Welcome to the COREY PEARSON- CIA SPYMASTER SERIES!

             Whether you’re looking for a quick, thrilling short-story read or an immersive spy novel to sink into, Corey Pearson's world has something for every adventure lover. Buckle up, explore the world of espionage, and join Corey Pearson on his next mission today! 

COREY PEARSON- CIA SPYMASTER NOVEL SERIES: Enter the deadly world of Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster, where deception is survival and the enemy hides in plain sight in these full-length novels. In Mission of Vengeance, Pearson hunts Russian agents behind a Caribbean massacre. In Shadow War, he uncovers a sleeper cell plot threatening millions on U.S. soil. From covert ops to nuclear threats, these gripping thrillers fuse real spycraft with breakneck action. The line between ally and traitor blurs—and only Pearson’s team can stop the chaos before it’s too late. Then, In Payback, a ruthless assassin is on the loose, murdering young CIA operatives- rising stars handpicked for a secret CIA Mentorship Program.

COREY PEARSON- CIA SPYMASTER SHORT STORY SERIES: These quick, 20-30 minute reads are perfect for spy thriller enthusiasts who crave high-stakes missions packed with real-world espionage and gripping spycraft. Read them in any order and get whisked away into Corey Pearson's daring adventures- devour each one in a single sitting!

How the CIA Really Uses AI and Spy Satellites Today, Revealed in a High-Tech Spy Thriller Novel

Stacie at NSA backs up CIA field ops with supercomputer intelligence in the Ghost Shadow high-tech spy thriller

A modern CIA analyst doesn’t show up to work like they do in the movies. No trench coats, no ringing red phones. Most days start with bad coffee, low lights, and a wall of screens already full of overnight alerts. Buried somewhere in all that noise is one detail that doesn’t quite fit. Spotting that is where the real work begins.

     At the Central Intelligence Agency, intelligence today is a partnership between people and machines. Human intelligence still matters just as much as it ever did. You still need to understand why a source is talking, trust a case officer’s instincts, and rely on an analyst’s judgment to connect the dots.  What’s changed is the volume. There’s simply too much information for humans to process alone, so AI now does the first sweep. It translates, summarizes, scans for odd patterns, and flags anything that looks off. Analysts decide what’s real and what’s worth chasing.

     In Ghost Signal, that moment comes when a U.S. surveillance drone drops out of the sky without warning. This isn’t a cheap or disposable aircraft. It’s a high-altitude, long-endurance system packed with encrypted communications, redundant controls, and advanced sensors. It watches, listens, and feeds intelligence back through satellites in real time.

     Then it simply stops responding. No explosion. No missile trail. It veers off course and vanishes from the network, like someone flipped a switch. That’s when alarms go off. Mechanical failures don’t look like that.

     So when Stacie appears on the screen from NSA headquarters, hair tied back and eyes locked on her monitors, there’s a reason everyone listens. She’s a CIA asset planted inside the NSA, quietly embedded where the data is thickest and the tools are most powerful. She doesn’t waste time. She says she’s running analysis. That’s realistic. When a high-end U.S. drone is lost under strange circumstances, nobody wants drama. They want answers.

     The first question is always the same: was this random, or did someone do it on purpose? That distinction changes everything. AI starts tearing through data from the drone’s final moments, looking for anything out of place. Repeating signals. Strange timing. Patterns that don’t belong. Machines are great at spotting those details.

     Stacie’s call that the signal wasn’t random but an encrypted burst firing every eight seconds is exactly how this works. The system flags the anomaly. The analyst interprets it. When she says the drone wasn’t jammed but taken over, that’s human judgment. And it reframes the whole incident. This wasn’t interference. It was sabotage.

     From there, intelligence becomes a fusion problem. Signals alone aren’t enough. Satellite imagery alone doesn’t explain intent. Human reporting fills in the gaps. As Stacie tracks the signal bouncing through Havana, Jamaica, and then somewhere moving at sea, she’s narrowing the problem the way CIA analysts do every day. Machines crunch the math. Humans recognize what matters.

