The challenge facing President Jack Ryan is an old one--with a terrifying new twist. The decades-long stalemate with North Korea continues. But a young dictator is determined to prove his strength by making a move. Like his father before him, he wants nuclear power.

President Jack Ryan faces a global threat on the verge of going nuclear in this thriller in Tom Clancy's #1 New York Times bestselling series. A North Korean ICBM crashes into the Sea of Japan. A veteran CIA officer is murdered in Ho Chi Minh City. A package of forged documents goes missing. The pieces are there, but assembling the puzzle will cost Jack Ryan, Jr., and his fellow Campus agents precious time. Time they don’t have... The challenge facing President Jack Ryan is an old one with a terrifying new twist. As the international stalemate with North Korea continues into its seventh decade, a young, untested dictator is determined to prove his strength by breaking the deadlock. Like his father before him, he hangs his plans on the country’s nuclear ambitions, a program impeded by a lack of resources--until now. A recently discovered deposit of valuable minerals has caused a dramatic change in the nation’s economic fortune. Coupled with their nuclear capabilities, the money from this find will make North Korea a dangerous force on the world stage. There’s just one more step needed to complete this perfect plan...the elimination of the president of the United States.

Praise for Tom Clancy Full Force and Effect
 
“Greaney...imbues his prose with the same gusto and sheer conviction that Clancy did.”—Booklist
 
“A taut storyline with familiar characters facing new challenges.”—*Kirkus Reviews

• Praise for Tom Clancy

  “He constantly taps the current world situation for its imminent dangers and spins them into an engrossing tale.”—The New York Times Book Review

  “A brilliant describer of events.”—The Washington Post

  “No one can equal his talent for making military electronics and engineering intelligible and exciting...He remains the best!”—Houston Chronicle

  Autorentext

  A little more than thirty years ago Tom Clancy was a Maryland insurance broker with a passion for naval history. Years before, he had been an English major at Baltimore’s Loyola College and had always dreamed of writing a novel. His first effort, The Hunt for Red October—the first of the phenomenally successful Jack Ryan novels—sold briskly as a result of rave reviews, then catapulted onto the New York Times bestseller list after President Reagan pronounced it “the perfect yarn.” From that day forward, Clancy established himself as an undisputed master at blending exceptional realism and authenticity, intricate plotting, and razor-sharp suspense. He passed away in October 2013.
  
  Mark Greaney has a degree in international relations and political science. In his research for the Gray Man novels, including Mission Critical, Agent in Place, Gunmetal Gray, Back Blast, Dead Eye, Ballistic, On Target, and The Gray Man, he traveled to more than fifteen countries and trained alongside military and law enforcement in the use of firearms, battlefield medicine, and close-range combative tactics. He is also the author of the New York Times bestsellers Tom Clancy Support and Defend, Tom Clancy Full Force and Effect, Tom Clancy Commander in Chief, and Tom Clancy True Faith and Allegiance. With Tom Clancy, he coauthored Locked On, Threat Vector, and Command Authority.

  Leseprobe

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” Chave…