Tom Clancy had been an English major at
Baltimore’s Loyola College and had always dreamed to be a novelist. He is
well-known with his main character Jack Ryan series. He passed away in October
2013. Mark Greany is American novelist, known as Tom Clancy’s collaborator on
his final three books. I choose Threat Vector for this post while Executive
Order and The Hunt Red October are still in waiting list. The first Great
Britain edition is published in 2012. This 710 – page novel is published by
Penguin Great Britain in 2013. This is a political and action thriller novel.
Threat Vector, a Jack Ryan Novel, Tom Clancy with Mark
Greany: summary
Istanbul, Turkey
Former operatives of the Jamahiriya
Security Organization (JSO), the dreaded national intelligence service of Lybia
under Moammar Gaddafi, managed to survive after Gaddafi’s death. The Seven
agents made their way to Istanbul, Turkey, where they were sponsored by
elements in the local underworld. Only five agents remained in the spy game.
The five Libyans became targets of an off-the-books assassination team from
U.S. A year earlier, a member of JSO cell had shot and killed Brian Caruso, the
brother of the Americans, and a friend of the rest. Five young Americans were
in secret operation named the Campus. It was John Clark, Domingo Chavez, Sam
Driscoll, Dominic Caruso, and Jack Ryan Jr, the oldest son of President Jack
Ryan. The five targets were down and Jack Ryan found the Campus team’s name on
the e-mail of the target five.
Beijing, President Wei Zhen Lin
Zhen Lin was born into privilege,
raised in Beijing, and sent to exclusive boarding school in Switzerland. Zhen’s
father was a member of the Seventh Politburo of the Communist Party of China.
He was with Mao Zadong during the Long March. Wei was a member of a group known
as the Princelings. They were the rising stars in politics, the military, or in
business in China who the sons or daughters of a former party officials, most
them high-ranking Maoists who fought in the revolution.
Wei returned to Beijing to study
economics and got a doctorate in administration in Nanjing University. He was
elected mayor of Shanghai and became the Shanghai party chief of Communist
party and a member of the Sixteenth Politburo. The three highest offices in
China are the president, the general secretary of CPC, and the chairman of the
Central Military Commission (CMC), the chief of military. At times the same
person holds all three roles simultaneously, but in Wei’s case the CMC
chairmanship went to a four-star general , Su Ke Qiang, the son of one of
Maoist’s most trusted marshals, had been a childhood friend of Wei. The
inevitable truth was the nation’s finance in crisis and he placed a pistol in
his temple but he lowered the gun quickly to hear his friend Chairman Su came
with tanks to Tiananmen Square.
Wei proposed China military power to
reassert China in the region. His economic disaster only could be avoided by
expanding territory, creating new sources of raw material, new products and
markets. Total dominance in South China Sea was step one, and step two is
returning Hong Kong to mainland. And step three will be the long-stand stated
goal of China, the absorption of Taiwan. Wei will do it without revealing China
as an aggressor, he chose some sort of computer attack to destroy U.S. A
cyberwarfare and cyberespionage. Chairman Su relied on Dr. Kwan Kwok Tong aka
Center. Tong went to the U.S to heighten his abilities in computer programming
in MIT. It was a computer software company in Menlo Park, California. They
developed a reputation as some of the best white hat hackers in Silicon Valley.
Crane, Centre’s man just killed all of
the programmers. But the paper said a murder-suicide with five victims the
previous morning at a software company in Menlo Park, California. Melanie Kraft
was reports officer, an analyst for CIA. She was blackmailed by Darren Lipton,
a FBI man. Lipton knew about her father’s act of espionage. She thought of her
own future, she knew if her father was arrested there would be no chance she
could ever get a job working for Department of State, the daughter of an
American traitor. Melanie had bugged his boyfriend’s cell phone.
Hong Kong
The campus found the hackers who
involved in killing the five programmers was known as FastByte22. Zha Shu Hai
was born in China and emigrated to U.S. He was American who arrested for trying
to sell classified engineering from his employer, the makers of unmanned aerial
vehicles for the Air Force. Like Tong he was a prodigy in computer science.
With Zha’s knowledge of computer code and penetrating secure networks, he
developed the Ghost Ship’s powerful remote-access Trojan, the malware that
allowed Center to steal data convert, as well as see through the cameras and
listen through the microphones of every machine it infected. Zha’s virus was as
insidious as it was brilliant. Adam Yao, a CIA agent who lived in Hong Kong
found Zha organization that linked to Center. Zha and Center also attacked U.S
cybersecurity.
