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

Machine-gun bullets knock the ant over.
The gunship swings around to verify that it is a confirmed kill.
As machine-gun bullets snap into the wet sand, the ant stands up, aims
its tiny AK-47 assault rifle, and fires a thirty-round magazine on full
automatic.
The Cobra gunship explodes, splits open like a bloated green egg. The
gutted carcass of aluminum and plexiglass bounces along, suspended in the
air, burning, trailing black smoke. And then it falls.
The flaming chopper hits the river and the flowing water sucks it down.
The ant does not move. The ant fires another magazine on full
automatic. The ant is shooting at the sky.
Tired of firing into floating corpses, the remaining two gunships
attack.
The ant walks off the beach.
The gunships hit the beach and sand dunes with every weapon they've
got. They circle and circle and circle like predatory birds. Then, out of
ammunition and out of fuel, they buzz straight into the horizon and vanish.
Delta Company applauds and cheers and whistles. "Get some! Number one!
Out-fucking-standing! Payback is a motherfucker!"
Alice says, "That guy was a grunt."
While we wait for the gunboats to come and take us back across the
River of Perfumes we talk about how the NVA grunt was one hell of a hard
individual and about how it would be okay if he came to America and married
all our sisters and about how we all hope that he will live to be a hundred
years old because the world will be diminished when he's gone.


The next morning, Rafter Man and I get the map coordinates of a mass
grave from some green ghouls and we hump over to the site to get Captain
January his atrocity photographs.
The mass grave smells really bad-the odor of blood, the stink of worms,
decayed human beings. The Arvin snuffies doing the digging in a school yard
have all tied olive-drab skivvy shirts around their faces, but casualties
due to uncontrollable puking are heavy.
We see corpses of Vietnamese civilians who have been buried alive,
faces frozen in mid-scream, hands like claws, the fingernails bloody and
caked with damp earth. All of the dead people are grinning that hideous,
joyless grin of those who have heard the joke, of those who have seen the
terrible secrets of the earth. There's even the corpse of a dog which Victor
Charlie could not separate from its master.
There are no corpses with their hands tied behind their backs. However,
the green ghouls assure us that they have seen such corpses elsewhere. So I
borrow some demolition wire from the Arvin snuffies and, crushing the stiff
bodies with my knee until dry bones crack, I bind up a family, assembled at
random from the multitude-a man, his wife, a little boy, a little girl, and,
of course, their dog. As a final touch, I wire the dog's feet together.


Noon at the MAC-V compound. We say good-bye to Cowboy and to the
Lusthog Squad.