Book Review: 'Clear and Present Danger'

(C) 1989 G.P. Putnam's Sons 

Reviewer's Note: I originally wrote this review in November of 1989 for Catalyst, the student newspaper of Miami-Dade Community College's South Campus.

Clancy's new novel clearly a success

Alex Diaz-Granados
Managing Editor

What would happen if a U.S. President were to approve a covert military operation against the Medellin Cartel in the mountains and jungles of Colombia?

In Clear and Present Danger, Tom Clancy, author of the best-selling novels The Hunt for Red October and Cardinal of the Kremlin, creates a scenario pitting the U.S. military's special operations assets and the CIA's stalwart Jack Ryan against the ruthless Colombian drug barons.

After a seemingly routine arrest at sea of two cartel hit men who have killed a wealthy yacht owner and his family, the FBI stumbles onto a complex money-laundering scheme linked to the drug lords.

When the U.S, government begins freezing the cartel's financial assets, the drug lords strike back by assassinating several high ranking U.S. officials who are to meet with Colombia's attorney general in Bogota.

This, in the eyes of White House officials, is a declaration of war, and the President approves a secret operation conceived by Adm. James Cutter, his new national security adviser, involving Army infantry squads, Navy aircraft, and "stealth bombs" to retaliate.

Trouble is, the more people involved in a covert operation, the less covert it eventually becomes, and when things go sour, Cutter abandons the small infantry squads in the Colombian hills and jungles, propelling Jack Ryan (now the CIA deputy director of intelligence) into a web of intrigue that leads to a daring rescue mission.

Clear and Present Danger is, after Red October and Cardinal of the Kremlin, Clancy's best Jack Ryan vehicle to date.

Part of his success is due to his accurate descriptions of modern weapons and tactics involved in their use.

"There were five teams of two men each, gunners and loaders. They were armed with West German MG3 squad machine guns, which the Colombian Army had just adopted because it used the same 7.62mm round as their standard infantry weapon, the G3, also of German manufacture...Based on the earlier German MG-42 of World War II fame, the MG3 retained the older weapon's 1,200-round-per-minute cyclic rate of fire - twenty rounds per second. The gun positions were spaced thirty meters apart, with two guns tasked to engage the chase car, two on the lead car, but only one on the Mercedes."

With writing like this it's for certain that Clancy has another hit on his hands.