Action & Adventure
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Tom Clancy Chain of Command (A Jack Ryan Novel)
The United States has stared down many threats with President Jack Ryan at the helm, but what if he's not there when we need him? That's the question facing a nation in the most shocking entry in Tom Clancy's #1 New York Times bestselling series.
A shadowy billionaire uses his fortune to further his corrupt ambitions. Along the way, he's toppled democratically elected governments and exacerbated divisions within stable nations. The competitors he's destroyed, the people he's hurt, they're all just marks on a ledger. Now, he's ready to implement his most ambitious plan of all. There's only one force standing in his way-President Jack Ryan.
How do you compel a man like Jack Ryan to bend? He's personally faced down everything from the Russian navy to cartel killers. It will take more than political headwinds or media disfavor to cause him to turn from his duty to the American people, but every man has an Achilles heel. Jack Ryan's is his family.
The answer is as simple as it is shocking. The billionaire has assembled an international team of the most ruthless mercenaries alive. Their mission-kidnap the First Lady.
A shadowy billionaire uses his fortune to further his corrupt ambitions. Along the way, he's toppled democratically elected governments and exacerbated divisions within stable nations. The competitors he's destroyed, the people he's hurt, they're all just marks on a ledger. Now, he's ready to implement his most ambitious plan of all. There's only one force standing in his way-President Jack Ryan.
How do you compel a man like Jack Ryan to bend? He's personally faced down everything from the Russian navy to cartel killers. It will take more than political headwinds or media disfavor to cause him to turn from his duty to the American people, but every man has an Achilles heel. Jack Ryan's is his family.
The answer is as simple as it is shocking. The billionaire has assembled an international team of the most ruthless mercenaries alive. Their mission-kidnap the First Lady.
Readers Top Reviews
Fishingman aliveDav
Clancy good author. Plots dances the world. This one did. Jack Ryan Jr. Always interesting characters. Some edit errors. 5 stars earned. Locations were beautiful on cell phone. Authors that send you on a travel log during story are gifted.
Mike Houston, Author
Tom Clancy was one of my all time favorite authors and after his passing I was lost until some of his co-writers stepped up and continued his amazing stories. Marc Cameron was one of these authors and with Chain of Command he has brought all the suspense and action that Mr. Clancy was known for back into his novel. With the kidnapping of Cathy Ryan, President Ryan must do the best for his country in order to get her back. The courage of resigning his position as president is facing him and he must choose the correct path to not only save his wife and his country but at the same time find the people responsible for his problems. Thank You Mr. Cameron for stepping up to the task of giving us this excellent story.
Storyteller7
In this new, fast-paced installment of the Jack Ryan saga, the First Lady is kidnapped by mercenaries in the pay of a pharmaceutical cartel anxious to destabilize the US government. Jack Sr. removes himself temporarily from office, & the entire US military/law enforcement arm gears up to track/rescue her. Cameron offers credible characters, great plotting, & technical expertise to give the reader an absorbing reading experience.
TrevorNV
As a longtime reader of the Jack Ryan universe, I've been underwhelmed with the direction the new group of Authors have been going. Many of the new books have been a bit sloppy, with stories and plots written as if their source material was a horribly acted, over the top action movie. Fortunately this book seems to bring the series back in line a bit, with a beautifully crafted plot and nuanced details you'd expect from a book carrying the Tom Clancy legacy. The details of materials, places, and people were on point. I'd almost lost faith in the series after the last few books, but I'm glad that Marc Cameron reigned it back in and pushed it in the right direction.
SZQ
A great story. Almost all of these books are realistic and have great action scenes. They have wonderful dialogue. It is all very believable. The medical scenes are real as are the military and spy stuff. I have been reading Tom Clancy since Patriot Games was released. And I have read every one of the Jack Ryan & son books several times. I’m sure I’ll do the same with this one. The only one I haven’t liked is the last one. It was not realistic or believable at all!! I liked reading about characters like Vetter who was definitely crazy and Chilly who was as heroic as can be. I was really hoping he would get the offer that he did in the end. I like reading about the Jack Ryans- both senior and junior. They are honorable and they care. About their jobs and their families. This author has a lot of inside knowledge because of his previous jobs. And he weaves the story he writes in a way that makes it real. He pulls all the pieces together. Although I do admit I get frustrated at times when I turned the page and there is a complete change of scene. I really want to find out what was going to happen in the last chapter right now!! I do realize that to write the whole book he has to jump from scene to scene because there is so much going on. And he has to keep the story up to date in all areas. And I really like how all the characters are kept up to date through the years. And that despite different authors writing the series. Like Director Foley when she was was an Intelligence Officer in the CIA all the way to Director of National Intelligence. And Sally who was just 4 years old and severely injured in Patriot Games and is now married. And John Clark who was a young enlisted Navy man in the Vietnam War and came up through the Navy Seals to Intelligence Officer and Trainee at the CIA and then joining the Campus just to name a few. By the way, I read this book in 1 week which is pretty fast considering I work Monday through Friday about 11 hours a day. And I don’t get breaks during the day to spend time on reading a great book.
