True Faith and Allegiance

True Faith and Allegiance is a Jack Ryan novel written by Mark Greaney, It is a suspense and thriller novel. It was released in November 2016. The events take place after Duty and Honor and before Point of Contact.

Publisher's Summary[]

The personal information of military officers and intelligence agents have been hacked. The personnel and their families have been attacked. Jack Ryan must find the hackers and cap the information before it's too late.

Plot[]

The operators of The Campus conduct a training exercise on a yacht out at sea. During the exercise it is apparent to John Clark that The Campus needs more operators, and he tells the team, including Domingo Chavez, Dominic Caruso and Jack Ryan, Jr., that he wants a recommendation from all of them on who they should recruit.

President Jack Ryan discusses with his advisors a couple of recent events that may be related. The first is that a navy commander and his family were attacked by a man with a gun while they were at a restaurant. The second is a CIA agent traveling to Iran was identified as an agent when his fingerprint was scanned.

During their date at Dominic Caruso’s apartment, he and Adara Sherman talk about him recommending someone to be a Campus operator. Sherman asks Caruso to recommend her.

Mary Pat Foley and those working for her in national intelligence have been trying to discover the whereabouts and plans of a known terrorist named Abu Musa al-Matari. They find a young girl who was forced into a marriage with him who escaped from his home in Iraqi Kurdistan. She tells them about how al-Matari left for an extended period of time to go to a “language school”. As it turns out, al-Matari has been preparing for a series of attacks on America. The “language school” is a camp in El Salvador where al-Matari has been training groups of radical Muslims on how to conduct terrorist attacks. He is also being provided information on US government agents and military by a man from Saudi Arabia who would benefit from more hostilities between ISIS and the US.

At The Campus, John Clark listens to the recommendations the men give for new recruits. He decides to train Adara Sherman as an operator and recruits Bartosz Jankowski.

Foley contacts Gerry Hendley and asks him to send a team to capture a man who works in the US embassy in Indonesia who will be passing some documents or information to some North Koreans. Ryan, Caruso and Chavez fly there and set up to survey the area where the pass is supposed to take place. In Indonesia, the team from The Campus manage to capture the American before he can pass the classified files that he had brought to the meeting with the North Koreans. After a brief firefight with them, they escape and fly out of the country. On the plane they find out that the man has a wife that is a CIA agent working in Minsk. The North Koreans knew who she was and where she was working, and threatened to kill her if he did not cooperate. They find out that the North Koreans did indeed kill his wife because he was taken by The Campus team before he could pass the files.

Three ISIS operatives travel by boat from Italy to Sicily. In a neighborhood near Naval Air Station Sigonella they break into a house where four US Navy officers are staying and kill the men along with themselves using their suicide vests.

Back at the headquarters of The Campus, Ryan and Gavin Biery begin building on a particular theory of how the attacks on US servicemen and women are happening, and who could be getting such specific information about the victims to make the attacks possible. There is a single database where all government employees’ original request for access to classified information is stored, and they theorize that this database, called e-QIP, has been hacked and is being exploited. Their theory is in fact correct. What they don't know yet is that the man they are looking for is Alexander Dalca. He works for Advanced Research Technological Designs in Bucharest. The company has obtained an old copy of the e-QIP database, and the Chinese are paying the company to use the data to find US spies in China. Dalca has been combining the information from the database with other information found in social media and open source and selling it for profit on the side. Some of that information has made its way to al-Matari who is now coordinating a series of attacks on military and other government personnel in the US.

Al-Matari’s terrorists make two attacks on two people in two different parts of the country. A bomb placed in a mailbox kills one woman while she is checking the mail, and a man is fired upon at a Starbuck’s while getting coffee but survives. Ryan decides to try to reverse-engineer the process of building an intel package on the woman that was killed with the mailbox bomb. He discusses with Biery and they conclude that whoever gained access to the e-QIP database must be combining that with information they look up on social media and open source and selling it to people on the dark web.

Clark sets up a practice surveillance exercise where Sherman and Midas are supposed to follow and old friend of Clark’s, Eddie Laird. Laird is a former CIA officer and they don't know that he is currently being targeted by al-Matari’s terrorists. As Sherman and Midas are following Laird, they notice that he is also being followed by other men. When they realize that the men are there to kill Laird they try to intervene. There is a shootout, during which Laird dies and all of the terrorists are killed.

