Without Remorse
By Tom Clancy
Review by Roger D. Noriega
John Clark - Mister John Clark. CIA agent extradonaire. The man that the agency turns to when it wants the job done. He is the one that must go into hostile territory to bring someone out to safety. He blends in well, speaks several languages and is intelligent and smart - rare for the CIA. His only concern is to complete the mission, but he suffers the failings of real people, he makes mistakes and he does endure bouts of fear - fear of failure for the danger is always real and is what he lives for.
John Terrance Kelly is an ex-seal recovering from the loss of his beloved wife and unborn child, killed by by a mechanical failure on a semi-truck. On a get-away holiday Friday, John Kelly meets a hitchhiker and both become attached to each other right quick as both hide demons. He killed for a living and she was killing herself for her living.
John discovers that she is a hooker and drug user and decides to clean her up and bring her back to the land of the living. She accepts him and all that he does for her, but she still fears those that kept her as a hooker: she knows that they can still hurt her as they hurt others - namely her fellow captive hookers. Kelly convinces her to speak to the police but before, Kelly decides to spend time in her old neighborhood while he was waiting for his secretive appointment with Baltimore's finest and they meet it with Billy, the pimp that kept Pam and the others doing their bidding. Kelly evades them with some slick maneuvering in the muddy lots of the abandoned neighborhood. Turns out that he didn't do enough as Billy and his buddies catch up with them and shot Kelly point-blank with a shotgun, take Pam and kill her.
Kelly should have died, but he survived the wounds and he recovers with a simple mission on his mind: avenge the loss of Pam and maybe, just maybe, save others as well from their certain death at the hands of the drug-dealers.
We learn what drives him and he realizes he made a mistake, a fatal mistake that cost Pam her life. He works out and gets into tip-top shape and he begins the hunt. He learns how the drug dealers operate and he begins to attack the drug dealers in different manners to through off the police of Baltimore. With each calculated kill, he moves deeper into the organization and he gains knowledge - all to avenge the loss of Pam. He has no other choice, live with her loss, a loss he caused, or avenge her so that she can rest as well as he.
On the other side of the world, a super-secret remote-piloted drone snaps a picture of an American POW declared dead by the Vietcong being tortured. Operation Boxwood Green is born and the twenty "dead" POW's are being targeted for death or worse, being sent to Russia to live out their lives in Russia as traitors. John Kelly is called in to look over the information since he has gone in previously on similar missions and he is later recruited to lead the planning of this op to save the lives of those left behind.
The operation to save the "written-off" P.O.W.'s is green lighted and Kelly is inserted to scout the location and to have "eyes" on the camp - obvious precautions. Turns out that a leak determines the fate of our P.O.W.'s before they can be saved . . .
Kelly returns stateside and continues with his mission to avenge the loss of his beloved Pam. With one break, Baltimore's Finest, Detective Emmett Ryan is on to Kelly and they go looking for him. It now becomes a race against the authorities, time, and the evil that Pam was associated with . . . Kelly has decides to face his demons.
******
This is the story of John Clark. He is in almost every novel from here on out in one way or another, but he will never be the primary protagonist again - Jack Ryan is the hero, but in this chapter, we learn who Clark is and why he is so good at what he does. The story is full of disappointments and tragedy - as in real life, but our heroes are the ones that don't lay down or quit when the rough waters hit. These are heroes and they are people just like ourselves. This story is a winner.
Roger's rating: ooo1/2
