Red Rabbit - Tom Clancy [85]
That's my job, all right, Ryan thought behind blank eyes. It was a quest for Truth, but it was more than that. He had to replicate for his own masters the thinking processes of others, to explain them to his own superiors, so that they, Ryan's bosses, could better understand their adversaries. He was playing pshrink without a diploma. In a way, that was amusing. It was less so when you considered the magnitude of the task and the potential consequences of failure. It came down to two words: dead people. In the Basic School at Quantico Marine Base, they'd hammered the same lesson home often enough. Screw up leading your platoon, and some of your Marines don't go home to their mothers and wives, and that would be a heavy burden to carry on your conscience for the rest of your life. The profession of arms attached a large price tag to mistakes. Ryan hadn't served long enough to learn that lesson for himself, but it had frightened him on quiet nights, feeling the roll of the ship on her way across the Atlantic. He'd talked it over with Gunny Tate, but the sergeant—then an "elderly" man of thirty-four—had just told him to remember his training, trust his instincts, and to think before acting if he had the time, and then warned that you didn't always have the luxury of time. And he'd told his young boss not to worry, because he seemed pretty smart for a second lieutenant. Ryan would never forget that. The respect of a Marine gunnery sergeant didn't come cheaply.
So he had the brains to make good intelligence estimates and the guts to put his name behind them, but he had to be damned sure they were good stuff before he put them out. Because he was betting the lives of other people, wasn't he?
The train slowed to a stop. He walked up the steps, and there were a few cabs topside. Jack imagined they had the train schedule memorized.
"Good evening, Sir John." Jack saw it was Ed Beaverton, his morning pickup.
"Hi, Ed. You know," Ryan said, getting into the front seat for a change. Better legroom. "My name is actually Jack."
"I can't call you that," Beaverton objected. "You're a knight."
"Only honorary, not a real one. I do not own a sword—well, only my Marine Corps one, and that's back home in the States."
"And you were a lieutenant, and I was only a corporal."
"And you jumped out of airplanes. Damned if I ever did anything that stupid, Eddie."
"Only twenty-eight times. Never broke anything," the taxi driver reported, turning up the hill.
"Not even an ankle?"
"Just a sprain or two. The boots help with that, you see," the cabbie explained.
"I haven't learned to like flying yet—damned sure I'll never jump out of an airplane." No, Jack was sure, he never would have opted for Force Recon. Those Marines just weren't wired right. He'd learned the hard way that flying over the beach in helicopters was scary enough. He still had dreams about it—the sudden sensation of falling, and seeing the ground rush up—but he always woke up just before impact, usually lurching up to a sitting position in the bed and then looking around the darkened bedroom to make sure he wasn't in that damned CH-46 with a bad aft rotor, falling to the rocks on Crete. It was a miracle that he and a lot of his Marines hadn't been killed. But his had been the only major injury. The rest of his platoon had gotten away with nothing worse than sprains.
Why the hell are you thinking about that? he demanded of himself. It was more than eight years in his past.
They were pulling up in front of the house in Grizedale Close. "Here we are, sir."
Ryan handed him his fare, plus a friendly tip. "The name's Jack, Eddie."
"Yes, sir. I'll see you in the morning."
"Roger that." Ryan walked off,