Tom Clancy's Op-Center

"Tom Clancy's Op-Center" is a novel series, created by Tom Clancy and Steve Pieczenik. The books are actually written by Jeff Rovin, but Clancy was the originator of the idea.

Main characters

These characters are in most or all books:

*Paul Hood: The director of Op-Center and former Mayor of L.A.
*General Mike Rodgers: deputy director of Op-Center and Commander of the STRIKER, Op-Center's Military branch
*Bob Herbert: Chief of Intelligence
*Matt Stoll: The Computer Genius
*Darrel McCaskey: The FBI Liaison
*Lowell Coffey II: Op-Center's Lawyer
*Liz Gordon: Op-Center's Psychologist

Plots

The books in the "Tom Clancy's Op-Center" series so far are (partial list):

*"Op-Center" — Op-Center dealt with many anti-unification terrorists in Korea trying to provoke a new war.
*"" — A hardline coalition in the Russian government plots against the new president of Russia, backed by the Russian equivalent of OpCenter.
*"Op-Center: Games of State" — A millionaire funds Neo-Nazi activity in Europe, while plotting to insert subliminal messages of hate into the mass media.
*"" — Syrian, Kurdish terrorists plotting a political assassination take hostage of the Regional Op-Center: employees testing a prototype mobile surveillance post.
*"Op-Center: Balance of Power" — The murder of an Op-Center representative (Martha Mackall) leads to a faction trying to provoke a Spanish Civil War.
*"Op-Center: State of Siege" — Rogue soldiers seize the UN complex in New York and demand a hefty ransom for the release of their diplomatic hostages (including Hood's daughter, Harleigh). Now it's personal, and Hood has returned to Op-Center to save his daughter.
*"Op-Center: Divide and Conquer" — Op Center seeks the help of their Russian counterpart in tracking the legendary assassin, The Harpooner. Meanwhile, Paul Hood is called in when it appears the President might be undergoing a mental breakdown.
*"Op-Center: Line of Control" — The Striker Team, cut off without support, has to fend for their survival on the line of demarcation between India and Pakistan.
*"Op-Center: Mission of Honor" — Op Center has to work with the Vatican and Spanish Special Forces when an African rebel group takes hostages at several missions.
*"Op-Center: Sea of Fire" — High traces of radiation found on a corpse, lead to a company selling nuclear waste to terrorists.
*"Op-Center: Call to Treason" — When Mike Rodgers is fired due to budget cuts, he goes to work for a corrupt senator and gets embroiled in the vicious world of Washington politics.
*"Op-Center: War of Eagles" — Op-Center is under new management as Paul Hood is reassigned to a Pennsylvania Ave. appointment. At the same time, bombings in Charleston, Durban, and Taiwan, may signify the outing of a feud within the Chinese government.

Op-Center

Although familiarly called "Op-Center", the actual name of the largely autonomous agency is the "National Crisis Management Center". The charter of the NCMC, or Op-Center is unlike any other in the history of the United States. They handle both domestic and international crises. Director Paul Hood reports to the president himself, and what had started as "an information clearinghouse with SWAT capabilities" now has the singular capacity to monitor, initiate, and manage operations worldwide.

It is headquartered in a nondescript, two-story building located near the Naval Reserve flight line at Andrews Air Force Base that used to be a ready room, a staging area for crack flight crews. In the event of a nuclear attack, it would have been their job to evacuate key officials from Washington, D.C.

The seventy-eight full-time personnel at Op-Center who worked at headquarters were handpicked s, generals, diplomats, intelligence analysts, computer specialists, psychologists, reconnaissance experts, environmentalists, attorneys, and even media manipulators, or spin doctors. Op-Center shares another forty-two support personnel with the Department of Defense and the CIA, and commands a twelve-person tactical strike team known as STRIKER, which is based at the nearby Quantico FBI Academy.

During its first two years, the group had spent more than $100 million on equipment and hi-tech modifications, turning the Op-Center headquarters into an operations center designed to interface with the CIA, NSA, White House, State Department, Department of Defense, DIA, NRO, and Intelligence and Threat Analysis Center.

Net Force

The third "Op-Center" novel, "Games of State", briefly alludes to the concept of a "Net Force". This concept was later expanded into its own "Net Force" series, created by the same men as "Op-Center" but written by Steve Perry (and later cowritten with Larry Segriff). No direct connection has yet been drawn between the two series, however.

External links

* [http://www.penguin.com.au/authors/author-author-profile.cfm?AuthorId=0000003073 Penguin (publisher)]