Quotes from Kyle Mills

pathological narcissism

Those in power are those willing to do what it takes to gain power. While the context varies, depending on the region, the rule itself is inviolable.

Over the years, I've come to believe that we need enemies. They're how we define ourselves and fighting them gives us purpose. In the absence of a viable external threat, we begin turning on ourselves. I don't want Russia as an ally. I just want to keep the cold war between us from becoming hot.

meeting the enigmatic PowerStation there tomorrow morning.

The definition of insanity is doing the same thing over and over and expecting a different result.

dawn breaking on the horizon. Angled

Noncommittal yet meaningless. Bill Clinton couldn't have done better under the circumstances.

CAPITOL COMPLEX WASHINGTON, DC USA

JOHN Alton's eyes moved from the deep blue carpet to the portrait of some old white guy

I wish I could send everyone in America to live under the dictatorship in Turkmenistan. Or to spend a little time in a New Delhi slum. Maybe they'd gain a little perspective about how good they have it. But I can't. So instead, they'll listen to politicians tell them how they're getting screwed. Or the media telling them about all the things that can kill them. Or some YouTube influencer showing off their fake idyllic life.

Maybe it was time to hit the reset button on the world. Make people see that there were consequences to their actions. Make them remember what they had and value it enough to protect it.

Fully functional weapons were being haphazardly passed around by low-level officers and, in two confirmed cases, civilians. One warhead they were watching was currently parked in a retired captain's storage unit. A recon team had managed to get a fiber optic camera through the ventilation grate and the Agency was now in possession of an honest-to-God picture of a hot nuke sitting next to a set of golf clubs.

I know no such thing.

others. Keep in mind that

The most terrifying thing about writing 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. Having said that, things like the details of how attacks would best be carried out and specific locations of critical infrastructure have been purposely obscured or fictionalized.

THE light from the setting sun moved slowly up the side of the mountain, creating a lengthening shadow at its base. Rapp set his pace to stay just below the transition from dark to light, a location that would generate the most visual distortion for anyone looking up from ground level.

Over the years, I've come to believe that we need enemies. They're how we define ourselves and fighting them gives us purpose. In the absence of a viable external threat, we begin turning on ourselves.

THE WHITE HOUSE WASHINGTON, DC USA

MITCH Rapp gave a quick knock on the Oval Office door and then entered.

faces were familiar: CIA director Irene Kennedy, who had recruited him as a kid;

her counterpart at the FBI, Darren Phillips; James Templeton

the chairman of the Joint Chiefs; and a wild card he hadn't seen in years—TJ Burton, the head of FEMA.

But it was Joshua Alexander who began striding toward him.

He had just entered the last month of his presidency and was looking very forward to that month ending.