Ten
TRICKS AND TOOLS OF THE TRADE
“The propellant charge is one quarter of standard,” the master sergeant said. He held the 40mm grenade vertically between his thumb and forefinger. It looked like a pistol bullet enlarged by a factor of ten. “With the projectile weight being, oh, about two and a half times a normal H.E. round, the range is going to be a max of two hundred feet. We’ll have to adjust the charge for the range you want.” He waited for the information.
“One hundred feet,” McAffee obliged. “What’s the range of error?”
“Five feet either way.” The master sergeant wrapped his palm around the special round.
McAffee unfolded the aircraft cabin floor plan. The forward cabin was longer than ten feet as a unit of the interior, so the margin of error was acceptable. “Okay. How many can you have in an hour?”
“How many you need?”
The major gave it a quick thought. “Eight. All the same. Two sealed in HK-69s, and six loose for practice.”
The NCO nodded confidently. “You’ll have ‘em in thirty minutes.” He gave a few commands over his hand-held radio, instructing his crew to adjust the propellant amount in the grenades. “The frame charge is ready. You wanna see it?”
“Let’s do it.” McAffee turned to the aircraft behind. “Captain Graber. Outside with me…pronto.”
The three men went to a grassy area a hundred yards from hangar 9. A row of pines hid the spot from view, but not from the electronic eyes that might be high above. To counter that a canopy was strung between four metal poles driven into the wet earth. Misty rain was settling down from the clouds hidden in the dark sky. Sunrise would be in less than an hour. By that time the weather was supposed to be back to a full-fledged rain.
A corporal stood beneath the canopy, his hand swathed in a towel to dry the aluminum panel of the moisture that was constantly condensing on its top surface. Attached to the bottom with double-sided adhesives was a single-frame charge, hastily but expertly assembled to meet the needs of the team.
“Everything ready, Geller?” the master sergeant asked, bending down to inspect the underside where his handiwork was attached.
“All set. I ran the detonator over to the berm.” He motioned to the sky. “There’s enough tree canopy there to cover it naturally.”
McAffee and Graber inspected the charge and the aluminum. The metal was a quarter inch thick, the same as the material they would need to penetrate on the aircraft. Four concrete poles were holding the metal plate four feet off the ground. Two bolts from each pole held it securely down, the entire structure as rock-solid as a single unit.
“We have four of these, but, unfortunately, we can’t adjust the power on them as easily.” The master sergeant directed the Delta officer toward the mound of dirt that would shield them from the blast. “The blast won’t be as loud as a door charge, and not as much backward concussion. You could probably stay three feet from it with no problem.” He trotted up and over the berm, followed by the others.
“Right here.” The corporal handed the detonator to his superior.
The master sergeant held it up. “Your standard setup. I will caution you: There’s gonna be more smoke than usual. Remember, this thing is like a bunch of HEAT shells packaged around the blast perimeter. They’re practically gonna melt the metal.”
“I hope it’s clean,” Graber said.
The master sergeant smiled. “It will be. Guaranteed.”
They were forty feet from the setup. There was no cover other than the knee-high berm, and none of the soldiers took any further cover.
It sounded like a sledgehammer coming down on a metal beam, followed by a hiss that ended the initial clang. Four sheets of whitish smoke expanded outward from each side of the new square hole in the aluminum. The piece blown free shot only a few feet straight up, with little force, and bounced off the canopy, landing just to the side. It stuck, corner first, in the damp dirt.
The master sergeant waved away a cloud of the dissipating smoke that came his way. He took a flashlight from the corporal and shone it at the center of the white cloud. “C’mon.”
They walked through the artificial mist to the test setup.
“Clean.” The master sergeant tentatively touched the bolted-down aluminum. It was warm at the outer edge — the center was cooling from an orange-red.
McAffee squatted under the setup, then stood through the hole. “This is fine. Good size.”
Graber pointed to the blown-out section. “That could be a problem.”
The master sergeant looked at it, then up at the canvas canopy. There was a four-inch tear where the square had pierced it after being blown free. “Yeah. That could cause a helluva headache. No problem. Just a minor addition on one side.”
“I thought you couldn’t adjust the power,” Blackjack said. He rotated his body a full three hundred and sixty degrees in the opening, checking for clearance.
“We can’t, but we can add a few more charges to throw the balance off.”
McAffee and Graber understood. Beyond that, they trusted the NCO implicitly. His work had proven itself before, in critical situations where a misfire would have been disastrous.
The major lifted his lower body through the opening, then swung both legs back to the ground. “Captain?” He offered Graber a try at the lift. He shook the suggestion off.
“You want just the two, Major?” the master sergeant asked.
“That’s all we need,” Blackjack answered.
“Got it. At the hangar in twenty minutes.” He turned to the corporal. “Check the wiring one more time.”
“Yes, Sergeant.”
A minute later McAffee and Graber were alone. Blackjack set the stubby MP5 on the metal slab. “We go with pistols.”
Graber agreed. “Let’s go with a double load.”
“Good thinking,” the major said. Each man would go into the assault with two pistols, a necessary safeguard against jamming. With the sub-machine guns left behind, a backup weapon would be the answer. “Let’s get back. You get the practice going with those grenades as soon as they get here.”
“Inside…right?”
“Absolutely, Captain.” It had to be real, the major knew. The bad guys’ bullets would be.
Art wanted a bacon-chili-cheese dog, but Pinks was twenty minutes away. The thought had crossed his mind to send someone down to pick up a couple for him, but there were reasons not to. Each of the cholesterol bombs probably took a day off his life, and half the reason the dogs were so good was the fun of eating them at Pinks’s sidewalk counter.
“Come on, Arthur,” he implored himself, and a half a minute later he was at the hallway fruit vending machine. He chose a banana, peeled it, and swallowed half before walking back through the door to his office.
“Boss.”
Art’s head came up mid bite. “Ed. I was thinking about Pinks a minute ago.”
Eddie sneered at the fruit. “Great substitute. We have the stuff from Chicago.”
Art hurried over to the desk. He stood in front of Eddie, leaning over to examine the information. “Who got all of this?”
“Lomax.”
“It figures,” Art commented. “He’s always in on the action, no matter where it is. Okay, fill me in.”
The junior agent turned his head. Art’s turned to meet it. “It’s starting to stink, Art. Real bad.”
“Go ahead.” It was strange, and had to be serious, Art knew, or Eddie wouldn’t have called him by name.
“PFC Sammy Jackson looks like our gunrunner. Guess what his post is at Rock Island?” Eddie didn’t allow time to answer. “Armory clerk. Lomax talked with Sammy’s commanding officer, and they do have all the shit used in L.A. in the armory. He has access to all of it, but the CO doesn’t see how he could have gotten any of it off the base. He said it would have been near to impossible.”