We’ve seen some great prequels over the years in the Ryanverse, Red Winter being a great example taking us back to an earlier Jack Ryan Sr. But what if there was an as yet untapped even earlier part of his past. A secret that he’s been carrying all these years.

I’m proposing a missing chapter titled Tom Clancy Semper Fidelis.

The year 1978 is one of the most volatile of the Cold War. In the Mediterranean, the U.S. 6th Fleet and the Soviet 5th Eskadra are locked in a permanent game of cat-and-mouse.

NATO’s southern flank is crumbling. Greece has recently withdrawn from the NATO military command structure in protest over Cyprus. Anti-American sentiment is at an all-time high in Athens.

In the U.S., the Carter administration is pushing for the Camp David Accords. The Soviets, desperate to maintain their influence with Arab rejectionist states, are flooding the Mediterranean with SIGINT trawlers to monitor U.S. diplomatic traffic.

The Soviet Navy is testing the Snegurochka (Snow Maiden), a prototype ultra-low-frequency burst-transmitter. This device allows a submarine to communicate with Moscow in milliseconds, rendering useless the U.S. Navy’s attempts at radio-frequency triangulation.

This novel would explore Jack Ryan’s enlistment, training and deployment with the Second Marine Division abord the USS Guam.

Every Ryanverse fan knows Jack Ryan was medically discharged after a CH-46 Sea Knight crash in Crete. The novel would reveal that the crash that ended his Marine career, wasn’t strictly a training accident. It was a black op. And it was this which first brought him to the attention of Admiral James Greer. Ryan’s platoon was being used as a clean cover for the CIA’s extraction of a GRU defector carrying the Snow Maiden.

A young, green 2nd Lt. Jack Ryan is hand-picked, because of his smarts, to secure a remote Cretan monastery under the guise of a wider NATO exercise. Site secured, the hand-off from the GRU defector is supposed to happen with John Clark and his CIA SOG team. However, he’s pinned down in the valley below by a Spetsnaz Alpha Group team that secretly landed via a Bulgarian freighter.

Ryan deftly deals with the hand-off from the GRU defector, despite not having the full picture, secures his extract, and then proceeds towards John Clark’s team with the intention of supporting them to break contact. His helicopter is caught by small arms fire and goes down. His back is broken and yet he still manages to pull his men from the helo, saving their lives. He never meets Clark.

Three weeks later Jack is discharged from Bethesda Naval Medical Center. Jack is in a back brace, his Marine career officially over. Admiral Greer visits him. He brings a file. The Navy JAG report details the crash was a unfortunate mechanical failure due to improperly seated hydraulic seals. No mention of the monastery. No mention of the defector. But Greer does tell Jack that the Snow Maiden is being analyzed at Langley as they speak. Greer swears him to secrecy and then says, “The Navy says you had a bad day in Crete on a training exercise. I say you did your country a service. When your back is better, come find me.”