The Sum of All Fears.pdf - Delta Force

Ryan reached for his cigarettes and lit one, standing up after he did so. The
snow was still coming down. The scrapers weren't keeping pace with it, down on
the parking lot. It took time to shake one of these off, watching his family die
like that. So many of the goddamned things. I've gotta get away from this place!
There were just too many memories, and not all of them were good. The wrong call
he'd made before the attack on his family, the time in the submarine, being left
on the runway at Sheremetyevo Airport and looking at good old Sergey
Nikolayevich from the wrong side of a pistol, and worst of all that helicopter
ride out of Colombia. It was just too much. It was time to leave. Fowler and
even Liz Elliot were doing him a favor, weren't they?
Whether they knew it or not.
Such a nice world lay out there. He'd done his part,
He'd made parts of it a little better, and had helped others to do more. The
movie he'd just lived in, hell, it might have come to pass in one way or
another. But not now. It was clean and white out there, the lights over the
parking lot just illuminating it enough, so much better than it usually looked.
He'd done his part. Now it was someone else's turn to try his or her hand at the
easier stuff.
'Yeah.' Jack blew his smoke out at the window. First, he'd have to break this
habit again. Cathy would insist. And then? Then an extended vacation, this
coming summer, maybe go back to England – maybe by ship instead of flying? Take
the time to drive around Europe, maybe blow the whole summer. Be a free man
again. Walk the beach. But then he'd have to get a job, do something. Annapolis
– no, that was out. Some private group? Maybe teach? Georgetown, maybe?
'Espionage 101,' he chuckled to himself. That was it, he'd teach how to do all
the illegal stuff.
'How the hell did James Greer ever last so long in this crummy racket?' How had
he handled the stress? That was one lesson he'd never passed on.
'You still need sleep, man,' he reminded himself. This time he made sure the TV
was off.
CHAPTER 34
Placement
Ryan was surprised to see that the snow hadn't stopped. The walkway outside his
top-floor window had almost two feet piled up, and the maintenance crews had
failed completely to keep up with things through the night. High winds were
blowing and drifting snow across the roads and parking lots more quickly than it
could be removed, and even the snow that they did manage to move simply found
another inconvenient place to blow over. It had been years since a storm like
this had hit the Washington area. The local citizenry was already beyond panic
into desperation, Jack thought. Cabin fever would already be setting in. Food
stocks would not easily be replaced. Already some husbands and some wives were
looking at their spouses and wondering how hard to cook they might be . . . It
was one thing to laugh about as he went to get water for his coffee machine. He
grabbed Ben Goodley's shoulder on the way out of the office.
'Shake it loose, Dr Goodley.'