ALSO BY TOM CLANCY
FICTION
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
Dead or Alive (with Grant Blackwood)
Against All Enemies (with Peter Telep)
Locked On (with Mark Greaney)
Threat Vector (with Mark Greaney)
Command Authority (with Mark Greaney)
Tom Clancy Support and Defend (by Mark Greaney)
Tom Clancy Full Force and Effect (by Mark Greaney)
Tom Clancy Under Fire (by Grant Blackwood)
Tom Clancy Commander in Chief (by Mark Greaney)
Tom Clancy Duty and Honor (by Grant Blackwood)
Tom Clancy True Faith and Allegiance (by Mark Greaney)
Tom Clancy Point of Contact (by Mike Maden)
Tom Clancy Power and Empire (by Marc Cameron)
Tom Clancy Line of Sight (by Mike Maden)
Tom Clancy Oath of Office (by Marc Cameron)
Tom Clancy Enemy Contact (by Mike Maden)
Tom Clancy Code of Honor (by Marc Cameron)
Tom Clancy Firing Point (by Mike Maden)
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
Into the Storm: A Study in Command
with General Fred Franks, Jr. (Ret.), and Tony Koltz
Every Man a Tiger: The Gulf War Air Campaign
with General Chuck Horner (Ret.) and Tony Koltz
Shadow Warriors: Inside the Special Forces
with General Carl Stiner (Ret.) and Tony Koltz
Battle Ready
with General Tony Zinni (Ret.) and Tony Koltz
G. P. Putnam’s Sons
Publishers Since 1838
An imprint of Penguin Random House LLC
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Copyright © 2020 by The Estate of Thomas L. Clancy, Jr.; Rubicon, Inc.;
Jack Ryan Enterprises, Ltd.; Jack Ryan Limited Partnership
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Ebook ISBN 9780593188118
Maps by Jeffrey L. Ward
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, businesses, companies, events, or locales is entirely coincidental.
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CONTENTS
Cover
Also by Tom Clancy
Title Page
Copyright
Epigraph
Principal Characters
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
Chapter 8
Chapter 9
Chapter 10
Chapter 11
Chapter 12
Chapter 13
Chapter 14
Chapter 15
Chapter 16
Chapter 17
Chapter 18
Chapter 19
Chapter 20
Chapter 21
Chapter 22
Chapter 23
Chapter 24
Chapter 25
Chapter 26
Chapter 27
Chapter 28
Chapter 29
Chapter 30
Chapter 31
Chapter 32
Chapter 33
Chapter 34
Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
About the Authors
Men who are accustomed to eat at tiny tables in howling gales have curiously neat and finished table-manners.
Rudyard Kipling
When two tigers fight, one is injured beyond repair . . . and the other one is dead.
Chinese proverb
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
Jack Ryan: President of the United States
Arnold “Arnie” van Damm: President Ryan’s chief of staff
Mary Pat Foley: Director of national intelligence
Scott Adler: Secretary of state
Robert Burgess: Secretary of defense
Admiral John Talbot: Chief of naval operations
Gary Montgomery: Special agent, Secret Service Presidential Protection Detail
Jay Canfield: Director of the Central Intelligence Agency
Robbie Forestall: Commander of the United States Navy, adviser to President Ryan
THE CAMPUS
Gerry Hendley: Director of The Campus and Hendley Associates
John Clark: Director of operations
Domingo “Ding” Chavez: Assistant director of operations
Jack Ryan, Jr.: Operations officer/senior analyst
Dominic “Dom” Caruso: Operations officer
Adara Sherman: Operations officer
Bartosz “Midas” Jankowski: Operations officer
Gavin Biery: Director of information technology
Lisanne Robertson: Director of transportation
OTHER CHARACTERS
Dr. Caroline “Cathy” Ryan: First Lady of the United States
Adam Yao: CIA case officer (NOC)
Dr. Patti Moon: Scientist on light icebreaker R/V Sikuliaq
Kelli Symonds: First officer, R/V Sikuliaq
Chief Petty Officer Shad Barker: Sonar technician, USS John Paul Jones
China
Liu Wangshu: Engineering professor
Medina Tohti: Uyghur woman, fugi
tive from PRC authorities
Hala Tohti: Medina’s daughter
Zulfira Azizi: Medina’s sister; Hala’s aunt
Timur Samedi: Kashgar contact
Yunus Samedi: Kashgar contact
Ren Shuren: Major, Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps
Ren Zhelan: Chinese assistant bureaucrat, Kashgar Medina
Mr. Suo: Chinese bureaucrat, Kashgar
Ma “Mamut” Jianyu: Leader of the Wuming movement; Uyghur mother, Han father
Zheng Guiying: PLAN admiral in charge of naval intelligence
Fu Bohai: Zheng’s henchman and primary hunter of Medina
