Tom Clancy Full Force and Effect Read online

  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

  Publishers Since 1838

  Published by the Penguin Group

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  New York, New York 10014

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  A Penguin Random House Company

  Copyright © 2014 by The Estate of Thomas L. Clancy, Jr.; Rubicon, Inc.; Jack Ryan Enterprises, Ltd.; and Jack Ryan Limited Partnerships

  Penguin supports copyright. Copyright fuels creativity, encourages diverse voices, promotes free speech, and creates a vibrant culture. Thank you for buying an authorized edition of this book and for complying with copyright laws by not reproducing, scanning, or distributing any part of it in any form without permission. You are supporting writers and allowing Penguin to continue to publish books for every reader.

  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.

  Version_1

  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 emp
loyee 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

  Emilio: Maldonado cartel member

  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.