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And then a no second later, he gets hit, he calls out that he's wounded.

I rush out, I'm trying to drag him, and I'm bare chested, and I could feel, and I'm sure you have this feeling before where people are trying to shoot at you, and you can feel the air of the bullet as it goes right by your bare torso, of course, that a bear torso?

Gene, how are you?

Doing great. So, I am great. How about yourself?

Doing great. It's so great to see you.

I've been using your book for research for my latest novel right here.

And I have the other ones, but they went to a different mailing address.

So I don't have them physically right here, but the novels are, if they're not already there, they're inbound anyway. How about that? How about that? Yeah.

Well, I think people will just kick this off. I mean, it's such an honor to be able to sit down and talk to you.

Like I said, I was, I feel like I know you because I spent so much time in these pages,

which you, you call a novel, but it's very hard to differentiate what is fiction and not in this, in surrender, not an option,

which I highly recommend. Everyone add to their bookshelves. So I want to ask you about the

decision to write the way that you did there. But first, you were born in Panama. Tell me about

what brought your family to Panama.

And then what was it like to live there, grow up there,

and how did that impact your decision to join the military?

I'm going to give you a little background to family here.

Okay.

We'll start off with my mother, on my mother's side.

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