"Kristine Kathryn Rusch - Craters" - читать интересную книгу автора (Rusch Kristine Kathryn)

CRATERS
Kristine Kathryn Rusch

What they don’t tell you when you sign up is that the work takes a certain amount of
trust. The driver, head covered by a half-assed turban, smiles a little too much, and
when he yes ma’ams you and no ma’ams you, you can be lulled into thinking he
actually works for you.

Then he opens the side door of his rusted jeep and nods at the dirt-covered
seat. You don’t even hesitate as you slide in, backpack filled with water bottles and
purifying pills, vitamins and six day’s dry rations.

You sit in that jeep, and you’re grateful, because you never allow yourself to
think that he could be one of them, taking you to some roadside bunker, getting paid
an advance cut of the ransom they anticipate. Or worse, getting paid to leave you
there so that they can all take turns until you’re bleeding and catatonic and don’t care
when they put the fifty-year-old pistol to your head.

You can’t think about the risks, not as you’re getting in that jeep, or letting
some so-called civilian lead you down sunlit streets that have seen war for centuries
almost non-stop.

You trust, because if you don’t you can’t do your job.

You trust, and hope you get away from this place before your luck runs out.

****

I still have luck. I know it because today we pull into the camp. This camp’s just like
all the others I’ve seen in my twenty-year career. The ass-end of nowhere, damn near
unbearable heat. Barbed wire, older than God, fences in everything, and at the front,
soldiers with some kind of high tech rifle, some sort of programmable thing I don’t
understand.

My driver pulls into a long line of oil-burning cars, their engines only partly
modified to hydrogen. The air stinks of gasoline, a smell I associate with my
childhood, not with now.

We sit in the heat. Sweat pours down my face. I nurse the bottle of water I
brought from the Green Zone—a misnomer we’ve applied to the American base in
every “war” since Iraq. The Green Zone doesn’t have a lick of green in it. It just has
buildings that are theoretically protected from bombs and suicide attacks.
 Finally, we pull up to the checkpoint. I clutch my bag against my lap, even
though the canvas is heavy and hot.

My driver knows the soldiers. “Reporter lady,” he tells them in English. The
English is for my benefit, to prove once again that he is my friend. I haven’t let him
know that I know parts (the dirty parts mostly) of two dozen languages. “Very
famous. She blog, she do vid, you see her on CNN, no?”