The Devil's Footprint (18 page)

"Watching
things go bang.
 
This
is fun," said Kilmara cheerfully.
 
"When the quarry starts to shoot back...
that
is horrible."

There was
movement at the firing line, and a man dressed in well-worn but starched fatigues
faced the gathering.
 
He wore a DI's
flat-brimmed hat as if it had grown with him in his mother's womb.

"My name
is Cutler," he said.
 
"You're
about to see a demonstration of the
Brunswick
RAW — Rifleman's Assault Weapon.
 
It's an
unusual weapon."

A 5.56 FN
Minimi light machine gun, bipod extended, was positioned on the ground beside
him with its muzzle pointed toward a sandbag bunker two thicknesses thick about
three hundred meters away.

In front of
the bunker and leaning against it was a heavy steel armor plate.

"The
trouble with the bad guys," continued
Cutler,
"is that they are not always willing to stand up and be shot at.
 
They don't play fair.
 
They get behind cover like bunkers or
reinforced concrete positions that your itty-bitty rounds can't penetrate, and
then what the fuck do you do?
 
It's
downright embarrassing."

There were
smiles from the assembled group.

"We
already have rocket and grenade launchers," Cutler went on, "but
rocket launchers are bulky and the 40mm grenade does not quite have the punch
for a strongpoint.
 
And so they came up
with the RAW.
 
Essentially, it is a
spin-stabilized elongated ball five and a half inches in diameter — a teardrop
shape — that you fire from a launching mechanism that you attach under the
muzzle of your personal weapon."

Cutler opened
a compact clamshell container and clipped the mechanism and then the projectile
in place.
 
The entire exercise took less
than ten seconds.

"With the
RAW in place, you can still use your weapon as normal.
 
The interesting thing is that for three
hundred meters, the projectile's trajectory is virtually flat.
 
Using your rifle sights, where you point it
will hit.
 
At longer ranges we're talking
indirect fire, but it will go up to fifteen hundred meters."

Cutler picked
up the Minimi with the RAW now attached.
 
"As I said, there is no recoil or backblast, so you can fire it
standing or sitting or however you want.
 
The bipod is not necessary except to steady your aim."

He then
reached out his hand, turned the RAW activator switch, aimed at the bunker, and
fired.

The projectile
hissed from its nest under the barrel and then accelerated rapidly.

It looked
harmless, thought Fitzduane, more like a well-spun ball than a weapon.
 
But after its initial acceleration, it was
extremely fast.

The distant
bunker protected by its armor plate could be clearly seen.

And then it
just
disintegrated,
the explosion startlingly violent
and more like a heavy artillery shell than a grenade.
 
It seemed an extraordinary amount of
destructive power from such a small sphere.

"Well,
I'm buggered," said Kilmara.
 
"That little thing does all that damage by itself?
 
You must have set off some explosives in it.
 
You're pulling a fast one, Sergeant."

Cutler
grinned.
 
"No, sir," he
said.
 
"What you saw is what you got.
 
The RAW is one effective sucker.
 
Ain't technology a wonderful
thing.
 
In destructive
power, the grapefruit is equivalent to a 105mm howitzer shell."

"Suppose
that grapefruit catches an incoming round?" said Fitzduane.

The fact that
the RAW had neither recoil nor backblast had caught his imagination.
 
You could use it in a confined space and
mount it near anywhere.

"Good
question," said Cutler, "but not to worry.
 
The explosive used is insensitive.
 
If it gets too hot it won't explode, and the
same applies if it takes a round.
 
We
tested it with a .50, and nada."

"Any more
tricks?" said Fitzduane.

Cutler
nodded.
 
"There is also a
dual-purpose projectile that combines anti-armor or bunker busting with antipersonnel
capability.
 
You set the range at which it
will explode with a built-in display and then it will fire three thousand tiny
tungsten balls that will kill or injure everything an arc with a radius of
about a hundred and sixty square meters.
 
The balls have an escape velocity of six thousand feet per second.
 
That momentum will take you through a flak
vest or a Kevlar helmet.
 
That's a lot of
very destructive metal flying around.
 
It
will shred people, soft vehicles, light armor and aircraft — and
it's
very bad news for helicopters."

He turned and
faced another target about two hundred meters away.
 
This time, instead of one bunker, a hundred
and fifty combat targets showing a menacing crouching infantryman advancing had
been set out to simulate an attacking enemy force.
 
They were in three irregular rows and were
spread out in a line over two hundred meters wide and fifty meters deep.

Cutler picked
up a RAW munition and fitted it, then adjusted the range on a small LED
dial.
 
Then he aimed slightly high.
 
"Airburst," he said, and fired.

Every man in the
assembled group examined every target after the demonstration.
 
And every single target had been hit.

One single RAW round.

*
         
*
         
*
         
*
         
*

Somewhat
subdued by what they had seen, Fitzduane and Kilmara had a quick lunch and
headed for Maury's mobile home to meet their Magnavox contact.

Having a
serious discussion at a busy exhibition stand was not easy.
 
Also, Maury's vehicle was more working base
than home.
 
In it were excellent
communication and office facilities.

Maury liked to
travel, but he also liked to work.
 
In
truth, he never seemed to stop working.
 
Certainly, one element that underpinned his detailed knowledge of the
terrorist world was sheer application.

So far he had
spent just one hour at the exhibition.
 
He had done a lightning tour and then returned to his mobile
burrow.
 
Military gadgetry was all very
well and he kept himself informed, but what really turned Maury on was the live
game.
 
