"The Dragon Factory" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maberry Jonathan)
Chapter Ten
Baltimore, Maryland
Saturday, August 28, 8:45 A.M.
Time Left on the Extinction Clock: 99 hours, 15 minutes
I was scared. I admit it.
I’d been in worse physical danger before. Hell, I’d been in worse physical danger two days ago, so it wasn’t that. But as I drove I started getting a serious case of the shakes because the NSA-the actual National Security frigging Agency-was trying to arrest me. If they hadn’t had just cause beforehand, they certainly did now, and I was beginning to regret how I had played it.
Sure, Church had warned me not to get taken. Message received and understood; but I know that I did more collateral damage to those guys simply because they braced me at Helen’s grave. If they’d come at me in the parking lot of my apartment building they might have gotten off with a couple of bruises. But I was pretty sure that at least two of them were in the hospital and a couple of others would be carrying around bruises that would be daily reminders of Joe Ledger, world’s oldest adolescent.
I took a bunch of random turns, double- and triple-checking that I had no tail.
My best friend, Rudy Sanchez-who’s also my shrink and used to be Helen’s shrink right up until she killed herself-has been working with me for years to control some of my less mature urges. He calls them unrefined primal responses to negative stimulation. I think he gets wood when he can toss out phrases like that.
My boss may think I’m hot shit and even the guys on Echo Team might think I’m cool and together, but Rudy knows the score. I’ve got enough baggage to start a luggage store, and I have a whole bunch of buttons that I don’t like pushed.
Disrespecting Helen-even through ignorance of her existence-did not play well with me. If they’d pushed harder I would like to believe that I wouldn’t have gone apeshit on them. There are a lot of things I’d like to believe in.
I was gripping the steering wheel too hard. The more I thought about it, the more anger rose up to replace the fear. I didn’t want either emotion screwing with my head. It was already a junk pile.
I dug out my cell and tried to call Rudy, but I got no answer.
“Shit,” I snarled, and tossed the phone down on the seat.