Word: decking
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...American diplomatic camp. U.S. Ambassador David R. Francis was an aging (67), old-line Missouri politician with a passion for poker. British Agent Bruce Lockhart recalled that after dinner, "Francis began to fidget like a child who wishes to return to its toys. His rattle, however, was a deck of cards." Ambassador Francis' poker-faced response to the Russian enigma was to hole up 250 miles north of Moscow in the town of Vologda, where he received garbled telegraphic reports from his Moscow subordinates...
...trim, 110-ft. U.S. yacht Valinda stood at anchor off Ecuador's Galápagos Islands in predawn darkness. The weather was balmy; the yacht's owner, Los Angeles Attorney William Rhodes Hervey Jr., 48, dozed on deck. Suddenly Hervey was roused by the chugging engines of two ancient fishing boats pulling alongside. Remembering a warning about seagoing thieves among the islands, he warned the boats to keep off, tried to kick one of them from Valinda's side...
...Waving pistols, 21 ragged, filthy men piled over the rail. Wakened by shouts, Hervey's wife Mildred rushed on deck, was held at gunpoint. The four-man crew was rounded up. Then the raiders, fugitives from the Galápagos penal colony on Isabela Island, demanded to be taken to the mainland...
...palace and the Defense Ministry across the street. At 11 a.m. four Sabre jets, three Vampires and three elderly light bombers began to cut through holes in the clouds and buzz the city low across rooftops. "Those crazy cowboys!" remarked a watching Pan American pilot from his poolside deck chair at the Hotel Tamanaco, a mile or two away. In the afternoon, as a more urgently signaled plea for army help, the airmen strafed the palace and Seguridad headquarters, dropped four bombs (only one burst, killing no one). A Vampire, hit, trailed black smoke, landed at a nearby commercial airport...
Author Barr deals from a carefully stacked deck. His President Pomton spends most of his time buzzing around for money, and doesn't much care where it comes from because "every well-run university has a special washing machine for cleaning dirty money." Pomton's scheming secretary not only writes his speeches but has the final say on his successor when the prexy leaves for what can only be a drearier job. The sociology professor who covets Pomton's job is so tiresome a fellow that his very honesty and earnestness make him seem more a threat...