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

gently.
Bang.
Doc Jay's right ear is split. Cautiously, the Doc touches the side of
his head, feels wet, jagged meat.
Bang.
A bullet cuts off Doc Jay's nose.
Bang.
A bullet passes through Doc Jay's cheeks. He coughs, spits up uprooted
teeth and pieces of his gums.
Animal Mother snarls, fires his machine gun into the canopy.
"Get them back," Cowboy says. He drops his Stetson and Mr. Shortround's
shotgun. He pops another smoke grenade, lobs it in. He jerks Mr.
Shortround's pistol from his shoulder holster. And before I can tell Cowboy
that a pistol is useless in the jungle he punches me on the shoulder like a
kid and runs, feinting as wildly as the narrow trail allows.
We wait.
I know that I should be getting the squad on its feet, but I too am
hypnotized.
From nowhere and from everywhere comes the sound of something laughing.
We all rubberneck to see who aming us is so stone-cold hard that he is
enjoying a world of shit like this.
The sniper is laughing at us.
We try to pinpoint the sniper's position. But the source of the
laughter is all around us. The laughter seems to radiate from the jungle
floor, from the jade trees, from the monster plants, from within our own
bodies.
As the dark laughter draws the blood from my veins I see something. My
eyes try to focus on a shadow. Sweat stings my eyes, blurs my vision. And I
see Sorry Charlie, a black skull, perched on a branch, and then I understand
that only a sniper that does not fear death would reveal his position by
laughing....
I squint. I strain my eyes. The laughing skull fades into a shadow.


Today I am a sergeant of Marines.
I laugh and laugh. The squad freezes with fear because the sniper is
laughing with me. The sniper and I are laughing together and we know that
sooner or later the squad will be laughing, too.
Sooner or later the squad will surrender to the black design of the
jungle. We live by the law of the jungle, which is that more Marines go in
than come out. There it is. Nobody asks us why we're smiling because nobody
wants to know. The ugly that civilians choose to see in war focuses on
spilled guts. To see human beings clearly, that is ugly. To carry death in
your smile, that is ugly. War is ugly because the truth can be ugly and war
is very sincere. Ugly is the face of Victor Charlie, the shapeless black
face of death touching each of your brothers with the clean stroke of
justice.
Those of us who survive to be short-timers will fly the Freedom Bird
back to hometown America. But home won't be there anymore and we won't be
there either. Upon each of our brains the war has lodged itself, a black