"O'Donnell, Peter - Modesty Blaise Pieces Of Modesty" - читать интересную книгу автора (O'Donnell Peter)

to the M14, trying for the apertures, trying for a ricochet in that confined space where five men crouched.
From the back of the plateau behind her came Jimson's voice, desperate and shaking. 'Miss Blaise! For God's sake stop this - this slaughter!'
She said viciously, 'Tell them that, for God's sake!' and she fired for one of the apertures, seeing dust spurt from it. But the angle was wrong, the bullet would have flattened against the inner surface of the hole.
'Miss Blaise, pleaseЧ!' His voice was nearer. She turned her head and saw with hot anger that he was halfway across the open ground of the plateau, walking towards her. She said, 'Get down, you fool!'
Two quick shots from the hill. Her head snapped round just in time to see a man fall. He had stood up in the pen, and her stomach clenched as she saw why. The black globule of a grenade was soaring lazily through the air. Not a stick-grenade, but an egg-shaped fragmentation bomb. The man had made a good powerful throw in the instant of rising, too quick for Willie's snap-shot to prevent.
The grenade would pass ten feet above her head as she lay. No hope of jumping to catch it. She would be riddled by fire from the pen if she tried. What was the fuse timing? Anything from four to seven seconds. If the grenade exploded while still in the air she would be lucky to live. Very lucky. If it hit the ground first and the blast was reflected upwards, there was a chance for her if she hugged the ground. For her, but not for Jimson. Cheek to the ground, eyes watching the flight of the grenade passing overhead, she saw Jimson seemingly in exactly the same position as before. He could have moved only a single pace in the half-second since she had first shouted to him.
She cried 'Grenade!' and in the same instant she saw him sight it as it curved down, falling towards his right. His pace changed. The whole manner of his gait changed, and suddenly he was moving with assured grace, forward and sideways, fast, not clumsily.
He caught the grenade one-handed at full stretch to his right and no more than eighteen inches from the ground. She saw
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his arm yield with the weight, absorb it, then bend and straighten as he threw, falling sideways and back to put the weight of his body behind the throw.
The grenade flashed by three feet above her head. It was the hard, low-trajectory throw of the cricketer, the first-class fielder making a return, with that characteristic whiplike flick of wrist and arm; the throw of a man able to hit the stumps sideways-on from thirty yards, six times out of ten.
There came a rattle of fire from the pen. Somebody there had glimpsed Jimson's moving figure above the line of the ramp. But he had already fallen and was hidden again. She had flinched instinctively as Jimson's throw sent the grenade skimming above her. Now she saw it hurtle on its way, spinning in the air, dipping towards the pen.
It had just cleared the wall when it exploded, six feet above the men crouched below.
There was an almost dreamlike quality about the silence that lay over the valley as the rending blast and its echoes faded. The silence was broken only by a single voice wailing thinly from within the pen, and the sound of Modesty's running feet. She had absorbed many surprises in her life, but few had been as swift and startling as this. Only long-nourished instinct surmounted the shock and sent her racing down the ramp before the echoes had died. In five seconds she was at the pen, gun ready, circling round to the slit opening at the back. Now was the time to finish things. There would never be a better time.
But there was nothing to finish. The feeble screaming stopped abruptly as she reached the opening in the dry-stone wall. Within was a sight as ugly as any she had seen, and her mouth grew dry even though she had braced herself against the expected nausea. The fragmentation of a grenade does not do pretty things to the human body.
She looked quickly towards the men scattered on the ground by the camp. Nobody was stirring. She lifted her gun and waved to Willie. A crunch of footsteps and Jimson was beside her. He looked into the pen, gasped, and turned away, retching. She did not look round at him but put down her gun and moved into the pen for the gruesome task of checking the torn
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bodies for any sign of life. A minute later Jimson said in a shivering voice, 'Are they ... all dead?'
She lifted a man who lay face-down, then let him fall and straightened up. 'Yes. They're all dead. When you're only six feet from an exploding grenade you don't stand much chance. And the fragments must have ricocheted round this pen like a swarm of hornets.'
'Dear God,' he said shakily, and went down on his knees.
