aisuyoukai | Best Part of the Book EVER!

Perhaps even the best part of any of Tom Clancy's novels. Hell, possibly his best work ever.

And it is when Clark and Oreza meet in Debt of Honor.

Oreza had been in the bathroom, finishing a needed shower while Burroughs handled the running count on the aircraft in and out of Kobler when the doorbell rang.

"Who are you"

"Didn't they tell you?" Clark asked, looking around. Who the hell was this guy?

"Reporters, right?"

"Yeah, that's it."

"Okay." Burroughs opened the door with a look up and down the street.

"Who are you, anyway? I thought this was the house of--"

"You're dead!" Oreza was standing in the hall, wearing just khaki shorts, his chest a mass of hair as thick as the remaining jungle on the island. The hair looked especially dark now, with the rest of the man's skin turning rapidly to the color of milk. "You're fuckin' dead!"

"Hi, Portagee," Klerk/Clark/Kelly said with a smile. "Long time."

He couldn't make himself move. "I saw you die. I went to the goddamned memorial service. I was there!"

"Hey, I know you," Chavez said. "You were on the boat our chooper landed on. What the hell is this? You Agency?"

It was almost too much for Oreza. He didn't remember the little one at all, but the big one, the old one, his age, about, was--couldn't be--was. It wasn't possible. Was it?

"John?" he asked after a few seconds further of incredulity.

It was too much for the man who used to be known as John Kelly. He set his bag down and came over to embrace the man, surprised by the tears in his eyes. "Yeah, Portagee--it's me. How you doin', man?"

"But how--"

"At the memorial service, did they use the line about 'sure and certain hope that the sea will give up its dead'?" He paused, then he had to grin. "Well, it did."

Oreza closed his eyes, thinking back over twenty years. "Those two admirals, right?"

"You got it."

"So--what the hell have you been--"

"CIA, man. They decided they needed somebody who could, well--"

"I remember that part." He really hadn't changed all that much. Older, but the same hair, and the same eyes, warm and open to him as they had always been, Portagee thought, but underneath always the hint of something else, like an animal in a cage, but an animal who knew how to pick the lock whenever he wanted.

"I hear you've been doing okay for a retired coastie."

"Command Master Chief." The man shook his head. The past could wait. "What's going on?"

"Well, we've been out of the loop for a few hours. Anything new that you know?"

"The President was on. They cut him off, but--"

"Did they really have nukes?" Burroughs asked.

"'Did'?" Ding asked. "We got 'em?"

"That's what he said. Who the hell are you, by the way?" Oreza wanted to know.

"Domingo Chavez." The young man extended his hand. "I see you and Mr. C know each other."

"I go by 'Clark' now," John explained. It was odd how good it felt to talk with a man who knew his real name.

"Does he know?"

John shook his head. "Not many people know. Most of them are dead. Admiral Maxwell and Admiral Greer both. Too bad, they saved my ass."

Oreza turned to his other new guest. "Tough luck, kid. It's some fuckin' sea story. You still drink beer, John?"

"Especially if it's free," Chavez confirmed.

Yes, that simple a scene. But you see... there is a lot of history in the work of this meeting. If you only read Debt of Honor you definitely wouldn't get it. I mean, it somewhat explains the fact that Clark has a new name and all and that Oreza saw "Clark" die. But there's just so much more to it than that.

And that is what makes it so f-in' awesome.

Should I explain in a full rant? I think I shall.

Now you see, having just finished reading Without Remorse in the Tom Clancy novel timeline (the Ryanverse as it is called, considering he has two books not connected to this timeline) it helps to understand this awesome f-in' scene. In fact, Without Remorse does not focus on Ryan but rather is completely about Clark. Or rather, Kelly as is his real name. (Fun enough though, Clancy still managed to put Ryan in this novel for a small family scene. You see, as I will probably further go into later, Ryan's father was a somewhat major player in this novel and there was a scene at home that barely had Jack Ryan in it.)

Back to the orginal matter at hand, Clark (Kelly) is the main focus of this previous novel and it is about how he joined the CIA. What events conspired to force him to take the offer to join and become their legend in field work, specifically paramilitary field work more often than not.

In the novel Kelly and Oreza, nicknamed Portagee in the Coast Guard, are good friends, both being perfectly at home on the water thanks to their professions, Portagee as a coastie and Kelly as an ex-Navy SEAL. Oreza's Coast Guard post is out in the waters were Kelly now lives (literally Kelly owns a small island completely to himself and lives there in an old battlement converted to a small home). The two are fast friends and talk frequently when out on the water in their respective boats.

