…I’m not Jack Calder… but I know a guy who might know him…

…as Authors we’re often asked, ‘is any of yer stuff autobiographical?’… well, unless it’s yer own life story, p’raps only wee bits of yerself and past experiences will creep into yer literary masterpieces… my Jack Calder crime thrillers are no exception to that… the main characters are former SAS officers… in a previous life, Master Gallacher spent some time as a corporate troubleshooter in the Philippines, one engagement there being to effect the turnaround of an ailing shipping company… ‘so where does the SAS in yer books fit into that benign scenario?’ I hear yeez ask… here’s how: in the first month around the company’s piers and cargo yards in the slum area of Tondo in Manila (a notorious squatter area housing over 125,000 people, a large number of whom were criminals and drug dealers), I fired 600 dockside trade union members… next to go were local mayors and policemen up and down the country in ports where the company’s vessels called daily… these men were supposed to be looking after our interests, when in fact much of the time they were simply lining their own pockets at the company’s expense… it had to stop… the abruptness of the actions taken had swift repercussions… in short order we were informed via the friendly Mayor’s office in Manila that a couple of ‘contract hits’ had been sanctioned against this stupid, interfering, disruptive Scots fellow … I relayed this to my principals who told me to ‘get security’… I said ‘I’m a banker, not bluudy Rambo!’… net result was an armoured car and a rotation team of 6 armed bodyguards for three years… the detail who looked after me were from a firm owned by a former SAS officer… there’s yer connection…

…pictured above is a lad called Adonis, the team leader and as cool and efficient an operator yeez will ever meet… alongside him was another champion guy, Raffy, shown with his firearm on the left below…

…and I literally had to trust them with my life… in one thankfully false alarm occasion, the details of which I will not bore yeez with, I was screamed at by Raffy, ‘You! get down!’… none of yer ‘please, sirs’… in seconds, I had two guards on top of me covering my body in classic line-of-fire style… here’s a picture of a very much younger me with more hair and much less girth than at present, with Raffy at my right hand side and Adonis taking up the rear cover alongside another agent… the loose shirts hid their firearms… note also the blurb about our security people protecting access to the company’s precincts…

…these guys were excellently trained, and I maintain the greatest respect for their skills… I even had to learn how to shoot from a rolling stance on the ground, and what to do in x, y and z situations… latterly, I was not allowed out of Manila without wearing a bulletproof armoured vest… so, yes, a wee bit of past experience has sneaked into my novels… I could tell yeez more, but then I’d have to shoot yeez… that’s how that WURKS…  right??!!… see yeez later… LUV YEEZ!

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