The Jack Ryan saga continues from The Sum of All Fears with this next massive installment. Ryan has stepped out of government service, but is called back again, this time as National Security Advisor to President Durling. Meanwhile, a complicated web of events is unfolding. A few business leaders in Japan have schemed to increase the power of their country. This grand plan has as its goal the seizure, along with China, of a large portion of eastern Siberia, to greatly increase the natural resources available to Japan. Meanwhile, the Japanese are made to realize their dependence upon America as an automobile accident causes the American public to push for more restricted trade with Japan (essentially enacting the same laws with regard to Japanese products that Japan enacts with regard to American products). This is the final straw, that pushes Japan into action.
The first major move of the offensive is economic, as a few major Japanese businesses, along with a well-placed buisenessman who has taken the lead position in a major American equity firm, begin a run on the dollar by dumping American T-bills. A few strategic moves lead to a steep decline in the value of American currency, and the corresponding rise in Japanese Yen. The day on the market turns out to be disasterous, but is made even more so because a second part of the attac, the loss of all of the data from the trades for that day, leaves doubt as to who owns what and who owes who money--in other words, confusion. The second part of the Japanese offensive also begins, with the quiet military occupation of Saipan and Guam. The third tier in the attack is the "accidental" crippling of two American aircraft carriers at the conclusion of a friendly military exercise, greatly reducing America's ability to project force in the Pacific. And with India occupying the attention of America's two carriers in the Indian Ocean with the threat of a military action against Sri Lanka, a very difficult stage is set. Ryan, as NSA, councils that the solution to the market crisis is to say that nothing officially happened after noon, when the data was lost. Everyone goes back to where they were at that point (an idea most traders would go for, because of the disasterous happenings of that afternoon). In order to counter Japan's military moves, America carefully strikes at their home country by destroying their air defenses, and especially their very advanced AWACS aircraft. This is done by stealth aircraft, by stealth helicopters, and also by some covert action by John Clark and Domingo Chavez. As the defenses of the Japanese homeland fall, it becomes clear that even the crippled America could strike at Japan. The wild card had become the fact that Japan had developed nuclear-tipped cruise missiles, but some careful attacks by America neutralized their missiles. Without this last card to play, the buisenessmen who had been pushing the offensive action were silenced, and a more orderly government was restored, all without a major offensive operation by America against Japan. But as events were resolving, a lone pilot of Japan's national airline fakes an in-flight emergency and crashes his plane into the Capitol building during a joing session of congress, which had been convened to swear in Ryan as the new Vice President, a post he was assuming after the VP had to resign in disgrace. Ryan survived, but almost the entire American government, including supreme court justices and the president, were eliminated in one stroke. A problem Ryan will have to deal with in the next book, Executive Orders.
The first time I read this book, I remember getting bored. And the first few hundred pages are a lot of information, but in true Clancy fassion he brings together a staggering array of plot lines into a great story. It deserves to rank with the rest of the Ryan saga as a great work of espionage fiction.
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