Free A Deniable Death by Gerald Seymour

was altered. Before the call, he had started by saying that improvised explosive devices had changed the outcome of a war from a triumphant and victorious mission accomplished to something that was close to mirroring ignominious retreat. Then the phone had trilled in the Boss’s suit pocket, and the Major had stood silent while the call was answered. The frown had set in his forehead and he had scratched the back of his neck.
    ‘Back to where I began . . . The improvised explosive device is the weapon that has snatched victory from the coalition and replaced it with a very fair imitation of defeat. It’s a poor man’s weapon, deadlier and more influential than the famed Kalashnikov rifle. I would like to quote from Kipling:
     
‘A scrimmage in a border station –
A canter down some dark defile
Two thousand pounds of education
Drops to a ten-rupee jezail.
The Crammer’s boast, the Squadron’s pride
Shot like a rabbit in a ride.’
     
    ‘Written more than a century ago, I suggest that the “education” was heftily expensive, and that ten rupees in the bazaar at Jalalabad or Peshawar bought something pretty cheap. Nothing has changed. We take the modern ten-rupee jezail – that’s a long-barrelled flintlock or matchlock rifle – extremely seriously. How seriously?
    ‘Between 2008 and next year, the United States defence family will spend in excess of thirty billion dollars – yes, you heard me – on all aspects of research to negate the effectiveness of these devices, from scanners, to detectors, and into the world of vehicles that can survive an attack. I said, “in excess of thirty billion dollars”, and the principal parts of such a weapon can be bought for five or ten dollars in any Iraqi souk. More sophisticated parts are brought into the Middle East from American factories. It’s a bewildering, crazy world. The most sensitive devices deployed in Iraq were to beat our strategy of putting a convoy inside an electronic counter-measures bubble that has a safety range of around a hundred metres. The enemy developed the technology of sitting off maybe a kilometre away and using combinations of passive infra-red and telemetry modules, and even such simple kit as car-key zappers, household alarms, the workings from inside a cheap wristwatch bought off a pavement stall. Right now, in Iran, they’re ahead of the counter-measures. The roadside bombs, often deployed in a daisy-chain configuration – that’s half a dozen devices linked over a couple of hundred metres – or in fake rocks made of papier-mâché or replacement kerb stones, create fear among troops. For every fatality, they knock down four, five, six wounded. They destroy morale and drive our armies into overhead flights by helicopter or overland drives in a truck with plate armour sides. Then along came the EFP, the explosive force projectile, which costs next to nothing to build and can destroy a main battle tank worth ten million sterling. The EFPs crushed us, and—’
    The Cousin said, ‘I know all this. I don’t need a high-school lecture.’
    The Friend said, ‘We have experience of this. It is taught in military kindergarten.’
    The Major’s eyes narrowed. ‘It’s gratifying that some of you are so well informed. Is anyone not familiar with EFPs? Anyone?’
    Foxy said he had served in southern Iraq, and shrugged, and the Boss smiled limply as if to show he was up to speed.
    Badger said, ‘I’ve never heard of an EFP, and if you think I should know – and it’ll be important when you get around to explaining this business – then I’m all ears.’
    ‘Thank you, Badger. Does anyone want to go and make coffee or walk in the rain? No?’ He paused. He was a handsome man and would have fitted in on Horse Guards, or anywhere else in full dress uniform. Danny ‘Badger’ Baxter understood. There had been a time when he’d been on a week of stags watching a remote parked caravan where a nutcase guy was thought to be building a