He said, ‘I can promise you, gentlemen, that in this matter you will not get half-truths and evasions from me. In the business that confronts us, we had a hope of local resources, but no longer. So, it is in our hands alone, which is probably a disappointment but perhaps a blessing. I apologise, Major, for the interruption… Please.. .’
They were no longer fighting cocks, Badger reflected, not pirouetting or prancing in rivals’ faces. Linkage with a faraway place had rendered that sort of pride second-rate. On the map he could see the road, the line of an international border, the symbols of lakes and marshlands and… The Major breathed in hard, as if his mood also 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-mache 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 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. Jozsef 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. Then, as if satisfied that he had eye contact with the Major, the Boss softened. ‘Thank you very much, Major, for that comprehensive and thorough study of our target. It’s time for a break, and a sandwich.’
A frown settled on Badger’s forehead, and he thought vaguely that part of an agenda had slipped by him, as if it flowed through a separate channel. His mind moved on because he had seen TV clips of the hospitals, clinics and rehabilitation centres where the amputees were taken, and of men struggling to hop along a corridor of parallel supports. He thought that after the sandwich he would be told what the mission was and what was expected of him.
She told her mother what had been agreed.
The children were at school and would not be home for two hours; her husband had been driven at dawn to the laboratory workbench. In darker moments, she would have said she competed with soldering irons, circuit boards, little silver detonators, alarm devices and… Mansoor, who oversaw the security at their home, had seen her husband taken away and the escort car that had followed, and would now be in his room in the barracks. She walked with a stick, held in her right fist, and her mother supported her left arm. She did not care that the sun was high and burned her face. Perspiration dribbled under the loose black robe and the scarf was tight round her head; she could feel, inside the material and pressed against the bone, the size of the growth.
She said her husband refused to accept the verdict of the doctors in Tehran.
Her mother walked with her, would not interrupt.
