For Honor

Tom Clancy's Op-Center #17

by Jeff Rovin

In For Honor, a chilling new thriller in the New York Times bestselling Tom Clancy's Op-Center series, simmering tensions threaten to ignite when a silo of Cold War missiles surfaces in the Middle East.

In 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union sent a convoy of nuclear missiles to Cuba. The crisis that followed almost triggered World War III. However, while all eyes were on the Caribbean, not all of the missiles were sent to Cuba. Several ships slipped from the flotilla and headed for a fishing village in a remote, frigid, northeastern Soviet frontier. There, a silo was constructed not far from Alaska.

More than sixty years later, that silo and its lethal contents are intact. Now, Iranian scientists team with a Russian agent and his estranged, arms-smuggling father to bring those missiles to Tehran. When an intel officer at Op Center starts picking up hints of the deal, the government's off-the-grid unit must track the unknown actors - and try to decide whether they can count on data provided by an Iranian defector, a man who has more at stake than anyone realizes.

At the same time, Op-Center sends a lone agent to Havana to try and find an aging revolutionary, a woman, who may hold the key to pinpointing the location of the silo.

Complicating matters is a turf war between Op Center, the White House, and the FBI that threatens to compromise the investigation...as the time to act grows perilously short.

Genres: Fiction, Thriller, Audiobook, Mystery Thriller, Espionage, Military Fiction

300 pages, Kindle Edition

First published May 29, 2018

Reviews

[Matt · Rating 2 out of 5]

A Cold War secret for almost 60 years suddenly becomes relevant as Russia looks to gain an ally in the Middle East by secretly giving it nuclear weapons, but a defector and Op-Center’s Geek Tank shines a spotlight on the covert affair. For Honor is the fifth book of the Op-Center reboot as original series author Jeff Rovin full takes over the series as Op-Center attempts to stop a potentially deadly epilogue of the Cuban Missile Crisis.

Operation Anadyr was not only the plan to put nuclear ICBMs in Cuba, but outside a remote village in the Artic Circle without the U.S. knowing. A former Soviet officer who became an arms dealer is contacted by his estranged son who is a part of the GRU—the KGB in all but name—to the little village and takes him to were the missiles are stored. Chase Williams and Op-Center help interview a defecting Iranian general, who is a Christian but allowed to rise in ranks to be used a decoy later, when they learn his “imprisoned” daughter is a nuclear physicist who attended a conference that also had Russians and a elderly Cuban who was Castro’s point-woman during Operation Anadyr. Op-Center’s Geek Tank then has alerts about the travels of the Russian arms dealer and his GRU employed son arriving in the same little Russian town, Anadyr. Williams dispatches someone down to Cuba and learns from the anti-Russian scientist that missiles were stored near the town. Op-Center’s Special Forces Team sinks an Iranian undercover naval ship in international waters, but the President and the National Security Advisor are not happy with the incident while the Iranian’s plan for revenge.

For the second straight book, Op-Center felt like it was only featured in the book because it was an Op-Center book. Everything that was interesting happened outside the organization’s building and did not include any character that related to it. Then there were the chronological issues with the Presidential administration that went from being in their first term in the previous book to almost finished with their second even though only one month had passed from the events of Dark Zone. Frankly all these issues have one thing in common, Jeff Rovin, and the foreshadowing of where he plans to take the series means their confused book and undermining of everything that was laid down in the first books of the relaunch means that things will just continue to be confusing and bad.

For Honor sees the full-time return of Jeff Rovin to the Op-Center series, which given the quality of this and the previous book means the rebooted series will have the same quality issues that the original series will. If you’re a fan of Rovin then by all means continue the series, if you’ve never read Rovin before then don’t waste your time.

[Joseph · Rating 5 out of 5]

A better title for this book would be Cold War Redux. The story focuses on the Russian/ Iranian attempt to acquire nuclear weapons stored away in a long forgotten bunker. On a personal note, having read the majority of the newer Op Center novels, I have a sense of pity for Chase Williams; he has no life outside of Op Center!!! Overall a very believable story, if a rather unspectacular ending.

