Without Remorse
Encyclopedia
Without Remorse is a thriller novel published in 1993 by Tom Clancy
and is a part of the Jack Ryan universe series. While not the first novel of the series to be published, it is first in plot chronology. The main setting of the book is set during the Vietnam War
, in the American city of Baltimore. The book focuses on the development of one of Clancy's recurring characters, John Kelly/John Clark
, while providing the character some back-story. The book serves to give a history of Kelly's life, and explains how he becomes John Clark.
The book alternates between multiple story arcs, involving: Kelly's back-story and his personal crusade against a large drug ring responsible for killing his girlfriend Pam; the capture and imprisonment of United States Air Force
colonel Robin Zacharias in a POW camp
; major heroin dealer Henry Tucker who is the story's main antagonist, as well as his Mafia connection Tony Piaggi, and their employment of a corrupt policeman named Mark Charon. Other story arcs in the book introduce characters such as detective Emmet Ryan (the father of Jack Ryan
, who makes a brief appearance in the book) and his partner who are investigating the recent murders of a string of drug dealers.
men performing a maritime demolition of an oil-rig irreparably damaged by Hurricane Camille
. The team set off a small explosive to scare away any fish, before neutralizing the oil-rig. While driving to pick him up after the job, Kelly's pregnant wife Patricia (Tish) is killed in a car accident caused by damaged brakes in a large truck.
Next to be introduced is Colonel Robin Zacharias, a devout Mormon
and United States Air Force F-105 pilot, who is shot down along with his co-pilot John Tait during a bombing mission over North Vietnam. Zacharias is also the father of a B-2 bomber pilot who makes a brief appearance in Debt of Honor
. Tait is killed but Robin is captured and reported killed in action, then transferred to a secret POW camp established to elicit aid from the Soviet Union. Among the prisoners are some who possess highly-classified knowledge, beyond the scope of the Vietnam War.
Zacharias, for example, had helped develop SAC
War Plans, choosing targets, routes, and methods. He is interrogated by Colonel Nikolai Yevgenievich Grishanov, who asks the prisoners to call him by his nickname Kolya. Grishanov manages to get more information out of the prisoners with kindness and a little vodka than the Vietnamese camp commander Major Vinh had gotten with privation and abuse. Eventually, someone up the chain of command of the NVA decides that the prisoners are not worth keeping and that they can be quietly killed, with plausible deniability
. Grishanov then starts to make urgent requests to his superiors that the POWs be brought to the Soviet Union
to live out the rest of their lives. While Zacharias is being moved to his cell, a U.S Buffalo Hunter
pilotless drone photographs him, and admiral Dutch Maxwell recognizes his face. Maxwell, along with two other admirals, develops a special-operation plan entitled Operation BOXWOOD GREEN—that will send Marines into North Vietnam to rescue the prisoners.
Six months after his wife's death, Kelly meets a girl named Pam Madden, who has escaped from prostitution and serving as a "mule"
in a drug-smuggling ring run by Henry Tucker. Kelly picks Pam up off the highway and becomes romantically involved with her. The day after he meets Pam, Kelly befriends two doctors — Sam and Sarah Rosen — who are both professors at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Sam of neurosurgery
and Sarah of pharmacology
, when they have trouble with their new motorboat. (He had neglected to replace the zinc anodes that normally protect exposed metal from corrosion, and his crumbly propellers have been scraped off by a sandbar, which is not on his outdated charts. Kelly orders new "screws" and charts, and Sam owes him.) Kelly discovers, by accident, that Pam is addicted to barbiturates.
