"Энди Макнаб. День независимости (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

LIBERATION DAY

One.
TUESDAY, 6 NOVEMBER 2001, 23:16 hrs
The submarine had broken surface ten minutes earlier, and its deck was
still slippery beneath my feet. Dull red torchlight glistened on the black
steel a few metres ahead of me as five of the boat's crew feverishly
prepared the Zodiac inflatable. As soon as they'd finished it would be
carrying me and my two team members across five kilometres of Mediterranean
and on to the North African coast.
One of the crew broke away and said something to Lotfi, who'd been
standing next to me by the hatch. I didn't understand that much Arabic, but
Lotfi translated. They are finished, Nick we are ready to float off."
The three of us moved forward, swapped places with the submariners, and
stepped over the sides of the Zodiac on to the anti-slip decking. Lotfi was
the cox and took position to the right of the Yamaha 75 outboard. We bunched
up near him, each side of the engine. We wore black bobble hats and gloves,
and a 'dry bag' - a GoreTex suit over our clothes with rubber wrists and
neck to protect us from the cold water. Our kit had been stowed in large
zip-lock waterproof bags and lashed to the deck along with the fuel
bladders.
I looked behind me. The crew had already disappeared and the hatch was
closed. We'd been warned by the captain that he wasn't going to hang around,
not when we were inside the territorial waters of one of the most ruthless
regimes on earth. And he was willing to take even fewer risks on the
pick-up, especially if things had gone to rat shit while we were ashore. No
way did he want the Algerians capturing his boat and crew. The Egyptian navy
couldn't afford to lose so much as a rowing-boat from their desperately
dilapidated fleet, and he didn't want his crew to lose their eyes or
bollocks, or any of the other bits the Algerians liked to remove from people
who had pissed them off.
"Brace for float-off." Lotfi had done this before.
I could already feel the submarine moving beneath us. We were soon
surrounded by bubbles as it blew its tanks. Lotfi slotted the Yamaha into
place and fired it up to get us under way. But the sea was heaving tonight
with a big swell, and no sooner had our hull made contact with the water
than a wave lifted the bow and exposed it to the wind. The Zodiac started to
rear up. The two of us threw our weight forward and the bow slapped down
again, but with such momentum that I lost my balance and fell on to my arse
on the side of the boat, which bounced me backwards. Before I knew what was
happening, I'd been thrown over the side.
The only part of me uncovered was my face, but the cold took my breath
away as I downed a good throatful of salt water. This might be the
Mediterranean, but it felt like the North Atlantic.
As I came to the surface and bobbed in the swell, I discovered that my
dry bag had a leak in the neck seal. Sea-water seeped into my cheap pullover
and cotton trousers.
"You OK, Nick?" The shout came from Lotfi.
"Couldn't be better," I grunted, breathing hard as the other two hauled