Patriot games - Tom Clancy [16]
"And how had she spent her day?" Ashley inquired. Ryan was certain that they had this information already.
"Shopping, mainly. Cathy's been over here a few times, and likes to shop in London. She was last here about three years ago for a surgical convention, but I couldn't make the trip."
"Left you with the little one?" Ashley smiled thinly again. Ryan sensed that Owens was annoyed with him.
"Grandparents. That was before her mom died. I was doing comps for my doctorate at Georgetown, couldn't get out of it. As it was I got my degree in two and a half years, and I sweated blood that last year between the university and seminars at the Center for Strategic and International Studies. This was supposed to be a vacation." Ryan grimaced. "The first real vacation since our honeymoon."
"What were you doing when the attack took place?" Owens got things back on track. All three inquisitors seemed to lean forward in their seats.
"Looking the wrong way. We were talking about what we'd do for dinner when the grenade went off."
"You knew it was a grenade?" Taylor asked.
Ryan nodded. "Yeah. They make a distinctive sound. I hate the damned things, but that's one of the little toys the Marines trained me to use at Quantico. Same thing with the machine-gunner. At Quantico we were exposed to East Bloc weapons. I've handled the AK-47. The sound it makes is different from our stuff, and that's a useful thing to know in combat. How come they didn't both have AKs?"
"As near as we can determine," Owens said, "the man you wounded disabled the car with a rifle-launched antitank grenade. Forensic evidence points to this. His rifle, therefore, was probably one of the new AK-74s, the small-caliber one, fitted to launch grenades. Evidently he didn't have time to remove the grenade-launcher assembly and decided to press on with his pistol. He had a stick grenade also, you know." Jack didn't know about the rifle grenade, but the type of hand grenade he'd seen suddenly leaped out of his memory.
"The antitank kind?" Ryan asked.
"You know about that, do you?" Ashley responded.
"I used to be a Marine, remember? Called the RKG-something, isn't it? Supposed to be able to punch a hole in a light armored vehicle or rip up a truck pretty good." Where the hell did they get those little rascals-and why didn't they use them ? You're missing something. Jack.
"Then what?" Owens asked.
"First thing, I got my wife and kid down on the deck. The traffic stopped pretty quick. I kept my head up to see what was happening."
"Why?" Taylor inquired.
"I don't know," Ryan said slowly. "Training, maybe. I wanted to see what the hell was going on-call it stupid curiosity. I saw the one guy hosing down the Rolls and the other one hustling around the back, like he was trying to bag anyone who tried to jump out of the car. I saw that if I moved to my left I could get closer. I was screened by the stopped cars. All of a sudden I was within fifty feet or so. The AK gunner was screened behind the Rolls, and the pistolero had his back to me. I saw that I had a chance, and I guess I took it."
"Why?" It was Owens this time, very quiet.
"Good question. I don't know, I really don't." Ryan was silent for half a minute. "It made me mad. Everyone I've met over here so far has been pretty nice, and all of a sudden I see these two cocksuckers committing murder right the hell in front of me."
"Did you guess who they were?" Taylor asked.
"Doesn't take much imagination, does it? That pissed me off, too. I guess that's it-anger. Maybe that's what motivates people in combat," Ryan mused. "I'll have to think about that. Anyway, like I said, I saw the chance and I took it.
"It was easy-I was very lucky." Owens' eyebrows went up at that understatement. "The guy with the pistol was dumb. He should have checked his back. Instead he just kept looking at his kill zone-very dumb. You always 'check- six.' I blindsided