Clear and Present Danger
51 pages • 1-hour read
Tom ClancyClear and Present Danger
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Chapters 14-19Chapter Summaries & Analyses
Content Warning: This section of the guide includes discussion of graphic violence, death, and attempted death by suicide.
Chapter 14 Summary: “Snatch and Grab”
Moira Wolfe and “Juan Diaz” (aka Felix Cortez) go to a romantic hotel with no televisions or newspapers. When Wolfe tells Cortez about the FBI’s plan to seize laundered cartel money, Cortez suspects that the cartel might try to kill the FBI Director during his visit to Colombia. He is relieved when Wolfe cuts their weekend trip short, and he returns to Colombia. Wolfe also returns home and is horrified to learn of her boss’s death.
Chavez’s battalion is ordered to kill the airfield guards, booby-trap the airfield, and pull out. They successfully kill the guards but are surprised by new arrivals while setting the booby-traps. Four additional cartel members are killed in an explosion. The troops of operation SHOWBOAT are successfully removed to Panama, although Ramirez and the other captains are not told why.
John Clark receives orders for a new plan to take down the cartel, which is not revealed. Meanwhile, Tim Jackson is surprised to learn that Chavez was not sent to the Army training camp, as he formerly believed. In Washington, James Greer is furious to hear that Jack Ryan is being left out of security briefings on Colombia and insists that Ryan get involved.
Chapter 15 Summary: “Deliverymen”
Clark flies to San Diego to hand-deliver operations orders to the commanding officer of a bomber squadron based on the aircraft carrier Ranger. When the officer expresses concern about the targets of the mission, Clark insists that they are not really people.
In Bogota, Cortez confronts Escobedo about killing Jacobs and making Cortez’s connection with Moira Wolfe meaningless. When Escobedo is dismissive in response, Cortez decides to supplant him in the cartel hierarchy. Meanwhile in Panama, Chavez and the other SHOWBOAT troops learn of the explosion in Bogota and correctly guess that they are being sent back into the country for a new mission.
In Washington, Executive Assistant Director (Investigations) Bill Shaw becomes acting head of the FBI. Along with Daniel Murray, he begins an investigation into Jacobs’s death and concludes that the Colombians must have had insider knowledge of the trip. They are devastated to learn that Moira was responsible for the leak.
Chapter 16 Summary: “Target List”
When a Mobile, Alabama police officer is gunned down in front of his home, investigators discover signs in his home that he was observing the owner of the Empire Builder and passing information to the cartel. They try to keep this information private, but Mark Bright realizes that it is likely connected to the FBI’s asset seizure operation. Daniel Murray concludes that Escobedo and the cartels have infiltrated deep into the American government.
Meanwhile, Edward Stuart disguises himself as a Coast Guard officer and sneaks onto a military base to question the crew of the Panache on the arrest of his clients Jesús Castillo and Ramón Capati. Stuart records the men admitting that they drugged both men and staged a mock execution. He presents this recording to Attorney General Edwin Davidoff in hopes of making a deal to avoid the death penalty for his clients.
Moira Wolfe admits that she told her new lover “Juan Diaz” about the FBI Director’s trip, and Murray and Shaw quickly realize that Diaz is Cortez. Horrified about her role in his death, Wolfe attempts to die by suicide.
Chapter 17 Summary: “Execution”
Chavez and his battalion stakeout and then ambush a cocaine-processing camp deep in the mountains of Colombia. Chavez kills several of the workers, and chases after another who escapes, killing him at close range. Chavez is forced to carry the man back to camp, and his clothes become soaked with blood. Afterwards, both Chavez and Ramirez privately wonder what the goal of their mission is.
Tim Jackson receives an angry phone call from Colonel O’Mara of Special Operations Command, ordering him to stop investigating Chavez’s disappearance. Meanwhile, his brother Robert boards a warship called the Ranger, which he believes is headed for a training mission far out to sea. On board, he learns about a new stealth bomb designed to leave no trace.
In Colombia, the cartel leaders decide to meet at a heavily guarded home in the hills to discuss the sabotage of their airfields and production facilities. Ritter intercepts messages related to the meeting and dispatches the Ranger and John Clark to execute a new plan.
Chapter 18 Summary: “Force Majeure”
Sergeant Mitchell, a friend of Tim Jackson, is unable to find a record of Chavez at Special Operations command, despite confirming that he is supposed to be there. He begins to believe that the Army deliberately deleted Chavez’s records.
In Colombia, Clark and Carlos Larson stake out the heavily guarded home in the hills where the cartel leaders are meeting. While the pilots and crew of the Ranger run training drills, the commanding officer, Jensen, runs a secret mission, dropping a precision stealth bomb on a car near the home. Four cartel leaders are killed in the explosion, as is the family of one of the leaders. Felix Cortez, who was sent to the home to represent Escobedo, arrives late and survives. NSA Advisor Cutter is horrified to hear of the civilian deaths, disgusting Ritter, who believes “collateral damage” is to be expected in military operations.
