Read Support and Defend Online
Authors: Tom Clancy,Mark Greaney
D
OMINIC
C
ARUSO STOOD
at his stove, stirring diced tomatoes into a saucepan full of fat shrimp, olive oil, and herbs. The smell of garlic and oregano was prevalent, and the crushed red pepper made his eyes water. The heat from the stove created a thin sheen of sweat on his forehead, which he blotted away with the towel on his shoulder. When his forehead was dry again he left the towel on his shoulder, keeping it at the ready. This was shrimp Fra Diavolo, after all. He’d really start sweating only when he ate it.
Dom had always loved to cook; when he was young, it brought him closer to his mom and grandmother, and now it brought him back to his childhood, and with that came some happy thoughts. And that was the plan this evening. He wasn’t cooking because he was hungry. Tonight he thought it might be a good idea to do something productive to occupy his mind for a couple hours. So he’d climbed off the couch, ignored his bruised ribs and his slight headache while he struggled to get his coat on, and then he ventured out for groceries.
Fixing a real dinner wasn’t much, but it beat ordering a pizza, and it beat sitting in his dark condo and brooding.
Dom turned down the heat on the saucepan and stepped away for a moment to open a bottle of Trebbiano he’d found tucked in back of his refrigerator. He swigged right out of the bottle while he went back to the stove, splashed a little into the Fra Diavolo and ducked the steam that roared up out of the bubbling dish.
While he cooked, his mind drifted, thinking of the last meal he’d prepared here in his place. It had been the evening before his flight to India and, unlike tonight, he had not been alone, because Dom did not, as a rule, cook for one.
Her name was Abbie; she was a bartender at an upscale saloon in Georgetown. He’d been a regular at her bar, though he was quiet and preferred sitting in the dark to interacting with her other regulars. One night he stayed till closing and the two of them then went to a local late-night watering hole for a nightcap. They sat talking for an hour over beers.
He’d told her he was in corporate security, and other than “cool,” she’d made no comment about his job again.
They’d made love at her place first, but after a couple more nights of meeting for drinks before the inevitable late-night hookup, Dom asked her over to his condo for a home-cooked meal. He prepared an authentic veal-and-ricotta meatball dish and served it by candlelight with one of his favorite Chianti Classicos. She seemed pleasantly surprised he could actually cook, but she hadn’t come over for the veal, so soon after their plates were stacked in the sink and the bottle of Chianti was empty on the coffee table, Dom and Abbie disappeared into his dark bedroom and the meal was all but forgotten.
Dom enjoyed that last night before India, but he’d barely thought of Abbie at all during his trip, and she hadn’t e-mailed or called once while he was gone.
So that was that. Dom decided he’d have to avoid her bar for a while, so they could both move on.
Dom plated his dinner and headed into the living room, grabbing the Trebbiano along the way. In stark contrast to the candlelit dinner with Abbie, tonight he sat alone on his couch with his feet up on the coffee table; the TV was tuned to a poker tournament, but he wasn’t paying attention to it. He sipped his wine and ate his shrimp and sulked. He was proud of tonight’s dinner, it had the right balance of flavors: the buttery sweetness of the shrimp, the heat of the red peppers, and the zing of the citrus. But he was in a dark mood, partly because he didn’t have a woman here to eat it with him and fawn over it, before he could take her to his bed.
Dom was Italian, after all. He was well aware of the seductive power of food.
His mind drifted off the food, off the women, and he thought of the Yacobys and the meals they’d shared, and he thought of the kids, and he thought about the American son of a bitch who sold them out to the terrorists as if their lives meant nothing.
This train of thought brought him yet again of his own responsibility in their deaths. Try as he might to remain objective about his actions, he continued to second-guess himself for being unable to save them.
Dom wrestled with the images in his mind throughout dinner. When his plate and his bottle were both empty, he considered checking his refrigerator again to see if there was another cold bottle of Trebbiano tucked in their somewhere. He thought he might try to watch TV and drain another bottle before bed.
No. He couldn’t sit here all night drinking alone and thinking dangerous thoughts.
He looked at his watch. Ten-thirty p.m.
He came up with a new plan for the evening, and instantly his mind drifted away from the Yacobys. He knew it was temporary, just like cooking the Fra Diavolo for one had been. But it beat sitting here brooding.
“Don’t do it, Dom.”
He didn’t know why he talked to himself like that. He knew he was going to do it. His body ignored his inner voice, he stood, went into his bedroom and changed into a pair of jeans and a brown leather jacket. Slipping his left arm in the sleeve felt like someone was twisting one of his ribs with a pair of pliers, but he fought through the pain and got it done. Before walking out his front door he took five minutes to straighten his place, because even though he wasn’t sure where he was going, and he had no idea who he would meet there, he had no intentions of returning alone.
