by Maden, Mike
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)
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.; and Jack Ryan Limited Partnership
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Names: Maden, Mike, author.
Title: Tom Clancy firing point / Mike Maden.
Other titles: Firing point
Description: New York: G. P. Putnam’s Sons, 2020. | Series: Jack Ryan Jr.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020013908 (print) | LCCN 2020013909 (ebook) | ISBN 9780593188064 (hardcover) | ISBN 9780593188088 (ebook)
Subjects: GSAFD: Spy stories. | Suspense fiction.
Classification: LCC PS3613.A284327 T62 2020 (print) | LCC PS3613.A284327
(ebook) | DDC 813/.6—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020013908.
LC ebook record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020013909.
Title page art: Topographic map by Andis Rea/Shutterstock.com
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
Prologue
October 18Chapter 1
October 24Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Chapter 4
Chapter 5
Chapter 6
Chapter 7
October 25Chapter 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
October 26Chapter 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
October 27Chapter 35
Chapter 36
Chapter 37
Chapter 38
Chapter 39
Chapter 40
Chapter 41
October 28Chapter 42
Chapter 43
Chapter 44
Chapter 45
Chapter 46
Chapter 47
Chapter 48
Chapter 49
Chapter 50
Chapter 51
Chapter 52
October 29Chapter 53
Chapter 54
Chapter 55
Chapter 56
Chapter 57
October 30Chapter 58
Chapter 59
Chapter 60
Chapter 61
Chapter 62
Chapter 63
Chapter 64
Chapter 65
Chapter 66
Chapter 67
Chapter 68
Chapter 69
Days LaterChapter 70
Chapter 71
Epilogue
About the Authors
In valor, there is hope.
—TACITUS
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
UNITED STATES GOVERNMENT
JACK RYAN: President of the United States
MARY PAT FOLEY: Director of national intelligence
ARNOLD “ARNIE” VAN DAMM: President Ryan’s chief of staff
SCOTT ADLER: Secretary of state
ADMIRAL JOHN TALBOT: Chief of naval operations
DICK DELLING
ER: U.S. Consulate (Barcelona, Spain), Public Diplomacy Section
THE CAMPUS
JACK RYAN, JR.: Operations officer/senior analyst
GAVIN BIERY: Director of information technology
GERRY HENDLEY: Director of The Campus and Hendley Associates
JOHN CLARK: Director of operations
DOMINGO “DING” CHAVEZ: Assistant director of operations
DOMINIC “DOM” CARUSO: Operations officer
ADARA SHERMAN: Operations officer
BARTOSZ “MIDAS” JANKOWSKI: Operations officer
OTHER CHARACTERS
UNITED STATES
BUCK LOGAN: President, White Mountain Logistics + Security
KATE PARSONS: Oak Ridge National Laboratory scientist
SPAIN
LAIA BROSSA: Centro Nacional de Inteligencia (CNI) agent
GASPAR PEÑA: CNI supervisor
PROLOGUE
POHANG, SOUTH KOREA
“Alive, not dead.”
That was the order. Jack got it. Rijk van Delden—if that was his real name—was the only link between the Iron Syndicate and the nameless merc outfit the syndicate hired for their dirtiest hits. The merc outfit was their real target. Find van Delden, find the outfit.
Simple as that.
But van Delden had been hard as hell to find. Impossible, actually. Until a lead, finally, that led them here tonight. Their one and maybe only chance to grab him.
“Alive, not dead” meant keeping the big Dutchman alive so they could find and eliminate his murderous organization.
The only problem with that was van Delden was one of his outfit’s heavy hitters. The six-foot-six killer possessed serious combative and tactical skills. The giant Dutchman had put more men in the ground than a gravedigger’s shovel.
“Don’t even think about taking this monkey on by yourself. Get eyes on him, call for backup, sit tight till the rest of us show up. Savvy?” Clark said in their brief before The Campus team split up. All hands were on deck for this op: John Clark, Ding Chavez, Dom Caruso, Adara Sherman, Midas Jankowski, and Jack Junior.
They all headed in different directions across the steel mill’s huge complex of buildings. Too much ground to cover for them to buddy up. They had to go it alone to find the guy. And fast.
Van Delden was in one of a dozen possible places on two hundred acres of property, and scheduled to leave within the hour, according to their source. They couldn’t risk missing him here tonight. If he shook loose, he’d be back in the wind the minute he left and they’d lose the only shot they’d ever had at rolling up his crew.
Alive, not dead, was tonight’s mission but it seemed like a pretty good idea for him and the rest of the team, too, Jack thought, as he made his way through the cavernous shell of the integrated steel mill. The cold night fog looming over the port outside stopped at the doorway, the air inside tinged with the acrid smells of rust, ozone, and burnt coal.
Jack Ryan, Jr., was a big, blue-eyed white guy striding confidently through the dark, hangar-size structure. He didn’t look that out of place beneath his stolen white safety helmet, clipboard, and paper mask. He moved fast like he had something to do, which he did. The steelworkers were too busy flying several hundred tons of molten slag in giant ladles lumbering overhead to pay attention to him.
Jack sweated beneath his shirt. It was an industrial volcano inside the sweltering building. At least the team had Sonitus Molar Mics. Without bone conduction for reception, he wouldn’t be able to hear the others calling out their sitreps on his comms. The infernal din of pounding hydraulic hammers, roaring diesel motors, grinding steel, and blaring alarms was a near sensory overload.
