Patriot games - Tom Clancy [85]
There was rarely any traffic back here. Falcon's Nest Road came to a dead end not too far down from Ryan's place, and on the other side of the road were several farms, also dormant at the beginning of winter. The stubby remains of cornstalks lay in rows on the brown, hard fields. He turned left into his driveway. Ryan had thirty acres on Peregrine Cliff. His nearest neighbor, an engineer named Art Palmer, was half a mile away through heavily wooded slopes and across a murky stream. The cliffs on the western shore of the Chesapeake Bay were nearly fifty feet high where Jack lived-those farther south got a little higher, but not much-and made of crumbly sandstone. They were a paleontologist's delight. Every so often a team from a local college or museum would scour at the base and find fossilized shark teeth that had once belonged to a creature as large as a midget submarine, along with the bones of even more unlikely creatures that had lived here a hundred million years earlier.
The bad news was that the cliffs were prone to erosion. His house was built a hundred feet back from the edge, and his daughter was under strict orders-twice enforced with a spanking-not to go anywhere near the edge. In an attempt to protect the cliff face, the state environmental-protection people had persuaded Ryan and his neighbors to plant kudzu, a prolific weed from the American South. The weed had thoroughly stabilized the cliff face, but it was now attacking the trees near the cliff, and Jack periodically had to go after them with a weed-eater to save the trees from being smothered. But that wasn't a problem this time of year.
Ryan's lot was half open and half wooded. The part near the road had once been farmed, though not easily, as the ground was not flat enough to drive a tractor across it safely. As he approached his house, the trees began, some gnarled old oaks, and other deciduous trees whose leaves were gone now, leaving skeletal branches to reach out into the thin, cold air. As he approached the carport, he saw that Cathy was already home, her Porsche and the family wagon parked in the carport. He had to leave his Rabbit in the open.
"Daddy!" Sally yanked open the door and ran out without her jacket to meet her father.
"It's too cold out here," Jack told his daughter.
"No, isn't," Sally replied. She grabbed his briefcase and carried it with two hands, puffing as she climbed up the three steps into the house.
Ryan got out of his coat and hung it in the entry closet. As with everything else, it was hard to do with one hand. He was cheating a little now. As with steering the car, he was starting to use his left hand, careful to avoid putting any strain on his shoulder. The pain was completely gone now, but Ryan was sure that he could bring it back quickly enough if he did something dumb. Besides which, Cathy would yell at him. He found his wife in the kitchen. She was looking at the pantry and frowning.
"Hi, honey."
"Hi, Jack. You're late."
"So are you." Ryan kissed his wife. Cathy smelled his breath. Her nose crinkled.
"How's Robby?"
"Fine-and I just had two very light ones."
"Uh-huh." She turned back to the pantry. "What do you want for dinner?"
"Surprise me," Jack suggested.
"You're a big help! I ought to let you fix it."
"It's not my turn, remember?"
"I knew I should have stopped at the Giant," Cathy groused.
"How was work?"
"Only one procedure. I assisted Bernie on a cornea transplant, then I had to take the residents around for rounds. Dull day. Tomorrow'll be better. Bernie says hi, by the way. How does franks and beans grab you?"
"Jack laughed. Ever since they came back, their diet had consisted mainly of basic American staples, and it was a little late for something fancy.
"Okay. I'm going to change and punch up something on the computer for a few minutes."
"Careful with the arm. Jack."
Five times a day she warns me. Jack sighed. Never marry a doctor. The Ryan home was a deckhouse design. The living/dining room had a cathedral ceiling