Dick Couch

The hermit kingdom is looking to take on an apparently limping superpower by once again scoring a propaganda coup by taking a naval crew hostage, but this time Op-Center and a resilient US Navy Commander have different ideas. Into the Fire is Dick Couch and George Galdorisi’s second installment in the Op-Center franchise reboot which sees North Korea and the United States on a collision course for war and the crew of a US ship caught in the middle.

After finding substantial reserves of oil show more and other energy resources in the Yellow Sea, North Korea negotiates with China to get military equipment in exchange for said energy resources, so China doesn’t have to depend on the Middle East. However, to get those energy resources North Korea needs to expand its claim in the area and plans to do so by taking a crew of a US Navy ship as hostage believing the U.S. would agree for something so simple as changing the lines of their territorial waters. Masking their operation at sea with troop movements to the DMZ, the North Koreans target the minesweeper USS Milwaukee during a joint exercise with South Koreans. The Milwaukee’s captain, Kate Bigelow, unknowing that she’s the target leads two North Korean ships on a chase before a missile strike cripples the ship forcing her ground it on a small South Korean island not far from the North Korean coast. Just before the attack, Op-Center’s top Geek Aaron Bleich notifies Director Chase Williams and begins following the high-seas drama until the ship’s grounding. Williams sends Op-Center’s Joint Special Operations Command team to Japan where it gets together with local SEAL team to find a way to get the crew off the island as the North Koreans and a US Fleet are at literal arms-length from the island on the verge of war. Using an experimental minisub to ferry the crew from the island to waiting nuclear subs, the JSOC stops a North Korean commando unit before calling in cruise missiles to destroy the Milwaukee. However North Korea’s supreme leader wants to send a message to the world and activates a terror cell in New York to destroy the UN, but Bleich’s Geek team finds out and notifies Williams who sends in a FBI Critical Incident Response Group team to New York to stop the attack. After one of the North Koreans calls her mother to say goodbye, not believing her leader’s promise they’ll make it out alive, Bleich’s team gives the CIRG and NYPD a location near the UN to surround and prevent the team from accomplishing their mission though they commit suicide and takeout a CIRG helicopter with a quarter of the team. The US and China come to an agreement about isolating North Korea and the energy resources in the Yellow Sea, but neither side is happy especially the Chinese at the loss of face at North Korea’s actions.

The focus on one plot was in instant improvement over the initial book of the reboot of the franchise helmed by Couch and Galdorisi, then add a quickly moving story that keeps the reader engaged throughout. The Op-Center team in Washington headed by Williams and prominently featuring Bleich and his Geek Team was well executed, yet the Op-Center personnel with the JSOC team seemed a little heavy on direct involvement from office personnel like Mike Rodgers did in the original series. Kate Bigelow was the character who did the heavy lifting through the book and was well written, unfortunately her first officer was a cliché out-of-his-depth liability that was a poor attempt to make Bigelow look better when she didn’t need it.

Into the Fire is a action-packed, quick moving thriller that keeps the reader hooked from beginning to end. Overall Dick Couch and George Galdorisi brought together an intriguing plot and great cast of characters to bring forth a good book, though there are missteps it doesn’t hurt the book too much to make the reader lose interest. show less

If you are looking for the "untold story", as promised by the title - keep looking. There is very little in this history of the Navy Seals that hasn't been written elsewhere. Much of what the authors choose to write about has been covered in much more detail, and with much more engagement of interest, in other books and articles.

Part of this is the nature of the book. Dick Couch is a prolific author of military books, and is a former SEAL himself. But because of that, he is extremely careful show more to write only authorized material. This book not only went through the normal vetting process that former SEALS and others must submit to when writing of their experiences - the Navy gave particular blessing to this work, and gave a lot of access to Couch and his co-author William Doyle that other authors can't get. That access came with strings - big strings.

