ANONYMOUS MALE

Looking for a fight.

Whitcomb’s last book, the bestselling Cold Zero: Inside the FBI, recounted his escapades in the 1990s as a sniper on the FBI’s elite Hostage Rescue Team (remember the Ruby Ridge and the Branch Davidian standoffs of the early 1990s?). Whitcomb quit the Bureau in 2001 for a new career as a journalist and celebrity commentator on terror for a parade of media organizations. In his new book, he invites readers on a roller-coaster ride through his life’s evolving pursuits, from his childhood on a New Hampshire farm to conflict-resolution G-man and then aspiring foreign correspondent. In 2006 he takes an off-ramp to Somalia to be a freelance intelligence operative and conflict trouble-shooter for hire. “I needed that feeling again, of taunting death but surviving,” he writes. “I needed war, but I needed a war I could manage. As it turned out, I knew just the place.” The place is East Timor, an overgrown island between Indonesia and Australia. On arriving, he describes the scene: “All you could see were sheets of rusted tin, sun-bleached tarps, women with plastic pails, skinny kids running around with sticks. Men sat in packs, trying to look tough. Maybe three thousand people. ‘Watch yerself, mate,’” he’s told. “‘These blokes will stone their mums.’” In East Timor, Whitcomb assembles a small army charged with guaranteeing security for the fledgling Timorese government (and Australian natural resources prospectors). His company becomes the island’s biggest employer—but he can’t manage what happens after a deadly coup attempt. Whitcomb survives, only to drop by death’s door in the face of a giant wave while surfing in Bali. Traveling with Whitcomb on his self-assigned adventures is entertaining and mostly a pleasure, but this memoir is short on defining facts and conclusions, incidental and moral.

A deftly written romp through the fantastical world of federal agents, warlords, journalists, and the men who bankroll them.