"Ed Howdershelt - Field Decision" - читать интересную книгу автора (Howdershelt Ed)

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Field Decision
by Ed Howdershelt
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Copyright (c)2003 by Ed Howdershelt
First published via Abintra Press

Abintra Press
www.abintrapress.tripod.com

Fiction


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*Chapter One*
The Mercedes taxi threaded its way through swept-aside mounds of
late-November slush and snow to halt at the curb in front of a
turn-of-the-century style building near the center of the US Armed Forces
Education branch of the Kaiserslautern Universitat campus. The tall stone wall
and cyclone fencing around the compound made it obvious that access to the
area was restricted to US military and other authorized visitors, but just in
case someone failed to notice the wall and fence, there were four-foot-wide
signs by the guard shacks warning visitors that their cars were subject to
searches.
_'Looks more like a prison than a school,'_ thought Cade.
Ed Cade's decision to take a taxi had been based on his unwillingness
to risk his own car unnecessarily on streets clogged by the sudden snowstorm.
They'd probably have the streets mostly cleared by noon, but it was only a
two-mile trip; not worth scraping the windshields and not far enough to warm
the engine enough to make the car's heater useful.
The building was of large-block stone construction that had been
typical in the Saar region of Germany at the turn of the century, complete
with concrete overhangs above each window, a steep slate roof, and a demeanor
that might have been perfect as the setting for a horror movie.
Edward Cade approached the offices of the university's
consulate-liaison facility through a light sprinkling of December snow that
was all that was left of the winter storm that had raged for three days as it
had slowly moved south.
He'd read somewhere that Kaiserslautern, West Germany, was located at
about the same latitude as Winnipeg, Canada, but that the winters in Germany
didn't seem to be quite as severe as Canada's. Looking around and sensing the
air, he decided that they weren't even as bad as some of the winters he'd