Clear and Present Danger Read online

  Table of Contents

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Acknowledgements

  Dedication

  Chapter 1. - The King of SAR

  Chapter 2. - Creatures of the Night

  Chapter 3. - The Panache Procedure

  Chapter 4. - Preliminaries

  Chapter 5. - Beginnings

  Chapter 6. - Deterrence

  Chapter 7. - Knowns and Unknowns

  Chapter 8. - Deployment

  Chapter 9. - Meeting Engagement

  Chapter 10. - Dry Feet

  Chapter 11. - In-Country

  Chapter 12. - The Curtain on SHOWBOAT

  Chapter 13. - The Bloody Weekend

  Chapter 14. - Snatch and Grab

  Chapter 15. - Deliverymen

  Chapter 16. - Target List

  Chapter 17. - Execution

  Chapter 18. - Force Majeure

  Chapter 19. - Fallout

  Chapter 20. - Discoveries

  Chapter 21. - Explanations

  Chapter 22. - Disclosures

  Chapter 23. - The Games Begin

  Chapter 24. - Ground Rules

  Chapter 25. - The ODYSSEY File

  Chapter 26. - Instrumentsof State

  Chapter 27. - The Battleof Ninja Hill

  Chapter 28. - Accounting

  Chapter 29. - Fill-ups

  Chapter 30. - The Good of the Service

  “Rousing adventure ... A crackling good yarn!”

  —The Washington Post

  “Heavy-caliber excitement!”

  —St. Louis Post-Dispatch

  CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

  Tom Clancy, the all-time master of the techno-thriller, is back with his newest, most controversial bestseller. Its theme: America’s war on drugs. Its subject: the assassination of three American officials in Colombia ... and the covert—and shocking—U.S. response.

  “The issues raised are real ones,

  and a jump ahead of the headlines.”

  —The New York Times

  “Absorbing reading ...

  You won’t stop until you hit the last pages!”

  —The Wall Street Journal

  Novels by Tom Clancy

  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

  SSN: STRATEGIES OF SUBMARINE WARFARE

  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

  SPECIAL FORCES: A GUIDED TOUR OF U.S. ARMY SPECIAL FORCES

  INTO THE STORM: A STUDY IN COMMAND

  (written with General Fred Franks, Jr., Ret., and Tony Koltz)

  EVERY MAN A TIGER

  (written with General Charles Horner Ret., and Tony Koltz)

  SHADOW WARRIORS: INSIDE THE SPECIAL FORCES

  (written with General Carl Stiner, Ret., and Tony Koltz)

  BATTLE READY

  (written with General Tony Zinni, Ret., and Tony Koltz)

  Created by Tom Clancy

  TOM CLANCY’S SPLINTER CELL

  TOM CLANCY’S SPLINTER CELL: OPERATION BARRACUDA

  TOM CLANCY’S SPLINTER CELL: CHECKMATE

  Created by Tom CLancy and Steve Pieczenik

  TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER

  TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: MIRROR IMAGE

  TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: GAMES OF STATE

  TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: ACTS OF WAR

  TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: BALANCE OF POWER

  TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: STATE OF SIEGE

  TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: DIVIDE AND CONQUER

  TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: LINE OF CONTROL

  TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: MISSION OF HONOR

  TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: SEA OF FIRE

  TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: CALL TO TREASON

  TOM CLANCY’S OP-CENTER: WAR OF EAGLES

  TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE

  TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: HIDDEN AGENDAS

  TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: NIGHT MOVES

  TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: BREAKING POINT

  TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: POINT OF IMPACT

  TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: CYBERNATION

  TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: STATE OF WAR

  TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: CHANGING OF THE GUARD

  TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: SPRINGBOARD

  TOM CLANCY’S NET FORCE: THE ARCHIMEDES EFFECT

  Created by Tom Clancy and Martin Greenberg

  TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: POLITIKA

  TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: RUTHLESS.COM

  TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: SHADOW WATCH

  TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: BIO-STRIKE

  TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: COLD WAR

  TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: CUTTING EDGE

  TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: ZERO HOUR

  TOM CLANCY’S POWER PLAYS: WILD CARD

  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, business

  establishments, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.

  CLEAR AND PRESENT DANGER

  A Berkley Book / published by arrangement with

  Jack Ryan Enterprises Ltd.

  Copyright © 1989 by Jack Ryan Enterprises Ltd.

  All rights reserved.

  This book, or parts thereof, may not be reproduced

  in any form without permission.