     That leads to satellites being tasked to look at one specific patch of ocean. When the feed locks onto a white yacht cutting through dark Bahamian waters, it isn’t luck. It’s the system working. Now there’s something concrete the team on the ground can act on.

     This is where context beats computing power. A satellite can show antennas on a deck. It can’t tell you who owns the yacht or why it matters. That comes from digging through records, shell companies, and human reporting. Stacie tying the vessel back to a Russian oligarch named Orlov isn’t a big reveal. It’s a lot of small pieces snapping together.

     From there, intelligence drives action. Analysts don’t board the yacht, but they shape every move leading up to it. They track speed, heading, and timing. When Stacie overlays the route and estimates how long the team has before the yacht reaches port, she’s giving them an edge, not certainty.

     All the while, AI keeps humming in the background, updating models and watching for changes. But the big calls still belong to humans. The machines assist. People decide.

     And when the shift ends, no one thinks the story is finished. There are always loose threads. Was this a one-time attack or a rehearsal? Who else can do this? What haven’t we seen yet?

     That uncertainty is the real texture of modern intelligence work. It’s quieter than the movies, faster than it used to be, and built on collaboration. In Ghost Signal, Stacie isn’t powerful because she controls technology. She’s powerful because she knows how to turn information into understanding and get it to the people who need it before time runs out.

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He also writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster Series, which blends his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His thrillers reveal the shadowy world of covert missions and betrayal with striking realism.

Inside Modern Spycraft: How CIA Officers Blend In to Protect U.S. National Security

 

Espionage in Plain Sight: Blending In Is the CIA's Most Powerful Weapon

     Movies have trained us to expect spies to look sharp, talk smooth, and draw attention the moment they enter a room. In real life, that kind of visibility gets you burned fast. Standing out isn’t an advantage. It’s a liability.

     The real skill is knowing how people casually scan their surroundings and then giving them no reason to look twice. Intelligence officers learn this early. During the Cold War, CIA operatives in places like Moscow and East Berlin figured out that dressing even a little better than the locals could get them flagged. Some wore ill-fitting coats, scuffed shoes, or outdated clothes because that’s what everyone else wore. One officer later said his goal wasn’t to look convincing. It was to look dull, like someone you’d never bother describing afterward.

     That’s the quiet truth of modern espionage. The best operative isn’t impressive or memorable. It’s the one whose face slips right out of your head. You could pass them on the street or stand next to them in line and forget them minutes later. That kind of invisibility isn’t luck. It’s the job.

     What’s unsettling is how fragile that invisibility has become. Cameras are everywhere. Facial recognition doesn’t care how average you look. Data trails follow you even when you blend in physically. Today’s CIA operatives aren’t just hiding from people. They’re hiding from algorithms trained to catch tiny deviations: a routine too clean, a walk slightly off, a face showing up where it shouldn’t.

     That tension runs straight through the spy thriller PAYBACK. In the novel, young CIA operatives are hunted down because they blend in almost too well. Their low-key lives and tight routines make them easier for trained foreign intelligence agents to spot and track. It’s fiction, but the logic is real. The habits that keep officers safe can also make them traceable.

     The book’s spymaster, Corey Pearson, understands a hard truth: tradecraft doesn’t age well. Once a method becomes familiar, it turns into a weakness. That applies to disguises, cover stories, and behavior. Real operatives constantly adjust, changing how they dress, tweaking grooming, and adding small inconsistencies so patterns don’t form. Sometimes they dress worse than locals, not better. They choose dull covers that explain odd hours. Nothing flashy. Just quiet choices that keep them harder to track. 

     PAYBACK drives the point home by showing how intelligence work becomes most dangerous in places that feel safe and orderly, cities like Zurich where anything out of rhythm immediately stands out. In those environments, blending in isn’t a preference for CIA operatives. It’s survival. If they can’t remain invisible to foreign intelligence services, networks get exposed, sources disappear, and entire operations collapse before anyone realizes what went wrong.

