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

people. A few of them followed him back. There was a similar shifting around on the left.

"Bet they're settin' up ambushes," the man behind him said. "Figure the gooks'll run from the artillery,
come down the trail here."

Batman and Moses hurried up the trail, slightly crouched. "We gotta find a place to blow an LZ," Batman
said. "You Murphy?"
The rifleman nodded. "You're all X-Ray?" That was the code name for the engineers.

"Right. You get to be our support."

"Jesus fucking Christ. Just me?"

"For now." Batman studied the terrain ahead. "Looks lighter over there." He pointed to a place a couple
of hundred yards to the right and started off the trail.

Murphy cocked his M16. "Better lock an' load." Batman and Moses did. They picked their way down a
slight defile, comealong vines pulling at their pants legs, and then back up again. The land leveled off and
there was a partial clearing.

In the middle of it was a rubber tree with a trunk about a foot and a half thick. Batman patted it. "Five
pounds for this one. Maybe half a stick for that one and that one. That one, too. A third stick each." He
pointed at other trees nearby, smaller.

"You're not gonna blow any LZ now," Murphy said.

"Huh uh. Not unless they make contact."

"They set up an ambush?"

"God, who knows. They just told me to find a place." Three more artillery rounds ripped overhead. "I
don't think it's nothin'. You hear any return fire?"

"Nah. Prob'ly just some fuckin' dinks walkin' through the woods."

"Well, let's hope so. Lay it out anyhow. Take Spider through the drill," he said to Moses. They were both
the same rank, Spec-4, but Batman had been incountry twice as long, and automatically took charge.

"Wait, man," Spider said in a voice that was almost squeaky with strain. "I got to take a shit in the worst
way."

"Do it in your pants; that's the worst way." Batman handed him his shovel. "Go behind a bush and dig
thyself a hole."

Spider shrugged out of his rucksack, rushed to the nearest bush and scooped up one shovelful of dirt. He
dropped his pants and backed squatting over the hole and evacuated, liquid and embarrassingly loud,
and managed to pee all over his trousers in the process. C-ration meals each had one small roll of toilet
paper in a brown wrapper; he used all of one arid half of another. He pulled up his damp pants and slid
the divot back over the hole.