Immediate Action by Andy McNab Read Free Book Online Page A

confusion; we might as well just do it, do what we'd been taught: issue a challenge, and then, if necessary, fire.
        Easier said than done. We weren't allowed to have a round cocked in our weapon; we would have to issue a challenge, cock our weapons at the same time, and then get back into the aim.
        I pulled the bolt hack and shouted, "Halt! Stand still!
        This is the army!"
        The characters turned.
        We fired.
        The inner cordon saw the tracer and thought we were being fired at. They opened up on us because that was where the fire was coming from. It was the first time I'd ever fired at people, and the first time I had been fired back at-and it didn't help that it was our own boys.
        We had been taught a thing called crack and thump: When somebody's firing at you, what you're supposed to do is listen for the crack and then the thump as the round hits the ground. From that you can work out distances. An interval of one second, for example, would mean that the weapon was about a hundred meters away. However, the theory wasn't working out. I didn't hear any cracks; all I could hear was the thumps.
        Gil and I got our heads down in a ditch and yelled at the inner cordon to stop.
        The firing increased. Reggie had gone up into one of the half-finished buildings to get a better perspective. He followed the line of the inner cordon's tracer and opened up with an LMG, giving it the good news down on us.
        After what seemed like hours, there was a deafening silence.
        Moments after that there was shit on. The world and his wife were trying to get in on the contact. People in the security base had been listening on the radio and legged it down toward the border, hoping to cut them off.
        Pockets of little contacts were starting all over the place.
        Patrols were opening up on cows, trees, and each other. It was chaos.
        I could see tracer flying. If it hit something solid, it would ricochet and then whiz!straight up into the air.
        Soon the follow-up was in full swing. Dogs were helicoptered in to try to pick up the scent, and off we went: me and Gil, the company commander, the company commander's escort, and the dog handler, traipsing through the fields, rivers, and swamps of South Armagh.
        The dogs picked up blood, but the players were good at their trade.
        "The way to evade dogs is to get on flat, open ground," the handler said. "If you start running along riverbeds, it just keeps the scent in those areas."
        "Running over a stream is lack shit use, too," he panted as we jogged along behind the dogs. "All the dog does is a thing called casting on the other side, and he'll pick up the scent again. If you get into a wide-open field, the scent is dispersed. You want to do a lot of zigzagging, which slows the dog down, makes it harder for him to pick up your scent."
        Sometimes the dogs lost the scent and sniffed around aimlessly.
        The handler sent them forward to cast for it.
        They'd pick it up again, and off we'd go. It was exciting stuff, like hare and hounds. It brought out a really basic human instinct.
        It was exciting to be part of something so much bigger than my own little rifle company. There were two helicopters going around on Night Sun, a fearsome big floodlight, with people on the ground directing them by radio. The effort put in to get these two people was massive, and I was a part of that. I was one of the two who instigated it, and it felt really good.
        We were out all night and came back well into first light, empty-handed.
        Our trousers had been shredded by barbed-wire fences. I was soaking wet, cold, and hungry and totally knackered. We still had to carry on work the next day; there were still stags to do, patrols to go out.
        But it didn't worry me at all because I felt so excited; at last I had done what I was there to do.
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