What is Bill McGee's Real Function?

One of the underlying themes of the Duncan Hunter books is that there are certain CIA files that are so explosive that they cannot be divulged nor can they be accessed without presidential approval.  In Special Access, the documents contained within the CIA file on the president proves he is not who he claims to be.  In Shoot Down, there was an ongoing CIA file to pay terrorists a yearly ransom to prevent commercial aircraft from being shot out of the sky by shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles.  In No Need to Know, an ancient pre-CIA file lists artwork hidden by the Nazis.  Another file attempts to track missing suitcase nuclear devices after the fall of the Soviet Union.

Executing these operations cannot be done by a single person.  Duncan Hunter largely provides the "aviation solution" while Bill McGee is the "ground solution."  They work together as a team.  Not everything can be done from the air while not everything can be accomplished from the ground.  There is synergy in this construct.  Once McGee is brought onto the team, the counterterrorism missions assume a new scope; they become more kinetic, more lethal.  As the new missions become more lethal, from the air and on the ground, Duncan Hunter's flying "liberal" partner can no longer be a part of them and walks away from the program.  The YO-3A gains new more lethal capabilities and Hunter becomes an airborne assassin for the CIA.  Hunter discovers he cannot perform the missions by himself and needs help.  For help, he turns to his friend from the war college, for there is no finer ground warrior than the former super SEAL Bill McGee.

Bill McGee also does things and gets into places no one else possibly could.  He's a "break down the door" kind a guy.  He's trying to balance his love for his wife and girls with the work he has done for all of his adult life.  It's something special operations warriors sometimes just cannot walk away from.  The thrill and excitement.  But also, when you are the only one that can do a particular job, you are loyal to your country and you do it.  A real man smiles in the face of trouble, gathers strength from distress, and grows brave by reflection.  These are traits and characteristics of a loyal and professional soldier.  Those that lean left politically cannot understand that. 

Maverick out!

Bill McGee is an Interesting Character

Captain William McGee, U.S. Navy SEAL, retired is a major composite character.  I met a few Navy SEALs at the Naval War College but none were more impressive than our class president, his actual name will not be revealed here.  I had the honor and privilege of sitting next to this real war hero during assemblies and a few social events.  I also had the good fortune to share with him my very limited contact with SEALs.  Mostly, I had attended flight school with a former SEAL, someone he knew.  As he said, one of "his good guys."  He left an impression on me.  There were things about him that I could only assume would have made great copy, even a book.  We talked shop and careers and avoided operational stuff.  We didn't talk politics.  We played a little racquetball--well, one of us did.  I swear the man could do everything well, except play racquetball.  His Schwarzenegger physique, culled from hours in the weight room, telegraphed his athletic prowess, his ability to survive in the most difficult of conditions, as well as his lethality.  People would think he was Schwarzenegger's Predator character without the make up and the crazy helmet.  Nightmarish bad.

Readers of Special Access are introduced to my very special SEAL.  As Duncan Hunter learned, Captain Bill McGee was the most decorated special operations warrior in special operations history.  He was Special Operations Command 9-1-1 response.  When America needed bad guys eliminated or neutralized, they'd call McGee. Finding and killing the enemies of America was his specialty.  McGee has tremendous interest in airplanes as he was the son of one of the original WWII Tuskegee Airmen.  McGee was disqualified from becoming a pilot because of poor color and distance vision, so he became a SEAL.  

I gave him tiny round eyeglass lenses like Alan west to give him the air of being incredibly smart as if he were a scholar.  There was nothing he couldn't do, except one thing.  When America needed him most, after 9/11, he couldn't find the master terrorist Osama bin Laden in the mountains of Tora Bora, Afghanistan.  When the CIA personally blamed him for failing to find Osama bin Laden, McGee was relieved of command and removed from Special Operations Command.  No one really knew why the legendary Navy SEAL was sent packing to the Naval War College.  The master of his profession, his 35-year career wasn't supposed to end as a student.  With his professional life in tatters, McGee invites Hunter to sit with him in the auditorium.  In a business where he had few friends, he lowered his defenses and he and Hunter become fast friends.  McGee didn't know it then, but he couldn't have found a truer friend.  And friends always come running when there is trouble.

Maverick out!

The Development of Nazy Cunningham

The Prophet Mohammad took four girls as concubines.  He took a nine-year old as a bride.  Radical Islamist groups destroy towns and villages in order to capture women and sell them or make them sex slaves.  It begs the question, does Islam have a problem with women?  To a great degree, yes; in almost every Muslim country in the Middle east women have little to no power and the vast majority have lost their freedom.  One could argue Muslim women once had amazing freedom; they attended the best universities in Cairo, Tehran, Damascus, and Islamabad and received degrees in engineering and medicine.  When they graduated college in the 40s, 50s, 60, and even the 70s, school graduation photographs clearly show the men wore business suits and women wore dresses and heels in the Western style.  Today, the Islamic world has been de-Westernized.  Today, under threat of pain or death, women are forced to hide their hair, their arms and legs.

