Clear and Present Danger/Awesome

The novel

 * 15-year-old Erik Sanderson witnesses two SMG-toting men attacking neighbor Ernie Braden (himself a police sergeant and Erik's former baseball coach), grabs his .22 lever-action and runs to help. Though he's too late to prevent Braden from being shot dead, the boy drives off the killers, mortally wounding one of them with a headshot.
 * Chavez's unit (barely about platoon strength), taking down the great majority of a company and half of drug-lord mercenaries, in what is aptly named the Battle of Ninja Hill.
 * John Clark making the Director of Operations at CIA damn near piss himself in fear of the guy.
 * Clark avenges some fallen soldiers in the most hardcore way possible.
 * Clark manages an awesome heroic Kick the Son of a Bitch on Admiral Cutter.
 * Ryan brings in a Gunship Rescue for the last team with an Air Force MH-53 Pave Low, with three Gatling Good miniguns, one of which Jack mans. Cue asskicking as the assembled mercenaries are slaughtered.
 * Jack gets one that overlaps with Crowning Moment of Heartwarming when he swears to the dying Sergeant Zimmer he will make sure his kids get into college. Throughout the whole book, US government officials have been regarding people like Zimmer as faceless, expendable cats-paws to do their dirty work, make them look good, and in the worst cases, die and take their secrets to the grave so they don't get in trouble, and none of the people in and out of uniform doing the work of stopping narcoterrorism get any gratitude or acknowledgement from a government that even sinks to the point of cutting their own troops off and leaving them to die to tie up loose ends and cover their own asses, a fate Zimmer almost shares. Jack, of his own initiative, decides to make sure his death wasn't in vain and swears he will ensure the wealth and livelihood of a family whose father died in the line of duty, proving to the dying man he didn't die for nothing and that at least one of the people responsible for his fate is willing to repay his loyalty.
 * Clark's ironic solution for what to do with Escobedo, who got dragged along with the evacuated troops during the final helicopter rescue largely because they couldn't leave him behind to sound the alarm and he wasn't armed when he was taken. The option of taking him to the US to stand trial being locked out by the illegal and covert nature of the raid, and Ryan having just veto'ed the suggestion of throwing Escobedo out of the helicopter to his death, the conclusion is reached that they have no choice but to let him go free. Clark agrees and volunteers to escort Escobedo back to Columbia personally under Clark's cover ID of a drug-smuggling mercenary... and delivers Escobedo right into the hands of his rivals on the Cartel, who he's just told that Escobedo was the traitor who had been working with the Americans to allow the covert raids on their operations (as opposed to Cortez, the actual traitor).
 * A variant of the same option is used on Cortez, who had been promised that he would not be prosecuted or arrested by the Americans in return for his information. This promise is kept 100% to the letter... when the Americans hand him right back to the Cuban intelligence service that he'd originally defected from, who fully intend to kill Cortez for his treason to Cuba.

The movie

 * At the end of the movie, Ryan gives the President a brief but powerful Reason You Suck Speech in the Oval Office. The President responds first by trying to browbeat Ryan, then threatening to ruin the late Adm. Greer's reputation. Finally, he tries to get Ryan to agree to keep quiet, in return for a future favor from the White House. The President refers to this as the "Washington Two-Step", and Ryan just glares at him and says, "Sorry, Mr. President. I don't dance."