"Olshaker, Mark - Unnatural Causes" - читать интересную книгу автора (Olshaker Mark)

UNNATURAL CAUSES

BY MARK OLSHAKER

Synopsis:

Ex Navy Seal, Viet nam Veteran Brian Thorp now a noted surgeon at
Bethesda Naval Hospital, is draw into investigating the suspicious
deaths of other Viet nam Veterans. These Veterans all have two things
in common: all were members of Firefight Eagle's Talon and all had
sustained shrapnel injuries. Dr. Brian Thorp knows Eagle's Talon too;
also is a survivor, and the only one wounded. Is he going to die too?

Prologue

Mekong Delta, February 14, 1966

The mission was like all the others. A three-man hunter-killer squad
from Navy SEAL Team One had been sent to interdict Vietcong forces
harassing riverine traffic in the delta. Only this time it didn't work
out. The VC encampment was right where intelligence said it would be.
But on the way in, Donovan had stepped into a sling snare attached to a
bent-over sapling. The snare flung him through the air like a rag doll
and impaled him on a bed of sharpened bamboo punji stakes. He was dead
before he had a chance to scream.

The springing of the trap was enough to alert the enemy, though. They'd
opened fire with everything they had. McNeely had taken the better part
of a B-40 grenade square in the thigh, and Thorpe got a machine-gun
round in his shoulder. Now he was the only one left standing; guards
from the camp would be on them in minutes, and McNeely was bleeding to
death.

There was one slim chance: somehow reach Stanway's squad at the
prearranged landing zone about four kilometers away and hope like crazy
some of them were still alive. Long odds all the way around, but
absolute zero on any other possibilities.

Brian Thorpe tried to suppress the pounding pulse between his eyes, the
queasy feeling in his stomach. They were dangerous distractions. The
scaring pain where the machine gun had ripped into his shoulder was more
useful. It would focus his attention and drive him on, like a jockey's
whip on the flank of a race-horse.

Analyze. Prioritize. He struggled to control his breathing. They had
to get out fast. But he couldn't leave McNeely alive for the Cong.
They'd torture him into divulging the SEALs'position. No.

Thorpe either had to take him along or kill him here himself.