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Kindle Notes & Highlights
by
Marc Cameron
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February 27 - March 21, 2022
Ryan stood to show the briefing was at an end. He was careful not to put any weight on his heel.
“I saw you limping, Jack,” she said, affecting the motherly voice she’d used on him when they were in the CIA together. MP was one of an extremely close cohort who still addressed him by his given name—but even she rarely did it in the Oval Office.
Growing old sure does suck…
Ed had a bout with plantar fasciitis a couple years ago. It’s nothing to be ashamed of.”
Yeah, plantar fasciitis damn sure ain’t no fun either.
“Getting old isn’t for wusses,” he said. “You’re not a wuss,” Mary Pat said. “You’re an invalid.”
Ha, ha.
“You’re supposed to take off your shoe and roll this around under the arch of your foot. It works wonders.” Ryan looked back and forth from the golf ball to his aching foot.
as the President’s daily schedule was posted on the White House website.
Isn’t that a bit of an OPSEC concern?
She raised her eyebrows and tilted her head like a mom, telling him to give the liver and onions a chance.
Ryan had asked them to include his detail agents’ shooting scores
Hooah.
Everyone got a haircut and bought a new suit for their first meeting in this office—if they had the time. He remembered his first time in the Oval and shuddered a little.
Style ‘n’ Profile…
People in the private sector—and even other countries—tended to hire their bodyguards by the pound, but the U.S. Secret Service was different. The agency understood that big didn’t necessarily mean competent.
The file said his range scores were near perfect with both his SIG Sauer pistol and the MP5 SMG.
HK MP5 Yay, SIG Meh.
Still, it would take months to develop the relationship Ryan had with Joe O’Hearn. And the level of understanding shared between him and Andrea Price-O’Day—forget about it.
“Welcome to the Big Show,” Ryan said, referring to what the agents themselves called PPD.
The longtime agent in charge of his detail, Andrea had retired after injuries sustained protecting him in Mexico City.
“The Little Show with free parking.” The Naval Observatory, home to the VPOTUS, offered agents a place to park—something not available to them at the White House.
but I happened to overhear DNI Foley mention that you might have a bout of plantar fasciitis going on. I don’t know if you are aware of this, sir, but that particular malady is also known as ‘policeman’s foot.’
were scared of her. Those were the worst. They had to hurt her to be real men. Magdalena could not understand how a grown man could be so frightened of a thirteen-year-old girl.
Sickening and disturbing.
Jacó, Costa Rica, sprawled across the lap of the jungle-covered Talamanca Mountains at the mouth of the Gulf of Nicoya, faces the open waters of the Pacific. The picturesque village is famous for three things: incredible surfing, expatriate norteamericanos, and legal prostitution.
Prostitution was not only legal in Jacó, but culturally sanctioned. Procreation recreation was, in fact, one of the driving forces of the local economy.
The age of consent in Jacó was sixteen, but the authorities were more interested in catching speeders and they made it clear that they would leave the girls alone unless they were under twelve. Magdalena looked like she was ten—and no policeman ever bothered her.
Again, sickening and disturbing.
Men were strange—and though she was only thirteen, Magdalena was old enough to know that she would never understand them.
“People Are Strange”—Jim Morrison and The Doors
A white tank top barely concealed sagging breasts and a muffin top overflowed the waist of her skinny jeans. She held a twisted leather quirt made from a dried bull penis. The cruel thing even had a name, Ratón,
Ugh! Food for “Yucca” Bill Fernandez (heh heh, inside joke).
The woman’s name was Lupe and she was the bottom bitch here—what Parrot called the senior girl of any operation, the one who’d been around the longest, survived all the chopping, and somehow kept enough of her teeth to hold on to the boss’s affections.
kids. It was the girls like Lupe who became the bosses, girls who exuded equal parts danger and sex—just enough to be interesting.
she was smart—and that scared men more than anything.
Bottom bitches were always the cruelest to girls they thought might pose a threat to their status. Magdalena had often thought that if her mother had joined the life, she would have been the bottom bitch.
A bit like the kapos in the concentration camps.
The car, a maroon Chrysler 300,
constant speed of sixty-three miles an hour, two miles an hour less than the posted limit. It bumped the center line a couple times but didn’t cross it, and that could have been a function of trooperitis. Nobody could drive a quarter-mile without committing some kind of violation, least of all someone with a black-and-white staring at them in the rearview mirror.
Been there, done that! I’m a former LEO myself, and I hate it when bored-ass state troopers hover around on these “fishing” expeditions!