Short Excerpt Teaser
1
Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center
Leesburg, Virginia
Time to decide: sixteen minutes.
Tim Goode grabbed the edge of the desk and pushed his padded chair away from the radar console, rolling it forward and back, bleeding off nervous energy while he took a scant moment to study the electronic blip moving northeast. At least once a day some clueless pilot flew their little Cessna or Piper or Beechcraft across the imaginary line that fenced the United States capital.
"Bewitched, ballsy, or bewildered?" Goode muttered under his breath, rolling his chair all the way forward again. A low growl rumbled in his chest.
Seriously, dude? All you gotta do is look at the chart . . .
Dozens of blips and corresponding transponder codes moved across his scope. It wasn't like this moron was the only aircraft he had to worry about at the moment.
Goode adjusted the mic on his headset-as if that would do any good-and tried the radio for the third time.
"Aircraft on a sixty-degree south of Nokesville, identify yourself on this frequency."
Nada. Nothing. NORDO.
Aircraft were not permitted within thirty nautical miles of the Washington Reagan Airport VOR-the SFRA, or Special Flight Rules Area-unless they met three specific criteria. They needed a flight plan. They had to be in communications with air traffic control. And their transponder had to squawk on the assigned frequency.
This inbound numbnuts was batting zero for three-and making a beeline for the capital at a hundred and twenty knots, covering two miles every minute.
Goode waved over his shoulder for a supervisor with his left hand. His right moved for the computer mouse on his desk, activating the red and green signaling lasers located around the SFRA. Aided by radar tracking, the intense beams were aimed directly at the offending aircraft, warning the pilot to make an immediate one-hundred-eighty-degree turn.
See it-flee it.
This guy continued inbound with no response, undeterred by the warning lights.
At this point, Goode reported this Track of Interest to the Air National Guard duty officer at the Eastern Air Defense Sector, or EADS, 390 miles to the north in Rome, New York. Her name was Lieutenant Mary Wong. Both were frequent fliers when it came to SFRA incursions, and the two have had spoken many times before.
"Got another TOI for you," Goode said, getting down to business with the particulars. "Bullseye two-four-zero degrees for thirty-one nautical miles. Airspeed 120 knots."
Bullseye was the VOR at Reagan National Airport, the center of the restricted airspace circle.
Lieutenant Wong kept Goode on and notified her commander, who had a direct line to the United States Coast Guard Blackjack helicopter crews at Reagan and the F-16s with the 121st Fighter Squadron at Andrews. Both of these units were immediately placed on a heightened state of alert.
It cost the American taxpayer over fifty thousand dollars to scramble a single F-16, so no one took the action lightly-nor would they hesitate once certain trip wires were crossed.
"Who is this guy?" Lieutenant Wong said. "He's bullseye two-four-zero degrees for . . ." She paused, then spoke again. "Still NORDO?"
Goode tried the offending aircraft on the radio once more before answering Wong. "Correct," he said. "Either he's having radio problems or he's ignoring me altogether."
Wong was in deep conversation with her supervisor, ticking down the checklist of responses for an incursion into restricted airspace. Goode watched the green dot, expecting to see a Coastie MH-65 launch on his screen at any moment.
Time to decide: twelve minutes.
The inbound Track of Interest met the criteria for an immediate Operation Noble Eagle (ONE) conference call. Lieutenant Wong began by contacting 601st Air Operations Center at Tyndall Air Force Base-Continental U.S. NORAD Region (CONR) headquarters near Panama City, Florida, where Lieutenant General Rhett Farrer served as the CFACC, or Combined Forces Air Component Commander.
