Danger Close | The Fourth Option Podcast: Ed Calderon

The Jack Carr Channel

Jack Carr

Society & Culture

4.9 • 2.9K Ratings

🗓️ 20 May 2026

⏱️ 82 minutes

🔗️ Recording | iTunes | RSS

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Summary

Today on DANGER CLOSE: THE FOURTH OPTION, I’m joined by Ed Calderon, a former Mexican counter-narcotics officer with firsthand experience fighting organized crime on the front lines. We get into the evolution of Mexican cartels from smuggling organizations into paramilitary forces, the rise of CJNG, drones, corruption, tradecraft, operational security, and why the security challenges facing Mexico are inseparable from the future of the United States. This is a companion podcast to my new thriller, THE FOURTH OPTION, talking to those on the front lines, analyzing modern warfare, and taking listeners deeper into the themes that inspired the novel. This podcast series is presented by HUXWRX Safety Co., Staccato 2011, and Bravo Company USA.

Transcript

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0:00.0	This episode was brought to you by Huxworks Safety Company.
0:06.0	Innovators of flow-through technology.
0:09.0	I was part of a very experimental police unit.
0:12.0	The ad was an Americanized police force working within Mexico.
0:15.0	Whatever levels of corruption you think are in place in Mexico,
0:18.0	that are beyond that high-level members of the government in Mexico are compromised.
0:22.6	These criminal enterprises are ginormous.
0:24.6	The criminal enterprises are ginormous. And what's up, what's up, buddy? How are you?
0:58.0	Good, good.
1:00.0	A bunch of weird adventures in weird places recently, but good.
1:04.4	Anything you can talk about?
1:06.1	Yeah, yeah.
1:06.7	I mean, basically I had to go down to the Haleesco and get one of my friends' family members out with all the burnings going on.
1:15.2	No way.
1:16.7	I went from Toronto, Canada, all the way down to Lima, which is like right next to Haleesco.
1:24.3	Oh, man.
1:24.8	And then how'd you get them out?
1:26.9	Were they specifically being targeted for some...
1:28.9	No, he's a diabetic and there's no fuel in town and medicine started getting really hard to get and
1:36.6	I had to fly him out.
1:40.8	There was that one active airport, but it was pretty expensive to try and get him out of there.
1:44.8	But we finally figured it out.
	...

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