10-10-25 *INTERVIEW* Jack Carr Former Navy SEAL Sniper & Author on his Latest Novel 'Cry Havoc'

Episode Transcript

Speaker 1 (00:00):
I usually have him by zoom, but I got on
my phone today and we are talking with my good
friend Jack Carr, who is a former Navy Seal sniper
both as an enlisted man and as an officer and
leader of men. He is a multiple time best selling
author and one of the few folks who is a
best selling author in.

Speaker 2 (00:19):
Both fiction and non fiction.

Speaker 1 (00:22):
And his latest book that I'm holding in my hand
is called cry Havoc. And for those of you who
are reading and or watching the Terminal list write the
books the Amazon stuff, cry Havoc is kind of like
a pre prequel because the main character in Terminalist, the

(00:43):
protagonist James Reese. This book is about James Reese's dad
in the Vietnam War. Anyway, that's enough talking from me, Hi, Jack,
Thanks for being here.

Speaker 3 (00:54):
Thanks so much for having me having that back of
a speeding suburban in the rain going from Orlando Airport
to Vero Beach for the nice book signing events. Helm
So glad we got to do this. So it's always
great to talk to you.

Speaker 2 (01:04):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (01:04):
Likewise, for the next question, you're allowed to say, I
could tell you, but I'd have to kill you. I
am aware that recently you were traveling. Are you allowed
to tell us anything about why and where you were traveling?
Or is that I could tell you, but I'd have
to kill you. This Morocco the you're referring to, If

(01:25):
you're allowed to say it.

Speaker 3 (01:27):
I think so. So we finished up filming True Believer
over in Morocco. He started filming back in February in
South Africa. Got some amazing stuff over there, just incredible
for that part of the book and now the TV
show that focuses on that part of the world where
James Rees goes to learn to live again and put
the skills from rock in Afghanistan into use against the

(01:49):
poachers in Mozambique, and we filmed right up there in
the Popo province, incredible and what to Toronto and then
Morocco for a few months and it is looking incredible.
So I guess that that would come out next summer.
I don't have any exact dates yet, nothing confirmed, but
we're in post production right now. We have all the
ingredients to make an incredible show. That's always the goal

(02:11):
is to make the next show better than the last one.
So it's we're on that path.

Speaker 1 (02:15):
And is that Chris Pratt back, you know, like full
time in the show that.

Speaker 3 (02:20):
Is that it's Chris Pratt and also Tom Poppers in there.
We have Luke Hemsworth in there as Jules Landry. And
for those people who thought we would never ever film
a torture scene the way I describe it in the book, well, yeah.

Speaker 2 (02:35):
All right.

Speaker 1 (02:36):
So I read Cry Havoc and for me, this might
be your best book. I mean it's certain, it's this
is an unbelievable book.

Speaker 2 (02:48):
And you did an immense amount of research.

Speaker 1 (02:51):
And we talked a little bit about that the last
time I had you on where we were talking about
Dark Wolf as much as the book. But tell me
a little bit about writing a Vietnam War story.

Speaker 3 (03:01):
Yeah, this is something I wanted to do and not
just say that there was Creeden'sclere Out of Revival playing
in the background and then it's nineteen sixty eight and
kind of leave it at that. I wanted to immerse
the reader and then myself in the writing and the
research into nineteen sixty eight. And I thought that I
had a very solid foundation when it came to the
Vietnam War, a lessons the sixties in general. And I

(03:26):
realized that I started to write and started the research
process that that was up the case. I had just
scratched the service. And that is why we're talking here
in October instead of in June, because the book took
a lot longer than I thought. At the outset, I
wanted every character to see the world only through the
lens of their life up until nineteen sixty eight, so

(03:47):
without the benefit of fifty plus years of hindsight. So
that's all they could bring to a problem set, discussion
and events, situation, whatever it might be, was their life
experience up until nineteen sixty eight. And that's a lot
more work than a contemporary thriller.

Speaker 1 (04:03):
Well, you can tell you did the work, you know,
when you read this book, you can tell, you can
really tell you did the work. And I think again
you and I mentioned this where you mentioned it briefly
last time we talked. But there's something that must have
been sort of liberating for you as a writer, and
also I think liberating for me as a reader to
not have to worry about the Internet and cell phones

(04:27):
and facial recognition and all this stuff. And it's just
like an old school war spy.

