"Brown, Dale - Fatal Terrain" - читать интересную книгу автора (Brown Dale)

6 DALE BROWN
lures stuck in it. He didn't know that all those things in his
hat had nothing to do with open-sea fishing, but it didn't mat-
ter-it was part of the "uniform."
By force of habit, he put the hardened polycarbonate Timex.
aviator's watch on his left wrist, although his own internal
body clock was all he needed now; and he plucked the cellular
phone from its recharging cradle, turned it on, and stuck it in
his fanny pack, although no one ever called him and he had
no one to call. For a long, long time, since assuming his first
command more than twenty years before, leaving his quarters
without a portable radio or a cell phone and pager had been
unthinkable, and such habits die hard. The cell phone was
something of a link to his old life, his old base of power. The
old life had been stripped away from him, but he would not
let it go completely.
The weather in Oregon's central coast matched the man's
mood-gray, cloudy, and a little depressing. The man had
spent many years in the Southwest, especially southern Ne-
vada, where they had more than three hundred clear, sunny
days a year. Many times he cursed the sun and the oppressive
heat it brought-one-hundred-degree days in April, lots of
ninety-degree midnights, terrible jet performance especially in
the high deserts-but right now a little sun and warmth would
be very welcome. It was not looking good-typical low over-
cast, drizzle with occasional light rain, winds out of the south-
west fairly light at ten knots but threatening to increase, as
they usually did, to thirty to forty knots by afternoon.
Not ideal fishing weather, but what the hell-nothing else
to do except sit around and look at the mountain of unpacked
boxes still cluttering his little mobile home in Southbeach, an
isolated vacation and retirement village on Oregon's central
coast, about eighty miles southwest of Portland. The Air
Force-contracted movers had delivered his household goods
seven months before, but there they sat, virtually untouched.

He saw a small hole the size of a pencil in the comer of one
box marked "Memorabilia" and wondered if the mice were
enjoying nibbling on the plaques, awards, photos, and me-
mentos he had stuffed in there. At least someone was enjoying
them.
The man decided just to get the hell out and do what he
had planned to do, and to hell with the bad memories and
bitterness. Concentrating on his boat, the sea, and staying alive
FATAL TER RAI N 7
on the cold waters of coastal Oregon in freshening breezes
would take his mind off the neglected remnants of the life that
had been taken away from him. 'Me prospect of catching a
glimpse of a migrating pod of whales filled him with a sense
of excitement, and soon he was speeding down the long gravel