Top Hook. Gordon Kent

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СКАЧАТЬ quantity—faces and handshakes at Pax River, and little else—and most of them had flown off with the det’s two aircraft and would be waiting on the Jefferson.

      By the time they had reached Aviano, he had at least gotten control of the anger, and he knew many of the faces, if not the names. He had made common cause with the senior chief, and they had agreed on how to improve the last leg to the ship. Then he saw to it that he was the last man to leave Aviano; that way, he knew that everything was in train, and the senior chief would get everything to the Jefferson on schedule.

      He showered for the first time in two days, changed into civilian clothes at the NATO bachelor officers’ quarters, and rented a car, which he drove a little too fast into Trieste before walking down to fleet landing. The Jefferson was anchored out beyond the main harbor entrance, washed by hazy sun and a faint Mediterranean mist that gave the port a friendly look and gilded the harshness of the modern waterfront.

      Now almost resigned to the change of orders and buoyed by seeing a ship he knew and felt great affection for, his mood was raised further by seeing a familiar face: Chris Donitz, an F-14 jock who had been the senior LSO on his last tour.

      “Hey, Doughnuts!”

      He smiled because it was obvious that Donitz was glad to see him. In an instant, shipboard camaraderie embraced him, and he listened with a smile as Donitz told him that he was heading shoreward for two days of liberty and a meeting with his wife. Donitz was just beginning to rhapsodize about meeting her in Venice when Alan heard a voice at his shoulder.

      “Sorry to interrupt, sir—are you Lieutenant-Commander Craik? Message at the SP shack, sir.”

      He thought, Oh, shit, trouble with the det. He shook Donitz’s hand. “Better catch your train. Give my regards to Regina.”

      “You bet. But Al, listen, uh—”

      Alan waited, literally balanced on one foot to walk away.

      “Uh, watch your step, okay?”

      That got Alan’s attention, and he swung back. “What’s that supposed to mean?”

      Donitz flicked a glance at his watch and shuffled his feet. “Just some scuttlebutt about why you’re here.”

      “An intel guy commanding a bunch of aviators? I can deal with it.”

      “Uh—sure. Hey, take care of yourself.”

      If Alan had been in less of a hurry, he would have known that Donitz had more to say. As it was, Donitz gave a quick hand gesture, part salute, part wave, and hurried through the shore-patrol sentries and down the pier toward the railway station.

      Alan strolled over to the shore-patrol office. A well-turned-out jg stood inside, his creased whites gleaming. He was from the ship’s company and didn’t recognize Alan in his civilian clothes, but as soon as Alan introduced himself, the man snapped to attention.

      “Sir, the previous DO left a message that your wife came by about an hour ago and said she’d wait for you in, uh, Lettieri.” He had trouble with it, and the name came out as Letty-air-yury.

      “My wife?” Rose was supposed to be in Newport, getting ready to graduate.

      “That’s what the message says, sir. ‘Mrs Craik waiting for her husband at the Letty-air-iery.’”

      “Lettieri?” Alan asked. Rose had never mentioned coming out. Of course, she wasn’t above surprising him—maybe even skipping her own graduation because he had to miss his, and they’d spend it together? Pick up a quickie flight from some friend in Transport—The thought of seeing her made him grin.

      “Lieutenant, can you call the boat?”

      “Yes, sir.”

      “Get CVIC on the line and tell them that LCDR Craik is going to miss the 1700 brief, okay? Ask my Det NCOIC to see that my stuff gets to my stateroom.”

      “Aye, aye, sir.”

      “Now, where is the Lettieri?” He realized that he wanted to see his wife a lot more than he wanted to see his new command.

      

      Alan’s eagerness to see Rose saved his life.

      He followed the first part of the directions from fleet landing to the Riva Del Mandrachio, which ran along the waterfront, but the next turning eluded him. The landmark for this turn had been hotly debated by two sailors of the shore patrol, one arguing for a small church, the other for a bar, both making marks on the back of an advertising flier for a rock club. Alan saw several bars, but no church. He turned southeast, away from the waterfront, and headed into town, following the crude map and asking his way in his Neapolitan Italian, to the amusement of the Triestini.

      The first local he asked pointed silently up the hill and waved Alan on. The second, as if to make up for the reticence of the first, offered to take him to a much better café, with a beautiful waitress, where the man himself was headed. Alan declined with courtesy, and the man shrugged. He gave directions rapidly, insisting that the Caffe Lettieri was on the Via San Giorgio. Alan followed the new directions as best he could.

      Ten minutes later, he was deep in the old part of the city. He passed two of the city’s foremost Roman attractions and stopped, his temper flaring. The anger about his changed orders was just below the surface again, ready to flare at any provocation. He took a deep breath, looked at his map, and began to doubt that any members of the shore patrol had got this far from the fleet landing. Then, deliberately calming himself, he walked slowly until he found a cross street whose name appeared on his map and moved briskly south toward the Via San Giorgio. By then, the sunny day had turned gray, and thin Adriatic drizzle had begun to fall, and he was hurrying because he was afraid he would miss Rose.

      He had to walk for more than five minutes to reach San Giorgio, and he realized by the time he reached it that he was directly above the fleet landing; indeed, the shore-patrol post was almost at his feet. The Caffe Lettieri was just ahead of him, a new, prosperous place with gold lettering on its façade. Rose’s choice of a rendezvous now made sense. He hurried to meet her, overtaking what he took to be a local man talking on a cellphone.

      And then something struck him as out of place. A car had pulled up ahead of him, a big Audi 5000; the doors opened even before it had stopped, and as the doors popped feet and heads and hands appeared, fingers gripped around door frames, tension in eyes that darted back and forth at him and at the man with the cellphone. He knew those eyes, those tense hands: anticipating violence. That was his reaction, irrational, atavistic: memories of Africa and Bosnia, men going into action, high on it, super-alert.

      And the man ahead of him was speaking Serbo-Croat, not Italian.

      The man closed his cellphone with a snap and drew a pistol from his backpack, his eyes fixed now on the Caffe Lettieri. He looked just like the men coming out of the Audi. Almost dancing on the pavement in his anticipation.

      They were going to hit the café.

      The café in which his wife was waiting.

      Alan lengthened his stride and stepped up behind cellphone man and took a last, careful look up the street at the car, his mind stretching the milliseconds as he tried to read what he was seeing. Weapons СКАЧАТЬ