Speaker 3 (04:34):
Story exactly exactly. I didn't have to worry about test
was and gps is and our bones and all the
things that you just mentioned. It could be pure trade craft,
pure spycraft, and really phones and this technology of the
day has to be woven into every chapter in a
contemporary thriller because it's so all consuming in our lives
to say nothing of what it does to an intelligence

(04:56):
operation or the military apparatus in general and time not
having to deal with that was amazing, And I wanted
to drop an Spona story into the heart of Southeast Asia.
Nineteen sixty eight is the most bloody year of the
war for the United States, started with the USS Publow,
which kicks off in January and then goes for a
full year. But I wanted to drop somebody right into

(05:18):
nineteen sixty eight for someone who lived through that timeframe.
I wanted them to know that I put in the
work to try to get that right. And also to
anyone who went down range in Iraq and afgan He
to Vietnam, I wanted them to know that I've put
in the work to get the details right, so that
I would on their service and not draw them out

(05:38):
of what I thought at the beginning was a completely
fictional story, but as I moved forward, I realized there
might be a lot more facts than fiction in the
story I lay out. It's really a Spana story dropped
into the heart of Ssaion.

Speaker 1 (05:51):
We're talking with Jack Carr about his new thriller novel,
cry Havoc, and all of Jack's books are great, but
I put this up, you know, add or among the
very best. I thoroughly, thoroughly loved this book for those
who are only modestly acquainted with Jack Carr. In addition
to Jack wanted to do two things when he was

(06:12):
a kid. When he grew up, he wanted to be
a Navy seal and he wanted to be a best seller,
best selling thriller author. And there's lots of people who
try one or the other, and most people who try
either one fail at either one. And Jack has succeeded
at both, which is a remarkable thing. But Jack's mom
is a librarian, So when you read Jack's work, there's

(06:35):
there are all kinds of literary references in it that
you just don't normally get in thriller in thriller novels.
And I just want to share a little bit from
page one oh three here that that made me.

Speaker 2 (06:47):
That made me laugh.

Speaker 1 (06:48):
Let's see, you seals have anybody like Maggie, Graves asked, no,
but maybe we should. Nobody writes books about us though,
and then and then it goes on, hey, are you kidding?
They're talking about who's writing books?

Speaker 2 (07:04):
And then Tom says, are you kidding?

Speaker 1 (07:06):
No Seal would ever write a book, and then Graves says,
you have to learn how to write first, anyway.

Speaker 2 (07:12):
That's hilarious, dude.

Speaker 3 (07:14):
Yeah, yeah, I believe that sort of thing in there,
like to humanize the characters, particularly through dialogue. That's where
I really get to know the characters because I know
who they are and how they're going to move the
story forward. But I don't really get to know them
until I put them in conversation with one another. So
in this one you find out about where James Reese,
obviously decades later, is going to get pap that connection
to a tomahawk, to a nineteen sixty eight Rolex Submarin,

(07:37):
or to honey in the coffee. So there's all these
little things that are woven in there like that. Of course,
there's some nods the popular culture, like magnum Pi and
a few other things. As well. But if you walked
into my office anytime over the last year, you would
have thought that I was invading North Vietnam or getting
ready to avade North Vietnam. I had maps from the
sixties all over the walls with red pins in them.
I had carved fifteen right there. I had brought and

(08:00):
high power right there, Randall knives, Seiko watches, the sixty
eight Rolex Wealthome companies that had manuals from night the
sixties on Motnyard, tribes, customers, and cultures, and it was
it was.

Speaker 2 (08:11):
It was quite something to behold, Wow, did you have
a modus?

Speaker 3 (08:17):
I could have probably got one, and now that we
live in Utah, I haven't had time to figure that
out yet.

Speaker 2 (08:23):
That's funny, all right. So one thing that.

Speaker 1 (08:26):
Stood one of many things that stood out in cry
Havoc for me and listeners know, from time to time
when we talk with authors fiction authors, I will sometimes
bring up something where I say, it's very obvious that
this is the author talking to me at least as
much as it's the character talking to me. And Jack
does that from time to time in the books, and

(08:48):
I don't I don't have the page in front of me.

Speaker 2 (08:50):
But there's there's a.

Speaker 1 (08:52):
Part where the characters the let's see what is it?
The Russian characters are talking about out how much work
the American media is doing to hurt the United States
and turn the American public against the government and all
of that.

Speaker 2 (09:10):
You talk about that. Do you know what I'm talking about?

