"Destroyer 078 - Blue Smoke and Mirrors.pdb" - читать интересную книгу автора (Williams Remo)

Every one of the officers assured Risko that he had done the correct thing. But many of the enlisted men began avoiding him. He heard the word "fink" whispered a time or two behind his back.
Now he faced a similar situation, and although his duty was clear, Risko hesitated.
As he turned the corner to his room, his eyes cast downward, Risko bumped into someone.
"Whoa there, airman!"
"Oh, sorry," Risko mumbled, looking up. It was the new cook, Sergeant Green. She was the only woman on the LCF. That alone would have made her stick out. She was a pert little redhead with laserlike blue eyes. She wore a white cook's uniform with silver-and-blue chevrons on her collar. But Risko wasn't looking at her chevrons. He was looking at her chest. Half the LCF had bet the other half that Sergeant Robin Green had a bigger chest than Dolly Parton. No one had yet figured out a way to prove this belief to the satisfaction of the lieutenant who held the betting money in trust.
Sergeant Green looked at him sharply.
"Is there something wrong?" she demanded.
"What? No," he said quickly. "Excuse me." Risko brushed past her hurriedly. He shut the door after him, thankful for once that he had no roommate. He sat down to think.
The knock at the door came before he had a chance to light up.
"It's Green," the voice called through the door.
Airman Risko muttered something under his breath and let her in.
"OSI," Green said sharply, flashing a security ID. It
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featured her photograph and the words "Office of Special Investigations," but as was customary, no indication of rank.
"You?" he said stupidly, stepping back to let her in.
"I've been assigned to look into some problems on the facility," Green said briskly. "And you look like you have one of your own."
Risko shut the door woodenly.
"I don't know what to do, Sarge-I mean sir. Do I call you sir, sir?"
"You know OSI ranks are classified. Call me ma'am."
"Yes, ma'am. You see, the regs are clear on this," Risko said, spreading his hands helplessly. "But it's going to cause hell."
"Spit it out, airman."
"Yes, ma'am. It's simple. I bought a pair of blue jeans. I put them right here. At the foot of my bunk. Then I went on duty. When I got back, they were gone."
"I see. There's no chance you misplaced them?"
"I turned this room upside down a dozen times."
"Who's your roommate?"
"I don't have one," Risko said miserably. "He got transferred. It was my fault. That's why I don't know what to do."
"Damn," Robin Green said, pacing the floor. Risko noticed that her white uniform seemed two sizes too small. Especially above the waist. Her buttons looked ready to pop. A brief interest flickered in his eyes, but the sick fear in the pit of his stomach seemed to creep up to his eyes, dulling them.
"Airman, you strike me as a solid kind of guy. I'm going to level with you."
"Ma'am?"
"LCF-Fox is troubled. Deeply troubled. Critical missile parts are missing from the stores. Guidance-system components and computer parts. Technical stuff I don't even understand. We've run countless checks, quietly
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put a few people through lie-detector tests. But no leads. No confessions. Nothing. All we know is that the trouble is localized. No other LCF or LF in the grid has had problems. Only Fox."
"You think this is related to my problem?"
"My superiors are on my cute little ass-if you'll pardon the expression-to uncover a bad apple in this barrel. But I don't think we have a bad apple."
"Then how ....?"
"It's not a breakdown in the Personnel Reliability Program. It can't be."
"But it has to be. Nobody just walks on a launch-control facility unless he has clearance."
"I can't explain it, but I feel it in my North Carolina bones. OSI wants to pull me off this assignment, but I can bag this guy. I know it. But I need your help."
"Name it."
"I'm gonna wrangle you a pass. You go buy another pair of jeans. Let's see if he snaps at the same bait twice."
"I don't see how he'd be crazy enough to come back after getting away with it once."
"He's come back seven times to pilfer missile parts. He's a creature of habit. This is the fourth time he's gone after noncritical stock."
"Fourth time?"
"I work in the kitchen. We've been losing steaks. Sometimes two or three a night."
"Steaks?"
"From a locked walk-in freezer, airman. Twice on nights when I sat outside that locker, all night, pistol in hand. I never slept. Hell, I never even blinked. But in the morning there were two steaks missing. Porterhouse."
"How is that possible?"
"I don't know if it is. But it happened. I haven't reported it. Without bagging the guy, you know what would happen to me."
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"Section Eight, for sure."