The Counterfeit by Ralph DeFalco (EXCERPT)

Hello, dear readers! Today we have an excerpt from a thrilling novel that reads like it could have been ripped from tomorrow’s headlines!

In his debut novel The Counterfeit, historian and national security intelligence veteran Ralph DeFalco depicts a disturbingly plausible near future in which China has won a Pacific War against the United States of America. Now Beijing is maneuvering to control the next US president, while the corrupt regime that has presided over the US’ defeat, bankrupcy and political fracture entrenches power through a sprawling Internal Security Division that is essentially America’s own Gestapo.

Not everyone is ready to take this lying down, tho. Philip Nolan, Commander, U.S. Navy is a former POW who finds himself paroled into an America starkly divided between privilege and deprivation. His own twin brother — a near identical lookalike — is now chief of the secret police. Recruited by a rising Resistance, Nolan undertakes an audacious mission to infiltrate the secret police by replacing his own twin. Embedded in the highest levels of power, Nolan will have to navigate political treachery, foreign manipulation and moral peril, risking torture and execution to undermine the regime from within.

Mr DeFalco blends the insider realism of a five decade career in intelligence with the urgency of contemporary geopolitics in this gripping dystopian thriller that explores loyalty, identity and the cost of freedom in a world where the truth itself has become a weapon to be used and manipulated.

Read on for a pulse-pounding excerpt!

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(From The Counterfeit by Ralph DeFalco, published by Lost Coast Press, 2026. Reprinted with permission)

Chicago Near North Side

Nolan sucked in a deep breath when he realized the warning on his watch had come to him hours ago. He knew he had to leave and would likely need to hide in plain sight to buy time. Where do I go? Forget it, just get out and keep moving. Can’t go through the lobby, probably being watched. Better go down to the basement, past the laundry room and out the emergency exit. From there he could duck into the alley and walk away from the building.

Nolan dumped his laundry bag and quickly stuffed it with clean clothes, a knit cap, hooded pullover sweatshirt, and MREs he swept in an armload from their shelf into the open mouth of the bag. He stepped to the tiled entrance to his room, slipped on his shoes, slung the laundry bag over his back, opened the door, stepped into the hallway, and froze.

Dufour, helmeted and dressed in black fatigues like all the team, had emerged first from the stairwell door. One by one, the other men in black had slipped in behind him and silently took their positions in a line against the wall. Dufour leaned past the doorframe and was just about to knock. Then, in his peripheral vision, he saw some movement reflected in the large mirror above the table at the end of corridor as Nolan emerged from his room.

“Shit,” Dufour said under his breath. In a moment he had pulled open the Velcro cover on his vest to show his shining silver badge, thrust out his arm, extended a finger in Nolan’s direction, and pointed him back to his room like a cop directing traffic.

Dufour motioned his team back into the stairwell and turned to them as he eased the door closed behind him.

“Guy at the far end of the hall,” he said in a half whisper. “Some asshole who wants to do laundry in the middle of the night. We’ll collect the package, then I’ll have a little visit with Mr. Clean. Let’s give it a couple minutes.” The team members nodded and waited in silence on the stairs.

Nolan went back into his room, realized the police had come to arrest him, and knew he was trapped, but the wrong man was in the room where Nolan was supposed to be. Maynard!

Nolan sagged against the door. Then he turned and aimed a savage kick at the laundry bag. He stopped, dropped to his knees, dumped the bag on floor, and tore through the unopened MREs. In seconds he had gathered the flameless ration heaters and salt packets from the packages. He snatched a bowl from his kitchenette, filled it with the heaters and salt, and retreated to the bedroom.

With a strength borne of desperation he ignored the pain in his back and drove the bed toward the window. He pulled the empty chest of drawers under the sprinkler head in the ceiling, tossed the lamp and the clock on the bed, and hoisted the empty night table to the top of the chest.

Nolan darted into the bathroom with the bowl and covered the ration heaters and salt packages with water. He moved quickly back to the chest of drawers and lifted the bowl onto the nightstand. It was just a foot below the sprinkler head.

