"Дон Пендлтон. Blood Sport ("Палач" #46) " - читать интересную книгу автора

They weren't cutting you in for enough of the take? What's your story, kid?"
PFC Cottonwood looked up.
His voice was clear for the first time, his eyes even.
"I know this might be hard for you to believe, sir. Especially now. At
first I was in it for the money.... You know the horror stories about how
hard it is to live over here on what we're paid. Especially if you're
married, like I was planning on doing this summer... so the money looked
good in the beginning. But then I didn't like it anymore. I didn't. Like I
said, you, probably won't believe me, but so what."
Bolan glared at the soldier who was fast becoming defiant as he
unburdened himself of his confession. He thight make a good soldier yet.
"Your report said the meeting with the Zwilling Horde was set for
tonight."
"Yes, sir." PFC Cottonwood looked at his watch. "They're supposed to
show up here in another three hours, at 04.30."
"Aren't you guys a little early for the meet?"
Cottonwood nodded. "The sarge had never met these people face-up
before, so he was a little anxious." The young soldier shivered
involuntarily amid the unscheduled wreckage that surrounded him. "Besides,
the sarge didn't trust us out of his sight. He was afraid Billy would go off
and get drunk or laid and not show up."
"Come on, guy," Bolan said, waving him to his feet.
"Where to, sir?"
"In less than three hours, killers in the butcher class, some of the
most bestial in modem history, true man-eaters are going to be coming
through that door. And I am going to be ready for them." Bolan's lips
twisted into something less than a smile. PFC Cottonwood was simply very
glad that he would no longer be numbered among those about to be on the
wrong side of this man. No way could he stand it. The sprung tension that
emanated from the blacksuit was like all of America's destiny coiled within
one single individual.
The misguided but well-meaning private was enacting a surrender he had
had in his mind as soon as the night-garbed apparition had come hurtling
through the window. He knew instantly he was in the wrong league. The
explosion of the window still sounded in his mind behind the sharper reports
of the killing that followed it.
This big stranger clearly embodied more than the vast majority of men
could hope to enact in a lifetime - he seemed to represent in his presence,
his manners, his dark and profound look, the manifest destiny that no longer
could be spared on the frontiers of the American West but which was a gift
to the Old World now, to tame and to teach the primitives of a new
generation who should know already that the lessons of American history are
written in blood.
PFC Cottonwood was only too happy to give in to that history and be
accountable, at least, for his own blood. He would watch this stranger with
manifest awe.
And he would serve him if he could.

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