Don Bentley. Tom Clancy: Zero Hour. Putnam, 2022.

Here is the latest from Tom Clancy’s estate. While somewhat formulaic, it is fun to read. The action is nearly nonstop. As I wrote before, Jack Ryan, Jr., here is a lot like Jack Bauer. But once again, we see some uncanny parallels with the real world.

Exactly one week before I started this book, there was a terrible mob action in the city of Seoul, Korea. Over a hundred people were trampled to death when a crowd began running and trampled others. Zero Hour begins with a mass panic in Seoul in which people are trampled. The cause is different, but our hero, Jack Ryan, Jr., is a mere tourist at the time but he gets caught up in the panic. He actually rescues a teenaged girl who was being run over, but he also gets a glimpse of what may really be going on.

In this case, circumstances link Jack up with two Green Berets stationed in Korea who also witnessed some violence while on liberty. We will learn the events are connected.

Unbeknownst to the rest of world, the Supreme Leader of North Korea (DPRK) has been in a coma. A high ranking government ally sees this as an opportunity to take over and finally unite the two Koreas. We learn that there are actually a few riots at the same time, all caused by DPRK agitators who have infiltrated the south. And they are making it look like Americans are behind the chaos.

If there is a problem anywhere in the world, blame it on the USA!

Fans of the original Tom Clancy called themselves technodudes. Some of the most distinctive things about his novels were technological innovations he imagined, such as the caterpillar type propulsion for submarine Red October. The coolest thing about Zero Hour is the secret weapon developed by Russia but being armed for the first time in battle by North Korea. It is a nuclear-powered missile.

Regular ICBMs are basically rockets. They rise in a high arc. Cruise missiles have similar propulsion but fly close to the earth so they are not as easily detected by radar. However, both types of missiles can only go so far before they run out of fuel. Even the cruise missiles, once detected can be tracked. Both kinds can be aimed, but are hard to steer.

Bentley imagines a nuclear-powered missile. Note, it is nuclear powered, not necessarily nuclear armed. It may or may not have a nuclear warhead. Like nuclear-powered submarines and ships, the nuclear power means it will take a very long time to run out of fuel. Such a missile could be launched and travel in a very irregular pattern and also perhaps escape anti-missile missiles. It could spend days in the air and travel all over the world if it had to. That is what the DPRK is planning on using against the ROK.

There are some high level North Korean actors in the book. North Korea may call itself a republic, but it is, in effect, a hereditary monarchy. What happens to the leader’s siblings figures big in the story as do some of the Russians who are on location working with the missile propulsion and those who support them.

Given the right kind of technology, this story is not unrealistic. We have already seen in the real world what can happen when a large group of people in Seoul or elsewhere get panicky. Maybe the rest is not that far-fetched.

Those who have read any of the Jack Ryan, Jr., stories know that he belongs to a clandestine government agency known simply as the Campus. Here the Green Berets recognize that he is some kind of spook, some kind of spy. They also note that his combat training or experience is not typical of the CIA. When they ask him if he is CIA, and he says he is not, they ask him, then, who does he work for. He tells them he works for the OGA. Among spooks and special forces that simply means Other Government Agency. If he told them who he really was working for, he’d have to kill them.

P.S. That last sentence is meant to be a joke, though a DPRK invasion of the ROK would be no joking matter.