She made a low sound in her throat, her lips parting against his.
“Let’s make something happen right now,” she husked, and kissed him, smiling as their mouths and tongues joined. She put her hand on him under the water, closed it around him under the water, moved it with quickening intensity under the water. Lang’s hand slid down over her hip, down over her thigh, lower, finding her, touching her, matching her rhythm, their eyes locked, their bodies pressing together, moving together, swaying, locked …
The two of them losing themselves in each other,
202
BIO-STRIKE
psiaking something happen there in the water on the deck I’ibeneath the wide and borderless blue sky.
fijfl a sense, Gordian was right about his building of the feporral having a therapeutic effect on him. He knew a ptoctor would not have condoned it. Might have strictly |8isallowed it. But he felt the warmth of the sun on his ck, the smells of mown grass and freshly dug earth, nd the robust physical workout helped carry him
ugh most of the day. Standing in his daughter’s backyard now, Gordian in- tpljpected his workmanship and nodded to himself with oval. He’d developed and patented scores of break- ough technologies, pioneered advances in communi- long that had transformed governments and psconomies, but his justifiable pride in those achieve- |tnents had never topped his pleasure in building some- Mng with only wooden boards, a box full of nails or pgcrews, and a handy set of tools.
It was a feeling that was no less keen today than it been when Gordian was a thirteen-year-old boy |founding together a tree house in Racine, Wisconsin, ordered routine of readying his tools and construc- materials relaxed him and gave him a chance to paganize his thoughts. He enjoyed the way a number of eful and methodical steps that followed a proven design would yield visible results within a relatively short Sme frame. And he enjoyed the direct connection be- ftween hands-on effort and outcome, especially when ey were for the benefit of someone he loved. While it was a bit of a damper to realize he was in- pexplicably getting on that particular someone’s nerves, Khe’d almost come to accept that as status quo.
203
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays
Gordian removed his safety goggles, slipped them into his tool belt, and flapped his T-shirt to dry the perspiration on his chest and armpits. Certainly he’d been functioning at well below 100 percent. He was breathing hard, his sore throat bothered him, and a nagging, raspy cough had developed over the last few hours. Every so often he would get a pang between his shoulder blades and down at the base of his spine as a reminder not to push too far. But that sun felt great, and there hadn’t been a recurrence of the vague dizziness and shakes he’d experienced the night before, and he hadn’t looked for trouble by mentioning any of it to Julia. She would surely overreact and push him into a lawn chair, where he’d spend the rest of the afternoon shooing away flies and mosquitos.
No thanks, he thought. He could decide for himself when he’d had enough. Parental privilege.
Gordian blotted the sweat from his eyes and forehead with his sleeve, put his cordless power drill into its belt holster, folded his arms across his chest, and continued to look over his handiwork. The fencing’s interwoven board construction required more fuss than, say, an ordinary stockade, but the wider spaces between its boards allowed enough wind filtration to keep it upright during the worst imaginable coastal blow. And gave the greyhounds convenient openings to peep through.
Each side of the square corral was to measure twelve feet by six feet, its horizontal plywood strips sized at a little over four feet long-any longer and they would tend to weaken. Gordian had needed to start off the first side by installing four posts at four-foot intervals. After he’d plotted the corral’s measurements with a tape ruler, twine, and temporary stakes on his last visit, he had dug
204
BIO-STRIKE
\ first row of pestholes, filled their bottoms with gravel drainage, and then driven the posts into the ground a heavy mallet, repeatedly checking their vertical with a carpenter’s level, packing soil into the holes ic went along. It had been vigorous work that left streaked with dirt and sweat and with a blistered ger or two in spite of the gloves he’d worn. But it n’t supposed to be easy, and he hadn’t minded, is morning, Gordian had resumed where he’d left using his power tool to fasten the horizontal strips jalternating sides of the posts, moving from bottom to and right to left. What he was presently looking at ; the open space between the last two posts. Once he the horizontals up to close that gap, he’d be done an entire side of the corral, his modified goal for afternoon. Well, almost done with it, since that uld still leave him having to thread the vertical spacfi through the strips. But it was a relatively quick and emanding task, and he could ask Julia to help him before leaving for home.
lian had another brief spate of coughing and his throat but didn’t bring up any fluid, and he ft a bit winded afterward. It was odd, that dry ness of breath. He didn’t seem to have any of the ipanying mucus and watery congestion that was ily symptomatic of a cold. Not even a runny nose, as if he’d sucked in a handful of plaster dust and ildn’t expel it from his lungs. fe cast a guarded look over at Julia’s back porch, she might have heard his latest hack attack. For- ely, though, she was busy with the tuna and sword- :eaks on her gas grill. When Ashley had called to that she’d been met by her pickup car at the air205
Tom Clancy’s Power Plays
port, Julia had gotten into an instant rash to prepare dinner. Maybe too great a rush. The drive from San Jose International would take about an hour in light traffic, and on Sundays, Highway 1 ordinarily became crammed with bumper-to-bumper mall-goers. This close to Thanksgiving, you could count on it. Much as he was anxious to see his wife, Gordian estimated they had a good forty minutes before she arrived, and Julia knew the Bay Area traffic situation as well as anyone. Besides, Ashley would want to relax for a while before eating dinner.
Gordian sighed. Call him oversensitive, but he thought Julia’s glued attention to the barbecue seemed an excuse for her utter and deliberate inattention to him. Whatever was bothering his daughter, her emotional state was always best revealed by her attempts to conceal it, to appear calmly preoccupied with her chores and projects, to veer off on her own and peripheralize everything and everyone around her. It was an exasperating quality Gordian found easy to recognize, given that the river from whence it flowed happened to bear his name, first and last.
Unfortunately, recognizing it didn’t mean he had the vaguest idea how to deal with it. On the one hand, he didn’t like being ignored during what he’d hoped would be a chance for some father-daughter bonding, to paraphrase Ashley. On the other, he didn’t want Julia regarding him so closely that she’d detect he was less than the picture of health. Was there no happy medium?
He stood there looking across the yard at the house, and after a few moments became aware that Jack and Jill seemed to be compensating for their mother’s cold- shoulder routine. Nice doggies. Leashed to the porch rail
206
BIO-STRIKE
cautious distance from any edibles, they had fixated him in their high-strung and inimitably questioning “ray, their ears cocked in his direction like swivel annas, their eyes penny brown circles of curiosity. Gor- had once heard somebody refer to the breed as shbutton dogs” because of their habit of lying per- :ly still and silent for hours on end, comically anxious i they watched their owners tend to their business, only snap onto all fours with a spring-loaded, running and when it was time to be fed or walked. And while term had been used with affection, he’d been disessed to learn this peculiar behavior came from years p being cooped in racetrack kennels that barely allowed em the room to stand or turn, let alone interact with er dogs. As a consequence, they became social miss, insecure about their status, never quite able to tell was expected of them or how to behave. And so ey kept their constant watch, waiting for reassurance, bottled energy.
Sad, Gordian thought. But thanks to the greyhound lie people and Julia, things had vastly changed for em. And would change even more for those particular eyhounds when their corral was built and they could Hop around outdoors to their hearts’ content. He turned, ready for his next go at the fence. The pile r forty boards he’d set out for himself this morning had tidied to a mere ten spread neatly across the grass. fow that today’s section had started to take definite liape, he could scarcely wait to get the rest of them up. Gordian was stooping to lift an armload of boards Wien the lightheadedness washed over him again. He shed hot and cold. His heart fluttered irregularly, then egan to pound.