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

sky was making the cut-out face of a giant of the mountain. The one the
locals call Wellington’s Nose.

“Call it a day,” I said.

We washed up, and had some grub in the canteen. Then we cadged
a lift for the hotel bar from an Iraqi refugee student on work placement who
was keen to make friends. Thank God for Muslims. Well, onside Muslims
anyway, if you see what I mean. They don’t complain about having to drive
back from the pub. I stood the first round and bought a tall orange juice for
young Farhad and a half and a half each for myself and the lads. The
whisky bottles all had labels showing the diseased liver of the month. The
beer mats showed a range of car crash injuries. The bar had been built like
a conservatory. Its big windows had long since been sprayed over with
insulation foam. Too mean or too poor even for double glazing. The light
was yellow. There was a score or so of people here, usual mix of local
soaks and less sozzled incomers. Couple of other teams from the site.
Most of the crew preferred to drink in the barracks. No smoke detectors
hot-linked to the local cop shop, for one thing. Better atmosphere in every
way, you could say. People had stopped staring at us after the first night. I
stared at them on my way back to the table with the tray.

“Looking for somebody?” Euan asked.

“He’s pining for his bandit,” said Murdo.

This was true but I denied it. I had found Ailiss on my mind the past
couple of days. I had been keeping an eye out for her, but I hadn’t seen her
on the road or in the village.

“I meant to ask,” said Euan. “Why did you call her a bandit?”

Farhad looked worried. “You have bandits here?”

“Just a few rebels in the hills,” said Murdo.

“Don’t wind up the kid,” I told him, then turned to Farhad. “They’re no
like your Kurds or anything. They’re just small groups of young folks mostly
who live up in the mountains. They call themselves new age settlers. Some
of them do a bit of stealing. One or two of them sometimes even hold up a
supply lorry on a lonely road. That’s why they get called bandits.”

“But why do they do it?” asked Farhad.

I shrugged. “To get stuff.”

“No, I mean why do they live in the mountains?”

“To get away from”—I waved a hand around—“all this.”
 I didn’t know what I meant, what I was waving my hand at. It was the