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

a problem because of the noise Lotfi was making. But, fuck it, there was no
other way. He just had to take his time. But at least once the first block
was out, it would be a lot easier to attack the mortar. It would have been
quicker and safer, noise-wise, to blow a hole in the wall at the same time
as the tanks were cut, but I couldn't have been sure that the right amount
of wall had been destroyed, allowing the fuel to gush out before it was
ignited.
I laid the four OBIs in a straight line on the floor as Hubba-Hubba and
his mate, the evil eye protector, assembled and checked the frame charges
from his bergen. These were very basic gizmos, eight two-foot-long strips of
plastic explosive, two inches wide, an inch thick, taped on to eight lengths
of wood. He was making sure the PE had connected by rolling more in his
hands before pushing it into the joints as he taped the wood together to
make the two square frame charges. He had pushed two dodgy-looking Russian
flash detonators into the PEon the opposing sides of each charge, then
covered them with yet more PE. Both charges had then been wrapped in even
more tape until they looked like something from kids' TV. It was bad
practice using the dets like that, but this was a low tech job and these
sorts of details counted. If the charges didn't detonate we'd have to leave
them, and if they looked sophisticated and exotic it would arouse suspicion
that maybe the job hadn't been down to GIA.
Just to make sure they'd jump to the wrong conclusion, I'd made up a
PIRA [Provisional IRA] timer unit to detonate them. They were dead simple,
using a Parkway timer, a device about the size of a 50p piece that worked
very much like a kitchen egg-timer. They were manufactured as key rings to
remind you of when your meter was about to expire. The energy source was a
spring, and the timers were reliable even in freezing or wet weather
conditions.
I watched as Hubba-Hubba disappeared to the side of the tanks facing
the sea with his squares of wood and left me to sort out the OBIs. I heard
the clunk as the first frame charge went on to the tank, held in place by
magnets. He was placing them just above the first weld marks. Steel storage
tanks are maybe half an inch thick at the bottom, due to the amount of
pressure they have to withstand from the weight of fuel. There is less
pressure above the first weld, so the steel can be thinner, maybe about a
quarter of an inch on these old tanks. The frame charges might not be
technically perfect, but they'd have no problem cutting through at that
level, as long as they had good contact with the steel.
I heard the magnets clank into position on the second. He was doing
everything at a walk, just as we had rehearsed. This wasn't so that we
didn't make a noise and get compromised, but because I didn't want him to
run and maybe fall and destroy the charges. We'd only made two, and I had no
great wish to end this job hanging upside down in an Algerian cell while my
head was on the receiving end of a malicious lump of four-by-two.
I laid the green safety fuse alongside the OBIs that I'd placed in the
sand a metre apart. The safety fuse between each OBI would burn for about a
minute and a half, just like when Clint Eastwood lit sticks of dynamite with
his cigar. A minute and a half was just a guide, as it could be plus or
minus nine seconds or even quicker if the core was broken and the flame
jumped the gaps instead of burning its way along the fuse. That was the