The Campus passes Ryan’s and Biery’s theory about the e-QIP database being hacked to Mary Pat Foley. Al-Matari’s terrorists continue their attacks. General Wendell Caldwell is stabbed while he is out jogging near MacDill Air Force Base and a medic in Delta Force is the victim of a drive-by shooting.

Ryan does some investigating into the perpetrator of the original incident at the restaurant, Vadim Rechkov. Rechkov had been actively posting comments on Reddit about how much he wanted to punish the people that were responsible for his brother’s death in a recent engagement between US and Russian forces. Biery has the idea of comparing the threads Rechkov was contributing to on Reddit with an online archive of the same threads to see if anyone posted there and then deleted their posts. They find one user, 5Megachopper5, sent a private message to Rechkov and then deleted his post. They conclude that this is the person that provided the information he needed to carry out his attack.

The men from China who commissioned the work ARTD has been doing have been following the world news and become suspicious. They do not want the political fallout from being associated with the attacks that are being conducted on American soil. They suspect that ARTD or someone at the company is making money on the side by providing the e-QIP information to ISIS, and that this will bring attention to their involvement. At a meeting with the ARTD management they warn them of the consequences if they find out that this is what is happening. Meanwhile the attacks in the US continue. At a grocery store the terrorists, intending to kill an Air Force Major, get in a shootout with a security guard and the police. One of the terrorists is killed by gunfire and the other dies when he detonates his suicide vest.

Ryan and Biery look into the person that corresponded with Rechkov. They find that variations of his username came in use at many different sites on the internet all starting at a certain date. One such site was being used for those looking for a place to live in Romania. Ryan guesses the man may be someone who was released from prison on or just before that date. By looking at public records databases online they suspect Dalca is the man they are looking for. Hendley and Clark send Ryan, Biery and Chavez to try to track down Dalca in Romania.

One of the terrorists, David Hembrick, is caught on a security camera fleeing the scene of an attack he perpetrated against an FBI agent in New York. Later it is determined that he left the area by taking a plane to Chicago.

Concerned that the Chinese are onto what he is doing, Dalca decides that he needs to leave Bucharest and relocate as soon as possible. He visits an old acquaintance from prison, Luca Gabor, who agrees to arrange for Dalca to be flown to Macedonia to work with some Albanian gangsters, and in exchange Dalca will pay Gabor’s daughter three million dollars. Meanwhile the team from The Campus arrives in Romania and begins surveying Dalca’s condominium.

The Chinese find Dalca’s boss Dragomir Vasilescu and threaten him to lead them to Dalca. They go to Dalca’s condominium and bang on the door. Dalca has had a plan in place in case he needed to escape and when he hears them, he drops an escape ladder over his balcony railing, lets himself down, then flees on a bicycle. The Chinese chase him in a van, and the Campus team chases the Chinese hoping to keep Dalca out of the Chinese’ hands. The Chinese chase Dalca into a park. The Campus team catches up to them and have a shootout with the Chinese. The Chinese are killed and Dalca escapes.

The Joint Terrorism Task Force (JTTF) finds out via security camera footage and facial recognition software that Hembrick and al-Matari have checked into the Drake Hotel in Chicago. They set up a sting operation on him, but it is a trap. When they breach the hotel room al-Matari is supposed to be staying in, the terrorists who have been waiting in other nearby rooms break out, attacking the JTTF agents with guns and explosives. Other terrorists have positioned themselves in the nearby streets and attack the JTTF mobile command trailers with rocket launchers and grenades. The JTTF suffers many casualties as a result of the attack.

Foley coordinates with the Romanian government to grant the Campus team access to Gabor. They get the details of Dalca’s plans to leave the country. They find Dalca at the airport and abduct him. After threatening Dalca, he decides to cooperate. Ryan comes up with a plan to draw out al-Matari. With Dalca’s help, they send information to al-Matari’s Saudi Arabian contact saying that Ryan will be in the US at a certain cabin in the woods at a certain time. Al-Matari and the other terrorists go to the cabin, intending to kill Ryan. The Campus team travels there and meets up with Clark. As the terrorists approach the cabin a gunfight ensues. he Campus men end up capturing al-Matari and kill his men, putting an end to the reign of terror in the US.

Principal Characters[]

United States Government

U.S. Military

The Campus

Others

True Faith and Allegiance

Publisher's Summary[]

Plot[]

Principal Characters[]

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