SPOILER ALERT! The time has come! Chris and Mike share their thoughts on Capture or Kill by Don Bentley - book #23 in Vince Flynn's Mitch Rapp series.
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00:00:12
Hey, guys, I'm Chris. And I'm Mike.
00:00:15
And welcome back to this week's No Limits after a long hiatus,
00:00:21
The Mitch Wrap Podcast. How you doing this week, Mike?
00:00:25
Oh dude, it feels so good hearing you say the Mitch Rap
00:00:30
podcast. Almost as good as cracking into
00:00:34
a new Mitch rap book. We are here to talk about
00:00:38
Capture or Kill, the first Mitch rap book written by Don Bentley.
00:00:44
Wow, do we have a lot to talk about.
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Dude, I, I know it's, you know, it's crazy to think that we're
00:00:53
recording. I guess I, I did the math the
00:00:56
other day. I'm, I'm forgetting already.
00:00:58
I should have wrote it down. But we're in our like 500th
00:01:02
episode range between the three different feeds to think that
00:01:05
we've, we started with, you know, one other focusing one
00:01:11
book, like one book a month, like to look back on that.
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And now sometimes we're recording anywhere from three to
00:01:17
five books a month. And it's just like I've said
00:01:22
this before, but I'll say it again.
00:01:24
It's like, you know, getting a warm blanket coming back to
00:01:26
these authors that we covered truly like we just did with Brad
00:01:31
Thor and Shadow of doubt. Hope you guys have checked that
00:01:34
out on the No limits Scott Harvat podcast.
00:01:38
And now getting a new Vince Flynn novel written by a new
00:01:41
author, Don Bentley, Capture or kill.
00:01:46
Really excited to talk to you about this, mainly because
00:01:48
there's there's just so much going on.
00:01:51
It's like, not only do we get this book written by a new
00:01:56
author in in the series, you know, I want to talk to you.
00:02:00
How is he compared to Kyle? How is he compared to Vince?
00:02:03
But we also get the caveat that this is like a semi prequel in
00:02:08
the sense that, you know, he's gone back in which placed
00:02:12
himself placed his story between two novels.
00:02:15
The last time we were on this feed, we covered the we
00:02:17
revisited these two novels to get ready for this.
00:02:20
So there's that aspect. And then additionally you add in
00:02:25
this I, I, I don't know what to call it, but like alternative
00:02:29
history with the, the Bin Laden stuff, you know, like
00:02:34
implementing like a real world event.
00:02:36
I mean I know like this, all these stories have put real
00:02:41
world events in before. You know Mitch's origin story is
00:02:46
based upon a real event with. With with a lot to.
00:02:48
Be this is different because we're like actually there, you
00:02:51
know, yeah, we're we're changing time period.
00:02:54
Exactly. So a lot of things I want to
00:02:58
talk to you about. Where do you want to start
00:02:59
though? Mike?
00:03:01
Wow. You're right, dude.
00:03:03
I mean, all these things we got to cover.
00:03:06
But your point about this, it feels like we're coming home,
00:03:09
you know, when we get a new. We're coming home.
00:03:12
It's coming home, you know, we're in our comfort zone where
00:03:16
I'm living for the moment right now.
00:03:17
So much going on in both our lives.
00:03:19
You with work me with the baby on the way.
00:03:21
Well, I guess we've announced that on the other podcast, but
00:03:24
not to the Mitch Rapp fans. So the Mitch Rapp pod listeners,
00:03:27
the originals who've been with us.
00:03:29
There's yet another podcast baby coming, and it's on my side this
00:03:33
time. Chris, you not my side.
00:03:35
You had what, three while we've been doing this podcast, NO22
00:03:38
while we've been doing this podcast, I think 2020.
00:03:43
Yeah, yeah, I'd already had Mary and and Patrick.
00:03:47
So this is the third podcast, baby, and in fact, the due date,
00:03:50
you know, who knows if we'll make it there is September 3rd
00:03:53
the publication. Date of capture or.
00:03:55
Kill yeah. So we we might have a mitrap
00:03:58
baby coming on publication day or earlier.
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Some signs are pointing to that. But it, it feels like we're
00:04:04
coming home with this book and with the transition.
00:04:08
There's a lot of things going on, who knows, behind the
00:04:10
scenes. We're not Privy to a lot of
00:04:12
that. You know, the social media has
00:04:13
really made a big push. I think Don Bentley or Vince
00:04:16
Flynn, as you should say, Vince Flynn was trending on, on
00:04:19
Twitter when the the transition was first announced and that the
00:04:23
new book is going to be written by someone different than Kyle.
00:04:26
There's so much buzz around this and it put me on edge.
00:04:29
I, I was anxious about that. I was anxious about the story
00:04:33
going back in time because this is smack in the middle.
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You you might call it the height of Vince, you know, maybe maybe
00:04:40
that like three quarter point of Vince protect and defend going
00:04:44
into the last man. I believe we had already covered
00:04:47
Memorial Day consent to kill. Those ones came I think right
00:04:52
before or a few books before protect and defend, if I'm not
00:04:55
mistaken. So we are hitting like peak
00:04:58
Vince, like he's already mastered the craft Vince and
00:05:01
he's writing some incredible stories and how Don wants to put
00:05:04
his first book right smack in the middle of that.
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And before the last man, this actually comes towards the end,
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then we're ranking. The Last Man is His is his last
00:05:13
book, right so. It's his last book.
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It's his swan song. It was such a meaningful book.
00:05:18
This was a risk. It was an absolute risk, messing
00:05:21
with the timeline a little bit, going to fill in a gap.
00:05:24
And like you said, this quasi alternate history of the bin
00:05:29
Laden raid. I had so many questions,
00:05:33
concerns. I was anxious about this book,
00:05:36
Chris, after reading the first half.
00:05:39
And folks, we are only spoiling the first half up to chapter 45.
00:05:44
We read chapters one through 44. So we will not be spoiling
00:05:48
anything after page 200. 12:00 today yeah 212.
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Yeah, these 1st 200 or so pages are making the case that this
00:05:58
book is in the top 10. No way.
00:06:01
Yeah, no, I'm not kidding. I'm not kidding.
00:06:04
My hot take is I love this book and if things keep up it has a
00:06:10
chance at the top ten no doubt. Wow, that's big.
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That's a big statement coming from me.
00:06:18
You know, I I had my trepidations about this book
00:06:24
because, you know, all the things we've listed, you know,
00:06:27
just new writer decision to do this versus just, you know, just
00:06:33
continuing after the last story worried and more so I was
00:06:39
worried that why would you pick to go back in time instead of
00:06:43
just continuing on? And I guess the the quick answer
00:06:46
is like, Oh, I want to go back in time.
00:06:48
So that way I can sort of mold how I want actually rap to go
00:06:52
into the future. You know, I'm I I'm thinking
00:06:54
big. I want to change, but I, I
00:06:57
believe we mentioned it on one of our pods that this might be a
00:07:01
good opportunity for Don. Like, you know, it might not
00:07:04
actually be a bad thing that he decided to do this because one,
00:07:08
it literally gives him an opportunity to fit his book in
00:07:12
between two Vince's books instead of having to follow both
00:07:15
Vince and Kyle. Right, and navigate both their
00:07:18
different styles and. Exactly.
00:07:21
And to cement himself, you know, to try to like understand who
00:07:25
rap is, what this character is and only having to navigate like
00:07:29
sort of one author's take, you know, coming right after two
00:07:32
different books. And you know, the stakes of
00:07:35
because it's in between two books, the stakes of this book
00:07:38
don't have to be like crazy high or have to be crazy memorable in
00:07:42
the sense that if they're never mentioned again, you know, it's
00:07:46
it, it the the whole story going forward, the next seven to 10
00:07:49
books don't fall apart because of it.
00:07:51
You know, not to say that like Bin Laden and and like what the
00:07:55
first half of this book isn't important stuff.
00:07:57
But what I'm saying is like the fact that it wouldn't like have
00:08:00
gotten broaden up or like you, you don't have plot holes going
00:08:03
forward. It's it's perfectly fine.
00:08:06
So and like you I we got this book really far in advance.
00:08:13
And I sat on it though I. Wasn't I the same thing?
00:08:16
I I I wasn't ready. I left it on my, my side table
00:08:21
because I don't know, I just, I, I didn't want, I didn't want to
00:08:24
read it. I mean, I wanted to read it, but
00:08:26
I I wasn't ready to read it. I hear you.
00:08:28
It was tough. It was like a dilemma.
00:08:29
It was like a paradise. Yeah, I.
00:08:31
Wanted to but I just, I something was just telling me
00:08:34
wait a little bit longer, wait a little bit.