PLAN Yuan-class attack submarine Expedition #771 (Blue Dragon)
Sun Luoyang: Captain
Bai Jiahao: Commander, XO (Executive Officer)
PLAN Nuclear SSBN 880 (Long March)
Tian Ju: Captain
Wan Xiuying: Commander, XO (Executive Officer)
USS Indiana (SSN 789) Virginia-class fast-attack submarine
Cole Condiff: Captain
Lowdermilk: Lieutenant, officer of the deck
Markette: Petty officer, sonar technician
Ramirez: New crew member
Roosevelt “Rosey” Jackson: Captain, USS Makin Island; nephew of former POTUS Robert Jackson
Jay Rapoza: Captain, USCG icebreaker Healy
ELISE
Monica Hendricks: CIA operations officer in charge of ELISE
Peter Li: Retired USN admiral
David Wallace: FBI counterintelligence agent assigned to ELISE
Odette Miller: CIA counterintelligence officer
Tim Meyer: CIA case officer
Albania
Leigh Murphy: CIA case officer, Tirana
Fredrick Rask: CIA chief of station, Tirana
Vlora Cafaro: CIA case officer, Tirana
Joey Shoop: CIA officer, Tirana
Urkesh Beg: Uyghur refugee living in asylum in Albania
Terms
ELISE: Operation to find Chinese mole within U.S. intelligence
PLAN: People’s Liberation Army Navy
Bingtuan: “The Corps,” short for Xinjiang Production and Construction Corps
1
Dr. Patti Moon sat bolt upright in her plastic deck chair, startled at the sudden noise coming across her headset.
The biting wind blowing off the Chukchi Sea didn’t realize it was spring and pinked her round cheeks and smallish nose. Apart from her hands, which she needed to work the Toughbook portable computer, her face was the only part of her not bundled in layers of wool or fleece. Dr. Moon leaned toward the folding table, situated on the afterdeck of the research vessel Sikuliaq, straining to hear the noise again. Sikuliaq was Inupiaq for young ice—appropriate for a science vessel capable of traveling through more than two feet of the stuff.
They were in open water now, taking advantage of a large lead, more than a mile wide, to set some research buoys before the wind blew the ice pack back in.
Moon touched a finger to her headset as if that would help her make more sense of the sudden burst of sound. A former sonar technician on a Navy destroyer, she’d listened to a lot of noises from the deep, but nothing like this.
She sat up again, shook away a chill, telling herself it was just the wind.
The scientist slouching beside her turned to look at her with sleepy eyes that dripped barely veiled contempt. She didn’t take offense. He looked at everyone and everything on the boat that way. Steven “Snopes” Thorson had spent his entire adult life in the world of academia. He knew he was smart—and he liked to make sure everyone around him knew it, too, fact-checking everything anyone said—especially his colleague and fellow Ph.D., Patti Moon.
Her academic bona fides were stellar—but she’d also had the experience of a life growing up in the Arctic, which apparently burned Dr. Thorson worse than the bitter wind.
Moon spent her first seventeen years in the tiny coastal village of Point Hope, Alaska, just four hundred miles south of where the Sikuliaq now motored to stay hove-to against the wind. She’d been in Anchorage for a high school basketball tournament when the USS Momsen, an Arleigh Burke–class destroyer, stopped for a port call. A female sailor had come ashore with the skipper—and that changed her life. No one pressured her to enlist—they didn’t have to. She’d grown up on the ocean, fishing and seal-hunting with her father. The sea was in her blood, and though she wasn’t sure how she felt about the U.S. government, the beautiful gray warship off the coast of her home state was all the inducement she needed to sign on the dotted line as soon as she graduated. She served six years as a sonar technician.
Her test scores were through the roof, and though she had a reputation for believing most every conspiracy theory she heard or read online, her sea-daddies (and -moms) pushed her to go to school when her enlistment ended. The GI Bill put her through undergrad at the University of Alaska Fairbanks, after which she’d gone on to attain a first-class graduate degree, and her doctorate in physics from Oxford.
She was just as smart as Dr. Thorson. And frankly didn’t give two shits if he judged her for being human and touching her headset in hopes that it would make her hear better. Something was down there. A sound that didn’t belong.
