Power and Empire (Jack Ryan Universe, #24)

by Marc Cameron

seven-hundred-peso fare—around forty U.S. dollars.

Now (March 2022) it’s equivalent to a measly $6.43 USD.

Ostensibly the Panamericano was a five-star hotel,

“Argentines don’t eat until after eight.

Hey, kinda like my parents and I back in the day.

Parrilla Aires Criollos restaurant

Yes, it really exists—add to bucket list!

rawhide boleadoras, a weighted throwing weapon of stone and rawhide,

Classy dress was the norm in Buenos Aires, and dressing down would have garnered more attention.

picada

bits of baked cheese and sliced meat people from his beloved country ate before a main meal.

“Hope. It is every man’s demise.” Amanda raised her eyebrows, the facial equivalent of a shrug. “And the downfall of most women,” she said.

A key component of C-4 was cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine. The name was a mouthful, so the British developers simply called it Research Department eXplosive.

she didn’t want the Feeble Eyes getting their Fed gunk on her homicide case.

Haha, hadn’t heard that one before.

High heat and butane didn’t go well together, so the process took forever.

??

Turf wars notwithstanding, whoever killed Aaron Bennet had come gunning for Callahan. The fact that the killer or killers went to Buttermilk Place instead of Buttermilk Circle gave Caruso a little peek into their intellect and psyche—but, in his experience, assassins hit the wrong person more than a quarter of the time.

We LEOs are taught not to believe in coincidences.

determined to kill Callahan might decide

Another typo/transcription error.

Harlingen, which was just about as close as one could get to Mexico and still be in Texas.

More so than McAllen?

stainless-steel Kimber K6s .357 revolver

Kimber makes revolvers?

It was so loud on the range, but, oddly to Bonnie, it seemed to make no noise as it fired.

Auditory exclusion phenomenon.

The man with the flat nose just turned his head to look at her, as though he was put out by her behavior.

I guess she wasn’t using the legendary 125-grain SJHP loads?

Across the table, Mike stared at her slack-jawed, as if he wasn’t quite certain who he’d been sleeping with for the last forty-four years.

True love, heh heh.

“Texas appears to be a bad place to become an assassin.”

Hoorah for CCW!!

He’d recently shaved down to a mustache—but he was glad to have the beard back. People said he looked like his dad. He didn’t see it. The full beard kept others from seeing it as well.

Like just about every other rental vehicle in Argentina, both had manual transmissions,

Blecchh.

Ryan had been warned not to refer to himself as an American. People in South America took issue with citizens of the United States coopting that title for themselves.

Members of the middle and upper classes tended to dress in business casual for nearly all endeavors that didn’t require business dress.

Ryan had learned the hard way that he’d rather be attacked by just about anything besides a knife. Conversely, he’d rather launch an attack of his own with just about anything else.

Going up against a knife man ain’t mo joke.

Batteries never died after they finished an op, failing instead at the most critical moments.

The infamous Mr. Murphy of Murphy’s Law.

James Bond and Jason Bourne made it look easy, but there was sure a lot of technical shit to worry about in this business.

They followed the Chevy east along Avenida 25 de Mayo,

Per Wikipedia: “The avenue was named in honor of the May Revolution of 1810 (the event that led to Argentine Independence.”

First, the halls of the government in the People’s Republic of China were even more byzantine than those of the United States.

No shit, eh.

“Anyway, ‘Esto huele mal’ means ‘This smells bad’ or ‘This stinks.’ Not sure what—”

one of many such slums in Buenos Aires collectively, and appropriately, called villas miseria.

Villa 31 was home to many of the hardest-working people in Buenos Aires—as well as some of the city’s most violent criminals.

Ryan couldn’t help but think she looked like pictures he’d seen of East German refugees fleeing the no-man’s-land to get over the Wall.

He bought a choripán—chorizo sausage on a bun—from

Walking through shit was one thing. Going for a swim in it was a whole other ballgame.

“Nee-ge—rō!” she said. “Run!” The way she spoke was full of urgency, and he felt certain it was Japanese.

He enjoyed driving a stick. It made him feel alive, even in the stop-and-go Buenos Aires traffic.

Meh, whatever floats your boat there, pal.

Sometimes, though, the enemy of my enemy was, well, just another damn enemy.

sipping yerba mate through a silver straw in a communal gourd called a mate that gave the drink its name. Mate was a national pastime.

it tasted like a mixture of boiling water and hay.

Mobile phones were the single greatest thing to happen to a surveillance team in recent history—and communication had nothing to do with it.

beret-wearing Grupo Alacrán, the elite Scorpion Group of the Gendarmería Nacional Argentina.

Right-wing death squads during Argentina’s “Dirty War” of the 1970s and 1980s left the population suspicious of the military—or anything that resembled it. The Army was not allowed to take part in civilian affairs, but the government got around this by describing the GNA as a “civilian security force of a military nature.” The Scorpion Group looked about as military as they came, but then they had to be.

He loved a good steak, but eating one every night after nine o’clock seemed like a recipe for bad dreams and blood with the consistency of 30 weight motor oil.

Ha ha.

“The ego has landed,” Ryan said. “Foreign Minister Li is on site.”

Heh heh, nice wordplay there.

He jokingly apologized to the Canadian minister that the evening’s discussion would have to take place in English because not everyone at the table spoke French.

Sacre bleu, eh!

He thought at first she’d stumbled, but it was impossible to mistake the rigid spasms of someone who’d been shot in the brain.

Quilmes Patagonia beer

Tipping was outside the norm in Argentina. The waitress would think him an idiot turista for leaving the equivalent of twelve bucks for two beers that cost half that, but it was better than her chasing them down street for leaving too little.

But life was so much easier when he’d been an impetuous troop and could let the bosses worry about the magnet in his ass that pulled him, without thinking, toward danger.