"Robert McCammon - Night Calls The Green Falcon" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCammon Robert R)

NIGHT CALLS THE GREEN FALCON

by

Robert R. McCammon



CHAPTER ONE : NEVER SAY DIE

He was in the aeroplane again, falling towards the lights of Hollywood.
Seconds ago the craft had been a sleek silver beauty with two
green-painted propellers, and now it was coming apart at the seams like
wet cardboard. The controls went crazy, he couldn’t hold the stick level,
and as the aeroplane fell he cinched his parachute pack tighter around his
chest and reached up to pop the canopy out. But the canopy was jammed
shut, its hinges red with clots of rust. The propellers had seized up, and
black smoke whirled from the engines. The plane nosed towards the squat,
ugly buildings that lined Hollywood Boulevard, a scream of wind passing
over the fuselage.
He didn’t give up. That wasn’t his way. He kept pressing against the
canopy, trying to force the hinges, but they were locked tight. The
buildings were coming up fast, and there was no way to turn the aeroplane
because the rudder and ailerons were gone too. He was sweating under his
green suit, his heart beating so hard he couldn’t hear himself think. There
had to be a way out of this; he was a never-say-die type of guy. His eyes in
the slits of the green cowl ticked to the control panel, the jammed hinges,
the dead stick, the smoking engines, back to the control panel in a frantic
geometry.
The plane trembled; the port-side engine was ripping away from the
wing. His green boots kicked at the dead rudder pedals. Another mighty
heave at the canopy, another jerk of the limp control stick – and then he
knew his luck had, at long last, run out. It was all over.
Going down fast now, the wings starting to tear away, Klieg lights
swung back and forth over the boulevard, advertising somebody else’s
premiere. He marked where the plane was going to hit: a mustard-yellow,
five-floored brick building about eight blocks east of the Chinese Theatre.
He was going to hit the top floor, go right into somebody’s apartment. His
hands in their green gloves clenched the armrests. No way out … no way
out …
He didn’t mourn for himself so much, but someone innocent was about
to die and that he couldn’t bear. Maybe there was a child in that
apartment, and he could do nothing but sit in his trap of straps and glass
and watch the scene unfold. No, he decided, as the sweat ran down his
face. No, I can’t kill a child. Not another one. I won’t. This script has to be
rewritten. It wasn’t fair, that no one had told him how this scene would
end. Surely the director was still in control. Wasn’t he? “Cut!” he called
out, as the mustard-yellow building filled up his horizon. “Cut!” he said
again, louder – then screamed it: “CUT!”
The aeroplane crashed into the building’s fifth floor, and he was