ALSO BY TOM CLANCY
FICTION
The Hunt for Red October
Red Storm Rising
Patriot Games
The Cardinal of the Kremlin
Clear and Present Danger
The Sum of All Fears
Without Remorse
Debt of Honor
Executive Orders
Rainbow Six
The Bear and the Dragon
Red Rabbit
The Teeth of the Tiger
Dead or Alive
Against All Enemies
Locked On
Threat Vector
Command Authority
Tom Clancy Support and Defend
(by Mark Greaney)
NONFICTION
Submarine: A Guided Tour Inside a Nuclear Warship
Armored Cav: A Guided Tour of an Armored Cavalry Regiment
Fighter Wing: A Guided Tour of an Air Force Combat Wing
Marine: A Guided Tour of a Marine Expeditionary Unit
Airborne: A Guided Tour of an Airborne Task Force
Carrier: A Guided Tour of an Aircraft Carrier
Into the Storm: A Study in Command
with General Fred Franks, Jr. (Ret.) and Tony Koltz
Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign
with General Chuck Horner (Ret.) and Tony Koltz
Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces
with General Carl Stiner (Ret.) and Tony Koltz
Battle Ready
with General Tony Zinni (Ret.) and Tony Koltz
G. P. PUTNAM’S SONS
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Copyright © 2014 by The Estate of Thomas L. Clancy, Jr.; Rubicon, Inc.; Jack Ryan Enterprises, Ltd.; and Jack Ryan Limited Partnerships
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ISBN 978-0-698-18536-4
INTERIOR MAPS BY JEFFREY L. WARD
This is a work of fiction. Names, characters, places, and incidents either are the product of the author’s imagination or are used fictitiously, and any resemblance to actual persons, living or dead, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Also by Tom Clancy
Title Page
Copyright
Map
Principal Characters
Prologue
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Chapter 70
Chapter 71
Chapter 72
Chapter 73
Chapter 74
Chapter 75
Chapter 76
Epilogue
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
THE UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
Jack Ryan: President of the United States
Scott Adler: secretary of state
Mary Pat Foley: director of national intelligence
Jay Canfield: director of the Central Intelligence Agency
Brian Calhoun: director of National Clandestine Service for the Central Intelligence Agency
Robert Burgess: secretary of defense
Arnold Van Damm: President’s chief of staff
Horatio Styles: U.S. ambassador to Mexico
Andrea Price O’Day: special agent, U.S. Secret Service
Dale Herbers: special agent, U.S. Secret Service
Colonel Mike Peters: regional director, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
Annette Brawley: imagery specialist, National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
THE CAMPUS
Gerry Hendley: director of The Campus/Hendley Associates
John Clark: director of operations
Domingo “Ding” Chavez: senior operations officer
Dominic “Dom” Caruso: operations officer
Sam Driscoll: operations officer
Jack Ryan, Jr.: operations officer
Gavin Biery: director of information technology
Adara Sherman: director of logistics/transportation
THE NORTH KOREANS
Choi Ji-hoon: Dae Wonsu (grand marshal) and Supreme Leader of the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea
Ri Tae-jin: lieutenant general in the Korean People’s Army and director of the Reconnaissance General Bureau (RGB), foreign intelligence arm of North Korea
Hwang Min-ho: director of Korea Natural Resources Trading Corporation, North Korean state-owned mining arm
OTHER CHARACTERS
Wayne “Duke” Sharps: former FBI agent, and president of Sharps Global Intelligence Partners
Edward Riley: former MI6 station chief, and employee of Sharps Global Intelligence Partners
Veronika Martel (aka Élise Legrande): former French intelligence officer, and employee of Sharps Global Intelligence Partners
Colin Hazelton: former CIA case officer, and employee of Sharps Global Intelligence Partners
Dr. Helen Powers: Australian geologist
Óscar Roblas de Mota: Mexican billionaire and president of New World Metals LLC
Daryl Ricks: chief (E-7), Naval Special Warfare, SEAL Team 5, Echo Platoon, NSW Group One
Marleni Allende: Chilean legal counsel of the United Nations Security Council Sanctions Committee
Santiago Maldonado: leader of the Maldonado cartel
Adel Zarif: Iranian bomb maker
Cathy Ryan: First Lady of the United States
PROLOGUE
John Clark didn’t give a damn what anybody said—this was still Saigon.
