– Vasya, comrade Soviet Ensign! Where is the cart? Where are the poles? Damn your mother in all ways!
Bashkalo whirled himself around so, that even the KHM92 swung on him, slapped both his sides, and from ten meters away Vadim saw how his round face sharply and completely burned, turning exactly the color of a disk on a pole. It became even more crimson than disc painted with iron oxide. Even his facial features disappeared and only the mustache was protruding like swollen scratches. The red muzzle of the Ensign. Vadim had never read a book, but certainly in one there is this: “the red muzzle of the Ensign”.
“Let's not forget, all of a sudden”, said Mumbler importantly, “that Bashkalo has been going to the Zone from the very beginning, that he is a skillful and tireless stalker, and that an KHM, for some reason called by trackers along with AK-47, sings in Bashkalo's hands at the firing line cleaner than a nightingale. You should be careful with him.”
– Nikolaich… – Said Bashkalo. – Damn, Nikolaich! I don't know! Don't remember! I fucked up, Nikolaich!
In the garden cart, gently painted in grey color, Bashkalo was driving fifty poles – sharpened, treated with linseed oil cuttings for mops with numbered disks nailed to them by copper braces. Gently painted in bright red, fiery color. (The whole previous month, Vadim had dedicated two or three hours every God's day to painting carts and poles.) The combat mission of the group of the Senior Ensign Petrovich in today's expedition was formulated as “reconnaissance and designation of the third quarter of the route 'Obelisk – m/u 20224 '.” In that way, the loss of the poles was ruining the task, the mission in general, and Petrovich's reputation, as it is said: “the Senior officer is responsible.”
– As in a dream, Nikolaich, don't remember! – Bashkalo said earnestly. – Missed it!
“The chunk is lying”, thought Vadim. (Or that was Mumbler?) “He does remember. Left it intentionally. There, in a ditch below the embankment. There the cart is standing now, and forever. He was supposed to go last, dragging the cart along the gravel and across the rails, and in horror, and blindly, when the third railcar easily could catch the cart, also pulling him, could knock him down and chew him up under the real wheels… so to hell with it, the cart, and on the other side of the railway – be that as it may. The money for the mission had already dripped in, and next time Petrovich would not take him. And glory to the CPSU