Pursuit of Honor: Who Is Mitch Rapp?

Since 9/11, doing research for my books, there's something which has come up again and again and which has become like a major frustration for me, a truth which I think needs to be focused on and shared -- and that is how the real heroes of America, the CIA agents and men and women in the military, and the guys in special forces, work their asses off oceans away from their families because they are told to do whatever they need to do to keep the country safe. And then, while they're busy abroad protecting the country, the self-serving politicians at home decide to make them look likes brutes, because it will make the politicians look better to their overly-politically-correct fans. Our agents are told to do a job and then kept from doing it -- and meanwhile, they're risking their lives. I wrote this book for the people of America who still know who our heroes are, and want to read a book that makes sense. And I wrote it so that hopefully those people who don't get it can maybe begin to see that we would be a lot safer if we'd stop questioning our heroic law enforcement, and let them work.

Obviously, Mitch Rapp is a character I've been using for some time, so I didn't create him specifically for this book -- but he was created, originally, to be the straightforward, hardworking hero most Americans can identify with. You know -- he's got his issues; he's not perfect -- but he doesn't complain. He just wants to do his job; he wants to do it well -- and he's not afraid to put himself in danger to accomplish that. Right away on page 2 I write, "Rapp wasn't the kind of man who was going to start pulling the trigger from a climate-controlled office a couple hundred miles away. He needed to see with his own eyes if they were missing something...." He's proud to have his responsibilities. And I contrast him immediately with Glen Adams, in many senses just as much a villain in the novel as al Qaeda: Glen Adams the bureaucrat. I have Glen Adams say he feels "like General Custer at times -- surrounded by savages, trying to fight the good fight" (15). Adams identifies with American heroes; he loves the Constitution. So in many ways, and to many readers at first, he seems like a good American. But just like all those politicians over in Washington, he's gotten obsessed with the rules, and all wrapped up in his power to enforce the rules. Just as Dr. Lewis describes him in the book, he's gotten so narcissistic and self-important that he sees himself as the General and the real fighting men, the "gunfighters," as the savages -- when in reality Mitch Rapp is "doing the honorable thing, while all the overeducated assholes like [Adams] sit in [their] nice leather chairs and criticize his every move" (77).

I was also thinking of the Ayn Rand excerpt, from "Atlas Shrugged," while I developed Mitch's character, and Irene Kennedy's. You could almost say Irene Kennedy is an Ayn Rand, not only because she is an intelligent, accomplished woman, but she recognizes that these men society has deemed 'out-of-control' are actually the heroes, the people keeping society sane. Instead of sacrificing, being selfless for the sake of the terrorists' 'humanity,' they are protecting their own interests: their families and their friends. Rand wrote, "do not sacrifice this world to those who are its worst. In the name of the values that keep you alive, do not let your vision of man be distorted by the ugly, the cowardly, the mindless.... Do not let the hero in your soul perish, in lonely frustration for the life you deserved.... The world you desired can be won, it exists, it is real, it is possible, it's yours" (979). This Randian idea of the heroic man, the free and rational, common-sense individual, helped me shape my American heroes.

So that's basically how I constructed the characters in Pursuit of Honor, to show the truth of the real characters in Washington, D.C. I also used some ideas from the readings we just did in class, especially the Schmitt. I didn't think I'd like the ideas of a Nazi, but you know, I read that actually he got in trouble with the Nazis because they didn't think he was truly hateful enough. They said he didn't really hate Jews, and that he couldn't be a real Nazi because he was Catholic. Anyway, I was surprised to find that a lot of his ideas made sense, especially in the context of this war on terror. One of my biggest problems with these 'enlightened' liberals is that they don't want to torture terrorists because they're human beings, and all human beings have certain rights -- or because it 'makes us just like them'. It makes me crazy, and Schmitt explains perfectly why: "[t]he distinction of friend and enemy denotes the utmost degree of intensity of a union or separation, of an association or dissociation. It can exist theoretically and practically, without having simultaneously to draw upon all those moral, aesthetic, economic, or other distinctions" (Schmitt 27). In other words, we don't have to distinguish ourselves from al Qaeda by behaving differently in any way -- by being ethically better, or having a different economic system. We are distinct from al Qaeda simply because we have declared them to be the enemy, and because of that, they can't be us. By definition, they aren't us. The United States isn't a Little League team. We don't have to play fair, and we don't have to shake hands at the end of a game. We're a country, we are Americans -- and they are people who want to kill Americans.

I have no doubt that these ideas will make sense to my readers. People aren't dumb; they can see that the war on terror isn't going very well. It's been taking a long time, and we haven't even caught bin Laden. And they know it's not their kids' fault, or their spouses'. It's the government's fault, because they're too busy trying to get votes, to do the politically-correct thing so they won't get skewered by the media. Also, I know it will work because we share the same values. Some of us may disagree politically, on some things, but in the end, we like a patriot. We like a brave man, someone who protects his people. And we dislike elitists, people with inflated egos from too much power. It's part of what makes us Americans, part of what founded this great country. I understand that, and my readers will see it in my book. Once I can connect with them on that level, I think they'll be able to see the truth. I don't think it will be that hard, either. You might have noticed that women aren't forming book clubs anymore; they're forming Tea Parties! I think they share some of Mitch Rapp's anger, and that's a good thing.