"Lumley, Brian - E-Branch 3 - Avengers" - читать интересную книгу автора (Lumley Brian)

Ben,' said Jake, 'you know this is a rescue chopper, don't you? I mean, the crew heard what you said just then, and if you were the captain f suspect you'd have a mutiny on your hands!'

'Yes, I know it's a rescue chopper!' Trask answered. 'And I also know what we could be dealing with here, as do you. So for now, just you get that gear down to him and then we'll see what we'll see. And meanwhile, Commander Argyle and I will be taking a shot at looking in through the panoramic windows at the sharp end . . . that's the bridge, to you.'

'Roger and out,' said Jake, sourly.

'That boss of yours,' one of the rescue crew asked Jake, after the pilot had reverted to an on-board frequency. 'What is he? Some kind of monster?'


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'Anyone who doesn't know Trask or his work,' Jake answered, 'might easily make that mistake. But no, he isn't a monster. He does know an awful lot about monsters, though. Don't ask me to explain more than that because I can't.'

'And don't ask us to lower the gear,' said the other. 'It's our job, sure, and God knows we'd like to get that guy off. But if he's a carrier . . .' His shrug was by no means callous; on the contrary, if anything it was helpless. 'Commander Argyle is the only one who can give that kind of order.'

Jake looked at him. The sailor was a young petty officer, a fresh-faced twenty-two-year-old with fair hair and freckles. He was also an expert at his job, and he knew the rules. Only this time he was torn two ways, between knowing what he'd like to do and knowing (or believing he knew) the dangers inherent in that course of action. It was the difference between his training - his duty and natural instinct to save life - and the knowledge that the life he wanted to save might be a plague-bearer, someone who carried the seeds of death. And that was a feeling that Jake understood only too well.

'No sweat,' he said. 'So we'll simply sit tight here - me, you, and your mates -and wait for the order from your Commander Argyle. I understand your position, but the order will come, I can promise you that. So even if we can't lower the gear now, still we should have it ready.'

'It's already ready!' said the other, scathingly. 'On a job like this and once we're airborne, it's always ready.'

'Whoa!' said Jake, ruefully. 'What would I know? I'm just a civilian, right?'

The rescue team was made up of three petty officers, and as far as they were concerned, Jake Cutter and Lardis Lidesci were precisely that: 'just civilians', alleged 'experts' who'd doubtless get in the way at their earliest opportunity. As for their boss - this Trask bloke and Co. on the anti-sub hunter-killer - well, Gunnery Commander Argyle would sort them out, for sure!

The three glanced at each other where they sat hooked up in their safety rigs, then looked again at Cutter and his Gypsyish companion. And even though Jake wasn't a telepath - not in the fullest sense of the word still it wasn't hard to guess what they were thinking:

If this was what experts in tropical diseases were supposed to look like . . . well, it had them beat all to hell!

Jake was wearing a shirt, a flying jacket, jeans and cowboy boots; in fact, he looked something of a 'cowboy' to the crew of the air-sea rescue chopper. Long-legged, he had narrow hips and a small backside, but the rest of him wasn't small. He was well over six foot tall - maybe six-four, if you included the heels of those boots - and had long arms to match


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his legs. His eyes were chestnut brown; likewise his hair, which he wore swept back and braided into a pigtail. His hair wasn't all brown, however, but had contrasting, even startling shocks of white at the temples: this was a recent thing, a change that had taken place in him almost overnight. His face was lean and hollow-cheeked, and he looked like a week of HMS Invincible's meals wouldn't do him any harm . . . but on the other hand the extra weight would certainly slow him down; and Jake Cutter looked fast. His lips were thin (some might even say cruel) and when he smiled it was hard to make out if there was any real humour in it. His jaw was angular and thinly scarred on the left side, and his nose had been broken high on the bridge so that it hung like a sheer cliff - like the straight strong nose of a Native American - instead of projecting. But despite his lean and hungry look, Jake's shoulders were broad, his chest deep, and there was more than enough of strength in him, both physical and psychological. Indeed, his mental powers bordered on the metaphysical, occasionally crossing those borders into realms that other men had never dreamed of visiting and certainly wouldn't care to.

As for Jake's companion:

The Old Lidesci was short, barrel-bodied, and almost simian in the great length of his arms. His lank hair, once jet black, was greying now and in places turning white; it framed a leathery, weather-beaten face with a flattened, suspicious nose that sat uncomfortably over a mouth that was missing too many teeth. As for the ones that he'd kept: they were uneven and as stained as old ivory. But under shaggy and expressive eyebrows Lardis's dark brown watchful eyes glittered his mind's agilty and defied the ever-encroaching infirmities of his body.

And if Jake had seemed a little cowboyish in boots, jeans, and his deliberately contrived casual manner, then what was the rescue helicopter's crew supposed to make of Lardis? The Lidesci's mode of dress was outlandish, like a cross between that of a frontiersman out of the Old West and a European Gypsy of that same era! It was all greens, browns, and greys; all tassles and tiny silver bells that jingled when he moved, so that the overall impression was that of a total outdoorsman, a fighting man, and a wanderer in endless woodlands. As if to verify all that: in a cutaway sheath under his left arm, Lardis carried a wicked-looking, razor-sharp machete, its time-blackened ironwood grip etched with several rows of notches . . .

While the crew had been spending a little time wondering about Jake and Lardis, Commander Argyle and the larger E-branch contingent aboard the hunter-killer had descended to within thirty feet of the stem of the stranded vessel and were looking through binoculars into the spacious bridge. For perhaps thirty seconds Jake watched the jet-copter


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