Would things go right or wrong? If the former, what elation would they feel? If the latter - well, they all had long since decided that, win or lose, this wasn't the sort of thing you walked away from.
They watched TV in the open bay, read books or magazines, waiting for the word in the knowledge that halfway across the world other men were waiting, too, and in the quiet of twenty-five individual human minds, questions were being asked. They knew about the mission, and the high-spirited horseplay common to young men was muted.
Remarkably, their off-duty hours were more relaxed now. The Old Man had a spring in his step like the chief's daughter heading out for a date. He didn't know what it was all about, but he knew it was about something. 'Aye.' The senior chief dropped the car into gear and headed for the river. 'Make signal to Admiral Podulski on Constellation: Olive Green.' It caused George to turn and smile one last time. 'You got it, Dutch,' the General replied, asking no questions. The latter was a matter of where he walked more than anything else, where he placed his feet, how he twisted and turned to pass between trees and bushes, watching both his path and the area around him with equal urgency. Kelly moved quickly for a man of his size, and silently. The weight wasn't excessive, and he found that he could move through the trees and over the hills without noticing it. It came out to a twenty-three-pound load, not counting his special gear for the insertion. A silenced 9mm automatic went into a shoulder holster, but his real weapon was a radio, and he would be carrying two of those, just to be sure, plus food and water and a map - and extra batteries. The primary weapon was a CAR-15 carbine version of the M-16 assault rifle. He'd picked his weapons load-out in the fervent hope that he would not need to fire a single shot. Kelly was working on his woodcraft, again, as he'd been doing for several weeks. 'Have my car come around, then call Anacostia. It was a struggle not to react, but now that Henderson was indeed swallowing the hook, he had to set it firmly. Somebody has to help make the peace, and dithering around won't change that. But it was too late to change it now, and besides, who would have have seen the humor in it? Glazov reached in his pocket for his shopping list. His first stop was at the office in the Air Force's section of the building.Ĭassius, he thought. Vice Admiral Winslow Holland Maxwell, USN, rose from his desk and headed out the side door into the E-Ring corridor.
0 kommentar(er)