With the help of Sam and Sarah, Kelly helps Pam recover from her addiction. While bringing her into the city for treatment and to speak with the police, Kelly becomes curious about Pam's old life and attempts to reconnoiter her previous chapters. Unfortunately, Pam is recognized by Billy Grayson, her old pimp, and they are attacked. A car chase ensues, in which Kelly's Scout is at a disadvantage to Billy's Plymouth Roadrunner. At one point, Kelly lures Billy into a vacant lot and gets him stuck in deep mud. However,Kelly makes the mistake of slowing down and stopping and is shot twice with a shotgun and Pam is kidnapped. A press photographer later finds Pam's body displayed in a fountain. Kelly recovers in a hospital with the help of Sam Rosen. At this point, Nurse Sandy O'Toole is asked to take a special interest in Kelly.
When Kelly is shown a picture of Pam’s body and is informed of her abuse during and after death (she was raped by several men, then strangled) he decides to take revenge and vows to take down the people responsible. Kelly starts a rigorous exercise regime to help heal his body so that he can prepare for his private war with Henry Tucker's drug ring. When Kelly returns to his home he is approached by Admiral Maxwell, who recruits him to spearhead a military operation to free the dozens of secretly held POWs. Kelly is recruited because he is the only person they know of that has ever spent time in the area of the camp. (Kelly had gone behind enemy lines in the vicinity of the camp [before it was built], to rescue Maxwell's son. Political considerations prevented him from receiving the Medal of Honor
for saving an admiral's son, but he got a Navy Cross
and a promotion as well as excellent references.)
Kelly next sets up a safe house in Baltimore, and goes incognito as a wino to perform recon on the drug pushers. He first kills Pam's first pimp in New Orleans, then several minor drug dealers and eventually learns the location of Billy, a subaltern in the drug ring and one of those who had killed Pam. He captures Billy and rescues Doris Brown, who is a "mule" as Pam was. Tucker had ordered all the girls who were his couriers to be killed since they were security risks. Kelly takes Billy to his island and tortures him in his recompression chamber to get further information about the drug ring. Kelly leaves Doris with Sandy because the time has come for him to take part in the mission to rescue the POWs. The plan fails, as the Soviets catch wind of it because of a loose-mouthed White House intern who told his prep-school friend, a senate aide who happens to be a mole
for the KGB
. Kelly does manage to kill the escaping Major Vinh and captures Grishanov, who the U.S. use to negotiate the transfer of the prisoners to the Hanoi Hilton
, where they will be confirmed as alive and eventually returned. The presence of mind Kelly shows in capturing, rather than killing, Grishanov greatly impresses the CIA officers involve in the operation, particularly since it ultimately leads to the survival of Zacharias and other POWs.
Upon his return to the U.S. Kelly finds the mole and makes him commit suicide with the heroin he's collected by threating to jam his knife in his skull. He then visits Sandy and discovers that Doris has been murdered thanks to Mark Charon, a corrupt policeman on Tucker's payroll. Kelly determines the location of the drug ring's first lab, used for "cutting" heroin, in a derelict ship near his own island home. It is abandoned after Kelly raids it, executing the men who murdured Dorris and releasing Xantha Matthews, another of the "mules" whom Tucker had ordered to be killed. Kelly deduces from the smell of the bags containing the heroin, and from the country of origin, that it is being smuggled into the US hidden inside corpses of American soldiers.
Kelly is then brought into a meeting with Admiral James Greer and high-ranking CIA
official Robert Ritter, who want Kelly to join the agency. Kelly states that there is one major problem, and points to the newspaper that has a front-page story of the raid on the derelict ship. The CIA then begins to plan Kelly's fake death by first switching his prints with the captured Kolya's, while allowing him to finish what he started. Kelly next tracks the new drug lab to a warehouse in a sleepy industrial district, which the smugglers plan to use as long as their source (and the war) holds out. He sets up a sniper post in a nearby building and lays siege to the warehouse, killing two Mafia hoods. Charon shows up at the scene and, upon learning of the situation outside, attempts to murder Piaggi and Tucker, only to be fatally shot by the former. Moments later, Kelly enters the room where the two drug dealers are holed up and shoots them with his 45 Caliber semiautomatic pistol.
