{"product_id":"command-authority-isbn-9780425275139","title":"Command Authority","description":"\u003cb\u003e\u003cb\u003eIn this Jack Ryan thriller, #1 \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestselling author Tom Clancy delivers an electrifying story of intrigue, power, and a family with two generations of heroes….\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003eDecades ago, as a young CIA analyst, President Jack Ryan Sr. was sent out to investigate the death of an operative—only to uncover the existence of a KGB assassin codenamed Zenith. He was never able to find the killer....\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eIn the present, a new strongman has emerged in the ever-chaotic Russian republic—the enigmatic President Valeri Volodon. But the foundations of his personal empire are built on a bloody secret from his past. And none who know of it have lived to tell. For he has set a plot in motion—a plot to return Russia to its former glory.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut when a family friend of Ryan’s is poisoned by a radioactive agent, the trail leads to Russia. And Jack Ryan Jr.—aided by his compatriots John Clark and the covert warriors of the secretive Campus—must delve into an international conflict thirty years in the making, and finish what his father started.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eWith President Ryan fighting the political battle of his life, and his son fighting a silent war against a ruthless foe, global conflict becomes imminent—and the possibility of survival may soon be lost for all....\u003cb\u003ePraise for \u003ci\u003eCommand Authority\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“Once again, the acrid scent of cordite wafted through my imagination during the climactic gun battle as Clancy’s characters from the world of intelligence achieved yet another victory over the forces of evil.”—\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Times\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e “Vintage Clancy...A pleasing fairytale for people who like things that blow up.”—\u003ci\u003eKirkus Reviews\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cb\u003eMore Praise for Tom Clancy\u003c\/b\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“He constantly taps the current world situation for its imminent dangers and spins them into an engrossing tale.”—\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe New York Times Book Review\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“A brilliant describer of events.”—\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003eThe Washington Post\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e“No one can equal his talent for making military electronics and engineering intelligible and exciting...He remains the best!”—\u003ci\u003e\u003ci\u003eHouston Chronicle\u003c\/i\u003e\u003c\/i\u003eA little more than thirty years ago \u003cb\u003eTom Clancy \u003c\/b\u003ewas a Maryland insurance broker with a passion for naval history. Years before, he had been an English major at Baltimore’s Loyola College and had always dreamed of writing a novel. His first effort, \u003ci\u003eThe Hunt for Red October\u003c\/i\u003e—the first of the phenomenally successful Jack Ryan novels—sold briskly as a result of rave reviews, then catapulted onto the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestseller list after President Reagan pronounced it “the perfect yarn.” From that day forward, Clancy established himself as an undisputed master at blending exceptional realism and authenticity, intricate plotting, and razor-sharp suspense. He passed away in October 2013.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003e\u003cbr\u003eMark Greaney\u003c\/b\u003e has a degree in international relations and political science. In his research for the\u003ci\u003e \u003c\/i\u003eGray Man novels, including \u003ci\u003eMission Critical\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eAgent in Place\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eGunmetal Gray\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBack Blast\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eDead Eye\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eBallistic\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eOn Target\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eThe Gray Man\u003c\/i\u003e, he traveled to more than fifteen countries and trained alongside military and law enforcement in the use of firearms, battlefield medicine, and close-range combative tactics. He is also the author of the \u003ci\u003eNew York Times\u003c\/i\u003e bestsellers \u003ci\u003eTom Clancy Support and Defend\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTom Clancy Full Force and Effect\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eTom Clancy Commander in Chief\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eTom Clancy True Faith and Allegiance\u003c\/i\u003e. With Tom Clancy, he coauthored \u003ci\u003eLocked On\u003c\/i\u003e, \u003ci\u003eThreat Vector\u003c\/i\u003e, and \u003ci\u003eCommand Authority\u003c\/i\u003e.\u003cp\u003e2\u003c\/p\u003e\u003cp\u003eThe Russian Federation invaded its sovereign neighbor on the first moonless night of spring. By dawn their tanks ground westward along highways and back roads as if the countryside belonged to them, as if the quarter-century thaw from the Cold War had been a dream.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e This was not supposed to happen here. This was Estonia, after all, and Estonia was a NATO member state. The politicians in Tallinn had promised their people that Russia would never attack them now that they had joined the alliance.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut so far, NATO was a no-show in this war.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Russian ground invasion was led by T-90s—fully modernized fifty-ton tanks with a 125-millimeter main gun and two heavy machine guns, explosive-reactive armor, and a state-of-the-art automated countermeasure system that detected inbound missiles and then launched missiles of its own to kill them in midair. And behind the T-90 warhorses, BTR-80 armored transporters carried troops in their bellies, disgorging them when necessary to provide cover for the tanks, and then retrieving them when all threats had been neutralized.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eSo far, the land war was proceeding nominally for the Russian Federation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eBut it was a different story in the air.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Estonia had a good missile defense system, and Russia’s attack on their early-warning systems and SAM sites had been only marginally successful. Many SAM batteries were still operational, and they had shot down more than a dozen Russian aircraft and kept dozens of others from executing their missions over the nation.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThe Russians did not yet own the skies, but this had not slowed down their land advance at all.\u003cbr\u003e In the first four hours of the war, villages were flattened, towns lay in rubble, and many of the tanks had yet to fire their main guns. It was a rout in the making, and anyone who knew anything about military science could have seen it coming, because the tiny nation of Estonia had focused on diplomacy, not on its physical defense.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEdgar Nõlvak had seen it coming, not because he was a soldier or a politician—he was a schoolteacher—but he had seen it coming because he watched television. Now as he lay in a ditch, bloody and cold, wet and shaking from fear, his ears half destroyed from the sustained crashing of detonating shells fired from the Russian tanks poking out of the tree line on the far side of the field, he retained the presence of mind to wish like hell his country’s leaders had not wasted time with diplomacy in Brussels, and had instead spent their time constructing a \u003ci\u003efucking\u003c\/i\u003e wall to keep the \u003ci\u003efucking\u003c\/i\u003e Russians out of his \u003ci\u003efucking\u003c\/i\u003e village.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eThere had been talk of an invasion for weeks, and then, days earlier, a bomb exploded over the border in Russia, killing eighteen civilians. On the television the Russians blamed the Estonian Internal Security Service, a preposterous claim given credence by Russia’s slick and state-sponsored media. They showed their manufactured proof and then the Russian president said he had no choice but to order a security operation into Estonia to protect the Russian people.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003eEdgar Nõlvak lived in Põlva; it was forty kilometers from the border, and he’d spent his youth in the seventies and eighties fearing that someday tanks would appear in that very tree line and shell his home. But over the past twenty-three years that fear had been all but forgotten.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e Now the tanks were here, they’d killed scores of his fellow townspeople, and they would surely kill him with barely a pause on their way west.\u003c\/p\u003e","brand":"G.P. 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