00:08:36
I'm not sure. I know so then then we like we
00:08:38
came up with all these concoctions like we flash read
00:08:41
both all of TJ Newman's book before this one.
00:08:44
We obviously covered a bunch of Brad stuff A.
00:08:47
Lot of Brad stuff, yeah. But you know, time crunch, we
00:08:52
are getting this in. We need to get these these
00:08:54
recordings in before you and your lovely wife go to give
00:08:58
birth to the third podcast baby. So we're sitting down now.
00:09:03
This is August, the little peek behind the curtains here.
00:09:06
August 21st We're recording part one well before the pub date.
00:09:11
Yeah. Over a week.
00:09:12
Two weeks almost, Yeah. And I have to say, I love it.
00:09:16
Thank you. Yeah, Yeah.
00:09:18
There's no other way to put it besides.
00:09:20
I love this book I amazing so I I have to say I am.
00:09:24
I have not read past page 212 so the second-half could change and
00:09:30
we'll cover that in Part 2, but at least the 1st 45 chapters are
00:09:36
very good. Now saying that is very
00:09:40
different than Vince. Yes, there.
00:09:43
So this is where I. Actually, but there's
00:09:46
similarities, like there's similarities too.
00:09:48
I could tell it was a different author.
00:09:51
I could tell it's definitely it is, but it's way more different
00:09:54
than than Kyle, than it is different from.
00:09:56
Vince 100%, it's more different than Kyle than it's different
00:10:01
from Vince. And to guide this conversation,
00:10:03
I wanted to try to put this this into two buckets, the content
00:10:08
bucket and the style bucket. And I think if we look at those
00:10:13
two things separately, we can do some really interesting
00:10:16
analysis. For example, I'm reading the
00:10:18
book and I feel 100% this is a Vince Flynn story.
00:10:24
Oh yeah, for sure the. Plot, the motivations, the
00:10:28
characters, the settings, the decision making.
00:10:31
I think everything driving the plot is pure Vince Flynn through
00:10:37
and through. I think Don has that analytical
00:10:41
mind. I think he's in touch with
00:10:43
politics, with military, with global affairs, with with
00:10:47
terrorism, and I think he really has channeled the storytelling
00:10:53
that Vince had. Style is where I see a bit of a
00:10:59
gap. And this is not a negative.
00:11:00
I I don't say a gap in a in a bad way, but a few things were a
00:11:05
little stark in in the writing style.
00:11:08
One is something around the dialogue and and I'm wondering
00:11:12
if I'm crazy or maybe misremembering.
00:11:15
Don really breaks up a scene that has dialogue, and in
00:11:20
between almost every speaker's words he puts like a few
00:11:25
paragraphs of background or or discussion or context and then
00:11:30
he'll come back to the conversation.
00:11:32
So like the character 1, Character A will say something,
00:11:35
character B might not respond until 5-6 paragraphs later.
00:11:39
And so the conversation. The conversation feels really,
00:11:43
really long, but not a lot of words are being said between the
00:11:46
people. And what's cool is we're getting
00:11:48
the texture of the setting, the texture of who these people are,
00:11:51
the background of why they're doing what they're doing.
00:11:54
But the conversation isn't flowing that well where I feel
00:11:57
like when Vince wrote dialogue, it was snappy, it was quick.
00:12:01
Those characters said what they needed to say, responded to one
00:12:04
another and you didn't have a lot of rap said Irene said,
00:12:09
Scott responded and Mitch jumped in and said then he said, and
00:12:13
you know, it kind of flowed. I feel like the dialogue here
00:12:18
gets a little choppy. I I've yet to determine if
00:12:20
that's a problem. And the reason I don't think it
00:12:22
is because the gold that's between those lines, there's
00:12:26
like, let's say the phone calls when Mitch is on the ground.
00:12:28
I guess now we're getting into the spoiler territory of it all.
00:12:32
When Mitch is undercover originally, he's the French
00:12:34
businessman and he's supposed to be taking out Fairbanks, a
00:12:38
terrorist financier. And then he gets approached by
00:12:42
Royinton, another guy, an Iranian high up in in the Quds
00:12:46
Force, and he sits down with him and he gives him a proposition.
00:12:50
And we thought his cover's blown.
00:12:51
He's like, I know who you really are, but he calls him Farid
00:12:55
Saeed. So rap is under like three
00:12:58
different covers here all at once.
00:13:00
His French cover is blown for this one assassination attempt,
00:13:04
but he's really playing the Iranians who thinks he's Farid
00:13:08
Saeed, an Iraqi kind of arms dealer.
00:13:10
He's a broker of these different terrorist groups in their.
00:13:13
Business Warlord. He's a warlord.
00:13:15
Yeah, yeah. And it's really cool.
00:13:17
He's got all these personas going on.
00:13:19
And so by having in between the dialogue descriptions of this,
00:13:24
it makes the story richer. It really fleshes it out.
00:13:27
But at some points I was like, I kind of want the characters just
00:13:29
to talk 'cause when Vince wrote characters talking, it felt so
00:13:33
authentic and real, like a conversation you were there for.
00:13:36
Where here I feel like an outsider on all the
00:13:38
conversations 'cause it's really chopped up and fleshed out with
00:13:42
all these descriptions that that was just something I noticed.
00:13:45
One of the major things that I noticed in a positive way that
00:13:50
was different than Vince is, and, and maybe it's purely
00:13:54
because he was a helicopter pilot, you know, this military.
00:13:59
Talk. This first half of this novel
00:14:03
one I feel like just has a lot more military aspect to it.
00:14:08
You know, Mitch has always like interacted with the military
00:14:12
and, you know, obviously Scott, Navy Seals, we've had that.
00:14:17
I just felt like this was very heavy military, but what we got
00:14:20
was very interesting and I thought it was done well.
00:14:23
And obviously this is one of Don's strong points.
00:14:25
And obviously he's going to bring in helicopters because
00:14:28
that's what he's used to. That's what he knows.
00:14:30
And it was awesome. You know, like the scene where
00:14:34
obviously you mentioned that interaction with Runyon, the he
00:14:38
mentions, you know, raps thinking that he's going to like
00:14:41
blow himself, but he actually no, he he thinks that he's this
00:14:47
other guy, but he gets that information from Ashanti, who
00:14:50
actually knows that Rap is using this alias.
00:14:53
Ashanti setting it up. But he's actually trying to get
00:14:56
to rap because he needs to talk to rap it.
00:14:59
It's kind of like, you know, 3D chess you're trying to put
00:15:03
putting it all together. Could have in his mind.
00:15:05
Yes, but then he's like, oh, you wanna you wanna know this
00:15:07
information and obviously this opcon bad.
00:15:11
We get all the cool like helicopter talk interaction with
00:15:15
the various Army Rangers. Even we throw in like some
00:15:19
Marines that are on like loan or the I don't know, I forget the
00:15:24
name, but like a study abroad with the Rangers like type deal
00:15:28
on yeah, on loan. Like that was kind of cool.
00:15:32
But yeah, like I I definitely could sense one.
00:15:36
This is Don's strong point. And two, it just felt that part
00:15:41
felt a little different from Vince, which, but I'm not saying
00:15:45
it's a bad thing. I'm saying I could just tell it
00:15:47
was different. You know what?
00:15:49
I mean, yeah, no, IA 100% agree. That was going to be one of my
00:15:52
other content points, not content of the plotting, which I
00:15:55
think is very much Vince Flynn style.
00:15:57
It might be Don Bentley upping the content a bit to be more
00:16:01
military focused. It might be an improvement on
00:16:04
the series based on his background that Vince didn't
00:16:07
have this intimate knowledge and first hand experience of whether
00:16:11
you're on the radio in a combat zone or whether you're having to
00:16:14
coordinate between the different branches, you know, the
00:16:17
artillery they are going to need to come in and the guys on the
00:16:20
ground and and some of the banter.
00:16:22
I think Don has done a really good job, particularly when
00:16:27
Coleman, Wicker, Maz and the boys get together.
00:16:31
The gallows humor kind of continues and it has this edge
00:16:34
of ribbing about the, you know, Army Rangers versus Seals and
00:16:39
and where we ended up when our guy who's taken the Army Ranger
00:16:44
who's taken gets rescued by Coleman out of the water and
00:16:47
rescued by rap in the. 1st Army Ranger who can't swim, by the
00:16:50
way. OK, that, that was a bit
00:16:52
strange. We're going to have to get
00:16:54
there. But yeah, just the fact that
00:16:55
they're ribbing each other about, oh, saved by a seal and,
00:16:58
and, and Scott Coleman's like, yeah, even Rangers need seals to
00:17:01
come in and be their heroes for them.
