"Andre Norton - Time Traders 6 - Echoes In Time" - читать интересную книгу автора (Norton Andre)

She might not have been able to conquer her bitterness, but one thing
she had learned was patience.

Saba bent over the recorder, pressed the ON button, then settled back
to wait for the Surma to emerge, like shy ghosts, from the shelter of the
brush.



"VIKHODITE! RUKI V' VERKH!"

"Like hell I'll come out with my hands up." Mikhail Petrovich Nikulin
smashed the butt of his pistol into a corner of window, and stuck the
muzzle through the hole. Bitter Siberian air smote his sweaty face.

Two things happened almost at once.

From behind came a shout: "Nikulin! You know the orders!"

From outside the rickety old building came the Match! and click!s as
two of the half-hidden gangsters dropped bullets into the chambers of
their rifles.

Phwup. A large-calibre bullet burrowed into the half-frozen slush just
below Misha's window, kicking up splatters of mud.

Footsteps from behind. A moment later a short, darkhaired figure
crouched below the level of the windowsill. "Nikulin!"

Misha did not have to look down; he knew that voice, and he knew the
expression on the older man's face.

"You know the orders. No violence. If we have to, we activate the
destruction device on the ship," Gaspardin said.

White hot anger flared through Misha Nikulin. "We are not going to
lose that ship," he stated, his gaze staying on the figures in the bulky coats
creeping foward from the cars to the old stone fence.

He fired once, and heard a shouted curse. Outside, one of the gangsters
flung up his weapon and dropped, rolling in the muddy slush, hand
clasped around his wounded knee.

"Misha—"
 On the periphery of his vision Nikulin saw Gaspardin reach up for his
pistol. "Don't touch me."

The hand vanished. "You will answer to the Colonel for contravening
orders."