The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

'Skipper, you were a little hard on Shaw.'
'What do you mean?' Ricks asked in annoyed surprise.
'He didn't make any mistakes. I couldn't have done the track more than thirty
seconds faster myself. The quartermaster I had with him has been doing TMAs for
five years. He's taught it at sub school. I kept an eye on both of them. They
did okay.'
'Are you saying the mistake was my fault?' Ricks asked in a deceptively gentle
voice.
'Yes, sir,' the XO replied honestly, as he had been taught to do.
'Is that a fact?' Ricks walked out the door without another word.
***
To say that Petra Hassler-Bock was unhappy was an understatement of epic
proportions. A woman in her late thirties, she'd lived over fifteen years on the
run, hiding from the West German police before things had simply become too
dangerous, precipitating her escape to the East Zone – what had been the East
Zone, the Bundes Kriminal Amt investigator smiled to himself. Amazingly, she'd
thrived on it. Every photo in the thick file showed an attractive, vital,
smiling woman with a girl's unlined face framed by pretty brown hair. This same
face had coldly watched three people die, one after several days of knife-work,
the detective told himself. That murder had been part of an important political
statement – it had been at the time of the vote on whether or not to allow the
Americans to base their Pershing-2 and Cruise missiles in Germany, and the Red
Army Faction had wanted to terrify people into seeing things their way. It
hadn't worked, of course, though it had made the victim's death into a gothic
exercise.
'Tell me, Petra, did you enjoy killing Wilhelm Manstein?' the detective asked.
'He was a pig,' she answered defiantly. 'An overweight, sweaty, whore-mongering
pig.'
That was how they'd caught him, the detective knew. Petra had set up the
kidnapping first by attracting his attention, then by establishing a brief but
fiery relationship. Manstein had not been the most attractive example of German
manhood, of course, but Petra's idea of women's liberation was rather more
robust than the norm in Western countries. The nastiest members of
Baader-Meinhof and the RAF had been the women. Perhaps it was a reaction to the
Kinder-Kuche-Kirche mindset of German males, as some psychologists said, but the
woman before him was the most coldly frightening assassin he'd ever met. The
first body parts mailed to Manstein's family had been those which had offended
her so greatly. Manstein had lived for ten days after that, the pathologist's
report stated, providing noisy red entertainment for this still-young lady.
'Well, you took care of that, didn't you? I imagine Günther was somewhat
unsettled by your passion, wasn't he? After all, you spent – what? Five nights
with Herr Manstein before the kidnapping? Did you enjoy that part also, mein
Schatz?' The insult scored, the detective saw. Petra had been attractive once,
but no longer. Like a flower a day after cutting, she was no longer a living
thing. Her skin was sallow, her eyes surrounded by dark rings, and she'd lost at
least eight kilos. Defiance blazed out from her, but only briefly. 'I expect you
did, giving in to him, letting him "do his thing." You must have enjoyed it