Net Force - Tom Clancy [129]
By now, though, its lunchtime. On the way to the interview, Ernest stops at Ricks Pit Barbecue, where he orders a double helping of pork ribs and a beer to wash em down. So while hes waiting for Ricks boy James to dish up the ribs-which are drenched in about half a gallon of hot, greasy barbecue sauce, and which are the absolute best ribs anywhere in East Texas, and pretty much in Central or West Texas, too, and thats sayin something-while hes waitin, Ernest walks on over to the phone and calls up Loretta. Says to her, Honey, shake out your blue dress-we gone go out dancin tonight to celebrate my new job.
Now, a man that eats ribs wearing a white shirt he knows got to stay clean, thats a confident man, girls.
Michaels laughed.
I like seeing you do that, Alex. Laugh. You dont do it enough.
Michaels felt a little stab of something through the pain medication. Something in her voice. She liked him. It made him feel a little uncomfortable, but not too uncomfortable. There have been better times for it. So, what happened to them? Your roommates?
Mary Louise went to law school-Harvard-then home to go into practice with her fathers firm. She was on the team that took the State versus Pennco Housing to the Supreme Court last year and won.
And the woman from Texas?
Dirisha joined the Womans Pro Volleyball Tour right after she graduated. Played for three years, was on the Nike Team that won the Four Woman Outdoor Championships a couple of times. She retired from the circuit, wrote a book about her adventures, got a job as a sports columnist for The New York Times. Got married a few years ago, had a baby, a boy. Want to guess what she named him?
Come on.
Yep. Ernest.
Youre making this up.
She raised her hand, made the scout sign. Not a word, I swear.
He chuckled again. She was right. He needed to laugh more.
Right now, though, he was a little nervous. Where was Howard? He should have called by now. He looked at his watch.
Even if it all went as smooth as silk on silk, Michaels was going to have to do some fast and fancy dancing to keep Carver from going for his throat when he found out. If they went through all this and failed to retrieve Plekhanov, well, he was definitely going to be in crap up to his eyebrows.
If this operation failed, hed sure as hell get a lot of time to practice his laughing, probably a long, long way from anything connected to Net Force. Though he didnt think hed feel much like yuk-yukking it up for a while.
Sunday, October 10th, 12:12 a.m. Grozny
Shes at top speed now, sir, the pilot yelled. He had to yell to be heard over the Hueys rotor and wind noise. All those action vids where they showed people having normal conversations inside a big chopper with the doors open, like two aristocrats sharing tea in an air-conditioned Rolls Royce, were pure fantasy. Those vids were produced by somebody who had probably never even seen a helicopter close up. Even the radio chatter in the headphones was hard to hear.
How long? Howard shouted.
Two, three minutes, the pilot yelled back. Theres the edge of the tank farm ahead, to the right. And theres the river. Im going to take us right over the main road.
The ten men assigned to this craft carried H&K subguns and holstered side arms-9mm Brownings, along with Cold Steel sheath knives. They wore plain coveralls, but they also wore flak vests and generic Kevlar helmets and boots. The gear was all over-the-counter commercial-the subguns were from Germany, the pistols from Belgium, the vests Israeli, the knives Japanese. This was not supposed to be a stand-up fight, and if any gear got left behind, it wasnt going to point to the United States.
The troops did wear dog tags, but that didnt matter-they werent leaving any personnel behind. Either they all left or they all stayed.
Theres the truck! Fernandez yelled.
And theres trouble, Howard said.
A convoy of military-style vehicles, three of them, was fast approaching the dead truck from the other direction. The lead