Jack Ryan 6 - Clear and Present Danger Read Online Free PDF Page A

Chief?”
    “Five years?  Maybe more.  I thought that sort of thing was all behind us.”
    “We'll know in an hour.” Wegener turned to look at the fog again.  Visibility was under two hundred yards.  Next he looked into the hooded radar display.  The yacht was the closest target.  He thought for a minute, then flipped the set from active to standby.  Intelligence reports said that druggies now had ESM gear to detect radar transmissions.
    “We'll flip it back on when we get within, oh, say, four miles or so.”
    “Aye, Cap'n,” the youngster nodded.
    Wegener settled in his leather chair and extracted the pipe from his shirt.  He found himself filling it less and less now, but it was part of an image he'd built.  A few minutes later the bridge watch had settled down to normal.  In keeping with tradition, the captain came topside to handle two hours of the morning watch—the one with the youngest junior officer of the watch—but O'Neil was a bright young kid and didn't need all that much supervision, at least not with Oreza around. “Portagee” Oreza was the son of a
    
    
     Gloucester
    
    
     fisherman and had a reputation approaching his captain's.  With three tours at the Coast Guard Academy, he'd helped educate a whole generation of officers, just as Wegener had once specialized in bringing enlisted men along.
    Oreza was also a man who understood the importance of a good cup of coffee, and one thing about coming to the bridge when Portagee was around was that you were guaranteed a cup of his personal brew.  It came right on time, served in the special mug the Coast Guard uses, shaped almost like a vase, wide at the rubber-coated bottom, and narrowed down near the top to prevent tipping and spillage.  Designed for use on small patrol craft, it was also useful on Panache, which had a lively ride.  Wegener hardly noticed.
    “Thanks, Chief,” the captain said as he took the cup.
    “I figure an hour.”
    “ 'Bout right,” Wegener agreed. “We'll go to battle stations at zero-seven-forty.  Who's on the duty boat section?”
    “Mr. Wilcox.  Kramer, Abel, Dowd, and Obrecki.”
    “Obrecki done this yet?”
    “Farm boy.  He knows how to use a gun, sir.  Riley checked him out.”
    “Have Riley replace Kramer.”
    “Anything wrong, sir?”
    “Something feels funny about this one,” Wegener said.
    “Probably just a busted radio.  There hasn't been one of those since—jeez, I don't even remember when that was, but, yeah.  Call Riley up here?”
    The captain nodded.  Oreza made the call, and Riley appeared two minutes later.  The two chiefs and the captain conferred out on the bridge wing.  It only took a minute by Ensign O'Neil's watch.  The young officer thought it very odd that his captain seemed to trust and confide in his chiefs more than his wardroom, but mustang officers had their own ways.
    Panache
    
     rumbled through the waves at full speed.  She was rated at twenty-three knots, and though she'd made just over twenty-five a few times, that was in light-ship conditions, with a newly painted bottom on flat seas.  Even with the turbochargers pounding air into the diesels, top speed now was just over twenty-two knots.  It made for a hard ride.  The bridge crew compensated for this by standing with their feet a good distance apart, and in O'Neil's case by walking around as much as possible.  Condensation from the fog cluttered up the bridge windows.  The young officer flipped on the wipers.  Back out on the bridge wing, he stared out into the fog.  He didn't like traveling without radar.  O'Neil listened, but heard nothing more than the muted rumblings of Panache's own engines.  Fog did that.  Like a wet shroud, it took away your vision and absorbed sound.  He listened for another minute, but in addition to the diesels, there was only the whisper of the cutter's hull passing through the water.  He looked aft just before going back into the wheelhouse.  The cutter's white