Hacktastic Suckage #2

Rainbow Six
Tom Clancy

JOHN CLARK HAD MORE TIME IN AIRPLANES THAN most licensed pilots, and he knew the statistics as well as any of them, but he still didn't like the idea of crossing the ocean on a twin-engine airliner.

[What a pussy. I thought Clancy was all about the intrepid hero who did stupid, unbelievable shit with sub-par equipment. Maybe that's later. Let's keep reading.]

Four was the right number of engines, he thought, because losing one meant losing only 25 percent of the aircraft's available power, whereas on this United 777, it meant losing half.

[And losing three meant losing only three quarters of the power. And losing four meant you were fucked. Thanks for spelling out the obvious. I always sucked at math, and you just made me feel like a total failure by chewing it up and regurgitating it down my eeping little reader throat.]

Maybe the presence of his wife, one daughter, and a son-in-law made him a little itchier than usual. No, that wasn't right.

[It was his balls. He'd changed up his normal routine that morning, forgetting to powder his sack with Goldbond.]

He wasn't itchy at all, not about flying anyway. It was just a lingering . . . what?

[I HAVE NO FUCKING CLUE. IT'S AN ITCH, THEN IT'S NOT AN ITCH. THEN IT'S, WHAT? I'M THE READER. DON'T ASK ME RHETORICAL QUESTIONS YOU ASSHOLE. BREAK OUT YOUR THESAURUS IF YOU'RE FEELING CRUNCHED FOR WORDS.]

he asked himself. Next to him, in the window seat Sandy was immersed in the mystery she'd started the day before, while he was trying to concentrate on the current issue of The Economist, and wondering what was putting the cold-air feeling on the back of his neck. He started to look around the cabin for a sign of danger but abruptly stopped himself. There wasn't anything wrong that he could see, and he didn't want to seem like a nervous flyer to the cabin crew. He sipped at his glass of white wine, shook his shoulders, and went back to the article on how peaceful the new world was.

[Wow. Great. Subtle foreshadowing here, Tom. I'm, like, totally clueless about what's coming down the pike.]

Right. He grimaced. Well, yes, he had to admit that things were a hell of a lot better than they'd been for nearly all of his life.

["Right. He grimaced."

What the fuck is this? Oh, yeah. This is Tom Clancy, slapping irrelevant crap into the story after reading through the giant turd he just took all over the reader. Why is this guy grimacing? In the next line he's talking about how much better his life is now. Way to squeeze off random facial expressions, Tom. But yeah, we get it. The grimace, it's very manly. John Whatshisname is all full of grit and determination. What a lazy-ass two-bit fuck fest excuse for character development this is turning into.]

No more swimming out of a submarine to do a collection on a Russian beach, or flying into Tehran to do something the Iranians wouldn't like much, or swimming up a fetid river in North Vietnam to rescue a downed aviator.

[Hm. Stuff they wouldn't like much, like, uh, putting scorpions in their turbans? Shoving cruise missiles up their ass? Or. Oh yeah. HOW ABOUT THREATENING TO INVADE THEIR COUNTRY WHILE SIMULTANEOUSLY EMBROILED IN ANOTHER HOPELESS WAR IN THE SAME REGION. GEE. I CAN'T POSSIBLY IMAGINE WHY THEM EYE-RANIANS IS PISSED.

What a patriotic, nationalistic asshole this protagonist is turning into. I already hate this fucking robot.]

Someday maybe Bob Holtzman would talk him into a book on his career. Problem was; who'd believe it-and would CIA ever allow him to tell his tales except on his own deathbed?

[God I hope not. Come on CIA. Please. Do something right for a change. Lend a helping hand and assassinate this loose end already.]

He was not in a hurry for that, not with a grandchild on the way. Damn.

