Read Online For Valour by Andy McNab - Free Book Online Page B

outfit called OSJC ‘IZHMASH’, founded by Tsar Alexander I in 1807. Their plant at Izhevsk had turned out more than eleven million rifles and carbines during the Second World War. It was still the proud producer of the Kalashnikov AK-47 and the Warsaw Pact sniper’s favourite, the Dragunov SVD.
    These things weren’t as well engineered as the Winchester or the Remington and didn’t guarantee their pinpoint accuracy, but in the right hands they could do some serious damage. I had the feeling that this one – an SVDS with folding stock extended – was in the right hands now.

15
    He spotted the glow from the Bolthole immediately, and got the butt in his shoulder as he advanced.
    I stepped back, removed my left glove and powered up the iPhone again, shielding its glow in my right palm. I pressed ‘A’ once, then the stop bar the moment I heard the G3 ring.
    A nanosecond later I heard nine rounds being pumped into the mouth of the cave, followed by the distinctive metallic clicks of a mag being removed and replaced while he still had a round in the chamber. Good skills. This lad wasn’t fucking about.
    The silence returned.
    Even the wind seemed to stop and wait for his next move.
    Then footsteps crunched towards me through the snow.
    Going into slow-mo, I slid the NVGs carefully off my head and put them down beside the shovel, pocketed the iPhone and pulled on my glove. Taking a deep breath to oxygenate myself for the drama ahead, I retrieved the ice axe and rose to my feet.
    The crunch rate slowed and began to sound more cautious, but Sniper One kept on coming.
    I heard his waterproofs rustle as he moved.
    He’d keep his SVD in the aim – no way would that butt be taken out of the shoulder now. Finger pad on the trigger. Safety lever down and off. Eyes flicking left and right as he advanced towards his target.
    He’d kick my beautifully sculpted snow tunnel apart with his boot. Then he’d have to stoop down to look inside. That was the moment I wanted to be on top of him. Give him no time to react. No room to move.
    It wouldn’t take him long to discover that he’d emptied his magazine into my daysack. But by then his night vision should be well and truly nailed by the hexamine blaze. Even if it wasn’t, I’d have to crack on and take him, to render his rifle a whole lot less effective than it had been when Trev’s eyebrows were at the centre of the optic.
    The crunches came to a halt.
    I flexed my finger muscles, closed both hands over the grip of my ice axe and bent my knees. As soon as he leaned down to inspect what lay behind the entrance, he was mine.
    I could hear him breathe.
    He was at the mouth of the cave.
    I stepped out, axe raised above my head, eyes focused on the space between his shoulder-blades as he crouched below me.
    The almost subliminal clink of crampon on rock and the sixth sense shared by every hunter in the universe made him look up before my feet had left the ledge.
    He threw himself sideways and tried to roll away before I could swing the pick down – tried to get out of my range, heave his barrel up and get a round into me. But it wasn’t working.
    My crampons dug into the snow. I zeroed in on his centre mass and cannoned into him. I wasn’t aiming my weapon with any precision. All I wanted to do was drive four or five inches of sharpened metal into him as far as I could and take it from there.
    I managed to make contact. With all the movement going on beneath me, I couldn’t immediately tell where the pointy bit had connected, but I felt it tear into flesh and muscle and the shaft juddered as I raked it up his spine. He grunted or cursed and twisted away, wrenching himself clear of my ice axe and putting some space between us. Blood glistened around a big tear in his waterproof top.
    I raised the pick above my head for a repeat performance as he turned towards me again. The pain must have been outrageous, but it didn’t seem to register. He kept on coming, filling the air with