  The scanning, uploading, and distribution of this book via the Internet

  or via any other means without the permission of the publisher is illegal

  and punishable by law. Please purchase only authorized electronic

  editions, and do not participate in or encourage electronic piracy of

  copyrighted materials. Your support of the author’s rights is appreciated.

  For information address:

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  eISBN : 978-1-101-00256-8

  BERKLEY®

  Berkley Books are published by

  The Berkley Publishing Group, a division of Penguin Group (USA) Inc.,

  375 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014.

  BERKLEY and the “B” design are trademarks

  belonging to Penguin Group (USA) Inc.

  http://us.penguingroup.com

  ACKNOWLEDGMENTS

  As always, there are many people to thank. To “The Great Geraldo” for his friendship; to Russ for his second installment of wise counsel and amazing breadth of knowledge; to Carl and Colin, who never knew what they were starting, but then, neither did I; to Bill for his wisdom; to Rich for his contemplation of what matters; to Tim, Ninja-Six, for more than a few tips on fieldcraft; to Ed, commander of warriors, and Patricia, who named the Cabbage Patch Hat, for their gracious hospitality; to Pete, former headmaster of the world’s most exciting school (the passing grade is life); to Pat, who teaches the same course at yet another school; to Har
ry, mentee, for his most serious irreverence; to W.H., who does his best in a hopeless, thankless job; and of course to a dozen or so warrant officers who could teach astronauts a thing or two; and so many others—would that America served you as faithfully as you serve her.

  To the memory of John Ball,

  Friend and teacher,

  The professional who took the last plane out

  Law, without force, is impotent.—PASCAL

  It is the function of police to exercise force, or to threaten it, in execution of the state’s purpose, internally and under normal conditions. It is the function of armed forces to exercise force, or the threat of it, externally in normal times and internally only in times that are abnormal....

  [T]he degree of force which the state is prepared to apply in the execution of its purpose ... is as much as the government of the day considers it necessary or expedient to use to avoid a breakdown in its function and a surrender of its responsibilities.

  —GENERAL SIR JOHN HACKETT

  Prologue:

  Situation

  THE ROOM WAS still empty. The Oval Office is in the southeast corner of the White House West Wing. Three doors lead into it, one from the office of the President’s personal secretary, another from a small kitchen which leads in turn to the President’s study, and a third into a corridor, directly opposite the entrance to the Roosevelt Room. The room itself is of only medium size for a senior executive, and visitors always remark afterward that it seemed smaller than they expected. The President’s desk, set just in front of thick windows of bullet-resistant polycarbonate that distort the view of the White House lawn, is made from the wood of HMS Resolute, a British ship that sank in American waters during the 1850s. Americans salvaged and returned it to the United Kingdom, and a grateful Queen Victoria ordered a desk made from its oaken timbers by way of official thanks. Made in an age when men were shorter than today, the desk was increased somewhat in height during the Reagan presidency. The President’s desk was laden with folders and position papers capped with a printout of his appointment schedule, plus an intercom box, a conventional push-button multiline telephone, and another ordinary-looking but highly sophisticated secure instrument for sensitive conversations.

  The President’s chair was custom-made to fit its user, and its high back included sheets of DuPont Kevlar—lighter and tougher than steel—as additional protection against bullets that some madman might fire through the heavy windows. There were, of course, about a dozen Secret Service agents on duty in this part of the Presidential Mansion during business hours. To get here most people had to pass through a metal detector—in fact all did, since the obvious ones were a little too obvious—and everyone had to pass the quite serious scrutiny of the Secret Service detail, whose identity was plain from the flesh-toned ear-pieces that coiled out from under their suit jackets, and whose politeness was secondary to their real mission of keeping the President alive. Beneath the jacket of each was a powerful hand-gun, and each of these agents was trained to view everyone and everything as a potential threat to WRANGLER, which was the President’s current code-name. It had no meaning beyond being easy to say and easily recognizable on a radio circuit.

  Vice Admiral James Cutter, USN, was in an office on the opposite, northwest corner of the West Wing and had been since 6:15 that morning. The job of Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs requires a man to be an early riser. At a quarter to eight he finished off his second cup of morning coffee—it was good here—and tucked his briefing papers into a leather folder. He walked through the empty office of his vacationing deputy, turned right down the corridor past the similarly vacant office of the Vice President, who was in Seoul at the moment, and turned left past the office of the President’s Chief of Staff. Cutter was one of the handful of real Washington insiders—the Vice President was not among them—who didn’t need the permission of the Chief of Staff to walk into the Oval Office whenever he felt the need, though he’d generally call ahead first to give the secretaries a heads-up. The Chief of Staff didn’t like anyone to have that privilege, but that made his unlimited access all the more pleasant for Cutter to exercise. Along the way four security personnel nodded good morning to the Admiral, who returned the gestures as he would greet any skilled menial. Cutter’s official code-name was LUMBERJACK, and though he knew that the Secret Service agents called him something else among themselves, Cutter was past caring what little people thought of him. The secretaries’ anteroom was already up and running, with three secretaries and a Secret Service agent sitting in their appointed places.