And then it was gone, yielding to the other squeals and grunts and songs of the ocean as quickly as it had arisen.
A strand of black hair escaped her wool beanie and blew across Moon’s wind-chapped cheek. The wind had shifted, coming from the northeast now—beyond the pack ice. She ignored the cold, focusing instead on the sound she’d heard for only an instant as the hydrophone descended beneath the Sikuliaq.
Ballpoint pens were iffy in the cold, so Dr. Moon used a pencil to record the depth and time in her notebook. She shot a quick glance at Snopes Thorson.
“You didn’t hear that?”
Wind fanned the ash on the end of Thorson’s cigarette, turning it bright orange—like a tiny forge. Bundled in layers of merino wool, fleece, and orange arctic bibs, it was difficult to tell much about him, except that he wasn’t very tall, and was, perhaps, very well fed. He wielded his sideways glares like weapons when he was annoyed, or, more often, when he was about to annoy someone else by fact-checking every little detail of a conversation. Thorson relished the notion of calling everyone out on the slightest error. Patti Moon made it a point to speak as little as possible around the man—not an easy thing to do when their jobs overlapped and their office was a 261-foot boat in the middle of the Arctic Ocean.
Like Moon, Dr. Thorson was a science officer, managing the dispersal of five expendable buoys that would be sunk in the deep water six hundred miles north of the Bering Strait and eight hundred miles south of the North Pole. If there were any mysteries left on earth, they were in the sea, Moon thought. And some of the greatest mysteries of all lay here, in the Chukchi Borderland, where the relatively warmer and saltier Atlantic met the colder, fresher, and more nutrient-rich waters of the Pacific. Oh, the Navy had bathymetric charts of the seafloor, but she knew from experience that they were not entirely accurate. Hidden reefs and shoals appeared and disappeared. Some believed them to be thick clouds of sea life that rose from the depths fooling a ship’s sonar techs into thinking they were in much shallower waters.
No matter where one stood on climate change, there was no denying that the Arctic Ocean was opening to more and more sea traffic during summer months, cutting the delivery time of fossil fuels from ports in Russia and the North Slope of Alaska to the rest of the world by as much as two-thirds. Polar nations like Russia, Canada, Denmark, and the United States were as busy as they had ever been collecting data on the Arctic. Even China had edged into the game, arguing that they were a near-polar nation and going so far as to plant a CCP flag beneath th
e ice on the seafloor. Other countries had laughed this off as a stunt, but everyone worked to enhance their own capabilities on and under the ice.
Where there were ships of commerce, there were also ships of war.
Dr. Moon noted the hydrophone’s depth at the time she’d first heard the noise. Two hundred and fifteen feet, but descending rapidly as the buoy and her underwater mic dropped toward the seafloors on the Kevlar cable. She adjusted the gain the old-fashioned way—by turning a knob, attempting to pick up the burst again.
“A passing whale?” Thorson said, his cigarette bobbing between his lips. “Sound can travel 4.3 times faster in water. Whatever you heard could be miles from here.”
“Maybe,” Moon conceded, ignoring the elementary physics lesson. She was professional enough not to rule out anything without a process. But even as she said the word, she knew that this was no whale.
The noise had not faded, but winked out, as if a switch had been thrown—leaving the rest of the ocean chorus to continue in its absence.
The sea was dark and cold, but it was not a quiet place. When she was only five, Patti’s father had let her come with him seal-hunting beyond the jutting spit of land that gave Point Hope its Inupiaq name of Tikigaq—forefinger. Her father had showed her how to put the handle of the wooden paddle to her ear and listen to the undersea songs of uguruq—the bearded seal—as they vibrated up from the blade he’d left submerged in the water. The wooden paddle made for a rudimentary listening device, but she was able to hear the occasional song of a bowhead whale, bearded seals, and the ever-moving pack ice that shrieked and squealed like a badly fitting lid on a Styrofoam cooler. Later, during her time in the Navy, she’d learned that fish grunted, croaked, farted, and ground their teeth.
“Pack ice?” Thorson offered. Sullen, but wanting to guess correctly before she did.
She shook her head. “I’d still be hearing it if it was ice. No . . . it’s gone dark, whatever it is.”
Moon listened to the relatively dull burble of water as the science buoy continued to plummet toward the seafloor, taking the hydrophone with it. She stretched, glancing out at the sea. Calm today for this part of the world, the Arctic churned and swirled, looking like blue Gatorade and crushed ice—the good stuff, the kind you get from a drive-in.