"Mikhail Evstafiev. Two Steps From Heaven " - читать интересную книгу автора ... like a fireball ...
it flew from the shelter of the wall, beside the tree, and a moment later the armour under Oleg jumped. The shell hit the vehicle's tread, blasting it off. Whee, whee, whee! Screamed wayward spook bullets on all sides. Soldiers fell flat, pressing themselves against the ground, into the dust, dived under vehicles. Everyone took whatever shelter they could. A machine gun chattered in fury and hatred, striving to kill off as many as it could of these suddenly vulnerable people, jumping off the armour to the ground. Sergeant Panasyuk was caught in mid-leap. He bounded up and fell like a sack on his back; his helmet rolled away, and his hand clenched his gun. The sergeant had no time to even shout, he just grunted almost inaudibly, as if to himself, before his long, bony body struck the ground. In the all-embracing silence before death, the sergeant was quiet and relaxed for the first time in one and a half years of war, as if he had returned home and wrapped himself in a blanket, hid his head and went to sleep. Hefty Titov crawled up and dragged him behind the BMP, pulled off his bullet-proof vest, and only then saw the reddish-brown spot on Panasyuk's shirt. The battle cut off the squad from the rest of the world, deafened it with shell-fire, blinded it with explosions; lead whizzed all around. Sharagin emptied his second magazine, replaced it and turned, wondering back and forth. Prokhorov, staggering, as if drunk, could not figure out where the fire was coming from and where the spooks had taken up their position. Finally he fired by guess: Kaboom! Kaboom! Kaboom! Kaboom! Kaboom! Came belated fire from the second BMP. ... serve the bastards right! ... give them another one! ... Ah, that was better. Now all guns were firing. Shattered by explosions, the village fell silent. The spooks must be retreating. But the infuriated soldiers kept raking the area with every available weapon. Eventually the barrage ceased, hot barrels cooling one after another. Death, which seemed to have come from nowhere and almost won, fell back in the face of the soldiers' desperate resistance, taking sergeant Panasyuk with it. He lay there with an expression of faint chagrin or disappointment on his face, his legs bent and doubled over like a snapped branch, pitiful, frail, shot through the side just in the spot left exposed by the bullet-proof vest. Sharagin railed, swore at the radio operator, who spluttered desperately, trying to summon a helicopter. There was not a single cloud in the sky, and not a single chopper. Time was passing, flying away uncontrolled, and together with it, with those speeding minutes that |
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