What is Greg Lynche's Real Function?
Duncan Hunter books have a political bend to them. Hunter is a conservative; Lynche is a liberal. Instant conflict. Between friends. The mild, urbane, and polished Lynche is the aggressive, not-so-polished, type-A Hunter's political counterweight. Hunter grew up in a household where his parents didn't have a high school diploma between them. Lynche is Ivy League. A wine drinker. Comfortable in executive or foreign relations settings. Hunter plays racquetball competitively. Lynche sails; from a yacht club. He gets sweaty from being in the sun on his sailboat, playing with the wind to fill a spinnaker, then tacking into the wind to race ahead of the competition. Hunter serves little blue balls with a crushing swing of a racquet and dives for 100 mph racquetballs, smashes them back to the front wall. One is refined, one is rough. Lynche needs someone that is not only rough but knows how to handle a mercurial little airplane...as well as other situations. One needs the other.
In Special Access, Lynche is faced with a situation that, as a liberal, he never could have conceived being a part of: interrogating a master terrorist. Convinced any form of "torture" doesn't work and years of listening to the liberals in the Agency that those activities will never yield good intelligence, Lynche cannot be any part of it but Hunter doesn't flinch and takes up the challenge. And on a spectrum of torture, Hunter starts off slow and then threatens the terrorist with the ultimate horror. If he doesn't cooperate and talk, Hunter threatens to hook up a car battery to the man's testicles. The refined liberal Lynche has never seen a man tortured and die; Hunter nearly makes Lynche faint when he grazes the battery cables together to make sparks and molten metal fly, a demonstration that the battery is the man's worst nightmare. After all, his partner had been hooked up to a battery and barely lived. The cowardly terrorist talks and Hunter disposes of the man in a gruesome manner, but out of sight, out of mind. Lynche realizes the escalation of violence necessary to accomplish the new missions is something he is not cut out for. This is not his type of work; it's getting too crazy. He blames himself for creating a monster. But he realizes that he has also created a hero, someone that is not afraid to tackle the ugly politically-sensitive, politically incorrect work. The work is necessary and they are on a timeline. Hunter figured it out.
Hunter has little use for liberals, with the sole exception of Lynche. Lynche tries to keep him grounded and not go off and do something crazy and stupid. In No Need to Know, Lynche's relationship is strained to the breaking point when "Maverick" apparently "wanders off the reservation."
Maverick out!
Duncan Hunter books have a political bend to them. Hunter is a conservative; Lynche is a liberal. Instant conflict. Between friends. The mild, urbane, and polished Lynche is the aggressive, not-so-polished, type-A Hunter's political counterweight. Hunter grew up in a household where his parents didn't have a high school diploma between them. Lynche is Ivy League. A wine drinker. Comfortable in executive or foreign relations settings. Hunter plays racquetball competitively. Lynche sails; from a yacht club. He gets sweaty from being in the sun on his sailboat, playing with the wind to fill a spinnaker, then tacking into the wind to race ahead of the competition. Hunter serves little blue balls with a crushing swing of a racquet and dives for 100 mph racquetballs, smashes them back to the front wall. One is refined, one is rough. Lynche needs someone that is not only rough but knows how to handle a mercurial little airplane...as well as other situations. One needs the other.
In Special Access, Lynche is faced with a situation that, as a liberal, he never could have conceived being a part of: interrogating a master terrorist. Convinced any form of "torture" doesn't work and years of listening to the liberals in the Agency that those activities will never yield good intelligence, Lynche cannot be any part of it but Hunter doesn't flinch and takes up the challenge. And on a spectrum of torture, Hunter starts off slow and then threatens the terrorist with the ultimate horror. If he doesn't cooperate and talk, Hunter threatens to hook up a car battery to the man's testicles. The refined liberal Lynche has never seen a man tortured and die; Hunter nearly makes Lynche faint when he grazes the battery cables together to make sparks and molten metal fly, a demonstration that the battery is the man's worst nightmare. After all, his partner had been hooked up to a battery and barely lived. The cowardly terrorist talks and Hunter disposes of the man in a gruesome manner, but out of sight, out of mind. Lynche realizes the escalation of violence necessary to accomplish the new missions is something he is not cut out for. This is not his type of work; it's getting too crazy. He blames himself for creating a monster. But he realizes that he has also created a hero, someone that is not afraid to tackle the ugly politically-sensitive, politically incorrect work. The work is necessary and they are on a timeline. Hunter figured it out.
Hunter has little use for liberals, with the sole exception of Lynche. Lynche tries to keep him grounded and not go off and do something crazy and stupid. In No Need to Know, Lynche's relationship is strained to the breaking point when "Maverick" apparently "wanders off the reservation."
Maverick out!
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