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

about fear-about the fear of pain, of being maimed, of that half-expected
thud of an antipersonnel mine or the punch of a sniper's bullet, or about
loneliness, which is, in the long run, more dangerous, and, in some ways,
hurts more. We lock our minds onto yesterday, where the pain and loneliness
have been censored, and on tomorrow, from which pain and loneliness have
been conveniently deleted, and most of all, we locks our minds into our
feet, which have developed a life and a mind of their own.


Hold. Alice raises his right hand.
The squad stops, now, within rifle shot of the DMZ.
Cowboy flexes the fingers of his right hand as though cupping a breast.
Booby trap?
Alice shrugs. Just cool it, man.
Our survival hangs on our sniper bait's reflexes and judgment. Alice's
eyes can detect green catgut trip wires, bouncing betty prongs, tiny
plungers, loose soil, crushed plants, footprints, fragments of packaging
debris, and even the fabled punji pits. Alice's ears can lock onto unnatural
silences, the faint rattle of equipment, the thump of a mortar shell leaving
the tube, or the snap of a rifle bolt coming home. Experience and animal
instincts warn Alice when a small, badly concealed booby trap has been set
on the trail for easy detection so that we will be diverted off the trail
into a more terrible one. Alice knows that most of the casualties we take
are from booby traps and that in Viet Nam almost every booby trap is
designed so that the victim is his own executioner. He knows what the enemy
likes to do, where he likes to set ambushes, where snipers hide. Alice knows
the warning signals that the enemy leaves for his friends-the strips of
black cloth, the triangles os bamboo, the arrangements of stones.
Alice really understands the shrewd race of men who fight for survival
in this garden of darkness-hard soldiers, strange, diminutive phantoms with
iron insides, brass balls, incredible courage, and no scruples at all. They
look small, but they fight tall, and their bullets are the same size as
ours.
A lot of Marines who choose to walk point have death wishes-that's the
scuttlebutt. Some guys want to be heroes and if you walk point and are still
alive at the end of the patrol then you are a hero. Some guys who walk point
hate themselves so much that they don't care what they do and don't care
what is done to them. But Alice walks point because Alice thrives on being
out front. Sure I'm scared, he told me one night after we'd smoked about a
ton of dope, but I try not to show it. What Alice needs are those moments
when he can see into what he calls the "beyond."
Alice freezes. His right hand closes into a fist: Danger.
All of Alice's senses open up. He waits. Invisible birds scatter from
tree to tree. Alice grins, sheathes his machete, lifts his M-79 grenade
launcher to his shoulder. The "blooper" is like a toy shotgun, comically
small.
Ancient trees stand silent, a jade cathedral of mahogany columns two
hundred feet high, roots entwined, branches interwoven, with thick, scaly
vines roped around solid trunks.
Adrenaline gives us a high.