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

I didn't know if there was anybody left outside the wagon who'd done a
runner. Had they run into the housing estate? Had they run into the shops?
Had they run down to the junction, which was only about ten meters away, and
turned left? Or turned right, up an old disused railway line? Who knew? I
had no idea what was going on.
In my peripheral vision I saw a group of people on the floor of the
shop, cowering. A man stood up quickly. As far as I was concerned, he could
have a gun. I turned around and gave it a couple high through the window so
he got the message. The glass caved in, and the bloke threw himself to the
floor.
"And stay down!" I shouted. I didn't know who was more scared, the
people in the shop or me. It was a stupid, bone reaction of mine to shoot
through the glass, but I didn't know what else to do; I was so hyped up that
anything that moved was a threat.
I ran up to a left-hand junction about ten meters away from the point
of the contact. Time and time again during the buildup training we'd
practiced two ways of looking around corners. You can get very low and look
around, close up to it, or, better still, you can move away from the corner
and then gradually bring yourself around so you present less of a target. It
was all very well in training because I knew there was nobody around the
other side with an Armalite aimed at me. But here there could be. I took a
deep breath, got down on my belly with the weapon ready to swing around, and
had a quick squint.
There was nobody there. I brought myself around and followed on down
the road a bit, just to check that there weren't any runners that way.
Then I returned to the scene.
One poor fellow who had been part of the crowd was now halfway up the
street. He had been in a wheelchair; the chair was lying on its side and he
was crawling toward the housing estate, cursing and shouting. People were
running from their houses to help him.
I could hear mothers shouting at their children, doors slamming, the
sound of people running. A woman in the shop was screaming, "There's nobody
in here, there's nobody in here!" They knew that we were wound up, and they
didn't want to be killed by faulty judgment.
By this time Scouse was with me and the other two blokes who had come
over the fence line. I went up to the bloke who was carrying the LMG and
started kicking him.
"Where were you?" I shouted.
I had been all hyper; I'd wanted someone else there, and they weren't.
But it wasn't their fault; they couldn't get there.
We started to go forward, looking for runners, at the same time getting
on the radio and talking to the SF (security forces) base to tell them there
had been a contact. No need, they'd heard it anyway.
All they wanted to know was "Any casualties? Any casualties?" At this
stage I didn't know if any of us had been hit or not. The patrol to the
north were running like loonies to get down to us. People were pouring out
of the SF base; Land Rovers were turning up with people in tracksuits and
flak jackets.
There was a massive follow-up. The dog handlers arrived within minutes;
roadblocks were thrown up. The police had to be informed what they were