if you want a script that prints the content of a bam to stdout, I wrote a tool based on samtools tview at http://code.google.com/p/variationtoolkit/

$ echo -e "ref\t3\nref2\t2" |\
  vcfttview -x 3 -B toy.bam -R toy.fa

>ref:3

1         11              21        31         41        51        61           
AGCATGTTAGATAA****GATA**GCTGTGCTAGTAGGCAG*TCAGCGCCATNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
      ........    ....  ......K.K......K. ..........                            
      ........AGAG....***...      ,,,,,    ,,,,,,,,,                            
        ......GG**....AA                                                        
        ..C...**** ...**...>>>>>>>>>>>>>>T.....

>ref2:2

1         11            21        31        41        51        61              
aggttttataaaac****aattaagtctacagagcaactacgcgNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNNN
.............Y    ..W...................                                        
..............****..A...                                                        
 .............****..A...T.                                                      
     .........AAAT.............                                                 
         C...T****....................                                          
           ..T****.....................                                         
             T****......................

For small numbers of sequences of ~20bp or longer you can use blat and then visualize the alignments in the genome browser. But, for larger numbers of reads you probably want to use an aligner like bwa and then load the result into a viewer like IGV.

Tablet is also a good tool for visualizing short read alignments to a reference sequence.