Support and Defend

by Tom Clancy

Dominic “Dom” Caruso is in India, training with former Israeli commando Arik Yacoby on a six-week training program in Krav Maga. One night, the Yacoby family are attacked in a home invasion, which ends with one of the intruders detonating a suicide vest, killing the whole family and injuring Caruso. It was later revealed that the attack on Yacoby was the result of a recent data breach in the National Security Council (NSC), which staffer Ethan Ross inadvertently set into motion when he took top secret files and shared them with an international whistleblowing organization called the International Transparency Project (ITP).

After the attack, the NSC schedules a lie detector test, which leads Ross to panic. He was then asked by ITP head Gianni Bertoli to scrape the government’s servers for classified data and store them in a flash drive as insurance in case the techniques for “beating the polygraph” does not work. Unbeknownst to them, the flash drive was provided by Iranian agent Mohammed Mobasheri, who had infiltrated ITP. Meanwhile, Caruso acquires help from David, a Mossad agent who was also investigating Yacoby’s death.

When the lie detector test does not work, Ethan is forced to flee the country with the flash drive by offering classified intelligence to Venezuela in exchange for safe passage. He was then kept in a safe house in Panama; Caruso finds this out from David. His boss from The Campus, Gerry Hendley, sends director of transportation Adara Sherman to accompany him in surveilling the safehouse. However, the Russian government had taken interest in Ross through their connections in Venezuela, and try to snatch him. Caruso and Sherman dispatch the GRU forces, but Ross, Bertoli and Mobasheri escape.

With David’s help, Caruso learns that Ross is on Geneva, Switzerland, the global headquarters of the ITP; he as well as FBI agents proceed there to apprehend the rogue staffer. Bertoli had arranged a press conference where Ross can go public about the top secret files that he had stolen from the NSC servers. However, the two become suspicious of Mobasheri’s true intentions. With the FBI agents approaching, he abducts Ross and Bertoli, intending to escape to Libya; the ITP leader is later killed. Caruso chases them to a chalet in the Alps.

Caruso sees Ross being tortured by Mobasheri for the password to the data scrape. Outnumbered, he decides to kill him using a sniper rifle; the Iranian and his henchmen later flee the scene with the flash drive. Caruso manages to contact the local CIA deputy station chief in order to dispatch an infantry platoon training nearby to block Mobasheri’s escape. Caruso then apprehends Mobasheri and secures the data scrape.