The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

The three logs, still chained together, were already well aft of the George M.
They were still green, and started soaking up sea water, making them heavier
still.
***
Cathy Ryan watched her husband's car pull out of the driveway. She was now past
the stage of feeling bad for him. Now she was hurt. He wouldn't talk about it –
that is, he didn't try to explain himself, didn't apologize, tried to pretend
that . . . what? And then part of the time he said he didn't feel well, was too
tired. Cathy wanted to talk it over, but didn't know how to begin. The male ego
was a fragile thing, Dr Caroline Ryan knew, and this had to be its most fragile
spot. It had to be a combination of stress and fatigue and booze. Jack wasn't a
machine. He was wearing down. She'd seen the symptoms months earlier. As much
the commute as anything else. Two and a half, sometimes three hours every day in
the car. The fact that he had a driver was something, but not much. Three more
hours a day that he was away, thinking, working, not home where he belonged.
Am I helping or hurting? she asked herself. Is part of it my fault?
Cathy walked into the bathroom and looked at herself in the mirror. Okay, she
wasn't a pink-cheeked kid anymore. There were worry lines around her mouth and
squint lines around her eyes. She should have her spectacle prescription looked
at. She was starting to get headaches during procedures, and she knew it could
be a problem with her eyes – she was, after all, an ophthalmic surgeon – but
like everyone else she was short of time and was putting off having her eyes
looked at by another member of the Wilmer Eye Institute staff. Which was pretty
dumb, she admitted to herself. She still had rather pretty eyes. At least the
color didn't change, even though their refractive error might suffer from all
the close work that her job mandated.
She was still quite slim. Wouldn't hurt to sweat off three or four pounds –
better yet, to transfer that weight into her breasts. She was a small-breasted
woman from a small-breasted family in a world that rewarded women for having
udders to rival Elsie the Borden cow. Her usual joke that bust size was
inversely proportional to brain size was a defense mechanism. She craved larger
ones as a man always wanted a larger penis, but God or the gene pool had not
chosen to give her those, and she would not submit to the vain ignominy of
surgery – besides which she didn't like the numbers on that kind of surgery. Too
many silicon implant cases developed complications.
The rest of her . . . her hair, of course, was always a mess, but surgical
discipline absolutely prevented her from paying great attention to that. It was
still blonde and short and very fine, and when Jack took the time to notice, he
liked her hair. Her face was still pretty, despite the squint lines and worry
lines. Her legs had always been pretty nice, and with all the walking she did at
Hopkins/Wilmer, they had actually firmed up slightly. Cathy concluded that her
looks were not the sort to make dogs bark when she passed. She was, in fact,
still rather attractive. At least the other docs at the hospital thought so.
Some of her senior medical students positively swooned over her, she liked to
think. Certainly no one fought to escape her rounds.
She was also a good mother. Though Sally and Little Jack were still asleep, she
never failed to look after them. Especially with Jack gone so much, Cathy filled