UnSEALed is a hagiographic work - you won't find much, if any, criticism of SEAL operations or operators. The closest we get to that is when a few SEALS make critical remarks about how the teams were used in conflicts past. For example, several operators from the Vietnam era are quoted as believing that if the entire military had taken a more SEAL-like approach, the Vietnam War could have been won by the US. Whether you buy into that rather dubious idea or not, it isn't really a criticism of SEAL operations or tactics. You won't find anything like real criticism in this book - all SEALS are heros, and any mistakes made are left unaddressed, or at most attributed to rear echelon brass.

In their zeal to never write about what the government doesn't want them to write about, they leave a lot of known material out. They reference the fact that US POWs in Hanoi were in direct communication with the US military/government during their imprisonment - but say that the method used is still "classified", over 40 years later. These methods have been written about extensively in other works - but you wouldn't know these methods are available publically by reading this book.

The beginning of the book is also rather boring. In an effort to give a more full history of where the SEAL teams came from, the authors go back to WWII and the Naval Combat Demolition Teams, and the later UDT teams. While these men were extremely brave and worthy of writing about, the authors have little source material to work from. Most of the NCDT members are dead, and operational after-action reports were not the norm at that time. It takes quite a while into the book before things get interesting.

I would love to see an outside author tackle this subject at length - without the hagiography, without the overly-adhered to restrictions of "national security". show less

About as good a true-life Navy Seal adventure as I've ever read. The author obviously knows his stuff; the mission, the training, the personalities of the military men, all absolutely dead-on realistic. Then the mission execution: the submarine movements, the travel of the team across the ice, the actions of the mission controllers back home, all perfectly executed.

I'll call out a couple of minor details to criticize, just because I can: I spent a lot of time wondering how the team was going show more to make contact with the mole, and I was left wondering - that part was more or less skipped over completely. Then, the final escape of the submarine was just lost - one second your heart's pumping, waiting for the escape, then suddenly they're out of danger completely. I wonder if the author was working under a page limit.

Here's what I found truly strange and wonderful: There's a major female character whose personality is brought out fully, neatly and in three dimensions. Where did that come from in the middle of a military adventure? There's practically a little romance in the middle that would appeal to female readers. I think Mr. Couch must have had his wife write that section. Truly remarkable.

So overall, an excellent military adventure, with some surprising and enjoyable detail work. Nicely done. show less

This book takes that sub-genre and makes it even more focused, and is all the better because of that. Dick Couch’s choice, with the exception of the first chapter, of focusing solely on the training of Green Berets rather than on the whole history of the outfit as a whole really lets him go into details that broader texts miss.

As a former SEAL Couch defiantly knows about Special Forces and is able to translate that into really detailed and clear explanation of what these men go through. He show more gives enough background detail of the people he is interacting with to be interesting without giving us page after page of soldiers that come and go through the training, a trap some history books fall into. This focus on the training with a brief overview of the men involved is more important when discussing Special Forces as so many men fall out of the training. Couch gives a good amount of anecdotal details about the candidates to make you feel connected to them without having to go into great detail about each man.

The pace of the book is also noteworthy. A poorly written history book can be a little tough to read. Having to record so much information and so many facts can leave a book a little dry if the author does not have the ability to keep an interesting narrative going throughout. Couch has mastered this narrative version of history writing and Chosen Soldier has a very easy to read flow.

There are a few problems with Couch’s writing however. Because he has broken the specialist training into its own sections there are times when he goes into detail about the same event nearly verbatim in multiple chapters. This doesn’t happen to often but when it does it can be distracting. He also seems to have lost some objectivity when writing this book. He is himself a character in his own books and recounts his side of interactions with soldiers as much as their interactions among each other. Doing this a few times might have its charms but he pushes this a little too far and his imposing himself in the story happens a little too much for my liking.

None of this detracts from the book. Chosen Soldier is a well-paced, informative read that anyone with interest in the military should pick up.

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