"Mack Reynolds - North Africa 01 - Blackman's Burden" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reynolds Mack)

pace of approximately twenty kilometers per hour.

The lead jeep—Skoda manufacture, Homer Crawford noted
cynically—was some thirty meters in advance. It drew to a halt upon
seeing him and a turbaned Arab Union trooper swung a Brenn gun in his
direction.

An officer stood up in the jeep and yelled at Crawford in Arabic.

The American took a deep breath and said in the same language,
"You're out of your own territory."

The officer's face went poker-expressionless. He looked at the lone
figure, dressed in the garb of the Tuareg, even to the turban-veil which
covers all but the eyes of these notorious Apaches of the Sahara.

"This is no affair of yours," the lieutenant said. "Who are you?"

Homer Crawford said very clearly, "Sahara Division, African
Development Project, Reunited Nations. You're far out of your own
territory, lieutenant. I'll have to report you, and also to demand that you
turn and go back to your origin."

The lieutenant flicked his hand, and the trooper behind the Brenn gun
sighted the weapon and tightened his trigger finger.

Crawford dropped to the ground and rolled desperately for a slight
depression that would provide cover. He could have saved himself the
resultant bruises and scratches. Before the Brenn gun spoke even once,
there was a Götterdammerung of sound and the three occupants of the
jeep, driver, lieutenant and gunner were swept from the vehicle in a
nauseating obscenity of exploding flesh, uniform cloth, blood and bone.

To the side, Abe Bakr behind his thornbush and rock vantage point
turned the barrel of his Tommy-Noiseless to the first of the half-tracks.
Already Arab Union troopers were debouching from them, some firing at
random and at unseen targets. However, the so-called Enaden smiths were
well concealed, their weapons silenced except for the explosion of the tiny
shells upon reaching their target.

It wasn't much of a fight. The recoilless automatic rifle manned by
Elmer Allen and Kenny Ballalou swept the wadi, swept it of life, at least,
but hardly swept it clean. What few individuals were left, in what little
shelter was to be found in the dry river's bottom, were picked off easily, if
not neatly, by the high velocity automatics in the hands of Abe Bakr and
Bey-ag-Akhamouk.

Afterwards, the five of them, standing at the side of the wadi, stared
down at their work.