“Is that practical?” Hail asked.
“Practical or not, I don’t see any other choice. I think we need to fly a drone in next to the building, set it down on the ground and then create a hole large enough in the side of the warehouse for our purposes.”
“How thick do you think the steel is?” Hail asked Renner.
“Eighteen gauge, maybe sixteen gauge. That would be about a sixteenth of an inch thick. Not very substantial.”
“We could hook up a cutter grinder to the arm of a drone,” Eric Rugmon suggested. He made a box in the air with his finger while doing calculations in his head. “I estimate the drone could probably have about an eighteen-inch reach both horizontally and vertically.”
“That would give us a hole in the metal about a foot and a half square,” Renner said, using his hands to demonstrate the size one way and then the other.
Hail shook his head, shooting down the idea with, “It’s too loud. Can you image the reverberation through the sheet metal structure once the cutting wheel started in on it? The guards would have to be dead not to hear it.”
“That’s another possibility,” Renner said. “If we kill the guards then…”
“What about a laser?” Kara said. “I mean a laser is quiet and could cut through thin metal. Couldn’t it?”
Everyone turned and looked at Kara.
Kara looked back at the blank faces that were staring at her.
“What?” she said defensively.
Hail said, “We do science. Not science fiction.”
Kara looked hurt and embarrassed.
“Well nobody else was coming up with anything,” she shot back.
“That’s because we haven’t had a chance to think it all out,” Hail said.
Kara wanted to tell them all to go fuck themselves, but she sucked it up and kept her cool.
“I’m sure if you thought about it for a moment, you would figure out why a laser would not be possible,” Hail told her.
Nobody spoke.
Kara already knew it was a stupid idea as soon as the word laser left her mouth. But there were no second chances with this bunch of techno-nerds. If you said something stupid, it appeared that you were going to get called out on it.
“Not enough power,” she answered indignantly.
“Correct,” Hail confirmed.
Kara looked indifferently at Hail as if she had never met him before. She wished she had a nail file so she could passively work on her nails or stick it in to Hail’s arm. Both seemed like a good use of a nail file at that moment.
Hail looked away from Kara and back at the others and asked, “What about a torch?”
The others thought about it for a moment.
“It’s pretty quiet,” Renner said, “but two possible issues come to mind. First, it will be bright, especially if we decided to go in at night. Second, high pressure oxyfuel tanks weigh a lot. Flying them in will take a lot of power.”
“Not necessarily,” Rugmon said. “If we calculate the exact burn time that is required to cut the hole, we could use lightweight miniature aluminum tanks. Once the cut was done, we could release the left over fuel and fly the drone back out.”
“Is that possible?” Hail asked.
“I need to do the math, but off the top of my head I believe the tanks would be within the lifting range of our mini drone,” Rugmon said.
“Sounds good to me,” Hail said. “Gage, are you good with that?”
“So far it’s the best of our options. It will be awfully bright when we’re cutting, but if we cut on the backside of the building and there are no guards walking the perimeter, then it could work.”
“I’m good with that,” Hail said. “Eric, how long would it take for your team to modify a mini drone with that configuration?”
“We could have it done in twelve hours, give or take.” Rugmon said boastfully.
Hail looked at the photos on the table and tried to think if there was anything he had missed. Not coming up with any items of consequence, he said, “OK, let’s turn our attention to the explosives.”
Terry Garber came to life like a robot that had all of a sudden been activated. A moment ago, passive and introverted, she now smiled and waited for input.
Hail asked her, “What type of explosives do you think we should use to destroy the missile sections?”
“I think we should use a cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine based explosive.” Garber said.
“Oh, here we go,” Renner said, rolling his eyes.
Hail laughed and said, “Terry, I know you get off on saying those long chemical words, but how about you cut that down for us non-laboratory folks.”
“OK,” the little woman said snobbishly, “How about we shorten that to nitroamine?”
“How about you shorten it to RDX,” Renner suggested. “Isn’t that the same thing?”
“Basically,” Garber said, but it was apparent she wasn’t very happy with just those three letters.
“So is RDX going to do the trick?” Hail asked Garber.
“Generally speaking, it will do a good job if you stick a wad of it against a large crate of parts,” the woman said. “But it won’t be effective in destroying the thick metal missile stages without some special work.”
The laboratory woman stopped talking. Everyone waited for her to expand on her thought. When it became apparent that she was not going to clarify her last statement without being prompted, Hail decided to drop another quarter into the robot and get her talking again.
“What type of special work would you need to do?” He asked.
Terry smiled and said, “The cyclotrimethylenetrinitramine needs to be molded into a shaped charge.” She gave Renner a look.
“Is that a problem?” Renner asked.
Before the woman could answer, Kara asked, “What’s a shaped charge?”
The little woman beamed with vitality, as if she had been waiting all her life for that particular question.
Before Hail or Renner could stop her, she began with, “A shaped charge is known as the Munroe effect, named after Charles E. Munroe, who discovered it in 1888. It’s the science of focusing the blast energy by cutting a hollow or void cut on the surface of an explosive.”
Terry stopped and looked at Hail.
“Go on,” Hail told her, knowing how much enjoyment she was getting out of this.
“The most common of the liner shaped charge is conical, with an internal apex angle of 40 to 90 degrees. Different apex angles yield different distributions of jet mass and velocity. Small apex angles can result in jet bifurcation, or even in the failure of the jet to form at all, if you can believe that,” she laughed knowingly, “and this is attributed to the collapse velocity being above a certain threshold, normally slightly higher than…”
“OK,” Hail interrupted. “That’s enough.”
The woman stopped talking and looked as if something very valuable had been yanked from her grasp.
“I’m sorry,” Hail said, softening his tone. “But we are short on time, Terry. I hope you understand.”
The woman said nothing.
Hail explained to Kara, “In a nutshell, if you cut a V shaped notch into a block of RDX, and then place the RDX on a thick slab of metal, when it blows up it will cut the metal in half.”
“Oh,” Kara said, content with Hail’s explanation.
Renner told the group, “So it’s important to keep track of the shaped charges and the non-shaped charges, because the shaped charges need to be used only on the missile sections.”
“Correct,” Garber said.
“So I’m assuming that outfitting this mission with both types of charges will not be an issue in a twelve-hour time frame?” Hail asked Garber.
“It will not be an issue,” Garber said, making sure she kept her responses short and succinct.