Car Wars Read online

  Madison Parker is excited. She just won a big advertising account for a revolutionary new car. Competitive car companies can’t compete with it. But one man decides to do something about that – even though it may cost Madison and many others their lives.

  A suspense thriller.

  MIKE BROGAN

  Lighthouse Publishing

  Also by Mike Brogan

  Breathe

  Kentucky Woman

  G8

  Madison’s Avenue

  Dead Air

  Business to Kill For

  This book is a work of fiction. Names, characters, businesses, organizations, places, events, and incidents are either the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously. Any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, events or locales is entirely coincidental.

  Copyright © 2019

  By Mike Brogan

  All rights reserved

  ISBN 978-1-7338037-0-0 (print book)

  ISBN 978-1-7338037-1-7 (epub)

  ISBN 978-1-7338037-2-4 (epdf)

  Library of Congress Control Number: 2019934509

  Printed in the United States of America

  Published in the United States by Lighthouse Publishing.

  Cover design: Vong Lee

  First Edition

  To all my pals in the ad world of “Baseball, Hotdogs, Apple Pie and Chevrolet.” May all your pistons keep hitting on full throttle.

  Acknowledgments

  To my colleagues in the US auto industry who showed me how the business is working hard to deliver better, safer, more cost-efficient vehicles each year.

  To my friends in the advertising business who gave me helpful guidance on the expanding social media world.

  To good friend, John Hus, automotive engineer, for his expert guidance in the technical aspects of this story.

  To good friend, Kevin Pierce, automotive engineer, for his many suggestions and advice.

  To my fellow novelists and writing colleagues for their helpful suggestions and comments.

  To editor/translator, Brendan Brogan, for his insightful improvements to the rough draft of CAR WARS.

  To author, Rebecca M. Lyles, for her comprehensive final edit and enhancements to final manuscript of CAR WARS.

  To wife, Marcie, for her advice as a backseat driver.

  Contents

  ONE

  TWO

  THREE

  FOUR

  FIVE

  SIX

  SEVEN

  EIGHT

  NINE

  TEN

  ELEVEN

  TWELVE

  THIRTEEN

  FOURTEEN

  FIFTEEN

  SIXTEEN

  SEVENTEEN

  EIGHTEEN

  NINETEEN

  TWENTY

  TWENTY ONE

  TWENTY TWO

  TWENTY THREE

  TWENTY FOUR

  TWENTY FIVE

  TWENTY SIX

  TWENTY SEVEN

  TWENTY EIGHT

  TWENTY NINE

  THIRTY

  THIRTY ONE

  THIRTY TWO

  THIRTY THREE

  THIRTY FOUR

  THIRTY FIVE

  THIRTY SIX

  THIRTY SEVEN

  THIRTY EIGHT

  THIRTY NINE

  FORTY

  FORTY ONE

  FORTY TWO

  FORTY THREE

  FORTY FOUR

  FORTY FIVE

  FORTY SIX

  FORTY SEVEN

  FORTY EIGHT

  FORTY NINE

  FIFTY

  FIFTY ONE

  FIFTY TWO

  FIFTY THREE

  FIFTY FOUR

  FIFTY FIVE

  FIFTY SIX

  FIFTY SEVEN

  FIFTY EIGHT

  FIFTY NINE

  SIXTY

  SIXTY ONE

  SIXTY TWO

  SIXTY THREE

  SIXTY FOUR

  SIXTY FIVE

  SIXTY SIX

  SIXTY SEVEN

  SIXTY EIGHT

  SIXTY NINE

  SEVENTY

  SEVENTY ONE

  SEVENTY TWO

  SEVENTY THREE

  SEVENTY FOUR

  SEVENTY FIVE

  SEVENTY SIX

  SEVENTY SEVEN

  SEVENTY EIGHT

  SEVENTY NINE

  EIGHTY

  EIGHTY ONE

  EIGHTY TWO

  EPILOGUE

  ABOUT THE AUTHOR

  ONE

  Lilly Thompson smiled at the winding road ahead. For good reason. Dean, her cute, smart fiancé, was just minutes ahead, waiting for her with open arms at his parents’ home in Michigan’s Upper Peninsula.

