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

generally acknowledged to be the luckiest man alive. And since his
luck seemed to rub off on whoever pulled patrols with him,
everybody wanted to be teamed with him.

Gary always laughed it off, attributed it to a pact he'd made with
Odin. Whatever the cause, it seemed to work. And the closer I got
to discharge, the happier I was that Sergeant Brown and Lieutenant
Donaldson teamed us up a lot. We worked well together, and
nothing got past us.

Being teamed with Gary got a whole lot more attractive once the
brass sent down their no-ammo-on-patrol policy. The official
explanation sounded like an updated version of Mom's "You'll
shoot your eye out" excuse for never buying BB guns for
ChristmasЧand made just about as much sense. We were sitting
on several megatons of nuclear warheads, and incidents with
terrorist groups running "training missions" in our area had been up
at least three hundred percent over the previous three months. Yet
brass decides out of the blue we ought to go sneaking around in
the dark with empty rifles? Go figure.

It wasn't our fault some goddamn fool of a civilian had gotten
himself shot on one of the other sites. The way we had it figured,
he'd probably been point scout, anyway, and got caught. But brass
up at HQ had had a royal cow, so we got stuck with the cow patties.
The tower guards got live ammo; just not us poor, dumb fools
assigned to patrol the perimeter.

Being GIs, we found ways around it, with nobody the wiser, and
none of us ending up casualties. We had the situation well in
handЧuntil that inevitable, bitter night under a full moon when I
turned to Gary and whispered, "You got any spares?"

He shot me an incredulous look. "You don't?"

"NoЧWilson borrowed 'em last night. He's running scared. You
know, his second kid's due in a couple of weeks, and I felt sorry for
him. Besides, I knew you always carry."

Gary snorted, visibly disgusted. His breath steamed.

"Great. I dumped mine back into my gear while you were in the
can. Brunowski almost caught me when he poked his head in the
door. I knew you always carry."

I wasn't sure which of us was more dismayed. Neither of us had
any illegal personal ammo; which meant we now carried what
amounted to clumsy plastic-handled clubs.

"Well," Gary muttered philosophically, "I guess it's you and me and