Speaker 3 (09:13):
I do, And it was I think it's really the
first time that I'm aware of, at least where it's
obvious that the press is not just a check on
government power. Their job is not just reporting. And he
saw big a shift. If you remember the newsreels from
World War Two with the matinees, a very different tone

(09:34):
to those than the reports on Vietnam during the sixties.
And I think that something morphs there, maybe late fifties,
early sixties, certainly around the Kennedy assassination, where the press
realizes that they and I shouldn't say the press in general,
I'm generalizing here. It's say, certain personalities in the press
and realized that they aren't just a check on government power.

(09:56):
They can influence events, they can influence policy, the influence
the perception of events. And it's not like that saying
where you barely get to know somebody someone's character when
you give them power. And I think the press realized
their power back then and realized that they could use
it not just to report and check on government, but

(10:16):
to influence the populace and influence policy. And we really
see that in nineteen sixties, particularly nineteen sixty eight around
the tet offensive.

Speaker 1 (10:24):
So do you I mean, I think this is maybe implied,
but I want to make sure I'm not reading more
into it than you intended to put there.

Speaker 2 (10:32):
So, on the one hand, you just described a.

Speaker 1 (10:34):
Recognition that the media can use their influence to change
public perception and maybe even change the behavior of government.

Speaker 2 (10:43):
Is the next step? Are you?

Speaker 1 (10:45):
Are you implying that the media did that in a
way that you disapprove of, And if so, is it
because you think the media should never do that kind
of thing, or because of specifically what they did regarding
the Vietnam War is something that you think was bad, wrong, unethical,
something like that.

Speaker 3 (11:06):
I'm just really saying how it was really an outside
observer pointing out that shift. And of course, later we
get to news organizations where when we have opinions and
we know that someone's host is an opinion, that sort
of a thing, but we're not really there yet. In
nineteen sixty eight, people still think the press is the
press of World War Two, and they're getting the facts

(11:27):
from those reporters on the ground, but really they're being manipulated.
And of course now it's moved well beyond that, with
the tech overlords now dominating news and being able to
through different social media platforms, be able to influence not
just someone's buying habits, the thoughts as well as behaviors.
So it's really it's morphed. And there's another sentence in

(11:50):
there that it's right around the same time, I have
the two characters on China Beach and they're talking and
talking about the difference between the Department of Defense and
Department of War, precision in language being precisioned in thought.
So as soon as that was announced for the administration,
of course people started texting me about that because I
mentioned it back in two thousand and one when I

(12:11):
wrote articles about the withdrawal from Afghanistan. I mentioned it
on many news programs. I think we've even talked about
it on this show. And of course that happens, and
I'm not saying that the administration got that idea from me.
I'm just saying that I had never heard anybody talk
about it before I did back in two thousand. Well,
that's all I'm saying.

Speaker 1 (12:33):
By the way, it's kind of additionally fun for me
to read this book because I've been to Denang Trengg
Marble Mountain, China, p h Saigon, Hanoi, Dalt, which is
have you been to Dalt?

Speaker 2 (12:47):
Have you been to Vietnam?

Speaker 3 (12:48):
Oh? No, No. I was planning on going for this book,
and then one deadline whipped right by, then another, then another,
and so I never got to go. And that was
really something I was planning on doing January. I pl
going in February. I was planning on going in March,
and it just never happened for this book, unfortunately.

Speaker 1 (13:05):
Well hopefully you get there. A lot is an incredible town.
You really really got to see it a lot, all right.

Speaker 3 (13:11):
I got two more parts against there one day. Yeah,
as I planned at some point go back to Tom Reeves.
Not for a few years, because yeah, a lot out
of me, a lot, or I bet a lot out
of me, So I'll me recovering from this one for
a while.

Speaker 2 (13:22):
Oh my gosh.

Speaker 1 (13:23):
All right, two more questions as you're writing this book,
how often did you find yourself having to remind yourself, No,
that's a thought that somebody would not have had in
nineteen sixty eight.

Speaker 2 (13:36):
That's a twenty twenty five thought. I need to get
that out of there.

Speaker 3 (13:39):
Yeah, it was pretty much constant. It was, but it
wasn't something I catched myself doing. It was just something
I was aware of the entire time. So it wasn't like, oh,
I wrote that, Oh I got to take that out
because someone wouldn't think that back then. It was a
fun job. Through the very first day that I started
writing this, I was aware that I needed to take
that view and I needed to put myself back in
nineteen sixty eight in order to write the kind of

(14:00):
book that I wanted to write this time. So I
essentially did everything I could have transport myself back to
that year so I could transport readers back to that year.
So it never came up as oh I caught myself
and I had to take this out to something that
was part of the writing process the entire time.

