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

expected this, but the faces did disappear, and I threw the automatic down,
withdrew the knife and stuck it in its sheath, and ran up the steep and
treacherous path - fit only for goat or baboons - removing my rifle as I did. A
glance at the copter showed that, so far, the men in it had not noticed me. They
were intent on something below them.

That would not last long. The men on top of the cliff had to have a transceiver of
some sort, and they would notify the copter immediately.

By then, the top of the cliff was about one hundred and sixty feet away. I
stopped, yanked out another grenade, and cast it. The grenade had to travel
about fifty-five feet beyond the range most men can throw a standard hand
grenade. It sailed just over the lip of the cliff as the three stuck their heads over to
fire at me. The explosion threw rocks and dirt over me, but I saw one body sailing
out of the smoke to crash against a projection, roll over and fall the rest of the
way. I had to presume that the other two were out of the combat; if I was wrong, I
would be dead. The copter had started to whirl around just before I threw the
grenade. The pilot must have received the message from the man on the top of
the cliff. I was ready for this, I'd yanked out another grenade, and I threw it.

It was probably the best throw of my life, as far as both distance and accuracy
went. The grenade weighed about one and three-quarter pounds and the copter
was about two hundred feet away when I threw the grenade. It had started to
move before then and was coming swiftly. It was approaching nose first, so that
its machine gunners could not aim at me. Its rockets had been launched during
the first attack, otherwise it could have fired at point-blank range and
disintegrated me and a good part of the face of the cliff.

But the pilot must have been jarred by the unexpected blast of the grenade, and
he did not react to my pointing my rifle at him because I did not point it.
Otherwise, I suppose he would have swung around so that the gunners on one
side or the other could let loose.
By the time he decided to do that, the grenade was well launched, and just as he
pivoted his craft around and stopped it, the grenade struck the vanes. The vanes
and the body of the machine disappeared in a cloud of smoke, pieces of
machinery came flying out, the machine dropped almost straight down and
crashed. A second later, it was burning furiously, and it may have fallen on a
number of men and the exploding fuel may have splashed on some. The men on
the ground were shaken up; the fire directed at me as I raced on up the path was
ragged and misdirected.

And then I was on top of the cliff, ready to fire at any survivors of the grenade I'd
tossed up there. But there were none.

One of the corpses had six grenades attached to hooks on a belt. I tossed these,
one at a time, into the bush below the cliff and had the satisfaction of knowing
that I got at least two men and a dog. Then I picked up a rifle and left running
because I did not want to be there if more copters were called in or if jets were
used. As it was, I had just entered a thick bush on top of the next higher plateau
when two jets screamed overhead about five hundred feet.