"Richard Harding - Outrider 02 - Fire And Ice" - читать интересную книгу автора (Harding Richard)

brought Starling and Bonner out onto the road so late in the season. It had to
be a hell of a prize and Savage wanted it, whatever it was. Savage held up
his hand and the two riders just behind him moved up alongside him. One was
Franklin. "Frankie," bellowed Savage, "slow the boys down a little. I don't
want Bonner to hear so many bikes on his ass." Franklin nodded. "Check," he
said, and drifted back to slow the column down. Savage turned to the man on
his left. "Scotty, I want you to take four or five men out and scout out ahead
of us. Take off man, catch up with Bonner. Keep him in sight, keep him close,
but don't try to take him. When you got him, send one of the boys back. Got
it?" The man nodded. "Then hit it." Five bikes and a man mounted on a
cycle/sidecar combination took off ahead of the column. In a matter of
seconds, they were just dots on the horizon. Savage settled back in the padded
saddle of his bike. He congratulated himself. He was a smart man. The main
force rode on another hour, throwing up a huge column of dust from the brown
lake bed. Then they started seeing trouble signs. Suddenly, up ahead on the
horizon, Savage saw a lump, something spread out on the ground. Smoke seemed
to rise from it. The raider force closed on it and when they were a couple of
hundred yards from their target they could see that it was one of their
scouts. His body-what was left of it-lay next to his burning bike. Flame had
danced from the exploded fuel tank over the chassis of the bike, scorching the
paint and catching the tires, which belched black, acrid smoke into the clear
blue sky. The scout's shattered body was sprawled on the lake bed. The upper
half of his torso seemed to have disappeared. Bits and pieces of the man were
scattered in a wide bloody circle around him. The man's waist and legs were
still a single unit, and entrails spilled out from the top of his pants like
the stuffing from an old sofa. "Stupid motherfuckers," said Savage. "I told
them not to try and take the man down." Franklin looked out toward the
horizon, following the tire tracks with his eyes. "They went after
him." "Then they are dead men." "Hey Savage," called out one of the raiders,
"who fucked Mickey so bad." "Starling," said Savage, "and those lousy arrows
of his." He gave the signal and the column moved out. At various points along
the road they found more bloody milestones. A couple of the raiders had been
blown to pieces like their brother on the road behind them. A couple had been
shot-big divots of flesh had been chewed out of their bodies by the sharp bite
of Bonner's.50-caliber. "How many is that?" "Five," said Franklin. "You
don't think Whiskey would be stupid enough to try and take them hisself?" "No
one is that dumb." The column moved on, expecting at any moment to find the
bloody remains of Whiskey on the road. Then they saw on the road ahead of them
a bike, still standing, bumping down the track toward them. It was coming on
very slowly. "That's Whiskey," said Franklin. "He's been hit," said Savage.
The raider was slumped over the handlebars of his bike, moving toward them
very slowly. The column met the broken biker and saw that blood seemed to drip
from him like dew. His face was flat against the big headlight and the only
reason the bike stayed erect was because it was a three-wheeler. If he had
been riding a two-wheeled machine, he never would have made it. A raider
jumped from his own steed and grabbed the handbrake on the crossbar and
stopped the bike just in front of Savage. "Another one dead," said
Savage. The raider that had stopped the bike reached down to kill the engine.
Just as he bent over, Savage noticed that the handlebars had been tied
together and jammed so that the bike would point back along the road. Whiskey