Some are unable to drive cars.  They are subject to arranged marriages.  They have very few rights, if any.  This is the essence of terrorism--which is defined as violence or intimidation to achieve a political goal.  Muslim women must submit or pay the price.  They would fight back if they could.  Who could possibly support fanatical Muslims inflamed for sharia, car bombs, and female genital mutilation?

When you are engaged in the business of counterterrorism, your direct goal is to destroy radical Islamists and by extension, you are indirectly fighting for the freedoms Muslim women have lost or never had.  The Nazy Cunningham character represents what happens when a Muslim woman is faced with the dilemma, either continue to submit and live a life under actual or the threat of violence or intimidation--by those fanatical Muslims hot for sharia and female genital mutilation--or run away or escape from the religion that facilitates such conditions to exist and its influences, and embrace freedom.  In Special Access, after Nazy (as Marwa) is beaten by her husband she makes the decision to escape from her life.  Before she races to the airport, she begins fighting back in one final act of defiance.

In the Duncan Hunter books, the amazing Nazy Cunningham continues to explore freedom and the potential of a full life.  As a CIA analyst, she is fully committed to fight the fanatical Muslims, the very group that seeks to subjugate, punish and destroy her as well as the country that has allowed her the freedom to blossom as a free woman.  She is in the fight to demolish the evil that resides in the radical strain of Islam.
Maverick out!

What is Nazy Cunningham's Real Function?

One of the underlying themes of the Duncan Hunter books is that there are certain CIA files that are so explosive that they cannot be divulged nor can they be accessed without presidential approval.  In Special Access, the documents contained within the CIA file on the president proves he is not who he claims to be.  In Shoot Down, there was an ongoing CIA file to pay terrorists a yearly ransom to prevent commercial aircraft from being shot out of the sky by shoulder-launched surface-to-air missiles.  In No Need to Know, an ancient pre-CIA file lists artwork hidden by the Nazis.  Another file attempts to track missing suitcase nuclear devices.

Nazy has risen up through the ranks of the CIA to become one of their most trusted senior intelligence service executives.  She found Osama bin Laden hiding in Pakistan and she got to interrogate him.  Her resume is full of accomplishments finding terrorists that don't want to be found or she interrogates them in Guantanamo Bay.  Or other places.  She didn't just renounce Islam, she escaped or some would say she defected.  Much the same way senior intelligence officials defected from the Soviet Union or Eastern Bloc countries and came to work for the US or British intelligence communities, Nazy followed that career path.  She escaped from an abusive radical Muslim husband and returned to America; embraced Christianity. 

Nazy is the antithesis of a politically liberal woman.  She loves America.  America is the only country founded on great and noble ideals.  She embraces America for what it is in the world, the last great hope for freedom loving people everywhere.  She is on the side of America that is continually being attacked from every quadrant of the globe where evil tries to propagate and allow totalitarianism to take hold and reside.  She has seen the face of evil, having been drawn into the politically evil side of Islam through a forced marriage, and has committed herself to do the ugly work necessary to uncover evil, root it out, and make and keep America safe.  She is growing into becoming an exceptional American and patriot.  And as a senior intelligence executive, she is entrusted with managing some of the nation's most incredible and damaging secrets.  Sometimes a few of those most secret of secrets need "outside action."  When those rare situations arise, she is the conduit for Greg Lynche as the Director of the Central Intelligence Agency to become aware of a particular problem which threatens the USA.  Nazy is also, sometimes, the conduit for Duncan Hunter to execute the special access or the blackest of the "black" programs. 

Nazy's life has been a remarkable one.  Her path to America as a safe haven was turned upside down when she is forced to spy on a man.  With no training, she was a crappy and unmotivated spy.  When she met the man she was to spy on, she found peace, comfort, and safety in the arms of Duncan Hunter.  The spark between them was virtually instantaneous.  Nazy and Hunter are soulmates.  They only have eyes for each other.  Their work keeps them apart for operational and practical reasons.  But when they are able to push work to the side and get together, you know sparks fly.

Maverick out!

The Nazy Cunningham Character

The idea for Nazy Cunningham came from several sources.  Like the other characters in the Duncan Hunter books, she is a composite character.  In my travels to the Middle East I ran across/met a young Jordanian woman who was the personal secretary for a senior government official.  Her name was "Marwa."  Her English was the formal King's English--without a British accent.  I was taken aback that she graduated from the Yale University Law School.  She wore a head scarf.  I saw her several times when I visited the office and each time she would greet me with a hearty handshake and a smile.  Then she got married and the next and last time I saw her, of course she could not shake my hand nor could she be touched by a man that wasn't her husband.  I knew the rules and that was ok.  But the rest of the story was she had married poorly and her husband was a jealous man and beat her.

