"Comments?" Clark asked. He didn't see much past that, either.
"Chavez is correct… but you're never fully prepared or fully trained," Malloy pointed out. "No matter how much you work, the bad guys always find a way to dump something new on you. Anyway, in Delta we deploy with full medical-response team, trained corpsmen-experts, used to trauma care. Maybe we can't afford to do that here, but that's how we did it at Fort Bragg."
"We'll just have to depend on local support for that," Clark said, closing the issue. "This place can't afford to grow that much. I don't have the funding."
And that's the magic word in this business, Malloy didn't have to add. The meeting broke up a few minutes later, and with it the working day ended. Dan Malloy had grown accustomed to the local tradition of closing out a day at the club, where the beer was good and the company cordial. Ten minutes later, he was hoisting ajar with Chavez. This little greaser, he thought, really had his shit together.
"That call you made in Vienna was pretty good, Ding."
"Thanks, Dan." Chavez took a sip. "Didn't have much of a choice, though. Sometimes you just gotta do what you gotta do."
"Yep, that's a fact," the Marine agreed.
"You think we're thin on the medical side… so do I, but so far that hasn't been a problem."
"So far you've been lucky, my boy."
"Yeah, I know. We haven't been up against any crazy ones yet."
"They're out there, the real sociopathic personalities, the ones who don't care a rat's ass about anything at all. Well, truth is, I haven't seen any of them either except on TV. I keep coming back to the Ma'alot thing, in Israel twenty-plus years ago. Those fuckers wasted little kids just to show how tough they were - and remember what happened a while back with the President's little girl. She was damned lucky that FBI guy was there. I wouldn't mind buying that guy a beer."
"Good shooting," Chavez agreed. "Better yet, good timing. I read up on how he handled it-talking to them and all, being patient, waiting to make his move, then taking it when he got it."
"He lectured at Bragg, but I was traveling that day. Saw the tape. The boys said he can shoot a pistol as well as anybody on the team-but better yet, he was smart."
"Smart counts," Chavez agreed, finishing his beer. "I gotta go fix dinner."
"Say again?"
"My wife's a doc, gets home in an hour or so, and it's my turn to do dinner."
A raised eyebrow: "Nice to see you're properly trained, Chavez."
"I am secure in my masculinity," Domingo assured the aviator and headed for the door.
