Against All Enemies

Against All Enemies is a military thriller co-written by Tom Clancy and Peter Telep. The protagonist, Maxwell Moore, is an agent in a special operations unit of the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, and bears a striking resemblance to Navy commander and SEAL Richard Marcinko. The novel opens with Moore on a significant mission in Pakistan; after the mission falters and a colleague is killed, he is recalled to the United States and reassigned to operations against a Mexican drug cartel. Moore forms a task force with colleagues from various agencies, attempting to infiltrate the cartel and use divide-and-conquer tactics to turn the enemy against itself, but the operation has its ups and downs: they manage to bring down one cartel leader, yet fail to stop several Taliban terrorists from smuggling man-portable surface-to-air missiles through the cartel's drug tunnels into the United States, planning to attack aircraft in several cities. The terrorists' operation is partially successful; Moore and his colleagues do their best to pin down one terrorist cell, then are ordered to Belize City to capture the terrorist leader. After a fierce waterborne chase, the leader is captured and sent to a "black site" for interrogation. At the novel's end, Moore overcomes his inner demons and finds relief, and agrees to meet a CIA colleague. The book continues Clancy's signature technical detail and multi-threaded action description, weaving transnational counterterrorism, drug smuggling, and intelligence maneuvering into a tense operational panorama.