Tom Clancy Command and Control

A Russian plot to seize the Panama Canal plunges President Jack Ryan into a desperate fight for his life in the latest entry in the #1 New York Times bestselling series. For a century, the Panama Canal has served as the path between the seas. Control of this vital waterway is the difference between free trade and chaos in world markets. So when Panamanian President Rafael Botero asks for a show of support against the socialist opposition, his old friend President Jack Ryan can’t turn down an invitation to visit the country, but what seems like an ordinary opportunity to preach the values of democracy quickly turns into a nightmare when a full-blown coup d’état erupts. President Ryan and his Secret Service team are cut off and out of communication. In Washington, the Vice President is coordinating a military response, but there''s still one more obstacle. One of the main forces behind the coup is the ruthless criminal organization known as the Camarilla. They’ve had their tentacles deep inside the plot to overthrow the government. All of their hard work has just presented them with an unexpected opportunity they can’t resist--the chance to kill President Jack Ryan.

Auteur

Marc Cameron

Échantillon de lecture
1

A hushed commotion fluttered outside Vice President Mark Dehart's ceremonial office-like birds escaping the path of an oncoming truck. Dehart glanced toward the door, smiling broadly to show the young reporter who was sitting on the other side of the Roosevelt desk that he was still paying attention to her questions. Fresh out of Penn State journalism school with a new job at the Philadelphia Inquirer, she was still unjaded enough to be a little starry-eyed about Washington politics.

Poor kid.

Cub reporter or not, she'd had enough moxie to ask her editor if she could try for an interview with the vice president. That alone was enough to earn her points with Dehart.

He was tall and trim with just enough silver at the temples of his dark hair to make him look like that favorite uncle who showed up with interesting stories at Thanksgiving. His deep farmer's tan must have been hereditary because he hadn't had more than a few moments on his old John Deere for over a decade. Dehart wasn't crazy about it, but being the kind of politician that journalists loved to photograph worked well for the man who held the office that was often described as the "spare tire" of the United States government.

Still smiling at the reporter, he cocked an ear toward the sounds outside-sotto voce whispers that virtually screamed to be heard, the telltale squeak of his secretary's chair as she got to her feet to race whomever it was to the door.

The Eisenhower Executive Office Building was normally a sleepy place compared to the frenetic atmosphere of the West Wing just a short walk away across the White House campus. The wide tiled halls had a way of swallowing up the building's inhabitants, where the White House felt as if it were about to burst at the seams.

Dehart pushed away from the Roosevelt desk. He'd signed his name inside the lap drawer like every vice president since Lyndon Johnson. And like every VPOTUS since the 1940s, he used his ceremonial digs in the EEOB when he needed a more picturesque backdrop than his utilitarian office in the West Wing for photo ops, greeting foreign officials, interviews with journalists, etc. As far as he could tell, this was going to be a complimentary piece from his home-state paper, easy, but devoid of much substance. Unlike most politicians, Dehart despised talking about himself and, frankly, would welcome the interruption.

He'd never wanted the job of vice president-or the one he'd had before it, for that matter. He and his wife, Dee, had lived in blissful happiness when he served as the senior United States senator from Pennsylvania, that is until Jack Ryan swooped in and asked him to be the secretary of homeland security.

Dehart liked to be ahead of the curve, so he stood abruptly as the noise at the door grew louder.

Startled, the reporter dropped her pen. "Is everything-"

Keenan Mulvaney, the special agent in charge of Dehart's Secret Service detail, cut her off midsentence, bursting in with three other agents hot on his heels.

Dehart groaned. The Secret Service whisked him away to a secure location more frequently than he would have imagined before he got the job. Drones, inbound unidentified aircraft, crazy people with guns on Seventeenth Street-any number of "trip wires" triggered the arrival of a cadre of armed agents.

This time, they brought someone with them.

Arnie van Damm, President Ryan's ever-rumpled chief of staff, trooped in with the agents.

Dehart offered the reporter an apologetic smile. "Please excuse me. I'm afraid I have to go." He started around the desk, but Mulvaney raised a hand.

"I apologize, Mr. Vice President, but she'll have to go. I'd ask you to stay put, sir."

Van Damm said nothing, instead pacing back and forth in a tiny piece of real estate by the door. Eyes flashing, his jaw clenched like a trapped animal about to gnaw his own leg off.

Dehart's secretary ushered the reporter out, promising to reschedule as soon as possible.

"The PEA-YOC?" Dehart asked as soon as they were gone, meaning, Are you taking me to the Presidential Emergency Operations Center? The PEOC was an underground bunker that served as a secure if starkly utilitarian situation room during a threat. Any visit there was a shock to the system, but some were worse than others. The look on van Damm's face said this was going to be one of the latter.

Mulvaney nodded grimly. "We'll go via the underground, Mr. Vice President."

The area beneath the White House and the Eisenhower Executive Office Building had enough tunnels to stoke more than a few conspiracy theories, many of them Dehart had yet to explore.

Van Damm finished with the hangnail he'd been chewing on and flicked a hand toward the door. "We'll take a breath here while your secretary clears the outer office."

"Okay . . ." Dehart gave a shrug. "You want to fill me in, Arnie?"

"Panama is turning to shit as we speak," van Damm said. "And at this moment, President Ryan is unaccounted for. The principals are coming in now."

The "principals" were the principal members of the NSC, the National Security Council.

Mulvaney raised a hand, signaling that he was getting a message on his earpiece from an agent posted outside.

"We're clear to move, sir," he said.

Dehart stood fast, staring down the chief of staff.

"What does that mean exactly, 'unaccounted for'?"

"It means what it means," van Damm snapped. A pained look creased his face, like he was nursing a bad tooth. "The Secret Service can't find the President. Incommunicado? Injured? Kidnapped . . ." He waved off the next logical thought. That was unimaginable. "It means that you are acting POTUS until we find Jack Ryan."

2

Venezuela

Four Days Earlier

The Ground Branch operators tasked with hunting down and killing Joaquín Fernando Gorshkov were known as WINDWARD STATION.

The Office of the Director of National Intelligence at Liberty Crossing called this operation SUDDEN SQUALL. Whomever came up with the code names was apparently a weather buff. Maybe a sailor, CIA operations officer Adam Yao thought as he looked out the grimy bus window at the Venezuelan jungle and mulled over how he and his team had gotten to this spot.

Barely forty, Yao was clean-shaven with a thick head of black hair that looked forever windblown unless he gooped it up with pomade-which he did not do. As well as English, he spoke Mandarin, Cantonese, and Spanish like a native, but he listened more than he spoke. Tall, but not overly so, he had the body of a decathlete-well muscled like a sprinter, but a shade on the lean side …