In Without Remorse Kelly begins married to his first wife. She is pregnant at the time but dies within the first couple of pages in a bad car accident. The novel skips ahead several months, Kelly is still trying to get over her death, and he is coming back from somewhere in shore when he happens upon this young woman. For some strange reason or another (fate perhaps, some would say) Kelly picks her up to give her a ride to wherever. When she finds out he has a boat she asks to go for a ride. Again, for some odd reason or another, he agrees and they go for a boat ride.

To shorten the length a tiny bit, they form a quick relationship and this is Kelly's second "failed marriage" as it's put in one of the other novels, however the two never actually get the chance to get married I noted while reading the novel. She dies before that happens.

Again to put things more shortly... Kelly finds out about her past and the drug and sexual abuse she went through... and decides to get revenge for her death and his near death. (Really only for her death but I had to point out that he got shotgunned in the back and still managed to survive. LUCKY BASTARD! Or not, depending on how you look at it. But he does survive and without much long-term physical handicap.)

The rest of the book is how he goes on a calculated rampage on the druggie bastards (providers, not users) that used his girl, killed her, and then left her battered, lifeless body out to be eaten by birds. (Literally.) And is it sad to root for a murderer when he's actually doing the world a favor? To love him? To love him even more because of what he did in his past? Because if so... I'm guitly as charged. I love Clark. (Almost as much as Chavez, man.) Always have, and upon reading this novel about his shady past have only ever loved him even more.

TO GET BACK TO THE POINT ABOUT CLARK AND OREZA...!!! Haha...

During this same time period, Kelly has also been doing a job on the side for the CIA and military. Basically one last job for the military but the black op is going through the CIA for the intelligence factor... need that data, man. Anyway, he does this job and the CIA decides they like him, want him for more, and are going to offer him a job pretty much. But by this time the police are starting to get close to Kelly. He has been committing murder all this time after all, even if it's only to the bad guys.

Therefore, when offered the job Kelly accepts... but has to tell them about his current situation. The CIA still wants him and they decide to kill Kelly off and create the "Clark" persona everyone knows and loves so much in the future.

Really cool part is that Kelly commits "suicide" on his boat--after the police "catch" him. The police officer on his case (Lieutenant Ryan! Jack Ryan's father, which I find highly amusing considering later when Jack is a part of the CIA Clark is his bodyguard there for a good while and they become friends) finds Kelly getting ready on his boat. Well, rather Ryan is on Kelly's boat when Kelly returns to it just prior to the suicide scene. Kelly looks straight into Ryan's eyes and merely asks for an hour. Ryan, although against his police ethics, but definitely not against his personal feelings considering he hates to do any harm to the man simply out for revenge against worse foes that he himself, Ryan, is working on bringing to justice (he works drug related crimes)--for some reason agrees to let Kelly have his hour. Besides, where is he really going to run off to? On his boat, back home to his island? They know where he lives, and the coast guard will easily agree to help.

So Kelly goes free for another hour and heads out to sea. Just as he knows will happen within the hour, the Coast Guard find him just in the spot he's picked out to commit suicide. The Coast Guard running the show is, of course, Oreza. Oreza and Kelly run a really nice boat chase, very respectable and all, very fast and very skilled, but in the end the Coast Guard wins due to his ships faster design. But instead of giving himself up honorably as Oreza knows he will, Kelly runs his boat into an area where his ship (the Springer) flips. Then it explodes.

On a side note, the Springer is what Oreza names his personal boat that he buys after retiring from the Coast Guard. It is mentioned in this current novel I'm reading, Debt of Honor, and Portagee runs a fishing business with this boat, and in the beginning he is currently holding contract with Burroughs when the invasion happens, which is why the man is in Portagee's home during the later event when Clark and Oreza meet.

The explosives were set by Kelly himself actually, it's not unrealistic. Heheh. Anyway, the two admirals helping Kelly get situated in the CIA pick him up out of the water without notice and, basically, hide him while they admirably help the Coast Guard look for the body. (Pun so totally intended.)

And this is how Oreza and Kelly know each other. And this is why Oreza freaks out upon seeing Clark for the first time in over twenty years. Because he saw him die in a blaze ~~of glory~~ of fire trapped in his boat. Of course, they never did find the body even after several hours of searching. Heheh. So the sea gave back its dead.