"Suppose that grapefruit catches an incoming round?" said Fitzduane.
The fact that the RAW had neither recoil nor backblast had caught his imagination. You could use it in a confined space and mount it near anywhere.
"Good question," said Cutler, "but not to worry. The explosive used is insensitive. If it gets too hot it won't explode, and the same applies if it takes a round. We tested it with a. 50, and nada."
"Any more tricks?" said Fitzduane.
Cutler nodded. "There is also a dual-purpose projectile that combines anti-armor or bunker busting with antipersonnel capability. You set the range at which it will explode with a built-in display and then it will fire three thousand tiny tungsten balls that will kill or injure everything an arc with a radius of about a hundred and sixty square meters. The balls have an escape velocity of six thousand feet per second. That momentum will take you through a flak vest or a Kevlar helmet. That's a lot of very destructive metal flying around. It will shred people, soft vehicles, light armor and aircraft – and it's very bad news for helicopters."
He turned and faced another target about two hundred meters away. This time, instead of one bunker, a hundred and fifty combat targets showing a menacing crouching infantryman advancing had been set out to simulate an attacking enemy force. They were in three irregular rows and were spread out in a line over two hundred meters wide and fifty meters deep.
Cutler picked up a RAW munition and fitted it, then adjusted the range on a small LED dial. Then he aimed slightly high. "Airburst," he said, and fired.
Every man in the assembled group examined every target after the demonstration. And every single target had been hit.
One single RAW round.
Somewhat subdued by what they had seen, Fitzduane and Kilmara had a quick lunch and headed for Maury's mobile home to meet their Magnavox contact.
Having a serious discussion at a busy exhibition stand was not easy. Also, Maury's vehicle was more working base than home. In it were excellent communication and office facilities.
Maury liked to travel, but he also liked to work. In truth, he never seemed to stop working. Certainly, one element that underpinned his detailed knowledge of the terrorist world was sheer application.
So far he had spent just one hour at the exhibition. He had done a lightning tour and then returned to his mobile burrow. Military gadgetry was all very well and he kept himself informed, but what really turned Maury on was the live game. Thanks to modern satellite communications, he could play that anywhere – and he did.
Fitzduane found Maury watching the fax for incoming nuggets in the utterly focused manner of a cat monitoring a mouse hole and brought him, protesting, into the meeting with Don Shanley.
Shanley impressed Fitzduane, and he wanted to put the Magnavox man under some additional pressure. Maury was rather good at asking awkward questions.
"What do you guys want to achieve?" said Shanley. "The more I know, the better I can help you."
"You just want to sell hardware," said Maury aggressively. "I hate salesmen."
Fitzduane groaned inwardly. This was not the best way to start. He had in mind awkward technical questions. Downright bad behavior would not be helpful. Still, the only thing now was to go with the flow.
Shanley smiled. "We all have some position to advance," he said. "Personally, I like to think of myself as a problem solver."
Maury glared at Shanley. "What do you know about combat?" he said. "Have you ever served?"
Shanley was tired, Fitzduane had observed. At Maury's question he went pale, as if the remark had struck deep. Given Maury's aggressive approach, Fitzduane would not have been surprised by an angry response, but the Magnavox man showed restraint.
"I know more about my field than most," he said quietly. "I hope that will be sufficient for you gentlemen. As I understand it, your application relates to FAVs. Perhaps we can take it from there. It might be helpful if you work from first principles."
Fitzduane caught Kilmara's eye and made an almost imperceptible gesture. Kilmara took the point and cut in.
"Don, my unit came into being as a counterterrorist force," he said. "Subsequently it was expanded to have an offensive capability. That meant we needed to deploy heavier firepower to deal with armor and other special situations, and pretty soon we ran into problems. Quite simply, our Rangers, no matter how physically fit, could not carry the weight of weaponry and equipment which we considered necessary to do the job. I am sure you now the figures."
Shanley nodded. "A fit soldier is supposed to carry only about one-third of his body weight if he is to remain combat capable – say, sixty pounds odd. In practice, by the time you have added spare ammunition and the modern tools of his trade, the guy – or girl these days – is staggering under a hundred pounds or more. That restricts his mobility and he tires faster. Worse again, he still is not carrying what is required in combat today. The days of a rifle and sixty rounds of ammunition are long gone. Now he is laden with four hundred rounds of ammunition, antitank weapons, explosives, claymores, laser range finders, and-" he smiled – "thermal sights. And there is more. Radio batteries are a real curse. And then there is his NBC kit."
"You've got the picture," said Kilmara. "A single special-forces soldier has never been better equipped or more potentially lethal in the history of warfare, but he cannot carry what he needs.
"Well, I tossed the problem out to Colonel Fitzduane. Hugo has a talent for this kind of thing."
Fitzduane could see that Maury was getting hooked.
"Back in World War Two," said Fitzduane, "my father was one of the founding members of the SAS in North Africa. Stirling's idea was to raid behind German lines using heavily armed jeeps."
"Did it work?" said Shanley. "As I understand it, the German Army in North Africa was heavily armored. Jeeps against armor does not seem much of a deal."
"A few dozen SAS destroyed more German aircraft on the ground than the entire Allied Desert Air Force, which contained thousands of men," said Fitzduane. "As to armor, the idea was not to go head to head. In those days, you couldn’t destroy a tank with anything you could carry in a jeep. But jeeps were faster and they could hide. And they were devastating against light armor and trucks. As a tactic it worked brilliantly."
"But surely the casualties were heavy?" said Shanley.
Fitzduane shook his head. "Ironically, you were a lot safer in the SAS than the regular army. It was a case of brute force versus speed, maneuverability, firepower, and brainpower. Anyway, with the SAS experience in the back of my mind, I started exploring the idea of a fast, light unarmored vehicle equipped with light but powerful weapons. And pretty soon I was pointed this way. The U.S. Army might have gone heavy, but some people were pushing at the envelope."
"Chenowth," said Maury. "They made the dune buggies that did so well in the Baja. The U.S. Army formed an experimental division and started playing with converted Chenowths equipped with grenade launchers and TOW missiles and the like. It was political dynamite, because field evaluation showed that a fast attack vehicle, a FAV – which was what they called these things – could, in many cases, outkill not just armored fighting vehicles, but also tanks. I've heard kill rates like nine to one and four to one."
Fitzduane nodded. "It gets complicated when you are talking combined arms, because armor does not operate in a vacuum. Add helicopters into the equation and FAV's might not have done so well. Also, the Abrams tank and the Humvee programs were well advanced and big money was involved, and no one wanted to lose them. So, for all practical purposes, the FAV experiment was killed. I hear the marines bought a few, and the SEALs certainly took them on board with success, but major development, which was what the program needed, never happened. It should have, because FAV funding would have been chicken feed in comparison to most military programs, but it didn't. That's the trouble with inexpensive programs. There is not enough money in them."