Emmet Ryan figures out who the undercover wino was and tracks Kelly to his boat. However, he allows Kelly a one hour head start before he alerts the Coast Guard. Kelly then gets into a boat chase and then purposely capsizes his boat, in order to fake his own death and kill off his John Kelly identity. He then uses the diving gear he prepared on his boat to swim under the Coast Guard vessel and onto Admiral Maxwell's yacht where the Admiral picks him up. (The Coast Guard officer who tried to pursue and arrest him, and who believed him to be dead in the "accident," would unexpectedly meet up with Clark many years later—in the chronology of the "Ryanverse"—within the pages of Debt of Honor
). Now known as John Clark, he has married Sandy, and the book ends with the release of the POWs after the end of the war.
Paramount Pictures
bought the film rights to Without Remorse soon after the novel was released. There were several attempts to start work on the film, but it was always dropped soon after, along with attempts to adapt Clancy's hit novel Rainbow Six
into a film. Without Remorse is currently in development with no release date set.
Tom Clancy
Thomas Leo "Tom" Clancy, Jr. is an American author, best known for his technically detailed espionage, military science, and techno thriller storylines set during and in the aftermath of the Cold War, along with video games on which he did not work, but which bear his name for licensing and...
and is a part of the Jack Ryan universe series. While not the first novel of the series to be published, it is first in plot chronology. The main setting of the book is set during the Vietnam War
Vietnam War
The Vietnam War was a Cold War-era military conflict that occurred in Vietnam, Laos, and Cambodia from 1 November 1955 to the fall of Saigon on 30 April 1975. This war followed the First Indochina War and was fought between North Vietnam, supported by its communist allies, and the government of...
, in the American city of Baltimore. The book focuses on the development of one of Clancy's recurring characters, John Kelly/John Clark
John Clark (Tom Clancy character)
John Clark is a fictional character created by Tom Clancy who appears in many of Clancy's novels. He is an Irish American Catholic.-Personal life:...
, while providing the character some back-story. The book serves to give a history of Kelly's life, and explains how he becomes John Clark.
The book alternates between multiple story arcs, involving: Kelly's back-story and his personal crusade against a large drug ring responsible for killing his girlfriend Pam; the capture and imprisonment of United States Air Force
United States Air Force
The United States Air Force is the aerial warfare service branch of the United States Armed Forces and one of the American uniformed services. Initially part of the United States Army, the USAF was formed as a separate branch of the military on September 18, 1947 under the National Security Act of...
colonel Robin Zacharias in a POW camp
Prisoner-of-war camp
A prisoner-of-war camp is a site for the containment of combatants captured by their enemy in time of war, and is similar to an internment camp which is used for civilian populations. A prisoner of war is generally a soldier, sailor, or airman who is imprisoned by an enemy power during or...
; major heroin dealer Henry Tucker who is the story's main antagonist, as well as his Mafia connection Tony Piaggi, and their employment of a corrupt policeman named Mark Charon. Other story arcs in the book introduce characters such as detective Emmet Ryan (the father of Jack Ryan
Jack Ryan (Tom Clancy)
John Patrick "Jack" Ryan, Sr. is a fictional character created by Tom Clancy who appears in many of his novels.-Backstory:Born in 1950, Ryan's background is established in Patriot Games and Red Rabbit. His father was Emmet William Ryan , a police homicide lieutenant in Baltimore, and World War II...
, who makes a brief appearance in the book) and his partner who are investigating the recent murders of a string of drug dealers.
Plot summary
The book starts off with John Kelly and two other UDTUnderwater Demolition Team
The Underwater Demolition Teams were an elite special-purpose force established by the United States Navy during World War II. They also served during the Korean War and the Vietnam War...
men performing a maritime demolition of an oil-rig irreparably damaged by Hurricane Camille
Hurricane Camille
Hurricane Camille was the third and strongest tropical cyclone and second hurricane during the 1969 Atlantic hurricane season. The second of three catastrophic Category 5 hurricanes to make landfall in the United States during the 20th century , which it did near the mouth of the Mississippi River...
