Terminal Velocity

This novel is part of the long-running Tom Clancy series featuring the Ryan family and their intelligence network. It follows several previous installments, including Tom Clancy Shadow State and Tom Clancy Line of Demarcation, also by M.P. Woodward.

A prologue set twenty years before the main narrative introduces Fahim Bajwa, a seventeen-year-old student at an elite prep school in Avignon, France. Fahim is the son of a sex worker of Turkish descent named Claudette and an unknown father, his education funded by a blind trust through a Swiss bank. At a mosque in Marseille, a religious scholar called the Mullah Fawwah reveals that the trust was established not by a wealthy Gulf Arab, as Fahim believed, but by the Emir of the Umayyad Revolutionary Council, a terrorist leader who considers himself the true heir of Muhammad. The Emir also fathered Fahim's younger half brother, Rafa. Before permitting Fahim to leave for the Sorbonne in Paris, the mullah demands he prove his loyalty through an islah, an act of jihad: Rafa hands Fahim a pistol and orders him to kill their mother. Terrified but reasoning they will execute Claudette regardless and kill him if he refuses, Fahim accepts the gun and carries out the act.

In the present day, Sheriff Mitch Whitcomb of Clarkston, Washington, responds to a barn fire at a remote ranch and discovers four bodies: Cole Hunt, a retired SEAL Team Six operator, his wife Marla, and their two children, bound to chairs, shot in the head, and burned. The crime scene is meticulously sterile. Federal agents arrive swiftly, signaling that Hunt was no ordinary civilian.

Attorney General Dan Murray and Director of National Intelligence Mary Pat Foley brief President Jack Ryan, Sr., in the Oval Office. Hunt is the third former special operator from a counterterrorism operation called POSEIDON SPEAR to be murdered alongside family members. SPEAR was a joint effort to dismantle the Umayyad Revolutionary Council after the Campus, a covert intelligence unit funded through a private equity firm called Hendley Associates and run by retired SEAL John Clark, captured and interrogated the Emir. Intelligence suggests the Emir's son, Rafa bin Yasin, is recruiting ISIS veterans into a movement called the Umayyad Caliphate in the disputed Kashmir region between India and Pakistan. The President orders protection for remaining SPEAR participants but declines direct military action in Kashmir, where India, Pakistan, and China all possess nuclear weapons and a previous border incident nearly escalated to nuclear war. He instructs Murray and Foley to find the mole leaking operative identities.

Murray and Foley recruit Clark at his Virginia farm. Clark assigns former FBI agent Mandy Cobb and IT specialist Gavin Biery to hunt the mole domestically. Former Delta operator Bartosz "Midas" Jankowski will infiltrate Pakistan using his old mujahideen contact, Rustam, to locate Rafa. Retired SEAL Master Chief Kendrick Moore will lead an airborne strike team.

Meanwhile, Jack Ryan, Jr., a Campus operative, travels with his fiancée, Lisanne Robertson, the Campus logistics director, to India for the wedding of Lisanne's college friend, surgeon Srini Rai, who recently fitted Lisanne with an advanced prosthetic arm. Srini's father, Daval Rai, is the founder of Assurance Global Industries (AGI), a massive global construction firm. On the train to Amritsar, Jack detects an armed man who has followed them since the U.S. embassy in Delhi. Jack lures the pursuer into a trap at a rural train station; the man detonates two thermobaric grenades, explosive devices that generate intense pressure waves. Jack hurls them into a septic hole beneath the building, and the blast launches him and Lisanne into the surrounding brush. They escape on freight trains.

At the Rai compound, Daval showcases AGI's projects, including a rail bridge across the Karakoram Gorge in northern Pakistan. Clark contacts Jack and tasks him with getting Midas across the Pakistani border using AGI credentials as cover. Jack drives north and detects a vehicle following him, occupied by two Albanian mercenaries employed by Fahim Bajwa, now AGI's chief operating officer. Fahim serves as the crucial link between Rafa and their mole inside Pakistan's Inter-Services Intelligence (ISI), Brigadier General Imran Khan, using AGI's corporate infrastructure to smuggle weapons and move operatives. Fahim's ultimate ambition is to eliminate the Rai family at the bridge dedication and seize AGI's chairmanship. Jack disables the mercenaries' vehicle, escapes under fire, and delivers Midas to Rustam at the border.

In eastern Washington, Gavin discovers a hidden cell phone at the Hunt ranch and traces its data traffic to South Asia. Using a custom AI engine, he follows a digital trail to a rental house near the Tri-Cities area of Washington, recently vacated by two foreign men. The trail leads to AGI's wind farm on federal land adjacent to the Hanford nuclear reservation. There, jihadis have loaded construction explosives into trucks targeting a plutonium waste storage site near the Columbia River. When Fahim's Albanian operatives open fire on the investigators, Mandy is knocked unconscious and stops breathing. Gavin performs CPR to revive her.

Deep in Pakistan, Midas and Rustam locate Rafa's fighters at an ancient caravansary. Midas fires on Rafa through his sniper scope, but a phone call from Fahim, relaying Khan's intelligence, alerts the terrorists to his position. Rafa survives the shot, protected by a metal breastplate, and his fighters charge. Midas is wounded before Rustam evacuates him.

At the National Counterterrorism Center (NCTC), Mary Pat confirms that Brigadier Khan, who served in POSEIDON SPEAR, has been trading American operative names to Rafa through Fahim. Clark coordinates an aerial insertion: A C-17 military transport, spoofing a FedEx flight, launches two experimental RAVEN pods at 49,000 feet over Tajikistan. After an hour of powered glider flight, the pods split apart, and Moore, Marine Raider Staff Sergeant Tom Buck, and Campus operators Cary and Jad parachute to the ground guided by Jack's infrared beacon. At dawn, they assault the caravansary and kill 15 fighters, but Rafa has departed for the Karakoram Gorge. In an underground cave, they recover laptops revealing schematics for the bridge ambush and the Hanford attack, code-named At-Takwir, a Quranic reference to the Day of Judgment.

Clark relays the intelligence. Murray activates the National Asset Command, and Hanford is locked down. Federal response teams neutralize all six militants at the wind farm. President Ryan calls China's president to coordinate protection of the Chinese delegation aboard the AGI train, then authorizes the counterassault.

Jack races to rejoin the train at the village of Khaibar. Lisanne forges media passes so Moore, Buck, and Jad can board the rear press car, while Cary and Midas take overwatch above the tunnel. As the train enters the tunnel, Rafa's fighters block it with a dump truck. Moore's team engages terrorists from the roof. Inside the lounge car, Rafa seizes the VIP passengers and orders Jack to recite the Shahada, the Islamic declaration of faith, before his execution on live television. Jack pretends to comply, then draws a concealed Glock from an ankle holster and shoots Rafa in the forehead. Lisanne simultaneously kills two guards. Fahim screams at Khan to shoot the survivors. Khan picks up a fallen carbine and shoots Fahim dead, then turns the weapon toward the others. Lisanne grazes Khan's skull, and Moore, Jad, and Buck crash through the windows and kill the brigadier.

Three weeks later at Hendley Associates, Clark awards Bronze Stars to Buck, Cary, and Jad. The NCTC has rolled up three dormant Umayyad cells in the United States. Investigation confirms that Fahim was Rafa's half brother and that Khan had been running Fahim as an ISI agent for years. When Lisanne presses Jack about setting a wedding date, he hesitates too long. She kisses him, tells him he is a good man but not the marrying type, slides off her engagement ring, and walks out.