Sergeant Dufour had by this time reassembled his men outside the door to Room 400. He nodded. Meyer rose from his half-crouch and hammered three sharp raps on the closed door. “Mr. Nolan,” he said, and rapped again. Then, in a louder voice, Mister Nolan.

The team tensed as they waited for the door to swing open. Meyer nodded, looked up at Lyons, slipped the keycard into the handle set, and leaned against the door. Lyons stepped up and snapped the taut security chain in the hardened steel jaws of a bolt cutter.

Floyd leapt past Lyons through the wide-open door. A tripwire just inside the darkened room snagged him and he fell to the floor. Tangled in the wire, Floyd tried to roll onto his back. Lyons, following quickly behind, fell heavily on the tripped-up Floyd and heard the sharp sound of cracking bone and a deep groan from beneath him.

Torres glimpsed the tangled forms on the floor framed in the dim hallway light that came through the door. The dreaded words officer down came from the back of his throat. He flicked off the safety of his Beretta 9mm automatic and rushed forward only to be stunned by a deafening bang and a blinding flash of light that erupted in his face. He flinched and fired the chambered round.

Lyons was rising off the injured Floyd and fell again, hard, as Torres’s round sliced across the big man’s bicep and slammed into the bulletproof vest that covered his chest.

The explosion and flash rocked Meyer back on his heels, even as the words “officer down” echoed in his ears. The single shot followed, and suddenly, smoke filled the dark room and poured toward the door.

Dufour pushed past the shocked Meyer and grabbed a hunched figure inside the doorway. With manic strength he swung Torres around like a rag doll. The point of Torres’s chin met the doorframe with a thud, and the stunned officer dropped to his knees, a stream of blood pouring from his face.

Dufour pulled frantically at Lyons as he backed out of the room. The two fell over Meyer who was crouched at the door, pistol in hand, to cover their retreat. Lyons scrambled to find his footing, and the heel of his heavy boot came down hard on Meyer’s ankle, but Lyons never loosened his grip on the backstrap of Floyd’s body armor. He managed to drag Floyd into the hallway and yank him up on his feet.

In Nolan’s room, the water in the bowl had worked its way into the coating of powdered magnesium, bits of iron, and traces of salt on the flameless ration heater card. The contact of water and powdered metals created a thermal reaction. A flameless heat of more than a hundred degrees rose from the bowl. The salt packets disintegrated, and an accelerated reaction boiled the water in the bowl and produced a cloud of scalding steam. The sprinkler head in Nolan’s bedroom burst open, sent a fan of high-pressure water through the room, toppled the nightstand and triggered the wail of the fire alarm.

A powerful strobe light flashed, flashed, flashed through the once night-lighted hallway.

“Get out, get out!” Dufour yelled over the ear-splitting alarm. Smoke wreathed his face and billowed in clouds behind him. Enraged, he shrieked like a banshee in the flashing light. He grabbed and shoved the stunned men toward the stairs.

Lyons clamped a large hand over the ragged, bloody tear in his arm. Meyer hobbled forward as his sprained foot swelled in his boot. Torres dripped blood from his chinstrap. Floyd forced himself to hurry forward even as his cracked ribs stabbed pain into his chest with every footfall.

They headed down the stairs, to the street exit door, through the dark alley, and into the safety of the Stryker. Dufour ducked under the roiling cloud of acrid smoke to grab the door to Room 400 and slammed it shut. Cursing with fury, he reached into his cargo pants patch pocket, withdrew an electromagnet, keyed it, then jammed it between the door handle and the doorframe. Now smoke eddied out from under the sealed door.

As he ran down the stairs, Dufour shouted over his shoulder, “Burn in hell, motherfucker!”

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From The Counterfeit by Ralph DeFalco. Copyright © 2026 by the author and reprinted by permission.

The Counterfeit by Ralph DeFalco was published today April 13 2026 by Lost Coast Press and is available from all good booksellers, including