. The team set off a small explosive to scare away any fish, before neutralizing the oil-rig. While driving to pick him up after the job, Kelly's pregnant wife Patricia (Tish) is killed in a car accident caused by damaged brakes in a large truck.
Next to be introduced is Colonel Robin Zacharias, a devout Mormon
Mormon
The term Mormon most commonly denotes an adherent, practitioner, follower, or constituent of Mormonism, which is the largest branch of the Latter Day Saint movement in restorationist Christianity...
and United States Air Force F-105 pilot, who is shot down along with his co-pilot John Tait during a bombing mission over North Vietnam. Zacharias is also the father of a B-2 bomber pilot who makes a brief appearance in Debt of Honor
Debt of Honor
Debt of Honor is a novel by Tom Clancy. It is a continuation of the series featuring his character Jack Ryan. In this installment, Ryan has become the National Security Advisor when the Japanese government goes to war with the United States...
. Tait is killed but Robin is captured and reported killed in action, then transferred to a secret POW camp established to elicit aid from the Soviet Union. Among the prisoners are some who possess highly-classified knowledge, beyond the scope of the Vietnam War.
Zacharias, for example, had helped develop SAC
Strategic Air Command
The Strategic Air Command was both a Major Command of the United States Air Force and a "specified command" of the United States Department of Defense. SAC was the operational establishment in charge of America's land-based strategic bomber aircraft and land-based intercontinental ballistic...
War Plans, choosing targets, routes, and methods. He is interrogated by Colonel Nikolai Yevgenievich Grishanov, who asks the prisoners to call him by his nickname Kolya. Grishanov manages to get more information out of the prisoners with kindness and a little vodka than the Vietnamese camp commander Major Vinh had gotten with privation and abuse. Eventually, someone up the chain of command of the NVA decides that the prisoners are not worth keeping and that they can be quietly killed, with plausible deniability
Plausible deniability
Plausible deniability is, at root, credible ability to deny a fact or allegation, or to deny previous knowledge of a fact. The term most often refers to the denial of blame in chains of command, where upper rungs quarantine the blame to the lower rungs, and the lower rungs are often inaccessible,...
. Grishanov then starts to make urgent requests to his superiors that the POWs be brought to the Soviet Union
Soviet Union
The Soviet Union , officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics , was a constitutionally socialist state that existed in Eurasia between 1922 and 1991....
to live out the rest of their lives. While Zacharias is being moved to his cell, a U.S Buffalo Hunter
Ryan Firebee
The Ryan Firebee was a series of target drones or unmanned aerial vehicles developed by the Ryan Aeronautical Company beginning in 1951. It was one of the first jet-propelled drones, and one of the most widely-used target drones ever built....
pilotless drone photographs him, and admiral Dutch Maxwell recognizes his face. Maxwell, along with two other admirals, develops a special-operation plan entitled Operation BOXWOOD GREEN—that will send Marines into North Vietnam to rescue the prisoners.
Six months after his wife's death, Kelly meets a girl named Pam Madden, who has escaped from prostitution and serving as a "mule"
Mule (smuggling)
A mule or courier is someone who smuggles something with him or her across a national border, including bringing in to and out of an international plane, especially a small amount, transported for a smuggling organization. The organizers employ mules to reduce the risk of getting caught...
in a drug-smuggling ring run by Henry Tucker. Kelly picks Pam up off the highway and becomes romantically involved with her. The day after he meets Pam, Kelly befriends two doctors — Sam and Sarah Rosen — who are both professors at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine, Sam of neurosurgery
Neurosurgery
Neurosurgery is the medical specialty concerned with the prevention, diagnosis, treatment, and rehabilitation of disorders which affect any portion of the nervous system including the brain, spine, spinal cord, peripheral nerves, and extra-cranial cerebrovascular system.-In the United States:In...
and Sarah of pharmacology
Pharmacology
Pharmacology is the branch of medicine and biology concerned with the study of drug action. More specifically, it is the study of the interactions that occur between a living organism and chemicals that affect normal or abnormal biochemical function...
