There was an awkward silence as the two looked at each other from across the room. Jenny, on the verge of crying, stood her ground. And Patrick Hogg returned her stare with nothing more than a blank expression. Alter a while, when it was clear that she had finished her say and he found that he was unable to meet her eyes any longer, Hogg looked down at the floor. "Will you be there when I come back?" he asked, more afraid to hear the answer to this than of anything he had ever had to lace before.
"No," she responded without hesitation. "Not this lime."
It was more the tone of her response than the promptness with which it was delivered that told Hogg there was no point in pursuing the issue.
Without another word, without even looking over at his wife he gathered his jacket from the chair it was draped across, walked past Jenny, and left the room.
Even a force as renowned for its thoroughness and toughness as the SAS could not prepare its men for every contingency.
With the hands on the clock dipping low. Stanislaus Dombrowski found that he was having to slow down lest he make a mistake. Pausing, the Polish legionnaire straightened up on the small stool he was perched upon and examined the oversized shaped charge on which he was working. With great deliberation, his eyes followed the wire from one of the detonators along the outer frame of the charge to the junction where ii would be joined to the wires from other detonators and the timer.
A shaped charge is a useful military tool. Though the principle behind it was discovered accidentally at the end of the nineteenth century, it wasn't until the Second World War that it began to appear on the battlefield. In the beginning, this wonder of technology was employed by combat engineers during special operations. The Germans who stormed the mighty Belgian fortress of Eban Emael in May of nineteen-forty were not crack commandos, as thought of today, but glider-borne engineers equipped with small arms and shaped charges. In less than a half a day, something like eighty of these fallschrimjager pioneers unhinged the entire defense of Belgium. Later in the war, the clumsy shaped charges in use for cracking the gun turrets of that Belgian fortress were modified so they could be packaged as warheads. In this role, they proved very effective as an antitank round and became the heart of the American bazooka, the German panzerfaust and panzerschreck, the British PIAT, and the Russian RPG.
Toward the end of the war, the idea of shaping an explosive charge so as to direct and magnify its force reached its ultimate refinement when the plutonium core of a bomb called "Fat Man" was encased in highly refined explosives. When triggered, the conventional munitions literally crushed the sphere of plutonium for the briefest of moments. But that proved more than sufficient to generate the critical mass necessary to initiate a chain reaction and devastate Nagasaki. After the war, the shaped charge continued to evolve, both as an antitank weapon and as the triggering agent for the world's nuclear arsenals. In a strange way, the jerry-rigged shaped-charge device being assembled by Sergeant-Chef Stanislaus Dombrowski to destroy Russian nuclear warheads was poetic. The crudest and earliest form of that principle was being employed against its most modern and sophisticated refinement.
Everything had to be exact, everything perfect. There could be no slack, no fudging anywhere. While the nature of the explosion was almost immaterial, the shaping of the explosive cone and the placement of the detonators to trigger the explosives were critical. If the lead from one detonator was even the slightest bit shorter than those of others, the electric current would prematurely reach the blasting cap to which it was connected. This would result in the initiation of the explosion on that part of the device first, rather than in synchronization with the rest of the package. So instead of generating a single, concentrated jet stream aimed with the precision of a laser beam against the desired point of impact, the entire device would turn into a shapeless, low-yield explosion that had no chance to bum through the concrete-and-steel cover it was designed to penetrate.
Done correctly, however, the bulk of a shaped charge's explosive force is directed in whichever direction the hollowed-out cone is aimed. This generates a jet stream capable of exerting over 100,000 foot pounds of pressure per square inch. Anything in the path of this jet stream with a tinsel strength of less than that is penetrated. This penetration is not achieved by burning, as is popularly thought, but by the displacement of the target's molecules, which are either pushed aside or become part of the jet stream. It is the same principle that allows a person to place a finger into a glass of water. The denser finger easily penetrates the surface of the water by displacing the less-cohesive water molecules.
Destruction of most targets occurs when this jet stream makes contact with a target that is either flammable, such as fuel and hydraulic fluids, or propellants, like those found in the rounds stored on tanks. This secondary detonation, inside the confined space of the object being attacked, is what does the bulk of the damage. There was little danger that the devices being prepared for use against the Russian ICBM's would initiate a nuclear detonation. The same was not true of the rocket fuel. The thin-skinned rocket just under the concrete cover sat confined in a very tight silo. Once the cap of the silo was penetrated, there would literally be nothing of substance between the all-powerful jet stream and thousands of gallons of volatile fuel.
Satisfied that all was in order with the device before him, Dombrowski closed his bloodshot eyes, rubbed his face, and yawned. Allowing his arms to fall away, he opened his eyes and again gazed upon the shaped charge sitting on the table. Blurry-eyed, he waited until his vision cleared before proceeding. It definitely was not pretty, the Pole thought to himself. In fact, if one of his fellow legionnaires had thrown this monstrosity together as part of a training exercise, Dombrowski would have ordered the entire thing pulled apart rather than risk removing it to the demolitions pit for immediate destruction.
From behind, Dombrowski heard footsteps. Turning, he peered into the darkness that engulfed the isolated workshop where he worked alone, perfecting his trade as the demolitions expert for his team. "I came by to see how you were doing, Stan," his captain called out. "And to bring you this. I thought you could use it."
As he emerged from the shadows, Captain Jules Pascal, Dombrowski's team commander, was holding two cups of steaming coffee before him. "If it's that used motor oil the French drink, mon capitain, then you are doing me no favors."
Stopping within arm's reach of the weary NCO, Pascal smiled and offered him the cup in his right hand. "No, I would do nothing like that to you. I know how much you enjoy that cow piss the Americans laughingly call coffee."
Taking the cup, Dombrowski lifted it slightly, as if making a toast. "Merci."
Together, each man took a long, almost ceremonial, sip of his respective brew, then paused for a moment to silently savor his drink, and enjoy this brief moment of calm in what had been a most hectic day, even by the standards of the Foreign Legion.
Finally, Pascal turned his attention to the device Dombrowski was working on. "Not very elegant, is it?"
The Polish NCO turned to face the object of his captain's comment, chuckling as he did. Only a professional soldier could judge an explosive apparatus capable of ripping flesh and concrete apart as an object of beauty. "No, it is not," Dombrowski responded. "But if this is a case where function is the sole concern, then it will work, and very nicely, I daresay, to take out the target it was designed for." Then, turning toward his commander, Dombrowski looked him in the eye. "And just what target, mon capitain, do our American friends envision using this thing against? Or should I say, on?"