"Энди Макнаб. Немедленная операция (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автораlast patrol; it could be just an old druggle in there, or it could be
something put in as a come-on. We loaded our weapons in the loading bay and stood behind the main gate, waiting for the order to go. It was a lazy, hot summer evening, not much traffic, and the birds were singing. We listened on the net to the'other patrol who were in the town, speaking in code words and numbers because our comms were not secure and the players had scanners. You don't saunter out of a security forces station; you bomb-bust out-which means that you run like a fucking idiot for about twenty-five meters to get out of the immediate vicinity, before regrouping. If they were going to put a shoot in on it or had a bomb rigged up, the one place they definitely knew soldiers were going to be was near the gates as they started a patrol. We all bomb-burst out. Rather than go directly into the town, we'd decided to take a route around the edge of it, in waste ground. We wanted to use the ground as much as possible to keep us away from the eyes of dickers (IRA observers) in case they had something for us. We didn't go through obvious features like holes in hedge lines or natural crossing points, which could be targeted and used to place bombs. We'd never touch anything military-looking either, like a shiny bit of kit that was out on the ground. Soldiers had been blown up picking up a water bottle, thinking that another patrol had lost it and they'd do them a favor by retrieving it. We came to a small river that we had to cross. No problems, we patrolled through that. Then we started to come up onto the waste ground there it was cuds all the way down to a place called Castle Blaney on the other side of the border. At that time of a Saturday night the streets were full of coaches that had come up to the estate to pick up the locals and take them down to Castle Blaney for "the crack." They'd go for a night out, then come rolling back at two o'clock in the morning. And quite rightly so; if I were stuck in Keady on a Saturday night, I'd want to put the kit on and go over there on the piss. We were patrolling along in dead ground. They couldn't see us, and we couldn't see them, but I was expecting that once we got nearer the housing estate, I'd see a few people. We'd leave them alone. It was pointless going through crowds because it just incited them. Our intention was to go around them, have a quick mooch around the housing estate, and see what was going on. More information was picked up when a patrol was stood still than when it was on the move. It was called lurking; we'd get to a position and just stop. It might be in somebody's backyard on a housing estate; we'd stop, get in the shadows, wait and listen, and see what was going on. It used to be great entertainment for the squaddies; we'd watch everything from domestic rows in kitchens to young couples groping in the mother's front room. Dave's patrol was to the right of me, about 150 meters away, and he was in dead ground to us. There . was no need to talk on the radio. We'd been out there quite a few months already now, and we were working really well together, supporting each other. |
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