, when they have trouble with their new motorboat. (He had neglected to replace the zinc anodes that normally protect exposed metal from corrosion, and his crumbly propellers have been scraped off by a sandbar, which is not on his outdated charts. Kelly orders new "screws" and charts, and Sam owes him.) Kelly discovers, by accident, that Pam is addicted to barbiturates.
With the help of Sam and Sarah, Kelly helps Pam recover from her addiction. While bringing her into the city for treatment and to speak with the police, Kelly becomes curious about Pam's old life and attempts to reconnoiter her previous chapters. Unfortunately, Pam is recognized by Billy Grayson, her old pimp, and they are attacked. A car chase ensues, in which Kelly's Scout is at a disadvantage to Billy's Plymouth Roadrunner. At one point, Kelly lures Billy into a vacant lot and gets him stuck in deep mud. However,Kelly makes the mistake of slowing down and stopping and is shot twice with a shotgun and Pam is kidnapped. A press photographer later finds Pam's body displayed in a fountain. Kelly recovers in a hospital with the help of Sam Rosen. At this point, Nurse Sandy O'Toole is asked to take a special interest in Kelly.
When Kelly is shown a picture of Pam’s body and is informed of her abuse during and after death (she was raped by several men, then strangled) he decides to take revenge and vows to take down the people responsible. Kelly starts a rigorous exercise regime to help heal his body so that he can prepare for his private war with Henry Tucker's drug ring. When Kelly returns to his home he is approached by Admiral Maxwell, who recruits him to spearhead a military operation to free the dozens of secretly held POWs. Kelly is recruited because he is the only person they know of that has ever spent time in the area of the camp. (Kelly had gone behind enemy lines in the vicinity of the camp [before it was built], to rescue Maxwell's son. Political considerations prevented him from receiving the Medal of Honor
Medal of Honor
The Medal of Honor is the highest military decoration awarded by the United States government. It is bestowed by the President, in the name of Congress, upon members of the United States Armed Forces who distinguish themselves through "conspicuous gallantry and intrepidity at the risk of his or her...
for saving an admiral's son, but he got a Navy Cross
Navy Cross
The Navy Cross is the highest decoration that may be bestowed by the Department of the Navy and the second highest decoration given for valor. It is normally only awarded to members of the United States Navy, United States Marine Corps and United States Coast Guard, but can be awarded to all...
and a promotion as well as excellent references.)
Kelly next sets up a safe house in Baltimore, and goes incognito as a wino to perform recon on the drug pushers. He first kills Pam's first pimp in New Orleans, then several minor drug dealers and eventually learns the location of Billy, a subaltern in the drug ring and one of those who had killed Pam. He captures Billy and rescues Doris Brown, who is a "mule" as Pam was. Tucker had ordered all the girls who were his couriers to be killed since they were security risks. Kelly takes Billy to his island and tortures him in his recompression chamber to get further information about the drug ring. Kelly leaves Doris with Sandy because the time has come for him to take part in the mission to rescue the POWs. The plan fails, as the Soviets catch wind of it because of a loose-mouthed White House intern who told his prep-school friend, a senate aide who happens to be a mole
Mole (espionage)
A mole is a spy who works for an enemy nation, but whose loyalty ostensibly lies with his own nation's government. In some usage, a mole differs from a defector in that a mole is a spy before gaining access to classified information, while a defector becomes a spy only after gaining access...
for the KGB
KGB
The KGB was the commonly used acronym for the . It was the national security agency of the Soviet Union from 1954 until 1991, and was the premier internal security, intelligence, and secret police organization during that time.The State Security Agency of the Republic of Belarus currently uses the...
