“Wait,” Jasper said.
He seemed to be warring with himself, which didn’t make any sense. He should be happy that they were going to be back on the move to the lake without drawing any more attention to themselves.
“You mentioned thermobarics. If you had, say, a source of a Cat 4 substance, like ammonium nitrate, could that work?” he asked.
“Well, sure,” JJ said. “But it would take a couple of hundred kilos, minimum, and it would still have to be fairly close to set off any munitions.”
“And with HPP?”
“Hydrogen Penta-Peroxide? Add that to the mix, and you’re down to 50 kilos. Why?”
Jasper took a deep breath as if considering what he was going to say next. “And with an accelerating oxidizer? Like a Patterson Arms V60?”
“Shit, Jasper, like, uh, like Mountie says, you might as well wish for a Snipe. A V60 is a military-grade accelerant.”
“But if you had it. All of that?”
“If you had all of that, and if you could contain it somehow until needed, I’d guess that ten kilos of ammonium nitrate—refined ammonium nitrate—would do the trick. Depending on the munitions, it would still have to be within five or ten meters, but it could work.”
“Why do you want to know, Jasper?” Mountie asked, wondering just where the militiaman was going with this.
“Because I think I know where we can get them.”
Chapter 19
JJ
Stepping back into the burned-out farm was hard, and JJ felt the anger rise within him. The merc they’d let go was glib, and he tried to make excuses for being a traitor, but here was hard proof that the Tenner movement was evil. This poor farmer was killed and his family executed, and for what? What tactical purpose did that serve?
He stopped before he reached the women and children, turned to Jasper, and said, “Now what?”
“Over there,” Jasper said, pointing to the one building left standing.
JJ was in a foul mood as he marched up to the door, which was secured with a large mechanical lock. He gave it a few tugs. It was very low tech, but it was massive. It wouldn’t give in to a couple of butt-strokes from his M90. JJ thought this was all a wild goose-chase, and he wanted to get it over with, so he pulled out a toad to burn through the lock.
“No!” Jasper shouted, reaching to grab JJ’s hand. “If I’m right, you could blow us up where we stand.”
“Bullshit,” JJ said.
“Trust me.”
Jasper had proven to be a pretty good guy, and JJ knew that some fertilizers could be made into explosives, but what else could be on a farm? He wasn’t buying Jasper’s assertion that the place would have any military-grade accelerant.
He shook his head, then turned and gave the lock a tentative rap with this rifle butt. It bounced but nothing more.
“So how are we going to open it?” he asked.
Jasper was using the merc’s Gescard as his prime weapon with Sergeant Go’s M90 slung on his back. He dropped the magazine, checked the chamber, and walked right up to the door. The Gescard was a heavier weapon than the M90, and much sturdier, but JJ didn’t think that would make much of a difference. The lock was just too massive.
Jasper nodded, then lifted the Gescard, butt high, and brought it crashing down . . . on the hinge on the side of the door, not the lock itself. It bent, and with the second stroke, it broke right off.
Shit! And I’m supposed to be the engineer?
He started to step in to finish the job but then thought better of it. He was going to let Jasper whale away with his Gescard. The M90 was a fine weapon, but if he knocked the mag rings out of whack, it became just a large paperweight.
While Jasper went to work on the second hinge, JJ turned back to look at Mountie, who had a bemused expression on his face. JJ felt the heat of his face reddening.
It took Jasper about a minute to knock off the three hinges and for the door to hang free. JJ reached under Jasper, and with the two of them yanking, they pulled the door back and away. Jasper looked inside, spotting several barrels with NH4NO3-C2 on the side. The NH4NO3 for the ammonium nitrate, the C2 the commercially accepted sign for “molecularly concentrated” where the military simply used the term “refined.” There was enough in there to blow a good-sized building away—if it could be gotten to the target. There wasn’t any way the mercs would just let them merrily roll barrels into the caves.
Various chemicals cluttered five shelves that ran along one of the walls of the shed. There were more varieties on the shelves than a Monsanto-Bayer chemist would have. JJ scanned the shelves before spotting some blue vacpacs.
“Here’s your hydrogen penta-peroxide,” he said, pulling out a pack. “That’ll help, but not enough. We can maybe make a few grenades, but a few grenades won’t set off any munitions.”
He turned to see Jasper rooting around the back of the shed.
“It’s not enough, Jasper. It was a good shot, but we’ve got to get out of here,” he said, acutely aware of the road that ran by the farm.
He looked to Mountie, who was standing in the door, and lifted both hands, palm up, while shrugging his shoulders. Mountie raised one finger and mouthed, “Wait.”
“I got it!” Jasper finally shouted.
He waved JJ over and pointed to the low black box he’d just uncovered.
“Is that a cocoon box?” JJasked moving close to see.
“Sure is,” Jasper said, grinning ear-to-ear.
“OK, that’s something.”
Cocoon boxes were containers with small dampening fields. No electronic pulses could get through to whatever was inside the box, nor extreme changes in temperatures or pressure shocks. They were used to protect volatile substances. He didn’t understand why a farmer would have one of them, but its very presence was promising.
“Is it locked?” he asked.
Cocoon boxes never had modern locks, only mechanical. Jasper smiled as he twisted the handle, and with a whump of released air, the door slid open.
“As I figured,” Jasper said, reaching in and pulling out an olive-drab seal-pack. He handed it to JJ, who immediately saw the circle-P of Patterson Arms. Under that, his eyes locked onto the V60.