The commander of NORAD/NORTHCOM, four-star general Mike Hopkin, was enduring a root canal at a specialist off base in Colorado Springs at that moment, so his J-5, Major General Steven Armstrong (the joint director of policy and planning), stood in for him on the phone in the N2C2-NORAD/NORTHCOM Command Center. In this capacity, General Armstrong was armed with Civilian Aircraft Engagement Authority-a benign way of saying he'd been delegated the responsibility from the secretary of defense through General Hopkin to give the shootdown order so an F-16 Falcon could blow this little four-seater civilian airplane out ...
Washington Air Route Traffic Control Center
Leesburg, Virginia
Time to decide: sixteen minutes.
Tim Goode grabbed the edge of the desk and pushed his padded chair away from the radar console, rolling it forward and back, bleeding off nervous energy while he took a scant moment to study the electronic blip moving northeast. At least once a day some clueless pilot flew their little Cessna or Piper or Beechcraft across the imaginary line that fenced the United States capital.
"Bewitched, ballsy, or bewildered?" Goode muttered under his breath, rolling his chair all the way forward again. A low growl rumbled in his chest.
Seriously, dude? All you gotta do is look at the chart . . .
Dozens of blips and corresponding transponder codes moved across his scope. It wasn't like this moron was the only aircraft he had to worry about at the moment.
Goode adjusted the mic on his headset-as if that would do any good-and tried the radio for the third time.
"Aircraft on a sixty-degree south of Nokesville, identify yourself on this frequency."
Nada. Nothing. NORDO.
Aircraft were not permitted within thirty nautical miles of the Washington Reagan Airport VOR-the SFRA, or Special Flight Rules Area-unless they met three specific criteria. They needed a flight plan. They had to be in communications with air traffic control. And their transponder had to squawk on the assigned frequency.
This inbound numbnuts was batting zero for three-and making a beeline for the capital at a hundred and twenty knots, covering two miles every minute.
Goode waved over his shoulder for a supervisor with his left hand. His right moved for the computer mouse on his desk, activating the red and green signaling lasers located around the SFRA. Aided by radar tracking, the intense beams were aimed directly at the offending aircraft, warning the pilot to make an immediate one-hundred-eighty-degree turn.
See it-flee it.
This guy continued inbound with no response, undeterred by the warning lights.
At this point, Goode reported this Track of Interest to the Air National Guard duty officer at the Eastern Air Defense Sector, or EADS, 390 miles to the north in Rome, New York. Her name was Lieutenant Mary Wong. Both were frequent fliers when it came to SFRA incursions, and the two have had spoken many times before.
"Got another TOI for you," Goode said, getting down to business with the particulars. "Bullseye two-four-zero degrees for thirty-one nautical miles. Airspeed 120 knots."
Bullseye was the VOR at Reagan National Airport, the center of the restricted airspace circle.
Lieutenant Wong kept Goode on and notified her commander, who had a direct line to the United States Coast Guard Blackjack helicopter crews at Reagan and the F-16s with the 121st Fighter Squadron at Andrews. Both of these units were immediately placed on a heightened state of alert.
It cost the American taxpayer over fifty thousand dollars to scramble a single F-16, so no one took the action lightly-nor would they hesitate once certain trip wires were crossed.
"Who is this guy?" Lieutenant Wong said. "He's bullseye two-four-zero degrees for . . ." She paused, then spoke again. "Still NORDO?"
Goode tried the offending aircraft on the radio once more before answering Wong. "Correct," he said. "Either he's having radio problems or he's ignoring me altogether."
Wong was in deep conversation with her supervisor, ticking down the checklist of responses for an incursion into restricted airspace. Goode watched the green dot, expecting to see a Coastie MH-65 launch on his screen at any moment.
Time to decide: twelve minutes.
The inbound Track of Interest met the criteria for an immediate Operation Noble Eagle (ONE) conference call. Lieutenant Wong began by contacting 601st Air Operations Center at Tyndall Air Force Base-Continental U.S. NORAD Region (CONR) headquarters near Panama City, Florida, where Lieutenant General Rhett Farrer served as the CFACC, or Combined Forces Air Component Commander.
The commander of NORAD/NORTHCOM, four-star general Mike Hopkin, was enduring a root canal at a specialist off base in Colorado Springs at that moment, so his J-5, Major General Steven Armstrong (the joint director of policy and planning), stood in for him on the phone in the N2C2-NORAD/NORTHCOM Command Center. In this capacity, General Armstrong was armed with Civilian Aircraft Engagement Authority-a benign way of saying he'd been delegated the responsibility from the secretary of defense through General Hopkin to give the shootdown order so an F-16 Falcon could blow this little four-seater civilian airplane out ...
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