Tom Clancy Defense Protocol

China's new president, Li Jian Jun, has lost patience with the long standoff over Taiwan. Beijing regards the island as a breakaway province, while much of the world treats it as an independent nation, and earlier Chinese leaders tried to bring it to heel through economic leverage and diplomatic pressure. Li has settled on something far more direct: a secret military plan to seize Taiwan by force.

The one man in a position to derail it is Defense Minister Qin Haiyu. Afraid for his own life and for his family, Qin quietly reaches out to the CIA in Beijing and signals that he wants to defect. Getting him out falls to John Clark, who assembles an international task force in the spirit of Rainbow Six and slips into mainland China under cover.

At sea, Lt. Commander Katie Ryan is posted to the destroyer USS Jason Dunham, at the front line of Taiwan's defense. With a Chinese armada closing in around her, she is pushed to find a weakness in the invasion plan that her father can use.

That father is President Jack Ryan, who commands the full weight of the American military but needs something it cannot give him: Li's plans, which only Qin can supply. Without them, the United States' own defense protocol could spiral into mutual destruction, costing thousands of young soldiers, sailors and special operators their lives, his daughter among them. This entry in the Jack Ryan series was written by Brian Andrews.