"Clancy, Tom - Jack Ryan 02 - Patriot Games" - читать интересную книгу автора (Clancy Tom)

bars with sawdust on the floors, mechanical bull rides, and office workers
who strutted around with pointy-toed boots and five-pound belt buckles . .
. Why not? he concluded. Yesterday I saw something right out of a Dodge
City movie.
Jack would have been just as happy to slide back into sleep. He tried
closing his eyes and willing his body to relax, but it was no use. The
flight from Dulles had left early in the morning, barely three hours after
he'd awakened. He hadn't slept on the plane -- it was something he simply
could not do -- but flying always exhausted him, and he'd gone to bed soon
after arriving at the hotel. Then how long had he been unconscious in the
hospital? Too long, he realized. Ryan was all slept out. He would have to
begin facing the day.
Someone off to his right was playing a radio just loudly enough to
hear. Ryan turned his head and was able to see his shoulder --
Shoulder, he thought, that's why I'm here. But where's here? It was a
different room. The ceiling was smooth plaster, recently painted. It was
dark, the only illumination coming from a light on the table next to the
bed, perhaps enough to read by. There seemed to be a painting on the wall
-- at least a rectangle darker than the wall, which wasn't white. Ryan
took this in, consciously delaying his examination of his left arm until
no excuses remained. He turned his head slowly to the left. He saw his arm
first of all. It was sticking up at an angle, wrapped in a plaster and
fiberglass cast that went all the way to his hand. His fingers stuck out
like an afterthought, about the same shade of gray as the plaster-gauze
wrappings. There was a metal ring at the back of the wrist, and in the
ring was a hook whose chain led to a metal frame that arced over the bed
like a crane.
First things first. Ryan tried to wiggle his fingers. It took several
seconds before they acknowledged their subservience to his central nervous
system. Ryan let out a long breath and closed his eyes to thank God for
that. About where his elbow was, a metal rod angled downward to join the
rest of the cast, which, he finally appreciated, began at his neck and
went diagonally to his waist. It left his arm sticking out entirely on its
own and made Ryan look like half a bridge. The cast was not tight on his
chest, but touched almost everywhere, and already he had itches where he
couldn't scratch. The surgeon had said something about immobilizing the
shoulder, and, Ryan thought glumly, he hadn't been kidding. His shoulder
ached in a distant sort of way with the promise of more to come. His mouth
tasted like a urinal, and the rest of his body was stiff and sore. He
turned his head the other way.
"Somebody over there?" he asked softly.
"Oh, hello." A face appeared at the edge of the bed. Younger than
Ryan, mid-twenties or so, and lean. He was dressed casually, his tie loose
in his collar, and the edge of a shoulder holster showed under his jacket.
"How are you feeling, sir?"
Ryan attempted a smile, wondering how successful it was. "About how I
look, probably. Where am I, who are you -- first, is there a glass of
water in this place?"
The policeman poured ice water from a plastic jug into a plastic cup.
Ryan reached out with his right hand before he noticed that it wasn't tied