Jack Ryan 6 - Clear and Present Danger by Tom Clancy Read Free Book Online

aft.
    “Damn.” Oreza observed quietly.  The quartermaster fished out his handkerchief and wiped his captain's shirt. “Jesus, Red, what's the world comin' to?”
    “I don't know, Portagee.  I think we're both too old to answer that one.” Wegener finally found his matches and managed to light his pipe.  He stared out at the sea for several seconds before finding the right words. “When I joined up I got broke in by an old chief who told stories about Prohibition.  Nothing nasty like this—he made it all sound like a great big game.”
    “Maybe people were more civilized back then,” Oreza thought.
    “More likely you couldn't carry a million bucks' worth of booze on a motorboat.  Didn't you ever watch 'The Untouchables'?  The gang wars they had back then were as nasty as the ones we read about now.  Maybe worse.  Hell, I don't know.  I didn't join up to be a cop, Chief.”
    “Me neither, Cap'n.” Oreza grunted. “We went an' got old, and the world went an' changed on us.  One thing I wish didn't change, though.”
    “What's that, Portagee?”
    The master chief quartermaster turned to look at his commanding officer. “Something I picked up at
    
    
     New London
    
    
     a few years back.  I used to sit in on some classes when I had nothing better to do.  In the old days when they caught a couple of pirates, they had the option of doing a court-martial on the spot and settlin' things right then an' there—and you know something?  It worked.” Oreza grunted again. “I s'pose that's why they stopped doin' it that way.”
    “Give 'em a fair trial—then hang 'em?”
    “Hell, why not, sir?”
    “That's not the way we do things anymore.  We're civilized now.”
    “Yeah, civilized.” Oreza opened the door to the wheelhouse. “I can tell.  I seen the pictures.”
    Wegener smiled, then wondered why.  His pipe had gone out.  He wondered why he didn't just quit entirely as he fished for his matches again, but the pipe was part of the image.  The old man of the sea.  He'd gotten old, all right, Wegener thought.  A puff of wind caught the match as he tried to toss it, dropping it on the deck.  How did you ever forget to check the wind? he asked himself as he bent down to retrieve it.
    There was a pack of cigarettes there, halfway out the scupper.  Wegener was a fanatic on ship-cleanliness and was ready to snarl at whoever had tossed the empty pack when he realized that it hadn't come from one of his crewmen.  The name on the pack was “Calvert,” and that, he remembered vaguely, was a Latin American brand-name from a
    
    
     U.S.
    
    
     tobacco company.  It was a hard pack, with a flip-top, and out of simple curiosity he opened it.
    They weren't cigarettes.  At least, they weren't tobacco cigarettes.  Wegener fished one out.  They weren't hand-rolled, but neither were they as neatly manufactured as something from a real American cancer factory.  The captain smiled in spite of himself.  Some clever entrepreneur had come up with a cute way of disguising—joints, wasn't it?—as real cigarettes.  Or maybe it was just more convenient to carry them this way.  It must have pitched out of his shirt when Riley flipped him around, Wegener realized belatedly.  He closed the pack and pocketed it.  He'd turn it over to the evidence locker when he got a chance.  Oreza returned.
    “Weather update.  That squall line'll be here no later'n twenty-one hundred.  The squalls are upgraded some.  We can expect gusts up to forty knots.  Gonna be a fair blow, sir.”
    “Any problem for Wilcox and the yacht?” There was still time to recall him.
    “Shouldn't be, sir.  It turned south.  A high-pressure system is heading down from
    
    
     Tennessee
    
    
    .  Mr. Wilcox oughta have it pretty smooth all the way in, Cap'n, but it might be a little dicey for the helicopter.  They didn't plan to get it to us until eighteen hundred, and that's cutting it a little close.  They'll be bucking the front