"Steve Perry - The Man Who Never Missed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

canned two of the weapons after the station in the woods, but he'd kept the
ammunition. He counted the remainder of those plus the ones he'd used later.
Each magazine held twelve darts, so he should have, let's see, minus two each
from the first station, then two more, one from the left, one from the
right....

He finished the count. One short. Had he miscounted?

He closed his eyes and replayed the stations slowly. The first one was okay,
the second was right, it must be the third....

He fired twice, caught Jason and the quad leader with the first two rounds,
then fired both his handguns again. He got Janie, but missed Toomie....

Ah. Yes. He'd missed the last quadman with his first shot, it had taken a
second dart for him. Khadaji grinned wryly. He was getting careless. He
reached up and pulled open one of the drawers in his desk. There was a second
flash-rigged packet nestled in the corner, under a banded packet of standards.
A thief who opened the drawer would see the money and likely not worry about
the plastic packet under it. If he or she did try to open the case, there
would be a hot surprise waiting; the thief would be lucky to escape with hands
and face intact.

He removed the second case from the drawer and printed it open. Inside were
loose spetsdod darts; there had been a hundred of them. Ninety-three now,
Khadaji knew. He had removed seven of them in five-odd months, once for each
wasted dart he'd fired. There was a pair of tweezers inside the lid of the box
and he used them to pick up a single dart, which he carefully loaded into the
magazine of his right-hand spetsdod. There.

He closed the flash-rigged packet and put it back into the drawer. His
carelessness hadn't been in missing Toomie, though that was bad enough; no,
the problem was in forgetting that he'd missed. True, it had been in the
middle of a heated exchange, but it was inexcusable.

He put the weapons away and closed the store box. There was no rigged lock on
the store box itself, even though a determined search of the cubicle would
likely turn it up. That was all right, it was unlikely anybody would be in
here while Khadaji was alive and if he were dead, well....

He suddenly felt very tired. The Reflex had finally worn off and the Paco was
still pulling at him. He stood and walked back to his bed. So very tired.

He slept again, and if he dreamed, those dreams didn't disturb him. -

"Good morning, Boss."

Khadaji nodded at Bork, the largest of his bouncers, one of the largest men on
Greaves. Bork was of Homomue stock, from a world where the gravity was higher
than normal and increased muscle mass was an asset. Here on Greaves, where the