"Ken MacLeod - The Highway Men" - читать интересную книгу автора (MacLeod Ken)

We had brought a Caterpillar digger on the back of the truck. Getting it off
was hard work. Our thick gloves made the chains awkward to handle, but
they were too cold to touch with bare skin. The heavy padlocks and hasps
were frozen solid. It took a lot of tapping with a hammer to get them loose.
The tailgate ramps were stiff. We had to melt ice off them with a blowtorch
before Euan could drive the Cat down to the ground. He had just eased the
tracks over the edge of the flatbed and was inching forward, waiting to tip
forward onto the slope of the ramps, when I saw a black cloud in the west.
Way down the loch. By the time the Cat was on the ground you couldn’t see
Lochcarron.

I looked around. It was weird to be standing in bright sunshine with
that black wall of cloud on the way. All over the site—there were about
twenty guys working there—people were yelling, hauling tarpaulins over
equipment, shutting down machinery, and running for shelter. Only the
guards stood their ground. Their armour would take more than a storm to
damage.

“Time to go, boys,” I said.

Euan jumped out of the Cat and locked the door behind him. Murdo
pulled his parka hood up and headed for the nearest depot. I heaved the
two boards one by one into the back of the truck and banged the tailgate
up, slammed the bolts across.

I could hear a hissing from the sea a couple of hundred metres away.

I ran after Euan towards the doorway where Murdo was standing
among a crowd of others, staring past us and waving. Beckoning, urging us
on. A gust of wind pushed us like a giant hand on our backs. The hiss
became a drumming roar. We had just got under the roof when hailstones
the size of golf balls started hitting the tarmac. They hit so hard they
shattered. I felt a sting of ice on my face, and covered my eyes. Everybody
backed farther inside, pressing against machines and tools and coils of
pipe.

For ten minutes it was almost as dark as night. The ground in front of
us turned slowly white. The hailstones hammered on the roof. I could see
them bouncing off the side window of the depot and wondered why it didn’t
break. Then I remembered it was probably made of toughened glass, just
like the truck windscreen and the Cat’s cabin windows. This thought
reminded me of something, but I couldn’t think what. With all the noise I
could hardly think at all.

Then the hailstorm passed as suddenly as it had started. The sky was
still overcast, and the wind fresh, but the squall had marched off up the
glen. We walked out, boots crunching on chunks of ice.

“The ground needed it,” said Euan.