retrievers, and he still checks his heading against a brass compass whenever the weather turns bad.

Eleven Seconds is his scond novel.