"Linda Evans - Sleipnir" - читать интересную книгу автора (Evans Linda)

in the dark.
Iowed Gary Vernon an apology. And my life.

Chapter Two
Of all the gutless wonders, greenhorn newbies, dopers, and fools who joined the Army and
somehow got themselves assigned to Pershing, only a pitiful few were competent to handle the job of
guarding nuclear missiles. Among those few were guys like "Wally" Wallenstein, and Charles "Chuck"
Norris, and Crater, who, as far as I knew, had never been called anything else (although I'd heard it
rumored that his real name was Haversham).
They'd been among my closest friends.
But head-and-shoulders above the whole crowd—ineveryone's opinion—was Gary Vernon. The
best of the best. An all-around nice guy, who'd lend you beer money when you were short, and watch
your back on patrol. Which was good, since he was generally acknowledged to be the luckiest man
alive. And since his luck seemed to rub off on whoever pulled patrols with him, everybody wanted to be
teamed with him.
Gary always laughed it off, attributed it to a pact he'd made with Odin. Whatever the cause, it
seemed to work. And the closer I got to discharge, the happier I was that Sergeant Brown and
Lieutenant Donaldson teamed us up a lot. We worked well together, and nothing got past us.
Being teamed with Gary got a whole lot more attractive once the brass sent down their
no-ammo-on-patrol policy. The official explanation sounded like an updated version of Mom's "You'll
shoot your eye out" excuse for never buying BB guns for Christmas—and made just about as much
sense. We were sitting on several megatons of nuclear warheads, and incidents with terrorist groups
running "training missions" in our area had been up at least three hundred percent over the previous three
months. Yet brass decides out of the blue we ought to go sneaking around in the dark with empty rifles?
Go figure.
It wasn'tour fault some goddamn fool of a civilian had gotten himself shot on one of the other sites.
The way we had it figured, he'd probably been point scout, anyway, and got caught. But brass up at HQ
had had a royal cow, so we got stuck with the cow patties. Thetower guards got live ammo; just not us
poor, dumb fools assigned to patrol the perimeter.
Being GIs, we found ways around it, with nobody the wiser, and none of us ending up casualties.
We had the situation well in hand—until that inevitable, bitter night under a full moon when I turned to
Gary and whispered, "You got any spares?"
He shot me an incredulous look. "You don't?"
"No—Wilson borrowed 'em last night. He's running scared. You know, his second kid's due in a
couple of weeks, and I felt sorry for him. Besides, I knew you always carry."
Gary snorted, visibly disgusted. His breath steamed.
"Great. I dumped mine back into my gear while you were in the can. Brunowski almost caught me
when he poked his head in the door. I knewyou always carry."
I wasn't sure which of us was more dismayed. Neither of us had any illegal personal ammo; which
meant we now carried what amounted to clumsy plastic-handled clubs.
"Well," Gary muttered philosophically, "I guess it's you and me and the gods tonight, good buddy."
 As we started down the access road that led up toward the main missile site, I growled morosely,
"Odin help us if we run into trouble."
"Odin, huh?" Gary's ugly face broke into a lopsided grin. "The fledgling pagan speaks."
"You're a good one to talk about pagans, Vernon."
He laughed. "Yeah. Well . . ."
The little gold Thor's hammer I wore beneath my shirt moved on its chain as I shrugged. "I wish
more of those old stories had survived. It's really great stuff. Whoring, drinking, fighting off the bad guys
against all odds—our kind of guys."
"Kind of thought you might like that," he laughed.