This episode of the Danger Close podcast is brought to you by Cry Havoc. From New York Times number one bestselling author, Jack Carr. Cry Havoc, a Tom Rees Thriller, Order Now. We started having one problem after another, so my gyro started tumbling. It was messing me up on goggles, so I had to go unaided. We were aided, unaided, and then the Harz bar on our ship failed so we didn't have any horizon. I'm already on the verge of

vertigo. I'm flying cross cockpit, so I just kind of hold it enough so that he gets level.

Ryan, how's it going, man? Hey, Jack, how's it going?

Good to see you.

Good to see you too.

Yeah, man, awesome.

So this is one of the books that I have to read a lot of books very quickly these days because

there's just so much going on and I have my own books and the TV show and I'm writing

the scripts and it's just like mass chaos constantly. So I usually have to go through books

pretty quick. And then this one, man, I started it and I thought it was going to be one of those

ones and I'm like, oh, I need to slow down because it was so good. So congratulations.

Thank you. Yeah. It's awesome. So really, really cool, super excited for you and all that's ahead.

But man, let's jump in.

Military background.

We kick it off with that.

What was your path into the military?

Sure.

So I was out in Hawaii, just a dive instructor trying to get my act together. And then I tried to, you know, always wanted to be a pilot. But I kept applying like five times and six times and just kept getting denied a flight slot. So I actually dropped out of college and listed EOD. And I got all ready to go to Great Lakes and everything like that. And then by happenstance,

I like taught this guy and his son an advanced scuba class, their instructor no-showed. And I did

it. And it turned out he was the head of Pack Air. And he was like a F-18 guy. Yeah. And I count

and Costello was his name. And he, you know, after the week, I didn't know who he was during the whole week, but he knew my story or whatever. And I was headed to Great Lakes in a couple weeks. And so, yeah, after that, he wrote me a letter recommendation and helped me get my package through. And then I got picked up for flight slot in the Navy. And then I became helicopter pilot. And I got, I was a subhunter, so I was an H-60 Bravo guy. So you're probably around to remember those. They're not around anymore. But I was a Bravo guy and I thought I was going to be like, you know, doing sub-hunting off, you know, South China Sea kind of stuff like a lot of my friends were. And that was not what happened. I got assigned counter narcotics, joined interagency task force South. And I did that

for my whole, I did three deployments down there doing that stuff with, you know, all those

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