ON A WINDY DAY IN MARCH the hottest Texas writer you’ve never heard of strolls into an El Paso hotel bar with a broad smile on his face. James Carlos Blake has upright posture, and his hair and mustache are closely cropped. Just five foot seven, he takes pride in being a little guy. As we chat he tells me that he trained as an Army paratrooper, and that later he was a “tunnel rat” in post-war South Korea. A labyrinth of crawlways lay under the demilitarized zone that divided the country from hostile North Korea. Wearing nothing but boots and shorts and carrying a .45 automatic and a flashlight, the smallest members of his unit would wriggle in there looking for spies and saboteurs.Back…
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