"Eliot Fintushel - Uxo, Bomb Dog" - читать интересную книгу автора (Fintushel Eliot)

STEP ON A CRACK,

BREAK YOUR MOTHERтАЩS BACK.




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According to the glossary in the NATO protocols, a mine may be detonated тАЬby the passage of time, the
action of its target, or by controlled means.тАЭ

(1) The passage of time. IтАЩve seen mines hidden in elephant grass and low shrubs, where the tic of a
twig in an unlucky breeze will blow a crater big enough to bury a man. IтАЩve seen them in dunes, IтАЩve seen
them in eyries, IтАЩve seen them in the crotches of trees.

Waiting.

We might have had an end to them back by the turn of the century or so. All the suits, the honchos, the
fat players met in Ottawa, Canada, in 1997 to ban the тАЬuse, production, stockpiling, and transferтАЭ of anti
personnel mines, the kind thatтАЩll blow your legs off years after the soldiers have gone home, the gift that
keeps on taking. This was back when there were only two hundred million landmines worldwide, plus,
per annum, another two thousand planted for every one we cleared. Give or take. Still, it was nothing like
today: the thing seemed doable. A hundred and twenty nations agreed, but the brute of them all wouldnтАЩt
sign: the United States of America.

And here we are.

(2) The action of its target. The shambling shards of men and women, ligatures and cauterized joints,
pegs and hooks and makeshift hardware - soup can elbows, hose clamps cuffs - when blood loss or
gangrene donтАЩt scotch the fixes . . . look out any window. ThereтАЩs your targets, cities full of them. Time
was, a human person might have to journey to a strange far land to see such testimonials. Now, with your
Neo Luddites and your Xian Militia and your Rights and your Lefts all тАЬin the basement mixing up the
medicine,тАЭ any old window will do. Near the start of the twentieth century, ninety percent of war dead
were soldiers. At the end it was ten percent. Now, into the twenty first, Nader bless and save us, they
say itтАЩs five.

The other ninety-five being you and me. Civilians. Look out any window.

But mind the glass.

(3) Or by controlled means. Find it, mark it, quarantine it, blow it up. ThatтАЩs what my old job was, mine
and Uxo, my bomb dogтАЩs.