"Andy Duncan - Fortitude" - читать интересную книгу автора (Duncan Andy)

along the gravel turnaround, and Willie scrambles, whining, into my lap, I
glance up and I see nothing in the mirror but blackness. Turn your back on
it, and all of Fortitude disappears, buildings and tanks and personnel and
Thomson too. If only I could forget as easily.
It's a long drive back to Peover (who but the Brits would give a town a
name like that?), and I don't sleep as well on the road as I used to.
That's an understatement. I don't sleep well anywhere anymore. The closer
I get to that left-turning truck in Germany ... but no matter. As Willie
snores in my lap, sides heaving beneath my crossed forearms, I open my old
notebook from Mexico and look at all the items I've crossed off, just to
reassure myself that this second life was worth living, that I might avoid
that truck yet. My eye lights on the name
DICK JENSON
and I grin. That's one achievement, surely. On April 1, 1943, a Junker
squadron dropped several bellyfuls of five hundred-pounders on the First
Armored command post in the Wadi Akarit, north of Ei Hamma. I had been
expecting the attack, of course, and I had taken steps to prevent the only
casualty. Before, everyone made it to the foxholes OK, but one of the
holes suffered a hit -- the one that contained only one man, my young
aide, Dick Jenson, whom I had sent out there, God help me, for some
front-line experience. Not again. I made sure Dick was with me all that
day, behind the lines, and so I never had to write Dick's mother that
letter, and instead of someone else getting killed in Dick's place (which
I had half-expected but accepted as a necessary risk), the Junkers didn't
do any harm other than rearranging Colonel Benson's furniture, which I'm
sure needed it anyway, and giving that nattering old woman Omar Bradley a
lingering earache, which is a kind of justice, if you ask me.
Got a card from Dick just the other day. He's quite the hero back home,
his wife's sulking because all the girls want to dance with him, leg brace
or no. Four days after the Junker attack, Dick stepped on a mine outside
Sidi-Bou-Zid -- well, actually, the poor bastard to his left stepped on
it. We thought that stretch of road had been swept clear, but, what the
hell, can't predict everything.
Feeling a bit better, I close my notebook, settle back, and peer out the
window, where a white stone wall has been twisting alongside for what
seems like an awful long time.

Mount Etna was hazy in the distance Aug. 10, 1943, when we skidded to a
stop along a muddy ditch outside the 93rd Evacuation Hospital. Why hadn't
I just let Sergeant Mims drive past? Had I even intended to call halt, or
had it just -- happened? I still didn't have to go in. But the very
thought of ordering Mims forward made me feel faint, abruptly feverish. I
suppressed a gasp, dug the fingernails of my left hand into the palm of my
right until the landscape stopped shimmering.
Changing my future had become so difficult, so painful, I had almost given
it up. But today I had to do something. I had to.
It was a breezy day, and the three-star pennants fluttered nicely even
when the jeep was standing still. Someone must have seen them and alerted
the receiving officer, a major, who came running, white coat flapping,
while I still was in the jeep dithering and taking in the view and feeling