Mitch Rapp, R.I.P.

Ian Fleming’s James Bond is the classic example of iconic figures sprouting from the popular spy/military/crime thriller genre of literature. Others include the French detective Jules Maigret who appeared in 75 Georges Simenon novels. More recently, Tom Clancy’s Jack Ryan topped the charts. But my favorite of them all is Vince Flynn’s Mitch Rapp.

Sadly, Flynn died of prostate cancer in 2013. Since then, the Mitch Rapp books have been written by Kyle Mills, who has done a good job of capturing much of what made Flynn’s novels so enjoyable. However, his latest in the series, Total Power, is clear evidence that Mills does not fully grasp the theme that had made Flynn and Rapp so popular.

Flynn’s first book, Term Limits, did not include Mitch Rapp. But it did feature a story line that set the stage for all of Flynn’s books. Some former Navy SEALS, led by Scott Coleman, trained by their country to kill its enemies, noticed that some of America’s most dangerous enemies were politicians in Washington, D.C. In one particular case, their loose lips and ideology had accounted for the deaths of a number of American soldiers. The SEALS’ training took over and, as a result, D.C. had a few less politicians. Rather than risk public awareness of the traitorous actions of the politicians, however, the U.S. government made peace with the SEALS and let them be as long as they promised to stop.

The publishing houses wouldn’t touch the book, so Flynn self-published it. After it topped the charts in Minneapolis (Flynn lived in Minnesota), however, Flynn got his first book contract and focused the rest of his books on Rapp, although many of the characters from the first book–including Coleman and his band of SEALS–remained.

What also remained in all the rest of Flynn’s books was a true sense of who the bad guys were–and the acknowledgement that many of the bad guys were home grown.

Most of the evil confronted by Rapp throughout the series came in the form of Islamic terrorists. Unlike the left today, Flynn never hesitated to call out Islamic terrorism for what it is–Islamic.

Stan Hurley, Rapp’s often combative trainer, made the point in American Assassin that the failure to identify and respond to Islamic radicalism has consequences:

Let’s just say some people in Washington have seen the error of their ways. This terrorism, especially the Islamic radical [type], has some people spooked, and it should. They saw what happened the last time we allowed someone like Buckley to be snatched without lifting a finger. It gives people the wrong idea.

Flynn not only identified Islamic terrorism as evil, he did so without–as best I can recall–the equivocation we hear from many today about how Islam itself is not a violent religion, it is just that the terrorists are distorting it.

Rapp also had great clarity on this, driven by the death of his girlfriend killed by Islamic terrorists in the Pan Am flight 103 Lockerbie bombing. And lest some people might get the “wrong idea” about how America should treat Islamic terrorists, Rapp sent the right message loud and clear: he killed them. 

However, unlike Coleman, Rapp was not taking the law into his own hands. He had been hired by the CIA because the (Democrat) president and some high ranking senators and representatives of both parties had decided that America had to take the fight to its enemies. Because of the violence it faced from its enemies, the United States of America had legally sanctioned violence in return–partly as a means of retribution but even more so of prevention.

Nowhere in his books, though, do you ever get a sense that Flynn had a hatred for Islam or Muslims. His focus was simply on making it very clear who it is that would threaten harm and do violence against our country. Thomas Stansfield, director of the CIA in the early Rapp books, explains in Transfer of Power how the CIA had to adapt radical Islamic terrorists replaced communist nations as the main security threats to America:

The CIA had changed during his tenure. More precisely, the threats had changed, and the CIA was forced to change with them. The old static days of a two-superpower world were long gone, replaced by small regional conflicts and the ever growing threat of terrorism. As Stansfield closed out his career, this was what bothered him most. The threat of one individual bringing biological, chemical, or nuclear annihilation to America was becoming more and more plausible.

Though most threats of violence came from external sources in Flynn’s books, he never forgot the internal threats to our nation’s security. Like U.S. Senator Hank Clark.

