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

Didn't matter. Nichols shook his camouflaged head. Didn't mean a damn thing,
Welch was right. But it made him queasy, looking back at the electro-optically
distorted field which masked the chopper so well you could have walked right
into one of its rotor blades and gashed your head open.
Okay, he thought, so Achilles knows his job. Ought to give him one point. But
Nichols couldn't do that; his gut knew better. And Nichols, unlike Welch,
remembered every minute of the Trojan Campaign - up until he'd died during it.
They'd scaled die very gates of Hell on that one, and Welch, with his partial
amnesia and his officer's attitude, just wasn't applying enough good
old-fashioned suspicion to the events that had brought matters to their
present turn.
Nichols had died in Troy, but been held in limbo, somewhere, awaiting
Achilles' pickup-for this mission. On whose orders? To what end? Welch,
meanwhile, who would have gotten Nichols out of limbo if he had to use a P-38
to do it, was afflicted with convenient amnesia and watch-dogged by Tamara
Burke, whoever and whatever she was. If all this was coincidence, Nichols was
a Persian eunuch.
If it was just luck, it was bad luck. And Nichols didn't like bad luck. If he
had a god, it was the one that got you out of wherever alive, stepping three
inches to the right of a cluster-bomb that would have blown you to perdition;
ducking your head to swat a mosquito just when the round that would have
smashed it to jelly sped by.
Nichols knew damned well that Achilles was trouble - always had been, always
was, always would be trouble, for friend and foe alike. He'd mucked up the
first Trojan War and tied the commanders in knots during the second. If Caesar
and Alexander the Great couldn't get around the jinx that Achilles put on any
mission he was attached to, what chance did he and Welch have?
You couldn't talk to Welch about Achilles, beyond operational talk-Welch
didn't believe in luck. Welch took everything personally. Which was fine, most
times-it made him an officer with whom Nichols was proud to serve. But it made
him touchy about certain things, like what he didn't remember about Troy.
And Welch didn't remember one very important thing about that mission: he
didn't remember that, when Achilles came flying into the middle of an already
complex situation, nobody-not Caesar's crew, not the opposition down there,
not his passenger Judah Maccabee, not Agency itself, and most especially not
Welch - would admit to dispatching him.
Achilles was a damned wild card and even the Myrmidons hadn't had a real
cheery survival quotient (so the unit's vets said), serving under him in life.
But Achilles knew his ECM. He could cajole stunts out that Huey like Nichols
had never seen-or heard.
Blinking hard and listening harder, Nichols could barely focus on the chopper
as it lifted, purring no louder than a happy cat. Stealth, you bet. Better
than it had any right to be, like Achilles was better than he had any right to
be. Nichols was willing to bet, all that capability was somebody's doing. Lake
maybe the Pentagram faction that was supporting the dissidents.
Achilles and Tamara Burke: neither of them had put a foot wrong the whole time
they'd been in Hell. He and Welch had called up their jackets, and there
wasn't a single negative notation or disciplinary action in either of their
files. Too damned perfect not to be trouble.
But you couldn't convince Welch of that, not without proof. Tanya failing to