"MacLean, Alistair - South by Java Head" - читать интересную книгу автора (Maclean Alistair)

"Yes, sir."

"What's your name, please?" The lieutenant's tone was a shade less peremptory now; the girl had a pleasant voice, and he could see that she was very tired, and shivering in the cold rain.

"Drachmann, sir."

"Well, Miss Drachmann, have you seen or heard anything of a small motorboat or a coastal steamer, anywhere offshore?"

"No, sir." Her tone held tired surprise. "All the ships have left Singapore."

"I hope to heaven you're wrong," Parker muttered. Aloud, he said, "Know anything about kids, Miss Drachmann?"

"What?" She sounded startled.

"The sergeant there has found a little boy." Parker nodded to the child still in the sergeant's arms, but wrapped now in a waterproof cape against the cold and rain. "He's lost, tired, lonely and his name is Peter. Will you look after him for the present?"

"Why, of course I will."

Even as she was stretching out her hands for the child, more footsteps were heard approaching from the left. Not the measured steps of soldiers, nor the crisp clickety-clack of women's heels, but a shambling, shuffling sound such as very old men might make. Or very sick men. Gradually there emerged out of the rain and the darkness a long, uncertain line of men, weaving and stumbling, in token column of twos. They were led by a little man with a high, hunched left shoulder, with a Bren gun dangling heavily from his right hand. He wore a balmoral set jauntily on his head, and a wet kilt that flapped about his bare, thin knees. Two yards away from Parker he stopped, shouted out a command to halt, turned round to supervise the lowering of the stretchers -- it was then that Parker saw for the first time that three of his own men were helping to carry the stretchers -- then ran backwards to intercept the straggler who brought up the end of the column and was now angling off aimlessly into the darkness. Farnholme stared after him, then at the sick, maimed and exhausted men who stood there in the rain, each man lost in his suffering and silent exhaustion.

"My God!" Farnholme shook his head in wonder. "The Pied Piper never had anything on this bunch!"

The little man in the kilt was back at the head of the column now. Awkwardly, painfully, he lowered his Bren to the wet ground, straightened and brought his hand up to his balmoral in a salute that would have done credit to a Guards' parade ground. "Corporal Fraser reporting, sir." His voice had the soft burr of the north-east Highlands.

"At ease, Corporal." Parker stared at him. "Wouldn't it -- wouldn't it have been easier if you'd just transferred that gun to your left hand?" A stupid question, he knew, but the sight of that long line of haggard, half-alive zombies materialising out of the darkness had had a curiously upsetting effect on him.

"Yes, sir. Sorry, sir. I think my left shoulder is kind of broken, sir."

"Kind of broken," Parker echoed. With a conscious effort of will he shook off the growing sense of unreality. "What regiment, Corporal?"

"Argyll and Sutherlands, sir."

"Of course." Parker nodded. "I thought I recognised you."

"Yes, sir. Lieutenant Parker, isn't it, sir."

"That's right." Parker gestured at the line of men standing patiently in the rain. "You in charge, Corporal?"

"Yes, sir."

"Why?"

"Why?" The corporal's fever-wasted face creased in puzzlement. "Dunno, sir. Suppose it's because I'm the only fit man here."

"The only fit-----" Parker broke off in mid-sentence, lost in incredulity. He took a deep breath. "That's not what I meant, Corporal. What are you doing with these men? Where are you going with them?".

"I don't rightly know, sir," Fraser confessed. "I was told to lead them back out of the line to a place of safety, get them some medical attention if I could." He jerked a thumb in the direction of the intermittent firing. "Things are a little bit confused up there, sir," he finished apologetically.

"They're all of that," Parker agreed. "But what are you doing down here at the waterfront?"