Without remorse - Tom Clancy [194]
'Anybody got a smoke? I'm out, and I could sure use one,' a voice murmured.
'Here you go, Marine,' Young said, the gracious general. He held one out to the shadows and flicked his trusty Zippo. Then he jumped back a step. 'Shit!'
'Personally, General, I think Pittsburgh looks pretty tough this year. The Orioles are a little weak in the pitching department.' Kelly took one puff, without inhaling, and dropped it to the ground.
'How long have you been here?' Maxwell demanded.
' "Lions and tigers and bears, oh, my!"' Kelly mimicked. 'I "killed" you around one-thirty, sir.'
'You son of a bitch!' Irvin said. 'You killed me.'
'And you were very polite about being quiet, too.'
Maxwell turned on his flashlight. Mr Clark - the Admiral had consciously decided to change the boy's name in his own mind - just stood there, a rubber knife in his hand, his face painted with green and black shadows, and for the first time since the Battle of Midway, his body shuddered with fear. The young face split into a grin as he pocketed his 'knife.'
'How the hell did you do that?' Dutch Maxwell demanded.
'Pretty well, I think, Admiral.' Kelly chuckled, reaching down for Marty Young's canteen. 'Sir, if I told, then everybody'd be able to, right?'
Irvin stood up from his place of repose and walked next to the civilian.
'Mr Clark, sir, I think you'll do.'
CHAPTER 22
Titles
Grishanov was in the embassy. Hanoi was a strange city, a mixture of French-Imperial architecture, little yellow people and bomb craters. Traveling about a country at war was an unusual exercise, all the more so in an automobile daubed with camouflage paint. A passing American fighter-bomber coming back from a mission with an extra bomb or some unexpended 20-millimeter cannon rounds could easily use the car for practice, though they never seemed to do so. The luck of the draw made this a cloudy, stormy day, and air activity was at a minimum, allowing him to relax, but not to enjoy the ride. Too many bridges were down, too many roads cratered, and the trip lasted three times what ought to have been the norm. A helicopter trip would have been much faster, but would also have been madness. The Americans seemed to live under the fiction that an automobile might be civilian-owned - this in a country where a bicycle was a status symbol! Grishanov marveled - but a helicopter was an aircraft, and killing one was a kill. Now in Hanoi, he got the chance to sit in a concrete building where the electricity was a sometime thing - off at the moment - and air conditioning an absurd fantasy. The open windows and poorly fitting screens allowed insects freer rein than the people who worked and sweated here. For all that, it was worth the trip to be here in his country's embassy, where he could speak his native tongue and for a precious few hours stop being a semi-diplomat.
'So?' his general asked.
'It goes well, but I must have more people. This is too much for one man to do alone.'
'That is not possible.' The General poured his guest a glass of mineral water. The principal mineral present was salt. The Russians drank a lot of that here. 'Nikolay Yevgeniyevich, they're being difficult again.'
'Comrade General, I know that I am only a fighter pilot and not a political theorist. I know that our fraternal socialist allies are on the front line of the conflict between Marxism-Leninism and the reactionary Capitalist West. I know that this war of national liberation is a vital part of our struggle to liberate the world from oppression -'
'Yes, Kolya' - the General smiled slyly, allowing the man who was not a political theorist to dispense with farther ideological incantations - 'we know that all of this is true. Do go on. I have