Tom Clancy · 1989 · thriller
Tom Clancy's 1989 thriller. When Colombian drug lords murder the U.S. ambassador and the visiting FBI director, an enraged president secretly unleashes American soldiers into the jungle to wage an undeclared war on the cartels. CIA analyst Jack Ryan, kept in the dark, uncovers the covert operation - and races to Colombia to save the stranded troops abandoned by their own government.
- 1Washington
In Washington, newly promoted CIA man Jack Ryan is shut out of a decision made in fury: after the cartel murders American officials, the White House quietly authorizes a secret war against the Colombian drug lords.
- 2The Caribbean
It opens at sea, where a Coast Guard cutter boards a blood-soaked cartel yacht in the Caribbean - the first thread of a covert campaign that will run from Washington's back rooms into the Colombian mountains.
- 3Panama
The covert war is run out of Panama - the aircraft, the communications intercepts and the men who fly the teams in. It is also where Cutter goes when he decides the operation has to be made to disappear.
- 4Medellin
In and around Medellin, the fortress of the cartel, the drug lords and the treacherous intelligence officer Cortez scheme against the Americans and one another, while covert teams watch the airstrips that feed the trade north.
- 5The jungle
Deep in the Colombian jungle, the soldiers of Operation Showboat are betrayed and abandoned as the cartel hunts them down - and Ryan and the operative John Clark go in to pull the survivors out before they are lost.
- 6The Panache
Shot up over the mountains and flying into a hurricane, the Pave Low cannot reach land and puts down on the deck of the same Coast Guard cutter that opened the book - with Zimmer dying aboard.
- 7Washington
Ryan comes home with what he knows, and the reckoning is political rather than military: an election lost on purpose, a National Security Advisor finished, and a promise made to a dead sergeant's family.