The US President, along with most of the Cabinet and Congress, is dead. Dazed and confused, the man who only minutes before had been confirmed as the new Vice-President of the United States is told that he is now President. President John Patrick Ryan. With stunning force, Ryan's responsibilities crush on him. He must calm an anxious and grieving nation, all while attempting to reconstitute a Cabinet and a Congress with the greatest possible speed.

Charged with spotting terrorist threats, the top-secret "Campus" has its hands full when Middle East thugs and Colombian drug lords join forces. New Campus recruits include Jack Ryan Jr., son of master spy John Patrick Ryan, now President.

It is The Campus. Secretly created under the administration of President Jack Ryan, its sole purpose is to eliminate terrorists and those who protect them. Officially, it has no connection to the American government - a necessity in a time when those in power consider themselves above such arcane ideals as loyalty, justice, and right or wrong.

Peace may finally be at hand in the Middle East - as Deputy Director of the CIA Jack Ryan lays the groundwork for a peace plan that could end centuries of conflict. But ruthless terrorists have a final, desperate card to play: they have their hands on a nuclear weapon and have placed it on American soil in the midst of an escalation in tension with the Soviet Union. The terrorists hope to rekindle cold war animosity and prevent reconciliation between Israelis and Palestinians.

Whether hunting warlords in Japan, druglords in Colombia, or nuclear terrorists in the United States, John Clark is efficient and deadly ? but even he has ghosts in his past, demons that must be exorcised. And nothing is more demonic than the peril he must face as the commander of a covert multi-national anti-terrorism squad known as Rainbow. Almost as soon as the group is formed, three terrorist attacks occur that seem unrelated at first, but may be the beginning of a new brand of terrorism like nothing the world has ever encountered before.

At what point does criminal activity threaten national security? When can a nation respond to it as to an enemy? These are the questions Jack Ryan must consider when he hears the awful news: Colombian drug lords, tired of being harassed by US law enforcement agents, have assassinated three high American officials, and that is just the beginning. The message is clear: Leave us alone. But they have pushed too far. Someone steps quietly over the line they have drawn, deploying covert-action teams in Colombia, intending to take the fight to the enemy.

Jack Ryan has only just moved back into the Oval Office when he is faced with a new international threat. An aborted coup in the People's Republic of China has left President Wei Zhen Lin with no choice but to agree with the expansionist policies of General Su Ke Quiang. They have declared the South China Sea a protectorate and are planning an invasion of Taiwan. The Ryan administration is determined to thwart China’s ambitions, but the stakes are dangerously high as a new breed of powerful Chinese anti-ship missiles endanger the US Navy's plans to protect the island.

Decades ago, when he was a young CIA analyst, President Jack Ryan, Sr. was sent on what was supposed to be a simple support mission to investigate the death of an operative looking into the suspicious banking activities at a Swiss bank. Ryan’s dogged tenacity uncovered not only financial deceit, but also the existence of a KGB assassin code-named Zenith.

Abandoned by other international leaders, Jack Ryan alone counters the threat posed by Russian president Valeri Volodin. This isn't the first time that the dictator has threatened world peace, but this time he's playing a very nuanced game, moving chess pieces around the board while isolating Ryan from the rest of the international community. Fortunately, Jack Ryan, Jr. and the rest of his Campus team find themselves in the middle of action with a vital clue to the Russian's intentions.

A North Korean ICBM crashes into the Sea of Japan. A veteran CIA officer is murdered in Ho Chi Minh City, and a package of forged documents goes missing. The pieces are there, but assembling the puzzle will cost Jack Ryan, Jr., and his fellow Campus agents precious time. Time they don't have.

A US Navy commander is attacked by an unidentified Russian man while having dinner with his wife. A CIA operative travelling on a Canadian passport is intercepted and interrogated at Tehran Airport. A team of FBI officers are arrested by Indonesian police for travelling under fake passports in Jakarta. These apparently unrelated incidents point to a compromise in US government security, and Jack Ryan and his team must find out where it is coming from.

His code name is Mr Clark. And his work for the CIA is brilliant, cold-blooded, and efficient...but who is he really? In a harrowing tour de force, Tom Clancy shows how an ordinary man named John Kelly crossed the lines of justice and morality - to become the CIA legend, Mr Clark.

This is an unforgettable journey into the heart of darkness. Without mercy. Without guilt. Without remorse.

Dominic Caruso. Nephew of President Jack Ryan. FBI agent and operator for The Campus, a top secret intelligence agency that works off the books for the U.S. government. Already scarred by the death of his brother, Caruso is devastated when he can't save a friend and his family from a terrorist attack. Ethan Ross was a mid-level staffer for the National Security Council. Now he's a wanted fugitive on the run with a microdrive that contains enough information to wreck American intelligence efforts around the world.

When Moslem fundamentalists blow up a key Soviet oil complex, making an already critical oil shortage calamitous, the Russians figure they are going to have to take things into their own hands. They plan to seize the Persian Gulf, and more ambitiously, to neutralise NATO. Thus begins Red Storm, an audacious gamble that uses diplomatic maneuvers to cloak a crash military build-up. When Soviet tanks begin to roll, the West is caught off guard. What looks like a thrust turns into an all-out shooting war, possibly the climactic battle for control of the globe.

As the world shakes from seemingly disparate outbursts of terrorism, Jack Ryan prepares for a crucial negotiation with President Zhou's increasingly hostile China. But when a routine traffic stop on an isolated road in rural Texas leads to the discovery of a stolen USB stick, it becomes clear there is a dark connection between the attacks. With tensions rising, a US spy ship in the South China Sea gets caught up in a violent storm - a storm which threatens to push it into the path of the Chinese navy, with potentially disastrous consequences.