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

States.
Lotfi had shown himself to be a highly skilled and professional
operator as well as a devout Muslim, so I was pleased that this job had got
the OK before Ramadan and also that it was happening in advance of one of
the worst storms ever predicted in this part of the world, which the
meteorologists had forecast was going to hit Algeria within the next twelve
hours. Lotfi had always been confident we'd be able to get in-country ahead
of the weather and before he stopped work for Ramadan, for the simple reason
that God was with us. He prayed enough, giving God sit reps several times a
day.
We weren't going to leave it all to Him, though. Hubba-Hubba wore a
necklace that he said was warding off the evil eye, whatever that was when
it was at home. It was a small, blue-beaded hand with a blue eye in the
centre of the palm, which hung around his neck on a length of cord. I
guessed it used to be a badge, because it still had a small safety-pin stuck
on the back. As far as the boys were concerned, I had a four-man team with
me tonight. I just wished the other two were more help with the paddling.
The job itself was quite simple. We were here to kill a
forty-eight-year-old Algerian citizen, Adel Kader Zeralda, father of eight
and owner of a chain of Spar-type supermarkets and a domestic fuel company,
all based in and around Oran. We were heading for his holiday home, where,
so the int said, he did all his business entertaining. It seemed he stayed
here quite a lot while his wife looked after the family in Oran; he
obviously took his corporate hospitality very seriously indeed.
The satellite photographs we'd been looking at showed a rather
unattractive place, mainly because the house was right beside his fuel depot
and the parking lot for his delivery trucks. The building was irregularly
shaped, like the house that Jack built, with bits and pieces sticking out
all over the place and surrounded by a high wall to keep prying eyes from
seeing the amount of East European whores he got shipped in for a bit of
Arabian delight.
Why he needed to die, and anyone else in the house had to be kept
alive, I really didn't have a clue. George hadn't told me before I left
Boston, and I doubted I would ever find out. Besides, I'd fucked up enough
in my time to know when just to get the game-plan in place, do the job, and
not ask too many questions. It was a reasonable bet that with over 350
Algerian al-Qaeda extremists operating around the globe Zeralda was up to
his neck in it, but I wasn't going to lie awake worrying about that. Algeria
had been caught up in a virtual civil war with Islamic fundamentalist groups
for more than a decade now, and over a hundred thousand lives had been lost
which seemed strange to me, considering Algeria was an Islamic country.
Maybe Zeralda posed some other threat to the West'sinterests. Who
cared? All I cared about was keeping focused totally on the job, so with
luck I'd get out alive and back to the States to pick up my citizenship.
George had rigged it for me; all I had to do in exchange was this one job.
Kill Zeralda, and I was finished with this line of work for good. I'd be
back on the submarine by first light, a freshly minted US citizen, heading
home to Boston and a glittering future.
It felt quite strange going into a friendly country undercover, but at
this very moment, the president of Algeria was in Washington DC, and Mr.