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As those in power around the globe face up to the challenges of a new world order, in Washington CIA Deputy Director Jack Ryan is putting everthing into a plan that could finally bring peace to a Middle East still suffering from the ravages of war. But too many groups have invested too much blood to allow the plan to succeed - and terrorists have one final, desperate card to play.
With one terrible act the world is plunged into nuclear crisis. His dreams of peace shattered, Ryan is confronted with a situation he has never dared to imagine: with the world standing on the brink of war, what do you do if the US President is incompetent to deal with the greatest crisis of all?
The master of the techno-thriller places nuclear-weapon technology in the hands of Third World terrorists and sets the superpowers on the path to Armageddon just when everybody thought it was safe to relax. Clancy dishes out page after page of highly detailed atomic bomb assembly directions and nuclear submarine specifications, enough technodazzle to satisfy the most seriously committed technofreak, but it is plain old-fashioned plotting in the best, hair-raising, we're-all-going-to-die-in-five-seconds-if-somebody-doesn't-do-something tradition that keeps things cracking in the very eventful life of Jack Ryan, hijacker of submarines, friend of princes, wizard of Wall Street, true spirit of the CIA, and devoted father. This time Ryan's nemeses are Arab terrorists who stumble on a lost Israeli atom bomb and get big ideas; the cowardly but attractive National Security Director who shares the President's pillow and hates our Jack; and the bottle. It is the last of these plagues that most worries Ryan's pretty ophthalmologist wife and friends. Stressed out by his responsibilities at Langley, unwinding every night with wine-in-a-box, he's gotten paunchy and cranky and unable to fulfill his husbandly role, and he's become vulnerable to the machinations of his archenemy Liz Elliot, the widowered President's favorite advisor. A boozy, discredited Jack Ryan means that the US is in deep danger when the Arabs hire an East German physicist to upgrade their beatup but still lethal old bomb before placing it outside the Super Bowl game in Denver. With Ryan out of favor there's no one to counter Ms. Elliot's misinformed ravings. The pesky terrorists and their truculent Native American recruit intend the atomic explosion to stir things up between the Americans and the supposedly deranged Soviets - and they get their wish. Ignoring Jack Ryan, listening to Liz Elliot, everybody in Washington panics, the Soviets get their backs up, bombers launch, submarines crank up their missiles, and thanks to more terrorist meddling, tanks from both sides start blowing each other up in Berlin. Has Jack knocked off the sauce in time to save the world? Clancy swears he has left the critical parts out of the atom bomb directions, and we will all just have to pray that he has. They sure seem complete, though. This is quite a rouser. (Kirkus Reviews)
ISBN: 9780006471165
ISBN-10: 0006471161
Audience:
General
Format:
Paperback
Language:
English
Number Of Pages: 1040
Published: December 1991
Publisher: HarperCollins Publishers
Dimensions (cm): 17.7 x 12.8
x 4.6
Weight (kg): 0.516
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