Patriot Games - vastav

By this time the Prince flushed a bit. The color gave his face life that it had
lacked. He wavered for a moment, then sat with reluctance and resignation.
"Now," Ryan said heatedly, "I think I know what's eating at you, sir. You feel bad
because you didn't do a John Wayne number yesterday and handle those gunmen all
by yourself, right?" The Prince didn't nod or make any other voluntary response, but
a hurt expression around his eyes answered the question just as surely.
"Aw, crap!" Ryan snorted. In the corner, Tony Wilson went pale as a ghost. Ryan
didn't blame him.
"You oughta have better sense . . . sir," Ryan added hastily. "You've been through
the service schools, right? You've qualified as a pilot, parachuted out of airplanes,
and even had command of your own ship?" He got a nod. Time to step it up. "Then
you've got no excuse, you damned well ought to have better sense than to think like
that! You're not really that dumb, are you?"
"What exactly do you mean?" A trace of anger, Ryan thought. Good.
"Use your head. You've been trained to think this sort of thing out, haven't you?
Let's critique the exercise. Examine what the tactical situation was yesterday. You
were trapped in a stopped car with two or three bad guys outside holding automatic
weapons. The car is armor-plated, but you're stuck. What can you do? The way I
see it, you had three choices:
"One. You can just freeze, just sit there and wet your pants. Hell, that's what most
normal people would do, caught by surprise like that. That's probably the normal
reaction. But you didn't do that.
"Two. You can try to get out of the car and do something, right?"
"Yes, I should have."
"Wrong!" Ryan shook his head emphatically. "Sorry, sir, but that's not a real good
idea. The guy I tackled was waiting for you to do just that. That guy could have put
a nine-millimeter slug in your head before you had both feet on the pavement. You
look like you're in pretty good shape. You probably move pretty good – but ain't
nobody yet been able to outrun a bullet, sir! That choice might have gotten you
killed, and the rest of your family along with you.
"Three. Your last choice, you tough it out and pray the cavalry gets there in time.
You know you're close to home. You know there's cops and troops around. So you
know that time is on your side if you can survive for a couple of minutes. In the
meantime you try to protect your family as best you can. You get them down on the
floor of the car and get overtop of them so the only way the terrorists can get them
is to go through you first. And that, my friend, is what you did." Ryan paused for a
moment to let him absorb this.
"You did exactly the right thing, dammit!" Ryan leaned forward until his shoulder
pulled him back with a gasp. It wasn't all that much of a pain medication. "Jesus,