“Me too, Chief Warrant Crocker. And if your family is with you, feel free to bring them, too.”
“Thank you, Mr. President.”
The president hung up, and Crocker turned to Captain Sutter, who was standing and looking at him with a wry smile on his face.
“Did I just hear you tell the president, who is arguably the most powerful man on the planet, that you had to postpone your visit with him because you’re going to see your father first?” Sutter asked.
“I suppose you did, sir.”
“Jesus, Crocker, you’re something else.”
Acknowledgments
You can’t keep a series like this alive and vital without the help of a number of hard-working and very talented individuals. They start with our agents, Heather Mitchell at Gelfman Schneider and Eric Lupfer at William Morris Endeavor, and include a whole team of people at Mulholland Books / Little, Brown-Wes Miller, Pamela Brown, Ben Allen, Chris Jerome, Katharine Myers, Nicole Dewey, and others. In terms of day-to-day support, we’re supremely grateful to our families. Don wants to thank his father, who quit high school on December 7, 1941, the day Pearl Harbor was attacked, enlisted in the U.S. Navy, and served throughout the war. After retiring, he devoted his time toward helping veterans through the DAV and the VFW organizations. And Ralph wants to acknowledge his lovely wife, Jessica, and children, John, Michael, Francesca, and Alessandra. As for inspiration, we get that from the men and women in the SEAL teams and other agencies of government who do the kind of work we describe in these books. Thank you for your service!
About the Authors
DON MANN (CWO3, USN) has for the past thirty years been associated with the U.S. Navy SEALs as a platoon member, assault team member, boat crew leader, and advanced training officer, and more recently as program director preparing civilians to go to BUD/S (SEAL Training). Until 1998 he was on active duty with SEAL Team Six. Since then, he has deployed to the Middle East on numerous occasions in support of the war against terrorism. Many of today’s active-duty SEALs on Team Six are the same guys he taught how to shoot, conduct ship and aircraft takedowns, and operate in urban, arctic, desert, river, and jungle warfare, as well as Close Quarters Battle and Military Operations in Urban Terrain. He has suffered two cases of high-altitude pulmonary edema, frostbite, a broken back, and multiple other broken bones in training or service. He has been captured twice during operations and lived to talk about it.
RALPH PEZZULLO is a New York Times bestselling author and an award-winning playwright and screenwriter. His books include Jawbreaker and The Walk-In (with CIA operative Gary Berntsen), At the Fall of Somoza, Plunging into Haiti (winner of the Douglas Dillon Award for Distinguished Writing on American Diplomacy), Most Evil (with Steve Hodel), Eve Missing, and Blood of My Blood. His nonfiction book about the shadowy world of private military contracting with former British Special Forces commando Simon Chase, Zero Footprint, was published by Little, Brown in January 2016.
