"Энди Макнаб. Немедленная операция (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

habit that was all his own. Every time he saw an aircraft he'd say, "See
that aircraft? The distance we're oing to walk today, he's just traveled
with one sip of his gin and tonic."
Clive was a singley who'd been a Royal Engineer and was another old
embassy and Falklands hand. He kept himself to himself but was very much
into cycling and running; he had all the cycling stuff and bone T-shirts.
Clive's nightly ritual was a pint of beer and a cigar. He was an
excellent long-distance runner despite his height; he looked too tall and
gangly to move fast. It was very annoying; he looked like this uncoordinated
mess on the run, but - he really motored. One New Year's Day Bulmer's had
organized a ten-kilometer race. Clive and I turned up with a couple of
runners from A Squadron, and I thought it would be really good to beat him,
just for once. I'd been doing a lot of training and was feeling really fit;
off we went, and for the whole race there was no sign of Clive. I was
chuffed to bits that he was behind me and was looking forward to stagging
him when he got in.
Then, as I was running down the hill toward the finish line, I spotted
him. He was on his bike all wrapped up in his Belly Hansen, having finished
the race and already on his way home.
Ken was the staff sergeant, the troop head boy, and had been away
during Malaya. A southerner from the Intelligence Corps, he was a fellow
jap-slapper of Mick's. The two of them had known each other for donkey's
years, even when Mick was a civvy; when Mick was shivering in his council
flat in Wales after everything had gone bust, half a ton of coal had turned
up. Mick had run outside shouting, "No, no, no, don't deliver. I can't
afford this!" but the driver had shown him the chit, paid for by a "Ken" in
Hereford. It was something that Mick had never forgotten, and he still
talked about Ken as the one who had saved him.
Ken was an excellent troop head shed, always very honest about his
capabilities; rather than bluff he wouldn't be afraid to say, "I don't know
about this.
Anybody got any ideas?" He was tall and toothless, having lost his
front teeth while jap-slapping for Britain; you'd know when Ken was pissed
because his jaw would sag and his falsies would clatter out onto the table.
He talked very rapidly and aggressively; somebody would ask, "Hey, Ken, give
us that newspaper a minute," and he'd say, "Fight you for it." Joking but
meaning it. Sade was doing well in the charts and he drooled over her. We
used to slag her down all the time and call her Sadie, then wonder why we
were walking around with black eyes.
Ken had brought his dog over with him, a big Doberman. When he went
away on operations, he'd say, "Don't overfeed this dog. It gets one scoff a
day and that's it." Tiny -used to get trays of sausages and feed this dog
stupid until it couldn't move; it would be splayed out all over the place.
It would get so exhausted with the amount of food it had eaten that we'd get
it into Ken's bed and tuck it in. Ken would come back to find the dog fast
asleep in his bed, farting and severely overweight.
Fraser was the troop sergeant and very experienced, which was good when
it came to working with other organizations-communicating with helicopters,
for example, if they were going to come in. It was his job to have the
overall picture. He had been part of the training wing when I did my first