The Perfect Soldier [antikvár]

PRELUDEH,Lis ability to hope amazed him. Even now, waiting to die, waiting for the bullet in the skull that would resolve his suspended life, he hoped against all logic that he would be spared. He was intelligent enough, and still sane enough, to realize his folly. He was going to die. And all his inextinguishable dreams of rescue were going to end, here and now, on this gray morning. The last shot before the one that would kill him had already echoed itself to death in the maze of scrubby ravines. The bastards were taking their time about it, killing them one at a time, as the morning matured into a chill, briny day, with the wind coming in from the Pacific to the east, skimming over the wastelands the way his aircraft had skimmed its fallen belly over the Korean marshes so many years ago.He had considered himself a very good pilot, buoyant with young-American pride, until that other morning when the antiaircraft rounds had knocked the flight out of his F-86 and he had done what he could to steer it in, too low to eject, too late, maybe too afraid. He woke up to blows from shouting men with furious faces, pummeling his broken arm until the skyrockets of pain made him shriek. Then he went1