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

on the job? This way. Down the column."
Willie scampers ahead, sniffing at the painted treads. The tanks loom on
either side, their bulks somehow more realistic in the darkness. I almost
could convince myself -- no, no I couldn't, it's gone. Not now. The gravel
beneath our boots is a good sound, a soldier's sound. Set a smart pace on
gravel, and you sound like you're really going somewhere. Thomson sets a
smart pace.
"So," I say, "what do you think of the boys at headquarters?"
Crunch, crunch.
"Let me put it this way, General. On a film set, I wouldn't entrust them
with a clapper board. The injuries could be frightful."
"I don't allow officers to mince words with me, Colonel. You must speak
freely and frankly."
"General, they are ignoramuses."
"I believe the phrase you're groping for, Colonel, is goddamn worthless
ignoramuses, but you're definitely on the right track. Listen, Colonel --
I'm not sure what you've been told or not told, but if I'm going to be
even the figurehead in charge of this fake invasion, then that makes you
one of my people, and I don't like for my people to be in the dark about
their duties. Do you have any questions for me that the lords of St. James
have not satisfied?"
"I do, General." She stops and switches off the flashlight. All around us,
in the absolute darkness, the base strains toward battle. In the pregnant
silence I hear a crewman, his final inspection complete, shinnying out of
a hatch and dropping to the ground -- or is it just a garter snake?
"We are told that so far, the Germans seem to be taking the bait. They
genuinely believe that East Anglia is a staging area for a great
cross-Channel invasion, aimed at Calais and led by you. Is that true,
General? Have my people helped convince the Nazis this absurd story is
real?"
Absurd -- let that pass. "You have, Colonel, you have." I hope she can't
tell that my eyes are closed. The breeze carries the smell of cordite,
boot polish, sweat. "You have indeed convinced the krauts. But now you
have a harder job. Now you have to convince me."

The tanks weren't moving, and so I had no choice but to find out why.
"Goddamn it, what's the holdup back here?"
Despairing that I ever would be heard over the artillery and the machine
guns and the engines, I half-strode, half-slid down the pulverized sod of
the hillside and regained my balance on the edge of the trench where the
whole ragged tank column, Renaults and Schneiders alike, had come to a
halt. As I stood there weaving, pistol in one hand and walking stick in
the other, I heard my batman, Private Angelo, reach my side, gasping; a
strong lad, but I could outrun him any day.
Beneath me, several dozen infantrymen huddled in the ditch, arms over
their heads. Their shovels lay every which way, like scattered kindling.
As I stood there, aghast, a shell blew several feet from me, spewing a
gout of mud that spattered down on us all. I didn't flinch. I had expected
it.
It was 10 a.m. on September 26, 1918, at the start of the Meuse-Argonne