Power and Empire (Jack Ryan Universe, #24)

by Marc Cameron

Defensive-tactics instructors taught their students to use the fingers of the nondominant hand to hold open one eye—but DT class was nothing like real life.

Caruso shook his head and said softly, “A carne di lupo, zanne di cane.” Callahan raised an eyebrow, waiting for him to explain. “Literally it means something about wolf meat and dog fangs, but figuratively it says you have to be rough to fight rough things.

Government agents didn’t like being under surveillance any more than regular citizens.

True dat.

“I’m in a relationship,” he said. Callahan gave him an honest laugh, continuing to walk toward her desk. “I figured,” she said. “Men who can quote Italian proverbs don’t stay unattached for long.”

“Tell me how you say that Italian proverb again.” “A carne di lupo, zanne di cane.” Callahan looked at him and nodded. “Hell yeah,” she said. “That.”

Gavin Biery on speaker. The Campus IT wizard sounded congested, like he had a cold—which was surely a function of the fact that it was nearly two in the morning in D.C.

Are y’all sure he ain’t got COVID? Nyuk nyuk.

Biery chuckled. “The United States required friendly nations to add biometric data to their passport photos over a decade ago.

Which greatly simplified my work life as a CBP Officer at L.A./Long Beach Seaport!

FBI techs . . . Please!

Heh heh, can’t say I blame ya there, Gavin!

Lisanne Robertson was the new Adara Sherman—director of transportation for The Campus. Gerry Hendley had recruited the energetic former Marine after she pulled him over for speeding on the Jeff Davis Highway. Her Lebanese mother had raised her to be fluent in Arabic—she had two tours in Iraq under her belt by the time she was twenty-seven.

OORAH and Mumtaz…my kind of woman!!

from the military, she’d spent four years with the City of Alexandria Police Department. Both jobs gave her the chops she needed to transform from uniformed flight attendant to effectively become a one-person Phoenix Raven unit,

Hooah! I say again, my kind of woman!!

One of the two girls Li called hostesses handed him a Gibson martini with three cocktail onions,

Gin or vodka? Shaken or stirred? And gimme olives over onions in my martinis any ol’ day of the week. 🫒 🍸

It was to be a British feast, and, as with all feasts, there would be far too much roast lamb and too many side dishes for anyone to eat.

“Qin’ai,” she said. The term was akin to “dear” or “darling.”

He never understood why every fixed-base operator he’d ever seen had a popcorn machine,

Argentina was an emerging country, but the extremely rich and the desperately poor lived literally across the street from each other in Buenos Aires, making the place sometimes feel like a powder keg set dangerously close to the campfire.

Watching an attractive young woman hike up her skirt to do battle—though they knew full well she was wearing shorts underneath—had a tendency to slow them down a fraction of a second too long. Everyone but Adara got “cut” several times by Lisanne’s chalk blade.

“Nearly fifteen hours. Don’t you have an eight-hour limit?” Hicks turned and put a finger to his lips. “Shhh,” he said. “Don’t tell anyone.” He smiled.

Provigil, or modafinil, was a “go pill” medication the Air Force sometimes issued pilots to help them stay alert during critical missions.

And anyway, you’re the one with friends in high places, getting dropped on me like this. Is John one of them?” “He’s a normal low-places friend,” Caruso said. “Well, your friend looks like he bites the heads off baby birds for lunch.”

Heh heh, if you only knew, Kelsey…

Montgomery had worked on Kealty’s detail when he was vice president. Now, that guy was a real asshat.

I wish the Kealty character would be killed off already!!

and more firearms than anyone admitted to the Japanese.

and even the occasional Hi-Point SMG.

John Clark was a dyed-in-the-wool .45 guy.

The argument of .45 versus nine-millimeter went out the window when you were out of bullets.

Yep!

Even so, he didn’t abandon the Wilson in favor of the Glock. He carried them both. He was a firm believer in “Two is one and one is none,”

The fastest reload in the world is a second gun.

Still a tough old bird, no doubt, but old was fast eclipsing tough as the operative word.

“Don’t worry, sweetheart. You’ll still be relevant.” It was at once the kindest and most pitiful thing anyone had ever said to him. Maybe that was it. Relevance.

She had to be the second-luckiest woman on the planet. Her husband, Tony, had remained relatively faithful over the course of their twenty-eight years of marriage,

“Relatively” faithful??

gluelike papeda, made from the starch of a sago palm and meant to be slurped from the bowl.

“Press checks are free,”

“Cuerno de Chivo”—relieved himself less than ten feet away. The song’s title literally meant “horn of the goat,” but that was a euphemism for an AK-47 rifle.

a stream of frothy blood that cascaded down his chin like something from a Quentin Tarantino movie.

CZ Scorpion machine pistol.

Skorpion in this case, not “Scorpion.”

Clark felt a certain amount of remorse about killing her.

An allusion to the “Without Remorse”’book title?

Electrician’s mate Petty Officer 2nd Class Raymond Cooper

Typically you don’t list both the rating and the Petty Officer rank in the same description; it’s either one or the other.

The USS Rogue,

Named for The Rogue Warrior, “Demo Dick” Marcinko (R.I.P.)?

They’d all heard stories from older hands about Australian girls who would scribble their phone numbers on tennis balls, then line up on the docks and throw the balls at arriving Navy ships.

five skinnies on board.” Skinnies was the term sailors used for pirates off the coast of Somalia.

Would that be considered racist nowadays? #CancelCulture

It took her three years to escape L.A.

“Escape From L.A.” starring Kurt Russell, nyuk nyuk.

taking Caruso’s callused paw and pumping it up and down like an overgrown Bamm-Bamm Rubble on The Flintstones.

is La Santa Muerte,” Ranger Anderson said. “Patron saint of shitheads.

Recoleta Cemetery was one of my favorite places. Evita Perón’s buried there.

Argentina’s supposed to be hell on wheels when it comes to beefsteak. You can keep your damn cucumber ice cream, thank you very much.”

“Parrilla Aires Criollos.” She pronounced the double l’s like y’s, as someone from Mexico would. “Parizha!” Ding Chavez corrected without opening his eyes. He coughed, licking his lips and turning slightly in his seat like he might drift off to sleep again. “Argentines speak Castilian Spanish. Parizha Aires Criozhos.”

¡Ay coño!

Unless otherwise directed, Campus operators were to be armed. Unless Otherwise Directed, or UNODIR, was a technique often used from the bottom up,

Hooyah!

Chueco, or “crooked”—what you called a lefty.

“¡Güey!

It’s usually uttered as “¡Ay guey!”

Chavez and Midas rode together in one cab while Jack, who spoke only enough Spanish to order a beer,

“Inflation in my country . . . It is . . .” He held his hand in front of his face, fingers together in the gesture used to explain something important. “It is . . . subir como pedo de buzo—how do you say? It rises like the fart of a scuba diver.”

Hey, kinda like inflation in the U.S. under Joe Biden!

Argentine footballers possessed a superhuman talent at the game. Ryan was an Arsenal fan, but he kept quiet about that, knowing football—soccer to Americans—was a touchy subject in many parts of the world. Argentine fans often seemed to treat the act of simply attending a match as a blood sport.

Just like Colombian soccer fans, ¿verdad?