Jack Slater > Quotes

“Once a man can be bought, his loyalty is temporary and only owed to the highest bidder. And that is not always—or even often—the United States of America. If anything,”
― Jack Slater, Dark State

“It was, in fact, his weapon of choice—extremely accurate, with a manageable form factor, and most importantly, dependable. The thing never jammed, never malfunctioned. When an operator needed to spit a lot of lead in the bad guys’ direction, an HK416 would do it forever without complaining once. “Who the hell are you?” Trapp asked, eyeing the man with his steel-blue gaze. The shooter was dressed in dark combat fatigues and had the mark of a special operator about him—a cold, lethal tension that suggested he could snap into action with a millisecond’s notice. Out of the corner of his eye, Trapp saw that the man’s partner was dressed and armed exactly the same. Except the other shooter had his weapon raised and aimed directly at Trapp’s skull. He did the math, quickly, and decided for the time being to play it cool. In all honesty, he didn’t really have much of a choice. Either of the two operators could drop him before he moved a yard. The man ignored the question. “Get back on the helicopter!” he yelled, his voice a slow Arkansas drawl. Trapp’s brow furrowed. The hell? What was the point in dragging him halfway across the country just to send him back? And then it clicked. The operator wasn’t speaking to him. “But—” “No questions. Get back on the helicopter, and fuck off!” the shooter shouted, jerking his thumb to accentuate his point. Trapp glanced over his shoulder at the liaison officer’s dismayed frown, and a wide grin crept across his face. Maybe he didn’t mind being held at gunpoint after all.”
― Jack Slater, Dark State

“He was surprisingly gentle in his actions for a man she knew had committed so much horror. Just being a room with him”
― Jack Slater, Hand of God

“They only found one needle mark on his entire body. Nothing underneath his fingernails or along the femoral veins where it could have been easily hidden underneath his uniform. No signs of corrosion on his teeth and gums from the meth, either.”
― Jack Slater, In the Dark

“themselves were intentionally secluded deep into the wilderness, far”
― Jack Slater, Among the Pines

“wind blasting him the face”
― Jack Slater, Eyes Only

“Alcohol, the cause of—and solution to—all of life’s problems.”
― Jack Slater, In the Dark

“surveying the speaker—a man in his early thirties, who was cradling a black Heckler & Koch HK416 submachine gun in his grip. The man’s posture was relaxed but had an intense lethality about it. Trapp recognized the weapon instantly. It was standard issue for operators in the CIA’s Special Activities Division. That made sense. It was, in fact, his weapon of choice—”
― Jack Slater, Dark State

“Trapp held his breath, knowing that it wasn’t his place to listen, but hoping that the message carried with it some news of Shea’s condition. Maybe it was even for him, Sarah wanting to keep him updated. It would be okay to listen to it, wouldn’t it”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“not yet allowing himself to wallow in the wave of relief coursing through his body, and pushed through it, ignoring questions barked at him in a foreign language. He galloped down a set of steps, past another pair of cops rushing in the opposite direction, barely meriting a second glance on this occasion. As he left the park, crossing a road that was cordoned off to traffic at either end, he breathed out a long, deep, endless sigh of relief that flooded out of him with the relentless power of the Nile emptying into the Mediterranean Sea. It was only now that he recognized how fast his heart was beating, or felt the beads of sweat dripping off his forehead – both more a result of tension than exertion. “That was close,” he groaned, cursing himself for breaking the cardinal rule of espionage and thrusting himself into the center of attention. “Too damn close.” And it was far from over. He might have escaped the first cordon of cops, but before long the whole of central Moscow would be on lockdown. He needed to get out before it was too late. Trapp fought against his instincts and slowed his pace, walking casually down a side street, past a government building with a small brass plaque outside which read, ‘Federal Agency for State Property Management’ in English letters under the Cyrillic. He kept his head low, pointed at the ground, hoping that it would obscure him from the surveillance cameras that dotted the area, but knowing that it probably wouldn’t. That’s a problem for another day. He cast a quick look around to make sure no one was paying him any attention, and when he was certain that they were not, he ducked into a space between two parked cars, crouched down, and pulled on the neon vest he had previously stowed by his breast. Again, the disguise was skin deep, but if one of the cops he’d just passed managed to radio in a description, then perhaps this costume change might add a layer of distance. It was better than nothing. He started walking again, slowly enough not to draw the eye, fast enough to put as much distance between himself and what was about to turn into a very hot crime scene as possible. As he walked, his fingers played with the rock he had carried all this time, searching for a seam or a catch. He knew that it would not be locked, or contain the kind of self-destruct device so beloved of Hollywood movies. There wasn’t the space, and besides, any competent intelligence agency would be able to defeat such protections quickly enough. Trapp found it, worked the bottom of the rock open, and saw a memory stick sitting in a foam indentation. He pulled it free, put it into the coin pocket of his denim jeans, and dumped the two halves of the rock into an overflowing trash can. It was only then that the question came to him. What the hell do I do now? 35 The village of Soloslovo was 20 miles from Central Moscow, about thirty minutes by car in light traffic, or twenty on a high-powered motorcycle the likes of which Eliza Ikeda rode as she zipped past, around”
― Jack Slater, Flash Point

