By Andy Harp
The beauty of the military thriller is that most live it! Fiction is only one short step away from fact.
I remember my first true-life brush with the spy game. I was a lowly intern working for a Congressman in the final days of Richard Millhouse Nixon’s presidency. Our LA, or legislative assistant, as those who frequent the hallways of Rayburn and Cannon know, asked me if I would like to go with her to a couple of Embassy parties. I quickly said yes.
(As some background, many embassies celebrate their countries’ national holidays with a party, but schedule it a few days from the actual holiday to keep away party crashers. It takes years to get on an Embassy invite list, and perennial staffers on the Hill, like my boss, were often on them.)
The first affair I attended was at Greece’s embassy and, as I soon found out, the Embassy party fits well on the pages of James Bond. Tuxedoed waiters work through the crowd with silver trays of crystal. The ouzo flowed and the dessert table was covered with baklava. The upper echelons of attendees wore tuxes and the worker bees were attired in coats and ties. Among the women, glittering diamonds abounded.
In the corner, I noticed a burly man in a brown suit and plain, chocolate brown tie with black strips. This was pre-Reagan, so brown was not yet fashionable. It was the time of the Russian Bear. Many Americans remembered the Cuban Missile Crisis of a dozen years earlier. They also remembered being taught as students to hide under their school desks and not look directly at any brilliant flashes of light.
The man had bushy black eyebrows that came close to qualifying as a uni-brow. Gathered around him and whispering in a corner were a few men, their suit colors matching their ties. (Contrasting colors was not a USSR concept at the time.)
It was not until the next party on the embassy circuit (I think it was at France’s embassy) that I understood the significance of the man in the brown suit. Again, the champagne flowed and the trays of pastries extended the length of the room. This time, however, the man was more noticeable. He wore the full uniform of the Russian military, with rows of gold and silver medals on his chest. The testy relationship between the U.S. and the Soviet Union apparently dictated the evening’s attire. I didn’t venture too close. Meeting the KGB would have been right up there with meeting Darth Vader—like hearing an ominous rattle when you venture too far off the trail in California’s high desert. One learns to back up.
It did underscore the fact that spies exist. Thirty years later, after serving with the Marines in the Gulf, Central America, Korea, and the Pentagon, my experiences only confirmed the same!
And have no doubt: the spy game continues. Now it heavily involves China, Iran, Israel, still Russia, and, of course, North Korea, the latter one of the world’s most perfect villains. North Korean concentration camps house more than 50,000 human souls who are constantly only a breath away from death by starvation.
In A NORTHERN THUNDER, my protagonist, Colonel Will Parker, USMCR, takes on North Korea. Every generation alive in The Democratic Peoples Republic of Korea, or DPRK, has heard, since early age, reams of anti-American rhetoric. In this thriller, the characters cross continents and paths that lead ultimately to a collision of fates. Parker, by simple fortune, is the only one capable of stopping North Korea’s latest attempt to disrupt our world. Like the KGB agent, the story is based on fact and reality.
I hope you enjoy it.
For more information, check out my website … and you’ll find an interesting book trailer on YouTube.)