Running Through The Dark Places.

[Samuel , Director]

Fun little topic. Sometimes spy/military thrillers can scare the living daylights out of readers like any decent horror novel. What are the scenes in spy thrillers which you would never want to be in and have left you on the edge of your seat? Or just plain on edge, looking over your shoulder?

[Samuel , Director]

I start with this book.
In the closing chapter, the main character is in Bulgaria and gets "taken for a ride" by some shooters from "The Institute". He manages to getaway as they reach the city limits of Sofia and finds himself in an abandoned industrial estate. For quite a bit of the chapter, it's just him and a group of the best professional killers on the planet stalking each other in the dark. They outnumber him and the only weapon he has is a suppressed Beretta 92FS with no spare magazines. He manages to incapacitate and kill several of his pursuers but then the team leader manages to knock the Beretta away and then they engage in a fist fight where the main character nearly gets a piece of glass rammed through his face.

[Tyler]

Day of Reckoning by Stephen England, there's a scene where Harry, protagonist, the DCI's daughter meet up with a friend at the friend's secret mountain house and they're attacked by a group of Russian assassins. They're severely outgunned and had it not been for a helipad hidden in the house they wouldn't have made it. Barely did anyways. There's more I can say on the scene but I don't want to give too many more spoilers.

Deadeye by Greaney, the last scene where Court and Whitlock are fighting to the death on a sheet of ice and eventually under the ice in the water. That scares the bejesus out of me. Reading that scene had me freaking out.

[Samuel , Director]

Tyler wrote: "Day of Reckoning by Stephen England, there's a scene where Harry, protagonist, the DCI's daughter meet up with a friend at the friend's secret mountain house and they're attacked by a group of Russ..."

Agreed. The Deadeye climax was positively brutal, especially the part where Russ was basically trying to drown Gentry with the ice.

[Samuel , Director]

In this book, there's a section where a paramilitary team led by the main characters is infiltrating a city which has been hit by a very unique weapon which gets similar results like the WMD in Batman Begins. Apart from contending with mobs of civilians which have been driven to a feral madness, they also have to contend with an army which is using
MI-24 gunships and tanks to conduct a cover-up operation through killing every living person in the area.

[Samuel , Director]

Tyler wrote: "Day of Reckoning by Stephen England, there's a scene where Harry, protagonist, the DCI's daughter meet up with a friend at the friend's secret mountain house and they're attacked by a group of Russ..."

Also, what made that part memorable for me was how Whitlock's carefully constructed mask of (superficial) sanity was rapidly breaking down in his final last ditch attempts at murdering The Gray Man.

[Samuel , Director]

In this book, the antagonists have a very useful piece of kit which can take control of anything with wifi/bluetooth linked components. Namely the kind in modern automobiles. At one point, there's a scene where they manage to nearly drive the main characters off a high mountain road. The fact that I later learned, with the right technology (which as employees of the FSB, the antagonists could get their hands on)
it could be pulled off in real life was quite unnerving.
http://www.forbes.com/sites/andygreen...

[Samuel , Director]

Last one for today. I would never want to be in a situation like the brilliant, scary ending to this book. Some of Tom Clancy's best writing and he milks the situation at the end for all the horror and devastation brilliantly.

[Samuel , Director]

The premise of this book. It revolves around the hostage taking to end all hostage takings. Basically, a gang of some of the most depraved Islamic terrorists put to pen, execute a very well thought out plan to take hostage ever single world leader of significance, not to mention hundreds of staffers....the kicker is that they lock everyone in a secure convention hall, wire the room with explosives and give a one week deadline till everyone gets incinerated. To put the boot in, said Islamic terrorists also pass the time with working their way through the various heads of state in a theatrical manner with a 9mm and as events escalate, they even go so far as to wipe out an entire delegation on a whim.

[Samuel , Director]

An interrogation scene from this book. Near the end, the bad guys get their hands on one of the protagonists. They decide to have their way with him and break out a heavy club. Which they then use to try and turn the protagonists feet into a bloody mess and the bones to powder. The author made me wince with every single blow and while not as elaborate at other interrogations, you have to remember, the human feet are one of the most sensitive parts of the body.

Also from this book, there's fight where an operative and a Jihadist manage to shoot each other and then close the distance. Both of them are bleeding out but the Jihadist is attempting to crush the operator's windpipe with his bare hands. So, having emptied her gun, the operative does a very desperate, move, namely ripping out the Jihadists guts by tearing open one of man's bullet wounds with her bare hands and digging inside. It's perhaps the most ugly, brutal kill I've read in a geopolitical thriller. The only thing that equals it is the decompression interrogation John Clark subjected one of his lover's murderers to in Without Remorse. It's the creativity and drastic nature of the action which was shocking. Especially the creativity. In your average geopolitical/counter-terrorist thriller, when someone gets into that situation, they either have a backup/improvised weapon within reach or just tough it out and try fight back with unarmed combat moves. In this book however, that wasn't the case.

[Tyler]

^^ sounds like the scene in Terry Hayes' I am Pilgram when Pilgram and the antagonist face off at the end of the book in the cave. If you haven't read it yet then you are seriously missing out. May have been the best debut thriller ever written.