. Kelly does manage to kill the escaping Major Vinh and captures Grishanov, who the U.S. use to negotiate the transfer of the prisoners to the Hanoi Hilton
Hanoi Hilton
Hỏa Lò Prison, later sarcastically known to American prisoners of war as the "Hanoi Hilton", was a prison used by the French colonists in Vietnam for political prisoners and later by North Vietnam for prisoners of war during the Vietnam War....
, where they will be confirmed as alive and eventually returned. The presence of mind Kelly shows in capturing, rather than killing, Grishanov greatly impresses the CIA officers involve in the operation, particularly since it ultimately leads to the survival of Zacharias and other POWs.
Upon his return to the U.S. Kelly finds the mole and makes him commit suicide with the heroin he's collected by threating to jam his knife in his skull. He then visits Sandy and discovers that Doris has been murdered thanks to Mark Charon, a corrupt policeman on Tucker's payroll. Kelly determines the location of the drug ring's first lab, used for "cutting" heroin, in a derelict ship near his own island home. It is abandoned after Kelly raids it, executing the men who murdured Dorris and releasing Xantha Matthews, another of the "mules" whom Tucker had ordered to be killed. Kelly deduces from the smell of the bags containing the heroin, and from the country of origin, that it is being smuggled into the US hidden inside corpses of American soldiers.
Kelly is then brought into a meeting with Admiral James Greer and high-ranking CIA
Central Intelligence Agency
The Central Intelligence Agency is a civilian intelligence agency of the United States government. It is an executive agency and reports directly to the Director of National Intelligence, responsible for providing national security intelligence assessment to senior United States policymakers...
official Robert Ritter, who want Kelly to join the agency. Kelly states that there is one major problem, and points to the newspaper that has a front-page story of the raid on the derelict ship. The CIA then begins to plan Kelly's fake death by first switching his prints with the captured Kolya's, while allowing him to finish what he started. Kelly next tracks the new drug lab to a warehouse in a sleepy industrial district, which the smugglers plan to use as long as their source (and the war) holds out. He sets up a sniper post in a nearby building and lays siege to the warehouse, killing two Mafia hoods. Charon shows up at the scene and, upon learning of the situation outside, attempts to murder Piaggi and Tucker, only to be fatally shot by the former. Moments later, Kelly enters the room where the two drug dealers are holed up and shoots them with his 45 Caliber semiautomatic pistol.
Emmet Ryan figures out who the undercover wino was and tracks Kelly to his boat. However, he allows Kelly a one hour head start before he alerts the Coast Guard. Kelly then gets into a boat chase and then purposely capsizes his boat, in order to fake his own death and kill off his John Kelly identity. He then uses the diving gear he prepared on his boat to swim under the Coast Guard vessel and onto Admiral Maxwell's yacht where the Admiral picks him up. (The Coast Guard officer who tried to pursue and arrest him, and who believed him to be dead in the "accident," would unexpectedly meet up with Clark many years later—in the chronology of the "Ryanverse"—within the pages of Debt of Honor
Debt of Honor
Debt of Honor is a novel by Tom Clancy. It is a continuation of the series featuring his character Jack Ryan. In this installment, Ryan has become the National Security Advisor when the Japanese government goes to war with the United States...
). Now known as John Clark, he has married Sandy, and the book ends with the release of the POWs after the end of the war.
Film, television, or theatrical adaptations
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures
Paramount Pictures Corporation is an American film production and distribution company, located at 5555 Melrose Avenue in Hollywood. Founded in 1912 and currently owned by media conglomerate Viacom, it is America's oldest existing film studio; it is also the last major film studio still...
bought the film rights to Without Remorse soon after the novel was released. There were several attempts to start work on the film, but it was always dropped soon after, along with attempts to adapt Clancy's hit novel Rainbow Six
Rainbow Six (novel)
Rainbow Six is a techno-thriller novel written by Tom Clancy. It focuses on John Clark, Ding Chavez, and a fictional multi-national counterterrorist unit codenamed Rainbow, rather than Jack Ryan and national politics...
into a film. Without Remorse is currently in development with no release date set.