"da Cruz, Daniel - Republic of Texas 02 - Texas on the Rocks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Da Cruz Daniel)

But it was going to take time.

Meanwhile, in the barge's flying bridge amidships, high above the slipstream of the jet engines, Ripley Forte willed himself to remain calm. At the moment, the crew needed no orders. The cable tender had deployed the buoy-supported nylon towing line around the iceberg and sheered off. The line was secured to the two barrel-sized bitts on the seasled's fantail.

The shotman had fixed his explosive charge to the nylon towing line fifty meters abaft the barge's stern. From his cupola the shotman watched the berg and the seabirds resting there. Gulls and petrels instinctively took wing seconds before a berg capsized. This is a common fate of icebergs, for beneath the warmer sea waters cut into the submerged ice like a woodsman's axe. This ablation could cause the unbalanced berg to tumble forward, smashing down on the sled, and sending its crew to the bottom. If it did begin to capsize, the shotman would blow the explosive and sever the line, allowing the seasled to rocket out of harm's way.

The thick line from barge to berg, the nexus between an almost irresistible force and an almost immovable body, quivered faintly as the two forces contended. Should it part under the strain, the severed end would snap back like a gigantic rubber band, slicing through the bridge's steel superstructure. Forte turned back to the inertial navigation dial.

By God! They had moved. Only 130 centimeters, but they had moved!

He punched in numbers on his control console: elapsed time at full power, distance made good, relative watercurrent speed, wind speed, estimated iceberg mass, engine thrust. He plotted the distances which would be made good at five-minute intervals. The line on the screen started flat and then rose sharply, leveling off at 1,050 meters per hour. He laughed and smote his thigh in exultation.

He'd show the old man!

For as long as he could remember, that had been Ripley's overpowering ambition. But Gwillam Forte cast so long a shadow, it had seemed that his son would never get clear of it. Now, though, everything was falling into place. Soon Ripley Forte would be rich--richer than his billionaire father had ever dreamed of being. He had made it on his own. To be sure, he could never rival Gwillam Forte's feat of arms--single-handedly saving the Republic of Texas by destroying Russia's 17th High Seas Fleet--but then, what mortal man could?

Certainly not Ripley Forte. Christ, it had already taken him the best part of his forty-three years even to get within striking distance of the lesser of Gwillam Forte's achievements.

Gwillam Forte was already a rich man when Ripley, his firstborn, became aware that his was no ordinary father. For one thing, Gwillam was a triple amputee as a result of the explosion of a Japanese kamikaze aboard the U.S.S. Texas, on which he had served as bugler during World War II. For another, he had surmounted his handicap by making a fortune in Houston real estate, investing millions of it in prosthesis research--bread upon the waters that returned to him in the form of an artificial arm and two artificial legs that in most respects equaled, and in some excelled, the performance of the limbs he had lost. An even more striking distinction was his father's fierce loyalty to Texas, to which he owed everything: three amazingly lifelike prostheses, five wives, seven children, a $1.3 billion fortune, the respect of his fellow Texans, and finally their reverence for sacrificing his life that the Republic of Texas might live.

Gwillam Forte's remarkable record of accomplishment was beyond the ambitions of Ripley's half brothers and sisters; they were content to graze the clover so fruitfully cultivated by their father. Ripley Forte was different. To him, Gwillam was a god, and Ripley would prove his devotion by walking in his footsteps; the stormier the path, the more worthy his emulation.

Just as his father had done before him, a bored and restless Ripley quit school in the eighth grade and hit the road, determined to meet life head on.

For the first time in his life, he breathed freely. No more English butlers standing behind his chair at dinner at El Cabellejo Ranch, no more riding lessons on purebred horses. Farewell to neckties, chamber music, formal dances with toothy young females, obsequious smiles from bank cashiers, ironed sheets, vitamin pills, visits to art galleries, cashmere sweaters, tiny sports cars, daily baths. He was out in the world Gwillam Forte, with two plastic legs and a steel hook instead of a hand, had taken on and conquered. Well, if Gwillam Forte could do it, so could

One thing was certain: Young Ripley wouldn't get by on his looks. He had a barrel chest, arms made muscular from repairing range fence during summer vacations, toobig ears, and long spindly legs that no amount of running and bicycling had been able to develop to the proportions of the rest of his body. At fifteen his hairline was already receding; by thirty the loss would stabilize, leaving him hairless from his thick black eyebrows to the crown of his head. His nose had been broken several times in fights, but the loss of symmetry was compensated for by the knife scar from the earlobe to the corner of his mouth that gave him a perpetual and slightly sinister smile. In temperament, he was flexible, as a herd of stampeding longhorns is flexible, in that he wouldn't gallop over people and stomp them into the turf unless they happened to get in his way. Somewhere behind his deep-set dark eyes, full of intelligence and imagination, was a sense of humor, but it rarely showed, for he was a young man of purpose with little time to spare on idle laughter.

For the next four years he kicked around Texas, while Texas kicked him around. He worked as water boy on a road construction crew, graduated to tool-room assistant, worked as a short-order cook, roughneck, gandy dancer, shrimp-boat hand, door-to-door encyclopedia salesman, swamper in a mine, wheat harvester, supplier of ink and needles to tattoo parlors, partner in a tire repair shop, and inmate in the Jim Hogg County jail for throwing a deputy sheriff out of a bar and grill, through a door that he hadn't observed was closed.

He had been locked up for three of his 18-months sentence when Gwillam Forte got him sprung. Two days later, he again disappeared from his father's El Cabellejo ranch, angry because his father insisted he return to school, to prepare to succeed him in the management of his dozen oil companies, newspaper chain, and the 40-odd corporations in which Gwillam Forte had important shareholdings.

Instead, Forte joined the Marine Corps, and fought campaigns in Lebanon, Honduras, and Nicaragua. In Central America, the Texan-born and bred Ripley, speaking Spanish as fluently as English, led a platoon of contras, picked up two minor wounds, and developed a distaste

Home after his four-year tour, his father's paternal hand weighed too heavily on him, so Ripley went to work for Mark Medina, one of Texas's leading contractors .Within six years he had begun his own contracting company and made a small fortune in fast-growing west Texas, establishing a name as a sound practical engineer and a man of his word--and a lousy businessman. His seventh year in business, he lost everything as shareholder in a liquidmetal fast-breeder reactor, which bred only debt--but fast.

Back at El Cabellejo Ranch for a weekend on his way to Alaska, resolved to stay away from stockbrokers while working as subcontractor on a pipeline, he found his father had mellowed; he no longer gave orders, but advice. "The sea, my boy--that's where the promise of your generation lies."

"Since when? You've done pretty well on dry land: real estate, oil, newspapers and television stations, manufacturing, information systems. Why should it be any different for me?"

"Because," said Gwillam Forte, "my generation has done too well. In our passion to produce things, we've just about used up all the land's resources. We have poisoned what little remains with foul air and blighted cities and decimated forests and fetid rivers. The oceans, Ripley--they are your future."

Ripley Forte knew about his father's being recently commissioned a captain in the "Texas Navy," charged with rehabilitating the old U.S.S. Texas on which he had served as a youth and lost three limbs. The refurbished ship would be the centerpiece of the millenary celebrations Governor Tom Traynor had scheduled to inaugurate the year 2000 in Texas. Obviously, this sudden interest in the sea had stemmed from his father's new command.

Gwillam Forte admitted it. "In fact, Governor Traynor's proposition came just as I was considering buying out an ocean technology company with a long string of annual deficits but bright prospects."

"And what did you decide?"

"Not to buy. I had the capital, but I didn't have anybody to run it."