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

the GIA, the Armed Islamic Group. They were probably the cruel lest and most
screwed-up bunch I'd ever come across. These guys had been trained and
battle-hardened in places like Afghanistan, where they'd fought with the
mujahadeen against the Russians. After that, they'd fought in Chechnya, and
then in Bosnia and anywhere else they felt Muslims were getting fucked over.
Now they were back in Algeria and this time it was personal. They wanted an
Islamic state with the Qur'an as its constitution, and they wanted it today.
In the eyes of these people, even OBL (Osama Bin Laden ) was a wimp. In
1994, in a grim precursor of attacks to come, GIA hijacked an Air France
plane in Algiers, intending to crash it in the middle of Paris. It would
have worked if it hadn't been for French anti-terrorist forces attacking the
plane as it refuelled, killing them all.
Unlike me, all the equipment in my bergen was dry. I peeled off my dry
bag, and immediately felt colder as the air started to attack my wet
clothes. Too bad, there was nothing I could do about it. I checked chamber
on my Russian Makharov pistol, pulling back the top slide just a few
millimetres and making sure, for maybe the fourth and last time on this job,
that the round was just exposed as it sat in the chamber ready to be fired.
I glanced to the side to see the other two doing the same. I let the top
slide return until it was home tight before applying safe with my thumb,
then thrust the pistol into the internal holster that I'd tucked into the
front of my trousers.
Lotfi was in a good mood.
"Your gun wet too?"
I nodded slowly at his joke and whispered back, as I shouldered my
bergen, "Pistol, it's a pistol or weapon. Never, ever a gun."
He smiled back and didn't reply. He didn't have to: he'd known it would
get me ticking.
I made my final check: my two mags were still correctly placed in the
double mag holder on my left hip. They were facing up in the thick bands of
black elastic that held them onto my belt, with the rounds facing forwards.
That way I would pull down on a mag to release it and they would be facing
the right way to slam into the pistol.
Everyone was now poised to go, but Lotfi still checked" Ready like a
teacher at the airport on a school trip, making everyone show their
passports for the tenth time. We all nodded, and he led the way up to the
high ground. I fell in just behind him.
Lotfi was the one taking us on target because he was the only one who
had been ashore and carried out a CTR [close target recce]. Besides, he was
the one in charge: I was here as the guest European, soon to be American,
terrorist.
There was a gentle rise of about forty metres from the tip of the
peninsula where we'd landed to the target area. We zigzagged over sand and
rock. It was good to get moving so I could warm up a little.
We stopped just before the flat ground and sat and waited for a vehicle
to make its way along the road. Lotfi checked it out. No one said it, but we
were all worried about the police being stationed so close, and whether,
because of the terrorist situation here, they constantly patrolled their
immediate area for security. I was still happy to stop and catch my breath.
My nose was starting to run a little.