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

we should have been using as little as possible, but it did look like a very
big tree.
"Sure this will be all right?"
"Yeah, no problem."
We moved back with our firing cable. Everybody else was doing the same;
we were going to fire them all off one by one and see what happened.
Raymond and Mal were by their tree. Keith, our DS, said, "Put your
cable into the initiator and fire."
They fired the electric current into the det, which detonated some det
cord and blew up the plastic explosive.
There was a boom, and we all looked up to make sure nothing was going
to fall on our heads. The tree fell perfectly.
"Good stuff, well done. Next one."
Tom and I put our firing cable in.
"Stand by. Firing!"
There was a massive explosion that shook the ground.
The tree went straight up in the air and disappeared from sight.
"How much fucking P.E [plastic explosive] did you put in that?"
the DS raged. "The correct amount," I said. "We did the formula,
honest."
"Bollocks!" Keith stormed over to where the P.E was stored. There was
almost none left.
"That's tearing the arse out of it," he said, and I waited for the
bollocking that I thought would follow.
But instead he said, "Oh, well, at least it ignited, I'll give you
credit for that much." It was the first time I'd seen a DS smile.
The next day I took my patrol up to an area where we were going to blow
more trees. When we arrived, we found that the explosives, which were the
responsibility of the DS, hadn't been delivered.
"We'll have to go back down to the camp and find somebody," I said.
"Otherwise we'll screw up our timings."
I knew the area where the DS lived was out of bounds. We got to the
edge of it, called, and didn't hear anything, so I decided to take a chance
and go through.
After all, it wasn't our fault that the explosives weren't where they
should have been.
Bad mistake. The sergeant major caught us and started to rip into me.
"Why are you doing this? We've told you not to come through here."
"Well, the explosives weren't there, and the timings are crucial," I
said. "We're not going to get everything done unless we get hold of them. I
called, and I know it's got to be there on time, so I made the decision to
come through."
I thought I was in the right, and possibly I was. However, I was on
continuation. I should have just shut up and taken the bollocking and let it
go. But like an idiot, I didn't. I just hoped that he hadn't marked my card.
One of the major components of our training was jungle navigation.
The first time I looked at a map of the jungle, all I could see was
contour lines and rivers. We had to learn how to travel with these
limitations but, more important, simply how to recognize where we were on
the ground.