"Philip Jose Farmer - The Empire of the Nine omnibus" - читать интересную книгу автора (Farmer Phillip Jose)

about five hundred to eighteen hundred feet high and which was covered with the
closed-canopy rain forest. This was the tongue of the highlands which extended
from the interior and was a freakish formation for this part of the land. Along the
coast here, the land was generally flat for about eight to ten miles from the sea to
the highlands.
I ran on ahead, glanced back once, and saw two dark objects streaking toward
me. I threw myself on the ground, forgetting that I had to be careful not to
dislodge the grenades attached to my belt by their pins. The explosions half-
deafened me, and dirt showered me. But the rockets had overshot me by forty
yards and blown up in a shallow depression. I was up and into the bush ahead
and then into the smoke created by the explosions before the wind had a chance
to clear it. The next two explosions came behind me. Apparently the rocket man
in the chopper had compensated immediately for the overshooting, and if I had
stayed in the same place, I would probably have been blown to bits.

As it was, the impact knocked me forward; I felt as if a log had been slapped
across my back by a giant. But the impact was softened by the trees and bushes
between me and the rockets, and I was up and going again. The smoke from the
second volley was carried eastward by the wind and so veiled me from the chop-
per for a minute.

The huge helicopter came charging through the smoke, its pilot apparently
assuming that I was either dead or incapacitated by the explosions. Perhaps, he
did not release the napalm bombs because he had orders to take me alive if he
could do so. Or perhaps he just wanted to make sure he could plant his bombs
exactly on the spot where my body or its remnants were and so ensure
obliteration of me.

Whatever his reasons, he brought the chopper down to fifty feet above the
ground and at a speed of about fifty miles an hour. I was completely at his mercy
or seemed to be, because he was suddenly about ten feet to the north of me.
The gunners on the right side saw me a few seconds after I saw them, and the
snouts of their .50 calibre machine guns began flaming.

They were not, as usual, accurate but they did not need to be, because they
were bringing their fire around like water from a hose, and the intersection would
be my body.

I did not try to run away, because they had spotted me, and I could not get away
when they were that close. I stood up, while the gouts of dirt and pieces of bush
torn by the bullets swung toward me. I yanked a grenade from the belt, leaving
the pin attached to the belt, and I threw the grenade.

They would have expected me to fire back with my rifle, but this they had never
expected. The grenade flew exactly as I had aimed it, went through the open port
before the gunner on my right just as the bullets were on the point of intersecting,
the scissors of lead about to close on my body.

But the gunner, or someone in the chopper, had been alert and cool enough to
catch the grenade and start to throw it out the port. He was not, however, quite