Debt of Honor
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| Debt of Honor | |
 1st edition cover |
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| Author | Tom Clancy |
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| Country | United States |
| Language | English |
| Series | Ryanverse |
| Genre(s) | thriller, novel |
| Publisher | Putnam |
| Publication date | 1994 (1st edition) |
| Media type | print (hardback & paperback) |
| Pages | 766 pp (hardback edition) 990pp (paperback edition) |
| ISBN | ISBN 0-399-13954-0 (hardback edition) |
| Preceded by | The Sum of All Fears |
| Followed by | Executive Orders |
Debt of Honor (1994) is a novel by Tom Clancy. It is a continuation of the series featuring his character Jack Ryan. In this installment, Ryan has become the National Security Advisor when the Japanese government (controlled by a group of corporate tycoons known as the Zaibatsu) goes to war with the United States. One of the sub-plots in this novel (on occupying the Siberian "Northern Resource Area") would later form part of the main plot of Clancy's later novel The Bear and the Dragon.
[edit] Plot summary
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This article may require cleanup to meet Wikipedia's quality standards. Please improve this article if you can. (December 2008) |
On Interstate 40 in Eastern Tennessee, a car accident involving a tractor-trailer and two Japanese-made cars results in the death of six people (2 adults, 2 teenagers, and 1 infant-her twin would have died, had it not been for the trucker.) The accident involves the failure of both gas tanks in the Japanese cars, which causes an explosion. It is revealed that the Japanese-made gas tanks were manufactured below proper safety standards, which caused them to fail. This results in Congress passing the "Trade Reform Act", enabling the United States to mirror the trade practices of the countries that it imports goods from. The bill is immediately used against Japanese goods, and results in an increasing backlog of imported products which begins to hurt the Japanese economy. Facing a perceived economic crisis, a group called Zaibatsu decides to seize Japan and take military action to safeguard the Japanese economy. Along with China and India, the plan involves curtailing the American presence in the Pacific in an effort to reestablish the Greater East Asia Co-Prosperity Sphere, which includes a possible Chinese-Japanese invasion of Siberia to secure its extensive resources. The earlier part of the novel implies that the Zaibatsu was planning to seize Japan anyway, and used the economic crisis as an excuse.
Japan begins its part of the operation against the U.S. by launching torpedoes at two of the U.S. Navy’s Pacific Fleet aircraft carriers and two submarines at the conclusion of a joint U.S.-Japan naval exercise, destroying both submarines and crippling the carriers. Simultaneously, the Japanese cabal engineers the collapse of the American stock market (through the use of witting and unwitting personnel who electronically wipe out the computerized records of all transactions on Wall Street), leaving America at a huge economic disadvantage. Meanwhile, units of Japan's Self-Defense Forces occupy the Marianas Islands (as part of the grand plan involving China and India), specifically Saipan and Guam. The Zaibatsu, actually its leader Raizo Yamata, believe that these two elements, combined with the acquisition of Russian SS-19 ICBMs and nuclear warheads under the cover of the Japanese space program, will be enough to force the United States to negotiate a truce.
As the U.S. and Japanese delegates negotiate to avoid further bloodshed in what is now called the "Pacific Crisis," newly appointed National Security Advisor Jack Ryan and Russia's SVR determines Japan's covert actions and in the process discovers the overall plan by Japan, India and China to eliminate U.S. influence in the Pacific. Fearful of an impending nuclear war between China and Russia, Ryan convinces President Roger Durling that the U.S. must take immediate action to stop the Japanese occupation, which Ryan hopes will derail the efforts of India and China. As a result, the United States commits two separate surgical strikes against Japan, resulting in the death of nearly all the Zaibatsu and the elimination of the Japanese presence in the Mariana Islands. The U.S. and Europe also perform a "reset" on the stock market that wipes out the Zaibatsu's planned gains from the previous sabotage and rescue the kidnapped former Japanese prime minister who later forces a cowardly, Zaibatsu-controlled PM to resign in disgrace.
The ending also has coincidental parallels with the September 11, 2001 attacks, although the disaster is not caused by hijackers. An embittered Japan Air Lines pilot, avenging the deaths of his son and brother — killed during the Pacific conflict — flies his Boeing 747 directly into the U.S. Capitol building during a joint session of Congress[1] assembled to vote on President Durling's nomination of Ryan to fill the just-vacated office of Vice-President, the sitting Vice-President having resigned due to a sex scandal. Nearly the entire United States presidential line of succession is eliminated, including the President, most of Congress, nearly all of the Cabinet, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and all nine Supreme Court Justices. Ryan, who has just been confirmed as Vice President moments before, narrowly escapes the attack and is immediately sworn in as President. He begins his term of office in the immediate sequel, Executive Orders.
[edit] References
- ^ Clancy, Tom (1995). Debt of Honor. The Berkeley Publishing Group. p. 975. ISBN 0-425-14758-4.
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