  She looked forward to their dinner tonight at the romantic Grand Hotel on nearby Mackinac Island. After dinner, they’d check out the hotel’s availability for their June wedding. She’d already picked out her wedding dress, a beautiful Vera Wang she could afford thanks to the special price from the bridal shop, and her new promotion at Global Vehicles.

  A promotion that included the new GV company car she was driving. Really new. An XCar. The XCar would not be on sale at GV dealerships for four months. Only two hundred early-release XCars had been shipped to dealers for showroom displays, Win-An-XCar contests, and sales to very select customers.

  As she drove north on I-75, she glimpsed the pristine blue water of Lake Paradise, remembering that Dean said Michigan had eleven thousand freshwater lakes, more freshwater than any country in the world.

  She noticed drivers glancing at her XCar’s sleek clean design, sort of a roomy SUV with a sleek hatchback flair. But XCar had much more than good looks. Thousands of people would soon be driving XCars for its revolutionary new battery power system that let them drive up to five hundred miles between battery recharges - recharges that took only fifteen minutes. No other car manufacturer had anything like its electric power or recharge system. The gas savings would be in the thousands annually for most drivers.

  She passed a vegetable truck and saw the towering Mackinac Bridge ahead. The Mighty Mac, the longest suspension bridge in the western hemisphere, soared up into a misty sky like an ancient humpback dinosaur. She drove up to the entrance, paid the four-dollar fee, and drove onto the bridge. The five-mile-long bridge would carry her over Lake Michigan and deposit her in the state’s Upper Peninsula near the town of St. Ignace, where Dean’s parents lived.

  She followed a royal-blue Chevy Malibu and wondered if her bridesmaids’ dresses should be royal-blue. Or maybe pink, or turquoise, or lavender, or lime green. Maybe her five bridesmaids should vote.

  Approaching the summit of the bridge, she saw the churning waters of Lake Michigan below. The wind whipped up whitecaps. The view was spectacular. She looked toward Mackinac Island and glimpsed the Grand Hotel’s incredibly long front porch, perfect for some wedding photos.

  The huge white hotel was embraced by lush green gardens and forests. She was looking at a Camille Pissarro painting.

  Suddenly - her car surged a bit.

  She eased up on the gas, but it surged faster.

  She took her foot off the gas.

  The car raced still faster!

  She hit the brakes.

  There were none.

  What’s happening?

  The speed limit was forty-five, but she was doing sixty - without touching the gas!

  She raced around two cars whose drivers stared at her like she was crazy.

  Ahead, slower cars blocked both lanes!

  She couldn’t steer around them. Couldn’t brake! She hit the horn but it didn’t work. She would crash into them in seconds.

  But then her car slowed and steered itself to the right, then left, then toward the short c
enter-divider that blocked her from oncoming traffic.

  Who’s driving this car?

  She reached to turn the key off, but the car had keyless ignition. The key was buried in her purse.

  Without warning, the car steered hard left again, plowed through the small center divider - barely missing oncoming delivery truck - and raced directly at the three-foot high guard-railing separating her from the water two hundred feet below.

  She pounded on the brakes . . .

  Still none.

  She smashed through the railing, went airborne, and plunged toward the frigid water below.

  This is not happening!

  But it was!

  Her life flashed before her. Dean, her wedding, their life together . . .

  * * *

  One hundred yards behind Lilly, a man in a black BMW stopped with the other cars and watched Lilly’s XCar crash through the railing and plunge into the choppy water below.

  Perfect, he thought.

  TWO

  MANHATTAN

  “He’s not going to phone me,” Madison McKean-Jordan said to Kevin, her husband of eleven months, and with luck the father of their child in nine more.

