"Steve Perry - Matador 01 - The Man Who Never Missed" - читать интересную книгу автора (Perry Steven)

soldiers. With full-intensification, spookeyes would amplify available light
millions of times; the glow of a flickstick butt would seem a bonfire at close
range.
He had been in the shadows with only a little cover. That would effectively
be gone, now that the light was only from the stars and the ambient city
glow. He had to move quickly. And the timing had to be right. They all had
to see him at the same time.
"Hey!" Khadaji yelled.
They were superb, the members of this quad. They spun as one, bringing
their weapons up.
Khadaji marked their positions in that instant; he also triggered the photon
flare and tossed it toward them. He turned his head and squeezed his eyes
shut tightly; even so, the light from the flare reflected from the walls beat
upon his eyes through the lids. There was no time to think about what it did
to the eyes of the quad. Khadaji ran at a right angle to his left, as fast as he
could sprint.
The quad was blind, but they were firing. A man's voice began yelling
orders over the sound of the . 177s and their explosive bullets: "Toomie, take
the left, Janie, center front! Jason, to the right!"
Khadaji circled before Jason managed to get his carbine out to cover his
assigned field of fire and raised both spets-dods. He fired twice, caught Jason
and the quad leader with the first two rounds, then fired both his handguns
again. He got Janie, but missed Toomie, who was still covering his quadrant
with short bursts of the Parker, his back to Khadaji. Before the man could
realize his team wasn't shooting, Khadaji snapped off a final round into
Toomie's neck. He went down, the Parker silenced.
No time. Khadaji sprinted for the door, tugging the spookeyes from his
face as he ran. He didn't slow, only twisted so that he hit the pressed plastic
with his left shoulder. The cheap material tore away from its sliding frame in
a shower of gray shards and Khadaji dived for the floor as he went through.
 The double boom of a smoothbore pistol filled the air and the charge of
brass shot sleeted against the wall and through the open doorway. Khadaji
rolled up and fired toward the woman standing behind her desk. The dart hit
her square on the chest, but she managed to trigger another twin shot of the
smoothbore as she went backwards. The gun was pointed at the ceiling and
blew a binocular-shaped pattern in the white hardfoam.
The Sub-Befalhavare went into poison contractions; the strength
distribution of her muscles causing her to sit back in her chair, her fists
drawn up to her shoulders and her face clenched into a snarl. She held onto
the smoothbore pistol at an almost classic port-arms position, pointed by her
right ear.
It should not have been funny, but it struck Khadaji that way. He laughed,
thought about it for a few seconds, and decided to add a touch more. There
was a flower arrangement on the woman's desk and he pulled a long-
stemmed green rose from the vase and stuck it into the barrel of the
smoothbore. One had to keep one's sense of humor, after all. And it could be
a clue for a wise man. A green roseтАФ a jade flower.... He doubted the Sub-
Befalhavare would think it funny, but humor always depended upon one's
viewpoint, whether you were the one who stepped on the banana peel or an
observer.