"Chalker, Jack L - A Jungle Of Stars" - читать интересную книгу автора (Chalker Jack L)

No one slept.
About a half-hour after midnight, they heard voices whispering in Vietnamese. Whoever they had bumped into out there was still around.
Savage grew cold and his stomach tightened -- someone was standing about two meters from him. He could sense movement even though he could not see clearly.
A new round of shots was fired into the air by the VC around them. None were returned, the men of the squad freezing like statues, their fingers poised nervously on their triggers.
The man nearest Savage now moved off, and the lieutenant was conscious of the movement of others toward the southeast. There appeared to be only four or five of them, but that didn't tell much about the size of the total force that potentially lurked in every bush and tree.
They were gone as suddenly as they had appeared, and the fetid air of the swamp somehow seemed fresher by the absence of nuoc-mam.
At about 0130, another volley was heard off to the southeast, but pretty far away. Charley had missed them.
This time.
As they sat through the night watch, Savage became slowly aware that the squad was whispering to one another. But he could not make out what was being said. Once he admonished them for being so noisy, but after a short while the whispering had begun again.
At a little before 0300, one of the men crawled over to Savage's painful perch on a high clump of bush. The lieutenant looked at him in the gloom: a big blond fellow, well over six feet, and seemingly in the peak of condition. He would be ideal for a young German officer in a World War II film, Savage reflected, although the man's name was, incongruously, McNally.
"Sir?" he queried softly. "Can I speak to you for a minute?"
"Sure. McNally, isn't it?" Savage responded softly. "What's going on?"
"Well, sir, we been wonderin', well -- uh, the contact time is coming up and we were, uh, wonderin' just what you were gonna tell 'em."
Savage shifted uneasily, considering the question and the motive of the man who had asked it. It was certain that he was spokesman for the rest.
"I'm going to tell them what happened," he replied carefully.
"Yeah, but -- what about gettin' us out of here?"
So that was it. He'd known it.
"Frankly, McNally, I'd love to get us out of here, right now. For one thing, my boots are undoubtedly staked out over there somewhere, waiting for me to get my brains splattered claiming them. I've got no desire to walk almost five miles barefoot. I'm not sure I'd - make it."
McNally's face seemed to light up the gloom. "Does this mean you're gonna ask for exfiltration?"
"That's what's been worrying me. I'm pretty sure they've got a couple of men on the LZ, and that's the only way out. On the other hand, they don't know where the exfiltration zone is."
"Goddammit, sir, they've got our map! If we take all that time to get there, with you bootless and all, they'll have the whole goddam North Vietnamese Army waiting for us!"
"Now, wait. We don't know that they have the map, but we do know they know the original LZ. Playing the odds--"
"The hell with the odds, sir! Call 'em in! If we can't beat off this little force and get to the chopper, then we can still go for the pickup point. If we do it your way, we're dead for sure."
"Well, maybe that's what being an officer is all about, McNally. I'd say the odds are with my way -- and we still have the mission, too."
"That's what it is!" the other spat. "You're gonna turn silver if you get us all killed and your feet ate off."
"No matter what you think," Savage replied, his voice even but touched with ice, "we'll play it my way. Go tell the men -- and bring the radio back up here."
McNally turned with a snarl and returned to the others. Savage tried to make out their conversation while appearing unconcerned; he found it impossible to do either.
After three or four minutes he moved back to them, every move painful from the legion of bites on his feet. The men watched him approach, looking very much like little boys in a dentist's waiting room, knowing something very unpleasant was coming. Knowing, too, that it was unavoidable.
"Well?" he said softly, standing in front of them, disregarding the risk a target of his size would represent. In those few short minutes he had resolved himself to dying, if need be, to keep the team together. He was somewhat surprised at himself, for he'd never been a particularly brave man, although always something of an idealistic one. But he had always had one hell of a temper.
"Who's got the radio?" he asked.
One of the others, a mousy little fellow who looked as if he was out of a New York street gang, reached around and pulled it out of the pack. McNally nodded and the little man put it down.
"We talked it over, Lieutenant. You ain't gonna sand that message. You're gonna tell 'em to come and get us."
"The hell I am. This is a pretty shitty place to have a mutiny, McNally."
"We're all short-timers, sir. This thing's been a botch from the beginning, and I, for one, ain't gonna get killed this close to goin' back to the world if I got a choice."
"The rest of you feel that way?" Savage asked, glaring at each man in turn.
None answered; most wouldn't look directly at him. As Savage stood there, he slowly unhooked the strap and took his knife out of its scabbard. No one seemed to have noticed.
"We're playing it my way, General McNally," be sneered, and as he said it he reached out and grabbed the tall blond NCO by the arm and pulled him over to his side.
The knife was at McNally's throat.
"Now what do we do, General?"
"You don't do nothin', Lieutenant," said a voice behind him.
He felt a rifle barrel in the small of his back. Turning slowly, without losing his grip on McNally, he saw that the little man with the radio had slid behind him, and cursed himself for paying so much attention to his own slick moves that he'd missed the movement.
"You're not going to shoot me, boy," he said confidently. "You'd have Charley here in a minute -- if all this hasn't brought him already."
He felt the pressure ease, but it was replaced in a second by a sharp point. "I got a knife, too," the little man said softly. "It's my favorite weapon. They spent fifty thousand bucks teachin' me how to kill people better with it. Why don'tcha just let Johnny there go and drop the knife?"
Suddenly all the determination went out of him. In frustration he shoved McNally away violently and then. tossed his blade aside. He continued to feel the pressure of the barrel as a hand reached over to his holster and drew out his service revolver.
"Now pick up the radio," McNally ordered him. "It's almost 0400. And any funny business, and you're dead and I talk to them."
He felt numb, distant somehow, as he picked up the radio and turned it on. Isn't it stupid, he thought -- these men probably just saved my life by doing this. And for forcing me to do what I want most to do myself, I damn near have to be killed.
"I'll make the call," he said resignedly, his voice sounding odd to his ears.
There was a quiet drone overhead and the muted HT-1 radio came to life, very crisply and tinnily.
"This is Artichoke," it said. "Acknowledge."
"Go ahead, Artichoke, this is Grasshopper," Savage responded mechanically, feeling somehow foggy, as if in a dream.