  “He’ll phone you!” Kevin Jordan said.

  “He’ll email.”

  “No - he’s a Midwesterner - he’ll use Morse code or smoke signals!”

  “He’ll email. He’ll say ‘Thanks for your agency’s hard work, Madison, but sorry, we’ve chosen a larger global advertising agency.’”

  “We have a chance!”

  “Our competitors have advantages!” she said.

  “I’m an optimist!” he said.

  “Yeah, cockeyed!” she said.

  “So . . .?”

  “So if blood-dripping lions chased you up a tree - you’d brag about the view!”

  “It could be stunning!”

  “Yeah, for the lions!”

  They sat in the small meeting room attached to her office. Madison was Chairman of Turner Advertising, the advertising agency handed over to her by her father Mark McKean. He’d retired two years ago to go three-putt his hours away on a Florida golf course and regularly remind her that her biological clock was running and that he’d love to hear the pitter-patter of little feet around the house.

  She told him to buy a Chihuahua.

  As she and Kevin waited for the big phone call, anticipation crackled in the air like static electricity. She hoped Kevin’s optimism was justified, that they got the call saying they made the shortlist of three agencies who could pitch for a huge new advertising account.

  But deep down she knew (heck - everyone in advertising knew) her agency’s chances were slim to none. Their competitors had awesome global advertising resources, exactly the credentials most multinational clients want.

  The phone call would come from a very large prospective client: Global Vehicles. The caller would tell them whether they’d made the three-agency shortlist. If they did, they could make a presentation for the advertising assignment of GV’s new XCar with its revolutionary new battery-power system. The annual advertising budget was two hundred seventy million dollars in media advertising, plus another forty million in social media business.

  It was business her agency badly needed because two years ago her former automotive advertising client, World Motors, was bought by Eastern Auto Manufacturing, whose chairman immediately took Madison’s World Motors advertising and gave it to his son-in-law’s agency. Welcome to the Ad Game.

  The resulting lost revenue hurt Turner Advertising significantly. Madison struggled to keep her auto-advertising experts on staff until she won a new car account. But car advertising accounts rarely come up for review.

  Her agency had to win some new business in the next few months or she’d have to release a number of their experienced automotive experts. And without them, it’d be very difficult to attract a future automotive client.

  She reminded herself to prepare for that scenario, because the ad experts said the XCar required a big global agency system of owned agencies in the major countries where XCar would be sold. Turner Advertising had excellent, but affiliated, agencies in each country.

  Madison’s desk phone rang.

  She grabbed it.

  “This is Madison Jordan.”

  She listened for several moments, feeling her stomach constrict, not liking what she heard, not wanting to hear it, but expecting it. Slowly, she exhaled and nodded.

  Kevin placed a comforting hand on hers.

  “I understand,” she said. “Well, thank you for letting us know.”

  She hung up.

  Kevin whispered, “So we didn’t make the short list! No problem. General Motors has a new pickup coming in six months. Maybe we can pitch for it.”

  “Oh . . . no. That was Doctor Lyons. She just got our latest test results. Another negative. I’m not pregnant.”

  Kevin slumped in his chair, looking as unhappy as she felt.

  They stared at each other, unable to voice their disappointment at their third “not pregnant” test.

  Her phone rang.

  Madison recognized the name on Caller ID. Her stomach cramped again and her heart started pounding. This was it. The other bad-news call. Could she handle two gut punches a minute apart?

  “Global Vehicles?” Kevin asked.

  She nodded, took a breath and picked up and hit speaker button. “This is Madison Jordan.”

  “Hi, Madison. It’s Pete Naismith at Global Vehicles.”

  “Oh, hi Pete.” She’d met Pete, the Marketing Director for Global Vehicles, at the initial briefing to the agency. She’d liked the man and his straightforward answers.

