The Complete Hammer's Slammers, Vol. 2 полностью

Gangbuster IIstarted to lift for the dike. That was almost certainly the Hindi aiming point, but Des Grieux had the sight picture he wanted, heneeded—

Des Grieux tripped the main gun.Five meters of mud and vegetation exploded as the 20cm bolt slanted across the base of the hedge.

The jolt of sun-hot plasma certainly blinded the laser pickup. It probably incinerated the observer as well: no mud burrow could withstand the impact of a tank's main gun.

The causeway was gouged as if a giant shark had taken a bite out of it. The soil steamed. Fragments of hedge blazed and volleyed orange sparks for twenty meters from where the bolt hit.

The weapon the observer controlled, a rack of four hypervelocity rockets dug into the edge of the causeway ten meters west of the rangefinder,was not damaged by the bolt. The observer's dying reflex must have closed the firing circuit.

Asection of causeway collapsed from the rockets' back blast.Gangbuster II's automatic defense system fired too late to matter. The sleet of steel pellets disrupted the razor-sharp smoke trails, but the projectiles themselves were already past.

The exhaust tracks fanned out slightly from the launcher. One of the four rockets missedGangbuster's turret by little more than the patina on the iridium surface. The sound of their passage was a single, brittlec-c-crack!

BecauseGangbuster IIwas turning in the last instant before the missiles fired—and because the main gun had blasted the observer into stripped atoms and steam before he could correct for the course change—the tank was undamaged, and Des Grieux was still alive to do what he did best.

It was time to do that now, whatever Broglie's orders said.

"Driver, steer for the road!" Des Grieux ordered. "Highball! We're goanna gut 'em like fish, all the way t' the town!"

"Via, we can't do that!" Pesco blurted.Gangbuster IIdropped off the dike in a flurry of dirt, water, and vegetation diced by the fans. "Cap'n Broglie said—"

Des Grieux craned his body forward and aimed his carbine. He fired, dazzling the direct vision sensors built into the driver's hatch coaming. The bolt vaporized a tubful of water ahead ofGangbuster IIand sent cyan quivers through a semicircle of the paddy.

"Drive, you son of a bitch!" Des Grieux shouted.

Pesco resumed steering to starboard, increasing the slantGangbuster IIhad taken to bring the 20cmgun to bear.The gap that bolt had blown in the causeway's border steadied across the tank's bow slope.