Command Authority

by Tom Clancy

Former KGB officer Valeri Volodin becomes president of Russia. Openly critical of the United States, he secretly tasks Russian domestic intelligence (FSB) with staging false flag attacks in an effort to justify an invasion of Ukraine. A bomb is detonated in a restaurant in Russia, killing Russian foreign intelligence (SVR) head Stanislav Biryukov; simultaneously, former SVR head Sergey Golovko falls ill to polonium poisoning while visiting his old friend, President Jack Ryan, in the White House. Volodin accuses the American government of orchestrating the recent incidents, and then announces the merger of the SVR and the FSB into one entity led by Roman Talanov, the mysterious head of FSB.

In Sevastopol, a CIA special mission compound comes under attack from pro-Russia protesters aided by FSB proxy agents. Campus operatives John Clark, Domingo "Ding" Chavez, and Dominic "Dom" Caruso, who are on the ground in Ukraine to gather intelligence on Russian criminal organization Seven Strong Men and its head Gleb the Scar, take part in defending the compound in a tense battle between the protesters and Delta Force operators guarding the compound. Even though the compound's cover as a State Department facility was preserved, Volodin nevertheless decides to invade Ukraine, intent on pushing his troops all the way to the capital of Kiev. President Ryan sends a few military troops to assist Ukrainian soldiers in the conflict with Russian forces as well as to prevent them from reaching Kiev.

Meanwhile, illegal" Victor Oxley, who was tasked by British intelligence with tracking down and eliminating Zenith, who is indeed Talanov. Oxley had crossed paths with his father, then a CIA analyst investigating the murders on behalf of British foreign intelligence, in West Berlin just before he got caught by the East German Stasi; he was then shipped off to the KGB and imprisoned in a gulag for years.

When Ryan finds out that the Zenith affair was connected to his case involving Galbraith, he (along with Oxley and fellow Campus operatives Chavez, Caruso and Sam Driscoll) confronts his boss Hugh Castor in his chalet outside off the grid. He also reveals that Talanov is essentially the leader of the Seven Strong Men (making him expendable to the criminal organization since he was KGB), and that Dmitri Nesterov is Gleb the Scar who is directly involved in Golovko's death. However, Spetsnaz forces sent by Talanov attack the chalet and kill Oxley and Castor. Ryan and his Campus operators manage to dispatch the attackers and flee the scene.

Back in Kiev, Clark, Chavez, Caruso, and Driscoll aid Delta Force operators in capturing Nesterov in the Seven Strong Men's heavily-guarded base of operations. Having been fully informed by his son, President Ryan talks to Volodin, demanding the halt of the Russian Army's advance into Kiev in exchange for Volodin not to be linked with the Seven Strong Men. Russia ceases operations in Ukraine and pulls back. Two days later, Talanov resigns from his position and is subsequently murdered by one of his own guards.