A member of Chavez’s battalion is killed while taking out a production facility, devastating the group.
Chapter 19 Summary: “Fallout”
Word quickly spreads of the explosion. Jack Ryan learns via cable news, and immediately suspects American involvement, though he is surprised he wasn’t alerted in advance. On board the Ranger, Robert Jackson learns about the explosion and suspects that the warship was covertly used as a base for the mission. At Fort Ord, Tim Jackson realizes that Chavez was likely a part of the mission that resulted in the explosion. In Colombia, Felix Cortez suspects his initial theory of a car bomb is incorrect.
The President is horrified to learn that civilians, including children, were killed in the attack on the cartel, knowing that it will not go over well with the public. Governor Robert Fowler, the man likely to be nominated to run against the President in the upcoming election, publicly states that the attack would constitute murder if the United States were responsible. Fowler’s remarks force the President to publicly deny involvement. Cutter leaks a story to the press suggesting that the explosion was inter-cartel violence resulting from disagreements about the attack on the FBI Director.
In Alabama, local police vow not to let the Empire Builder “pirates” escape the death penalty.
Chapters 14-19 Analysis
After the explosion at the cartel meeting, the novel’s antagonists begin to lose control of the surrounding action as secondary characters move into action. The conspiracy behind operation SHOWBOAT starts to unravel as Tim Jackson, an Army lieutenant who previously worked with Domingo Chavez, and his brother Robert Jackson both begin to realize what is going on. Jack Ryan’s sudden decision to involve himself in the Colombia affair, despite CIA Director Ritter’s warnings, also suggests that he is also close to uncovering the conspiracy. Meanwhile, dissent is brewing within the operation, as Captain Ramirez realizes that their deadly raid on a cocaine production facility had accomplished “nothing at all, really […] they hadn’t made a dent in the trade” (350). At the same time, chaos is brewing within the cartel itself as Feliz Cortez begins making plans to usurp the position of the cartel leader Ernesto Escobedo. Across this section of the novel, powerful institutions like the CIA and the Colombian drug cartel begin to lose power as smaller characters move into action.
The Moral Ambiguity of Covert Operations appears through discussions of collateral damage and corrupt police. The concept of “collateral damage” implies that not all deaths are equal. The pilot responsible for dropping the bomb on the cartel meeting acknowledges that innocent people might be hit, but reflects that “worrying about ‘collateral damage’ wasn’t strictly his concern” (318), focusing instead on eliminating the cartel. He ultimately concludes that “he felt sorry” (318) for the family members killed in the explosion, “but not all that sorry” (318), as “fate had already selected [them] to be in the wrong place” (318). Here, the pilot suggests that the deaths of the cartel leaders’ families were justifiable because they were simply the byproduct of the justifiable deaths of the cartel leaders themselves—a rationale that reflects his unwillingness to consider his own moral culpability in the mission.
These chapters reflect a particular interest in how ambiguous morality intersects with the strict hierarchy of the military and intelligence communities, reflecting The Abuse of Power in the American Government. The bomber’s co-pilot tells him that he “ain’t likely to have a conscience attack” (380) about the deaths of innocents, reasoning that if “the White House says it’s okay, that means it’s really okay” (380). This idea is echoed by Domingo Chavez and his battalion, who kill unarmed workers because “their country had decided that [they] were enemies worthy of death. That was that” (286). Although Chavez and Captain Ramirez eventually begin to question the purpose of the operation, they repeatedly refer back to this hierarchy while attempting to justify the collateral deaths they cause. These reactions show how unthinking obedience to violent orders can enable abuse of power to continue instead of being addressed.
Furthermore, this willingness to consider innocent lives “collateral damage” in the war on the cartel is contradicted elsewhere by a willingness to hide police misconduct related to the cartel. When it is revealed that an unnamed Alabama police officer was working with the cartel, his colleagues immediately conspire to hide evidence that he was “a dirty cop” (310). The detective investigating the case, a colleague of the guilty officer, explicitly hopes to mislead the FBI to “protect the name of a man who had certainly been a dirty cop” (320). This conspiracy reflects a belief that not everyone who works with the cartel is a bad person, reflecting the double standards and biases at play when those at fault are Americans instead of Latin American citizens.
Crucially, Jack Ryan is depicted in this section as the antithesis to this kind of moral ambiguity. In the chapter describing his decision to get personally involved in the action in Colombia, the novel describes Ryan as “a man who believed that Right and Wrong really existed as discrete and identifiable values” (389). This characterization positions Ryan against the morally ambiguous characters in the novel, highlighting his role as the hero.
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