Todd Wicks, a computer hardware
territory sales manager, had been set up at a hotel in Hong Kong. A detective
and the Shanghai Municipal Police arrested Wicks and charged him with engaging
a prostitute that was a cause of great concern in that city. Having the U.S
consulate know that he had cheated on his wife with a Chinese hooker would be
even more humiliating, but maybe they could get him out of this. They had the
evidence, the video. He swore to the detective that he would do anything. A
Chinese spy wanted Todd to commit act of treason that could get him killed or
thrown to the prison the rest of his life. He planted virus on his client,
Hendley Associates, an international financial concern in where the Campus
worked. It was owned and directed by former US, Gerry Hendley.
The Campus, the unofficial name given
to the off-the-books spy shop, had been envisioned years earlier before
President Jack Ryan during his first administration. Wicks’s treason had made
Hendley Assosiates easily tracked and the Campus had been hacked. Center used
four threat vectors. The third vector was the insider threat. Gavin Biery, the
director information of technology Hendley Assosiates, was suspicious on Todd
Wicks. Wicks’s treason almost made Jack Ryan, Jr. and his friend almost killed.
Dr. K.K Tong also recruited some Russian guys.
Valentin Olegovich Kovalenko was a
brilliant programmer, former Russian foreign intelligence. His employer had
sprung him from Matrosskaya Tishina jail in Moscow but made him accomplice. He
thought it was industrial espionage. He sent Kovalenko to some places in Europe
but now he was in a mission in U.S. Center had made him met Darren Lipton. Both
Lipton and Valentin communicated at the Cryptogram (a secure instant message
program) window on their laptop. They thought Center was an English man or
Russian. The jobs started easy for Valentin, but got harder and harder. Center
had tricked and threatened to kill him. He wanted to quit from his jobs and had
helped the Campus team from Center’s men attack.
The call between President of United
State Jack Ryan and President of the People’s Republic of China Wei Zhen Lin
had been Ryan’s originally; he wanted to attempt a dialogue with Wei, because, regardless
of what Wei had been saying publicly, Ryan and most of his top advisers left
that Su was pushing the conflict in the strait and the SCS way past what Wei
was comfortable with. The Chinese had fired more anti-ship cruise missiles
against another Taiwanese ship.
Zha had been killed in Hong Kong. Adam
Yao, the Campus team, and SEAL team did it. Yao studied Tong was in Guangzhou
and all teams had seized and killed him. Tong was dead. That was not in the paper; Su had learned this
when his body was identified. Ninety-two Ghost Ship hackers, managers, and
engineers died as well, dozens more were injured. The servers were blown to
bits, and with that Su had learned almost immediately that America’s secure
Department of Defense network bandwith increased, satellite communications come
back online. The Campus seized Su. Ding shot him dead.
President Jack Ryan announced publicly
that the American strike aircraft a limited attack on location Southern China
that was thought by American military and intelligence experts to be the nerve
center overseeing the cyberattacks against the U.S. Eight American military
personnel were killed, when the American Reaper drone was hijacked two months,
and missiles were fired on U.S soldiers and its allies. President Wei heard the
heavy vehicles of Ministry of Public Security outside his window. They had come
to arrest him, just they had done before, except this time Su wouldn’t show up
to save him. Su had not save him back then but he only delayed Wei’s fall long
enough to further tarnish his legacy. He shot himself.
Mary Patricia Foley, director of
national intelligence, asked Jack Ryan to talk to his girlfriend. Her boss had asked Melanie to resign because she knew about
the Campus. She resigned and went home to her father in Texas. Jack Ryan, Jr.
was feeling somber with the death of his friends and his breakup with Melanie
but being home around his family, brightened him. He was on the dinning table
with his family.
Sekapur Sirih
Tom Clancy adalah penulis novel khusus
tema thriller politik dan aksi dengan tokoh serialnya Jack Ryan. Selain menulis
sederetan novel ternama penulis juga menulis beberapa karya non fiksi. Clancy
adalah sarjana Sastra Inggris dan selalu bercita-cita ingin menjadi novelis.
Karya-karyanya biasanya tebal dan detil mengenai kepresidenan, pesawat,
senjata, aksi laga, dan politik antar negara. Penulis telah meninggal dunia
pada tahun 2013 lalu. Mark Greany adalah penulis Amerika yang berkolaborasi
dengan Tom Clancy dalam tiga novel terakhirnya.
Ada 40 tokoh terkadang kewalahan
mengidentifikasi mereka. Namun saya masih tetap kagum dengan penulis karena
mampu menuliskan karya kompleks dan berteknologi terkini karena berkaitan
dengan dunia siber (cyber), mengingat usia dan latar belakang akademik Clancy,
dengan tokoh berkarakter kuat dan tentu saja novel ini tepat bagi peminat aksi
thriller dan politik.