B
Y ELEVEN P.M.
Caruso sat on a bar stool at a 14th Street gastropub called The Pig. He’d been here a dozen times in the past, each time looking for food, drink, and perhaps something more. As he sipped his beer he scanned the dark and lively establishment, his eyes tracking over dozens of tables, each one with a cluster of patrons enjoying themselves.
And Dom identified several potential targets.
This always felt to Dom a little like the fixed-position surveillance ops he did with The Campus. Except he wasn’t tailing terrorists or Russian mobsters or keeping an eye out for enemy countersurveillance ops.
No, he was here to pick up a girl.
Dom’s phone contact list was crammed with other hookup opportunities, but they all would entail a certain amount of familiar conversation that would involve, inevitably, a high level of compassion and concern. Dom was rough and ragged, mentally and physically, and all of his female friends, even the most peripheral, would attempt to mother him, trying to find out what on earth was wrong.
Dom wasn’t looking to be mothered tonight.
H
E DIDN’T NOTICE
the woman just down the bar on his first examination of the room, but that wasn’t because she was unattractive. On the contrary, she was a striking brunette, his age to a few years older, with almond eyes and full lips. He hadn’t noticed her at first because she was surrounded by three young and very large men. One sat on either side of her at the bar, and the third stood close behind her. One of the men laughed loudly and put his arm around her, while the other two drank whiskey out of rocks glasses and glanced around the room with sly grins on their faces.
Dom’s eyes moved on. His radar scanned for targets of opportunity, after all, and this particular potential target was lost in the signal interference of testosterone.
He finished his beer and ordered another. A redhead sitting with a friend at a two-top near the back wall caught his eye, and he hers. Dom scanned for a wedding ring on her ring finger like a seasoned pro, and saw her finger was unadorned, but then he noticed the woman’s dramatic mannerisms in her conversation with her friend, and her ragged fingernails were evident even from halfway across the room. He pegged her as more frazzled and emotional than he was prepared to deal with at the moment, and he resumed his scrutiny of the room.
A tall athletic blonde in a business suit glanced his way through a large group of both male and female coworkers, but her dress and the gang around her told him she worked on the Hill. Dom knew a few congressional staff members, he had nothing against them personally, but he wasn’t really in the mood to listen to either inane party politics or cynical gossip from the congressional coatroom, so he moved on, continuing his slow study of eligible women in the pub.
Dom sighed inwardly while he searched. The older he got, and the better he became at reading people, the tougher it was to find someone he was compatible with. He wondered whether or not he really wanted to ever get married, since he found it so damn hard to connect with someone mentally even for a single night.
After another long pull off his beer, Dom recognized the real impediment to a connection was his own frame of mind. India had fucked him up, even for something as callous and momentary as sleeping around.
C’mon, D. Soldier on.
He ordered his third drink of the evening, and when it arrived he thought about making his way toward a table of three good-looking college-aged women in the middle of the dining room, but his plan was derailed when he heard the beautiful brunette just down the bar from him raise her voice in annoyance at one of the three big men surrounding her. “I said no!”
Dom’s eyebrows rose, he’d all but discounted the woman during his initial scan because she was in a group of men, but now he tuned his ears into the conversation between the brunette and the young men, and he looked them all over more closely.
The three dudes looked to Dom to be about seven hundred fifty pounds’ worth of trouble. Their muscles strained in tight T-shirts emblazoned with eagles and skulls and wolves and other nonsense, tattoos ringed their forearms, and their leather coats lay haphazardly on three chairs at a table nearby. He scrutinized their eyes and postures and confirmed all three were either drunk or at least well on their way.
Dom sized up the situation quickly. The beautiful woman didn’t know these guys; she was several years older and much better dressed than they, and she looked impossibly small and painfully uncomfortable as they towered over her.
Dom used his practiced powers of observation to determine the woman had arrived alone; she was on business here in D.C., perhaps, maybe staying at one of the big four-star chain hotels in the neighborhood. She’d dropped in for a late dinner and a glass of wine, and then had apparently fallen prey to a crew of steroid-addled horny jackasses.
This is not your night, honey.
Dom focused on the barrel-chested blond-haired man with a goatee who seemed to be doing the talking. He was the one incurring the wrath of the small brunette. He said something to her, Dom wasn’t able to pick it up, but she answered him with a roll of her eyes and a shake of her head.
Now the man said, “You don’t got to be a bitch about it.”
“I’m not being a bitch. I was trying to be nice, but you weren’t listening.”
“I sent you over a drink. The least you can do is be friendly and join us at our table.”