Way back during his field-training days, a senior trooper in the Highway Patrol had once told him that only three kinds of people were out during the wee hours of the night—cops, paperboys, and assholes.
Add a fourth: cross-country commuters trying to beat rush-hour traffic as much as possible!
Troopers in the Texas Highway Patrol are endowed with buckets of swagger by the time they graduate the DPS Academy in Austin. But swagger could get you killed if it wasn’t backed up with good procedure.
Everything is bigger in Texas, including (especially) egos…
Never one to engage in a fair fight when it came to his own safety,
Yeah, to hell with fair fighting; the only rule in a fight is to win!!
Calderon wagged his flashlight at the guy’s lap. “Scares me when you do that,” he said, grinning.
CENTRAL CASTING: My former FLETC classmate Rich Velez (real-life Texas DPS veteran) as Trooper Roy Calderon
“You crossed the center line a couple times back there,
Heh heh, that snippet of dialogue reminds me a bit of the opening scene from “Magnum Force.”
drew his SIG. “Reggie,” he said, his voice raspy and tight. “Keep your hands where I can see them. Shut your mouth and get out of the car.”
Texas cops don’t take no shit from nobody!
Trooper Calderon gave a tired sigh. He was incredibly thirsty, and he knew that wasn’t a good sign.
Dammit…
Everyone else in the room ranked exponentially higher than Colonel Huang, but under his dark suit jacket was a Taurus PT 709 nine-millimeter pistol.
Again, why is a ChiCom officer carrying a Brazilian Taurus as opposed to a homegrown PRC pistol design?
None of the other men were armed, and, as Chairman Mao had so rightly pointed out, political power “grows from the barrel of a gun.”
Hence the policy of Commie dictators of disarming the citizenry.
each wore the uniform of their respective office, festooned with enough medals as to form protective breast plates for the two men. The general and the admiral were both possessed of the heavy jowls and swollen bellies that seemed to go with high command,
Panjandrums.
At forty-two, Huang Ju was a working colonel, still striving to be out in front of his team instead of slumped behind a desk preparing schedules and checking pay books.
Gotta give the man credit for leading from the front and not from the rear, even if he is a damn dirty ChiCom.
Huang led by example, and he made certain every close-protection officer under his command was given the opportunity to exercise and practice weekly to stay proficient in both firearms and defensive tactics.
Like I was just saying…
“The idea makes no sense,” the general secretary said. “Does anyone truly believe the Americans are stupid enough to sink a Chinese ship off their own coast—and then prove themselves magnanimous enough to rescue our personnel?” General Ma gave a sullen nod. “It would be a mistake to put anything past the American CIA. I would not be surprised if they were behind the bombing of the subway construction site.” The foreign minister interjected. “We are referring to that as a gas explosion, are we not?” “Of course, of course,” Ma said. “But we in this room are all aware Uyghur separatists were
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<facepalm>
Admiral Qian spoke next. “The sea is over a hundred fathoms deep where Orion was lost, so there it will be impossible to look at any physical evidence.
A hundred fathoms is a mere 600 feet; shipwrecks have been examined in detail at FAR greater depths than that (look at the Titanic as just one example).
“A dog barks at something,” Zhao said, quoting a proverb. “And the other dogs bark at him.”
“Zhao Zhuxi,” Admiral Qian said, using the title that had meant “chairman” in Mao’s day but was now usually translated as “president” by the media. It was a matter of semantics that amounted to little consequence; the sentiment in the Chinese mind had changed little.
Politicians of any stripe made him feel as though he’d downed a mouthful of spoiled milk.
Haha, good one.
He’d followed in Deng’s footsteps as mayor of Chongqing in the early nineties,
Home of the famous acrobats!
He wore a white lab coat and black tie. His shirt pocket was stuffed with an array of expensive fountain pens, the way a military man might wear his medals.
I also suggest a marked increase in the frequency of physical congress between the general secretary and Madame Zhao.” Zhao took the pill bottle and rolled it around in his palm. “Swallowing a large pill will be an easy task when compared to the remainder of your prescription.” The notion of explaining to his wife that the doctor ordered them to have more sex would have been comical had he not been in so much pain.
Hmm, what would Dr. Ruth Westheimer or Nina Hartley say?
“Yin yang huo,” he said. “Horny goat weed?”
“In the meantime, I must remind my wife of her conjugal responsibility to my health.” Zhao gave a polite chuckle, letting the bawdy comment slide.
