All Necessary Force

“That’s going to be a problem,” I said, “because I don’t work for the government. So save your threats.”

I saw a flicker of fear for the first time. He went through his pockets rapidly, then remembered.

“That’s right,” I said. “No cell phones allowed in here. It’s just you and me.”

“I’m still an American citizen. Just because we’re in Egypt doesn’t mean you can sit here and accuse me of some bullshit charge.”

I heard him say “accuse,” and knew he was guilty. I lost all compunction about being polite. He had something to do with the death of Bull and the wounding of Knuckles, and would now pay the price. Retro came to the same conclusion I had.

He moved behind Ellis. Speaking quietly, the venom dripping out, he said, “We can do whatever the fuck we want. And right now I want you to look at a picture. Make no mistake, your life is over. The only question now is how it will end. You fuck with me and it will be a world of pain before the lights go out.”

I saw real terror begin to grow in his eyes, tinged with desperation. He jumped up and strode over to Mack.

“What the hell is going on here? I want my cell phone. And your supervisor’s number. I’m a United States congressman. Do you know what that means?”

Mack stood by the door, mute.

Ellis turned to me. “I’m through here. I’m leaving. You try to stop me and I’ll have the Marines here lock you up forever.”

His face was a sickly green, with a fine mist of sweat on his brow, as if we were in a rain forest instead of the desert. His breath was coming in shallow pants, his eyes flicking from me to Retro. He made a move to the door and I threw the photo from Kurt’s father on the table. He caught the movement and looked down.

“Tell me about this.”

The quality was absolutely horrible, with a vague figure standing on the edge of a lanai somewhere on the earth. To me it meant nothing at all. To the congressman, it meant everything. As soon as he saw it, he gave a strangled little squeak, swayed a bit, then sank into a chair, his head in his hands.

Still not knowing what I held, I gave Retro a questioning look. He ran his fingers across his throat, the implication clear. Crush him now. Don’t give him any time to think.

I grabbed a headful of hair, pulling up his face.

“Give me when and where.”

His eyes had a glassy stare, no comprehension in them at all. I lightly slapped his face.

“Wake the fuck up. When and where?”

He snapped back to the present, focusing on me.

“I… I… that was a long time ago… I didn’t tell anyone… you can’t talk about it… it’s secret…”

He was babbling and I wondered if he was about to have a real breakdown. Retro circled around behind him again and I shook my head. I didn’t want him going over the edge. On the other hand, I didn’t want him to have time to come up with a story. Need to keep the pressure steady.

“Vietnam is over, Congressman. There’s no secrets left from that war. Chris Hale is dead.”

I don’t know if it was the mention of Kurt’s father or Vietnam itself, but it was enough. The words convinced Congressman Ellis that I knew a helluva lot more than I did. He slumped back in his chair and eyed me.

“Okay… okay. You know where it is. What do you want from me?”

“I want you to tell me the story. Now.”

And surprisingly, he did. After burying himself as deep as he possibly could, cementing his future, he quit. He looked at me expectantly, like he’d now earned something in return, but he hadn’t said a damn thing about what was going on here.

“I got all that. I want to know what you were doing with the Chinese in Egypt.”

His face showed confusion, as if I should have known what had happened.

“You… you took the shipment here. That’s all I was doing. That’s it.”

“What shipment?”

He squinted, his brain beginning to realize he may have made a huge mistake. Can’t lose momentum. I closed into his personal space and locked eyes with him, speaking softly.

“Congressman, let me explain something to you. Right now, you’re wondering what to say, what to protect. You’re thinking that maybe if you shut up, you’ll save something a lawyer can use to plea bargain, but that’s not going to happen.”

I snatched his thumb and quickly bent it backward, stopping just short of breaking it. He screamed, a short, sharp sound that echoed in the room. I continued speaking calmly.

“I told you, I don’t work for the government, and you’ve had a hand in the death of a friend of mine. What you need to be concerned with right now is how painful your death will be.”

The little droplets of sweat on his brow grew larger, until they trickled down his face. I released his thumb and he jerked his hand away, massaging his thumb. He began talking.

“I had a shipment of EFPs to transfer to the Chinese. Last night someone attacked the shipment and took them. I thought it was you.”

Explosively formed penetrators were powerful shaped charges designed to penetrate armor at a distance. Basically just a metal dish on top of some explosive material that, when fired, warped the dish, turning it into a bullet of molten metal with aerodynamic properties traveling at hypersonic speed. They had played hell on our troops in Iraq, easily defeating even our best armor systems. While a simple concept, it required a great deal of technical capability to execute properly. The shape, diameter, thickness, and type of metal were mathematically intertwined with the ignition system and the amount and type of explosive material. Any small variant would destroy the aerodynamic properties or render the charge no more potent than shrapnel from a mortar round. Even so, EFPs had been around since World War II, and the construction parameters were widely available. It wasn’t rocket science. Even if it was, the Chinese had rocket scientists. It didn’t make sense.

“Why would the Chinese risk so much for EFPs? They can already make them.”

Ellis said, “You know anything about shaped charges?”

“Enough to know that the Chinese don’t need American technology to make their own.”

“Not like these. The average EFP with a copper or iron plate can penetrate half of its diameter through armor steel. You have an eight-inch plate, you can penetrate four inches of armor. Change the plate to tantalum and it goes one-to-one.

“These plates were made with nanotechnology. The grain structure of the tantalum was altered at the molecular level specifically to enhance its potential as an EFP. It worked better than anyone predicted. Now, instead of halving the diameter, you square it. Up to an eight-inch plate. Then it begins to fall off again.”

What he said sank in. While the EFPs in Iraq were deadly, they were also large, cumbersome things. In order to defeat an M1A1 Abrams tank, the insurgent had to lug around something that weighed damn near a hundred pounds with a width like a turkey platter. These EFPs could do the same damage with something as small as an eight-inch plate. And the little traitor wasn’t finished.

“The nano work also increased the aerodynamic properties. Instead of a range of one hundred feet, the spall flies accurately up to one hundred meters. It’s a true standoff attack capability.”

I’d heard enough. “What did you give them? Just the plates? You couldn’t fly in here with completed EFPs. You’d never get out of the U.S.”

“The entire effort was an enhancement of the M303 Special Operations Demolitions Kit. It’ll be in the U.S. inventory in a couple of years. The Chinese wanted to see if they could reverse engineer the plate.”

The M303 SODK was a do-it-yourself explosives kit consisting of all the components needed to destroy just about anything. Bridges, roads, aircraft, you name it, there was something in the kit that could be used. All it was missing was the explosives. We used to joke about the old commercials that said “just add water” because the kit was idiot-proof, complete with instructions for each device. You just packed the explosives into the chosen container according to the directions, installed an initiation capability, and followed the instructions for implementation.

“You mean you gave them the complete charge container, aiming devices, everything?”

I was hoping this bastard had transferred only the plates. While they were a large part of success, they were still just a part. Without knowing specifically how much explosives to use and how shallow or deep to form it behind