Free A Deniable Death by Gerald Seymour Page A

device to use against a supermarket chain. When the guy was picked up, the bomb-disposal people had moved in. Above the suit, the laundered shirt and the smart tie Badger had recognised the bleak, worn gaze. Maybe the Boss, the Cousin and the Friend didn’t know about the people who did bomb disposal and made things safe. To be different was Badger’s thing.
    ‘Right, then I’ll continue. The EFP involves a shaped charge, and we call that the Munroe effect. Charles E. Munroe, an American, worked out the theory of the shaped charge a hundred and twenty years ago while stationed at the Rhode Island base where they had a naval torpedo station. József Misnay and Hubert Schardian made refinements as they developed anti-tank weapons for the Wehrmacht in the 1940s. There is a metal tube, with a shallow copper bowl, factory-machined, at one end, and behind it explosives – perhaps military or perhaps triacetone triperoxide – a detonator, a trigger apparatus and a method of sending the signal for firing. The copper becomes a molten slug, travelling at a thousand yards per second, and will penetrate the armour of a tank, a personnel carrier, pretty much any vehicle on wheels or tracks. The EFPs are deployed at predictable choke points – where a road goes from four lanes to two, where there’s a bridge, an elevated highway or repair work. The devices have been tested thoroughly across the frontier and inside Iran. The range of the radio signals will have been determined, and “dickers” will have been used on the Iraq side to watch the procedures used by the coalition and to report back on them. Several times the convoy will have gone by, not knowing it was under electronic surveillance, and the results sent back across the frontier. They’re in no hurry. They have endless patience. They test and experiment and don’t move until they’re satisfied. Still with me?’
    What could they say? The Boss nodded. The Cousin and the Friend forced a smile. Foxy shrugged. Badger said sharply, ‘With you.’
    The Major said, ‘And I’m coming to the core. This is a peasant’s weapon. I repeat, it’s a peasant’s weapon to deploy, to activate, to see it kill and mutilate. But it is not a peasant who builds the electronics that run ahead of the counter-measures, or who oversees the factory where the shallow copper dish is milled to high standards. The view is peddled by the Pentagon and the MoD that the bomb-maker is a low-life rag-head who deals in very basic science concepts. Such assessments are dangerous, misleading and wrong. A small number of clever, innovative men is capable of wrong-footing us so consistently that the body-bags keep going home, and the injured with wounds they’ll carry to their graves. This particular individual – Rashid Armajan – is a man whose professionalism I would have, reluctantly, to respect. We know him also by the title given him by his employers and on the base where he works. He is the Engineer. Because I have looked at these people I feel free to offer a stereotypical image of him with some confidence. His family would be of huge importance to him. Alongside that we can say that religion is a major motivation, along with a profound love of his country. He’s a perfectionist, and with that comes personal egotism. He believes himself the best. Religion and nationalism give him the right to butcher the troops of the Great Satan and the Little Satan – anyone on the wrong side of God’s will. I’m not exaggerating if I say that this one individual is responsible in no small degree for the foul-up that is the coalition campaign in Iraq . . . and don’t forget how many casualties, killed and wounded, were caused by roadside bombs. We call an enemy a Bravo. Rashid Armajan is a big, bad Bravo, and we should take every opportunity to locate him and—’
    The clap of the Boss’s hands cut off the Major in mid-sentence.
    Badger had been concentrating and hadn’t anticipated the interruption.