“I’m thirty seconds from target,” Dom whispered on his way to the plant manager’s office.
“Copy that,” Clark said.
Jack took two steps at a time up the yellow steel staircase to the “pulpit”—the automated control room for the hot-steel processing facility, high off the floor. The grated treads led to the landing just outside the control-room door. With his back against the corrugated steel wall, he did a quick check around him. Helmeted workers below were focused on the job, not him.
From the landing, a steel-grating walkway ran parallel along the windowless steel wall of the pulpit where Jack stood. On either end of the east–west walkway was a catwalk. Both catwalks ran north, parallel with the tracks of the huge ladles moving slowly along beneath them. Each ladle brimmed with nearly two hundred tons of molten steel heading toward the vacuum degassers on the far side of the building.
In the middle of the steel control-room door stood a small, face-size observation window.
“I’m in position,” Jack whispered.
“Copy,” Clark said as a siren wailed overhead.
Jack stepped over to the door’s observation window.
He scanned the room. In front of the big picture windows overlooking the mill floor, five young South Korean technicians sat at their monitors chatting excitedly, pointing at virtual gauges on their screens.
Scanning right, Jack saw Park, the oldest Korean in the room, standing in the corner, round and silver-haired beneath his safety helmet. Jack recognized Park from his file photo. He was the steel firm’s CEO and biggest shareholder, and a man in serious trouble with Japan’s largest yakuza syndicate, the Yamaguchi-gumi. Their source inside the syndicate said Park was reaching out to van Delden for protection tonight.
Jack leaned over to see who Park was talking with.
And there he was.
The giant Dutchman towered over the diminutive Korean, his long, granite face focused on Park in earnest discussion.
The Dutchman’s gaze shifted briefly toward the window. His eyes locked with Jack’s.
Shit.
In the blink of an eye, van Delden’s big Glock 17 was in his hand. Jack ducked as the barrel sparked. The door glass shattered just above his head.
“Found him,” Jack barked in his comms as he crouched low and pressed hard against the heavy steel door. He felt more rounds thud against the metal, like someone was pounding the door with their fists.
“Sit tight,” Clark said. “We’re on our way. Five mikes, max.”
“Copy that.” More bullets crashed into the door near Jack’s ear.
“Don’t hurt him, Jack.”
“Copy that—”
WHUMP!
The big man slammed into the door. The steel cracked against Jack’s skull and knocked him back a little. But Jack was wedged hard against it. The door only budged open an inch. He slammed it back shut with his shoulder.
Jack heard the last shards of the shattered window glass breaking above him. He glanced up just in time to see the black steel slide of the big Glock wedge through it, then angle down, thick fingers wrapped around the hilt. The Glock fired three earsplitting shots that chinged the grated steel floor near Jack’s feet before Jack could react. Jack turned and grabbed the hot slide with his left hand and twisted it upward just as van Delden fired another shot into the steel rafters overhead.
The hot barrel burned Jack’s hand as he squeezed but he caused the last shot to fail because the slide couldn’t fully eject the brass.
With his left hand still gripped around the Glock, Jack pulled his SIG P229 Legion Compact SAO with his right hand and smashed the steel butt against the Dutchman’s thick wrist, breaking it with a sickening crack.
The massive paw dropped the Glock and yanked back through the shattered glass. Jack kicked the Dutchman’s gun over the edge.
“Status?” Clark asked. “Still got eyes on?”
“He ain’t going nowhere—”
WHUMP!
Van Delden crashed against the door again before Jack could brace himself. The steel door blew open, tossing Jack backward, dropping him to the grated landing.
Jack’s hand exploded in pain, as if it had been smashed with a sledgehammer. His momentary focus on his aching hand cost him dearly as the same big boot raised high and smashed down into Jack’s gut, knocking the wind out of him. Jack gasped for air and clutched at his belly as the boot raised up a third time, aimed squarely at his skull. Jack rolled away at the last second, the sole of the massive boot clanging against the steel near his ear.
Jack rolled again just as the Dutchman launched a kick at his skull and missed. Van Delden lunged forward for a final, fatal steel-toed shot to Jack’s temple, not seeing Jack’s three-inch Kershaw spring-assisted blade until it plunged into his inner thigh.
Van Delden screamed and grabbed his leg to stanch the blood. He stumbled away past Jack before The Campus operative could strike him again, limping west along the walkway as Jack struggled to stand.
“Jack, we’re close. Stay put,” Clark ordered. Jack shook the pain out of his hand as he grabbed a couple of deep breaths, his stomach aching like he’d been gut shot.
“Jack? You copy?”
Jack glanced up just in time to see van Delden turn the corner north, heading away from the pulpit.
“Copy,” was all Jack said.
He sure as hell wasn’t staying put.
He had his orders. “Alive, not dead.”
But Jack knew there was a long, nasty road of hurt between the two, and he was happy to take the big man along for the ride.
Jack thundered along the steel grate, racing after the giant operator. Even wounded, the big man was fast as a feral cat.
Jack turned the corner, running past the giant ladle of molten steel crawling along on its track ten feet below him. Even from here, the searing heat made his skin tingle, like standing too close to a campfire on a cold night.
“Van Delden! Halt!” Jack shouted over the noise of the giant ladle motors grinding overhead.
Van Delden limped farther along, leaning heavily on the rail, one bloody, massive hand gripping his thigh. He finally stopped as Jack charged up behind him.