"Keith Laumer - The Monitors" - читать интересную книгу автора (Laumer Keith)

parking lot occupied by three nondescript sedans and a pearl- gray custom bodied Mercedes 300
-
SL. Maxwell slid behind the wheel of the latter, and Blondel climbed in the other side in a heady
perfume of glove leather and waxed inlay work. The door closed with a click like a watchcase.
"Where are we going?" Blondel inquired.
"My place," Maxwell said shortly and dug off with a soft rhoom! like a secret weapon leaving
the launching pad. A block up the street they passed a gold-striped Monitors' car parked in a gas
station. Nobody appeared to notice them, except an expensively corseted middle-aged matron
who gave Maxwell a wave and a smile that suggested that Doc had that first million made, if he
stuck around town long enough to collect it.
It was a breezy ten-mile drive north along the kind of winding, tree- hung road that suggested
picnic baskets in the rumble seats of Model A Fords. They made it in nine minutes by the dash
clock, topped a rise, and saw a spread of neatly- tended acreage with a brick glass house that
could have been lifted from any professional- class suburban street in the country. Blondel could
see a long graveled drive leading up a slope of lawn past a stretch of wall behind which a stray
shaft of late sun struck a patch of yellow.
 He grabbed the wheel, hauled it back as Maxwell swung out to turn in.
"Gun it!"
Maxwell's reactions were quick; he straightened the Mercedes out with no more than a little
slithering of loose shoulder- gravel and booted her hard.
"It was a stake-out," Blondel yelled over the roar of the wind. "Unless you've got a houseboy
who wears yellow."
Maxwell's eyes went to the rear- view mirror; they tightened at the corners. He said something
under his breath. Blondel looked back. The garage door was up and a police car was just poking
its snout out; a yellow-clad figure was running toward it fro m the house.
"I wonder how ... " Maxwell cut his eyes at Blondel.
"They traced me to your office," he said, "and called for the ambush as soon as they found you
gone. Keep your eyes on the road. I'm not going to jump - - in either direction." The little car
howled around a curve, straightened out in time to enter another. Maxwell was staring straight
ahead, his lips parted, eyes bright. "Fasten your belt," he said. "This may be a little hectic."
"You think you can outrun them?"
"I may not be faster -- but I know the roads."
"They've got helis."
Maxwell glanced at the sun, just above treetop level now. "I have a few tricks, too." His tone
suggested that he was pretty well satisfied with the way things were going.
"For a quiet little hometown dentist you're full of surprises, Doc."
"Not all of us were as somnolent as the enemy imagined," Maxwell said. "We knew this day was
coming. We're not entirely unprepared."
"Who's 'we'?"
Maxwell ignored the question, drifted the SL around another ungraded turn, kicked out of it.
went away wide open, did what the British call a racing change through a wobbly S curve that had
been designed to save a tree that had quite probably been a sapling when Pocahontas was selling
trade goods to John Smith. Blondel got a flash of the Interceptor just coming into the
straightaway half a mile behind.
"They're gaining," he said.
"Open the top boot." Maxwell nodded at the black mohair cover buttoned down behind them
with big chrome snaps. Blondel lifted a corner; Maxwell poked something on the dash and a panel
slid back, exposing the gleaming walnut butt of a rifle nestled down under the parcel tray. Blondel
looked at him and shook his head. Maxwell turned the corners of his mouth down.
"This isn't a game of cops and robbers," he barked. "It's war!"