"Robert McCammon - The Wolfs Hour" - читать интересную книгу автора (McCammon Robert R)

angled a few degrees to the right, went up a rocky hillock and down again as if following a predetermined
course. Sand flew from beneath its paws, and ahead of the beast scorpions and lizards darted for cover.
Its ears twitched. A growling noise was coming up fast on the left. The wolf’s pace quickened, its
paws thrumming against hard-packed sand. The growling was closer… much closer… and now it was
almost directly to the left. A spotlight swept past the animal, came back, and fixed on the running shape.
The soldier in the motorcycle’s sidecar shouted, “There it is!” and pulled the safety mechanism off the
machine gun. He twisted the barrel toward the animal and opened fire.
The wolf skidded to a stop in a flurry of dust, and the bullets ripped a fiery pattern across the earth in
front of it. The motorcycle zoomed past, its driver fighting the brake and handlebars. And then the wolf
changed course and started running again at full speed, still heading east, still gripping the handcuff.
The machine gun kept chattering. Tracer bullets carved orange lines through the dark and ricocheted
off stones like spent cigarette butts. But the wolf zigzagged back and forth, its body hugging the earth,
and as the tracers whined around, the animal went over another hillock and out of the spotlight’s range.
“Over there!” the gunner shouted against the wind. “It went over that hill!” The driver turned the bulky
motorcycle and headed after it, white dust whirling through the headlight’s beam. He gave the engine full
power, and it responded with a throaty roar of German machinery. They topped the hill and started
down—and the headlamp showed an eight-foot-deep gulley just beneath it, waiting like a jagged grin.
The motorcycle crashed into it, turned end over end, and the machine gun went off, spraying bullets in
a wild arc that ricocheted off the sides of the gulley and slammed through the bodies of the driver and
gunner. The motorcycle crumpled, and its gas tank exploded.
On the other side of the gulley, which the wolf had cleared with a single spring of its hind legs, the
animal kept going, dodging pieces of hot metal that clattered down around it.
Through the echoes of the blast came the noise of another predator, this time coming from the right.
The wolf’s head ticked to the side, sighting the sidecar’s spotlight. The machine gun began to fire, bullets
thudding around the wolf’s legs and whistling past its body as it ran in quick, desperate circles and angles.
But the motorcycle was closing the distance between them, and the bullets were getting nearer to their
target. One tracer flashed so close that the wolf could smell the bitter scent of a man’s sweat on the
cartridge. And then it made another quick turn, leaped high in the air as bullets danced underneath its
legs, and scrambled into a gulley that cut across the desert toward the southeast.
The motorcycle prowled along the gulley’s rim, its sidecar occupant searching the bottom with the
small attached spotlight. “I hit it!” he vowed. “I know I saw the bullets hit—” He felt the hair on the back
of his neck crawl. As he twisted the spotlight around, the huge black wolf that was running behind the
motorcycle leaped forward, coming up over the sidecar and slamming its body against the driver. Two of
the man’s ribs broke like rotted timbers, and as he was knocked out of his seat the wolf seemed to stand
up on its hind legs and lunge over the windshield as a man might jump. The tail slapped the gunner
disdainfully in the face; he scrambled madly out, and the motorcycle went about another fifteen feet
before it reeled over the edge and crashed down to the bottom. The black wolf ran on, coming back to a
due easterly course.
Now the network of gullies and hillocks ended, and the desert was flat and rocky under the blazing
stars. Still the wolf raced on, its heart beginning to beat harder and its lungs pumping the clean smell of
freedom, like the perfume of life, into its nostrils. It snapped its head quickly to the left, released the
handcuff, and gripped the satchel’s leather handle so the bag no longer bumped the ground. It fought and
defeated the urge to spit the handle out, because it held the foul taste of a man’s palm.
And then, from behind, another guttural growl, this one lower-pitched than the voices of the other two
predators. The wolf glanced back, saw a pair of yellow moons speeding across the desert, following the
animal’s tracks. Machine-gun fire erupted—a red burst above the double moons—and bullets shot up
sand less than three feet to the wolf’s side. It jinked and spun, checked its speed, and darted forward
again, and the next long burst of tracers singed the hairs along its backbone.
“Faster!” Stummer shouted to his driver. “Don’t lose it!” He got off another burst, and saw sand kick
up as the wolf angled sharply to the left. “Damn it!” he said. “Hold it steady!” The animal still had Voigt’s