[Will · Rating 3 out of 5]

SUBJECTIVE READER REVIEW WITH PLOT SPOILERS FOLLOWS:

I've read a couple of Op-Center novels written by authors under the 'Tom Clancy Universe' umbrella, and some are better than others. In my opinion, Jeff Rovin's not the writer that, say, Mark Greaney is, but that's not why I gave 'For Honor' three stars.

Assuming a reader has previously been exposed to the Op-Center, the 'black hole intel beacon' is generally understood, along with its makeup and its modus operandi. Unfortunately, Rovin spends a significant part of the book developing the players at Op-Center, carefully tying in their core competencies so their part in uncovering the Iran-Russia conspiracy seems logical. Who gives a shit if you already know what Op-Center is and likely would not have invested in the novel otherwise?

Having said all of that, the storyline behind 'For Honor' is excellent; two forgotten, stowed away Soviet Cold War nuclear warheads are still in play and a side-sliding GRU captain finds a very excited buyer in the Iranian VAJA-apparently the eventual successor to the Shah's SAVAMA. The plot is actually pretty good, as an Iranian General appears to be defecting, his daughter's resultant beating videotaped and made available to supposedly keep him quiet. I guess there really are no ghosts, as Op Center's able to uncover the background of the most obscure individuals on earth. Turns out his daughter is a physicist for Tehran and was part and parcel with the beating, taking weeks to recover from her wounds--on purpose! She's then rushed off to Anadyr, Russia, to participate in removing the warheads from the missiles so they can be coptered off to an awaiting Iranian freighter waiting off the far northwestern coast of Russia. Op Center's muscle, JSOC, mistakenly sinks the freighter while trying to disable the chopper landing platforms, so the whole plan goes to shit.

The key to having the JSOC kill team on site was the obscure appearance of Cuban scientist Dr. Adoncia Bermejo, one-time revolutionary with Fidel, now 83 and seeking one last thrill. Turns out that Operation Anadyr, the transport and installation of intermediate range nuclear missiles in Cuba by the Soviets, included some fudging on inventory, with some number of missiles slated for transport disappearing from government possession and control. Adoncia remembers the Soviet maskirova, or art of deception, and on a hunch Op Center sends Intel Director Roger McCord in looking for a rowing contest with an old competitor. He finds her, manages to temporarily dissolve the clusterfuck she's in, and charms her into helping him understand the specific Soviet maskirova that left a couple of nukes in Anadyr, missing the Soviet naval warship hauling them to Cuba.

I guess I'm used to biting the bullet on developing characters in my books and ignoring the impact on what this does to word count. Publishers refer to my typical novel size as 'epic' but I've never shied away from long reads. Hell, 'Nobel House' was like 1174 pages, and I ain't ever come close to that. But I was absolutely spellbound for a month reading it! So 'For Honor' spends two-thirds of the book in character development and all the action packed into the last quarter. It's 341 sparsely populated pages, so you get my drift. All in all, not a bad transcontinental read, but certainly no award winner.

[Kym Gamble · Rating 3 out of 5]

An Op Center book that is, I would say, one of the lesser written books. Lots of intrigues but not a lot of action. I picked it up because it looked interesting but it was slow and only rated a 3-star rating. I did finish it so that is a plus. I like the other spin-offs better than the Op-Center books. If you have other books on your list I would put this at the bottom of the list.

[Monzenn · Rating 4 out of 5]

A low four, just about picked itself up by the end. The start and middle were okay-ish, the end was good, and it promised further action. I guess jugging politics, military operations, big data, and the special concept du joir is too much for a 350-odd page book, and it showed in the sometimes lack of details. Nonetheless, the crisis was described and averted quite nicely, hence a four is appropriate.

