Without remorse - Tom Clancy [8]
'Well, I think you're pretty cute.'
'You say the nicest things.' She moved slightly, rubbing her breast against his upper arm.
Kelly settled down to a steady cruising speed of eighteen knots as he worked his way out of Baltimore harbor. The Italian freighter was the only merchant ship in view, and the seas were flat, with one-foot ripples. He kept to the main shipping channel all the way out into the Chesapeake Bay.
'You thirsty?' she asked as they turned south.
'Yeah. There's a fridge in the kitchenette - it's in the-'
'I saw it. What do you want?'
'Get two of anything.'
'Okay, ' she replied brightly. When she stood, the soft feeling worked its way straight up his arm, finally departing at the shoulder.
'What's that?' she asked on returning. Kelly turned and winced. He'd been so content with the girl on his arm that he'd neglected to pay attention to the weather. 'That' was a thunderstorm, a towering mass of cumulonimbus clouds that reached eight or ten miles skyward.
'Looks like we're going to get some rain,' he told her as he took the beer from her hand.
'When I was a little girl, that meant a tornado.'
'Well, not here, it doesn't,' Kelly replied, looking around the boat to make sure that there was no loose gear. Below, he knew, everything was in its proper place, because it always was, ennui or not. Then he switched on his marine radio. He caught a weather forecast at once, one that ended with the usual warning.
'Is this a small craft?' Pam asked.
'Technically it is, but you can relax. I know what I'm doing. I used to be a chief bosun's mate.'
'What's that?'
'A sailor. In the Navy, that is. Besides, this is a pretty big boat. The ride might get a little bumpy, is all. If you're worried, there are life jackets under the seat you're on.'
'Are you worried?' Pam asked. Kelly smiled and shook his head. 'Okay.' She resumed her previous position, her chest against his arm, her head on his shoulder, a dreamy expression in her eyes, as though anticipating something that was to be, storm or no storm.
Kelly wasn't worried - at least not about the storm - but he wasn't casual about things either. Passing Bodkin Point, he continued east across the shipping channel. He didn't turn south until he was in water he knew to be too shallow for anything large enough to run him down. Every few minutes he turned to keep an eye on the storm, which was charging right in at twenty knots or so. It had already blotted out the sun. A fast-moving storm most often meant a violent one, and his new southerly course meant that he wasn't outrunning it any longer. Kelly finished off his beer and decided against another. Visibility would drop fast. He pulled out a plastic-coated chart and fixed it in place on the table to the right of the instrument panel, marked his position with a grease pencil, and then checked, to make sure that his course didn't take him into shallows - Springer drew four and a half feet of water, and for Kelly anything less than eight feet constituted shallow water. Satisfied, he set his compass course and relaxed again. His training was his buffer against both danger and complacency.
'Won't be long now,' Pam observed, just a trace of unease in her voice as she held on to him.
'You can head below if you want,' Kelly said. 'It's gonna get rainy and windy. And bumpy.'
'But not dangerous.'
'No, unless I do something really dumb. I'll try not to,' he promised.
'Can I stay here and see what it's like?' she asked, dearly unwilling to leave his side, though Kelly did not know why.
'It's going to get wet,' he warned her again.
'That's okay.' She smiled brightly, fixing even more tightly to his arm.
Кеllу throttled back some, taking the boat down off plane. There was no reason to hurry. With the throttles eased back, there was no longer a need for two hands on the controls either. He wrapped his arm around the girl, her head came automatically down on his shoulder again, and despite the approaching storm everything was suddenly right with the world. Or that's what Kelly's emotions told him. His reason