Jack Ryan 8 - Debt of Honor Read Online Free

exercised at their worktables, both to loosen themselves up and to show their devotion. At start-time minus two hours, the chief walked out of his office and called for his team to gather around for the first morning's talk about what they were doing. They all knew, of course, but they had to be told any way. It took ten minutes, and with that done, they all went to work. And this was not at all a strange way for a war to begin.
     
     
    Dinner was elegant, served in the enormous high-ceilinged dining room to the sound of piano, violin, and the occasional ting of crystal. The table chatter was ordinary, or so it seemed to Jack as he sipped his dinner wine and worked his way through the main course. Sally and little Jack were doing well at school, and Kathleen would turn two in another month, as she toddled around the house at Peregrine Cliff, the dominating and assertive apple of her father's eye, and the terror of her day-care center. Robby and Sissy, childless despite all their efforts, were surrogate aunt and uncle to the Ryan trio, and took as much pride in the brood as Jack and Cathy did. There was a sadness to it, Jack thought, but those were the breaks, and he wondered if Sissy still cried about it when alone in bed, Robby off on a job somewhere. Jack had never had a brother. Robby was closer than a brother could ever have been, and his friend deserved better luck. And Sissy, well, she was just an angel.
    “I wonder how the office is doing.”
    “Probably conjuring up a plan for the invasion of
    
    
     Bangladesh
    
    
    ,” Jack said, looking up and reentering the conversation.
    “That was last week,”
    
    
     Jackson
    
    
     said with a grin.
    “How do they manage without us?” Cathy wondered aloud, probably worrying about a patient.
    “Well, concert season doesn't start for me until next month,” Sissy observed.
    “Mmmm,” Ryan noted, looking back down at his plate, wondering how he was going to break the news.
    “Jack, I know,” Cathy finally said. “You're not good at hiding it.”
    “Who—”
    “She asked where you were,” Robby said from across the table. “A naval officer can't lie.”
    “Did you think I'd be mad?” Cathy asked her husband.
    “Yes.”
    “You don't know what he's like,” Cathy told the others. “Every morning, gets his paper and grumbles. Every night, catches the news and grumbles. Every Sunday, watches the interview shows and grumhles. Jack,” she said quietly, “do you think I could ever stop doing surgery?”
    “Probably not, but it's not the same—”
    “No, it's not, but it's the same for you. When do you start?” Caroline Ryan asked.
     

Jack Ryan 8 - Debt of Honor
    1
    Alumni
     
     
     
    There was a university somewhere in the
    
     Midwest
    
    , Jack had once heard on the radio, which had an instrument package designed to go inside a tornado. Each spring, graduate students and a professor or two staked out a likely swath of land, and on spotting a tornado, tried to set the instrument package, called “Toto”—what else?—directly in the path of the onrushing storm. So far they had been unsuccessful. Perhaps they'd just picked the wrong place, Ryan thought, looking out the window to the leafless trees in
    
    
     Lafayette
    
    
    
    
     Park
    
    
    . The office of the President's National Security Advisor was surely cyclonic enough for anyone's taste, and, unfortunately, much easier for people to enter.
    “You know,” Ryan said, leaning back in his chair, “it was supposed to be a lot simpler than this.” And I thought it would be, he didn't add.
    “The world had rules before,” Scott Adler pointed out. “Now it doesn't.”
    “How's the President been doing, Scott?”
    “You really want the truth?” Adler asked, meaning, We are in the White House, remember? and wondering if there really were tape machines covering this room. “We screwed up the Korean situation, but we lucked out. Thank God we didn't screw up
    
    
     Yugoslavia
    
    
     that badly,