The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

Like not being a man. That was the simple description.
I am a man. I've done all the things a man can do.
Try explaining that to your wife, chump!
I've fought for my family, for my country, killed for my family and my country,
I've won respect among the best of men. I've done things that can never be known
and kept the secrets that had to be kept. I've served as well as any man can.
So why are you looking out at the water at two in the morning, ace?
I've made a difference! Jack's mind raged.
Who knows? Who cares?
But what of my friends?
A whole lot of good they do you – besides, what friends? When's the last time
you saw Skip Tyler or Robby Jackson? Your friends at Langley – why not confide
your problems to them?
Dawn came as a surprise, but not so much a surprise as that he'd actually slept,
sitting alone in the living room. Jack rose, feeling the aches in his muscles
unhelped by whatever number of hours he'd not been awake. It hadn't been sleep,
he told himself on the way to the bathroom. It was just that he hadn't been
awake. Sleep was rest, and he felt singularly unrested, with a pounding headache
from the cheap wine of the previous night. The only good news – if that's what
it was – was that Cathy didn't get up. Jack fixed his own coffee and was waiting
at the door when Clark drove up.
'Another great weekend, I see,' the man said, as Ryan got into the car.
'Et tu, John?'
'Look, Deputy Director, you want to take a swing at me, go right ahead. You
looked like shit a couple of months back and you're getting worse instead of
better. When's the last time you took a vacation, got away for more than a day
or two, you know, maybe pretended you were a real person instead of some fuckin'
government ticket-puncher who's afraid that if he leaves nobody'll notice?'
'Clark, you do have a way of brightening my mornings.'
'Hey, man, I'm just a SPO, but don't bitch if I take the "protective" part
seriously, 'kay?' John pulled the car over and parked it. 'Doc, I've seen this
before. People burn out. You're burning out. You're burning the candle both ends
and the middle. That's hard to do when you're in your twenties, and you ain't in
your twenties anymore, in case nobody bothered telling you.'
'I'm quite aware of the infirmities that come with age.' Ryan tried a wry smile
to show that it wasn't that big a deal, that Clark was overdoing it.
It didn't work. Suddenly it occurred to John that his wife hadn't been at the
door. Trouble at home? Well, he couldn't ask about that, could he? What he saw
in Ryan's face was bad enough. It wasn't just fatigue. He was tiring from
within, all the shit he was taking from up the chain of command, the strain of
backstopping Director Cabot on damned near everything that went out the front
door. Cabot – not a bad guy, he meant well, but the truth of the matter was that
he just didn't know what the hell he was doing. So Congress depended on Ryan,
and the Operations and Intelligence Directorates depended on Ryan for leadership
and coordination. He couldn't escape his responsibilities, and didn't have the
good sense to realize that some were really things he could leave to others. The
directorate chiefs could have taken up more of the slack, but they were letting