HELMUT PORTMANN
Author of the Alex Beck Novels
About the Author
Helmut Portmann spent years working on the US Army’s Pershing Tactical Nuclear Missile System during the Cold War in Europe. He also was hand picked to hunt for Soviet submarines as well as worked to hide our own submarines. He also operated weather, climate, and Tsunami buoys across the world’s oceans.
When a revolution turns childhood into a battlefield, survival becomes a lifelong sentence.
In 1950s Cuba, six children are forced into hiding as soldiers storm their homes and destroy their families. From closets and crawlspaces, they witness horrors no child should ever see—violence, betrayal, and loss that will haunt them forever.
They escape with nothing but shattered innocence, unanswered questions, and a promise they never meant to make
Something is moving beneath the Gulf of Mexico and no one knows how.
When Navy sonar detects strange echoes near offshore rigs, panic spreads instantly. Seismic blasts bounce off a submerged object that should not exist. No engine noise. No mechanical trace. No origin. It glides in silence, then vanishes without warning. The Navy and CIA suspect a secret battery-powered submersible, but every known submarine must surface to recharge. This one never does. Who built it? Why is it here?
America’s warships are under attack, and no one sees it coming.
Without warning, U.S. Navy vessels explode across the Middle East.
The first strike is devastating: a new destroyer, the USS Cushing, is destroyed in port at Aden, Yemen. Investigators suspect terrorist divers and limpet mines, but CIA intelligence reveals something darker—Iran is building a proxy force to strike everywhere. Harbors become battlefields. Every mission is a gamble.
June 28, 1919. Inside the Palace of Versailles, exhausted nations gather to reshape the world after World War I.
While leaders punish Germany, few notice a clause buried deep in the treaty—shared interests in a remote Arctic archipelago called Svalbard. Administered by Norway yet eyed by forty-six nations, its waters and lands hide coal, oil, gas, and rare minerals. A forgotten signature. A hidden prize. A future conflict waiting to ignite.
© 2026 Helmut Portmann, all rights reserved.