The novel starts off at a slow pace and not much happens in the first hundred pages. Clancy can be forgiven because the rest of the book makes up for its few shortcomings. The scene that sets the story for the novel is the horrid scene of the president's family friend tortured and then murdered by a drug lord's thugs. The extreme method of playback by the drug lord that in this case is in South America set the stage for a President initiating a covert operation against the drug lord. He does this through the use of a crack special forces unit that works in the jungle virtually alone to accomplish their mission with only radio communications to high tech aerial support that pinpoints and hits targets with laser-guided smart bomb from far away.
             At the end of the prologue to Clear and Present Danger, Clancy writes, "And so began something that had not quite begun and would not soon end, with many people in many places moving off in directions and on missions which they all mistakenly thought they understood. That was just as well. The future was too fearful for contemplation, and beyond the expected, illusory finish lines were things fated by the decisions made this morning and, once decided, best unseen." In Clear and Present Danger nothing is as clear as it may seem.
             The president, unsatisfied with the success of his "war on drugs," decides that he wants some immediate success. But after John Clark's covert strike team is deployed to Colombia for Operation codenamed Showboat, the drug lord's strike back taking several civilian casualties. The chief executive's polls plummet. He orders Ritter to terminate their unofficial plan and leave no traces of leaving the American highly trained team in the Columbine jungle to be captured by the drug lord. Jack Ryan, who has just been named CIA deputy director of intelligence is enraged when he discovers that, has been left out of the loop of Columbine oper
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