“I’m sorry, I shouldn’t have accepted it. I’ve got an early flight tomorrow and—”
“One more drink! What’s it gonna hurt?” he shouted, and he loomed over her ominously.
No one else at the bar had taken any interest in the conversation except for a well-dressed gentleman at the far end, who looked on with idle curiosity. The bartenders were out of earshot, laughing it up with some other patrons.
The two friends of the blond with the goatee kept their mouths shut as he and the woman argued. Dom gave this a moment’s consideration and determined any real friends would have hustled their buddy away from this confrontation and told him he was acting like a jerk, so the fact these two were holding their tongues indicated to Caruso the blond was the alpha of the trio.
The brunette tried to ignore the young tough. She flipped her bill over, then pulled out her wallet and put a couple twenties on the bar. She attempted to push her bar stool back to stand up, but the man behind her didn’t move. The blond with the goatee put his hand on her back, keeping her right where she was.
He said, “Where you goin’? You gotta do a shot.”
Dom swigged the last of his beer, threw his own cash on the bar, and then stepped forward into the fray.
F
IVE SECONDS LATER
Dom placed his hand gently on the bearded blond’s chest, and leaned in close as if to shout over the music and the din of the crowd.
He kept a faint smile on his face as he said, “Hey, buddy. You asked. She answered. Let this one go. Don’t sweat it, you’ll catch the next one.”
Dom’s demeanor was unsettling, confusing to the bigger, younger man. Was this stranger threatening him? With a smile on his face? Who the fuck was this guy?
“Who the fuck are you?” Dom thought he detected Michigan in the man’s voice.
“Nobody. How ’bout you let me buy you a whiskey? What are you drinking? Evan Williams? Big spender.” Dom held his hand up for the bartender and flashed a quick look at the brunette. He was hoping she’d understand that his look meant “Go. Now.”
But she just stood there.
One of the other big men grabbed Dom by the shoulder and spun him around. Dom found himself looking straight ahead into the muscular chest of the young man. His eyes tracked up and he smiled. “Take it easy. I was just telling your buddy that I’m picking up this round.”
The woman backed away from the bar now, and she put her purse on her shoulder, but she did not walk to the door. She just stared at the dark-haired man who’d come to her rescue, unsure what to say or do.
The blond man with the goatee spun Dom back around to him, using Dom’s shoulder again as if it was a door handle and causing his bruised ribs to spasm in pain. “Nobody was talking to you, asshole. Stay out of this.”
Dom sighed a little. He knew he should disengage. These people meant nothing. This wasn’t some back alley, in a Third World hellhole. This woman wasn’t in real danger; if she started yelling, surely some other man would eventually get off his ass and come over to defend her honor.
But Dom couldn’t help himself. He stood his ground.
The blond said, “Seriously, bro? You wanna piece of me?”
Dom knew the question was asked as a provocation, but he considered it carefully.
Do I want a piece of you?
he asked himself.
He had to be honest.
Yeah.
A piece of this jackass was exactly what he wanted. It wasn’t mature or professional, but Dom was in that kind of mood.
As much as he knew he could get himself out of this without resorting to violence, he did not disengage.
The blond man smiled, showing teeth stained with chewing tobacco. To Dom he looked like a guy who realized he wasn’t getting laid tonight, but was just as happy, if not happier, to discover he was going to at least get to punch a man in the face.
A nice conciliation prize for a guy like him.
Dom added, “She and I are walking out the front door. You boys
should
stay right here.”
The blond said, “You walk out that door with her and I’m going to follow you out and break your pencil neck.”
Dom didn’t think he had a pencil neck, but he didn’t dispute the point. Instead, he just turned, took the brunette by the arm, and said, “Let’s go.”
As he walked by the two big men who’d been standing close behind him, one of them jolted at him suddenly, his fist up and high like he was about to pound Dominic in the jaw. He threw the fist, but stopped it an inch from Dom’s face.
Dom didn’t even flinch, he knew this guy wouldn’t suckerpunch him because the alpha of the group had already claimed him as his prize. He just gave the man a little smile and kept walking.
The big man with his fist held in the air was taken aback. He was used to smaller men cowering under his threats. He recovered quickly, and turned to bluster. Gleefully he said, “Shane’s gonna kick your ass. It’s gonna be a one-hit fight, bitch.”
Dom just continued toward the door with the girl in tow, and the three big men rushed to grab their coats.
As Dom walked past the end of the bar he noticed the distinguished gentleman in the nice suit sitting alone. He had turned away, he stared down into his Manhattan, though Dom was certain the man had seen and heard everything.
From behind him he heard the man call out again. “A one hit fight!”