All The King's Men

All The King's MenAn Alex Mason ThrillerDavid ArcherBlake Banner Copyright © 2023 Right HouseAll rights reservedThe characters and events portrayed in this ebook are fictitious. Any similarity to real persons, living or dead, is coincidental and not intended by the author.No part of this ebook may be reproduced, or stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, without express written permission of the publisher. Contents Title PageCopyrightJoin Our NewslettersPrologueOneTwoThreeFourFiveSixSevenEightNineTenElevenTwelveThirteenFourteenFifteenSixteenSeventeenEighteenEpilogueLast Chance!What'd You Think?Excerpt of Next BookPrologueOneTwoThreeAlso By David ArcherAlso by Blake Banner Join Our NewslettersWe are avid writers and love to publish books as often as we can! If you'd like to be notified of any new releases be sure to join our newsletters below!JOIN DAVID ARCHER'S NEWSLETTERJOIN BLAKE BANNER'S NEWSLETTER(No Spam. Ever.) PrologueColonel Ian Cameron, retired, late of the Central Intelligence Agency, looked out at his audience and smiled with the confidence of a man who has faced violent death so many times he has forgotten how to be scared.“This book,” he said, “is the story of my life,” he paused a moment to give a brief, ironic laugh, “or at least that part of it, after I was eighteen, when the illegal things I did had the blessing of the Federal Government.” There was laughter around the brightly lit room. “That made life a lot easier, I can tell you. Those first eighteen years will have to remain my secret. Let me just say that the midwife’s first word when I was born was ‘Oops!’ and my mother’s first six words to the midwife were, ‘What is the policy on returns?’”There was more laughter, almost an uproar. They’d had enough wine and brandy to laugh at anything, and the colonel’s delivery was good.“I know,” he went on. “I could have been a stand-up comedian, but the comedians make this stuff up.” He paused and became serious. “But what I’m doing is telling you the truth.” The laughter died away. “When I was eighteen I joined Delta Force, which you are told doesn’t actually exist. I can tell you it does. It is very real. When I joined them I had the moral and ethical standards of a Mexican second-hand car dealer.” He smiled and shook his head. “I’ll tell you! I once had a meeting with Bill Clinton, you can read all about it in the book, and he left the meeting in tears, sobbing, ‘Lord forgive me, I have seen the error of my ways!’ Seriously, he went and joined the Quakers after that. I met Hillary and she kept calling me Lord.”They were in stitches again, and one guy was slapping his thigh.“I’m kidding, that never happened. Not like that, anyway. But from Delta I was recruited into the Central Intelligence Agency. They told me they’d recruited me because, in the psych evaluation I had scored zero in moral inhibitions. They said there was no moral—or immoral—place I was not prepared to go. And I gotta tell you, back then, that was true. There are people like that. I have met them. The Mexican cartels are made up of people like that. But what is worrying, my friends, is when Western security agencies, those agencies charged with protecting democracy and our Federal Government, recruit you because you are like that. I should have been in a mental institution, or better still on Death Row. But they couldn’t do that to me because in the beginning I was too valuable to them, and later because everything I had done I had done with their blessing. And besides.”He looked around the room at the faces, wide-eyed and wondering, warm with admiration.“Don’t ask me how it happened. I don’t really know myself. But you look into enough pleading eyes, you see enough orphaned children, enough destroyed families, and something begins to happen inside of you. I am not just talking about the hundreds of thousands of people murdered and orphaned in Mexico, so that those bastards can become billionaires. I am talking also about driving through DC, Philly or Chicago, or any other city in the USA, and seeing the junkies, the junkies’ children, the wasted lives, the hollow, uncomprehending eyes too wasted even to plead. I am talking about seeing that and knowing that you enabled it. That you made it possible.”He paused a long time, leaning on the lectern and staring at the floor.“Something,” he said and looked out at his audience again, “something inside you begins to stir and wake up, and you know that somehow it is wrong, and you have to stop. I don’t know if there’s a god, and if there is I don’t know if it is a monster or a god of love and forgiveness. And I have no idea how to define good and evil. But what I can tell you is that I know in my bones that what I did for all those years was wrong, and now, somehow, I have to atone. So fifty percent of the proceeds of this book will go to setting up a foundation to help children who are the victims of parents who abuse or trade in drugs.” There was applause. When it died down he added, jabbing his finger toward the cardboard display by the door, “But equally important is that, if I must atone, the bastards who recruited me, who shielded me and enabled me to do the things I did, must atone also. There are pillars of society in this country who have grown rich—fabulously rich—on the pain and suffering of millions of men, women and children from Chiapas and Yucatan to Chihuahua and Sonora. This book will be published in a month. Advanced sales are already through the roof. Good! Because when this book hits the stands, my friends, heads are going to roll from the White House to the National Palace in Mexico City! The time has come for a lot of people to take responsibility