“Don’t use too much,” Meller said, carefully. “You don’t want a crater.”
“I won’t,” Mike said. “Take one of the Keldara with you who can drive and head back to the caravanserai. I’ll get this thing out of the way while you work on the plans. Suits?”
“Suits,” Meller replied.
“Who’s your straw boss?” Mike asked watching the Keldara work. There didn’t appear to be anyone supervising but the Keldara were expert at moving rock. They even did it in a reasonably safe manner, but he mentally added steel-toed boots to the list of materials these people needed. Every time he turned around there was one more “vital” item someone required. He’d taken a look at the spreadsheets last night and capital costs on the militia and infrastructure equipment had gone over four million dollars. Ammunition and pay for the trainers was going to easily go over another million. Fuel, food, the very low pay the Keldara were getting for all these projects, the whole damned thing was costing like crazy. And he didn’t see any way to recoup it.
“Sawn,” Meller said, pointing at the Keldara. He had the brown hair and short, broad look of Father Makanee, who it turned out was actually his uncle. He was pitching in just like the rest, tossing boulders nearly the size of his barrel chest into the back of the truck.
“Isn’t that rock granite?” Mike asked.
“Yeah,” Meller answered. “And the trucks will take it over to the gravel pit.”
The backhoe dumped its load into the back of one of the trucks and then the majority of the Keldara backed up as it scraped the ground, clearing the last of the rubble. There was a small mound at the base of the hill that a few of the Keldara set to work on with shovels as one of the trucks drove away with its load and the backhoe began working its way out of the defile.
“It’s time to set the next load,” Meller pointed out. “I’ll show you where the demo shack is.”
A small, reinforced shack had been set up down on the flats and Meller opened it with a key to reveal a reel of detcord, a stack of Semtek cases, a box of detonators, wire and receiver modules.
“Semtek’s not the best material for this sort of work,” Meller said. “And I really should be drilling the rock. But that would have to be done by hand so I’m just putting in charges and tamping them with sandbags.”
“I can work with that,” Mike said. “But have you considered shaped charges?”
“I could make a couple,” Meller admitted. “But…”
“I was thinking of the RPGs,” Mike pointed out. “They’ll dig a small diameter hole in the rock if you use the HEAT rounds.”
“Now that’s thinking outside the box,” Meller pointed out.
“When you get to the house get an RPG and send it back with the Keldara along with a few rounds,” Mike said. “About twelve. I’ll have to experiment some.” He thought about it for a moment and then shrugged. “Take Sawn and have him stop and find Genadi on the way back. There’s a pump around somewhere and we’ll use it to cool the holes.”
“This is getting complicated,” Meller pointed out. “Why not just tamp?”
“I’m bored,” Mike admitted.
“Don’t set the pump up, yet,” Mike said as he crossed the small stream, carrying the RPG and three rounds. “And everybody back up and put your fingers in your ears; this is going to be noisy.”
He set the rocket-propelled grenade launcher across his knee and loaded in one of the bulbous rounds, rotating it to lock the head in. Then he inserted earplugs and lifted the weapon to his shoulder, flipping up the sight. The distance was about fifty meters, just over arming distance, but that should work. He checked his backblast area, to make sure none of the Keldara had wandered behind him, and flipped the weapon off safe.
The rocket flew straight and true to impact on the side of the rock,impacting with a large explosion and one hell of a bang. But when the smoke had cleared there didn’t appear to be any damage to the rock.
“Kildar,” Sawn called, smiling, “we will be here a very long time making gravel that way.”
“Look again,” Mike said, leaving the RPG and rounds in place and crossing back over to the rock. The Keldara gathered around in a crowd and shook their heads at the small hole drilled in the rock.
“I’m going to need a small, straight, piece of metal or wood,” Mike said, frowning. “I need to see how deep that is. And we’ll need some clay. Somebody head down by the ranges and dig some up. Just a few bucketsful will do.”
Sawn detailed one group to go get the clay while a few of the younger men went to the pile of debris from clearing to look for a long, straight piece of wood that would fit. Mike, in the meantime, crossed back over the stream and continued to shoot into the rock, keeping low on it now and circling around to the east side. Each of the impacts caused a small diameter hole and he stopped when he had six.
By that time a suitable piece of wood had been found and he explored the first hole with it, noting that it was still extremely hot. The hole turned out to be only a meter and a half or so deep.
“Tum tee tum,” Mike hummed as the truck got back from the ranges with the clay. He wandered back to the demo shack and loaded up with gear, then headed over to the diggings.
“Set up the pump,” he told Sawn. “Fill each of the holes with water. If they flood out, that’s fine. But keep filling them ’til they cool down.”
“Yes, Kildar,” Sawn said, obviously confused.
Mike pulled out three blocks of Semtek and broke them up, using the hood of the truck to roll out narrow cylinders. He then hooked up detonators to sections of detcord and headed over to the diggings.
He’d considered two ways to blow the rock and settled on the more reliable, using the detcord to slide the narrow cylinders of explosive to the bottom of the wet holes. Then he used the stick to pack clay down on top. It took him about an hour to fill all the holes. What he was left with was six holes with detcord sticking out of clay plugs. He then “daisy-chained” the detcord ends together and led a string of detcord out from the rock.
“Okay,” he said, waving everyone back. “It’s about ready to go. I’d suggest you back up a bit more than usual; I’m not as precise as Meller.”
When everyone was back around the scrap of hill, he hooked a detonator and module up to the detcord daisy-chain and walked down onto the flats himself.
“Let’s see what we get,” he said, looking at Sawn and grinning as he hit the firing button.
The sound was much more muted than Meller’s detonation and there was less dust. But when they walked back around the hill he saw that the rock had been shattered along one side deep into its mass and was now sitting on a narrow base. More rock had been thrown outward, ready to be picked up, but Mike held up his hand as the Keldara moved forward.
“Let’s break it up some more, first,” Mike said. “Sawn, time to learn how to use an RPG. Everybody on the other side of the stream.”
This time he walked the Keldara through the loading and firing sequence, showing him how to check that he had enough backblast area and explaining why it had to be clear both of people and obstructions. He had the leader fire two rounds, then picked out another Keldara at random to fire the next couple until he’d expended all his remaining six rounds. One had missed so he only had five holes to fill this time, scattered over the upper mass of the rock. One reason that he’d fired rather than having the Keldara start clearing was that he was unsure the rock was stable enough, but it had taken five hits from an RPG and hadn’t fallen over so that was good enough.
By the time he’d completed the second demolition it was late afternoon and he called a halt.