"Энди Макнаб. Последний свет (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

normally didn't happen in the UK, and no way would anyone in their right
mind give this the go. Everything felt wrong, and the Yes Man would never
want to be on the losing side. He'd knife his own grandmother if it meant
promotion; in fact, since he took over the Ks Desk from Colonel Lynn, he was
so far up C's arse he could have flossed his teeth. If things didn't go to
plan, and even if I did evade SB, he wouldn't hesitate to fuck me over if it
meant he could take any credit and pass on any blame.
I needed a safety blanket, so I started by noting down the serial
numbers of all three snipers' weapons before grinding them out. Then I took
Polaroids of all the equipment, plus the three firing positions during the
CTRs. I'd given the snipers photographs in their orders, and I kept a set
myself. I had a full pictorial story of the job, together with photocopies
of each set of sniper's orders. It all went into a bag in Left Luggage at
Waterloo station, along with everything else I owned: a pair of jeans,
socks, pants, washing kit and two fleece jackets.
After loading the three snipers' DLBs, I should have left them alone
but I didn't. Instead I put in an OP (observation post) on Sniper Two's dead
letter box, which was just outside the market town of Thetford in Norfolk.
There was no particular reason for picking Sniper Two's to OP, except that
it was the nearest of the three to London.
The other two were in the Peak District and on Bodmin Moor. All three
had been chosen in uninhabited areas so that once they'd got the weapons,
they could zero them to make sure that the optic sight was correctly aligned
to the barrel so that a round hit the target precisely at a given distance.
The rest -judging the wind, taking leads (aiming ahead of moving targets)
and working out distance is part of the sniper's art, but first the weapon
sight and rounds need to be as one. How they did that, and where they did
that within the area, was up to them.
They were getting more than enough cash to make those decisions
themselves.
Inside the DLB, a 45-gallon oil drum, was a large black Puma tennis bag
that held everything needed for the shoot and was totally sterile of me: no
fingerprints, certainly no DNA. Nothing from my body had made contact with
this kit. Dressed like a technician in a chemical warfare lab, I had
prepared, cleaned and wiped everything down so many times it was a wonder
there was any Parkerization (protective paint) left on the barrels.
Jammed into a Gore-Tex bivi bag and dug in amongst the ferns in
miserable drizzling rain, I waited for Sniper Two to arrive. I knew that all
three would be extremely cautious when they made their approach to lift the
DLBs, carrying out their tradecraft to the letter to ensure they weren't
followed or walking into a trap. That was why I had to keep my distance:
sixty-nine metres to be exact, which in turn had meant choosing a telephoto
lens on my Nikon for more photographic evidence of this job, wrapped in a
sweatshirt to dampen the rewind noise, and shoved into a bin liner so that
just the lens and viewfinder were exposed to the drizzle.
I waited, throwing Mars bars and water down my neck and just hoping
Sniper Two didn't choose to unload it at night.
In the end it was just over thirty boring and very wet hours before
Sniper Two started to move in on the DLB. At least it was daylight. I
watched the hooded figure check the immediate area around a collection of