[John Purvis · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Tom Clancy's Op-Center: For Honor" eBook was published in 2018 and was written by Jeff Rovin (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeff_Rovin). Mr. Rovin has published nearly 50 novels as well as several non-fiction and biographies.

I received an ARC of this novel through https://www.netgalley.com in return for a fair and honest review. I categorize this novel as ‘PG’ because it contains scenes of Violence. At the height of the cold war Russian nuclear weapons were quietly put into place in a remote East Russian fishing village.

Now decades later the Russian military is making a deal to sell the warheads to the Iranians. Op Center steps in to stop the sale. Their efforts are challenged by opposition within the White House and the FBI.

This was an interesting read of 8+ hours for this 352 page thriller. The cover art is OK, but something closer to the story plot would have been better in my opinion. I give this novel a 4 out of 5.

Further book reviews I have written can be accessed at https://johnpurvis.wordpress.com/blog/.

[PeterK B · Rating 3 out of 5]

This book just does not work.. the first 30 pages should grab the reader... instead, we get bios of far too many characters. Takes much too long to get into the plot and again, too many characters on the US side.

And fyi, Jeff Rovin... Cuba's economy is based on tourism... check out the hundreds of hotels built by foreign companies. Russia may be involved in Cuba but is not the primary source of funds.

[Mike Grady · Rating 3 out of 5]

A better written entry in the Op Center series than the previous one. Still, it is mediocre fare - good buildup for the first 3/4 of the book, then maybe 4-5 pages of tepid climax. I will be stepping away from the remainder of the Op Center series until I can get the books at a discount. The writing simply does not justify the cost of the book for me.

[David Yount · Rating 2 out of 5]

There was too much plot development and not enough of the story in this book, in my opinion. The book starts out with a lot of background on a variety of characters from the US, Cuba, Iran, and Russia. It became too confusing to follow and keep all of the characters straight in my mind. Once the story got going it was almost too late to enjoy the book. I’ve read much better Op-Center books.

[Brentman99 · Rating 3 out of 5]

I haven't read one of these Op Center books for a while and I was reminded why...

This time, Iran and Russia are working together so Iran can acquire two nuclear warheads (I don't recall if the yield was specified). The twist is that the missiles were moved a hop, skip and a jump from the US mainland across the Bearing Sea at the same time missiles were being moved to Cuba in 1962 at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. The plot is a bit interesting, but also seemed a bit disjointed, in that I think the interagency rivalry probably goes back a few books that I haven't read.

The characters weren't memorable and I had a hard time really buying into them. One character has a near miss on a cancer scare health crisis in the beginning, but it never really goes anywhere or factors into the story. Thus, I'm wondering what was the point of telling us that information? I read this book during my daily train travels which are about 14 minutes each way, so maybe I missed something, but I don't think so.

One point that I have to mention because it annoyed the hell out of me, and I'm sure Tom Clancy would be spinning in his grave (okay, a bit of hyperbole here), was the typos. I'm not a book editor, but I think I could have done a better job than whomever proofed this one. I found at least three typos (p241 fist not first, p254 GRU not CRU, p300 likely one hundred feet not one hundred lines) and I didn't start keep track until they really got annoying. With the number of people that get paid to read these books, a paying reader shouldn't have to be the unpaid proofreader.

The premise wasn't bad and the story moved along okay, which is why I rated it at three stars. However, if I had paid top dollar for a copy, I would not have been satisfied that I got full value for my money.

Overall, not a bad book, but far from the best I have ever read. An okay timewaster, but not a book that inspired me to want to read it a second time.

[Brandon · Rating 3 out of 5]

There was a time when Op-Center has big, sprawling and complex plots about little-regarded world hot spots. The first book was about a potential conflict in Korea. Books about battling Russians were there, sure, but so were plots dealing with neo-Fascists in Europe, the fate of the Kurds, Basque separatism. Novels were set in Africa and Kashmir. Op-Center started before 9/11, sure, but it kept its eye on the rest of the world even after "everything changed." The plots were original and sometimes surprising.