     That’s why the novel’s conspiracy, buried inside institutions people are supposed to trust, feels so real. Modern espionage threats don’t come only from obvious foreign adversaries. They come from insiders, compromised systems, and slow-moving infiltration that hides in plain sight. When operatives lose the ability to blend in, those threats gain the upper hand.

     The larger implication is hard to ignore. A CIA officer who can’t disappear into the background is a liability, not just to themselves but to U.S. intelligence as a whole. And when intelligence weakens, national security weakens with it. For Americans, this isn’t abstract. The ability of operatives to remain unseen directly affects how well the country anticipates threats, protects allies, and prevents crises before they reach home. Invisibility isn’t just a spy’s trick. It’s a cornerstone of America’s security.

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He also writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster Series, which blends his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His thrillers reveal the shadowy world of covert missions and betrayal with striking realism.

Ukraine Is Just the Beginning: Inside Putin’s Plan to Rebuild the Soviet Union

After Ukraine, Who's Next? Putin's Dangerous Push to Redraw Europe's Map

      More and more people are starting to see it the same way, whether they work in intelligence or write spy novels: Putin isn’t just fighting over Ukraine. He’s fighting the past.

     And that’s what makes this whole thing so dangerous. In Putin’s mind, the collapse of the Soviet Union wasn’t some great moment of freedom. It was a disaster. An embarrassment. Everything that came after 1991, all those new borders and independent countries, he doesn’t see them as real. He sees them as something forced on Russia while it was weak. Ukraine, especially, has always been personal for him. It’s not just another country next door. To Putin, it’s a loose end that was never supposed to exist.

     That’s why a lot of Western intelligence officials believe Ukraine isn’t a bargaining chip or a buffer zone in his eyes. It’s the centerpiece. The key piece on the board. If Ukraine falls, the rest of the old Soviet neighborhood suddenly looks exposed. Moldova. Georgia. The Baltic states. Parts of Central Asia. The thinking is that it wouldn’t happen all at once. First comes pressure. Then political chaos. Then “peacekeepers” or influence campaigns. And eventually, control. One country at a time.

     That chilling logic plays out vividly in Shadow War, a spy thriller that almost feels less like fiction the longer the real war drags on.

     In one pivotal scene, CIA spymaster Corey Pearson sits across from a captured Russian soldier, Nickolay Ivanov, inside a safe house in Key West. The room is quiet, tense, the kind of quiet that makes every word matter. Nickolay isn’t some grand strategist. He’s a foot soldier. But he’s been close enough to hear the whispers.

     He tells Pearson that Putin didn’t act alone. That the real drivers are a tight inner circle of former KGB hardliners who never accepted the Soviet collapse. Men who bonded in bitterness when the old system fell apart. Men who believe the United States robbed them of their empire. To them, Ukraine is only the opening move.

     Nickolay describes a long game already in motion. Sleeper networks seeded years ago. Militias and intelligence assets planted quietly across former Soviet states. Influence campaigns that don’t look like invasions until it’s too late. No tanks needed at first. Just chaos, fear, and division.

     That’s where the novel leans into its darkest territory. Nickolay claims the plan doesn’t stop at Europe. He tells Pearson that Russia intends to bring the fight directly to American soil. Not with armies, but with shock. A single, deniable act of nuclear terror meant to fracture the United States right before a presidential election. Enough panic to paralyze the country. Enough confusion to tilt power toward a candidate willing to look the other way while Russia moves west.

     It’s a fictional scenario, but it mirrors a real and unsettling truth about modern warfare. Power isn’t just seized with missiles and soldiers anymore. It’s seized by destabilizing societies, breaking alliances, and convincing people that democracy itself can’t protect them.

