His work for the CIA is brilliant, cold-blooded and efficient, but who is he? In a harrowing tour de force, phenomenally best-selling author Tom Clancy shows how an ordinary man named John Kelly crossed the lines of justice and morality to become the CIA legend known as Mr. Clark. It is an unforgettable journey into the heart of darkness, without mercy - without remorse.

Debt of Honor ends as Jack Ryan is confirmed vice president minutes before a mammoth act of terrorism kills the President, most of his cabinet, all but a few members of Congress, the entire Supreme Court and all of the Joint Chiefs of Staff. Suddenly Ryan is President, which is where Executive Orders begins.

Newly elected, Jack Ryan has found that being President is not easy: domestic pitfalls await him at every turn; there's a revolution in Liberia; the Asian economy is going down the tubes; and now, in Moscow, someone may have tried to assassinate the chairman of the SVR - the former KGB - with a rocket-propelled grenade. Were the potential assassins political enemies, the Russian Mafia, or disaffected former KGB? Or is something far more dangerous at work here?

It is The Campus. Secretly created under the administration of President Jack Ryan, its sole purpose is to eliminate terrorists and those who protect them. Officially, it has no connection to the American government - a necessity in a time when those in power consider themselves above such arcane ideals as loyalty, justice, and right or wrong.

When Russian President Valeri Volodin's ambitions are foiled in Dagestan, he faces a difficult choice. The oligarchs who support him expect a constant flow of graft, but with energy prices cratering, the Russian economy sputters to a virtual halt. Unable to grow the Russian market at home, his hold on power relies on expansion abroad—a plan that has been thwarted by the United States in the past. But this time Volodin has determined that an indirect approach is the best.

It is fall. CIA analyst Jack Ryan, historian and former Marine, is vacationing in London with his wife and young daughter. Suddenly, right before his eyes, a terrorist group launches its deadly attack.

The Campus has been discovered. And whoever knows they exist knows they can be destroyed. Meanwhile, President Jack Ryan has been swept back into the Oval Office - and his wisdom and courage are needed more desperately than ever. Internal political and economic strife has pushed the leadership of China to the edge of disaster. And those who wish to consolidate their power are using the opportunity to strike at long-desired Taiwan, as well as the Americans who have protected the tiny nation.

It begins with a family dinner in Princeton, New Jersey. After months at sea, US Navy Commander Scott Hagan, captain of the USS James Greer, is on leave when he is attacked by an armed man in a crowded restaurant. Hagan is shot, but he manages to fight off the attacker. Though severely wounded, the gunman reveals he is a Russian whose brother was killed when his submarine was destroyed by Commander Hagan's ship. Hagan demands to know how the would-be assassin knew his exact location, but the man dies before he says more.

Privately training with special forces, he’s honing his combat skills to continue his work within the Campus, hunting down and eliminating terrorists wherever he can--even as Jack Ryan Sr. campaigns to become President of the United States again. But what neither father nor son knows is that the political and personal have just become equally dangerous. A devout enemy of Jack Sr. launches a privately-funded vendetta to discredit him and connect him to a mysterious killing in his longtime ally John Clark’s past. All they have to do is catch him.

Against all odds we have made it into the last half of the 1990s. The Cold War looks solved, Arabs and Jews are talking, confrontation is on the wane. In this new harmony, one discord - what becomes of unemployed terrorists?

Freedom may have finally arrived in Iran. As protests break out across the country, the media rejoices over the so-called Persian Spring. Western leaders are ecstatic. Members of Congress and the Cabinet clamor to back the rebels. Only President Jack Ryan remains wary. Meanwhile, he has plenty to handle at home. A deadly strain of flu is ravaging the United States as spring floods decimate the Southeast. An unethical senator wants to bring down the Ryan presidency and is willing to lean on fabricated bot-planted stories to do it.

Aboard an icebreaker in the Arctic Ocean, a sonar operator hears an unusual noise coming from the ocean floor. She can't isolate it and chalks the event up to an anomaly in a newly installed system. Meanwhile, operatives with the Chinese Ministry of State Security are dealing with their own mystery - the disappearance of brilliant but eccentric scientist, Liu Wangshu. They're desperate to keep his crucial knowledge of aerospace and naval technology out of their rivals' hands.

While on vacation in Barcelona, Jack Ryan, Jr. is surprised to run into an old friend at a small café. A first, Renee Moore seems surprised to see Jack, but then she just seems irritated and distracted. After making plans to meet later, Jack leaves, only to miss the opportunity to ever speak to Renee again, as the café is destroyed minutes later by a suicide bomber. A desperate Jack plunges back into the ruins to save his friend, but it's too late. As she dies in his arms, she utters one word, Sammler.

Jack Ryan is dealing with an aggressive challenge from the Chinese government. Pawns are being moved around a global chessboard: an attack on an oil platform in Africa, a terrorist strike on an American destroyer, and a storm-tossed American spy ship that may fall into Chinese hands. It seems that President Zhao is determined to limit Ryan's choices in the upcoming G20 negotiations. But there are hints that there's even more going on behind the scenes.

Father Pat West, SJ, was a buddy of the young Jack Ryan when they were both undergraduates at Boston College. Father West left a comfortable job in the philosophy department at Georgetown to work with the poor in Indonesia. Now, he's been arrested and accused of blasphemy against Islam. President Ryan is desperate to rescue his old friend, but he can't move officially against the Indonesians. Instead, he relies on the Campus team to find out who is framing the priest.