Clancy is back. After 10 years on the sideline from a brand of fiction that if he didn’t invent, he surely took it to a higher plane, the techno-thriller, Clancy jumps back in doing what he does best - detailing seemingly unrelated plans and events, bringing it to a hyperdrive finish. On one day, the bad guys are planning: a claymore mine attack outside a church in Nebraska. A mortar attack during the unveiling of a monument in Ohio. Grenades to be tossed under the bleachers of a high school football game in Kentucky. An explosion on a container ship docked in Norfolk containing the raw materials to make chlorine gas and send it into the SE Virginia air. A dirty bomb to be detonated inside the under construction Yucca Mountain, Nevada nuclear waste disposal facility. Sabotage of Brazil’s largest oil processing plant.
Our tale begins with a squad of Rangers capture intelligence in a cave in the Pakistan/Afghanistan mountains and in the process kills a bunch of bad guys, some in their sleep. Some bleeding heart in the Justice Dept reads the after action report, sends it to his boss, the AG, who brings it to the attention of President Kealty (weeny Democrat that Jack Ryan, Sr. thinks is a wasted human experience, especially when it comes to national security) who fumes about murder and wants the balls of the sergeant who pulled the trigger.
Jack Ryan, Jr., last seen working for The Campus (an off the books very black agency of spooks set up by his dad, the former President), spots an odd email amongst the mass of electronic eavesdropping that announces a birth. The extremist ‘chatter’ goes mostly silent and there are no congratulations on the birth. Seems strange that no one would acknowledge a birth.
This sets off a long, convoluted, detailed inter twinning of events in Pakistan, Tunisia, Lybia, Iraq, Brazil, Senegal, DC, Baltimore, San Francisco, Vegas, desert Nevada, Vancouver, Virginia, Annapolis, and more places I can’t recall right now. Clancy outdoes Clancy in his attention to detail of weapons, plots, communications, action, people, extremists, government, spooks, etc. Eventually, the stories all come to a head with The Campus assembling a complex puzzle and finding and capturing the Emir who is THE head of the extremists.
Once they get what they want from the Emir, now what? As delightfully fun as it might sound, trussing him up in a package and dropping him on the front steps of the Hoover Building with a note on his chest would raise more questions about just who The Campus is and that just won’t do. The Campus is that far off the books.
Clancy doesn’t pull any punches in his view of the way the US should be approaching religious extremists who would do harm to the US and I’m guessing that readers who sit toward the left will find his views somewhat troubling, but make no mistake about it. Clancy sure has brung it big time in this one. And leaves open a number of plot options for a followup.
If you wonder just where Clancy has been, he must have been at work on this story . . . all 950 pages of it. Make no mistake about it. This book take you really deep into the planning and execution of a multi-pronged attack on the US. If it’s a journey you want to take, be prepared. 950 pages is a commitment, but if like this kind of tale, the adventure is worth the effort.
To some, Clancy has become Clancy, Inc. Yes, the story, while very complex, might be considered formulaic leaving some to wonder if Clancy's penchant for creative plots might be waning. No, he probably isn't exploring any new ground. But Clancy remains an excellent story teller and fans of his should be very happy that Clancy, Inc. is still in the game.
East Coast Don
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