The Bear and the Dragon - Tom Clancy [144]
"Ettore, where the hell did you learn to shoot?" RAINBOW SIX demanded.
"At the police academy, General Clark. I never fired a gun before that, but I had a good instructor, and I learned well," the sergeant said, with a friendly smile. He wasnt the least bit arrogant about his talent, and somehow that just made it worse.
"Yeah, I suppose." Clark zippered his pistol into the carrying case and walked away from the firing line.
"You, too, sir?" Dave Woods, the rangemaster, said, as Clark made for the door.
"So Im not the only one?" RAINBOW SIX asked.
Woods looked up from his sandwich. "Bloody hell, that lads got a fookin letter of credit at the Green Dragon from besting me!" he announced. And Sergeant-Major Woods really had taught Wyatt Earp everything he knew. And at the SAS/RAINBOW pub hed probably taught the new boy how to drink English bitter. Beating Falcone would not be easy. There just wasnt much room to take a guy who often as not shot a "possible," or perfect score.
"Well, Sergeant-Major, then I guess Im in good company." Clark punched him on the shoulder as he headed out the door, shaking his head. Behind him, Falcone was firing another string. He evidently liked being Number One, and practiced hard to stay there. It had been a long time since anyone had bested him on a shooting range. John didnt like it, but fair was fair, and Falcone had won within the rules.
Was it just one more sign that he was slowing down? He wasnt running as fast as the younger troops at RAINBOW, of course, and that bothered him, too. John Clark wasnt ready to be old yet. He wasnt ready to be a grandfather either, but he had little choice in that. His daughter and Ding had presented him with a grandson, and he couldnt exactly ask that they take him back. He was keeping his weight down, though that often required, as it had today, skipping lunch in favor of losing five paper-pounds at the pistol range.
"Well, how did it go, John?" Alistair Stanley asked, as Clark entered the office building.
"The kids real good, Al," John replied, as he put his pistol in the desk drawer.
"Indeed. He won five pounds off me last week."
A grunt. "I guess that makes it unanimous." John settled in his swivel chair, like the "suit" hed become. "Okay, anything come in while I was off losing money?"
"Just this from Moscow. Ought not to have come here anyway," Stanley told his boss, as he handed over the fax.
"They want what?" Ed Foley asked in his seventh-floor office.
"They want us to help train some of their people," Mary Pat repeated for her husband. The original message had been crazy enough to require repetition.
"Jesus, girl, how ecumenical are we supposed to get?" the DCI demanded.
"Sergey Nikolaych thinks we owe him one. And you know "
He had to nod at that. "Yeah, well, maybe we do, I guess. This has to go up the line, though."
"It ought to give Jack a chuckle," the Deputy Director (Operations) thought.
"Shit," Ryan said in the Oval Office, when Ellen Sumter handed him the fax from Langley. Then he looked up. "Oh, excuse me, Ellen."
She smiled like a mother to a precocious son. "Yes, Mr. President."
"Got one I can …
Mrs. Sumter had taken to wearing dresses with large slash pockets. From the left one, she fished out a flip-top box of Virginia Slims and offered it to her President, who took one out and lit it from the butane lighter also tucked in the box.
"Well, aint this something?"
"You know this man, dont you?" Mrs. Sumter asked.
"Golovko? Yeah." Ryan smiled crookedly, again remembering the pistol in his face as the VC- 137 thundered down the runway at Moscows Sheremetyevo airport all those years before. He could smile now. At the time, it hadnt seemed all that funny. "Oh, yeah, Sergey and I are old friends."
As a Presidential secretary, Ellen Sumter was cleared for just about everything, even the