"Smeds-ShortTimer" - читать интересную книгу автора (Smeds Dave)

DAVE SMEDS

SHORT TIMER

"Their need to express what they went through had become my need to do so," he
writes. He turned that need into a short story about life, living, and the
persistence of memory.

DEWITT DRAGGED HIS BOOT out of the sucking, red mud. Half a klick to the LZ.
Boone was still alive.

Boone. Of all the squad, DeWitt would rather have carried out anybody else, but
that didn't matter now. Boone was who was left. So Boone was who he'd try to
save.

Boone moaned, wiggling, trying to walk. Dirty but intact skin showed through the
rips in his fatigue pants. The rifleman's legs were still good, if he could only
stay coherent enough to make them work. But the unfriendly fire was closing in
again, so DeWitt carried the man, no matter how much it made him stagger through
the elephant grass.

"Perimeter's just past that line of trees," DeWitt whispered, spitting the words
out between quick, sharp gulps of air.

The line of trees lay lost somewhere in the vegetation and the dripping wet
shadows of the night. DeWitt could not have seen it even if an illumination
round had gone off straight overhead. But he knew it was there. He knew Boone
needed to hear that it was there.

One guy, DeWitt thought. Dear Jesus, let me bring back at least one guy.

"I'm short," Boone mumbled, his eyes rolling aimlessly in their sockets.
"Forty-three days 'til I get my papers. Captain said he might send me back to
the rear next week, let me work with the ARVN until my tour's up."

"That's right," DeWitt said, keeping Boone talking. "Think of next week, man.
They got refrigerators in the rear, Boone. The beer is cold."

Boone laughed, licking his lips as if he were already tasting the brew.

AK-47s blistered the jungle about five-zero-zero meters to the right. DeWitt
adjusted Boone's weight across his shoulders and kept moving. Speed was
everything now. Boone was losing too much blood. And if the NVA didn't know
exactly where the Americans had run, they'd figure it out soon enough. The two
grunts couldn't stick around.

DeWitt wheezed. His knees groaned as the path took an upward turn. The incline
slowed them, but its presence was a good sign; it proved they had found the