Andy McNab_Nick Stone 09 by Recoil

Author:Recoil
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Publisher: Transworld
Published: 2007-06-17T23:00:00+00:00

2

As I emerged from the re-entrant and turned towards the tents, Tim came down the valley carrying a baby in each arm, their wailing mother close behind him. I watched him with them, completely competent, completely at ease. If I’d been one of these poor little fuckers, I’d have wanted him close by. It got me thinking about the two of them, or the possibility of the two of them. I didn’t want to ask the question, but I wanted to know the answer.

I cut away again. I still had a job to do, I kept telling myself, as I headed for the tents. Miners surrounded by empty fertilizer bags and the lime-green and yellow jerry-cans of diesel were mixing ANFO in oil drums like they were stirring huge cauldrons of porridge and the three bears were arriving any minute. They had to finish before it rained again. The mix had to be kept dry: one drop of water, it lost its detonation capability. And they didn’t have much time to get the stuff back into the bags and into position before every mad LRA fuck within five hundred miles steamed into the valley.

I got to the bottom of the knoll the tents were sited on and followed the mud track up towards them. Lumps of rock had been positioned at intervals to make progress less slippery, but they didn’t help much.

The HQ was well placed. It commanded an elevated view into the valley as well as out to the river four hundred away and the treeline another thirty or so beyond it.

I scanned Sam’s defences. The canny old Jock hadn’t lost his touch. He might be putting his spiritual salvation in the hands of the Good Lord, but he was clearly in no hurry to put the man in the big white beard to the test. This was textbook stuff.

If you want to defend a position, you don’t just shove a big front door on it like they do in the movies. However dense a line of squaddies you put in the mouth of the valley, you’d be overrun in no time. Instead, you position your defence in depth across the entire area; that way you not only get protection from view and from incoming fire, but cover the valley entrance and the high ground above. If any of the sangars was overrun, others could keep the firefight going. They were everywhere.

Sam would have given each position its arcs of fire. They’d only shoot at targets within those arcs – otherwise they’d start hosing down their own guys in front of them. All the arcs would interlock, so there’d be cover in every area. The GPMGs’ arcs would overlap to make best use of their beaten zones, the stretch of ground on which the cone of fire would fall.

It was good to see that God’s best mate still knew his stuff. But I still thanked fuck I wouldn’t be here when the whole thing kicked off. However good the theory, he still needed lots more manpower to keep the fire going.

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