00:17:03
That ribbing I expected from Don if you read any of his earlier
00:17:06
works, his Matt Drake works, his Clancy.
00:17:08
Oh yeah, it's. You knew you were going to get
00:17:10
that and, and I think it helps the series.
00:17:12
I think it jazzes it up. Well, and that's in in a line
00:17:16
with what what Vince did, what Kyle, I think elevated and now
00:17:23
Don has taken his own spin on that, you know?
00:17:27
And the radio chatter, the radio chatter seems very authentic to
00:17:30
a war zone where where Vince or Kyle wouldn't do that.
00:17:34
Exactly that that kind of operational military operational
00:17:38
aspects of the story when either rap is there or not there is
00:17:43
something that we rarely, if ever got the other thing I I
00:17:49
don't know, you can tell me this is like a nitpick minutia, but
00:17:55
so the only reason why I can justify why it was there is
00:17:58
because it is this novel placed in between two other novels.
00:18:02
But we've talked a lot about how Vince's strength was characters
00:18:08
and how he could craft the back story for a character that was
00:18:12
literally going to die on the next page.
00:18:14
But you could you know, you know his name, you know his whole
00:18:18
life story. What was with not naming people
00:18:25
like we're getting Fairbanks and we're getting cyclone, cyclone
00:18:32
and a little too heavy-handed even like the see those the CIA
00:18:37
people with the station chiefs. We get we get Bill and Steve.
00:18:44
But Mitch, sorry Vince, would always give us their full name.
00:18:50
Yeah, I thought those I both of those things really stood out to
00:18:53
me. You're right, you're right.
00:18:54
Did it did it and it it's just because maybe I'm a I'm a quote
00:18:57
UN quote, I'm I'm I'm I'm no Ryan Steck, but I'd like to
00:19:01
think, you know, I love Ryan Steck.
00:19:03
I love the way. He wrote the books by.
00:19:05
He's the real books by He's the Rapologist.
00:19:09
I like to say that we're pretty good second tier rapologist
00:19:12
considering. We know rap, we know the series,
00:19:15
we know the style, we know what should and should not be in this
00:19:18
this line of books. And that felt a little
00:19:22
heavy-handed using the call signs or the code names.
00:19:25
But that goes hand in hand with the operational know how, like
00:19:28
you most likely are using those code names that often on the
00:19:32
ground during an op when you're seeking out a high value target.
00:19:36
Like those code names are front and center.
00:19:39
So like you could look at one page and six or seven times the
00:19:43
the name Cyclone in all caps. Right.
00:19:46
Why was it in all caps? Weird it again, that's probably
00:19:49
how these code names are, but it just looks funny on the page in
00:19:53
like a visual aesthetic point. If you just open the book
00:19:56
randomly, every page is going to have a bunch of names in all
00:20:00
caps. But again, it, it kind of works
00:20:03
with the operation because these high value targets are, are
00:20:05
going to have those code names. And ultimately, I'm guessing
00:20:08
this leads to a Geronimo moment. Like we're going to have to have
00:20:12
Geronimo mentioned when we get to the bin Laden stuff, which
00:20:15
hasn't really come up yet. I, I do want to talk about that.
00:20:18
But your other point on the CIA guys, I kind of appreciated that
00:20:24
because you go to like, let's say I think they're at Jalalabad
00:20:28
and in the air base and there's a special tent set up where, you
00:20:31
know, the secret squirrel guys are doing the secret secret
00:20:33
squirrel stuff. And it's like they're not using
00:20:36
last names and these probably aren't their real names.
00:20:38
And a couple of the military guys who were brought in don't
00:20:42
know their real names. And it just feels kind of
00:20:44
strange in a way that makes me believe the CIA is trying to be
00:20:48
a little dodgy, secretive here, protecting identities and
00:20:52
whatnot. So I kind of thought that was a
00:20:55
mysterious and a nice little hook, but eventually I'm like,
00:20:59
is it too much of it just like the code names?
00:21:02
Is it too much of it a little heavy-handed?
00:21:04
And then similarly, it's not something Vince would have done.
00:21:07
So are we straying a little too far from the path?
00:21:10
So the only thing that like rubs me wrong about that is the fact
00:21:14
that the last man takes place in right after Afghanistan, right
00:21:20
after this. And so we get the J Bod station
00:21:25
chief is who? He's in cahoots with Rick and he
00:21:30
gets killed. Right.
00:21:32
So, and his name's not Steve, right?
00:21:35
Is. There a missing link.
00:21:36
Yeah, like, so I, I, I just don't, I don't understand that.
00:21:43
I mean, I guess there could be, you know, he could have been
00:21:46
fired or replaced, you know, so. I think you bring up a bigger
00:21:49
point of we'll have to do this either during Part 2 or maybe a
00:21:53
little special episode after Part 2, but we're going to have
00:21:56
to talk about the cannon, right? Does this book do enough to slot
00:22:02
into the cannon and not break rules?
00:22:05
And I, I, I'm, I'm, I'm waiting to pass judgement on that
00:22:09
because so far I think this book really brought us out very well.
00:22:13
But not knowing how it ends, I don't know how it brings us into
00:22:16
the last man. So that's something we're going
00:22:19
to have to talk about. And I didn't notice it, but that
00:22:22
would be a big one if there's like a different station chief
00:22:24
and we never get any reconciliation over why there
00:22:27
was. Turn because I just remember
00:22:30
Darren Sickles, right, is the station chief of Kabul.
00:22:34
I remember. Him and you know all right, I'm
00:22:36
being like a little mid trap bitch you know, like I
00:22:40
understand maybe I like I'm being like that, but you know
00:22:44
I'm not going to be the only one that realizes that you know
00:22:48
Darren Sickles played a huge part in the fact that he was in
00:22:51
this inept person in charge of Kabul in station and they were
00:22:56
having all of these problems with you know Rickman.
00:23:03
So I, I, I don't know that that maybe just because I'm so into
00:23:07
this series and I like, I know it like the back of my, I don't
00:23:11
know, like the back of my hand, but I, I know a lot of it like
00:23:13
the back of my hand, you know, like stuff like that just drives
00:23:17
me a little bit crazy. Is that weird?
00:23:20
But let's not draw that conclusion on half the book.
00:23:22
That's why I'm saying let, let's do.
00:23:23
This. Yeah.
00:23:23
Very true. Very true.
00:23:25
Post mortem at the end because it may all check out.
00:23:28
Or this book might not even bring us right up to the last
00:23:31
man in terms of dates. Maybe there's an even bigger
00:23:33
gap. Maybe Don's second book is a
00:23:36
sequel to this that's still in this time period.
00:23:38
Like we, we just don't know those things yet, not having
00:23:41
finished the book. Yeah, true.
00:23:43
Very true. Very true.
00:23:44
Very. True, I'm open to that, but
00:23:45
another thing I'd like to connect is OK, where is Joe
00:23:47
Rickman? If that's not mentioned by the
00:23:49
end of this book, a a little concerned.
00:23:51
Because we're in Afghanistan. He runs everything in
00:23:54
Afghanistan. He's essentially like what
00:23:56
Fareed Saeed wants to be this know it all, connecting all
00:23:59
strings, having, you know, his fingers, his tentacles on
00:24:02
everything. Especially when he puts, when he
00:24:05
like taps all of those assets to pull off that, you know, fake
00:24:12
the fake mission like Rickman would have 100% have been
00:24:16
involved with that because Rickman has all the assets to
00:24:20
begin with. So.
00:24:22
That's. What doing doing doing this kind
00:24:25
of prequel insert thing like that's where it gets a little
00:24:28
dicey for me, like if if you're not gonna hold up to Canon.
00:24:32
So yeah, I like this idea of maybe doing either having a
00:24:35
segment of our next episode devoted to that or if it, you
00:24:40
know, guarantees a whole third episode.
00:24:42
We we could talk about that. So.
00:24:43
We should. There's an opportunity, though.
00:24:45
You know how Kennedy has the plan as a distraction to let rap
00:24:49
operate. She's going to send Nash and a
00:24:51
delegation of spies. I think that was the quote.
00:24:53
And Nash just recruited. There was that one little
00:24:56
cutaway scene where he calls. One little scene.
00:24:59
What was it? Noreen or what was her name?
00:25:01
Yeah, we've never met her before, but some some asset
00:25:04
who's about to leave the CIA cause of something that happened
00:25:08
she's. Looking for an FBI job it sounds
00:25:09
like, and she's with her husband and he kind of is hoping she
00:25:13
can. Noreen Ahmed was her name.
00:25:16
Noreen Ahmed but but Nash is going to bring her in.
00:25:19
So this delegation of spies is going there.
00:25:21
And it's really a distraction. You know, everything rap is
00:25:24
doing in the Spingar Mountains. Nash has to be like the official
00:25:28
delegation to draw attention away for all the spies in town.
