"Bova, Ben - Orion 01 - Orion" - читать интересную книгу автора (Bova Ben)

against the walls. Some were moaning. A woman
sobbed.

I took the young model in my arms and carried
her out to the sidewalk. Then I went back in and
brought out another couple. As I stretched them
out on the pavement among the shards of glass
from the blown-out window, the police and fire-
men began to arrive, sirens shrieking. An ambu-
lance was right behind them. I stood aside and let
the professionals take over.

There was no sign of either of the two men who
had been sitting at the bar. Both the golden one
and the dark man seemed to have disappeared the
instant the grenade went off. They were gone by
the time I had pulled myself up off the floor. The
bartender had been cut in half by the blast. His
two customers had vanished.

As the firemen extinguished the smoldering blaze,
the police laid out four dead bodies on the side-
walk and covered them with blankets. The medics
were treating the wounded. They lifted the model,
still unconscious, onto a stretcher. More ambu-
lances arrived, and a crowd gathered around the
scene, buzzing.

"Goddamned I.R.A.," grumbled one of the cops.




12 Ben Bova

"Cheez, they're tossin' bombs around here, too,
now?"

"Coulda been the Puerto Ricans," another cop
suggested, his voice weary, exasperated.

"Or the Serbo-Croatians. They set that bomb off
in the Statue of Liberty, remember?"

They questioned me for several minutes, then
turned me over to the medics for a quick checkup
at the back of one of the ambulances.

"You're lucky, mister," said the white-jacketed
medic. "You didn't even get your hair mussed."