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Navy Seal stories by Marcinko and Weisman are current favorites. I was a Tom Clancy fan well before I ran out of sci-fi author's to read. I think the answer to terrorism is Clancy's "Executive Order". You put out the fire and then go after the individual that gave the order. It looks like President Bush has added one feature and that is you also go after nations that harbor the terrorists.
Clancy, Tom
Clancy never writes a novel because they are all long enough to be a mini-series on TV. So, what you have is around 150-200 pages of setup and then non-stop action for the rest of the story. You just have to plod through the setup because you won't understand the ideosyncracies of the plot without that information.
Douglas, Keith
Douglas has a series called Seal Team Seven. They may be seals but they are available to the CIA for special operations. They don't have a "where did he come up with the idea" like Clancy does but they get involved when diplomacy won't work.
Forsyth, Frederick
I read "Avenger" by Forsyth because there was a short blip about Sam Elliot signing to play Calvin Dexter in a movie version of the Avenger. In the story, Dexter loses his family to some nasty types and goes on a vendetta mission. He was trained during the Vietnam war and was a "tunnel rat". The tunnel rats went one on many in the tunnels of Vietnam. After extracting vengance, Dexter decides that he should really bring them back alive and let them experience justice. A term that seems to apply is "They were rendered for justice". It was a 4-hour book. I started reading it at 7 pm and was finished by 11:30 pm with only a couple of short breaks.
The second book I read was called "The Fist of God". The Fist of God was a nuclear device that Sadam supposedly had in one of his 1000 km guns that had been assembled and not found. It was pointed at the delta area, which was the staging area for the soldiers of Desert Storm. The person controlling the gun was supposed to fire the weapon if an attempt was made to retake Kuwait. Finding and dealing with the weapon made an interesting book to read.
The third book was Icon and dealt with the political destruction of a candidate for President of the Russian Confederation. In the story, Igor Komarov intended to rebuild the Soviet structure and subvert the freedom that the Russian people were enjoying. I didn't get into this book nearly as much as I did with Avenger and Fist of God.
In the books I have read, Forsyth writes stories that make you wonder if the stories are totally fiction. This was one of Tom Clancy's characteristics in his Techo-thrillers. One of the problems I have reading Clancy is that he takes 150-200 pages to provide you with enough information to follow the rest of the story. Forsyth writes a different kind of book and you learn as you go. This makes the front part of the book much more interesting.
Griffin, W. E. B.
16 November 2008 - I was sucked in on this purchase. Hastings was having a 30% off sale on used books. I went down the ones that I was following and didn't find anything. I finally decided to see if there were any used Griffin books. I found "Spec Ops", read the cover and puchased a used hardcover for less than $4. It was the 2nd book that claimed that Che Guevara was not a heroic person but a bloody killer. I just had to read it to see what he had to say. I was always of the belief that Che had become a communist when he encountered the miners in Peru and that Castro was feeding the CIA lies to get their hardware just like Afghans did. So, I spent a long night reading the book. His treatment of classified material is so irreverant that it bothers me. My early days at Hanford put me into a different mindset. He comes up with some really interestings characters and that makes it very difficult to put the book down and go to sleep. I was still so pumped at the end that it took another hour to come down and be able to sleep. So, it isn't hard to imagine that I went down and found an new paperback version of "The Aviators", which was the book in front of "Spec Ops". It was also a one-night book. The problem with "The Aviators" is that too much of it is the outline for "Spec Ops". For example, you will know the outcome of the love problems between Oliver and Lisa before they happen. That wouldn't make "Spec Ops" less interesting to read, just not as much suspense. I am going to be a little bit more selective on my next purchases with this group.
9 June 2008 A new book by W. E. B. Griffin was released on 3 June 2008. It is called "Death and Honor" and is part of the "Honor Bound" series. It stars an equally irreverant Marine Corp. flyer than the "By the Order of The President" series. Clete sort of PO's me but the story was interesting. It was interesting enough that I went to our local Hasting Book Store where I found used copies of "Honor Bound" and "Blood and Honor". "Death and Honor" and "Honor Bound" turned out to be about 1.5 day books. I found myself putting them down when I was shocked to see it was 4:30 in the morning.
Griffin has a relatively new series out that started with "By Order of the President". This is where you meet Carlos Castillo. He is multi-lingual and comes out of the Delta Force. He is tasked with finding out what happened to a Boeing 727 that disappeared. Charley does that and also retrieves it. It has 544 pages and I call it a one night book. It all depends on where you are when you start getting tired because it reads really fast.
