Читать книгу Forbidden Area онлайн

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Men started coming out of the bow, trotting down the ramp, ten or twelve of them, all carrying weapons, sub-machine guns strapped to their shoulders. They fanned out along the beach like fingers of a fist suddenly unclenched. They deployed in a purposeful manner, and then advanced on the dunes in a skirmish line like soldiers. One headed directly for their hollow, as if he knew they were there. It was too late to run for it now, not with the sand so white and the moon so brilliant.

Henry dropped to his knees and pulled Nina to his side. He scrambled to the left where a clump of rice grass bent over the lip of their hollow, drawing her along with him. They pressed themselves into the sand. They tried to mold their bodies to the shape of the grass's feathery shadow. Henry's arm, pushing down on the girl's back, felt an uncontrollable shaking. He didn't know whether it was her body or his hand that shook. In the space of a few seconds their world had gone crazy. Where only a few minutes before he had been thinking about the future, now there might be no future at all, for these men behaved like hunters moving across a field to flush rabbits or quail, guns held for snap shooting. The hollow was no longer a sanctuary. It was a trap, a convenient pit for killing.