"Murphy, Warren - [Destroyer 060] - The End of the Game" - читать интересную книгу автора (Destroyer)

"No," he said firmly. "I want to turn these people or this thing, whatever it is, in. I've had enough. I've gone far enough. I guess you do have to pay for what you get, and I'll pay whatever I have to pay."

"Are you sure?" asked Detective Casey.

"Yes," said Waldo.

"Tell everything? Littlest details? Everything? You're willing to give up everything?"

Waldo nodded.

"Listen, buddy. As a friend. Why don't you just give the broad a little bump on the bottom and pick up your dough?"

"Dammit, Casey, it's illegal and I'm not doing it anymore. Some things I won't do for money. Even big money."

Detective Lieutenant Joseph Casey withdrew his .38 Police Special and put it in Waldo Hammersmith's face and shot away a very large segment of it.

Too bad for Waldo, Casey thought. But a person did get used to the big money. It got so that you would even murder to keep the money coming in.

In Nemonthsett, Utah, a lieutenant colonel in charge of a Titan nuclear missile battery bought himself two new Mercedes Benzes and paid for them with a personal check. He earned less than half that much in a year. But the check did not bounce.

He wondered if someday he would have to pay the money back. But he did not wonder too long. He was due at work, due to spend the next eight hours watching over twenty-four missiles that were aimed at Russia, threatening it with the force of millions of tons of TNT.
sChapter Two

His name was Remo and the Iranian sun was cold this winter, colder still because he wore only a thin black T-shirt and chinos.

Someone had told him that the winters in Iran were like those in Montana, and that in ancient times, before Islam had come, the people of the region believed that hell was cold. But then they had left the religion of the Parsi and taken that of the desert, that of the prophet Mohammed who lived where the sun scorched away life on burning sands, and eventually like all religions whose holy men talked first from deserts, they came to believe that hell was hot.

But Remo did not mind the cold of Iran and the men he was watching did not mind the heat of hell because they were all sure they were going straight to heaven when the time came. Heavy woolens covered their backs, and their hands thrust forward to warm near flickering yellow flames and their voices chanted in Parsi.

Guards every few feet looked into the blackness and told themselves that they too were earning heaven, although not as surely as those men who sat around the fire.

Remo could see the guards try to avoid the cold by tightening their bodies, not even knowing that they were attempting to generate heat by straining their muscles under their clothing.

The cold was real, only three degrees above zero and with a wind that tried to tear away all the body's heat, but Remo was not part of that cold.

His breathing was slower than that of the other men, taking in less cold, having to warm less air, a thin reed of human calm that suffered no more than the tall grass around his thighs. He stood so still that a rock this night would attract more attention from a human eye.

Those around the campfire tried to dull their senses and fought the cold. Remo let his senses run free. He could hear the grass strain ever so gently at its roots in the gravelly dust of the soil that had been leached of nutrients for thousands of years. He could feel a sentry tremble, leaning against a dried tree trunk, feel the young man shake in his heavy boots, feel the shaking come through the ground. He could smell the dinners of beef and lemon rotting in the mouths of those who had eaten them just hours before. And from the little fire, he heard the cells in the logs collapse as they puffed into smoke and flame.

The chanting stopped.

"We now speak in English, beloveds," came the voice of the leader. "We dedicate our lives in sacrifice against the Great Satan and for that we must speak the language of the Great Satan. Waiting for us in the United States are a thousand daggers and a thousand hearts ready to enter the gates of paradise."

"A thousand daggers and a thousand hearts," the voices came back.

"We all seek to end our lives to have eternal life. We fear not their bullets or their planes or any device of the Great Satan. Our brothers have gone before and taken many lives of the unbelievers. Now we too will bleed the Great Satan. But our honor is the greatest, because we will bleed its most important blood. Its snake head. Its President. We will show there is nothing safe from the wrath of Allah."

"Allah Akbar," chanted the young men around the flames.

"We will build groups from students and then, like a wave of righteousness, we will carry the bombs that will blow up the Great Satan's head. We will carry them in crowds. We will carry them on street corners. We will make his entire land of Satan a place of his death."