The new Op-Center books have been ... not that. They started out that way, but were more poorly written and plotted than the old ones. I had some hope for the series after Jeff Rovin -- a bizarre character in his own right who wrote the first series -- returned to co-write "Dark Zone," the fourth installment of the revival. The fifth is worn solely by Rovin, which might be why it is the most disappointing of all.

It might be a "spoiler" to say that the book is about a plot to transfer "lost" nuclear weapons to Iran from Russia if it weren't blindingly obvious by about 30 pages in. I kept waiting for a twist that would make it truly a high-stakes plot, but the threat of Iran having nuclear weapons is as cliched as they come, and that robs it of a great deal of its scariness. The original Op-Center was thrilling in part by showing how the next threat could come unexpectedly from a region Americans weren't watching. Aside from a return trip to Korea, the first four books in the new series have focused on Iran, ISIS, and Russia; there's no surprise there.

There might remain hope, now that Rovin is introducing yet another new team. But the blurbs about the next book looks like it will follows the events of this one -- marking yet another run-of-the-mill installment.

Hope still exists, maybe, but it is running out quickly.

[Alex Hoisington]

In 1962, at the height of the Cold War, the Soviet Union sent a convoy of nuclear missiles to Cuba. The crisis that followed almost triggered World War III. However, while all eyes were on the Caribbean, not all of the missiles were sent to Cuba. Several ships slipped from the flotilla and headed for a fishing village in a remote, frigid, northeastern Soviet frontier. There, a silo was constructed not far from Alaska.

More than sixty years later, that silo and its lethal contents are intact. Now, Iranian scientists team with a Russian agent and his estranged, arms-smuggling father to bring those missiles to Tehran. When an intel officer at Op-Center starts picking up hints of the deal, the government's off-the-grid unit must track the unknown actors - and try to decide whether they can count on data provided by an Iranian defector, a man who has more at stake than anyone realizes.

At the same time, Op-Center sends a lone agent to Havana to try and find an aging revolutionary, a woman, who may hold the key to pinpointing the location of the silo.

Complicating matters is a turf war between Op-Center, the White House, and the FBI that threatens to compromise the investigation...as the time to act grows perilously short.

[Jayce · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 of 5 stars
After reading this, I learned that Tom Clancy did not write this, since he passed away in 2013, although books are still coming out in the Jack Ryan series being written by other authors that can recreate the way that he writes, they copy his structure and verbiage that he uses their names are in the bottom right corner of the covers usually. Jeff Rovin wrote this novel, and although it was entertaining in some spots, I found that the writing that Rovin used is very different than Clancy himself and very different than the other novels that Marc Cameron and the other authors that have picked up writing JACK RYAN JR. series. This was among the bottom 5 list.

[Mike Kennedy · Rating 3 out of 5]

During the Cuba Missile Crisis a few of the Nuclear missiles bound for Cuba were secretly moved to a remote part of the USSR. Present day with the USSR no longer around a group of Russians along with Iran as trying to bring the still functioning missiles to Iran for us against the Western Nations. Op Center is called in to try to find the missiles and keep them from falling into Iran’s hands.

This book was good not great. At times I was really engaged in the story, and at times my mind tended to wander. So far, I haven’t been impressed by the reboot of the Op Center Series.

Overall worth picking up if you have read the rest of the series, but I wouldn’t bother if you haven’t.

[Denise Morse · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was my first Op-Center book in some time but I am pleased to say that you can pick up right where you left off with no detriments.

For Honor is a classic Clancy style novel filled with terror plots, twists and turns, and high drama. I think this one was a little light on the action scenes as compared to previous books however it is still a good story, a good read, and makes you continue to root for the home team.

[Summer · Rating 2 out of 5]

Very unsatisfactory ending.

I'm giving this book 2 stars because the theme was possible, but the flow was distracting and the ending was totally unsatisfactory. The Epilogue, which seems to be trying to set up for follow up book, was hard to understand or to place in context with the story. And the ending of the book left too much unsaid. I should know better than to read stories playing on an author's theme.

