"Энди Макнаб. День независимости (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

shown a modern shutter-type garage door at the side, facing away from us
towards the road. A dirt track connected it with the main drag.
Inside the high protection was a long, low building. It wasn't exactly
palatial, but showed that the fuel and tea bag business paid Zeralda well
enough for him to have his own little playpen.
Double doors from quite a lot of the rooms opened on to a series of
tiled courtyards decorated with plants and fountains, but what the satellite
photographs hadn't been able to show us was which room was which. That
didn't really matter, though. The house wasn't that big and it was all on
one floor, so it shouldn't take us long to find where Zeralda was doing his
entertaining.
The metal led road flanked the far side of these two areas and formed
the base of the triangular peninsula.
Lotfi moved back down into the dead ground and started to scramble
along in the darkness to his left, just below the lip. As we followed, two
cars raced along the road, blowing their horns at each other in rhythmic
blasts before eventually disappearing into the darkness. I'd read that
eighty per cent of men under the age of thirty were jobless in this country
and inflation was in high double figures. How anybody could afford fast cars
was beyond me. I could only just about afford my motorbike.
We got level with the tanks and moved up to the lip of the high ground.
Hubba-Hubba took off his bergen and fished out the wire cutters and a
two-foot square of red velvet curtain material, while we put on and adjusted
the black and white check she mags that would hide our faces when we hit the
hut. I wouldn't be taking part directly because of my skin colour and blue
eyes. I would only come into the equation when the other two had located
Zeralda. It wouldn't matter that he saw me.
When Hubba-Hubba got his bergen back on and his shemag around his head
we checked each other again as Lotfi drew his pistol and did his school-trip
routine, with a nod to each of us as we copied.
Breaking the operation down into stages, so that people knew exactly
what to do and when to do it, made things easier for me. These were good men
but I couldn't trust my life with people I didn't know very well and whose
skills, beyond the specifics of this operation, I wasn't sure about.
Following Lotfi, with me now at the rear, we moved towards the fence
line It was pointless running or trying to avoid being in the open for the
thirty or so metres: it was just flat ground and the light in the compound
hadn't hit us directly yet as the arc lights were facing into the compound,
not out. We would get into that light spill before long, and soon after that
we'd be attacking the hut, so fuck it, it didn't really matter. There was no
other way of crossing the open ground anyway.
There came a point where, bent over as we tried instinctively to make
ourselves smaller, we caught the full glare of the four arc lights set on
high steel posts at each corner of the compound. A mass of small flying
things had been drawn to the pools of light and buzzed around them.
I could hear the rustle of my trousers as my wet legs rubbed together.
I kept my mouth open to cut down on the sound of my breathing. It wasn't
going to compromise us, but doing everything possible to keep noise to a
minimum and make this job work made me feel better. The only other sounds
were of their trainers moving over the rocky ground, and the rhythmic scrape