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

If fires again, blasting the ground floor.
The tank commander's great mechanical body grumbles contentedly and
rumbles away.
Cowboy double-times to meet me. He punches me on the arm. "Look!"
Cowboy touches his right ear, carefully. "Look!" There's a neat little round
hole through his right ear and a semicircular nick on the top of his left
ear. "See? A cheap Heart! The round went through the helmet from behind,
spun all the way around my head, then came out and hit me in the arm..."
Cowboy holds up his right forearm, which has already been bandaged. "Did you
see that tank? Was that tank bad? What a honey."
Doc Jay catches up to Cowboy, grabs him roughly, pushes him down.
Cowboy sits on a splintered tree stump while Doc Jay tears the waxy brown
wrapper off a compress bandage and ties the bandage around Cowboy's bloody
head.
Alice and I walk around to the rear of the house.
We find Rafter Man standing over the sniper, drinking a bottle of
Coca-Cola. Rafter Man grins. He says, "Things go better with Coke."
Animal Mother walks up and Rafter Man says, "Look at her! Look at her!"
We all stand over the sniper. The sniper is drawing her breath with
great effort. Guts that look like colorful plastic have squirted out through
bullet holes. The back of the sniper's right leg and her right buttock have
been torn off. She grits her teeth and then makes a sound like a dog that
has been run over.
Lance Corporal Stutten leads his fire team to the sniper. "Look at
that," says Lance Corporal Stutten. "It's a girl. She's all busted up."
"Look at her!" Rafter Man is saying. He struts around the moaning lump
of torn meat. "Look at her! Am I bad? Am I a menace? Am I a life taker? Am I
a heart breaker?"
Alice kneels and unbuckles the sniper's web belt and jerks it from
under her body. The sniper whimpers. She speaks to us in French. Alice
tosses the bloody belt to Rafter Man.
The sniper begins to pray in Vietnamese.
Rafter Man asks, "What's she saying?"
I shrug. "What difference does it make?"
Animal Mother spits. "It's gonna get dark. We better hump back to the
company area."
I say, "What about the gook?"
"Fuck her," says Animal Mother. "Let her rot."
"We can't just leave her here," I say.
Animal Mother takes a giant step toward me, puts his face up close to
mine. "Hey, asshole, Cowboy is down. You're fresh out of friends,
motherfucker. I'm running this squad. I was a platoon sergeant before they
busted me. I say we leave the gook for the mother-loving rats."

Rafter Man is buckling on his NVA belt. The belt has a dull-silver
buckle with a star engraved in the center. "Joker is a sergeant."
Animal Mother is surprised. He stares at Rafter Man, then at me. Then:
"That don't cut no shit out here. This is the field, motherfucker. You ain't
a grunt. You don't pack the gear to be a grunt. You want to fuck with me?
Huh? You want to throw some hands?"