00:25:31
The Iranians who are in town, the Afghanis, it's a perfect
00:25:35
opportunity for them to team up with Joe Rickman.
00:25:38
Like Joe Rickman should be advising Nash when he's on the
00:25:41
ground when he arrives. Like maybe that gets him out of
00:25:45
the picture. You just kind of say he's part
00:25:48
of that team somewhere else doing something.
00:25:50
But I think it really should be mentioned.
00:25:52
You're right, yeah. What did I wanted to ask you
00:25:55
about Nash? What do you think about the
00:25:58
choice to bring Nash up in this novel?
00:26:00
Oh you, you have to. Exactly.
00:26:03
Look at everything from extreme measures.
00:26:04
You can't ignore Nash, and you especially can't ignore his kind
00:26:09
of faltering relationship with Kennedy.
00:26:12
And, and I just think the way Nash and Kennedy have that
00:26:15
conversation is perfect. That shows somebody who did
00:26:19
their homework, someone who is in tune with where Vince was
00:26:23
going, because Kennedy is questioning Nash when he knocks
00:26:27
on her door and is being very timid about what he can and
00:26:30
cannot do and the office politics of it all in the
00:26:33
organizational charts, he's transitioning from being an
00:26:36
operative like Mitch to being a bureaucrat who has his hands
00:26:41
tied with red tape and he doesn't know how to navigate
00:26:44
that. And he didn't even want it.
00:26:45
They forced him into it to be this national hero.
00:26:48
So I love that Nash is kind of kind of a wuss right now.
00:26:53
And Irene sees that he's a wuss and Irene basically wants to use
00:26:57
him as a political pawn instead of actually having involved
00:27:00
involved in the op. I think that's great.
00:27:02
Well, and. She even says the quote.
00:27:06
I I never. 2nd guessed myself until now like.
00:27:11
That was big. I, I, I wanted to bring this up
00:27:15
because I felt that the placement of Mike Nash and the
00:27:18
execution of when he's introduced with Irene in their
00:27:24
dialogue 100% confirm what you said.
00:27:30
This is, this is a guy who did his research.
00:27:34
Obviously, you know, not that I'm going to like say that the
00:27:37
authors that take over the series don't read all the
00:27:39
novels, but you know, you, you never know.
00:27:43
This is definitely someone who focused on reading all the
00:27:48
novels carefully, or or at least all the novels with with Mike
00:27:51
Nash and all the way up to his betrayal in Enemy at the Gates
00:28:01
and it I feel like this just adds to Enemy at the Gates a
00:28:04
little bit. You know what I mean?
00:28:05
I agree. I agree, that is probably the
00:28:09
clearest connection to what Kyle did in the series.
00:28:12
Exactly. Exactly is what?
00:28:14
Don's doing here with Mike Nash, which is what Vince started and
00:28:17
hinted at. Then Kyle picked up an enemy on
00:28:20
those three books. Later, you know, 10.
00:28:22
Books later, whatever it is that's the clearest connection
00:28:25
to Kyle is is the Nash connection, I think.
00:28:28
Yeah. And which?
00:28:29
So many people claimed. Like Oh my God, how?
00:28:34
Could you do that to Mike Nash? Like, that's out of left field.
00:28:36
That's so uncharacter like. But we've said this time and
00:28:40
time again, if you go back and look at Vince's stuff, you will
00:28:44
see that he was planning this, you know, whether or not he
00:28:49
wanted Mike to, you know, essentially perform treason by
00:28:54
proxy on his country. You know, don't know that.
00:28:58
But he definitely had something he he purposely like put this
00:29:02
doubt with Mike Nash between he was going off the deep end.
00:29:04
Kennedy and. Rap and and this was something
00:29:08
that Kyle latched onto obviously developed into his own story so
00:29:13
I love love, love, love the way Don introduced Mike Nash and put
00:29:18
him into the story I completely. Agree.
00:29:21
And at the same time, he's valuable to Irene because, yes,
00:29:26
no one knows rap better. I would say personally, maybe
00:29:31
there's a few people up there who can give you a psychological
00:29:34
profile on him, Scott Stan, But no one knows him better in terms
00:29:38
of operating on the ground in the CIA at this point.
00:29:44
Yeah. True, I think at this.
00:29:46
Point Nash knows his patterns of thinking the best.
00:29:50
I feel like Coleman has been an assistant and is the does The
00:29:54
Dirty work. But Coleman to this point never
00:29:57
has had to kind of think like Mitch and operate like Mitch.
00:30:01
He would always just take the orders and execute them.
00:30:03
Florida State, you know, we've never seen.
00:30:05
Scott push back No and and. Here, he's even actually
00:30:09
starting to have to think on his own.
00:30:11
When he has to rescue rap. He makes a couple of calls.
00:30:14
Like Scott, Coleman is given a little more agency here in the
00:30:17
field. And and I.
00:30:19
Really like that. But just to wrap up the Nash
00:30:21
stuff, he and Kennedy are talking about trying to predict
00:30:24
Rapp's next move. You know, when the OP to
00:30:26
assassinate Fairbanks get sidelined and cyclone or no,
00:30:31
Royinton comes in and says, hey, we're going to blow up the this
00:30:34
American chopper. Watch it.
00:30:36
And he doesn't say that exactly, but watch what happens.
00:30:38
And turns out Royinton, the Quds Force, the Iranians are giving
00:30:43
the terrorist groups, Al Qaeda and others, HIGI think is one of
00:30:46
them. The ability to take down
00:30:49
choppers at night time, which we thought that was impossible.
00:30:52
Rap's got to chase all these leads.
00:30:54
But he's lacking communication with Kennedy.
00:30:57
So Kennedy needs Nash to predict his next move.
00:30:59
And Nash says it's clear he's giving up on Fairbanks because
00:31:03
he knows right now he's got to track down who is in Afghanistan
00:31:08
on behalf of the Iranians, giving them weapons, giving them
00:31:11
Intel on an American operation that allows them to take down a
00:31:14
chopper and kill service members.
00:31:16
Nash knows Rap ain't gonna fuck with that.
00:31:19
Rap is going to the source to JBAD.
00:31:22
He's talking to every mother fucker he can.
00:31:24
He's asking who they captured on the mission, who their target
00:31:26
was, who where their Intel came from.
00:31:28
He's going to track down every lead he can over that.
00:31:31
And then that gets him brought into the whole rescue mission
00:31:34
for this Sexton guy who was captured, this Army Ranger.
00:31:37
It's all kind of connecting, but we're getting lines like this
00:31:41
sometimes. Miracles happened and people
00:31:43
survived cancer. No one survived Mitch Rap.
00:31:47
I loved that one that. Was a good one.
00:31:49
That's a gem. And then this one.
00:31:50
In all these conversations, Irene and Nash trying to figure
00:31:53
out rap's moves, they're thinking just like him.
00:31:56
Rap's ability to do what others couldn't went beyond just the
00:31:59
physical. Yes, the man seemed born to kill
00:32:01
terrorists in the same way in which Eddie Van Halen had been
00:32:04
born to play guitar, but it went further than that.
00:32:07
Rap possessed the sort of operational 6th sense that was
00:32:10
hard to define and impossible to teach.
00:32:12
He was more like a coyote who could spot a Hunter's trap than
00:32:16
a chess master able to foresee an opponent's strategy.
00:32:19
Rapp had probably constructed the Saeed identity for a
00:32:21
scenario exactly like this one. Her top operative was doing his
00:32:25
part to turn the current set back into a win.
00:32:27
Irene intended to do the same. And that's the moment where she
00:32:31
sends, you know, Mike and Ash out there.
00:32:33
They they have Rapp's number. And Don is giving new readers
00:32:38
clues of who Rapp is. There's even a few other times.
00:32:40
I think it happens multiple times where he says rap is not
00:32:44
just a cold blooded killer and like that's exactly what I want
00:32:48
people to say or I want a new author to say to show that we
00:32:52
know rap here it is. Contrary to popular belief, rap
00:32:55
did not kill everyone who irritated him.
00:32:58
He was, as he was fond of telling Irene, he could and did,
00:33:01
practice restraint when the situation merited it.
00:33:04
There's another one where it. Says Stan Hurley taught him
00:33:06
that. I think it's the most important
00:33:08
lesson from Stan Hurley. Really want to find this one
00:33:11
real quick. You could be an author.
00:33:14
Who takes over the series and goes, I'm going to have an
00:33:17
unhinged Mitrap. I think the readers want to go
00:33:19
back to the days where he was dark and brooding and did all
00:33:22
these crazy things and he would just murder people with
00:33:25
incendiary grenades, you know, stuffed into their mouth,
00:33:27
breaking their teeth, and then light their their insides on
00:33:30
fire and they burn from the inside out.
