Mark Greaney, Tom Clancy (Series Creator)
Commander-in-Chief
PRINCIPAL CHARACTERS
Jack Ryan: President of the United States
Scott Adler: secretary of state
Mary Pat Foley: director of national intelligence
Robert “Bob” Burgess: secretary of defense
Jay Canfield: director of the Central Intelligence Agency
Dan Murray: attorney general
Arnold Van Damm: President Ryan’s chief of staff
Peter Branyon: CIA chief of station, Vilnius, Lithuania
Greg Donlin: CIA security officer
Roland Hazelton: admiral, chief of naval operations, United States Navy
Scott Hagen: commander, captain of USS James Greer (DDG-102), United States Navy
Phil Kincaid: lieutenant commander, executive officer of USS James Greer (DDG-102), United States Navy
Damon Hart: lieutenant, weapons officer on USS James Greer (DDG-102), United States Navy
Richard “Rich” Belanger: lieutenant colonel, 3rd Battalion, 5th Marine Regiment, 1st Marine Division, United States Marine Corps; battalion commander of the Black Sea Rotational Force
Gerry Hendley: director, The Campus/Hendley Associates
John Clark: director of operations
Domingo “Ding” Chavez: senior operations officer
Dominic “Dom” Caruso: operations officer
Jack Ryan, Jr.: operations officer/analyst
Gavin Biery: director of information technology
Adara Sherman: director of transportation
Valeri Volodin: president of the Russian Federation
Mikhail “Misha” Grankin: director of the Kremlin Security Council (Russian intelligence)
Arkady Diburov: chairman of the board of directors of Gazprom, Russian natural gas company
Andrei Limonov (Mr. Ivanov): Russian private equity manager
Vlad Kozlov (Mr. Popov): intelligence operative in the Kremlin Security Council
Yegor Morozov: intelligence operative in the Kremlin Security Council
Tatiana Molchanova: television newscaster, Novorossiya (Channel Seven)
Martina Jaeger: Dutch contract killer
Braam Jaeger: Dutch contract killer
Terry Walker: president and CEO of BlackHole Bitcoin Exchange, cryptocurrency trader
Kate Walker: wife of Terry Walker
Noah Walker: son of Terry and Kate Walker
Eglė Banytė: president of Lithuania
Marion Schöngarth: president of the Federal Republic of Germany
Salvatore: Italian paparazzo
Christine von Langer: former CIA case officer
Herkus Zarkus: Lithuanian fiber-optic network technician; Land Force soldier
Linus Sabonis: director, Lithuanian State Security Department
ARAS: Lithuanian police antiterrorist operations unit
ASROC: Antisubmarine rocket
ASW: Antisubmarine warfare
CIA: Central Intelligence Agency
CNO: Chief of Naval Operations
CIWS: Phalanx close-in weapons system
DIA: Defense Intelligence Agency
FSB: Federal’naya Sluzhba Bezopasnosti, Russian State Security
JSOC: Joint Special Operations Command
NATO: North Atlantic Treaty Organization
NGA: National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency
NSA: National Security Agency
ODNI: Office of the Director of National Intelligence
ONI: Office of Naval Intelligence
RAT: Remote Administration Tool
SAU: Search and Attack Unit
SIPRNet: Secret Internet Protocol Router Network — Classified network for U.S. Intelligence community
SOF: Special Operations Forces
TAC: Tactical Air Controller
TAO: Tactical Action Officer
USWE: Undersea Warfare Evaluator
VHRJTF: Very High Readiness Joint Task Force — NATO
PROLOGUE
The Norwegians sold their secret submarine base to the Russians, and they did it on eBay.
Really.
In truth, the transaction was conducted on Finn.no, the regional equivalent of the online trading site, and the purchaser was not the Kremlin but a private buyer who immediately rented out the facility to a Russian state-owned concern. Still, the base was the only non-Russian permanent military installation on the strategically important Barents Sea, and the very fact that NATO condoned the sale in the first place spoke volumes about the organization’s readiness for war.
And it also said something about Russia’s intentions. When the purchaser clicked buy, Norway gave up Olavsvern Royal Norwegian Navy Base for five million U.S. dollars, a third of what Norway was asking and a pitiful one percent of what NATO spent building it in the first place.
With this purchase Russia won two important victories: It gave them the strategically located installation to use as they saw fit, and took it out of the hands of the West.
Olavsvern is an impressive facility, something out of a Bond film. Carved into the side of a mountain near the city of Tromsø north of the Arctic Circle, it has direct access to the sea and contains underground tunnels, massive submarine bays with blast-proof doors, a dry dock capable of receiving large warships, a 3,000-square-meter deep-water quay, infantry barracks with emergency power, and more than 160,000 square feet of space that is virtually impervious to a direct nuclear attack because it is hewn deep into the rock.
At the time of the sale, those in favor — including the Norwegian prime minister — rolled their eyes at anyone who said such a deal was ill-advised; the buyer promised that the Russians would use the facility to service their oil rigs — the Russians drilled all over the Barents Sea, after all, so there was nothing nefarious about that. But once the ink was dry, the oil-industry ruse was quickly forgotten, and the massive mountainside submarine lair was promptly employed to house a fleet of Russian scientific research vessels for a state-owned concern run by Kremlin insiders.
And those who knew about Russia’s Navy and intelligence infrastructure in the Arctic knew research vessels often worked hand in hand with both parties, conducting surveillance and even moving combat mini-submarines around in international waters.
The Norwegian prime minister who sanctioned the deal with the Russians soon left office, only to become the new secretary general of NATO. Shortly thereafter, Russia moved its Northern Fleet to full combat readiness, and it increased activity out of the Barents Sea fivefold as compared to the last of the days when Olavsvern maintained a watchful eye over them.