The second book in the series is called "The Hostage". An American Diplomat's wife is kidnapped and people are killed. Charley is told to render harmless the individuals responsible. The book has 768 pages and he moves around a lot. It is really nice that reading stories isn't done in realtime. There is chit chat in what I see as flawless Spanish. More about this subject in "The Hunter".
The third book is called "The Hunters". Charlies crew is tasked to find who killed American diplomat Jean-Paul Lorimer. Much of Griffin's plots in his "By Order" series revolve around a "food-for-oil" conspiracy involving Iraq. It was an interesting book but "Putnam Adult" must have changed their editors because the Spanish is no longer flawless. I would grimace everytime they said "mucho gracias" instead of "muchas gracias". They had "via con Dios" instead of "vaya con Díos" and "buenos tardes" instead of "buenas tardes". One of the Americans said "no hable español", which should have been "no hablo español". This didn't bother me because if Delchamps did not understand Spanish, he was likely to use the wrong expression and the Spanish speaker would have smiled at the error. Another place had Ordóñez saying "You are muy amiable." but the more typical spelling is "amable" meaning nice or kind.
The problem with all of these misusages was that I would be jogging along reading at 700-1000 wpm and bang, I would stop, shake my head at the Spanish, and have to get back up to speed again. So, reading "The Hunter" was interesting but what stuck in my mind was the many occurances that I noticed of Spanish usage that went against what I was taught in my Spanish class.
18 January 2008 - I went back and read the hardback versious of "The Hunters" again. I have 7 postits where there were errors that I noticed in the Spanish. The locations with "muchos gracias" are pages 18 amd 19. These are fixed in the paperback.
Pages with "via con Dios" are 92, 373, and 377. The pronunciation of "via" and "vaya" are identical. He has "vaya con Dios" in another place. So it isn't like they didn't understand the proper usage. These are fixed in the paperback.
The page with "di nada" is 261. That translates loosely into "give nothing" instead of "de nada", which is the normal response of "your are welcome". "Dar las gracias" is also a form of thanking someone.
The page with "buenos noches" is 346. Only "dia" is masculine. Noches and tardes are feminine, which makes the usage "buenas noches" or "buenas tardes" but "buenos dias". On 346, Ordóñez also says "muy amiable". This is a mix because I would have expected him to say "muy amable".
The page with "buenos tardes" is 377.
The page with "no hable español" is 510. Since a non-Spanish speaker made the comment, it could have been "no habla" but it should have been "no hablo". A non-Spanish speaker wouldn't have known the more obscure 2nd person singular conjugations that use "hable". These conjugations don't translate into "I don't speak Spanish".
On 511, Ordóñez introduces himself as Jose instead of José.
Some of these errors would not be caught by a spell-checker but a Spanish speaking person would have caught all of them. Of course, they really didn't detract that much from the story.
The fourth book is called "The Shooters". A DEA employee is kidnaped in Paraguay. Charley thinks he is running under the radar but a friend of the DEA guy figures out some of what Charley is doing and tracks him down in Argentina. He wants Charley to go after the bad guys. If this bright guy can do it, some one else could also do it. For a covert operation, that could be both deadly and embarassing. They immediately shut down and head back to the USA to see what damage had been done. It isn't too long until some people are banging on the President to go after their friend. Sending a Delta Force guy and his team after kidnappers is probably equivalent to hunting a house mouse with an elefant gun. Charley and his team are the wrong weapons to go after the drug people but they innovate, are lucky, develop new friends and enemies, and perservere. In addition, I didn't see any obvious Spanish errors this time and that let me enjoy the story that much more.
Hagberg, David
Hagberg, whose claim to fame is as an intelegence analyst, has a series of books about Kirk McGarvey. I encountered his work when I walked by the bargin books at Barnes and Noble and saw "Soldier of God". The cover caught my attention and I bought the book. It was a one-night book. I started it and finished it the same night. That means that it grabbed my attention and I stayed with it for however long it took to read it. The next day, I went looking for other McGarvey books and found Crossfire, High Flight, and Joshua's Hammer. When I encountered McGarvey, he was DCI at the CIA. He had a history of black operations where he was an assassin if he needed to be. He is sort of like a James Bond without all of the gratuitious sex. McGarvey is always being described as a dangerous man to be around because nasty things seem to occur in his vicinity.
Marcinko, Richard