Without remorse - Tom Clancy [18]
'So why are you in such a great mood, Cas?'
'This one goes in the wall safe, Dutch.' Podulski handed over a heavy folder. Its edges were bordered in red-and-white striped tape, and it bore the coded designator boxwood green.
'They're going to let us play with it?' That was a surprise.
'It took me till oh-three-thirty, but yes. Just a few of us, though. We have authorization for a complete feasibility study.' Admiral Podulski settled into a deep leather chair and lit up a cigarette. His face was thinner since the death of his son, but the crystal-blue eyes burned as bright as ever.
'They're going to let us go ahead and do the planning?' Maxwell and Podulski had worked towards that end for several months, never in any real expectation that they'd be allowed to pursue it.
'Who'd ever suspect us?' the Polish-born Admiral asked with an ironic look. 'They want us to keep it off the books.'
'Jim Greer, too?' Dutch asked.
'Best intel guy I know, unless you're hiding one somewhere.'
'Не just started at CIA, I heard last week,' Maxwell warned.
'Good. We need a good spy, and his suit's still blue, last time I checked.'
'We're going to make enemies doing this, lots of 'em.'
Podulski gestured at the window and the noise. He hadn't changed all that much since 1944 and USS Essex. 'With all those a hundred feet away from us, what'll a few more matter?'
'How long have you had the boat?' Kelly asked about halfway through his second beer. Lunch was rudimentary, cold cuts and bread supplemented by bottled beer.
'We bought it last October, but we've only been running it two months,' the doctor admitted. 'But I took the Power Squadron courses, finished top in my class.' He was the sort who finished number one in nearly everything, Kelly figured.
'You're a pretty good line-handler,' he observed, mainly to make the man feel better.
'Surgeons are pretty good with knots, too.'
'You a doc, too, ma'am?' Kelly asked Sarah.
'Pharmacologist. I also teach at Hopkins.'
'How long have you and your wife lived here?' Sam asked, and the conversation ground to an awkward halt.
'Oh, we just met,' Pam told them artlessly. Naturally enough it was Kelly who was the most embarrassed. The two physicians merely accepted the news as a matter of course, but Kelly worried that they'd see him as a man taking advantage of a young girl. The thoughts associated with his behavior seemed to race in circles around the inside of his skull until he realized that no one else seemed to care all that much.
'Let's take a look at that propeller.' Kelly stood. 'Come on.'
Rosen followed him out the door. The heat was building outside, and it was best to get things done quickly. The secondary bunker on the island housed Kelly's workshop. He selected a couple of wrenches and wheeled a portable air compressor towards the door.
Two minutes later he had it sitting next to the doctor's Hatteras and buckled a pair of weight belts around his waist.
'Anything I have to do?' Rosen asked.
Kelly shook his head as he stripped off his shirt. 'Not really. If the compressor quits, I'll know pretty quick, and I'll only be down five feet or so.'
'I've never done that.' Rosen turned his surgeon's eyes to Kelly's torso, spotting three separate scars that a really good surgeon might have been skillful enough to conceal. Then he remembered that a combat surgeon didn't always have the time for cosmetic work.
'I have, here and there,' Kelly told him on the way to the ladder.
'I believe it,' Rosen said quietly to himself.
Four minutes later, by Rosen's watch, Kelly was climbing back up the ladder.
'Found your problem.' He set the remains of both props on the concrete dock.
'God! What did we hit?'
Kelly sat down for a moment to strip off the weights. It was all he could do not to laugh. 'Water, doc, just water.'
'What?'
'Did you have the boat surveyed before you bought it?'
'Sure, the insurance company made me do