"Энди Макнаб. Немедленная операция (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

slow Donny Osmond numbers.
I was slowly getting pissed, and I didn't really pay that much
attention when my new friend said, "Call me Pierre."
To me, Pierre was a French blokes name. I hadn't realized it was also a
Chinese woman's. Then, very, very slowly, I started to get the picture. I
looked around and realized that everybody in the bar was a bloke. I looked
again at Pierre-and the awful truth sank in.
"Just going to the toilet," I said, disentangling her hand from my
thigh.
I did a runner, haunted by the faces of all the blokes I'd seen looking
at me through the windows. I was going around for days afterward laughing
manically and saying, "They do the best Spanish omelet in Gibraltar down the
Capri. It's full of dodgy character's, of course, but it's worth it for the
food."
The battalion were coming back to England in November and heading more
or less straightaway for South Armagh. I would be too young to go with them
immediately; you had to be eighteen, because years before there had been too
many seventeen-year-olds getting shot. It was bad PR, so they'd upped the
age limit. I'd have to wait until after my birthday.
We went to Lydd and Hythe for infantry buildup training. We spent a lot
of time on the M.U.F (marksmanship under fire) range and were trained in all
the different scenarios we were likely to meet.
"We are going to be based in South Armagh-bandit country," said our
company commander, "and B Company are going to Crossmaglen, a town that
makes the rest of bandit country look like Camberwick Green."
We were issued with street maps and told to "learn" South Armagh.
There was a shooting during the buildup training, and for the first
time I started to read more of the newspaper than the TV page.
Toward the end of the training we were issued with an optic sight for
our weapons. I'd never seen this bit of kit before, but I knew that it
existed. That was it; I thought I was the international sniper.
In the infantry at that time all the clothing was incredibly basic. We
had a uniform, but no effective waterproofs or warm clothing. If you wanted
stuff like that, you had to buy your own. The most exotic item we were given
to help us through the rigors ahead was a pair of thick arctic socks.
I was eighteen years old. I'd already been in the army for coming up to
two years, but this was 'my first operational tour. Everything was great.
The way I looked at it was I was having a good experience, I was with the
battalion, I thought I was hard as fuck, and I'd have enough money to buy a
car and show Christine a good time when I got back.
Crossmaglen, a cattle market town known to us as XMG, was right on the
border. This meant the players could prepare in Dundalk on the other side,
then pop over and shoot at us. There was a big square in the center, with a
number of small buildings with metal railings in front to hold the
livestock. It was overlooked by Baruki sangar, which was less than a hundred
meters away from the security forces base that we lived in.
Named after a paratrooper called Baruki who got blown up, the sangar
was a big corrugated iron and steel structure. Inside were three GPMGs
(general purpose machine guns), an M79 grenade launcher, smoke dischargers,
radios, and, most important, flasks of tea and sandwiches, because we were