"Thomas Marcinko - The Nixon Wrangler's Tale" - читать интересную книгу автора (Marcinko Thomas)

Thomas Marcinko - The Nixon Wrangler's Tale

I impeached my hundredth nixon in a tiny room above the Twisted Lemon, a
bar in a town on Central America's serrated Pacific edge. Costa Rica still
touts itself as the safest nation south of Canada. That depends on who you
are. Or what you are.
An old lady noticed the circle-and-slash of my badge and pointed the way.
"бAllэ esta щl! бEsta arriba, esta el nixon! бEl replicado!"
"бGracias!"
"бCon mucho gusto!" The people in Costa Rica are really nice.
The night was full of ghost-lights. They floated like dandelions and
burned like fireflies: the licensed ones soft white or yellow; the illegal
ones in lurid Day-Glo colors. A recent editorial denounced their seasonal
manifestation as "bioeconomic echoes of American imperialism . . . the bad
old days of the United Fruit Company grafted irresponsibly onto modern
Central America." Yak, yak, yak. They urged me on, in a perverse sort of
way. They were a constant reminder of my father's glorious crimes. No
wonder I went into law enforcement.
I hefted my taser and ran upstairs. The milhous cowered in the dark.
Bright eyes shuttled in deep-bagged sockets. Permanent sweat glazed that
five o'clock shadow the genewriters could not undo. Jowls puffed and
bubbled like Dizzy Gillespie's, or maybe the mumps. And the nose, the
nose, that grotesque, trademark nose . . . a bowling pin, a sock darner, a
ski-slope that Pinocchio, that lying little puppet, could have modeled
for; an obscene bulge, erection-stiff. The room smelled of old rice,
beans, and beer.
"Y'know," that oily baritone, "y'know, I knew they'd find me sooner or
later. They've always been out to get me. But did that stop me? No. I
could have given up. But that would be taking the easy way out, and that
goes against every fiber of my being. I'm a fighter. A scrapper. Because,
y'know, as long as you're in there plugging, they can't beat you. Only you
can defeat yourself, it doesn't matter, it can be the last down of the
final quarter, right on the fifty-yard line, but Ч"
I shot it. I swear I never touched them in any other way; not of my own
free will, anyway. And that's God's truth, no matter what they say. I'd
been viscerally afraid of them since, at the impressionable age of nine, I
saw one claw its way out of John Hurt's chest in a digital retrofit of
Ridley Scott's original Alien. Megavolts triggered the twin V-for-victory
gesture, arms outstretched for jumping jacks.
I stood back. Sometimes they were rigged to explode. Instead of a blast,
this time I only got their usual death-blather. Often they spouted
reflexive phrases like "Not a crook" or "We're gonna keep it." A few made
"Pat" their last word. Once I heard a "Bebe."
This time it was different. This one spoke to me.
"You need us," it hissed. "You need us." It died. One fewer to kick
around. Ghost lights drifted to land on its face. A light settled on the
tip of the nose.
I paused to admire what the fleshkon had done with the room. The flower
arrangement near the window was very nice Ч palm fronds,
birds-of-paradise. Sort of a tropical motif.