"Andy McNab - Bravo-Two-Zero" - читать интересную книгу автора (McNab Andy)

hadn't been in the Regiment, he would have been a yuppie or a
spy--albeit in a Crimplene suit.

Most people take tubes of mustard or curry paste with them to jazz up
the rations, and spicy smells emanated from areas where people were
doing supplementary fry-ups. I wandered around and sampled a few.
Everybody carries a "racing spoon" about their person at all times. The
unwritten rule is that whoever has the can or is cooking up has first
go, and the rest has to be shared. You dip your racing spoon in so that
it's vertical, then take a scoop. If it's a big spoon you'll get more
out of a mess tin, but if it's too big--say, a wooden spoon with the
handle broken off--it won't go into a can at all. The search for the
perfect-sized racing spoon goes on.

There was a lot of blaggarding going on. If you didn't like the music
somebody was playing, you'd slip in when they weren't there and replace
their batteries with duds. Mark opened his bergen to find that he'd
lugged a twenty-pound rock with him all the way from Hereford. Wrongly
suspecting me of putting it there, he replaced my toothpaste with
Uvistat sunblock. When I went to use it I bulked up.

I'd first met Mark in Brisbane in 1989 when some of us were being hosted
by the Australian SAS (Special Air Service). He played against us in a
rugby match and was very much the man of the moment, his tree trunk legs
powering him to score all his side's tries. It was the first time our
squadron team had been beaten, and I hated him--all 5'6" of the bastard.
We met again the following year. He was doing Selection, and the day I
saw him he had just returned to camp after an eight-mile battle run with
full kit.

"Put in a good word for us," he grinned when he recognized me. "You lot
could do with a fucking decent sc rum-half."

Mark passed Selection and joined the squadron just before we left for
the Gulf.

"Fucking good to be here, mate," he said as he came into my room and
shook my hand.

I'd forgotten that there was only one adjective in the Kiwi's vocabulary
and that it began with the letter f.

The atmosphere in our hangar was jovial and lively. The Regiment hadn't
been massed like this since the Second World War. It was wonderful that
so many of us were there together. So often we work in small groups of
a covert nature, but here was the chance to be out in the open in large
numbers. We hadn't been briefed yet, but we knew in our bones that the
war was going to provide an excellent chance for everybody to get down
to some "green work"--classic, behind-the-lines SAS soldiering. It was
what David Stirling had set the Regiment up for in the first place, and