"Энди Макнаб. Удаленный контроль (engl) " - читать интересную книгу автора

LATER
If you work for the British intelligence service (also known as the
Firm) and get formally summoned to a meeting at their headquarters building
on the south bank of the River Thames at Vauxhall, there are three levels of
interview. First is the one with coffee and cookies, which means they're
going to give you a pat on the head. Next down the food chain is the more
businesslike coffee but no cookies, which means they're not asking but
telling you to follow orders. And finally there's no cookies, and no coffee,
either, which basically means that you're in deep shit. Since leaving the
SAS in 1993 and working on deniable operations, I'd had a number at every
level, and I wasn't expecting a nice frothy cappuccino this particular
Monday. In fact I was quite worried, because things hadn't been going too
well.
As I emerged from the subway station at Vauxhall the omens weren't
exactly with me, either. The March sky was dull and overcast, preparing
itself for the Easter holiday; my path was blocked by roadworks, and a burst
from a jackhammer sounded like the crack of a firing squad. Vauxhall Cross,
home of what the press call MI6 but which is actually the Secret
Intelligence Service, is about a mile upstream from the Houses of
Parliament. Bizarrely shaped like a beige and black pyramid that's had its
top cut off, with staged levels, large towers on either side, and a terrace
bar overlooking the river, it needs only a few swirls of neon and you'd
swear it was a casino. It wouldn't look out of place in Las Vegas. I missed
Century House, the old HQ building near Waterloo station. It might have been
1960s ugly, square with


IS

loads of glass, net curtains, and antennae, and not so handy to the
subway, but it was much less pretentious.
Opposite Vauxhall Cross and about two hundred yards across the wide
arterial road is an elevated section of railway line, and beneath that are
arches that have been turned into shops, two of which have been knocked
through to make a massive motorcycle shop. I was early, so I popped in and
fantasized about which Ducati I was going to buy when I got a pay
raise-which wasn't going to be today. What the hell, the way my luck was
going I'd probably go and kill myself on it.
I'd fucked up severely. I'd been sent to Saudi to encourage, then
train, some Northern Iraqi Kurds to kill three leading members of the Ba'ath
party; the hope was that the assassinations would heat everything up and
help dismantle the regime in Baghdad.
The first part of my task was to take delivery in Saudi of some former
Eastern bloc weapons that had been smuggled in-Russian Draganov sniper
weapons, a couple of Makharov pistols, and two AK assault rifles, the
parachute version with a folding stock. All serial numbers had been erased
to make them deniable.
For maximum chaos, the plan was to get the Kurds to make three hits at
exactly the same time in and around Baghdad.
One was going to be a close-quarters shoot, using the Makharovs.