"Janet Morris - Crusaders In Hell" - читать интересную книгу автора (Morris Janet E)

up a little something of their own? That's lots of money, lots of power, lots
of anonymity, down there." Nichols' gaze flickered to his feet on the deck,
below which was the caravan camped on the shore in sight of Pompeii. Nichols
didn't like Achilles and the feeling was mutual.
Achilles liked Tanya, though. Anything with a dork would follow Tamara Burke
anywhere, sniffing and wagging its tail and leaving its common sense behind.
Welch ought to know.
"What are you getting at?" They knew each other too well for Welch to take
umbrage at the "Sirs" missing from Nichols' badinage. When you were sweating
it out in a corn truck on the battle plain of Ilion or in Caesar's private
office at a New Hell villa or in a chopper flown by one of the biggest egos in
Hell, you wanted a man like Nichols - to have your best interests-and the
success of your mission - at heart.
"A little recon. If you don't mind. You don't need me here right now. What
these babies ain't sayin', you can handle." Nichols' chin jutted toward the
electronics displays.
Maybe it wasn't necessary, but it was logical. And it was what Nichols did
better than he did anything but exponentially increase body count.
Okay, you're go," said Welch absently in their familiar shorthand, and unwound
from his chair to give the order to Achilles on the flight deck. He could have
patched into Achilles' helmet-circuit from here, but if there was an argument
- and there almost always was with Achilles - he didn't need Nichols hearing
it.
Standing, Welch had to slump to avoid hitting his head. Stooped over, he said:
"Finish my beer for me. And take more than you need down-there. Including
this." He reached into his hip pocket and pulled out one of the miniaturized
black boxes he'd requisitioned for his recent sortie into Che's camp. "You get
into trouble, or just want extracted, push this button." He turned the
match-box sized oblong in his fingers until the red nipple on one side was
facing Nichols. "I'll be waiting."
"You expecting this kind of trouble?" Nichols frowned at the black box before
he took it.
Tm expecting a real good reason why Tanya's not checking in, yeah."
Damned women, you could never tell what they had in mind. But it wasn't so
much that he didn't trust Tanya, it was that Welch knew Nichols. Nichols had a
disdain for the Old Dead that might cause him to underestimate the opposition.
No matter who me antiques were, the opposition here was really Mao. And Mao
was nobody's friend, nobody's fool. Welch promised himself that, when he got
back to New Hell, he was going to get Machiavelli transferred to Sanitation
Engineering.
Up on the flight deck, listening to the inevitable "better idea" that Achilles
had, Welch made a mental note to include the Achaean in Machiavelli's
Sanitation squad. Then he pulled his 9mm off his hip and, flicking suede lint
from its barrel, said levelly to die pilot, "You fly 'em. I'll call 'em.
Understood?"
The chopper pilot began landing procedures without another word.
Nichols had scrambled thirty feet away from the Huey before he looked back.
Even knowing where it was, he couldn't see die damned thing. Stealth
technology had come a long way since Nichols died, not in the Med during the
Big War, but on an island off America's coast in the aftermath.