Thanks to modern satellite communications,
he could play that anywhere — and he did.

Fitzduane
found Maury watching the fax for incoming nuggets in the utterly focused manner
of a cat monitoring a mouse hole and brought him, protesting, into the meeting
with Don Shanley.

Shanley
impressed Fitzduane, and he wanted to put the Magnavox man under some
additional pressure.
 
Maury was rather
good at asking awkward questions.

"What do
you guys want to achieve?" said Shanley.
 
"The more I know, the better I can help you."

"You just
want to sell hardware," said Maury aggressively.
 
"I hate salesmen."

Fitzduane
groaned inwardly.
 
This was not the best
way to start.
 
He had in mind awkward
technical questions.
 
Downright bad
behavior would not be helpful.
 
Still,
the only thing now was to go with the flow.

Shanley
smiled.
 
"We all have some position
to advance," he said.
 
"Personally,
I like to think of myself as a problem solver."

Maury glared
at Shanley.
 
"What do you know about
combat?" he said.
 
"Have you
ever served?"

Shanley was
tired, Fitzduane had observed.
 
At
Maury's question he went pale, as if the remark had struck deep.
 
Given Maury's aggressive approach, Fitzduane
would not have been surprised by an angry response, but the Magnavox man showed
restraint.

"I know
more about my field than most," he said quietly.
 
"I hope that will be sufficient for you
gentlemen.
 
As I understand it, your
application relates to FAVs.
 
Perhaps we
can take it from there.
 
It might be
helpful if you work from first principles."

Fitzduane
caught Kilmara's eye and made an almost imperceptible gesture.
 
Kilmara took the point and cut in.

"Don, my
unit came into being as a counterterrorist force," he said.
 
"Subsequently it was expanded to have an
offensive capability.
 
That meant we
needed to deploy heavier firepower to deal with armor and other special
situations, and pretty soon we ran into problems.
 
Quite simply, our Rangers, no matter how
physically fit, could not carry the weight of weaponry and equipment which we
considered necessary to do the job.
 
I am
sure you now the figures."

Shanley
nodded.
 
"A fit soldier is supposed
to carry only about one-third of his body weight if he is to remain combat
capable — say, sixty pounds odd.
 
In
practice, by the time you have added spare ammunition and the modern tools of
his trade, the guy — or girl these days —
is
staggering under a hundred pounds or more.
 
That restricts his mobility and he tires faster.
 
Worse again, he still is not carrying what is
required in combat today.
 
The days of a
rifle and sixty rounds of ammunition are long gone.
 
Now he is laden with four hundred rounds of
ammunition, antitank weapons, explosives, claymores, laser range finders,
and—" he smiled — "thermal sights.
 
And there is more.
 
Radio
batteries are a real curse.
 
And then
there is his NBC kit."

"You've
got the picture," said Kilmara.
 
"A single special-forces soldier has never been better equipped or
more potentially lethal in the history of warfare, but he cannot carry what he
needs.

"Well, I
tossed the problem out to Colonel Fitzduane.
 
Hugo has a talent for this kind of thing."

Fitzduane
could see that Maury was getting hooked.

"Back in
World War Two," said Fitzduane, "my father was one of the founding
members of the SAS in
North Africa
.
 
Stirling
's
idea was to raid behind German lines using heavily armed jeeps."

"Did it
work?" said Shanley.
 
"As I
understand it, the German Army in
North Africa
was heavily armored.
 
Jeeps against armor
does
not seem much of a deal."

"A few
dozen SAS destroyed more German aircraft on the ground than the entire Allied
Desert Air Force, which contained thousands of men," said Fitzduane.
 
"As to armor, the idea was not to go
head to head.
 
In those days, you
couldn’t destroy a tank with anything you could carry in a jeep.
 
But jeeps were faster and they could
hide.
 
And they were devastating against
light armor and trucks.
 
As a tactic it
worked brilliantly."

"But
surely the casualties were heavy?" said Shanley.

Fitzduane
shook his head.
 
"Ironically, you
were a lot safer in the SAS than the regular army.
 
It was a case of brute force versus speed,
maneuverability, firepower, and brainpower.
 
Anyway, with the SAS experience in the back of my mind, I started
exploring the idea of a fast, light unarmored vehicle equipped with light but
powerful weapons.
 
And pretty soon I was
pointed this way.
 
The U.S. Army might
have gone heavy, but some people were pushing at the envelope."

"Chenowth,"
said Maury.
 
"They made the dune
buggies that did so well in the Baja.
 
The U.S. Army formed an experimental division and started playing with
converted Chenowths equipped with grenade launchers and TOW missiles and the
like.
 
It was political dynamite, because
field evaluation showed that a fast attack vehicle, a FAV — which was what they
called these things — could, in many cases, outkill not just armored fighting
vehicles, but also tanks.
 
I've heard kill
rates like nine to one and four to one."

Fitzduane
nodded.
 
"It gets complicated when
you are talking combined arms, because armor does not operate in a vacuum.
 
Add helicopters into the equation and FAV's
might not have done so well.
 
Also, the
Abrams tank and the Humvee programs were well advanced and big money was
involved, and no one wanted to lose them.
 
So, for all practical purposes, the FAV experiment was killed.
 
I hear the marines bought a few, and the
SEALs certainly took them on board with success, but major development, which
was what the program needed, never happened.
 
It should have, because FAV funding would have been chicken feed in
comparison to most military programs, but it didn't.
 
That's the trouble with inexpensive
programs.
 
There is not enough money in
them."