Chapter By Chapter> Tom Clancy’s Op-Center: Mirror Image chapter 35

Chapter by Chapter features me reading one chapter (or possibly multiple chapter for this one) of the selected book at the time and reviewing it as if I were reviewing an episode of a TV show or an issue of a comic. There will be spoilers if you haven’t read to the point I have, and if you’ve read further I ask that you don’t spoil anything further into the book. Think of it as read-along book club.

Considering how long this book is we’re probably going to be halfway through the book for a while. That’s the problem with a long novel like these Op-Center novels. At this point I’m out of stuff to write for the intro, so at least the Chapter By Chapter intro is long enough.

In the last chapter Squires met with the British agent he’ll be working with. Their cover isn’t as a couple. Meanwhile, she might have a chance at payback. This chapter we’re going back to Commie Op-Center. Let’s see how much closer they are to screwing up.

Chapter 35: Tuesday, 1:05 AM, St. Petersburg

Orlov continues to interest me. He doesn’t even know that Fields-Hutton was killed. He really is out of the loop, and it makes me wonder why Dogin put him in charge when he’s the one behind this? I was of the impression Zhanin wasn’t even aware of Commie Op-Center, one of the reasons I call it Commie Op-Center. Orlov was told it was suicide. So he doesn’t know the agent sent to keep an eye on Squires and Peggy killed Fields-Hutton, but despite Rossky’s wishes he wants them followed, not killed. He would have liked to interrogate Fields-Hutton, but he doesn’t want the same mistake with this group. It’s a bit naive to think they might help Commie Op-Center, but do they think they’re American or Finish?

Meanwhile they also track Striker’s plane, but being a seperate but connected operation is only one theory, and not the first one they come up with. The first is that the plane might contain a defector. They’ll track the plane to see what’s happening.

Here we see the difference between Orlov and Rossky on display again, and we can compare them to Paul Hood and Mike Rodgers, their respective counterparts. Orlov is a lot like Paul, not really thinking of violence as the first response. He sees Commie Op-Center as an intelligence gathering operation, while regular Op-Center is a crisis response team that uses intelligence as well as field agents and soldiers. Rossky is closer to Rodgers in that he’s a man of action, but he’ll gladly take on a body count to protect their operation, and of course Dogin’s plan to restore Communist Russia and the USSR, which more and more I’m convinced Orlov is unaware of.

Additionally we get a moment at the start of the chapter where Orlov is being pulled off of his regime that he started when he was an astronaut. I feel sorry for the guy. He’s clearly surrounded by evil people but he is not evil himself. He might be the best weapon the heroes have, but we’ll have to find out in the next set of chapters.