"Joe Haldeman - 1968" - читать интересную книгу автора (Haldeman Joe)

Spider helps him wrestle a heavy, lumpy body bag up onto the table. The black man undoes the clamp
and cable that holds the bag closed, and starts to skin the plastic back. A head rolls out and falls on the
floor with a wet smack.
"Ah, shit." He picks up the head by the hair and sets it on the table facing Spider. A man or beast has
flayed the skin off the face; it looks like a grinning anatomy illustration crusted with clotted blood. The eye
sockets are dark holes. A shiny black millipede scurries out of one of them. Spider screams and wakes
up.

Second week

Moving Out

"Everybody humps three meals and at least two gallons of water." Wilkes had popped four boxes of Cs
with the flash suppressor of his M16. "They got some pogeybait and weeds down at the LZ; get your
ammo there too. Everybody humps four hundred rounds and three grenades."

"Heavy shit," Killer said. Wilkes shrugged.

"Goin' out on slicks?" Spaz asked. The LZ was the helicopter pad, landing zone; slicks were the standard
UH-1 utility helicopters, also called Hueys. (They were originally HU-1s, for "Helicopter, Utility." The
army changed its nomenclature but the old name stuck.)

"Not this time. Humpin'. Meet back here when you got your shit together, ten minutes. I'll go get some
plastic and stuff."

The squad headed down toward the LZ, the more experienced ones moving faster than the new guys.
Candy and cigarettes were in limited supply; if you wanted your favorite brand you had to be there first.
They came in boxes called SP packs, which also had a few cigars and packs of pipe tobacco and things
like razor blades and shaving soap.

There were never enough Winstons and Marlboros and always two cartons of Salems that nobody
wanted. Spider liked nonfilters, Luckies or Camels or in a pinch Pall Malls, so he didn't have much
competition.

They also had "fours and fives" at the LZ; four beers and five sodas apiece. There was some on-the-spot
horsetrading; Spider, like most of the guys, would rather have had warm Coke than warm beer. Killer
took his four Buds in exchange for a Coke and an orange soda.

Their rucksacks about fifteen pounds heavier, they returned to the engineer bunker. Wilkes passed out
C-4 plastic explosive, two 1-kilogram blocks per man, and three bricks of TNT apiece. Moses got the
demo bag, a canvas sack with fuses, an extra load of detonation cord, and blasting caps, which you
didn't want to treat too roughly. Everyone else canned a tool-shovel, axe, or pick mattock-for making
bunkers each night, one for each two or three men.

Everyone carried an M16, including Doc, who swore he would never use it. Wilkes also carried a.45
automatic, carefully wrapped in plastic to save him the labor of cleaning it, or firing it, for that matter.
Killer had managed to score a civilian.44 Magnum revolver with a shoulder holster, although he only had
six rounds for it.