Willie Garvin was making his way down the slope of the hill. The girls appeared at the lip of the ramp. She called to them to stay where they were, picked up the AKM and walked across to the men who had fallen in the first moments of the battle, noting that the hobbled mules seemed to have escaped harm.
Three of the men were alive. One was unconscious. The other two were empty of aggression, their faces pallid with pain and fear. She gathered up all guns lying within reach, moved them to a safe spot, then made a quick examination. Two shoulder-wounds, one leg-wound, all serious. She knelt by the unconscious man and began to cut the blood-soaked shirt away from his shattered shoulder with his own knife.
Willie Garvin came trudging across the valley bottom, M14 slung, carbine swinging in his hand, a rucksack on his back. His gaze searched her keenly as he came up, looking for any sign of hurt.
She said, 'I'm all right, Willie love.'
He nodded, slipped off the rucksack, then surveyed the scene of battle with a look of disgust. 'A right shambles they made of it,' he said. 'I reckon the Salvation Army could've done better. Whoever was in charge of this lot ought to be bloody well shot.'
She looked up from her work to nod agreement. 'He was, Willie.'
There was a lot of blood down the front of the sentry's jerkin that Willie still wore. Dried blood, obviously not Willie's. No point in asking if the sentry on the hill was alive. Willie had probably had to take him at throwing-knife range, and had played for keeps. There had been too much at stake to risk any fancy work.
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He had opened the rucksack and was taking out a big tin box, a well-stocked first-aid kit. She said, 'Let's have a field-dressing, then prop him up while I bandage him.'
Ten minutes later they had done what they could for the three men. Their wounds were plugged and bandaged, and they had been given a fifteen milligram shot of morphia each. Modesty stood up and looked around. Jimson was still on his knees in prayer by the pen. The girls were sitting along the edge of the ramp, watching like birds perched on a branch.
She said, 'Have you got a cigarette?'
Willie took out a packet, gave her one and lit it for her, then surveyed the battlefield again with a frown of professional disapproval. 'They were better at rape,' he said. 'What about that girl? I saw four of them 'ave 'er before we started shooting.'
Modesty looked towards the ramp. Rosa, swathed in the blanket, was on her feet now, standing up straight, gazing at the scene with interest. Just as well it had been Rosa. She was a sturdy peasant type with nerves like sisal. In a little while she might even begin to relish the cachet of having been raped by guerrillas.
'She'll survive,' Modesty said. 'We'd better make a move, Willie. El Mico is supposed to be arriving sometime soon.'
Willie shook his head. 'El Mico's dead.'
'Dead?'
'I 'card it on the car radio just before I found the bus. News flash. Triumphant music. The Army trapped El Mico's main forces in a pass down south. Pretty well wiped 'em out. They found El Mico's body after it was over.'
That made a big difference. With the road safe, they could afford now to be burdened by the wounded. She said, 'Do you think the bus is all right?'
'I 'ad a quick look. Just the exhaust crumpled and the windscreen gone. I could drive that with the girls and the parson while you drive the Merc. We'll still be in San Tremino around sundown.'
'San Tremino?' It had been in her mind to return to Orsita.
'I was thinking of Garcia,' Willie said.
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It was a moment before she remembered that she had been on her way to see Garcia because he was dying. That seemed a long time ago now.
'Orsita's much nearer,' she said. 'I mean for these three.' She looked at the wounded men. 'We can get them down to the bus on the mules. The quicker they get treatment the better.'
Willie said gently, 'They won't live long with the treatment they'll get if we take 'em in, Princess. What they do with rebels around these parts is hang 'em.'
'So they do.' She rubbed an eye with the back of her wrist; her hands were too dirty. 'I'm a bit slow today.'
'It's the weather.' Willie wiped his brow and looked at the sun. 'Too much humidity.'
She threw away her cigarette. Her mind felt sluggish, as if resentful of being set problems now that danger was past. Leave the men here and they would die; take them into a town for treatment and they would die.
Willie Garvin said, 'How did that grenade bit 'appen, Princess? I couldn't see from up there, but it was a fair old clincher.'
She moved her head to indicate Jimson, still kneeling near the pen. 'The parson did it. He used to play cricket for Cambridge. Nice clean catch-and-return in about one second dead.'