Then I came across an interesting woman on Al Gore's amazing internet.  Before she was George Clooney's wife, Amal Alamuddin was another Arabic lawyer who was sort of an Islamic apologist and more of the type of person I wanted Duncan's Hunter's love interest to be like.  Tall, good looking, and the "apologist" in her appealed to me as I was looking for a situation where the future love interest would question her Muslim faith after being blackmailed into spying on an infidel.  The infidel being Duncan Hunter, of course.  She renounces Islam, he turns her and off she goes to the CIA to be an analyst.

But Nazy Cunningham had to be stunning.  Someone who would literally make the racquetball-happy Duncan Hunter stop in his tracks at the first sight of her and then, also literally, flip over onto his back as he tried to recover from chasing a racquetball in a court to spying the woman in the stands.  Imagine Roger Federer chasing a tennis ball and right before he swings at it with his racquet, in the corner of his eye he sees this beauty in the stands and for a split second he forgets what's he's doing on the court to "take a peek" at her.  When he blinks, he realizes he is supposed to be swinging a racquet at the ball, misses wildly, and the momentum of the distraction causes him to cartwheel onto his back.  That is what "Marwa" did to Duncan during their first encounter.  Add some green eyes to reflect her royal Persian ancestry and a cover name, given to her by the CIA.  In Persian, Nazy means "cute." 

What does Nazy really look like?  When I saw the 2014 Miss Netherlands walk out onto the stage during the Miss Universe Pageant in a yellow low-cut dress, I about fell out of my seat as I said aloud, pointing like a fool, "That's Nazy!"  Duncan's favorite color is yellow.  Synchronicity.  No brainer.  That dress might make an appearance in book #4. 

Maverick out!

The Airplanes

One of Duncan Hunter's most amazing talents, right behind uncovering the deepest of the undercover spies and driving Nazy Cunningham wild, is his uncanny ability to stumble upon rare aircraft or airplanes that have been lost to history.  Often these are one-off designs or "special purpose" aircraft, such as a Bugatti racer that was designed for an "across Europe" race in the 1930s.  I read recently this lost Bugatti racer will actually take to the skies in the very near future.

In my fourth book, another 1930s-era aviation race sets the plot for the remaining novel.
Why bother?  For starters, Duncan Hunter's YO-3A almost never got built.  Like countless other interesting and fantastic designs that never made the leap off the drawing board to the runway, I think these historically-significant airplanes should be part of the discussion.  When I flew a jet, I rarely had time to think about the aircraft that had come before mine or the pilots who braved the elements to advance the fledgling aviation industry, one airplane at a time. 

So expect to see more unusual or rare aircraft when Duncan Hunter least expects to find a lost aviation treasure.

Maverick out!

Old CIA Files

Not just any CIA files but old files.  Files that should have been sent to the archives or the burn bag but somehow managed to pop up in the most unusual settings or at the most inappropriate times.  The old CIA files Duncan Hunter is exposed to are, with apologies to Thomas Alva Edison, 90% inspiration, 10% perspiration.  An illegal alien that becomes the President--there just has to be a hidden file on him-- and the CIA and all the President's men are looking for it.  The President does negotiate with terrorists and pays the terrorist billions--again, there just has to be a file because there has to be a black program that has CIA agents facilitating the payments.  In No Need to Know, several unrelated old files come together for an explosive story.

Purposely, there is a little bit of truth in these imaginary old CIA files.  They are ripped from today's headlines.  Today we learned the current CIA Director voted for the 1980 Communist Party Presidential candidate, Gus Hall.  The book on the DCI is that he also converted to Islam many years ago, and the news he had voted for the Communist Party" while taking a polygraph, was simply stunning.  In Shoot Down readers are introduced to Dr. Bruce Rothwell, CIA Director who is not only a closet Communist but converted to Islam to better infiltrate terrorist groups such as al-Qaeda.  Some things you can make up only to find out they are true--change the name of course.

And then there is the President.  In book four, Blown Cover, readers are introduced to the man whose file was released by one Duncan Hunter.  He is described by his name, for he was named after a famous Russian, a famous Muslim, and his African family.  Maxim Mohammad Matabaa.  A Soviet-style  socialist at heart, he once described the Muslim call to prayer as “one of the prettiest sounds on Earth at sunset.” 

And some files come from unusual sources, like defectors.  These can often provide a treasure trove of old intelligence that is relevant for today's world view and foreign policy.

Old files, old pilots, old airplanes, old CIA guys, old SEALs.  And one young incredibly beautiful CIA senior executive that is in the middle of them all. 

Maverick out!