00:33:32
Yes, we want that Mitrap, but you can't have a single minded
00:33:36
narrow story of Mitrap just being this off the hook killer.
00:33:40
So. So Don gets that and wrote.
00:33:42
Besides teaching Rap how to kill, how best to kill a man,
00:33:45
perhaps the most important thing Hurley had imparted was when not
00:33:49
to kill. Specifically when to temper the
00:33:51
bias for action that ordinarily made Rap so effective at his
00:33:55
job, as Stan was won't to say he hadn't recruited Rap to be a
00:33:58
suicide bomber. The life of a good guy for the
00:34:01
life of a bad guy was never an even trade.
00:34:05
And that. Understanding of Rap is paying
00:34:08
off and allowing Irene and Nash to do their job because they
00:34:12
don't know Rap is going undercover as Fareed Saeed.
00:34:15
They don't know Rap is going to pop up in JBAD and want to get
00:34:18
involved in this op to track down whoever blew the American
00:34:21
chopper. But them understanding who Rap
00:34:24
is gets them to know where he's going to pop up and have
00:34:27
Coleman's team in place to meet with him and pull off the OP.
00:34:31
That wouldn't have happened if we didn't understand Rap's
00:34:34
psyche and persona. Yeah.
00:34:36
And I think. The other ways that Don shows
00:34:40
this is. There's.
00:34:43
You know, you're the quotes guy. I'm not the quotes guy, but I'm
00:34:46
just going to bastardize it. He says, there's this one, I
00:34:51
don't know, security guard or whatever.
00:34:54
And he's like, you know, I'm not just going to kill the guy
00:34:58
because he chose the thing. But, you know, you do make a
00:35:01
decision essentially like saying like rap just doesn't have
00:35:03
indiscriminate rule of he kills whoever he sees.
00:35:07
He actually like, yeah, I mean, this guy obviously chose to be
00:35:10
the bodyguard of someone who is a bad person.
00:35:13
So like, if he gets in his way, he's going to have no problems.
00:35:16
But like, you know, he's not he's not just going to straight
00:35:18
up kill him right away without any sort of pretext.
00:35:23
That, to me is true to what Vince would say and even what
00:35:26
Kyle would do with with, you know, rap is not that kind of
00:35:30
character to just pop up, kill anybody.
00:35:34
The one scene that was interesting was when he gets
00:35:36
ambushed by those random guys in the random thugs.
00:35:41
Yeah. Yeah.
00:35:44
Would he have? They are.
00:35:45
Thugs and he he eventually uses their phone yes to.
00:35:49
Contact would he would he have killed those guys?
00:35:52
Would Vince have had him kill those guys or would Vince have
00:35:54
just had him incapacitate him? I that.
00:35:57
That was the questionable one that that was the questionable
00:36:00
1. He was so hell bent in that
00:36:03
moment of doing two things. One passing the Intel just found
00:36:07
out the information. Yep, that an American.
00:36:09
Special operations team was going into an ambush, so he he
00:36:13
he was needing to pass on that information.
00:36:16
He was also trying to salvage the Fairbanks assassination
00:36:19
before he gave up on that, which Nash correctly predicted he's
00:36:23
going to give up on Fairbanks to track this down.
00:36:26
He was still thinking maybe I could pull this off.
00:36:28
So yeah, that was a strange little move.
00:36:33
I don't know, I maybe. He could have justified it that
00:36:35
they were thugs. They did approach him and
00:36:36
honestly, if he didn't kill them, they were probably going
00:36:39
to kill him. So very true.
00:36:41
I. I think that's.
00:36:41
Justified. Yeah.
00:36:43
One other signal that Don gets mitrap and he throws this to us.
00:36:48
Give it to me in the prologue. The Angel of Death.
00:36:53
I was bought. In if I had any questions going
00:36:56
in, is this going to be the Mitch rap I know and Love did.
00:36:59
Did Don do his homework? You know, we know Kyle spent
00:37:02
countless hours get, you know, digging into Vince and trying to
00:37:05
figure out every little clue that he needed to pull this off.
00:37:09
Don did the same. And it's clear when we get
00:37:11
Azadashani, we're brought back to Isfahan.
00:37:15
Yeah. But we knew, we knew that we
00:37:18
were going to get Azadashani because it was in the the
00:37:22
description that's. The description.
00:37:24
We knew we were going. Back to the nuclear site that
00:37:26
was bombed and or blown up and protect and defend by the
00:37:29
Israelis. And they were going to try to
00:37:30
pin it on the US and use that as a justification, which we still
00:37:33
don't know what they have coming.
00:37:35
The Quds Force demonstration by the Iranians.
00:37:39
It's kind of like murky of what technology or what weapons or
00:37:43
what operation they're planning. But we know it's going to hurt
00:37:45
the US. Well, I think we know.
00:37:47
It's like this missile technology because that's that's
00:37:50
what I just yeah, that prologue was very interesting.
00:37:53
And the fact that like we're getting all this the the writing
00:37:56
in there is interesting. We're getting all these
00:37:58
descriptions about what he's watching, but we don't ever
00:38:02
actually like he doesn't actually ever say it.
00:38:04
So I imagine like me, I always think of a visual.
00:38:07
I think of like, how would this be shown in ATV or movie?
00:38:11
So if we were there in the movie, like literally the last
00:38:13
scene, we'd be on their faces the whole time.
00:38:16
But as we panned away, we would just pan to this, you know, car
00:38:20
administration demonstration of whatever is going on.
00:38:23
And to me, almost like the the. The North Koreans, you know,
00:38:25
rolling their nukes through the streets with this massive man
00:38:28
army, Yeah, to me, what I think. What they were showing was the
00:38:31
fact at night they were able to shoot down this helicopter and
00:38:36
destroy it. So I guess that's it.
00:38:38
I'm wondering if there's a little more they have planned
00:38:40
that I. I feel like they're hinting at
00:38:42
something bigger like. Definitely.
00:38:45
Yeah, I hope so too. But definitely that is, I mean,
00:38:47
that really freaks out Irene and Mitch on their phone call when
00:38:50
they kind of like, without saying it, they understand each
00:38:52
other where Irene's like, oh shit, they shot down the chopper
00:38:55
at night and Mitch is like, oh shit.
00:38:58
And you know, that's a big deal. That's that's a turning point.
00:39:01
But I still think the Iranians have something bigger at stake
00:39:04
and and rap's going to have to figure it out, you know, with
00:39:07
this this guy that he's undercover with.
00:39:10
And I'm really. Intrigued how?
00:39:12
Because we have this whole dialogue, inner dialogue with
00:39:15
Ashanti and the fact that he, we know what kind of person he is
00:39:19
based off of, you know, everything he did to help Irene,
00:39:23
you know? Irene.
00:39:25
But he still loves his country and obviously he he thinks
00:39:29
what's going to happen with his country is is wrong.
00:39:32
So he wants to try to stop that. So I'm super I think like
00:39:35
literally the chapter right after we're cutting off like is
00:39:38
the chap like we we get more Ashanti immediately after this.
00:39:41
So we're going to start covering that in the next next part.
00:39:44
But, well, you know, that's a huge.
00:39:46
Cliffhanger because I'm while the whole thing is going on in
00:39:50
the caves in the Spingar Mountains, in the back of my
00:39:52
mind I'm like, he's got to get to the Ashanti, meet it, which
00:39:55
is so funny. 'Cause like even Irene's with
00:39:59
the president. And he doesn't realize that.
00:40:02
Oh, wait, the video I just saw that's wrapped.
00:40:04
Mitch, I thought you said he has to meet with Ashanti.
00:40:07
He's like, oh, he has seven hours.
00:40:08
He'll make it like, yeah. That was so funny.
00:40:12
That. Was real interesting and the
00:40:13
president's like that, that that's him.
00:40:16
I thought you said, you know, he was tracing down a lead with a
00:40:20
with a high value target and and Irene's like that's the one he's
00:40:22
carrying on his back. So like you're letting Mitch
00:40:26
carry away a high value target, which we just took down to take
00:40:30
him undercover into a cell and you're going to rescue and
00:40:34
you're going to have him rescue the Ranger.
00:40:36
Oh, and then that leads to an amazing line of how Irene, after
00:40:41
being in the Oval Office, was left again, Irene doesn't rattle
00:40:46
very easily, but so far she's rattled a few times rethinking
00:40:49
her strategy to to out Nash and bring Nash in rethinking whoa,
00:40:56
actually her her interaction with Rex Alton Rex, I think
00:41:01
yeah, he touches her and she's just shaken to her core.
