"Gustav Hasvord. The Short-Timers " - читать интересную книгу автора

was a stupid thing to do. But then anything you could say to a dead officer
who was killed by one of his own men would have to be pretty ridiculous.


Rafter Man and I double-time to catch up with the squad.
We hump past scented lotus ponds, through landscaped gardens, over
bridges linking delicately structured pagodas.
All around the beautiful gardens invisible gunships rip into the peace
and quiet like dogs fighting in a church.
Cowboy holds up his right hand. The squad stops. Alice aims an index
finger at a street of big mansions.
Cowboy looks at me, then at the squad. Cowboy pulls me aside. We walk
ahead for a few steps. "That sniper opened up on us in a gook graveyard.
Some guys in One-One told us they found gold bars in the Emperor's palace.
They had all they could hump, so we was going to souvenir the rest." Cowboy
wipes sweat from his eyes. "T.H.E. Rock was walking point. The sniper shot
T.H.E. Rock's foot off. Shot it off. The Hardass Squad went out to get him,
one at a time. That sniper shot all their feet off. We were hiding behind
graves, those old round graves like baseball mounds, and we had nine grunts
down in the street...." Cowboy pulls a red bandanna from his back pockets
and wipes his sweaty face. "Mr. Shortround wouldn't let us go get them. It
made him sick, but he held us back. Then the sniper started shooting off
fingers, toes, ears-everything. The guys in the road were crying and begging
and we were all growling like animals, but Mr. Shortround held us back. Then
Animal Mother started to go for them and the Skipper grabbed Animal Mother's
collar and hit him in the face. Animal Mother was so mad I thought he was
going to kill us all. But before he could do anything the sniper started
putting rounds into the guys in the street. He didn't miss more than a
couple of times. He popped T.H.E. Rock's head off and then he put a round
through each guy's head. They were all moaning and praying and then it was
quiet and they were dead and it was like we were dead too..."
I don't know what to say.
Cowboy spits, his face a sweaty stone. "After the NVA pulled out, the
lifers sent in the Arvin Black Panthers to take the Forbidden City. Shit.
Nothing left but rear guard squads. We stomped the NVA and they stomped us
and then the lifers send in the Arvins, like the goddamn Arvins did it. Mr.
Shortround said it was their country, said we was only helping out, said it
would boost the morale of the Vietnamese people. Well, fuck the Vietnamese
people. The horrible hogs in hard, hungry Hotel Company ran up an American
flag. Like on Iwo Jima. But some poge officers ordered them to take it down.
The snuffies had to run up the stinking Vietnamese flag, which is yellow,
which is the right color for these chickenshit people. We're getting
slaughtered in this city. And we can't even run up a fucking flag. I just
can't hack this shit, bro. My job is to get my people back to the World in
one piece." Cowboy coughs, spits, wipes his nose with the back of his hand.
"Under fire, these are the best human beings in the world. All they need is
for somebody to throw hand grenades at them for the rest of their
lives...These guys depend on me. I can't send my people out to get that
sniper, Joker. I might lose the whole squad."
I wait until I'm sure that Cowboy has finished talking and then I say,