Speaker 1 (14:14):
Okay, my last question for you, I'm going to come
back to literary stuff.

Speaker 2 (14:19):
Who is Jean Larteghie.

Speaker 3 (14:24):
An author, a journalist, and someone who I think and
the authors know, and I forget if he was there exactly. Oh,
he was kind of mysterious. That's why I left it
mysterious because I didn't know if he was actually in
Saigon in nineteen sixty eight, but he could he possibly
could have been, but it was too hard to tell.
But he was in and out of Vietnam, in and

(14:45):
out of Central South America, and just everybody should look
him up and add the Centurions at Victorians to their bookshelves.
I think betrayus is that I talks about him quite
a bit as well, But I think I have some
quotes from those books and in this book and just
just a just an incredible guy before such colorful characters
back then.

Speaker 2 (15:05):
Yeah.

Speaker 1 (15:06):
Well, whenever you mention a book, you know, I feel
like I need to add it to my list.

Speaker 2 (15:10):
My list is infinitely long, as is as is yours.

Speaker 1 (15:13):
But I think you actually mentioned the Centurions two or
three times in cry Havoc, So clearly that's a bit
means something to you.

Speaker 3 (15:23):
It sure does. It really talks about the you know
the difference between that of the insurgents and UH and
the counterinsurgent and those who sit back behind the desks
and those who go out there and do the job,
and particularly the paratroopers, which we can substitute special operators
for for the word paratroopers essentially in the way that
they're they're described in those books. So yeah, a lot

(15:45):
of people in special operations in military circles read them.

Speaker 2 (15:48):
I guess I haven't you mentioned mac v SAG. I mean,
which is important to mention.

Speaker 1 (15:52):
Do you want to say anything real quick about about
that before we.

Speaker 3 (15:55):
Go Absolutely, absolutely, Max the Dog is a very innocuous
type of a name.

Speaker 4 (16:00):
But these guys were doing denied operations, that means going
into places where Americans were not supposed to go to LB, Cambodia,
allows North Vietnam, and they did some of the most
audacious missions of the Vietnam War. So I have Tom
Reese Navy CEO attached to this unit. And also I
found out that a lot of these units were disappearing
without a trace, And that's where I came up with

(16:23):
this storyline about how the Soviets might have been able
to compromise these missions and then come up with a
plan to actually bring some of these guys captured to
the Soviet Union through Vietnam. So that's where it all
kicked off. And I think there's a lot more fact
in there in fiction.

Speaker 1 (16:39):
Yeah, I believe that, and we won't dwell on it now.
But then the numbers that you give in the book
about the casualty rate among mac VSAG warriors are really stunning.
It takes a special kind of person who have done that.
I mean, it takes special kind of person who have
done what.

Speaker 2 (16:57):
You did too.

Speaker 1 (16:58):
But there's something about the way you tell the story
perhaps that just seems in my mind to raise the
MAC v SAG guys to a special level.

Speaker 3 (17:08):
Well, I got the very fortunate to get to know
a lot of those guys, have them on my podcast,
read all their books, and then be able to ask
them questions throughout the writing process, send them chapters to check. Yeah,
sure I was doing them justice the way I described
their operations. So just hats off to them and everyone
who went down range during the sixteen and seventies in Vietnam.
That was the daylate the foundation for the rest of

(17:29):
us and everything that's going to come after September eleventh,
when it comes to technic techniques and procedures, but they
get to come home to the way that we did.
So pats off to all of those guys.

Speaker 1 (17:39):
Jack Carr's new thriller novel, it's sort of partly military
thriller and very much spy thriller, is called Cry Havoc.
I think it's one of Jack's very, very best books,
and they're all great again. It's out now, Cry have it,
go buy it, go read it. Last thing, Jack, I
know you're going to do an event with my buddy Leland.

Speaker 2 (17:58):
Vindert, and I sure wish.

Speaker 1 (18:00):
I was thinking of flying down to Florida come meet
up with you guys, but I got to travel with Mike.
I don't have to, but I'm traveling with my kid
to go look at some colleges. So I'm going to
miss you, but have a lot of fun. You guys
should have an amazing conversation together.

Speaker 3 (18:14):
Thank you. Really looking forward to that one.

Speaker 2 (18:16):
Jack Carr, thanks for your time, Thanks for your service.

Speaker 3 (18:19):
Thank you so much. Take care of talking to you.