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

roof collapses.
Animal Mother continues to fire from his position near the tank.
Cowboy double-times to the first house at our end of the street. He
steps carefully to the rear corner of the house, peeks around the corner.
Cowboy waits for Lance Corporal Stutten to pop a green smoke as a signal
that his fire team is in position as a blocking force.
We wait.
When green smoke begins to pour from a drainage ditch behind the first
house at the far end of the street Cowboy waves his hand and we all open
fire at the first house at our end of the street. One at a time, we run
across the street to the first house, joining Cowboy.
Cowboy waves his hand around the corner and Lance Corporal Stutten's
fire team opens up with their weapons on full automatic, pouring hundreds of
high-velocity copper-jacketed bullets into the rear of the first house at
their end of the street.
Animal Mother continues to chew up the fronts of all the mansions with
his black steel machine gun.
The tank fires a second round. The ground floor of the first house is
blown apart. The tank grinds forward twenty yards, stops, fires again. The
second story of the second house explodes.
Cowboy leads us into the mansion at our end of the street. Inside, we
leapfrog from corner to corner. Cowboy pops a frag and underhands it into
somebody's kitchen. The detonation rocks the whole house, numbs our ears.
Rafter Man steps forward. He gestures to Cowboy, jerks his thumb at the
ceiling. Cowboy holds up a circled thumb and index finger, "okay." Rafter
Man pops a frag and pitches it up a stairwell to the second story. The
explosion splits the plaster over our heads.
Outside, up the street, the tank fires again.
Cowboy punches me in the chest with his knuckles. Then he punches
Rafter Man and Alice. He aims his right index finger at Donlon, then at the
deck. Donlon nods and begins to silently point out the positions he wants
the men in the squad to take.
Cowboy waves his hand and we follow him up the stairs.
Upstairs, Alice kicks out a window and we all hop out onto the roof.
The tank is two houses away. It fires.
We drop our gear and jump the six-foot chasm between houses.
On the roof of the second house Cowboy stands up and signal Lance
Corporal Stutten, who waves back with his poncho. Bullets from Lance
Corporal Stutten's fire team stop hitting the rest of the house we're
standing on.
I double-time to the front of the house and I wave to Animal Mother.
Bullets from Animal Mother's machine gun stop hitting the front of the
house.
The tank fires. The shell bursts. Shrapnel whines over us.
We converge on a skylight. I drop a frag through the glass.
The grenade explodes in an invisible room below. Concussion shatters
the skylight.
We drop through the ragged rectangular hole into somebody's library.
Shrapnel has mangled leatherbound books. I pick up a small leatherbound book
for a souvenir. The author is Jules Verne; the title is in French. I stuff