"Reed-TheSingingMarine" - читать интересную книгу автора (Reed Kit)

Her eyes glow. Something behind them begins to smoulder. "Just do what I say.
Then you'll see. Get it and I'll start your fires."

"I was on my way back to the base," he says.

Her smile is touched with malicious humor. "What would you want to do a thing
like that for?"

He chooses not to catch her tone. Instead he starts telling; like the song he
sings, it's something he has to do because he needs to hear it. "I have to
report. I have to let them know it wasn't my fault. I have to forestall the
court martial. It was my platoon. I. God, the sergeant!" He stops and starts
again. "We were on maneuvers near Ocracoke. He marched them into the marsh." He
does not tell her that the marsh gave way underneath them and half his men are
still out there somewhere, either mired to the knees or drowned in mud and
confusion; he does not tell her that in another few hours he will be AWOL. "I
have to report. I do."

Without even looking at him, she divines the rest. She knows what lies at his
center. She is brusque, almost matter-of-fact. "Your platoon's okay. They found
everyone. It's in all the papers."

His heart leaps up. "You're sure?"

How cleverly she plays him. "TV this morning. Interviews."

"But I'm not there."

"Oh, you," she says. "They think you deserted."

Maybe I have. It's too much to contemplate. "I have to go back and explain it."

"Do this and you won't have to go back at all. You'll be rich enough to buy your
way out of anything."

But when Taps sounds tonight the Marine will go back, slouching over the
causeway like the returning prodigal in his muddy fatigues and the boondockers
that won't stop squelching water. When he does, he will be richer. He knows that
when a beautiful woman you don't know asks you to do her a favor, you do what
she asks soon enough, but you never, ever let her know what you'.re thinking.

Right now he says, "I'll think about it."

"No time for that. We're getting off."

They are in the woods for more than an hour, during which the lieutenant's boots
get heavier in a geometric progression toward eternity. The heat is intolerable.
Gnats crawl into his ears and clog his nostrils; mosquitos feed on the exposed
back of his neck, sliding down the sweaty surface to feed on his most vulnerable