The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2 полностью

Five-year-old Dickie Suilin screamed, "Suzi!" as his older sister squeezed his nostrils shut and clapped her other hand over his mouth. The flames arcing over the skirts ofFlamethrowerroared their laughter.

He could breathe after all.A mask of some sort had extended from the earpieces of the commo helmet as soon as the inferno waved an arm of blazing diesel fuel to greet the combat car plunging toward it. Suilin could breathe, and he could see again when overload reset his visor from thermal display to optical.

Though there wasn't much to see except flames curling around black steel skeletons, the chassis of trucks whose flammable portions were already part of the red/orange/yellow/white billows.

Even steel burned when Suilin raked it with his tribarrel. Faces bloomed into smears of vapor and calcined bones . . . .

Blue Two grunted head-on down the road, spewing a wake of blazing debris to either side. Cooter's driver followed, holdingFlamethrowerat a 45° degree angle along the edge of the cut.

The slant threw the men in the fighting compartment toward the fire their vehicle was skirting.Gale clung to the starboard coaming. Cooter must have locked his tribarrel in place, because he was frozen like a statue of Effort on its grips.

And Dick Suilin, after a hellish moment of feeling his torso swing out and down toward the bellowing flames, braced his feet against the inner face of the armor and grabbed Cooter by the waist. If the big lieutenant minded, they could discuss it later.

Something as soft-featured and black as a tar statue reached out of the flames and gripped the coaming to either side of Suilin's tribarrel. The only parts of the figure that weren't black were the teeth and the great red cracks writhing in what had been the skin of both arms. The thing fell away without trying to speak.

Only a shadow. Only a sport thrown by the flames.

"Help me, Suzi," the reporter whispered. "Help me, Suzi."

Blue Two sucked fire along with it for an instant as the tank cleared the ambush site. Then the return flow,cool sweet air, pistoned Hell back into its proper region and washed Suilin in its freedom as well.

This car wasFlamethrower. For the first time, Suilin realized how black was the humor with which the Slammers named their vehicles.

The driver brought them level with a violence that banged the skirts on the roadway. Suilin grunted. He reached for the grips of his tribarrel, obeying an instinct to hang onto something after he lost his excuse to hold Cooter.