Read Jack Ryan 6 - Clear and Present Danger for Free Online Page B

Brown not to touch anything.  Plenty of fuel aboard, he can run her at full speed.  He'll have her in
    
     Mobile
    
     'fore
    
     midnight
    
     if the weather holds off.  Nice boat.” Another shrug.
    “Bring 'em up here,” Wegener said after a moment.
    “Aye aye.” Riley went aft.
    Wegener filled his pipe, then had to remember where he'd left his matches.  The world had changed while he'd been off doing other things, and Wegener didn't like it.  It was dangerous enough out here.  Wind and wave were as deadly an enemy as man needed.  The sea was always waiting for her chance.  It didn't matter how good you thought you were; you only had to forget once, just once, that you could never trust her.  Wegener was a man who never forgot, and devoted his life to protecting those who had.  Remembering that one hazard, and protecting those who forgot, had given him a full and satisfying life.  He liked being the guardian angel in the snow-white boat.  You were never lost if Red Wegener was around.  You always had a chance, a good chance, that he could reach into the wet, stormy grave and pull you out with his bare hands . . . but sharks were feasting on four people now.  Wegener loved the sea for all her moods, but sharks were something to loathe, and the thought that they were now eating people that he might have saved . . . four people who'd forgotten that not all sharks live in the sea, Wegener told himself.  That's what had changed.  Piracy.  He shook his head.  That's what you called it on the water.  Piracy.  Something that Errol Flynn had made movies about in Wegener's boyhood.  Something that had ended two centuries earlier.  Piracy and murder, the part that the movies had usually left out.  Piracy and murder and rape, each of them a capital offense in the old days . . .
    “Stand up straight!” Riley snarled.  He had both by the arm.  Both were still cuffed, and Riley's hands kept them from straying.  Chief Oreza had come along to keep an eye on things.
    Both were in their mid-twenties, both were thin.  One was tall, about six feet, and arrogant, which struck the captain as odd.  He had to know the trouble he was in, didn't he?  His dark eyes burned at Wegener, who regarded the younger man dispassionately from behind his pipe.  There was something odd about his eyes, but Wegener didn't know what it was.
    “What's your name?” the captain asked.  There was no reply. “You have to tell me your name,” Wegener pointed out quietly.
    Then something very unusual happened.  The tall one spat on Wegener's shirt.  There was a strangely long fragment of time in which the captain refused to believe what had happened, his face not even showing surprise.  Riley was the first to react to the blasphemy.
    “You son of a bitch!” The bosun lifted the prisoner up like a rag doll, spinning him in the air and smashing him down on the bridge rail.  The young man landed on his belt, and for a second it seemed that he'd break in half.  The air whooshed out of his mouth, and his legs kicked, trying to find the deck before he dropped into the water.
    “Christ, Bob!” Wegener managed to say as Riley picked him back up.  The bosun spun him around, his left hand clamped on the man's throat as he lifted him clear of the deck with one arm. “Put him down, Riley!”
    If nothing else, Riley had broken through the arrogance.  For a moment there was genuine fear in those eyes as the prisoner fought for breath.  Oreza had the other one on the deck already.  Riley dropped his man beside him.  The pirate—Wegener was already thinking of him in those terms—pitched forward until his forehead touched the deck.  He gagged and struggled for breath while Chief Riley, just as pale, rediscovered his self-control.
    “Sorry, Captain.  Guess I just lost it for a second.” The bosun made it clear that he was apologizing only for embarrassing his commanding officer.
    “Brig,” Wegener said.  Riley led both