[Jack]

I can't recall one. Most of the time the protagonist is fearless or at least has a plan. Although I do become tense about the secondary characters. Jack Ryan's family in Patriot games, Irene Kennedy being captured and tortured by the muzztards etc.

[Samuel , Director]

Finished this book. The most tense moment was an escape from a Baghdad overrun by Islamic militants (story is set in a contemporary dystopia where the Sunni-Shia war is out in the open).

The protagonists are assisting with close protection duties for a convoy full of state department paper pushers who had been running the Iraq embassy. While all the vehicles they're using have bullet resistant armor, they're forced to conduct the evacuation when the Sunni Militias make their move on a Iranian sponsored General.

The one thing on their side is that they have a few potent assets. Namely suburban SUV's with the Dillion aero minigun modification, MANPADS and the most up to date RPG. However, they only have a few of those and seeing them trying to be strategic with their timing when using said assets was nail-biting to say the least. One missed rocket or one destroyed suburban and they would have been screwed.

[Samuel , Director]

Only just started this book but on reflection, the general plot concept is rather nightmarish. You're on the run from the world's only superpower which maintains a pretty decent paramilitary apparatus, and an extraordinarily efficient tracking capability. You're stuck in the Middle East and to survive on a day to day basis, you have to deal with utter scum who might at any given point sell you out or take their own shot at you.
Mr Hood knows how to create an atmosphere of paranoia in the segments of his first novel featuring his primary protagonist.

[Feliks]

I see another case of crossover between our two groups! ha

I read somewhere once how skin divers sometimes joke about sharks, and how when they roll their eyes back in their sockets as they head for you. 'You don' wanna be there'

Me: I don't wanna be anyplace around snakes. Or rats. I'll take fire over drowning if its quick. Never want to fall from a high place. I don't care if my brains are blown out, just make it QUICK!

[Samuel , Director]

Feliks wrote: "I see another case of crossover between our two groups! ha

I read somewhere once how skin divers sometimes joke about sharks, and how when they roll their eyes back in their sockets as they head f..."

For inhospitable terrain, I'd take deserts over jungles. Less things trying to kill you and if you pack right, make good preparations and know how to navigate, chances of survival are also higher.

[Feliks]

Hmmm. More things in the jungle to assist survival though. Vegetation means moisture. Shelter.

[Samuel , Director]

Perhaps. But if you bring along a tent and some animals to carry equipment, that isn't too much of a problem.

[Samuel , Director]

From my favorite spy thriller set in China.
The main character gets shanghaied by the boys from the MSS and Second Directorate while in Beijing. He wakes up somewhere in a rather compromising position, one which is also uncomfortable due to how he's hanging from the manacles.
Two men walk in. They put on knuckle dusters, break out the blackjacks and get to work.
A few ribs were ground to powder in that scene.

[[deleted user]]

In one of the innumerable Mack Bolan books, a poor undercover policewoman who had infiltrated the Mafia had her cover blown and was then condemned by the local Don to 'fifty days in the Chamber'. That meant being slowly tortured, maimed and dismembered by a sadistic doctor who made sure she stayed alive to feel every minute of it, and this during fifty days. Truly sick and horrifying!

[Feliks]

boy!

[[deleted user]]

There was also that old movie starring Charles Bronson, 'The evil that men do'. In it, Bronson plays the role of a retired hitman who is approached by a woman who wants him to get rid of a first class piece of s..t called 'El Doctor'. That El Doctor was basically a doctor who worked as a torturer for drug lords, after 'working' for the Junta generals in Argentina during the 'Dirty War'. I can hardly remember anyone more deserving of a bullet than that El Doctor. Bronson's character did nothing less than a public service to the planet by killing him.

[Feliks]

that was an odd book and an odder movie

[Samuel , Director]

Michel wrote: "There was also that old movie starring Charles Bronson, 'The evil that men do'. In it, Bronson plays the role of a retired hitman who is approached by a woman who wants him to get rid of a first c..."

Ah Clement Moloch. I concur with your assessment. His introduction was a pretty brutal establishing character moment which showed off his complete detachment from humanity very well.

[Samuel , Director]

Very few counter-terrorist thrillers involving nuclear terrorism have the bomb going off near its target (except for the fizzle in Tom Clancy's The Sum Of All Fears).
This book on the other hand put a brutal twist on the disposal stage

At a certain point in the story, a US NAVY helicopter crew in San Diego suddenly finds themselves saddled with a atom bomb. No way to diffuse it and as they realize that they're on their last flight, they don't say any noble sentiments about sacrifice or go with dignity to their deaths. They panic. Hard, with one of them screaming about the injustice of the whole thing and the fact he'll never see his family ever again.
They take off and it seems they'll get out of range of San Diego. Unfortunately, they don't.

Kudos to the author for realistically portraying actual human reactions to having a nuke next to you. One would be completely terrified, due to the shock and the little time to process the fact of your approaching death.
Gritty and a beautiful, tragic subversion of those
idealistic "just in time" endings.