     Back in the real world, Putin hasn’t exactly been subtle about how he views Ukraine. He flat-out denies it’s a real, independent country. When he talks about the invasion, he doesn’t describe it as a land grab. He talks like he’s taking something back. That choice of words isn’t accidental. Leaders don’t spend years saying the same things by mistake. They say them because that’s how they actually see the world.

     What really keeps analysts up at night isn’t just what Russian forces are doing right now on the battlefield. It’s what happens if they get their way. If Ukraine falls, it tells the world that borders don’t mean much anymore, that they can be wiped away with tanks and missiles. It suggests NATO’s promises might be tested, bent, or ignored. And it sends a clear warning to every former Soviet country that their independence only lasts as long as Moscow allows it.

     In Shadow War, Pearson listens as Nickolay lays it all out. The old Soviet dream never died. It went underground. It adapted. And now, in the chaos of modern geopolitics, it’s trying to resurface.

     That’s what makes the story resonate. Because beneath the fiction is a question the real world still hasn’t answered: if Putin succeeds in Ukraine, where does it stop?

     History suggests it doesn’t.

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He also writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster Series, which blends his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His thrillers reveal the shadowy world of covert missions and betrayal with striking realism.

From World War II to Modern Cyberwar: How Spies Quietly Shape Our Safety

 

The Spy Wars You Don't See- Intelligence Ops Stop Catastophes Before They Start

      Most of us think of spies as movie characters. Slick, impossible, living in a world that has nothing to do with our daily routines. But real espionage has always been messier, riskier, and far closer to home than we like to admit. A lot of what keeps planes flying, power grids humming, and cities safe depends on people we’ll never know making hard calls in the dark.

     History is full of real spies who pulled off things that still sound unreal. Take Virginia Hall. She had a prosthetic leg and still became one of the Allies’ most effective agents in World War II. Or Juan Pujol García, a Spaniard who convinced the Nazis he was on their side while quietly feeding them lies that helped throw off German forces on D-Day. These people weren’t action heroes. They were regular humans living under nonstop pressure, knowing a single slip could cost them everything.

     Some spies helped stop wars before they started. Others helped end them faster. And some paid the ultimate price. Eli Cohen worked his way deep into Syria’s inner circle in the 1960s, gathering intelligence that reshaped Israel’s military plans. Oleg Gordievsky, a high-ranking KGB officer secretly working for Britain, tipped off the West when the Cold War came terrifyingly close to going nuclear.

     What tied all those spies together wasn’t style or swagger. It was guts. Patience. And a clear understanding that even a tiny slip of information could get people killed.

     That still holds true today, even though the gear looks different. Espionage isn’t about trench coats and microfilms anymore. It’s about satellites, drones, data streams, and signals shooting around the world in seconds. When someone breaks into those systems, the damage doesn’t stay locked inside some secret briefing. It spills out, affecting borders, warning systems, and how ready a country is when trouble hits.

     That’s why spy stories aren’t just fun distractions. They’re reminders of what’s really on the line.

     There’s a moment in my spy thriller Ghost Signal where a U.S. spy drone doesn’t explode or get shot down. It simply drops out of the sky, like someone pulled the plug on gravity. CIA spymaster Corey Pearson and his team stare at the wreckage in a sealed safe house, watching a tiny diode blink back to life. The drone is dead, but the signal isn’t. Someone hijacked it mid-flight and walked away clean.

     That scene hits close to reality. Governments and criminal networks alike have shown they can hijack drones, spoof GPS signals, and manipulate communications systems. When that happens, it’s not just military hardware at risk. Commercial aviation, emergency services, shipping lanes, even your phone’s navigation system rely on the same infrastructure.

     Real spies have always known how to take advantage of that access. Back in the Cold War, that meant sneaking out blueprints and codes that shifted the global balance. Today, it’s quieter. An insider slips malware into a secure system or quietly feed adversaries information that weakens and pokes holes in defenses. The best spies don’t cause explosions. They leave damage you don’t notice until it’s too late.