00:41:05
I think that's. That shows another element of
00:41:09
Don doing his homework. She has just had this.
00:41:13
She was just taken and brought to the point of.
00:41:18
You know thought. She was going to be raped, you
00:41:20
know, stripped down to her underwear.
00:41:22
So placing her in this vulnerable state that is that is
00:41:27
true and canonical, canonical to the story, right.
00:41:30
Fully agree with putting that in there.
00:41:32
I, I read that and I was like, oh, I, I get why he's doing that
00:41:36
exactly. The.
00:41:37
And that's the explanation, because I could see some people
00:41:39
being like, this is kind of a weakened Irene.
00:41:42
She's second guessing herself. She's trembling a little bit.
00:41:45
The president even has to ask her Irene what's wrong.
00:41:47
And she has to steady herself like this is not the Irene you
00:41:51
know who comes in and kicks ass. But dude, protecting the fend
00:41:53
just happened. You're 100% right.
00:41:57
She is vulnerable, but they just, she just blows the
00:42:00
president's mind with this Intel.
00:42:02
And then she says. As the president left the room,
00:42:05
Irene found herself wondering how it was that the most
00:42:08
powerful nation in the world was yet again placing its fate on
00:42:11
the shoulders of just one man every book.
00:42:14
Man, that's a Mitrap book. That right there is the essence
00:42:18
of a mitrap book. Very true.
00:42:21
And it's going to lead to. This Ashanti conversation, which
00:42:23
I think is the turning point Part 2 is going to open up.
00:42:27
I hope. However, rap transitions.
00:42:29
Now that he saved the guy, he knows a little bit more about
00:42:31
what's going on. He can get back to meet Ashanti
00:42:34
and Ashanti wants to partner with him.
00:42:36
And we know Ashanti is bringing in his wife.
00:42:38
Ashanti says one of the most important parts of the mission
00:42:41
will be his wife. And then cliffhanger.
00:42:43
We don't know what he asks of her, but she.
00:42:45
She's going to be involved. Like there's something coming
00:42:48
big that I'm really excited for. We.
00:42:51
Don't yet know what Mike and this NOC of, you know Noreen is
00:42:57
going to do, right? We.
00:43:01
We don't know what. You know what Raff's next move
00:43:03
is? We we don't know what Irene's
00:43:07
next move is. And so I guess there's there's
00:43:09
two other things that I really want to talk to you about
00:43:11
that's. I want to talk to you.
00:43:14
About the, the action of the first half and like what you
00:43:18
thought of the, the operation, you know, once Mitch, you know,
00:43:24
got out of, got to essentially got to Islamabad and undergoes
00:43:29
that. I want to ask you about that.
00:43:31
And the other thing is, is this weird, Like, not weird, but like
00:43:37
every couple chapters or every like not a couple, every seven
00:43:41
chapters, we get a update on what's the code name for Osama
00:43:48
bin Laden? Crankshaft.
00:43:51
Oh, Crankshaft, right? Crankshaft is the operation.
00:43:53
The operation. The operation to take.
00:43:55
Him down we get. This we get.
00:43:57
This up every now and then we get this update on crankshaft
00:44:01
and it's like OK, I realize and to my understanding I guess this
00:44:07
makes perfect sense right. There's missions that go on.
00:44:10
He's obviously placing it during this time period.
00:44:13
So that makes sense that there would also be this other mission
00:44:17
going on that the president would also want to know about.
00:44:19
So we're going to try to merge the two together.
00:44:22
So I'm really intrigued. Well, obviously we just heard
00:44:24
from the president that he wants Mitch to be there to verify so
00:44:30
that we've already learned how these two missions are going to
00:44:33
come together. But, you know, I just don't, I
00:44:34
don't see how it's going to happen.
00:44:36
No, I, I. Agree.
00:44:38
The Bin Laden stuff through the first half of this book is like
00:44:41
the outlier. It's it's kind of looming out
00:44:44
there. And it was a little abrupt when
00:44:47
Irene brought that up with the president, 'cause I thought the
00:44:50
big thing she's nervous about talking to him about is sending
00:44:53
Mitch on this mission that he's on and what he's doing.
00:44:56
But. No, she goes and talks about
00:44:57
crankshaft, but then she brings up.
00:44:59
Crankshaft and and she really is worried about that.
00:45:01
I think that shows what the director has on her plate.
00:45:05
Sometimes she might be the only one who knows all the different
00:45:08
pieces and everything's compartmentalized, but she's
00:45:11
like that sieve that it all has to come through.
00:45:14
So I yeah, I think that lends credit credence to her job.
00:45:18
And then the other thing is that makes a really, really big deal
00:45:22
about the Iranians giving the Afghanis technology to shoot
00:45:26
down choppers at night like that.
00:45:30
Dude. That I didn't think of that.
00:45:32
I wasn't sure how the the Bin Laden raid would come into this
00:45:35
and why it's important and it seemed weird when Irene talked
00:45:37
about it, but dude that whole operation is fucked if they can
00:45:42
shoot down our choppers in the middle of the night.
00:45:44
Exactly. That's the link.
00:45:46
That's the link exactly. And if Ashanti?
00:45:49
Can give us Intel that helps us stop that and stop that
00:45:53
technology trade. Crankshaft can be successful.
00:45:56
Wow. Don is a genius.
00:45:59
Yeah. And.
00:46:00
To me, it's almost like, all right, we, we read these stories
00:46:04
and the way the authors craft them, we want to think that, oh,
00:46:09
whatever is going on within this universe, that's what's most
00:46:12
important. But what Don is doing here is
00:46:15
placing by placing us back in 2011.
00:46:21
Of course. Top of mind on the director of
00:46:23
the CIA would be, you know, capturing Osama bin Laden,
00:46:28
especially because they have all that information about, about,
00:46:32
about and about, you know, the vaccine campaign.
00:46:35
And so to me, it it's just nice that like you would throw that
00:46:38
in because you could easily just make a book where none of that
00:46:43
is present at all. But then you're like you write
00:46:45
in your own way. But then you're reading and
00:46:47
you're. Like, oh, well, at this time,
00:46:49
that's that's when the CIA is also trying to capture Osama bin
00:46:52
Laden. So like, what wouldn't what the
00:46:54
hell is going on with that? So, you know, it's nice to put
00:46:57
that in a in a accurate historical context.
00:47:00
And I feel like Don does a good, good job of that.
00:47:03
And and two. Little Nuggets there.
00:47:04
You mentioned it, the hepatitis B vaccine where they tried to
00:47:07
knock on the door and get a blood sample.
00:47:10
Well, that fails here in the book.
00:47:11
So it's like the CIA tried something didn't work.
00:47:14
Well, I think it wasn't. It wasn't.
00:47:15
That's what. That's what it was Successful in
00:47:17
real life, I'm pretty sure. And the other one.
00:47:19
That I think was realistic when they're talking about the one
00:47:23
Courier who has been so good at using burner phones and tracking
00:47:29
his movements and he he sometimes drives 90 miles,
00:47:32
You're right, just to place a call on a burner phone.
00:47:34
But he used the same Internet cafe and sent some emails.
00:47:39
And I think that might have been real that that that Courier kind
00:47:43
of showed his cards, you know, blown his cover when he did
00:47:47
that. He was so careful on everything
00:47:48
else but that. One opportunity.
00:47:50
Let us get some Intel and I really like the call by the way,
00:47:54
we have one other thing I want to talk about is callbacks here
00:47:57
we get the call back with Barbara Lonsdale when?
00:48:00
When both. Irene and the president kind of
00:48:02
know in the back of their minds we can't have another failure
00:48:06
because our support on Capitol Hill right now is coming from
00:48:10
both sides. Like she switched, she she went
00:48:13
across the aisle after extreme measures to be pro CIA and she's
00:48:17
helping things on the Hill get operations like this approved.
00:48:20
And then our Chinook goes down and then we had missing Intel
00:48:23
that the Iranians can shoot down our choppers.
00:48:25
Like, this is going to look really bad not only on Irene's
00:48:30
leadership at the CIA, but look bad on our whole involvement in
00:48:33
the Middle East. And if we can't get the senators
00:48:36
on Capitol Hill to play ball, that could look really bad for
00:48:40
president. And that's, and that's going to
00:48:42
make him we're dead in the water.
00:48:43
That's going to make him not green light OPS like Crankshaft
00:48:46
to go get bin Laden. So they know very well there's a
00:48:49
lot riding on this. And that really UPS the stakes
00:48:53
at the same time as it connects to extreme measures and pursuit
00:48:55
of honor. I thought really cool connection
00:48:58
there. Memorial Day I feel like is
00:49:00
mentioned like the legend of rap and what he did to stop the nuke
00:49:04
that day. Some of the operators are like,
00:49:06
oh, it's that guy or the SEAL Team Six guy that Scott Coleman
00:49:10
is talking to. He's like the SEAL Team 6
00:49:13
liaison with the Jalalabad group.