[Jayce · Rating 3 out of 5]

3 of 5 stars
After reading this, I learned that Tom Clancy did not write this, since he passed away in 2013, although books are still coming out in the Jack Ryan series being written by other authors that can recreate the way that he writes, they copy his structure and verbiage that he uses their names are in the bottom right corner of the covers usually. Jeff Rovin wrote this novel, and although it was entertaining in some spots, I found that the writing that Rovin used is very different than Clancy himself and very different than the other novels that Marc Cameron and the other authors that have picked up writing JACK RYAN JR. series. This was among the bottom 5 list.

[Craig Pearson · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am becoming more and more disappointed in the military suspence genre. The lack of correct detail that a former military officer would appreciate is very annoying. The action is exciting and it melds quite well with today's headlines. I just wish this was more in line with the quality writing associatted Tom Clancy.

[Randall · Rating 4 out of 5]

Engaging read

The story itself is well paced and engaging. One odd thing though is a phrase which is repeatedly used which makes it seem unlikely to have been written by a “Tom Clancy-esqe” American. “He shut the phone to conserve the battery.” “She shut the light.” It’s just strange wording for a native.

[Drew Lowis · Rating 2 out of 5]

Felt like this book never really got going. Lots of names and characters to follow for some of the plot to not really go anywhere. Book may be part of a series but it’s the first one I read so not much made sense. Felt like there wasn’t a whole lot of actual conflict and once the conflict arose then it was done in about a page

[Ron · Rating 3 out of 5]

While this was an interesting book, it felt stiff in spots. I often wondered if there were multiple writers?

Standard boiler plate spy novel.

Nukes, Russians, Iranians, Cubans and US political types.

Entertaining, but not great.

[Jeffrey Shaw · Rating 5 out of 5]

Great read and fantastic story. Time flew by while I was reading this story. The characters were all fantastic. I think we have not heard the end of this story and I can't wait to read what happens next.

[Ross · Rating 3 out of 5]

Enjoyable entry in the “Op Center” series. The far ranging story takes place in Washington DC, northeastern Russian frontier, Cuba and Iran. Fast paced and enjoyable! I have read approx. ten novels in this series. This was not one of the best, but it was good!

[Michael · Rating 4 out of 5]

Good Thriller

A good thriller that was heavy on information and relationships but a little light on action. It took the story a little too long to get its feet on the ground and move along.

[carl clause]

CC1

Another brilliant Op- center story . The complete plot is relevant even to today. Can ' t wait till the next chapter. I just wish they would write more!!!! 10 stars plus. Thanks, Carl Clause

[Gabor · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a pretty decent read. If you've read the rest of the series, you know what you get. The old writer, Jeff Rovin is back in the saddle. I must say, out of the Rebirthed Op-Center books, this was my least favourite. It wasn't bad, it was just okay.

[Susan B · Rating 4 out of 5]

In true fashion of Tom Clancy, there were so many characters introduced some minor that you wouldn;t see til the end. Chapters are short which helps until you get to the real action. Easy read and enjoyable.

[Johnny · Rating 3 out of 5]

It was a decent book, but it misses that old school Clancy pizazz. It was an alright read, and it was a quick one. It wasn't anything special, though. I'm not disappointed that I read it, nor do I regret it. However, I probably wouldn't go out of my way to read it.

[Wayne Rurka · Rating 3 out of 5]

Found this one a hard read, first 3/4 of book takes place in office type settings, so slot of bla bla bla. Very little “out in the field action” so to speak until the last 1/4 of the book. A lot of setup dialogue for the action at the end.

[William D Green Jr. · Rating 5 out of 5]

What a crazy change of events

This was a very different adventure that had various twists and a very unexpected results that came on the fly that worked out for the greater good and safety of the nation and world enjoyed all the different ups and downs all over.