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

The rifle was a Belgian FN light automatic rifle using the 7.62-mm cartridge. It
could be set for semi-automatic or automatic fire, and its magazine when full
contained twenty rounds. I set it for automatic fire, since I was likely to be
needing a hose-like action in thick foliage. It was regrettable that I did not have
the knife, but, for the moment, I would have to do without it. I did not want to
climb up to the body and so expose myself to fire from below. At any moment
one of them might see the corpse and know that I was on the loose with the
firearm.

The voices of the men to the east came closer. The ones behind me and on my
sides were not closing in so swiftly. One, or more, had grenades, and I especially
had to watch out for them.

My heart was pumping hard, and I was quivering with the ecstasy of the hunt.
Whether I am the hunter or the hunted, I feel the same. There is a delicious
sense of peril; the most precious thing is at stake. You, a living being, may be
dead very shortly. And since my life could last forever, or over thirty thousand
years anyway, I have much more than most people to lose. But I didn't think of
that. I am as willing to risk it now as I will be thirty millennia from now, if I live that
long.

When the nearest man was within ten feet, he had a man on his right about
twenty feet away and a man on his left about thirty. He had turned his head to
say something to the man behind him. The butt of my rifle drove through the
branches of a bush into his throat.

He fell backward and then I was on him and had squeezed his neck with my
hands. I took his knife and a full magazine, which I carried clamped under my left
arm. But another man about twenty feet behind him had noticed that his
predecessor had disappeared.

He spoke in English with an Italian accent. 'Hey, Brodie, where are you? You all
right?'
I answered back in an imitation of Brodie's voice. 'I fell down in this damned
bush!'

The man advanced cautiously, then stopped and said, 'Stand up so I can see
you!'

I put on Brodie's green digger's hat - it was several sizes too small - and rose far
enough so he could see the hat and the upper part of my face. He said some-
thing and came toward me, and I threw Brodie's knife into his solar plexus.

At the same, there was a yell from behind me. The dead sniper had been
discovered.

The leader, bawling out in a Scots English, told everyone to stand still. They were
not to start firing in a panic, or they would be killing each other. And they were to
call out, in order, identifying themselves.