In the Blood (Terminal List, #5)

by Jack Carr

I have found that most of those he triggers are the most disconnected from the land and the animals that inhabit it. Putting food on the table is the job of a farmer somewhere between New York and Los Angeles. Many don’t feel a responsibility to be prepared to protect their spouses and children when that primal task can be outsourced; just call 911. A moral vanity has trumped the obligation to protect their lives and the lives of those they love; that is the job of the police in a civilized society, after all. If that describes you, and you are picking this book up for the first time, perhaps you should put it down. You might not identify with, you might even despise, the protagonist in these pages. Self-reliant men, capable of extreme violence in defense of their lives, their families, and of freedom makes some people nervous.

“Civilized men are more discourteous than savages because they know they can be impolite without having their skulls split, as a general thing.”

As President Dwight D. Eisenhower said, “You know, farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil, and you’re a thousand miles from the corn field.” The same is true of warfare; it looks mighty easy when your rifle is a budget approval and you are six thousand miles from the battlefield.

Today, half the military budget and seventy percent of the intelligence budget goes to contractors.

James Reece has been a part of that system. He was betrayed by it just as were those who stepped up in service to the nation following the attacks of September 11, 2001. Read The Afghanistan Papers by Craig Whitlock for documentation.

In Europe, France was a liberal bastion of democratic socialism. Overseas they hunted their enemies with ruthless efficiency.

Courteney Selous

What made a country? Borders, language, and culture. The Americans were doing away with all three.

The West believed they had won. It was that belief that allowed them to let down their guard, focus inward, find the wrongs in their society, and exploit and even exacerbate them for political gain. It was a myopic strategy. He had expected more of his Cold War rival. That they did not study or learn from their history did not bode well for their future. The death

of the West. The USSR hadn’t needed ballistic missile submarines or a nuclear arsenal larger than the United States’. All they had needed to defeat the Americans was patience.

The Americans had almost destroyed themselves with their COVID mandates; failed wars in a part of the world they would never understand; race riots; political upheaval; and a border policy of which Gromyko’s predecessors could only have dreamed. Russia would see the United States fall.

joining the ranks of those whose service and sacrifice went almost unnoticed by a country whose citizens assumed that safety and security were entitlements. The wall and the stars etched into its surface reminded Reece that no matter what his mission, personal or professional, there were always those out there in the shadows, risking it all for a country that would never know their names.

“I’ll have my friends at Black Rifle Coffee get you a complimentary subscription to their coffee club. We can’t have America’s best and brightest surviving on mass-produced stale, burnt beans. It’s unbecoming of America’s premier spy agency.”

Fast is fine, but accuracy is final. In a gunfight you must learn to be slow in a hurry.