Over the course of three decades, Tom Clancy created a world alive with prescient action and remarkable individuals. In Tom Clancy Support and Defend, covert agent Dominic Caruso faces the deadliest challenge of his career.
Dominic Caruso. Nephew of President Jack Ryan. FBI agent. And operator for the top secret U.S. intelligence agency known as The Campus. Already scarred by the death of his brother, Caruso is further devastated when he is unable to save a friend and his family from a terrorist attack. Ethan Ross was a mid-level staffer for the National Security Council. Now he’s a wanted fugitive on the run with a microdrive that contains enough information to destroy American intelligence efforts around the world. The CIA is desperate to get the drive back before it’s captured by the Russians or one of the various terrorist groups also vying for it.
Only Caruso stands in their way—but can he succeed without the aid of his Campus colleagues?
“Tom Clancy, who collaborated with Greaney on 2013’s Command Authority, would have approved of this solid, fast-paced continuation of his series featuring FBI man Dominic Caruso, an agent with the off-the-books intelligence organization known as “The Campus.” Dominic is in India learning the Israeli fighting system Krav Maga from Arik Yacoby, a retired member of the Israeli Defense Forces. After Arik and his family are murdered by unknown terrorists, Dominic vows revenge on those responsible. In America, Ethan Ross, a deputy assistant director in the National Security Council, has been passing secret information to the International Transparency Project, an organization seeking government accountability. The arrogant, narcissistic Ethan loves the feeling of power he gets from intelligence trafficking, but soon finds himself in serious trouble when a member of an elite unit within the Iranian Revolutionary Guards sets in motion a plan to kidnap him and secure his trove of secret information. All these characters wind up in a violent confrontation, with Dominic playing the lead role in taking down the evildoers. Clancy readers will hardly notice that Tom is no longer with us.”
“Another timely, techno-geeky thriller from the Tom Clancy franchise. Greaney (Command Authority, 2013, etc.) populates his latest with most of the bad guys of the “axis of evil,” and then some. As the nicely convoluted storyline sets out, the baddies are a cell led by a “lieutenant in the Ezzedeen Al-Qassam Brigades,” which is to say—and here’s one timely bit—”the militant wing of the Palestinian political organization Hamas.” They’re far from home, plying the waters off India, and they’re bad luck for an Israeli expat who just happens to be a pal of Dominic Caruso, secret agent extraordinaire and, as it happens, nephew to the hyperactive world policeman Jack Ryan. Nothing gets Caruso’s goat more than terrorists freely working evil in the world, but setting to work to do justice, he finds that he’s got quite a puzzle on his hands—for bound up in it all is an enigmatic former NSA agent who’s on the run with a bunch of damaging information on his thumb drive. All that’s needed to complete the tableau is a shirtless Russian head of state, and Greaney comes pretty close to obliging with Spetsnaz toughs and, for good measure, Venezuelan spies, since, natch, Putinistas and Chavezistas and Ayatollistas share the goal of subverting the interests of the civilized world. The yarn is at once shaggy dog improbable and highly realistic, and Greaney incorporates the late Clancy’s fascination for military and intelligence hardware, for micro-Uzis and Intelink-TS backbones and chase-worthy vehicles (“In the dark both SUVs looked black, but once Ethan got closer he realized one was dark green”). And, of course, he works in a bevy of smart and lovely women who know both how to mend wounds and cause them. It’s by-the-numbers stuff, with the requisite villainy, continent-hopping, décolletage, neat tools and cliffhangers. But, of course, that’s just what Clancy’s fans read him for, and Greaney carries on that entertaining tradition seamlessly.”
