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

We’re sixty-five miles from the outskirts of Damascus, so all should be safe there. There is one small town behind us, about twelve miles away. Ordinarily it would be affected, but we have positioned the device against a sheer stone wall nearly a hundred feet high. It will deflect and channel most of the pulse to the east, away from the town of As Suwayda’. They may experience a few outages, but most electronics there will not be affected.”
    Outside, they drove in the general’s air-conditioned car. At the test site stood a square-wall tent with the front flaps open. Two men worked with a long silver tube perched on a pair of sawhorses. Both men had on ear protectors. When the car stopped, one of the men ran up and gave the manager and general the earmuff-type protectors. They held them in their hands.
    “General, we’ll pull back a couple of hundred yards in your car. It is a diesel so it has no electronic engine components. Good. Your car radio will go out but you can have that replaced.”
    “How do you set it off?”
    “We send an electronic signal that activates a starter circuit in the bomb that energizes the stator coil creating the magnetic field. We’ll hear a sharp crack like lightning. No blast, a small explosion, but no mushroom-shaped cloud.”
    He used the radio and the two men at the bomb hurried away on bicycles. They came toward the general’s car. One handed Jabrin a small box with two red buttons on it.
    “When you’re ready, push both red buttons and that will set it off,” one of the men said. Then they bicycled away from the area, toward a small building a hundred yards to the left. General Diar and Jabrin entered the big car and the driver rapidly moved them back two hundredyards, then both men stepped out of the car and put on the ear protectors.
    “Ready, General?”
    “Yes, I’m ready. Let’s get it done.”
    Jabrin held up the black box and pushed both of the red buttons at the same time. At almost the same instant the jolting crack of a lightning strike blasted into the area. General Diar looked where the sawhorses sat. Now he saw only a few pieces of shattered wood and some scraps of aluminum.
    Jabrin took out a cell phone and held it. “Hot to the touch,” he said. “It’s fried. Will never work again. Now let’s get in your diesel-powered car and go check our test area.” They asked the driver to turn on the radio. He did but it didn’t respond.
    Jabrin beamed. “So far, so good. The local electronics are fried and out of business. We have laid out a test track down this straight road into the desert to the east.”
    At a sign that read “One half mile,” they found a display of battery operated radios, laptops, computers, and other handheld electronic devices. Jabrin went from one to another testing them. Some were hot to the touch. None of them worked. All had worked just before the test.
    They found the same results at mile markers two, four, and ten. At ten they found the first automobile, an old Citron that had served the lab workers. Jabrin got in and ground the starter for two minutes. The rig would not start. The electronic ignition was blown out.
    They stopped again at test sites at twenty, thirty, and fifty miles. All of the electronic devices were burned up. None of the cars with electronic ignition would start. A diesel-powered BMW at thirty miles started on the first try.
    At sixty miles two of the gas-powered electronic ignition cars started and two didn’t. At sixty-five miles out, all three cars started and the laptops and other electronic devices all worked. Jabrin picked up one of the handheld radios and made a call. He had an instant response.
    “Jabrin here. The test is a total success. Bring back to the lab all of our electronic gear. We can get back intoproduction.” The manager of the project looked at the general. “So, we have a total success. You have the only other complete device in a safe storage area outside of Damascus. What else do