Without remorse - Tom Clancy [37]
'Yeah.' Podulski looked up the hill. The funeral procession had stopped, and the casket was being moved off the gun carriage. A young widow was watching her husband's time on earth end. 'Yeah, I know about politics.'
Tucker eased the boat into the slip. The inboard-outboard drive made that easy. He cut the engine and grabbed the mooring lines, which he tied off quickly. Tony and Eddie lifted the beer cooler out while Tucker collected the loose gear and snapped a few covers into place before joining his companions on the parking lot.
'Well, that was pretty easy,' Tony noted. The cooler was already in the back of his Ford Country Squire station wagon.
'Who do you suppose won the race today?' Eddie asked. They'd neglected to take a radio with them for the trip.
'I had a yard bet on Foyt, just to make it interesting.'
'Not Andretti?' Tucker asked.
'He's a paisan, but he ain't lucky. Betting is business,' Piaggi pointed out. Angelo was a thing of the past now, and the manner of his disposal was, after all, a little amusing, though the man might never eat crab cakes again.
'Well,' Tucker said, 'you know where to find me.'
'You'll get your money,' Eddie said, speaking out of place. 'End of the week, the usual place.' He paused. 'What if demand goes up?'
'I can handle it,' Tucker assured him. 'I can get all you want.'
'What the hell kind of pipeline do you have?' Eddie asked, pushing further.
'Angelo wanted to know that, too, remember? Gentlemen, if I told you that, you wouldn't need me, would you?'
Tony Piaggi smiled. 'Don't trust us?'
'Sure.' Tucker smiled. 'I trust you to sell the stuff and share the money with me.'
Piaggi nodded approval. 'I like smart partners. Stay that way. It's good for all of us. You have a banker?'
'Not yet, haven't thought about it much,' Tucker lied.
'Start thinking, Henry. We can help set you up, overseas bank. It's secure, numbered account, all that stuff. You can have somebody you know check it out. Remember, they can track money if you're not careful. Don't live it up too much. We've lost a lot of friends that way.'
'I don't take chances, Tony.'
Piaggi nodded. 'Good way to think. You have to be careful in this business. The cops are getting smart.'
'Not smart enough.' Neither were his partners, when it came to that, but one thing at a time.
CHAPTER 5
Commitments
The package arrived with a very jet-lagged Captain at the Navy's intelligence headquarters in Suitland, Maryland. On-staff photo-interpretation experts were supplemented by specialists from the Air Force's 1127th Field Activities Group at Fort Belvoir. It took twenty hours to go through the entire process, but the frames from the Buffalo Hunter were unusually good, and the American on the ground had done what he was supposed to do: look up and stare at the passing reconnaissance drone.
'Poor bastard paid the price for it,' a Navy chief observed to his Air Force counterpart. Just behind him the photo caught an NVA soldier with his rifle up and reversed. 'I'd like to meet you in a dark alley, you little fuck.'
'What do you think?' The Air Force senior master sergeant slid an ID photo over.
'Close enough I'd bet money on it.' Both intelligence specialists thought it odd that they had such a thin collection of files to compare with these photographs, but whoever had guessed had guessed well. They had a match. They didn't know that what they had was a series of photographs of a dead man.
Kelly let her sleep, glad that she was able to without any chemical help. He got himself dressed, went outside, and ran around his island twice - the circumference was about three quarters of a mile - to work up a sweat in the still morning air. Sam and Sarah, early risers also, bumped into him while he was cooling down on the dock.
'The change in you is remarkable, too,' she observed. She paused for a moment. 'How was Pam last night?'
The question jarred Kelly into a brief silence, followed