     There’s a moment in Ghost Signal where Corey’s team traces a hijacked signal to a luxury yacht cruising through the Caribbean. Champagne on deck. Shell corporations on paper. And just enough antennas hidden in plain sight to turn the whole boat into a floating relay station. It sounds ridiculous until you realize how effective it is.

     That’s uncomfortably close to real life. Espionage often hides behind normal-looking businesses, research labs, or tech companies. The real threat isn’t only what gets stolen. It’s what those operators learn about how a country protects itself.

     For everyday readers, this isn’t about paranoia. It’s about awareness. Prevention usually happens quietly. When it works, nothing happens.

     And that’s the real legacy of daring spies. Not the drama, but the disasters you never hear about because someone caught a signal blinking when it shouldn’t have been.

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He also writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster Series, which blends his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His thrillers reveal the shadowy world of covert missions and betrayal with striking realism.

The New Space War: How Russian Satellite Weapons Could Disrupt GPS, Internet, and Everyday Life

 

When Space Goes Dark, Life On Earth Will Feel It

     I look up at the sky on a clear night and it’s easy to forget just how crowded space has gotten. Those tiny points of light aren’t just stars anymore. A lot of them are satellites doing everyday work for you, like telling your phone where you are, pushing out weather warnings, approving credit card purchases, and keeping your internet running. Space isn’t some far-off sci-fi place now. It’s part of the basic wiring of modern life. And more and more, it’s starting to look like the next place where conflicts play out.

     What most people never see is what’s happening behind the curtain. Russia has been pouring serious effort into anti-satellite tech, and it’s not just about blowing things up with missiles. The newer stuff is quieter and more unsettling. Satellites that creep into the same orbit as U.S. systems and just hang there, close enough to watch or interfere. Tools that can jam signals, mess with communications, or even knock out networks like Starlink, which both civilians and militaries now depend on for real-time connections.

     That stuff matters way more than most people think. Starlink isn’t just about getting better internet in the middle of nowhere. It’s turned into a lifeline for emergency crews, disaster response teams, and even military operations. When hurricanes wipe out cell towers or earthquakes crush ground-based networks, satellite internet is often the only thing still working. And if that goes dark, it’s not just movie night that gets canceled. People lose real connections they depend on to stay safe and alive.

     So when you hear about another country sliding a weapon-capable satellite into the same orbit as an American one, that should set off alarm bells. That’s not some harmless coincidence. It’s a calculated move. In space, being close is a form of control. You don’t have to blow anything up to cause serious trouble. You can jam signals, mess with sensors, or just loom nearby as a threat. It’s basically the space version of someone parking a surveillance van outside your house and quietly hacking into your Wi-Fi.

     We’ve already gotten a taste of where this is heading. In Ukraine, satellite interference has knocked out communications on the battlefield, forcing troops to scramble and switch systems in the middle of operations. In parts of Europe, GPS signals have been messed with so badly that ships and planes showed up miles from where they actually were. This isn’t sci-fi. It’s practice.

     And that’s where it hits home. Your phone’s maps. The timestamps on your bank transactions. Air traffic control. 911 dispatch systems. All of it depends, at least in part, on satellites working the way they’re supposed to. Once countries start treating space like a shooting range, the fallout doesn’t stay on military bases. It shows up in everyday life, right where you live.

     In my novel Ghost Signal, CIA spymaster Corey Pearson sits in a dim Nassau safehouse watching satellite telemetry scroll across a wall-sized screen. His team is trying to understand how a Navy surveillance drone, supposedly untouchable, was hijacked mid-flight and driven into the sea.    Corey doesn’t see a malfunction. He sees a message. Someone has learned how to reach into secure systems without kicking the door down. Someone is testing how blind they can make the U.S. before anyone notices. The tension in that room mirrors what’s happening now in real life, just without the dramatic lighting.