00:49:17
I just think there's a lot of callbacks that Don gets right.
00:49:19
But I didn't want to get off off track there.
00:49:22
No, there's a lot of good. Callbacks and I feel like also
00:49:24
he's able to intertwine. I, I think I picked up four
00:49:29
previous novels he like directly says including capture or kill.
00:49:34
He says capture or kill extreme measures.
00:49:37
Active treason. Capture or kill.
00:49:40
No, I know. But he's able to work.
00:49:43
Oh, he used the phrase. Capture.
00:49:45
He uses the phrase. Capture or kill.
00:49:47
But he also uses extreme measures.
00:49:49
Active treason. Like, you know, he's he.
00:49:52
I don't know by purpose or just because the nature of these
00:49:55
novels, like the titles are the same.
00:49:58
I feel like I read five or seven of them.
00:50:01
The titles of these previous books in his dialogue or in his
00:50:06
That's really. Fun and some of them, even if
00:50:08
not the title, I didn't pick up on that completely, but just
00:50:11
referencing the storylines in ways that seem authentic and
00:50:14
it's not force. Like there's one point where he
00:50:16
talks about what rap did in Paris after getting shot, and it
00:50:21
just showed, you know, he was the man for the job.
00:50:23
And like that raised him to legendary status.
00:50:26
Kill shot. You know that he talks about
00:50:28
when? He he gave himself up to the
00:50:31
Hezbollah to be captured to rescue Stan Hurley in the
00:50:36
American American assassin. I think it's.
00:50:39
Hitting all the seven or eight books reference It's hitting all
00:50:42
the. Hallmarks of like, all right,
00:50:45
this guy knows his shit. You know, like I, I, I feel
00:50:48
like, but not being too preachy. Yeah, like.
00:50:53
Not hitting you over the head with it.
00:50:55
It it all worked. You know it it wasn't like too
00:50:58
much, if that makes sense. I completely.
00:51:01
Agree. The one thing maybe that was
00:51:03
downplayed, and I don't mind it, but it was very Vince Flynn.
00:51:09
You need the one to two pages about the Pan Am Lockerbie
00:51:13
flight, about Maureen that was short, about why it was only
00:51:17
like maybe two or three sentences or like a paragraph.
00:51:20
Yeah, but he had it in. There he had it.
00:51:22
He had. It that's why I can't think him
00:51:23
too much. But you know, Vince Flynn would
00:51:25
put that full page and I think sometimes it was the same exact
00:51:28
text. I think that it's copy and
00:51:30
pasted it. Sometimes it was almost, you
00:51:33
know. I picked up on this.
00:51:35
Brad does the exact same thing with some some of the elements
00:51:38
of Scott Harvat. It's just you wrote something
00:51:41
great one time, you use it, you. Might as well use.
00:51:44
It again especially 'cause these authors want them to be
00:51:47
standalone novels, so you can fill it in.
00:51:50
For new readers, I think. This novel because of the nature
00:51:54
of where it's placed. Is really.
00:51:57
Cool for not only being a standalone, but also super cool
00:52:03
for being a lifelong reader because of the elements of the
00:52:08
connections that it makes with everything.
00:52:10
And even like what we've mentioned how it's so far just
00:52:14
from the 1st 200 pages, you know, potentially connecting to
00:52:17
to Kyle's writing and and like his storyline.
00:52:20
So IA 100. Percent agree.
00:52:24
This is crazy to think this is one of the better books to meet
00:52:29
Metrap, to be introduced to Metrap.
00:52:31
Like there are some books I would tell people like, oh,
00:52:34
don't, don't read that one 'cause you got to read these
00:52:36
three. First, don't read that one.
00:52:37
You don't. Want to know what happens, you
00:52:38
know, or this one, you really get a feel for who Mitch Rap is.
00:52:41
So you got to start with this one.
00:52:43
I could recommend this one to anybody 'cause it's got that
00:52:46
hook. You'll be drawn into it so much
00:52:49
you have to go back. You want to read other.
00:52:50
Novels you want to read other. Novels.
00:52:53
You want to know who Mitch is? Like, I mean, just look at this.
00:52:57
This little little sentence blew my mind when I read it because I
00:53:01
was like, this dude's a motherfucking badass.
00:53:04
And if you knew nothing about Mitch Rapp, but you just read
00:53:06
this, this was right when the ambush happens that was staged
00:53:10
by Coleman and Will Bentley, which there is a Will Bentley
00:53:12
here. Force Recon Marine new guy
00:53:16
worker. He's got to die, right?
00:53:18
Because where is he? He's not anywhere.
00:53:20
So he's got to die, right? Like Scott Coleman's?
00:53:23
Got to lose him or he's got to leave the Coleman team for some
00:53:25
reason. But anyway, he he, he's, he's a
00:53:27
fun character. Right before that, OP wraps up
00:53:30
and Rap goes out into the jungle with an utterance that sounded
00:53:33
more like a growl than speech. Rap dropped his rifle, lifted
00:53:37
the warlord into a fireman's carry, and ran for the trail.
00:53:41
That's just such a cool way to end that ambush scene.
00:53:44
Rap picking up this warlord on his back after he convinced him
00:53:48
they're on the same team and just running off into a trail to
00:53:51
go find a nearby village after the staged ambush.
00:53:55
And then the president and the Security Council are watching
00:53:57
that on film and they know it's ACIA guy but don't know it's
00:54:01
Rap. If I never knew anything about
00:54:03
Rap, just that one sequence would make me want to read
00:54:06
everything about this guy. Same.
00:54:10
I'm like I said, I had my trepidations not not because of
00:54:17
Don, just because of like. A new writer.
00:54:21
You know, obviously this is a is a series that's near and dear to
00:54:24
my heart, but I don't know, through the 1st 200 pages, I
00:54:29
think he's done a damn good job. And I'm, I'm, I'm vested and I'm
00:54:34
excited about reading the second-half of this book because
00:54:37
I really want to know what happens 100.
00:54:41
Percent. My three biggest concerns.
00:54:42
One, the transition to a new author check.
00:54:46
No longer a concern at all. Second, going back in the
00:54:51
timeline to protect and defend, filling in gaps between Vince's
00:54:54
stories. Check.
00:54:57
No longer a concern at all doing this semi alternate history as
00:55:02
we called it with the Bin Laden stuff that's still up for grabs.
00:55:05
Still up for grabs? Undecided.
00:55:07
Undecided if if we have to, we have to finish the.
00:55:09
Novel to pull off that one right and then the other.
00:55:12
Undecided is does this fit with the Canon of the other books
00:55:15
around it or does it break the lore?
00:55:17
So far no indicators that that exactly.
00:55:20
So. Undecided though, until we read
00:55:23
it. One last thing.
00:55:24
Before we wrap up part one, what did you think of the rescue of
00:55:28
the Ranger at the at the end with with Scott and team and the
00:55:32
fact that there's this like other Iranian who like outsmitch
00:55:37
and says, Oh no, he's the Angel of death.
00:55:39
What are you doing? Like I thought I'll and then the
00:55:42
guy can't swim. I thought it was great.
00:55:45
Oh my. God that sequence just hummed
00:55:48
the second I just read that. Fireman's carry where?
00:55:51
Where he takes the warlord. I think Cyclone on his back
00:55:54
leaving from the fake. Ambush leaving from the fake
00:55:58
ambush. Which I just read about all the
00:56:00
way up to Scott Coleman coming in and saving them in the the
00:56:04
waterfall, in the pond, the river.
00:56:06
That entire sequence blew my mind.
00:56:09
It was a mix. God, there's so much happening
00:56:12
there. It was a mix of the opening
00:56:14
scene in Memorial Day, which was that huge military engagement.
00:56:19
It was a mix of lethal agent in The Cave complex with what's his
00:56:23
name, Mukhtar. Was that Imad Mukhtar?
00:56:26
Yeah, Imad Mukhtar. In in so we.
00:56:27
Got The Cave elements of that. It's also him undercover that
00:56:31
one time. Like you said, he goes
00:56:33
undercover, let's himself get captured.
00:56:35
He's using an alias, he's pretending to be the warlord.
00:56:38
He's using all his features, right?
00:56:40
His darkened features, his Iraqi accent and perfect understanding
00:56:44
of the Arabic language. He's firing on.
00:56:48
All cylinders as mitrap in that sequence.
00:56:51
Two quibbles about it, though. When Sexton.
00:56:55
The marine that they rescue or is he a Ranger?
