"Joe Haldeman - 1968" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

"God." Killer made a face and, gagging, washed the thing down with half a canteen of water. Spider
belonged to the other school of thought: he broke it into four more-or-less equal pieces with his Swiss
Army knife, and took each piece separately. Killer watched him with the righteous contempt of a man
who has seen a physical challenge and faced it directly.

"Yer gun clean?" Killer asked. His was immaculate, always.

"All I ever do is clean my fuckin' gun." He knew it was probably pretty dusty, but he hadn't checked it
this morning. "What's it to you?"

"Gonna saddle up. Search an' destroy."

" 'Saddle up,' " Spider mocked him. "Will you get off that shit?" Every morning of the week Spider had
been at the fire base, somebody said they were going to be moving out.

"No shit. Captain's been in the command tent all morning."

"Playin' cards."

"Uh uh, Miller says it's for real this time." Miller was their platoon sergeant, a graybeard of forty who had
actually fought in Korea.

"Well." Spider got up and brushed the dust from the seat of his pants, a futile instinctive gesture. "Maybe
I'll go get my shit straight."

"Maybe you better." Spider really hated the guy when he was on that hard-core kick. When he wasn't
playing John Wayne he was all right. He read books, even science fiction sometimes.

Spider went to the fuel dump and sloshed a couple of inches of gasoline into his helmet. He carried it
back to his hooch and picked up his M16 and sat down cross-legged on a sandbag.

The Black Death (1)

Soldiers in Vietnam were told that the enemy, primitive superstitious devils, called our M16 "the Black
Death." It did appear menacing: sleek, dull black, efficient-looking, modernistic. A great deal of thought
had gone into the visual aspect of its design. But it had its drawbacks.

For some reason, the magazine only held twenty rounds. The weapon's cyclic rate of fire was such that if
you held the trigger down for three fourths of a second, you'd be suddenly out of ammunition. Also, the
spring-feed would jam if you tried to fill the magazine completely; most people carried only eighteen
rounds per magazine.

It was mechanically as cantankerous as a cheap watch. If there was any dirt or rust inside the receiver, it
just wouldn't work. And it was too light to make a good club.

It fired tiny bullets whose effect on the human body was inconsistent.

If you cocked it too fast you'd lose a fingernail.

The rear peep-sight kept filling up with crud.