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

'cm. Can't imagine it's more than ethics, though, if things get tough-" He
safed his service pistol, still in his hand, and held it out to her, butt
first.
It was a sacrifice she obviously didn't understand, or appreciate.
She shook her head; her hair flew around her face; she bit her lip: "No,
Nichols, if Gilgamesh found that..." Then the rest of what he'd said sank in.
"Look, I haven't seen anything more incriminating that lots of pack animals
with nothing to carry. We might be way off base here. And what do you mean,
'wants one Sumerian aboard the chopper'?'
"Let me explain," Nichols suggested. "We don't have much time."
The timer on the explosives was set for ten minutes from now, if he didn't
intervene with a radioed signal. And he didn't think he would. These
primitives were going to read it as a minor earthquake; they were out of sight
of the blast, anyway. And, whether Achilles was somebody's spoiler or not,
this mission was going to go perfectly, or Nichols was going to know the
reason why.
When hick had given him a handle on the ChiCom problem at the waterfall,
pajamas and all, he'd known he was going to win this one.
All that remained in' question was whether Tamara Burke, here, and her
Sumeriaa boyfriend lived through it or got back to Reassignments the hard way.
Nichols didn't really care which. It would be interesting to see the look on
Achilles' face, however things turned out.
He returned his attention to the business at hand: briefing Burke; getting out
unseen; using the extraction beacon Welch had given him from a safe LZ as far
as possible from the waterfall and the imminent destruction there.
A few minutes later, beaded upslope on the far side of camp, he heard and felt
the explosion and his heart lifted. Behind him, the caravan folk were running
around nervously and dogs were barking, but there was no attempt to mount a
show of force, no sign that foul play was suspected.
He'd have liked to have some drugs to show, but he had an ex-waterfall, a
blocked tunnel, and a new hole to show, and likely -some dead guys.
And, most important, it had worked: nobody had found and disarmed Nichols'
explosive ordnance; nobody had stopped his show. Now he just had to make the
other side of the bill and wait for pickup. Sometimes. Hell wasn't any worse
than life had been. At least, not life as Nichols remembered it.
Enkidu was among the chaos of the caravan when the bird descended on a roaring
gale from Heaven.
He had been down on his knees, talking with a dog; barking at the round-eyed
hound who barked at him, The dog belonged to the woman of the caravan whose
wagon was painted red and gold, with golden silks draping it.
This dog had been barking, "Enkidu! Beware! Danger! Intruder!" Enkidu, who had
been like a wild beast in life, who had been lord of the forest and ravager of
its game, had barked back, insulted. He, Enkidu, was no intruder and at the
dog's bark he had taken offense.
So they had been readying to battle it out there and then, Enkidu and this
impolite dog who called him an intruder, when the bird began its descent and
the silks on its owner's wagon blew wildly.
If Gilgamesh had been with Enkidu, things might have gone differently. Enkidu
would not have been down on his knees in the dirt, barking loudly about how he
would bite out the throat of this impudent dog as surely as he, Enkidu, was