“A smudge on the right-hand side of Trapp’s vision sent out a warning signal, attracting the attention of his conscious brain. In an instant, that nervous tension that was never that far away these days ramped itself back up. His fingers curled around the throttle, not feeding gas into the engine just yet, but ready to with a second’s notice”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“decline,”
― Jack Slater, False Flag

“shot. Judging by the way she was standing, she was dressed in heels. It could be her. She watched as the blonde walked to a pair of armchairs in the very”
― Jack Slater, She Lies Here

“Chino did as he was told but received the same response, accompanied in quick succession first by a vise clenching his stomach in its grip, then the metallic clang of bullets impacting the vehicle’s steel chassis. He twisted in his seat, his attention instinctively drawn to the sound of the impacts. In the back, Cpl. Miles Roth and Pvt. Stan Oxley had hunched low, behind the protection of the metal sides”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“Lee swallowed hard, unable to draw his eyes away from Finch’s unnamed companion for very long. Something about the man was truly terrifying. He looked like he could crush a human head between those two meaty paws of his without breaking a sweat. More than that, he looked like he might even enjoy it”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“counter-intelligence work. It was all shirt and no pants.”
― Jack Slater, The Apparatus

“Several years ago, the House Oversight Committee chairman wrote, referring to the cash sent to Iraq after the invasion: “The numbers are so large that it doesn’t seem possible that they are true. Who in their right mind would send 363 tons of cash into a war zone?” Who indeed… In the first year after the fall of Saddam Hussein, the special Inspector General for Iraq Reconstruction determined that $8.8 billion in $100 bills was disbursed as cash to Iraqi ministries, “without assurance the monies were probably used are accounted for.” Worse still, he later decided that that lack of accountability “extended to the entire $20 billion expended” by the Coalition Provisional Authority. Much of this money was stolen by Americans. Millions of dollars was billed by contractors for contracts that simply did not exist. Where the contracts were real, accounts were not kept. Sometimes, perhaps even often, this can be attributed to the chaos present during wartime. But you would have to be naïve to think that hundreds of millions of dollars – probably billions – was not stolen. Hangman was the result of me asking – who stole it?”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“insanely driven individual who trained day after day, year after year, and decade after decade with an unrelenting, unbending desire to be the best. To beat the best.”
― Jack Slater, Dark State

“desiccated”
― Jack Slater, Dark State

“Last year I wrote a novel about a pandemic, False Flag. I don’t think in my wildest dreams that I could have imagined that the risks I read about during my research might actually happen. Even though every expert wrote that it wasn’t just a possibility, but an inevitability, that a novel virus would be able to take advantage of a human race that is more globally inter-connected than at any time in human history. It’s hard for any of us to imagine that the worst can actually happen – even though all I do all day is dream up scenarios in which it could! I promise I won’t write any books about asteroids colliding with the earth, or Yellowstone finally erupting, just in case…”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“The inside of the house looked like it had emerged from the 1980s stillborn.”
― Jack Slater, She Lies Here

“a Simpsons quote”
― Jack Slater, In the Dark

“bloviate, pontificate, procrastinate, and generally stand in the way of American progress.”
― Jack Slater, Dark State

“said”
― Jack Slater, Code of Arms

“know”
― Jack Slater, Hand of God

“on an off.”
― Jack Slater, Eyes Only

“It’s not the crime that gets you—it’s the cover-up.”
― Jack Slater, Code of Arms

“The whole thing melts like a chocolate teapot,”
― Jack Slater, Valley of Death

“Jason Trapp’s gaze jerked upward from the empty bottle of beer in front of him toward the source of the man’s voice before his head did. The bartender was in his 40s, with a fraying head of sandy brown hair and a couple of weeks’ worth of beard growth. His eyes were tired, sunk into sagging bunkers of flesh”
― Jack Slater, Hangman

“His turned”
― Jack Slater, Eyes Only