The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

useful. We'll have the money to you in two weeks if we're lucky. What the hell,
fifty million bucks – chicken feed. Thanks for coming down.'
Ryan locked his case and stood. 'Always a pleasure.'
Trent shook his hand. 'You're a good man, Ryan. What a damned shame you're
straight.'
Jack laughed. 'We all have our handicaps, Al.'
***
Ryan returned to Langley to put the NIITAKA documents back in secure storage,
and that ended his work for the day. He and Clark took the elevator down to the
garage, and left the building an hour early, something they did every two weeks
or so. Forty minutes later, they pulled into the parking lot of a 7-Eleven
between Washington and Annapolis.
'Hello, Doc Ryan!' Carol Zimmer said from behind the register. One of her sons
relieved her there, and she led Jack into the back room. John Clark checked out
the store. He wasn't worried about Ryan's security, but he had some lingering
worries about the way some local toughs felt about the Zimmer enterprise. He and
Chavez had taken care of that one gang leader, having done so in front of three
of his minions, one of whom had tried to interfere. Chavez had shown mercy to
that lad, who hadn't required an overnight stay at the local hospital. That,
Clark judged, was a sign of Ding's growing maturity.
'How is business?' Jack asked in the back room.
'We up twenty-six 'rcent from this time las' year.'
Carol Zimmer had been born in Laos less than forty years before, rescued from a
hilltop fortress by an Air Force special-operations helicopter just as the North
Vietnamese Army had overrun that last outpost of American power in Northern
Laos. She'd been sixteen at the time, the last living child of a Hmong chieftain
who'd served American interests and his own – he'd been a willing agent –
courageously and well, and to the death. She'd married Air Force sergeant Buck
Zimmer, who'd died in yet another helicopter after yet another betrayal, and
then Ryan had stepped in. He hadn't lost his business sense despite his years of
government service. He'd selected a good site for the store, and as fate had it,
they hadn't needed his educational trust fund for the first of the kids now in
college. With a kind word from Ryan to Father Tim Riley, the lad had a full
scholarship at Georgetown and was already dean's-listed in pre-med. Like most
Asians, Carol had a reverence for learning that bordered on religious
fanaticism, and which she passed on to all of her kids. She also ran her store
with the mechanistic precision a Prussian sergeant expected of an infantry
squad. Cathy Ryan could have performed a surgical procedure on the register
counter. It was that clean. Jack smiled at the thought. Maybe Laurence Alvin
Zimmer, Jr. would do just that.
Ryan looked over the books. His CPA certificate had lapsed, but he could still
read a balance sheet.
'You eat dinnah with us?'
'Carol, I can't. I have to get home. My son has a little league game tonight.
Everything's okay? No problems – not even those punks?'
'They not come back. Mistah Clark scare them away fo' good!'
'If they ever come back, I want you to call me right away,' Jack said seriously.