"Daniel da Cruz - Texas Trilogy 02 - Texas on the Rocks" - читать интересную книгу автора (Da Cruz Daniel)

uncannily prescient advice into the ears of the mighty for more than forty years, very little was
known of the man beyond a name and a number--no address-- in the telephone directory.
The tinkle of ice in a glass, the splash of liquids, and a glass was pressed into his hand.
Castle, who had begun to shiver in his wet clothes, didn't care what it was so long as it was
strong. He sipped it, then drank greedily.
A Bloody Mary, with Russian vodka, fresh lemon, and Tabasco, by God! In public, to preserve
his image as a champion of local industry, Castle drank California wine. But in the privacy of his
own study, a Bloody Mary was his evening solace, with Tabasco instead of Worcestershire.
Somehow William S. Grayle knew. But then, why not? He was said to know everything worth
knowing in Washington, D.C. It was for Grayle's knowledge that Castle had just paid the old man
$250,000, and it was going to make him, Congressman David D. Castle, President of the United
States of America.
As the dean of "public affairs consultants" in the nation's capital, William S. Grayle was
believed to have retired more than a decade earlier, having molded national politics and the
careers of some of the nation's leading power brokers as well as serving as special adviser to six
consecutive presidents. According to gossip around the Hill, in recent years he had undertaken
only the occasional "mission impossible," simply to add flavor to his declining years and to prove
to himself that he had not lost his exquisite political touch.
Such a visionary project had been proposed to him by David D. Castle, congressman from
California.
Castle had only one question: Did Mr. William S. Grayle think he could bring it off?
What a silly question, thought William S. Grayle. He acknowledged himself, without false
modesty, the shrewdest political mind in the nation's capital, but still not quite God-on-High. Who
the hell did this junior congressman, ordinarily good-looking but totally lacking in charisma,
well-to-do but not excessively rich, with a sound but undistinguished record during five terms in
Congress, think he was, anyway?
Yet the more he pondered the sheer magnitude of the challenge, the more irresistible it
became. It could be a coup to make the history books.


2. GROWLER
23 OCTOBER 2004
HE'D SHOW THE OLD MAN.
Ripley Forte shoved the eight throttles forward until the indicator needle bit into the red. The
eight powerful propfan engines answered with a banshee roar that surged out across the choppy
waters of the Labrador Strait and then bounced back from the craggy blue-green sides of the
million-ton iceberg.
Silent and sinister, its base-shrouded in fog, the berg loomed above Forte and his jet sled like
a Matterhorn suspended in space.
The sled responded to the engines' thrust. It shot forward, the eight fourteen-foot, ten-bladed
propfans clawing at the frigid morning air. Behind the sled a braided nylon cable, eleven inches in
diameter, surfaced from beneath the frothing wake as the sled pulled away from the huge
pinnacle iceberg. The cable drew taut, and suddenly the seasled, as big and unlovely as a
Mississippi coal barge, lay dead in the water, shackled by the enormous mountain of ice.
His weathered face framed by bulbous orange ear defenders that only partially blocked out the
din of the jet engines, Ripley Forte squinted through the icy spray at the inertial-navigation dial on
the control panel. The readout was accurate to the hundredth of a second of arc: a little over ten
inches of movement by the seasled would be discernible. But the dial didn't move.
The tension began to tighten around his sinewy neck like a strangler's hands. A wave of
nausea rose from his empty stomach. He swallowed hard and choked it back.