Novel setebal 710 halaman ini cocok
dijadikan acuan pembelajaran novel bahasa Inggris karena bahasa yang mudah
dimengerti dan disampaikan dalam bahasa bagus. Karena buku fiksi ini bercerita
tentang perang siber (cyberwar) perebutan perairan strategis Laut China Selatan
sehingga kata Indonesia beberapa kali disebut dan kapal perang Yos Sudarso dan
Bunguran Timur pada halaman 635 dan 636. Buku ini tepat sebagai rekomendasi
bagi pembaca cyberwar maupun dunia kriptografer, programmer, dan komputer
sains.
Terjemahan dalam Bahasa Indonesia: The
Threat Vector karya Tom Clancy dan Mark Greany
Sebuah tim intelijen operasi rahasia
bernama the Campus melakukan pekerjaan mereka dengan sigap dan rapi di kota
Turki. Dari kelima anggota tim, salah satunya adalah Jack Ryan Jr., tak lain
merupakan putra tertua President Amerika Jack Ryan. Target mereka adalah lima
orang mantan anggota JSO (Jamahiriyah Security Organization), badan intelijen
nasional Moammar Gaddafi dari Lybia. JSO telah membunuh Brian Caruso saudara
dari anggota tim dan sahabat bagi yang lainnya. Lima target sudah terbunuh
dengan sempurna namun Jack Ryan, Jr. menemukan sebuah data yang mengarah kepada
nama mereka sendiri, kelima anggota the Campus yakni John Clark, Sam Granger,
Domingo ‘Ding’ Chavez, Dominic Caruso, Sam Driscoll, dan Jack Ryan, Jr.
Wei Zei Lin adalah putra dari seorang anggota
partai Politburo Ketujuh dari Partai Komunis China. Ayahnya masih teman
seperjuangan dengan tokoh Mao Zedong. Dilahirkan dan dibesarkan di keluarga
berada di Beijing dan menamatkan sekolah berasrama ekslusif di Swiss bersama
teman-teman sebayanya yang juga merupakan anak-anak jendral, pejabat atau
petinggi China. Seteleh kembali di Beijing, dia belajar ekonomi pada Beijing
University, menyelesaikan program master bisnis, dan program doktor
administrasi di Nanjing University. Wei tergolong dalam grup anak-anak petinggi
negara yang dikader untuk menempati posisi penting di negaranya.
Berkat jaringan itu dia dengan mulus
memulai karirnya sebagai walikota Shanghai hingga Menteri Perdagangan yang
mengantarkan pria tampan itu menjadi Presiden Republik Rakyat China (People’s
Republic of China) serta menjabat sekjen Partai Komunis China. Situasi
kepresidenan tidaklah mulus hingga dirinya hampir saja menembakkan kepalanya
sendiri. Namun bantuan barikade Jendreal Su ke Qiang, seorang jendral
berbintang empat, tak lain adalah teman semasa kanak-kanak, yang kini menempati
posisi tertinggi militer sebagai kepala tentara nasional. Kekuatiran atas
kegagalannya dan membayangkan dirinya diasingkan dan dipenjara membuatnya
hendak memutuskan untuk bunuh diri.
Kekuatan militer di tangan Su,
membuatnya bertahan. Untuk mengatasi bencana krisis ekonomi yang dihadapinya,
Wei ingin menambah wilayah, pasar, bahan mentah yakni dengan tiga ambisi: 1. menguasai Laut China Selatan (LCS),
Selat Malaka beserta menggenggam perekonomian negara-negaranya sekitarnya, 2. mengembalikan Hongkong dan perekonomiannya ke daratan, 3. merebut Taiwan. Lewat pidato resmi kenegaraannya dia
berdalih bahwa kawasan LCS dulunya adalah milik PRC serta ingin menguasai
negara-negara itu juga termasuk Fillipina, Indonesia, Vietnam, dan Malaysia.
Wei mengiginkan perang siber (cyberwar) menghindari kesan penyerang untuk
menghancurkan Amerika yang selalu antusias menjaga Taiwan dan kawasan jalur
perairan strategis LCS dan selat Malaka.
Seorang programer dan kriptograper
handal Dr. Kwok Kwan Tong dipercaya sebagai direktur operasi Ghost Ship dalam
misi rahasia ini. Center begitu nama samarannya. Doktor ahli komputer lulusan
terbaik Amerika dan berstatus seorang buronan dari Beijing memimpin pergerakan
peretasan (hekking) drone pesawat Amerika dan peretasan data rahasia badan
intelijen Amerika. Center merekrut mantan JSO Libya, beberapa orang Rusia
termasuk Valentin Kovalenko, mantan intelijen Rusia untuk luar negeri, seorang
programmer handal.