[Wait for it…wait for it…]

He grimaced,

[BAHAHAHA THERE IT IS. THE GRIMACE.]

unwilling to contemplate that development. Patsy must have caught a silver bullet on their wedding night, and Ding glowed more about it than she did. John looked back to business class-the curtain wasn't in place yet-and there they were, holding hands while the stewardess did the safety lecture. If the airplane hit the water at 400 knots, reach under your seat for the life-preserver and inflate it by pulling . . . he'd heard that one before. The bright yellow life-jackets would make it somewhat easier for search aircraft to find the crash site, and that was about all they were good for.

[Wow. Way to go. You spent a whole fucking shit-brick of a paragraph doing the cliché, "Boy these life preservers and seat belts sure won't do us any good," bit. I hate you, Tom.]

Clark looked around the cabin again. He still felt that draft on his neck.

[No, there's no draft on your neck, idiot. That's the hot, fetid breath of the Good Lord Satan perched behind you on the head rest, panting, waiting for you to die so he can take your sellout hack soul to Hell. Duh.]

Why?

[OH MY GOD STOP ASKING ME QUESTIONS. I DIDN'T PICK UP THIS PIECE OF SHIT BECAUSE I WAS ALL HOT AND BOTHERED FOR A SOVIET STYLE INTERROGATION. FUCK.]

The flight attendant made the rounds, removing his wine glass as the aircraft taxied out to the end of the runway. Her last stop was by Alistair over on the left side of the first-class cabin. Clark caught his eye and got a funny look back as the Brit put his seat back in the upright position. Him, too? Wasn't that something? Neither of the two had ever been accused of nervousness.

[What mindless drones. Like the absence of fear, I don't trust people who's palms don't sweat when there's a god damn gun to their head. But hey, that's just me.]

Alistair Stanley had been a major in the Special Air Service before being permanently seconded to the Secret Intelligence Service. His position had been much like John's-the one you called in to take care of business when the gentler people in the field division got a little too skittish.

[That's right, Tom. Way to glorify a bunch of sociopathic killers while poo-pooing those dirty liberals who "just don't get it," and dig on silly, ridiculous things like peace and the brotherhood of man, putting themselves directly in the path of contempt, scorn, and physical harm from fat, ignorant rednecks while protesting the unjust, thinly veiled holy wars your dumb grunt boys spend all day long instigating under the guise of freedom and democracy.]

Al and John had hit it off right away on a job in Romania, eight years before [where they got a kick out of greasing each other up with the rendered fat of slaughtered villagers, before embarking on glorious voyages into one another's anuses] and the American was pleased to be working with him again on a more regular basis, even if they were both too old now for the fun stuff.

[Fun stuff. Like, you know, setting off claymore mines in crowded marketplaces, or putting a cap in some raghead's ass from two miles away, or, maybe, making necklaces out of human ears?]

Administration wasn't exactly John's idea of what his job should be, but he had to admit he wasn't twenty anymore . . . or thirty . . . or even forty.

[Or even cogent, as you've made painfully aware by all the retarded ellipses.]

A little old to run down alleys and jump over walls. . . . Ding had said that to him only a week before in John's office at Langley, rather more respectfully than usual, since he was trying to make a logical point to the grandfather-presumptive of his first child. What the hell, Clark told himself, it was remarkable enough that he was still alive to gripe about being old-no, not old, older. Not to mention he was respectable now as Director of the new agency.

[Just goes to show: you might be able to buy the respect of your peers with a stupid title during face-to-face meetings, but as soon as you're gone, they're still talking about what a sorry, uptight asshole you really are.]

Director. A polite term for a REMF. But you didn't say "no" to the President, especially if he happened to be your friend.

[No, if you have a brain, you DO say "No," to a President, particularly if he's the half-coherent, drooling mess we have in office right now. You say no, then you kick him in the fucking head until he resigns. It's PRETTY EASY, and there you go, fucking it up again.]

© Tom Clancy 1998

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There were, seriously, 13 more pages of this bullshit. In the excerpt. Yes. I couldn't take more than a page. It was so god awful I just about had an aneurysm writing this. This gets the Dr. Hack stamp of Ultimate Aqua Teen Hunger Force Hacktastic Suckage.

Need advice? Sure you do. E-mail Dr. Hack and he'll set you straight.