"Nichol, John - Stinger" - читать интересную книгу автора (Nichol John)

All characters in this publication are fictitious and any resemblance
to real persons, living or dead is purely coincidental.

British Library Cataloguing in Publication Data Hardcover edition ISBN
0 340 75115 0 Trade paperback editioj rcoxT f\ Typeset by Hewer Text
Lid, Edinburgh Printed and bound in Great Britain by Mackays of
Chatham, PLC, Chatham, Kent Hodder and Stoughton A division of Hodder
Headline PLC 338 Euston Road London NW1 3BH

STINGER

Foreword The CIA covertly supplied hundreds of Stinger missiles to the
Mujahedeen in Afghanistan during the war with the Soviet Union. The
SAS trained the Mujahedeen in the use of the Stingers, which wreaked
havoc among Soviet helicopter-gunships, military and civilian
aircraft.

At the end of the conflict an estimated 300-400 missiles remained
unaccounted for. The US originally offered $3 million to buy them
back. This was increased to $30 million when US Intelligence received
information suggesting that Libya was attempting to purchase them. The
ransom has never been paid and the whereabouts of the missing Stingers
remain unknown.

One of the reasons for the panic that engulfed the US government after
the downing of TWA Flight 800 in July 1996 was the fear that it had
been shot down by Fundamentalist terrorists armed with Stingers.1 John
Nichol May 1999 Gost Force, The Secret History of the SAS, by Ken
Connor (Wridenfeld & Nicolson.

Prologue I sat silent as the blank screen of the briefing room filled
with a grainy colour image of a 747 rolling along a taxiway, through a
haze of heat rising from the tarmac. Sidelit by the setting sun, it
thundered down the runway and rumbled into the air, its jet wash
rattling the chain link perimeter fencing and stirring a storm of dust
and litter from the waste ground beyond the wire.

The camera tracked the jet climbing into the darkening sky, the smoke
trails from its engines merging with the pall of smog hanging over the
city. The towers of Manhattan were framed beneath the wing for a
moment, then disappeared as the jet began a long turn south and east.

The neat grid of street lights flared into a brief, dirty smudge of
light at Coney Island before the jet was clear of the land. Still
holding the climb, it banked further east to follow the shore of Long
Island out towards the open sea.

John Nichol To the north of the jet I could see the twin tracks of the
airport's main runways and the navigation lights moving across the sky
with military precision, one line of jets dropping towards the north