"Evans,.Linda.-.Sleipnir" - читать интересную книгу автора (Evans Linda)

that when it really counts. If you could talk like that to the brass, you
wouldn't get yourself in half the jams you end up in. And you might
just get yourself out of the other half."

I grunted and didn't deign to respond.

He chuckled. "Cat's got your tongue, eh? Well, you did a good job,
anyway. Sometimes Frau Brunner reminds me a little of my
grandma. She used to make me bargain for cookies when I was a
kid. Nobody ever got anything over on her. You'd love her."

"I'd like to meet her," I said, thinking about the lonely old woman
who'd cried over the letter Gary'd shown me. "Think you could talk
her into visiting you over here?"

Gary shrugged. "Don't know. She's kind of funny about traveling.
Says the men in the family have done enough traveling for several
lifetimes. She's got a point, I guess, considering the odd corners
of the world we've been sent to fight in. Grandpa, Dad, and now
me. She never figured on a bunch of ragheads shooting at me
over here. Poor Grandma." Gary shook his head; then got an evil
glint in his eye. "One of these fine nights, you know, those bastards
are going to overrun the site, and leave brass holding a bunch of
bodies in the bag. Ought to be some fight, huh?"

I regarded Vernon with a jaundiced eye. GaryЧand his dad, and
his granddadЧhad been raised with this pagan thing about fighting
for glory because that's what life was for. Both his father and
grandfather had been decorated in their respective generations'
wars before they died together, pointlessly, in a car wreck. I guess
Gary was just intent on continuing the family tradition.

I admired Gary's heroic attitude; but it was going to get him killed,
and then where would he be? Pact with Odin notwithstanding,
sometimes Vernon had carried this Viking stuff a little too far. You
did a whole lot more damage to the enemy if you shot twenty or so
with a sniper than if you took out half a dozen in a suicide
dashЧand you generally didn't lose the sniper, either. Patton had
had the right of it as far as I was concernedЧmake the other poor,
dumb son-of-a-bitch die for his country.

"You know, Gary," I said as we headed for the railway station, "I
figured out why there aren't any more Berserkers. They killed
themselves off before they could reproduce. What was it Niven
and Pournelle said? `Evolution in action'?"

He gave me an enigmatic look from under his eyebrows. "Never
thought of it quite that way," he said quietly. "Maybe that's why
Grandma asked me to quit Special Forces." His voice trailed off
quietly and I winced; I hadn't meant to rake up bad memories. He'd