He knew history, of course. Forty years ago the communists came down from the north and they took the place. They renamed it Ho Chi Minh City in honor of their conquering leader. To the victors the spoils. They executed collaborators and imprisoned unreliables and they changed the politics, the culture, and the fabric of the lives of those who lived here.
It looked a little different now, but to John it felt the same. The cloying evening heat and the smell of exhaust fumes mixing with the pressing jungle, the incense and cigarette smoke and the spiced meat, the buzz of the stifling crowds and the lights from the energetic streets.
And the sense of pervasive danger, just out of sight but closing, like an invading army.
They could name this city after his sworn enemy from the past, they could call it whatever the hell they wanted, but to the sixty-six-year-old man sitting in the open-front café in District 8, that didn’t change a thing.
This was still fucking Saigon.
—
Clark sat with his legs crossed, his shirt collar open, and his tan tropic-weight sport coat lying across the chair next to him because the slow-moving palm-frond fan above him did nothing more than churn the hot air. Younger men and women swirled around him, heading either to tables in the back or out onto the busy pavement in front of the café, but Clark sat still as stone.
Except for his eyes; his eyes darted back and forth, scanning the street.
He was struck by the lack of Americans in uniform, the one big disconnect from his memories of old Saigon. Forty-odd years ago he’d trod these streets in olive drab or jungle camo. Even when he was here in country with the CIA’s MACV-SOG (Military Assistance Command, Vietnam—Studies and Observations Group), he’d rarely worn civilian clothing. He was a Navy SEAL, there was a war going on, battle dress was appropriate for an American, even one in country working direct-action ops for the Agency.
Also missing were the bicycles. Back then ninety percent of the wheeled traffic on this street would have been bikes. Today there were some bikes, sure, but mostly it was scooters and motorcycles and small cars filling the street, with pedestrian throngs covering the sidewalks.
And nobody wore a uniform around here.
He took a sip of green tea in the glow of the votive candle flickering on his bistro table. He didn’t care for the tea, but this place didn’t have beer or even wine. What it did have was line of sight on the Lion d’Or, a large French colonial restaurant, just across Huynh Thi Phung Street. He looked away from the passersby, stopped thinking about the days when twenty-five percent of them would have been U.S. military, and he glanced back to the Lion d’Or. As hard as it was to divorce himself from the past, he managed to put the war out of his mind, because this evening his task was the man drinking alone at a corner table in the restaurant, just twenty-five yards from where Clark sat.
The subject of Clark’s surveillance was American, a few years younger than Clark, bald and thickly built. To Clark it was clear this man seemed to be having issues this evening. His jaw was fixed in anger, his body movements were jolting and exaggerated like a man nearly overcome with fury.
Clark could relate. He was in a particularly foul humor himself.
He watched the subject for another moment, then checked his watch and pressed down on a button on a small wireless controller in his left hand. He spoke aloud, albeit softly, even though no one sat close by. “One-hour mark. Whoever he’s meeting is making him wait for the honor of their company.”
—
Three stories above and directly behind Clark—on the roof of a mixed-use colonial-style office building—three men, all lying prone and wearing muted colors and black backpacks, scanned the street below them. They were connected to Clark via their earbuds, and they’d picked up his transmission.
Domingo “Ding” Chavez, in the middle of the three, centered his Nikon on the man in the restaurant and focused the lens. Then he pressed his own push-to-talk button and answered back softly: “Subject is not a happy camper. Looks like he’s about to put his fist through the wall.”
Clark replied from below. “If I have to sit here in this heat and sip this disgusting tea much longer, I’m going to do the same.”
Chavez cleared his throat uncomfortably, then said, “Uh, it’s not too bad up here. How about one of us take the eye at ground level, you can make your way to the roof?”
The reply came quick. “Negative. Hold positions.”
“Roger that.”
Sam Driscoll chuckled. He lay on Chavez’s left, just a few feet away, his eye to a spotting scope that he used to scan to the north of the restaurant, watching the road for any sign of trouble. He spoke to the men around him, but he didn’t transmit. “Somebody’s grumpy.”
