"Энди Макнаб. День независимости (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

I sat on the T, the smart aluminium commuter train that had brought me
from Logan airport into Boston and, after a quick change, north towards
Wonderland.
Wonderland always sounded to me like some kind of glitzy shopping mall;
in fact, it was only the drop-off point for people from the northern suburbs
heading into Boston. Today, though, no destination could have been better
named. Carrie had been lecturing at MIT this morning, so was picking me up
here instead of at the airport, then taking me to her mother's place in
Marblehead, a small town about twenty miles north along the coast. Her
mother had lent us the granny annexe, while she carried on with her B-and-B
business in the main house. Carrie and I lived there alone now that Luz had
started high school in Cambridge. To me it was home, and it was a long time
since I'd felt that way about anywhere.
The other passengers looked at me as if I'd just escaped from the local
nuthouse. After two days of travelling back from Egypt, my skin was greasy,
my eyes stung, and my socks, armpits and breath stank. As some kind of
damage limitation before I saw Carrie I was brushing my teeth and swallowing
the foaming paste as I looked out of the window. It wasn't going to
transform me into Brad Pitti on Oscars night but it was the best I could do.
I picked up the nylon holdall near my feet and put it on the empty seat
beside me. I needed to check just one more time that the bag was sterile of
anything that could link me to the job before she picked me up. My hand
passed over the smooth, rounded shape of the Pyramids snowstorm shaker I'd
bought her at Cairo airport, and the hard edge of the small photo album
she'd lent me for my weeks away.
"If you don't look at it and think nice things about me every day, Nick
Stone," she'd said, 'don't even think about coming back."
I opened it and felt a grin spreading across my face, as it did every
time I saw her. She was standing outside Abbot Hall in Washington Square,
Marblehead, on the start of what she'd called my US Heritage Induction Tour.
Abbot Hall was the home of The Spirit of '76', the famous portrait of a LIFE
and drum at the head of an infantry column during the revolutionary war. She
wanted me to see it because she said it embodied the spirit of America and
if I was going to become a US citizen one day, it was my solemn duty to
damned well admire and be moved by it. I said I thought it looked more like
a cartoon than a masterpiece, and she pushed me outside.
Her short brown hair was being buffeted by the wind blasting off the
Atlantic as I pressed the shutter. She looked like GI Jane in green fatigue
cargoes and a baggy grey sweater. She certainly didn't look in her late
thirties, even though a certain sadness in her smile, and a few small
creases at the corners of her mouth and eyes, told anybody who was paying
attention that the last couple of years had not been easy on her.
"Nothing Photo Shop can't handle," she said, 'once I've scanned them
into the PC."
It was rare to see her expression so relaxed, even when she was
sleeping. Normally it was much more animated, most often frowning,
questioning, or registering disgust at Corporate America's latest outrage.
She had good reason to look weighed down. It had been hard for her and Luz
since the two of them had come back from Panama, one without a husband, the
other without the man who'd become her father. Since Aaron's death there