  “Chief on time?” he asked.

  “WRANGLER is on the way down, sir,” Special Agent Connor said. He was forty, a section chief of the Presidential Detail, didn’t give a goddamn who Cutter was, and could care less what Cutter thought of him. Presidents and aides came and went, some liked, some loathed, but the professionals of the Secret Service served and protected them all. His trained eyes swept over the leather folder and Cutter’s suit. No guns there today. He was not being paranoid. A king of Saudi Arabia had been killed by a family member, and a former prime minister of Italy had been betrayed by a daughter to the terrorist kidnappers who’d ultimately murdered him. It wasn’t just kooks he had to worry about. Anyone could be a threat to the President. Connor was fortunate, of course, that he only had to worry about physical security. There were other sorts; those were the concerns of others less professional than he.

  Everyone stood when the President arrived, of course, followed by his personal bodyguard, a lithe, thirtyish woman whose dark tresses neatly concealed the fact that she was one of the best pistol shots in government service. “Daga”—her Service nickname—smiled good morning at Pete. It would be an easy day. The President wasn’t going anywhere. His appointment list had been thoroughly checked—the Social Security numbers of all nonregulars are run through the FBI’s crime computers—and the visitors themselves would, of course, be subjected to the most thorough searches that can be made without an actual pat-down. The President waved for Admiral Cutter to follow him in. The two agents went over the appointment list again. It was routine, and the senior agent didn’t mind that a man’s job had been taken by a woman. Daga had earned her job on the street. If she were a man, everyone agreed, she’d have two big brass ones, and if any would-be assassin mistook her for a secretarial type, that was his bad luck. Every few minutes, until Cutter left, one or the other of the agents would peer through the spy-hole in the white-painted door to make sure that nothing untoward was happening. The President had held office for over three years, and was used to the constant observation. It hardly occurred to the agents that a normal man might find it oppressive. It was their job to know everything there was to know about the President, from how often he visited the bathroom to those with whom he slept. They didn’t call the agency the Secret Service for nothing. Their antecedents had concealed all manner of peccadillos. The President’s wife was not entitled to know what he did every hour of the day—at least, some presidents had so decided—but his security detail was.

  Behind the closed door, the President took his seat. From the side door a Filipino mess steward carried in a tray with coffee and croissants and came to attention before leaving. With this the morning’s preliminary routine was complete, and Cutter began his morning intelligence briefing. This had been delivered from CIA to his Fort Myer, Virginia, home before dawn, which allowed the Admiral to paraphrase it. The brief didn’t take long. It was late spring, and the world was a relatively quiet place. Those wars underway in Africa and elsewhere were not of great import to American interests, and the Middle East was as tranquil as it ever seemed to be. That left time for other issues.

  “What about SHOWBOAT?” the President asked while buttering his croissant.

  “It’s underway, sir. Ritter’s people are already at work,” Cutter replied.

  “I’m still worried about security on the operation.”

  “Mr. President, it’
s as tight as one could reasonably expect. There are risks—you can’t avoid them all—but we’re keeping the number of people involved to an absolute minimum, and those people have been carefully selected and recruited.”

  That earned the National Security Adviser a grunt. The President was trapped—and as with nearly every president, it had come about from his own words. Presidential promises and statements ... the people had this annoying way of remembering them. And even if they didn’t there were journalists and political rivals who never passed on a chance to make the necessary reminders. So many things had gone right in this presidency. But so many of those were secret—and, annoyingly to Cutter, those secrets had somehow been kept. Well, they had to be, of course. Except that in the political arena no secret was truly sacred, most especially in an election year. Cutter wasn’t supposed to be concerned with that. He was a professional naval officer, and therefore supposed to be apolitical in his outlook on the ins and outs of national security, but whoever had formulated that particular guideline must have been a monk. Members of the senior executive service did not take vows of poverty and chastity, however—and obedience was also a sometime thing.

  “I promised the American people that we’d do something about this problem,” the President observed crossly. “And we haven’t accomplished shit.”

  “Sir, you cannot deal with threats to national security through police agencies. Either our national security is threatened or it is not.” Cutter had been hammering that point for years. Now, finally, he had a receptive audience.

  Another grunt: “Yeah, well, I said that, too, didn’t I?”