“Never had any doubts you might’ve been rushing things?”
DeMarco gave Nimec a short glance.
“I’m only human,” he said. “You hear these stats about how over fifty percent of marriages hit the mat. And then there are all the timetables society lays on you. You’re supposed to date for this long, get engaged for that long, wait so many years to have a baby… sure, I had doubts. You don’t, it’s not normal. But worrying about them seemed like a waste. I knew what I knew. And figured it was enough for me to commit.”
Nimec became quiet in his seat as they rocked along over the deeply rutted trail. He turned his eyes to the display console’s GPS screen.
“Looks like we’re pretty near base,” he said, motioning at the readout graphics. “All we have to do now is get there without breaking an axle.”
DeMarco nosed their Rover forward, took a hard, jarring bump.
“Or our asses,” he said, his hand tight around the wheel.
The sound of engines was close.
They raised their eyes, their heads covered with the heat and flash retardant hoods now. Although the brush around them trembled slightly, it did not part.
Saddled high in the bubinga tree, the man with the Sig SG550 sniper rifle was motionless, camouflage netting wrapped around his face, his cheek against the weapon’s nonreflective black stock.
The sound was growing louder, yes. Closer. But its source had not yet entered their fire zone.
The ambushers remained hidden, ready for the moment.
“What the hell,” DeMarco said. His foot had slammed down hard on the brake pedal. “You ever ask yourself if the boss finds these green splats on the map just to test us? See what it’ll take to drive us crazy?”
Nimec produced a thin smile.
“Sometimes,” he said, “I could almost wonder.”
DeMarco shifted the tranny into PARK. He had a feeling they might be going nowhere for a while.
They sat looking out their windshield at the cargo hauler’s tailgate, their passengers muttering unhappily in the rear. A moment earlier the convoy’s lead Rover had come to a sudden halt, setting off a chain reaction down the line. This after their trail had taken them through a thicket of snarled, spiny-limbed euphorbia toward a jungle corridor that had promised some blessed shade from the relentless sun.
The forward driver had exited his vehicle, gone around to the truck behind him, and then paused to talk with some other locals who’d hopped from its cab — the entire team scanning the trail up ahead, shielding their eyes from the midday brightness with their hands. Now he separated from them, approached the Rover, and made a quick winding gesture with his finger.
DeMarco lowered the automatic window, catching a blast of hot air in his face.
One of the execs riding in back leaned forward in his seat, trying to make out the guide’s response, unable to understand his French.
“What is it?” he said.
“We’ve got some downed trees across the trail,” DeMarco replied. “Our guide says these things happen sometimes. A tree rots, goes over, hits another, and that one crashes into another.”
The exec frowned, but sat back to relay the news to his companions.
“How big a holdup can we expect?” Nimec said to DeMarco.
DeMarco held up a finger, had another brief exchange with the guide in French, then shrugged.
“Depends,” he replied after a moment. “There can be two, three, or a dozen trees that need clearing. Loren, a couple guys from his Rover, and the truckers are going have a closer look at the fall, and he wants us to check it out with them so we know the score. He says it doesn’t seem too bad from here. If a few of us pitch in to help, we should be able to move soon.”
Nimec gazed out in front of him but was unable to see past the 6?6’s broad rear end. After a second he turned back to DeMarco.
“Tell Loren I’ll be right with him,” he said.
DeMarco nodded. “Guess I’d may as well tag along.”
“No,” Nimec said. “You sit tight.”
DeMarco looked at him.
“Any particular reason?”
“Like I told you before, nobody ever gets hurt by being careful.” Nimec pushed his molded radio earplug into place and adjusted the lavalier mike on his collar. He thought a moment and then resumed in a hushed tone, “Call back for some of our boys to get out of their Rovers and keep their eyes open to what’s around us. But I want them sticking close… nobody off the trail. At least one man should stay in every vehicle with the execs.”
DeMarco regarded him. The four company honchos aboard their Rovers were talking among themselves in back.
“You sure you don’t smell trouble?” he said, his voice also too low for them to overhear now.
Nimec shrugged.
“Not so far,” he said.
Then he shouldered open the door to exit the vehicle.
Weapons of war are by obvious definition intended to have ugly effects.
Thermobarics — a military nomenclature for devices producing intense heat-pressure bursts — are uglier than most.
Whether dropped by an F-15E Strike Eagle fighter jet or fired from a shoulder-mounted rocket launcher, a thermobaric warhead will cause vastly more sustained and extensive destruction to its target than a conventional explosive munition. There are numerous designs floating about the open and black international markets, many battle tested, some under development, their payload formulas and delivery systems guarded with varying degrees of secrecy. In its basic configuration a fuel-air warhead has three separate compartments, two with high explosive charges, a third containing an incendiary fluid, gaseous, or particulate mixture. Though Russian arms builders will not confirm it, the RPO-Bumblebee warhead’s flammable mix is a volatile combination of petroleum-derived fuels such as ethylene or propylene oxide, and tetranitromethane-a liquid relative of PETN, the combustible ingredient used in many plastic explosives.
As the primary HE charge is air detonated, the incendiary compartment bursts open like a metal eggshell to scatter its contents over a wide area. A second explosive charge then ignites the dispersed aerosol cloud to produce a tremendous churning fireball that can reach a temperature of between forty-five and fifty-five hundred degrees Fahrenheit, burning away the oxygen at its center, a vacuum filled in a fraction of a second by a rush of pressurized air approaching 430 pounds per square inch — almost
Pete Nimec had gotten only one leg out of the Rover when the RPO-A warhead erupted at the head of the convoy, and along with his fast reflexes, that was probably what saved his life.
There was a loud eruption from the mass of trees up ahead of him, then a roaring, rushing chute of heat and flame. The concussion struck the Rover’s partially open door, slamming it up against him and throwing him back into his seat with his fingers still clutching its handle. He had a chance to glimpse the vehicle Loren had exited just moments before bounce several feet off the ground, then drop back down on its left flank, crumpled and blazing, its windows blown out, completely disintegrated by the blast.