     What’s unsettling is how quiet this kind of warfare can be. No explosions. No mushroom clouds. Just interference, outages, and confusion. A satellite drifts a little closer than it should. A signal degrades. Systems hiccup. By the time leaders admit something hostile happened, the damage is already baked in.

     The upside is that the U.S. and its allies aren’t asleep at the wheel. Space is now treated like a real military arena, right up there with land, sea, air, and cyber. Engineers are building in backups on top of backups. New satellites can maneuver, protect themselves, and spread the workload so one hit doesn’t bring the whole system crashing down. The goal is simple: if something breaks, the system keeps going instead of falling apart.

     Still, this is one of those moments where it actually pays to pay attention. Space used to feel neutral, almost off-limits. That idea doesn’t hold anymore. The fight over orbit isn’t about planting flags on the moon or sci-fi bragging rights. It’s about who controls the unseen systems that keep our daily lives running smoothly.

     You’ll probably never see a satellite confrontation unfold in real time. But if your map app suddenly stops working, your internet cuts out during an emergency, or alerts don’t come through when they matter most, you’ll feel the impact immediately. And by then, the conflict won’t be coming. It’ll already be happening.

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He also writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster Series, which blends his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His thrillers reveal the shadowy world of covert missions and betrayal with striking realism.

The Silent War: Why CIA Officers Are Dying in the Shadows and What It Means for U.S. National Security

 

Inside the Rising Threat to CIA Operatives and teh Hidden Cost of Modern Espionage

     Two new stars recently added to the CIA’s Memorial Wall is one of those quiet moments that says more than any press conference ever could. No names, no details, just the acknowledgment that two officers went out doing work the rest of the country will never fully understand. That wall isn’t about glory. It’s about cost. And the cost keeps rising.

     What’s striking isn’t just that these officers were killed in the line of duty, but how familiar the story feels. The intelligence world hasn’t gotten safer or cleaner with better tech and satellite coverage. In many ways, it’s gotten messier. The modern battlefield doesn’t wear uniforms. It hides in encrypted chats, compromised allies, insider leaks, and shadow networks that stretch across borders faster than any diplomatic cable can keep up.

     There’s also an uncomfortable truth buried beneath the ceremony. These weren’t desk analysts lost to age or illness. These were people in motion, exposed, likely young enough to still be climbing. That suggests an enemy that knows how to find American intelligence officers when they’re most vulnerable, when they’re still learning the rhythms of the job and trusting the system to protect them.

     It echoes a moment from one of those late nights in Zurich in the Shadow War spy thriller, when Corey Pearson realizes the assassin isn’t targeting veterans but rising stars. The killers aren’t just removing people. They’re shaping behavior. Fear becomes the weapon. The goal is to hollow out the future leadership of the agency before it ever hardens. Fiction, sure, but only just. Real adversaries think that way. They always have.

     The Memorial Wall is a reminder that intelligence work is still intensely human. For all the talk of AI, cyber dominance, and remote operations, someone still has to meet a source in person, cross a hostile street, trust the wrong checkpoint, or rely on an ally who may already be compromised. When that fails, there’s no dramatic ending. Just a star carved into stone.

     For America’s national security, the implications are blunt. The country depends on people willing to operate in ambiguity, without recognition, and often without backup. If those people are being systematically targeted, the threat isn’t just operational loss. It’s deterrence through fear. Recruitment suffers. Initiative slows. Risk-taking drops. And adversaries gain room to maneuver.

     Those stars on the wall aren’t just memorials. They’re warning lights. They tell us the intelligence war never cooled down, it just learned how to hide better. And they remind us that protecting the nation still means asking a few to walk straight into the dark, knowing they might never be publicly remembered for it.

 

Robert Morton is a member of the Association of Former Intelligence Officers (AFIO) and writes about the U.S. Intelligence Community (IC). He also writes the Corey Pearson- CIA Spymaster Series, which blends his knowledge of real-life intelligence operations with gripping fictional storytelling. His thrillers reveal the shadowy world of covert missions and betrayal with striking realism.