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

"So how long we gonna be out?" Killer asked.

"Two days, anyhow," Wilkes said. " 'Course, last time they said that it was, what, two weeks."

"More like three," Spaz said. "Fuckin' uniform was rotting off my back."
"Jus' that powerful BO," Doc drawled.

Two whistle blasts echoed from the other side of the camp. "No rest for the weary," Wilkes said.
"Saddle up."

Search and Destroy

The infantry company to which Spider's engineering squad was attached was about to embark upon a
"search-and-destroy" mission, a term both inaccurate and unfortunate. It was unfortunate because it
sounded brutal, vaguely un-American, and did not help the image of the war at home.

It was inaccurate because the company did not so much search for the enemy as expose itself to them. It
was sort of like trolling. When they made contact with the enemy they would take cover and shoot back,
and call in artillery and air support, a deadly rain of high explosives and white phosphorus and napalm,
which could come in minutes or hours or not at all. Usually itwas minutes, and the enemy knew this, so
most contacts were brief and furious.

The company would walk through the jungle in three lines, roughly parallel, making as little noise as
possible, which was usually quite a lot. If they were lucky, they wouldn't make contact with the enemy,
and in late afternoon would settle down and dig in for the night.

The two outside lines were infantry platoons, carrying along with their M16s an assortment of M79
grenade launchers, M60 machine guns, and two "light" 60-millimeter mortars, which actually weighed
almost fifty pounds each, with baseplates. Two people carried LAWs, M72 Light Antitank Weapons.
(There weren't any tanks here in the mountains, but they were handy against bunkers, or just to point and
shoot at wherever the bullets were coming from.) The infantrymen also had a wide assortment of
nonstandard weapons, such as captured Chinese AK-47s, civilian pistols like Killer's, and old-fashioned
Thompson submachine guns and grease guns, both of which fired the fat slow.45 AGP slug, much better
suited for jungle warfare than the MIG's light 5.56-millimeter round (see "The Black Death [2]").

Spider's engineers were in the middle line, the "command group." Protected by the two flanking platoons,
this group also contained the captain who was in charge of the operation, the top sergeant who actually
knew what was going on, the FAO (forward artillery observer), the RTO radioman, a squad of riflemen,
and the head medic. Sometimes, not this time, there were temporary people like observing officers and
official photographers.

The command group carried weapons but would not normally fire them, since they would be shooting
through their own lines. If the company made contact with the enemy, the captain and sergeant would
figure out what to do and pass orders to the platoon sergeants, who might obey them. With the help of
the FAO and radioman, they would attempt to call in artillery or air strikes onto the enemy's position. The
engineers, protected by the squad of riflemen, would go back down the trail and try to find a place to
make an LZ, blasting away a circle of trees with C-4 and TNT, so that helicopters could land to
evacuate the wounded and resupply the company. It was not as dangerous a job as the infantrymen's, but
it sometimes had its moments.