Several yards to Chavez’s right, Jack Ryan, Jr., peered through his camera, scanning the pedestrians on the sidewalk to the south of their overwatch. He focused his attention on a leggy blonde climbing out of a cab. While doing so he asked, “What’s wrong with Clark? He’s usually the last one of us to bitch, but he’s been like this all day.”
There was no one else on this rooftop other than the three Americans, but Chavez had been doing this sort of thing for most of his adult life. He knew his voice would carry through the metal air-conditioning duct behind him if he wasn’t careful, so he answered back as if he were in a library. “Mr. C’s got some history around here, is all. Probably coming back to him.”
“Right,” Ryan said. “He must be reliving the war.”
Ding smiled in the darkness. “That’s part of it. Clark’s down in that café thinking about the shit he saw. The shit he did. But he’s also thinking about running around here as a twenty-five-year-old SEAL stud. It probably scares him how much he wishes he was back in the groove. War or no war.”
Ryan said, “He’s holding up for an old guy. We should all be so lucky.”
Driscoll shifted on his belly to find a more comfortable position on the asphalt mansard roof, though he kept his eye in his optic, centering now on the man at the table. “Clark’s right. It doesn’t look like this meet is going to happen, and watching this guy through a ten-power scope while he drinks his liver into oblivion is getting old.”
While Sam focused on the subject, Ryan continued following the blonde as she pushed through the foot traffic heading north along Huynh Thi Phung Street. He tracked her to the front door of Lion d’Or. “Good news. I think our evening just got interesting.”
Chavez followed Ryan’s gaze. “Really? How so?”
Jack watched the woman as she turned sharply into the restaurant from the sidewalk and moved directly toward their subject’s table. “The meet has arrived, and she is hot.”
Chavez saw her through his own binos now. “I guess it’s better than watching another fat dude slurp gin.” He pressed the push-to-talk button again. “John, we’ve got a—”
Clark’s voice crackled over Chavez, because he had the command unit on their network and could override other transmissions. “I see her. Too bad we don’t have any fucking audio.”
The men on the roof all laughed nervously. Damn, Clark was grouchy tonight.
1
Colin Hazelton made a show of checking the time on his mobile phone as the
woman sat down. She was an hour late and he wanted to indicate his displeasure, even if only passive-aggressively.
She fixed the hem of her skirt and crossed her legs, and only then did she look up at him. She seemed to notice the phone and his focus on it, then she lifted the sweating water glass in front of her and took a sip.
Hazelton dropped his phone back into his pocket and drank down half of his gin and tonic. He had to admit she was every bit as attractive as advertised. It was virtually all his control had said about his contact tonight. Statuesque and blond, with mannerisms that transmitted refinement and poise. Still, Hazelton was too pissed to be impressed. Not pissed at her, exclusively, but generally angry, and he certainly wasn’t in the mood to ogle his contact tonight.
That she’d made him wait a goddamned hour took even more of the luster off her splendor.
Before either spoke the waiter appeared. It was that kind of place, not like the dive bars and tea shops that populated the rest of this part of Huynh Thi Phung Street.
The woman ordered a glass of white wine in perfect French. Hazelton could tell it was her native tongue, but his control officer had mentioned this fact as well, between breathless comments about her almond eyes and her lithe body.
He assumed she was a former French spook, either DGSE or DCRI, although she also could have been from DST, which became DCRI in 2008. Virtually everyone Hazelton met with in the course of his work was a former intelligence officer, so this was no stretch.
She did not introduce herself, though he wasn’t surprised by this. He had, however, expected some contrition for her late arrival. But she didn’t mention it at all. Instead, she opened with, “You brought the documents?”
Hazelton did not answer her directly. “What do you know about the circumstances of the operation?”
“The circumstances?”
“The client. Have they read you in on the client?”
She showed a little confusion now. “Why would they do that? The client is not relevant to my brief.”
“Well, let me fill you in. The client is—”
The woman held a slender hand up. Her nails were perfectly manicured, and her skin glowed with lotion. “When they don’t brief me, I take that to mean I am not supposed to know.” She looked Hazelton over. “You don’t appear to be new to this work, so surely you understand this.” Her French accent was thick, but her English was flawless.