  “Glad I caught you this late,” Naismith said.

  “It’s only seven-thirty.”

  Naismith laughed. “That’s music to a client’s ears. But I just called to see if your team needed any more background information from us?”

  She couldn’t think of anything. She looked at Kevin who shook his head.

  “No. Your team briefed our team thoroughly, Pete. Unless there’s new information we should be aware of.”

  “No new information. But we do need one last bit of information from you.”

  “Just name it.”

  “How soon can we meet?”

  Her hope rocketed. “Are you suggesting we might be one of the three lucky agency finalists to pitch for your XCar advertising?” She smiled at Kevin.

  “No . . .”

  Another gut punch. “Oh . . .”

  He paused. “I’m saying you’ve won our XCar advertising assignment.”

  She dropped her phone, but snatched it back.

  Kevin leapt to his feet, shooting his arm in the air like he’d hit a walk-off home run.

  “Pete, did you just say we won the XCar assignment?”

  “I did.”

  “But . . . what about selecting three finalists first?”

  “That was our plan, Madison. But frankly, your agency’s XCar presentation blew the other agency presentations out of the water. We decided to choose Turner Advertising based on your XCar creative concepts and marketing strategies. And based on your agency’s prior automotive advertising expertise.”

  “Our auto experts are still on staff.”

  “It’s obvious from your presentation.”

  Kevin jogged around the room like an Olympian taking his victory lap.

  She leaned back against her chair. Kevin hugged her tight enough to break a rib.

  “To answer your question, Pete, we can fly to Detroit tonight and meet you later. Or fly in early tomorrow morning.”

  “Tomorrow morning is fine. You should know that we’ve decided to move the national XCar launch earlier.”

  “When?”

  “A few weeks from now.”

  “Wow - that’s months sooner than your brief indicated.”

  “Yes. We need to launch sooner. And your concept ads can help us do that.”

  “As our ads are now?”
>
  “Yes.”

  Madison was amazed they didn’t want changes. Many clients have great suggestions, some have good suggestions, some have so-so suggestions, and some have batshit-crazy ideas.

  “Can you be here at 10 a.m.?”

  “Yes. In your Detroit headquarters office?”

  “Yes. Our driver, Ike, will meet you at the airport. And congratulations again, Madison. We really liked your strategic thinking and concept work.”

  “Thank you, Pete. We’ll give this all we’ve got.”

  “We need it.”

  “See you tomorrow.”

  They hung up.

  Madison’s eyes moistened. She leapt to her feet, threw her arms around Kevin and hugged him. Their team had just beaten some of the most formidable global advertising agency systems by winning the Global Vehicles XCar advertising assignment. Was she dreaming?

  THREE

  Down the hall from Madison’s office, Chase Chensen, Turner Advertising’s Associate Media Director, had listened to every word of Madison’s conversation with Pete Naismith thanks to the tiny Countryman microphone hidden in her bookshelf.

  Chensen couldn’t believe what he’d heard!

  Turner Advertising just won the XCar advertising business! Incredible! No one predicted it. A stunning win for our agency, Turner Advertising!

  And more important, an unexpected big win for me!

  He closed his office door, grabbed his burner phone, and called the only number it ever called.

  Nester Van Horn answered on the second ring.

  “What’s up?”

  “Turner just won the XCar advertising business,” Chensen said.

  Long pause. “That’s impossible!”

  “Done deal.”

  “Says who?”

  “Says Pete Naismith, Global Vehicles V.P. Marketing Director. I just heard him tell Madison.”

  “But they’re supposed to shortlist three agencies to pitch for the business!” Van Horn said.

  “Changed their mind! No three-agency short list. Game over. Turner flat out won the XCar advertising.”

  “Shit! Turner is a terrific agency,” Van Horn said. “You’ve made award-winning automotive advertising for years. You’ll make great advertising again! Our friend will be very worried.”

  “He should be. But our friend has more to worry about.”