Tom Clancy, Mark Greaney
Threat Vector
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
JOHN PATRICK “JACK” RYAN: President of the United States
ARNOLD VAN DAMM: the President’s chief of staff
ROBERT BURGESS: secretary of defense
SCOTT ADLER: secretary of state
MARY PATRICIA FOLEY: director of national intelligence
COLLEEN HURST: national security adviser
JAY CANFIELD: director of the Central Intelligence Agency
KENNETH LI: U.S. ambassador to China
ADAM YAO: operations officer, National Clandestine Service, Central Intelligence Agency
MELANIE KRAFT: reports officer, Central Intelligence Agency (on loan to Office of the Director of National Intelligence)
DARREN LIPTON: senior special agent, Federal Bureau of Investigation, National Security Branch, Counterintelligence Division
ADMIRAL MARK JORGENSEN: United States Navy, commander Pacific Fleet
GENERAL HENRY BLOOM: United States Air Force, commander United States Cyber Command
CAPTAIN BRANDON “TRASH” WHITE: United States Marine Corps, F/A-18C Hornet pilot
MAJOR SCOTT “CHEESE” STILTON: United States Marine Corps, F/A-18C Hornet pilot
CHIEF PETTY OFFICER MICHAEL MEYER: United States Navy, SEAL Team Six element leader
GERRY HENDLEY: director of Hendley Associates/director of The Campus
SAM GRANGER: director of operations
JOHN CLARK: operations officer
DOMINGO “DING” CHAVEZ: operations officer
DOMINIC CARUSO: operations officer
SAM DRISCOLL: operations officer
JACK RYAN, JR.: operations officer/analyst
RICK BELL: director of analysis
TONY WILLS: analyst
GAVIN BIERY: director of information technology
WEI ZHEN LIN: president of the People’s Republic of China/general secretary of the Communist Party of China
SU KE QIANG: chairman of the Central Military Commission of China
WU FAN JUN: intelligence officer, Ministry of State Security, Shanghai
DR. TONG KWOK KWAN, aka “CENTER”: computer network operations director of Ghost Ship
ZHA SHU HAI, aka “FastByte22”: Interpol-wanted cybercriminal
CRANE: Leader of “Vancouver Cell”
HAN: factory owner and high-tech counterfeiter
VALENTIN OLEGOVICH KOVALENKO: Ex — SVR (Russian foreign intelligence) assistant
TODD WICKS: territory sales manager of Advantage Technology Solutions
CHARLIE “DARKGOD” LEVY: amateur hacker
DR. CATHY RYAN: wife of President Jack Ryan
SANDY CLARK: wife of John Clark
DR. PATSY CLARK: wife of Domingo Chavez/daughter of John Clark
EMAD KARTAL: ex — Libyan intelligence officer, communications specialist
PROLOGUE
These were grim days for former operatives of the Jamahiriya Security Organization, the dreaded national intelligence service of Libya under Moammar Gaddafi. Those members of the JSO who had managed to survive the revolution in their home nation were now scattered and in hiding, fearing the day when their cruel and brutal past would catch up with them in a cruel and brutal way.
After the fall of Tripoli to Western-backed rebels the year before, some JSO operatives had remained in Libya, hoping that by changing their identities they would save themselves from reprisal. This rarely worked, as others knew their secrets and were all too happy to finger them to revolutionist headhunters, either to settle old scores or to win new favors. Gaddafi’s spies in Libya were rounded up wherever they hid, tortured, and then killed; in other words, they were treated no worse than they deserved, though the West had held out some naive hope that fair trials for past crimes would be the order of the day when the rebels took power.
But no, mercy did not follow Gaddafi’s death any more than mercy had preceded it.
Meet the new boss, same as the old.
The smarter JSO spies made it out of Libya before capture, and some went to other African nations. Tunisia was close, but it was hostile to former spies of the Mad Dog of the Middle East, a fitting nickname bestowed on Gaddafi by Ronald Reagan. Chad was desolate and similarly unwelcoming to the Libyans. A few made it into Algeria and a few more into Niger, and in both places they found some measure of security, but as guests of these dirt-poor regimes their future prospects were severely limited.
One group of former Jamahiriya Security Organization operators, however, fared better than the rest of their hunted colleagues because they possessed a marked advantage. For years this small cell of spies had been working not just in the interests of the Gaddafi regime, but also for their own personal enrichment. They accepted after- hours work for hire, both in Libya and abroad, doing odd jobs for organized criminal elements, for Al-Qaeda, for the Umayyad Revolutionary Council, even for the intelligence organizations of some other Middle Eastern nations.
In this work the group had suffered losses even before the fall of their government. Several had been killed by American operators a year before Gaddafi’s death, and during the revolution several more died at the port of Tobruk in a NATO airstrike. Two others were captured boarding a flight out of Misrata and burned with electric shocks before being hung naked from meat hooks at the market. But the cell’s seven surviving members did make it out of the country, and even though their years of extracurricular assignments had failed to make them rich men, when it came time to jump like rats from the ship called the Great Socialist People’s Libyan Arab Jamahiriya, their international connections helped keep them safe from the rebels back home.
The seven made their way to Istanbul, Turkey, where they were sponsored by elements in the local underworld who owed them a favor. Soon two of their number left the cell and went into honest work. One became a jewelry store security guard and the other found a job in a local plastics factory.
The other five remained in the spy game, and they farmed themselves out as a highly experienced unit of intelligence professionals. They also attempted to focus on both their personal security and their operational security, knowing that only by maintaining strict PERSEC
