Free Seal Team Seven #19: Field of Fire by Keith Douglass Page A

his black hair just starting to show signs of gray. He would color it again within the week. There could be no hint of age or of slowing down.
    The car stopped and the driver got out and swung open the rear door. A blast of hot wind drove into the car, making General Diar gasp. “Idiot, did I tell you to open the door?”
    The sergeant held the door open, knowing better than to reply to an angry question from the general. Diar groaned, pushed over to the side of the car, and stepped into the desert sand. The building ahead was low and squat, one story high with a flat roof. In front there was a small door and Diar could see no windows whatsoever. Good. Windows were dangerous.
    Diar marched toward the door. Just as he got there someone from inside opened it and waved him in.
    Abdul Jabrin stepped back, letting the general come into the small front office of the laboratory. “General, it is good to see you. We are almost ready for our grand experiment.”
    Diar frowned as he checked the small room. He’d never been here before but had almost daily talks with the workers here and the manager, Jabrin.
    “Yes, yes. Do you have anything cold to drink?”
    “We do, General. Do you wish to sit on the sofa and relax after your long trip?”
    “No, get me the drink, then I’ll have a tour of your production facility. You say everything is ready?”
    “We have only a few more placements to make. Our men are in the field now and will report by radio when everything is set.”
    The drink came in an insulated tall mug and the general took a long pull at it, then waved Jabrin forward.
    “Now let’s see what I’ve been spending so much money on out here in the damned desert.”
    They went through two doors and into a laboratory, machine shop, and workroom all combined.
    “In this section we fabricate the parts we need-thetubes, the coils, the capacitors. Nothing exotic or expen-sive. The explosives we use are common and plentiful. We make the parts here, and put it all together on the tables in the next section.”
    They moved forward about twenty feet. “Here, General Diar, we assemble the parts. The tube filled with explosives is inserted into the slightly larger stator copper coil and positioned inside the outer canister. You see the whole FCG bomb is no more than six feet long. We have four in the process of assembly here. Two have been completed and we’ll use one of them this afternoon in the test.”
    “So we have only two complete and ready to fire?”
    “Yes, sir. These four more will take about a week to do the final assembly. We work carefully, double-checking every part of the process so we won’t have any failures.”
    “Who are the people?”
    “All are highly skilled and trained. As you know, General, it took us nearly two months to find the right physicists to spearhead the project. Once we convinced them that this particular bomb would kill no one, and could have the effect of saving thousands of Syrian lives by a quick surrender of our enemy, they came to work. The first flux bomb took longer, because we were experimenting with materials and size and shapes. Now that we have the technique down, the average FCG bomb will take us about four working weeks to complete, start to finish.”
    “Yes, yes. Now let’s see the test. I’m anxious to see how it will go.”
    “We still have two men in the field. We can check by radio as we drive to the test area. We have taken all of our electronic equipment, including computers and cell phones, and all of our radios out of the laboratory and have driven them fifty miles beyond ground zero. They should be safe there.”
    “Jabrin, I don’t want to know the technical details. I don’t have the slightest idea how this new bomb works.I just need to know that it does and will do the job on call, when I order it to be done.”
    “Yes, General Diar. We can leave now. Ground zero is only five miles away, farther out in the desert as you specified in your stipulations.