Clark was an uber-wealthy Republican who had had been in office for twenty-two years. Bored with that, his next goal was to be president. Clark never left anything to chance, though, so he developed a plan to take down the current president Robert Hayes and the Democratic Party along with him. His plan centered on publicly revealing the Orion Team, the shadow organization Rapp worked for inside the CIA created to take down terrorists. The key factor in Clark’s plan was to kill Rapp and then blame him for an assassination of a German banker. Like any plan to kill Rapp, though, it did not go so well.

The same was generally true for anyone who tried to kill Rapp and those he cared for. Here is what happened to Senator Clark in Separation of Power:

Clark clawed at his bow tie. “Something isn’t right. I’m having a hard time breathing.” The words barely made it out.

“You’re having a heart attack, Senator. Just try and stay calm, it’ll all be over in a minute.”

There was horror on Clark’s face. He tried to speak, but nothing came out.

Rapp leaned in real close and said, “By the way, Senator, my name isn’t Mitch Kruse, it’s Mitch Rapp.”

There was a flutter of recognition in Clark’s eyes, but he was too far gone to react.

“I just wanted to meet you face-to-face before you died.” Rapp stepped away so he could see the look of absolute horror on Clark’s face fade to a death stare.

With Clark sitting wide-eyed, Rapp turned and extended his arm for Donatella. She grabbed it and they walked across the dance floor to the sounds of music, conversation, and laughter.

While executions by Rapp were reserved for traitors and murderers, a constant them running through Flynn’s books was the harm done to our country by those whose policies, or even inaction, aided and abetted America’s enemies.

In the case of progressives, many times aiding America’s external enemies is intentional because they are opposed to the biblical principles, such as life, liberty, and private property, upon which our country was founded and prospered for the better part of two centuries. In other words, these people are our internal enemies seeking to undermine everything that our country stands for, even if their actions are not criminally treasonous.

Moderates, on the other hand, aid and abet our enemies because they are deceived by progressive ideas yet believe they still support our biblical foundations. Whether they champion compassionate conservatism, appeasement of foreign powers, the welfare state, or abolishing white privilege, these folks have lost all perspective on who America’s (and often God’s) enemies really are. Ultimately, they often have little idea where the battle lines are in any given conflict and get very confused about who is on which side. Thus, they often do as much to undermine liberty as the progressives.

Flynn’s focus on these internal threats to our nation–be they of the intentional or imbecilic kind–was almost always on the ones inside the government. He was not a harsh critic of government, but he recognized its limits and the harm that it could do–especially in the wrong hands.

A perfect example of this was Arianna Vinter in Flynn’s aptly named last book, The Last Man. She was a typical State Department type who believed that no one, and especially no one from the CIA, knew more about what was going on than she did. In the midst of a crisis over the reported kidnapping of CIA operative Joe Rickman, Vinter and Rapp collided in Afghanistan. Here’s how it went down:

Vintner examined her fingers for a long moment and then in a casual voice asked, “Do you think I’m stupid, Mr. Rapp?”

“I don’t know you.”

“You don’t know me. That’s all you have to say.”

“I’ve never met you before and I haven’t heard anything about you until this morning, so I’m not really in a position to answer your question. You could be a genius or an imbecile. As of right now I can’t answer that question, but keep talking and I should be able to give you an answer in a few minutes.” …

Vinter’s agreeable façade was slowly melting away, revealing her angry side. “I know you think you’re some hotshot, but you need to understand something. I’m in charge around here and if I don’t like you and what you’re up to, you’re going to find your [butt] on the next flight out of here. Do you understand me?” …

Rapp raised his hand as if he was waiting to be called on by his teacher.

“What?” Vinter asked.

“I have the answer to your question . . . I think you’re an imbecile. There could be some underlying psychological issues as well but I’d need to spend more time with you, which isn’t going to happen. Beyond that, I’m pretty sure you’re stupid.”

“You have no idea who you’re [messing] with, Mr. Rapp.”

“Actually, I have a really good idea. You’re some spoiled brat who’s gotten her way her entire life. … The point is I don’t [care] who you are, but you’d better care who I am and understand that I’m the meanest [SOB] you will ever meet. That’s why the president sent me over here. Because he wants results and he knows I won’t put up with people like you. So you go ahead and call your boss and anyone else you need to and after they’ve all told you what I’ve just told you, you will hand over every shred of information you have regarding Joe Rickman and the scumbags you had him making deals with. And if you don’t, I can guarantee you will be the one on the next flight out of here.”

