"Arcady And Boris Strugatsky. Prisoners of Power" - читать интересную книгу автораmines. Clouds covered the sky, and it was drizzling. The grass was wet;
within a few minutes they were drenched. Green followed his compass faithfully, never once straying off course. As the odor of damp rust drifted toward them. Maxim saw three rows of barbed wire and beyond them the dim outline of the tower's massive girders. Raising his head slightly, he could make out a squat triangular structure at the tower's base. The guardhouse. Three legionnaires were sitting there with a machine gun. Indistinguishable voices drifted through the patter of the rain; then a match was lit and the long gunport glowed with a faint yellow light. Green, on all fours, shoved the pole under the barbed wire. "Ready," he whispered. "Back!" They crawled back ten paces and began to wait. Green looked at the luminous hands of his watch. The detonator was clenched in his fist. He was trembling. Maxim could hear his chattering teeth and labored breathing. Maxim was trembling, too. He put his hand into the sack and touched the mines; they felt rough and cold. As the rain grew heavier, all other sounds were drowned out. Green rose slightly on all fours and kept whispering something: he was either praying or cursing. "OK, you bastards!" he shouted suddenly as he made a sharp movement with his right hand. The click of the blasting cap was followed by a hissing, and up ahead a sheet of red flames spouted from the earth. And far to the left, another broad sheet leaped up, blasted their ears, and scattered hot wet earth, clumps of smoldering grass, and chunks of red-hot metal. Green darted forward. Suddenly a blinding light lit up the entire area. Maxim squinted. A cold shiver ran down his spine as a thought flashed through his brain: "We've had it." But there wasn't any shooting, and only rustling and hissing broke the When Maxim opened his eyes, he saw the gray guardhouse, a large gap in the barbed wire, and small solitary figures on the vast empty expanse surrounding the tower. The figures were running as fast as they could toward the guardhouse, silently, soundlessly, stumbling, falling, jumping up and running again. Then Maxim heard a plaintive groan: Green was sitting on the ground behind the barbed wire and rocking from side to side with his head in his hands. Maxim rushed to him and pulled his hands away from his face. His eyes bulged and saliva bubbled on his Ups. Still no firing. An eternity had passed, but the guardhouse was silent. Suddenly a familiar song rang out. Maxim turned the slobbering Green on his back and fumbled in his pocket with his other hand. Lucky thing that the General had been overcautious and had given Maxim a supply of painkillers. He pried open Green's mouth and forced him to swallow them, Then he grabbed Green's submachine gun and turned around, looking for the source of the blinding light. Still no firing, and the solitary figures continued to run. One was now quite close to the guardhouse, another not far behind him, and a third, running from the right, suddenly flung his arms out as he fell and tumbled head over heels. "Oh, how the enemy weeps!" bellowed the singing voices. And the light beat down from above, from a height of some dozen meters, probably from the tower, which he couldn't make out now. There were five or six blinding blue and white disks. Maxim raised his gun, aimed at the disks, and pulled the trigger. The homemade weapon, small, awkward, and unfamiliar, trembled in his hands. As if in reply, red flashes sparked in the gunport. Suddenly |
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