Dengan kekuatan jaringan dan pendanaan
besar dari SU, dia mampu mengambil tawanan Rusia itu dari penjara dengan
memberi identitas baru dan gaji tinggi. Seorang anggota FBI Darren Lipton pun
dibayar mahal untuk operasi ini. Tak satu pun mereka mengetahui kalau Center
adalah seorang China, mereka hanya menduga Center seorang Inggris atau Rusia
karena semua perintah dalam perintah teks dan suara di layar komputer wahana
Cryptogram tanpa pernah tatap muka.
Agennya dimana-mana sehingga setiap
gerak-gerik Kovalenko yang sempat ingin lari dari perjanjian tak luput dari
pengawasannya. Presiden Jack Ryan sudah sempat mempersiapkan perang atas
tindakan China yang mulai mengokupasi LCS dan Taiwan. Operasi the Campus pun tidak tinggal diam dan merangkai
temuanya dari anggota JSO dan mengarah pada Center maupun Fastbyte22. Adam Yao,
seorang prodigy lulusan Amerika dan salah satu agen CIA yang bermukim di Hongkong mendapati kalau organisasi
pergerakan Center berada di Hongkong. Tim Campus dan tim SEAL berhasil membunuh
Zha Shu Hai, dengan nama smaran Fastbyte22, programmer hebat andalan Center.
Namun mereka gagal mendapatkan Center.
Sekembalinya ke Amerika, Jack Ryan Jr
dan rekannya hampir saja terbunuh oleh tiga orang Rusia yang merupakan suruhan
Center dan tidak hanya itu beberapa agen Amerika pun terbunuh di sebuah gedung
dan diduga perbuatan kelompok Center. Jauh sebelumnya sekelompok programmer
handal dari sebuah perusahaan software di Silikon Valley pun dibunuh dan data
mereka dicuri. Seorang manajer penjualan perangat keras (hardware), pemasuk
resmi barang pada orgasisasi Hendley yang merupakan kantor resmi kelompok the
Campus, berhasil mencuri data dan menyadap mereka.
Todd Wicks, sang manajer penjualan itu,
telah dijebak dengan tuduhan atas pelacuran ilegal dengan tuduhan penjara dan
mengancam memberitahu video rekaman perzinahannya itu pada kedutaan dan
istrinya. Dia dijebak semasa kunjungan bisnis di Hongkong. Dengan terpaksa dia
menuruti perintah polisi dan detektif China itu dan menghianati
Gavin Biery, direktur informasi teknologi dari perusahaan Hendley Assosiates,
yang juga teman baiknya dengan menyadap kegiatan mereka serta mencuri datanya.
Penghianatan juga dilakukan oleh
Melanie Kraft, seorang anggota CIA yang juga kekasih dari Jack Junior dengan
menyadap telepon genggam sang putra presiden. Semuanya dilakukannya karena
terdesak. Anggota FBI Darren Lipton telah mengancam akan membuka penghianatan
ayahnya yang memberi informasi pada kekasih gelapnya yang tak lain adalah pihak
musuh ketika bertugas sebagai duta besar di Mesir (Egypt). Karena kekuatiran,
Melanie dan ayahnya akan berakhir di penjara, dia terpaksa menuruti permintaan
Lipton dan atasannya Packard.
Adam Yao berhasil menemukan posisi
Center di Guangzou. Center berhasil dibunuh dan Jendral Su yang juga telah
mencium kehadiran kelompok the Campus dan sang jendral juga dibunuh. Presiden
Wei sangat kuatir akan posisinya atas kematian Su. Dia pun kembali bunuh diri
dan kali ini berhasil dan dia sendiri meminta asistennya menyelesaikan upaya
bunuh diri itu.
Sesuai harapan atasannya, Melanie Kraft
pun akhirnya mengundurkan diri sebagai agen dan meninggalkan kekasihnya dan
kembali ke Texas menemui ayahnya setelah dia mengakui semua pengkhianatannya dan
meminta maaf pada Jack. Darren Lipton tertangkap dan dipaksa mundur dari FBI sebagai tanggung-jawab atas pengkhianatannya pada negara. Walau sebenarnya sedih
kematian beberapa kawannya dan kehilangan Melanie, namun bagi Jack Junior
berada di tengah keluarga menyemangatinya lagi, dia pun menikmati makan malam dengan
keluarganya.
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