"MCNAB, ANDY - LIBERATION DAY" - читать интересную книгу автора (McNab Andy)

around the fire after carrying out yet another rehearsal of the attack,
and they'd gob off about their time in Europe or when they'd gone on
holiday to the 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,