After taking over the Mitch Rapp series, Kyle Mills recognized this aspect of Flynn’s writing:

After spending a year pushing Vince’s style about as far as it could go into geopolitics, I was in the mood to narrow my focus. With Lethal Agent, I wanted to create something that felt like old-school Flynn—a book about Mitch kicking terrorist [butt] while corrupt forces in Washington try to take him down.

Mills is a very good writer and has a knowledge of Flynn’s writing probably second only to Flynn himself. However, even though he is capable of replicating this scenario, Total Power makes it clear he does not share Flynn’s innate questioning of government that in many ways drove the Rapp narrative.

The plot of Total Power is built around a largely successful physical and software attack on America’s electric grid. It brings down power across the entire lower 48 states and pushes the nation into chaos. The only hope for saving the country from two years or more without power–and near total destruction–is for Rapp to find the mastermind behind the attack. Of course, he does, and the destruction is averted–although hundreds of thousands of Americans die in the process.

In the Author’s Note at the beginning of the book, Mills writes:

The most terrifying thing about this book was how little I had to make up. Between actual historical power outages, government assessments of power grid vulnerabilities, and official estimates of the casualties that a long-term outage would generate, much of the book wrote itself.

Then, in the book Mills makes clear that the government’s failure to secure the grid is the primary reason for the grid’s vulnerability to attack.

This is in keeping with modern liberalism’s view that when something goes wrong, government has to fix it. While we all pay for it. Poverty? Welfare is the answer. Racism? Have to outlaw it; well, except for government-sponsored racism in the form of affirmative action. Global warming? Renewable energy subsidies and banning fossil fuels will take care of it. COVID-19 pandemic? Mask and sheltering in place mandates, ending freedom of association and assembly, and massive government payouts are clearly the only solution.

Mills highlights the government-as-the-solution attitude in this conversation Rapp has with CIA Director Irene Kennedy, the FBI director and others:

When the conversation turned to the worldwide depression that would inevitably follow the complete collapse of the world’s largest economy [due to the recent failure of the grid], Rapp made his way toward Irene Kennedy and the men she was speaking to.

“Looks like we screwed up, bad,” he said when he got within earshot. “What now?”

“We were just talking about that,” the FBI director said.

“And what did you come up with?”

“That we’re the only people who can fix this.”

“I’m not an electrician, Darren”

“In a way, that’s the point,” Kennedy said. “It wouldn’t matter if you were. Evaluating the physical damage to the grid, repairing it, and bypassing the frozen computers of thousands of individual utility companies is going to take six months if everything goes our way. It can’t take that long, Mitch. The majority of our population will be dead and America will have ceased to exist.”

Despite the fact that they were unable to stop the initial attack, we are told that only a handful of government officials, directing perhaps a few thousand of their minions, are capable of fixing the grid in time to stop further catastrophe.

No thought is even given to tens of thousands of folks employed in and supporting the electricity business–electrical, mechanical, and software engineers, technicians, financiers, CEOs, grid operators, manufacturers, line workers, etc.–as being capable of dealing with the problem. Only a handful of folks with centralized control–and guns–can fix it.

I get that Mills is focused here on this group capturing the mastermind behind the disaster as the quick fix to regaining control of the software systems. Still, the questioning of government that characterized Flynn’s writing is completely missing from this book and has been replaced by government as the be-all, end-all solution to our problems.

What seals the deal for me on this is how Mills writes this story. While quite a few good/innocent people have died in Flynn’s books, there was nothing of the magnitude we find in Total Power. Rapp was the guy who ALWAYS made sure catastrophes like this did not happen. But to prove his point how easy it would be to make the grid collapse and highlight the need for government to fix the problem, Mills allows Rapp to fail to the tune of hundreds of thousands of American deaths. Then tries to resurrect our hero by telling us, “Hey, at least it wasn’t millions.”

Mitch Rapp, R.I.P.