[Feliks]

'Evil That Men Do' was a Fawcett Crest or Gold Medal paperback as I recall. Possibly Bantam. Just so!

[Samuel , Director]

Samuel wrote: "
From my favorite spy thriller set in China.
The main character gets shanghaied by the boys from the MSS and Second Directorate while in Beijing. He wakes up some..."

Oh I just remembered, there was another situation in this book which I would most certainly not want to be in.

Say you're an field officer with an asset and trying to conduct an ex-filtration from the most sophisticated autocratic state on the planet, one which due to an increased budget, has a lot more toys to try hunt you down with.

In this book, the main character and the asset who he's trying to escape with decide to head for the Republic Of Korea. In a tiny sailboat. With the P.L.A.N breaking out half its frigates, surveillance aircraft and fighter planes to try blow them out of the water. Damn close. Imagine if the wind died down. They would have been sitting ducks.

[Samuel , Director]

Opening of this book has a delightful scene where a Russian Cosmonaut takes control of the international space station. He does so by shutting the airlocks and killing the air supply of the American astronaut, who proceeds to drift away and is implied to have burned up in the atmosphere.

[Samuel , Director]

Samuel wrote: "

Opening of this book has a delightful scene where a Russian Cosmonaut takes control of the international space station. He does so ..."

Which is strangely similar to a certain rubbish video game I came across once upon a time....that one was science fiction alternate history however.

[Samuel , Director]

Climax of this book has one of the main characters and an antagonist fighting over the dead mans switch of a suicide bomb vest. The protagonist then decides to take a very dicey calculated risk and tackle the man to the ground. It sets off the bomb.

[Samuel , Director]

Another one from a book I reviewed recently.

There's a chapter where a federal agent working for the bad guys tries to murder the main character who has locked himself in the bathroom of a crappy apartment in Queens NY.

First she shanks her partner (who isn't working for her actual boss) then tries to blind fire her SIG-Sauer P226R through the bathroom walls. then she bursts in and manages to last longer than expected against the protagonist who is forced to bludgeon her half to death with the shower curtain rail and then drown her, just to keep her from getting back up and using her gun.

Not the situation itself, but the vivid aftermath which the author's impressive descriptive powers drive home which I found unnerving.

[Samuel , Director]

Reading a new book. The title will remain unrevealed until the new year is underway due to certain circumstances which would ruin the fun, something which I wish to avoid because the book in question is truly fantastic.

Anyway, I'm in the middle of the first third of the book. It details an invasion of sorts. The man leading the invasion is a war criminal of the fanatical kind. Hangings, decapitations and throat slitting occur on his watch as he tears through the first town on his hellish road trip of conquest.

He also has taken a leaf out of the Stalinist USSR's play book. When his men falter, he breaks out his AK47 and after making messy examples of certain minions afraid to go forth and die for his glorious cause, is able to use the result to convince the rest to take their chances by advancing, something which the NKVD commissioners were ordered to do by Stalin.

[Joshua]

Hmmmmm.

[Samuel , Director]

In the following book, there's a scene involving a submarine getting sunk. Turns out, modern day submarines have amenities to prevent the crew from dying immediately if they're lucky and fast enough to utilize them. However, it still means that you're trapped at the bottom of the sea, running out of air and potentially going to starve.
Such is the case of some secondary characters in "The Trident Deception" who have the misfortune of suffering this terrifying scenario. The author makes it plain that the situation isn't pleasant in the slightest and it's something I would never wish to be subjected to.

[Samuel , Director]

A spy fiction TV show I watched happened to have a relatively disturbing torture scene. There's this covert operative, well trained, cynical, experienced and fearless. The operative has been captured by the enemy. They wish for information and to make their prisoner do their bidding. They hit upon an elegant solution. It involves a powerful sedative and a sophisticated virtual reality system powered by a super-computer.

Basically, it's a variant of the old sleep-wake routine where the victim is made to lose track of time perception with the application of powerful narcotics.

Here however, the enemy agents simulate the world around their prisoner and then when their victim doesn't realize it, make her do a task in the real world rather than the fake one. The task being the unintentional (on the prisoner's part) murder of a woman.

What results is a catastrophic breakdown in confidence. The prisoner becomes terrified about whether they are in the real world or trapped in a false one, and have become slightly paralyzed by fear.

[Samuel , Director]

Samuel wrote: "A spy fiction TV show I watched happened to have a relatively disturbing torture scene. There's this covert operative, well trained, cynical, experienced and fearless. The operative has been captur..."

speaking of which, there is another scene from that spy fiction TV show. It involves an unarmored bmw 5 series in a car chase. With a Dillon Aero Chevy Suburban.
What's better than a Chevy Suburban that's bullet proof? A suburban that can turn a car into swiss cheese.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nHHj8...

[Samuel , Director]

From a book by a group member which I'm reading.
The situation is this, two contract killers with automatic weapons are conducting a home invasion. They have orders to kill everyone in the vicinity. You're trapped in a closet upstairs with only a Glock 36 for company. Six rounds, .45 ACP. No suppressor and you can't see squat. You can only wait in fear as the gunman gets closer and closer....