"Clancy, Tom - Debt Of HonorUC" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clancy Tom)

flying billet he'd really wanted. Jackson tried to shrug it off. He'd done his
flying, after all. He'd started in Phantoms and graduated to Tomcats, com-
manded his squadron, and a carrier air wing, then screened early for flag
rank tin the basis of a solid and distinguished career during which he'd never
put H foot wrong. His next job, if he got it, would be as commander of a
turner battle group, something that had once seemed to him a goal beyond
the jirusp of Fortune itself. Now that he was there, he wondered where all the
Unic hud gone, and what lay ahead. "What happens when we get old?"
"Some of us take up golf, Rob."
"Or go back to stocks and bonds," Jackson countered. An eight-iron, he
thought, a soft one. Ryan followed him to his ball.
"Merchant banking," Jack proffered. "It's worked out for you, hasn't
it?"
That made the aviator-active or not, Robby would always be a pilot to
himself and his friends-look up and grin. "Well, you turned my hundred
Ihou' into something special, Sir John." With that, he took his shot. It was
one way to get even. The ball landed, bounced, and finally stopped about
twenty feet from the pin.
"Enough to buy me lessons?"
"You sure as hell need 'em." Robby paused and allowed his face to
change. "A lot of years, Jack. We changed the world.'' And that was a good
thing, wasn't it?
"After a fashion," Jack conceded with a tight smile. Some people called
it an end to history, but Ryan's doctorate was in that field, and he had trouble
with the thought.
"You really like it, what you're doing now?"
"I'm home every night, usually before six. I get to see all the Little
League games in the summer, and most of the soccer games in the fall. And
when Sally's ready for her first date, I won't be in some goddamned VC-
20B halfway to nowhere for a meeting that doesn't mean much of anything
anyway.'' Jack smiled in a most comfortable way. ' 'And I think I prefer that
even to playing good golf."
"Well, that's a good thing, 'cuz I don't even think Arnold Palmer can fix
your swing. But I'll try," Robby added, "just because Cathy asked me to."
Jack's pitch was too strong, forcing him to chip back onto the green-
badly-where three putts carded him a seven to Robby's par four.
"A golfer who plays like you should swear more," Jackson said on the
way to the second tee. Ryan didn't have a chance for a rejoinder.
He had a beeper on his belt, of course. It was a satellite beeper, the kind
that could get you almost anywhere. Tunnels under mountains or bodies of
water offered some protection, but not much. Jack plucked it off his belt. It
was probably the Silicon Alchemy deal, he thought, even though he'd left
instructions. Maybe someone had run out of paper clips. He looked at the
number on the LCD display.
"I thought your home office was New York," Robby noted. The area
code on the display was 202, not the 212 Jack had expected to see.
"ll is. I can teleconference most of my work out of Baltimore, but at least
once a week I have to catch the Metroliner up there." Ryan frowned. 757-
5000. The White House Signals Office. He checked his watch. It was 7:55 in
the morning, and the time announced the urgency of the call more clearly