00:56:59
He's a Ranger that they rescue when he can't swim.
00:57:03
I was like, give me a break. Like yes, it led to the banter.
00:57:07
If seals are good in the water, Rangers are good on land.
00:57:09
It's not part of their. He does say he joined.
00:57:11
The Army, not the Navy, so you know you.
00:57:14
Could write it off, at least to that little bit of banter.
00:57:17
So sure, you got me, I'm OK with it.
00:57:19
But come on, it's kind of a cheap little device to up the
00:57:22
stakes and just make this exciting.
00:57:24
I wouldn't have minded if you condensed that all and it was
00:57:27
just there's a stream here, let's jump into it and go get
00:57:30
saved. Oh shit, they're shooting at us
00:57:31
and we almost died in the waterfall.
00:57:33
Thank God Scott Coleman's here and thank God these smoke, you
00:57:35
know, artillery smoke, white phosphorus grenades are going
00:57:38
off and whatever. You could have just done that
00:57:40
instead of stretching it out with that.
00:57:42
I can't swim because because that was not a good buy in.
00:57:44
I just I was just checked out of the you could have just made it.
00:57:47
It's really hard carrying this guy because they're trying to
00:57:50
take they're trying to take one of the guys for Intel so they
00:57:52
can debrief him and interrogate him.
00:57:55
You could have just made that the challenge instead of the not
00:57:57
swimming. So it was light hearted.
00:57:58
The other quibble a little long when the lights are out in The
00:58:03
Cave right after he turns around, tries to kill the
00:58:06
Iranian guy, who we assume maybe he's not just a warlord there,
00:58:11
but he also might be the guy who had Intel about selling the
00:58:15
technology to shoot down the choppers.
00:58:17
He escapes out of The Cave. The Cave sequence and shootouts
00:58:20
and getting lost in the tunnels got a little long in the tooth.
00:58:25
So I loved everything about rap, going undercover as Farid Saeed,
00:58:30
having to convince Cyclone to trust him, having to turn on the
00:58:34
Iranian guy, the meat to buy the American, how he's going to free
00:58:37
the hostage. I wasn't sure if that would be a
00:58:39
little cheap of how he's going to free the hostage, but then
00:58:42
cyclone offers it to him as a business proposal and Fareed's
00:58:46
like, you know, I'm well equipped.
00:58:47
I've moved people across the border before because I I work
00:58:50
in all these shady, murky dealings across the the border.
00:58:54
I would definitely believe that Fareed Saeed has business with
00:58:59
this guy and would want to purchase him.
00:59:01
So this like highest bidder scene.
00:59:03
I really liked. My quibbles are went a little
00:59:05
long in the Tooth in The Cave and a little unbelievable with
00:59:08
the I can't swim plot. Just seemed a little cheap,
00:59:12
yeah. I liked how a lot of those
00:59:14
chapters, so between from when that scene starts to when it
00:59:19
we're ending our our talk today is like 25 chapters, but it's
00:59:25
only 100 pages of the book. Yeah, it's a long.
00:59:27
Sequence and. There's a lot of like one to
00:59:32
three page chapters. It's like some of them are very,
00:59:35
some of them are very short and some of them are very long.
00:59:37
It's just I like the mix, the mixing up of the writing style
00:59:42
of of the the there's some staccarinous with the chapters
00:59:46
and then you get a long one, you know.
00:59:48
So he's doing all the beats that we've seen with not only his
00:59:53
writing, but with, you know, how some of these sort of writers
00:59:56
are going nowadays, like with the Brad, with the James race,
00:59:59
Jack Carr. So dude, I, I love it.
01:00:04
I'm. This I I, you said it might
01:00:08
crack the top ten. I, I, I think I have to agree.
01:00:10
It might crack the top ten. I think it might crack.
01:00:14
The top 10 pretty comfortably if the second-half is like this
01:00:17
first half. Another thing that was super
01:00:19
cool during that whole sequence, Rap pissing on the dude, and
01:00:24
that's the signal for the drone to be able to pick up on their
01:00:27
location. Yeah, that.
01:00:30
Was that was that was crazy when rap starts.
01:00:33
Pissing on the guy, I'm like, oh, this is brilliant to make
01:00:37
the guy think he's really one of them.
01:00:39
You know, like the fact that he'd be willing to do this.
01:00:43
But no, I was sold and I was tricked because there was more
01:00:46
to it than that. Oh, I love that.
01:00:48
And the threads on his shirt was kind of cool.
01:00:50
When Coleman during the ambush operation, he can't get shot, he
01:00:54
has these IR threads in his shirt that only, you know, the
01:00:57
IR in the night vision goggles would pick up so he'd he'd light
01:01:01
up very different than the colors of the other bodies.
01:01:05
Two really cool little Nuggets that were elevated for me and oh
01:01:09
man, the pissing on the dude was just fantastic.
01:01:12
Well, I even like the. Fact that so they staged this
01:01:15
entire ambush only to place a gun that had instead of a
01:01:21
ammunition to have like a pink castle in the end, right?
01:01:24
But you got to imagine that like.
01:01:27
All right, Is that going to be the?
01:01:28
Only gonna round is rap going to know to pick up that like which.
01:01:31
How are they going to signal to rap to pick up that one and fire
01:01:33
it at this Will Bentley guy is dangerous.
01:01:36
Super dangerous. But it's cool, I got they just
01:01:39
and the fact that we get thrusts the way Don writes that
01:01:42
sequence, we don't know what's happening.
01:01:45
We just we cut from 1 scene to the other is that that's.
01:01:50
More of a Don. Style than a Vince style.
01:01:52
I think that's Vince. I don't know.
01:01:55
I think that's kind of. Vince.
01:01:57
I think it's a little Vince to do something where you're not
01:02:01
exactly sure what's going on. I don't know if I have an
01:02:04
example of it. I feel like.
01:02:08
Maybe. Hank Clark walking.
01:02:12
Into the Country Club. You know you get this.
01:02:15
Whole thing if he's talking to his buddies, he's having lunch
01:02:17
or whatever, but then a few scenes later rap's going to be
01:02:20
waiting in the sauna for him. You.
01:02:23
Thought this was a safe space you.
01:02:24
Know, you thought like he just had lunch with his buddies, he
01:02:26
did all his scheming, he played golf.
01:02:28
But then rap's there, you know, or I don't.
01:02:31
Maybe no term limits? Term limits.
01:02:34
Which I was thinking about term limits a lot with this dude
01:02:38
Sheamus. Watching the choppers take off
01:02:40
from the White House, I think he's in Arlington Cemetery at
01:02:43
the Lee House. So he has perfect view of this.
01:02:45
And you don't know what's going on with the choppers and all.
01:02:48
But then it's it's the president going out to Camp David and
01:02:52
like, oh, oh, oh, no term limits with oh, this is a throwback.
01:02:58
Do you remember he had to put the jamming devices in the
01:03:03
newspaper dispensers to jam up the media vans so that their
01:03:08
their feed was all messed up so that, you know, I forget exactly
01:03:12
what. Oh, oh, that was the jammers.
01:03:14
So the choppers would have to go.
01:03:16
It's over the Potomac River. I feel like you just we just we
01:03:20
as the audience didn't exactly know what was going on.
01:03:24
Scott Coleman drugging the dog. He comes up with late poison
01:03:27
laced meat and he drugs the dog in the alley in the backyard
01:03:31
undercover of like a utility cable man.
01:03:33
We don't know why, but then that's because he's going into
01:03:36
the house later and he doesn't want the dogs to to come up.
01:03:39
I just think that's I saw a little bit of Vince in that with
01:03:43
that, not quite a misdirect, but the audience doesn't have the
01:03:47
full picture of where we're headed.
01:03:48
And then when it happens, it's so exciting, OK.
01:03:53
I could probably. Find more but those ones just
01:03:54
come to mind dude. I'm excited about the first
01:03:58
half. Next time we talk, we'll we'll
01:04:01
talk Part 2, man. Yeah, this book did.
01:04:04
A lot more than I was expecting it to do.
01:04:06
It exceeded expectations thus far.
01:04:09
Very much so. Yeah, it'll be live from Amstnet
01:04:14
Live, but recorded from I'll be in Amsterdam when we record Part
01:04:17
2 of this book. Hopefully Mike will not have to
01:04:21
have a rush rush to the hospital.
01:04:25
But before then. We got to thank our patrons,
01:04:28
including our Deputy Director, Sherry F, our Special operator
01:04:31
Jason C, our special agents, Ben, Darrell, Kevin, George,
01:04:34
Matt, Dawn, Peggy, Mark and Chris.
01:04:38
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01:04:42
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01:04:46
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01:04:49
And as always, just sub Mitch, be Mitch.