Net Force - Tom Clancy [49]
He squatted and sat on the low seat, slipped his feet into the toe-clips on the pedals and put his riding gloves on. He grabbed the handlebars. He planned to stretch it out a little today-he felt stale. Lunch was pretty much an excuse for a place to go. Probably he wouldnt do more than grab a soft drink before he headed back.
He checked out at the gate, and headed for the bike path.
He stayed in a fairly high gear, even though it was hard to pedal that way at slow speed. The shift lever was on the seat frame next to his right hip, and easy enough to gear down if the going got too hard.
He passed a few people he knew from the base, out jogging on their lunch hour, and he waved or nodded at them. He came up behind one young woman in a red Speedo tank top and matching skintight shorts with a fanny pack slung in back, going at a pretty good rate in his direction. She was in great shape. He admired the play of her taut legs and backside as she ran. He checked her in the handlebar mirror when he passed, but he didnt recognize the face. There were a lot of people here. She could be a Marine, one of the new FBI recruits, maybe an office worker. Or maybe she lived in town and this was the return loop.
Lately, despite his feelings for his wife-ex-wife-he had felt a few stirrings that exercise and long hours working, or playing with the Prowler, couldnt quite quell.
He sighed, shifted into a higher gear and pumped harder. Sooner or later, hed have to jump back into the pool; he couldnt really see himself as a monk for the rest of his life. It just didnt seem quite right yet. He was out of practice-and the idea of asking a woman out was still more than he wanted to think about.
The path, a nice smooth macadam, meandered through a small stand of hardwood trees whose leaves were fast changing from greens to yellows and golds, then swung past the back of a new light industrial park, mostly office buildings or jobbers warehouses. A beeping forklift, painted a dark red, with a big silver propane tank on the back, carried a stack of wooden pallets toward a larger stack next to the chain-link fence. The forks motor rumbled as the driver expertly lowered the shipping platforms and backed away.
Michaels smiled. Hed run a forklift in an aluminum warehouse one summer when he was in high school, moving plate and bar to big flatbed trucks for shipment. It had basically been a simple job once you got the hang of it, uncomplicated. You picked it up here, and you put it down there, and the only thing you had to worry about was dropping it. It made a hell of a racket when you let a couple thousand pounds of metal slip off the forks, and most of the guys in the warehouse would stop what they were doing and applaud when it happened. Just like dropping a plate in the high school lunchroom.
It was true what they said: Life was like high school-only bigger.
He came to the long straight stretch, a little over half a mile before it curved again, and he upshifted into top gear. He pushed and pulled hard on the pedals, the toe-clips allowing him to apply pressure in both directions. It didnt take but a couple hundred feet for his legs to get really warm, and halfway through the strip, his thighs and ham-strings started to burn really hot. He checked the speedometer. Thirty-three. Not bad. He had the windshield mounted, but without the full faring installed, the drag wouldnt let him get much faster sitting upright with just a little backward