Has Tom Clancy lost it completely? Rainbow Six was a major disappointment; Teeth Of The Tiger starts with three promising premises, but it does very little with them and there's practically nothing to it.

A radical Moslem terrorist approaches Colombian drug lords about an alliance of convenience: the terrorist's organization will open up a European market for the cartel's cocaine, and the narcotrafficantes will smuggle willing martyrs into the United States and provide them with weapons so that they can commit a shocking, unprecedented atrocity.

Meanwhile, forward-thinking American patriots are creating a super-secret antiterrorism agency known as The Campus. It's completely and off the books, and it (rather sneakily) generates its own funding as part of its cover business. It actually fulfills about the same role as Stony Man Farm, but it exists a lot more plausibly and the current President knows nothing about it.

A secret agency needs secret agents, and as the book opens The Campus is recruiting its first candidates. Problem is, they're not going to be secret agents in the usual sense; they're going to work exclusively as assassins, discreetly removing critical links in the terrorist chain of command. Where do you look for willing assassins who are still decent human beings? If you're The Campus, you have sympathetic higher-ups in the military and law enforcement scout their own organizations. The first two candidates are a young Captain in the Marine Corps and a young Special Agent of the F.B.I.. And what a coincidence, they turn out to be twin brothers Brian and Dominic Caruso! Here's another coincidence--they're somehow related to Jack Ryan's family!

Teeth Of The Tiger takes place in Tom Clancy's alternate history, so Jack Ryan has already served as President. Remember how Patriot Games concluded with the birth of Jack Ryan, Jr.? By now Jack Junior is all grown up, with an undergraduate degree from Georgetown. He's looking for an interesting career where he'll be able to make a positive difference in the world...so he finds The Campus and figures out most of its mission through a little amateur sleuthing! Once he's found them, he talks them into hiring him as an intelligence analyst. This is a super-secret organization? Remember, if the terrorists found The Campus they'd blow it off the map, and if the U.S. government or the media even suspected that The Campus existed only a sheaf of pre-signed Presidential pardons would keep all the participants out of jail.

Well, let's overlook that one. Brian and Dominic--and by the way, if you had asked me while I was reading the book which one was the Marine and which one was the agent, I couldn't have told you--start their training, which appears to consist mainly of them examining their consciences and trying to decide whether the assassination business is really for them.

Here's where the book could have become interesting. Virtually all of our fictitious secret agents are well established in their shadowy careers when we meet them, but just how does one go about becoming a secret agent? John Le Carre provided an interesting, believable answer in The Night Manager and Murray Smith a very tough-minded, equally interesting and believable answer in The Devil's Juggler, but Clancy gives us a minimum of the twins' indoctrination as agents and of Jack Jr.'s indoctrination as an analyst. Jack Jr. does relate--repeatedly--how he learned about the intelligence business from his father's contacts and from his own Secret Service detail.

Or maybe the book could have become interesting as the terrorist gunmen make their way into and across the United States, but everything goes so smoothly for them that there's never any suspense, never any chance for the planning and training to be clever. The "terrorist procedural" parts of the book are about as fascinating as their cross-country drive.

At least the lives of the terrorist higher-ups are reasonably interesting. These aren't the disenfranchised acting out of desperation; they're rich, educated, and spoiled, and somehow--Clancy doesn't go into details--they've come to believe in a radical, violent corruption of Islam. The Teeth Of The Tiger frequently finds them drinking alcohol in violation of specific Islamic law, justifying it as part of their covers. It's a nice touch the first time or two, but Clancy repeats it far too often.

So the terrorist cannon fodder carry out their mission, but it's not much of a mission. In the book's world, we've seen not only the destruction of the World Trade Center but a homegrown bioweapon attack that killed about 10,000 U.S. residents. I think that the atrocity would shake people up, but from the book's point of view it serves mainly to stir up The Campus and its two newest agents, and soon the Caruso twins are off to Europe to stalk their prey.

So they kill someone. Then they kill someone else. After that they kill another one. Finally they kill yet another. The last assassination is a major setback for this particular terrorist organization, but it doesn't feel like a major plot point, much less the climax of the book.

Sounds less than fascinating? All of the killings are accomplished with the same device, essentially with the same procedure. None involves any risk to the agents or any suspense for the reader. Not only do we see the covert weapon in action repeatedly, we hear it explained at least twice; I remembered it perfectly well after the first time.

What else is wrong with The Teeth Of The Tiger? Mostly it's the dialog. When Clancy's characters are discussing logical matters and explaining things to one another, the writing is lucid and elegant. When they talk to each other informally, the dialog is consistently stilted and artificial. I cringed every time Brian and Dominic used the nicknames "Aldo" and "Enzo" for each other--and I couldn't begin to tell you which was which--or addressed each other as "bro."

Finally, Clancy just plain forgets about the alliance between the terrorists and the druglords. Sure, at some point a major shipment of cocaine makes its way into Europe, but that's it. There's no more activity on the part of the cartel, and as far as I know the U.S. intelligence community doesn't find out about the connection. Sure, sooner or later the F.B.I. will figure out that the cartel smuggled the terrorists into the country, but that happens offstage and doesn't become part of the plot.

Clancy has forgotten major plot elements before. Remember Red Storm Rising? The Soviets were invading western Europe only to draw attention away from their real plan, which was to take over the oil fields of the Middle East. Then Clancy forgot about the basic idea--and went on to write an exciting book, but that's beside the point.

I've said it before and I'll say it again: what Tom Clancy needs is an editor with the authority to stand up to him and make him do rewrites. The Teeth Of The Tiger has some perfectly good premises, but it needs serious work. Clancy should have removed the repeats, probably created a few more field agents for The Campus, and taken us through the four assassinations of the current version. This would have given him a workable 100-page introduction.

Then he could have written the plot.