“Holy shit. This is the real deal,” he said, carrying the pack outside into the direct sunlight.
Mountie took it from him, turning the thing over and hefting it.
“How . . . why . . . I mean, what is it doing here?” JJ asked.
“Saving credits. A little pinch of V60 makes the ammonium nitrate go a lot further on the crops.”
“But it’s dangerous, hellaciously dangerous!”
“If a few credits can make the difference between going red or black, and red means your family isn’t going to eat, you go with dangerous.”
“How do you get it?” Mountie asked.
“Really? You think this isn’t available on the black market?” Jasper said as if talking to a child. “A large shipment came in last year, along with the recipe of how to use it with our fertilizers. It was all over the local undernet, so no big secret.”
“I guess I’ve lived a sheltered life,” Mountie answered, handing the pack back to JJ.
JJ had grown up on Nuevo Oaxaca, and he knew a thing or two about the black market, but it still boggled his mind to think that a farmer was sitting on enough V60 to stock a regiment.
“So, do you think you can use this?” Jasper asked.
“Theoretically, yes. But we have to have a way to make it. I don’t see a machine shop and lab sitting around here for us to use.”
“What do you need?”
“Well, a casing, for starters. We can’t just mix this in a bucket and throw it at someone. We’ve got to contain the pressure long enough for the reaction to take place. We need a detonator, which I’ve got, but it has to be fixed in position.”
“OK, let’s do it,” Jasper insisted.
“I just told you I don’t see a machine shop or lab around here, Jasper,” JJ said
, looking to Mountie as if confused as to why Jasper didn’t seem to understand.
“We don’t have labs and most of us don’t have machine shops, yet we get things done. Let’s see what’s around here that we can use.”
“This place? It’s destroyed,” JJ said, pushing back the images of the dead children that tried to force their way into his thoughts.
“You think you can find something here?” Mountie asked Jasper, his voice tinged with doubt.
“We won’t know until we try,” Jasper said, then to JJ, “What kind of casing do you need? What size?”
“I’m not sure. Say, about like this,” he said, holding his hands about 50 centimeters apart.
“Then let’s see what we can come up with. Hold on a moment,” Jasper said, leaving the shed.
“Where’re you going?” JJ asked, following him out.
Jasper didn’t answer but headed towards the fields, making a wide detour to miss where the children’s bodies lay. He raised a hand to his eyes, scanning the field. Spotting something, he took off across the emerging crops, JJ and Mountie in tow.
Up ahead, at the side of the field, was a red tractor, the big white “W” of “Walker Agricultural Machines” on the side. JJ had seen the huge corporate harvesters on the holos, immense beasts that could harvest hectares of crops in hours, taking in full plants and shitting out neatly packaged products ready for shipment. In the shade of the trees at the edge of the field, this Walker must have been from the bare minimum school of farming. Barely two meters long, it didn’t even have a seat for the operator.
Jasper made a beeline to the Walker, hurrying, but taking care to step over each row of crops, avoiding the plants themselves.
Kind of moot now, Jasper, JJ thought with the farmer who owned these fields laying dead behind them. He probably doesn’t even realize he’s doing it.
Still, JJ followed suit, half-hopping over each row trying not to trample on anything. Jasper probably had more practice doing that because he was already pouring over the Walker by the time JJ and Mountie arrived.
“Look for the controls,” Jasper said. “I’d like to take this back to the chemshed.”
“Just push it.”
Jasper gave JJ a condescending look before saying, “This is a PT Manzo 2, no controls.”
“Then how do you work the thing?” Mountie asked.
“It’s got a decent AI, so it’s self-serving. But to instruct it, you need the remote. It’s not here, so he . . . he probably had it on him or had it in the barn.
“Do you need it?” JJ asked, figuring it would be up to him to search the now-bloating body of the farmer.
“No. This is what I wanted to show you,” Jasper said, pulling up a panel and revealing a 60-centimeter-long cylinder. “Will this do?”
“I don’t know. What’s in it? Methane?”
“Glucose. Methane’s specific density’s not high enough to be that efficient, and unless you’ve got livestock, harder to come by out here. No, this is an A4 cylinder, big enough for 72 kilos of glucose, and that will keep the Walker running for a long time.”
“I’ve never seen a glucose engine,” Mountie said, his voice piqued with interest. “We don’t use them.”
“That’s because you have all sorts of fuel and energy sources you need, and you don’t need a FASS to keep the output high.”
“FASS?”
“Oh, a flexible asymmetrical solid-state supercapacitor. Tricky buggers to keep up, and expensive. I can’t see how they would be practical for military work, but out here in the sticks, glucose is one of the easiest fuels we can produce.”
“How do you produce it?” JJ asked, interested despite his initial skepticism.
“Over there,” Jasper said, pointing to the far side of the field. Those are genmodded sugar beets, but some people use cane, or melons. Dates, too, but not around here. Back in the barn, there’re probably the remains of the still used to make it.
“But will this work as a casing?” he asked JJ.
“Maybe. Do you know its volume?” JJ answered, stepping up to thump on the cylinder with his forefinger nail.
“It’s an A4, so just over 42-thousand cubic centimeters.”
JJ tried to run the numbers though his head. Without the V60, no. With the V60, maybe.
He said 72 kilos of glucose, but that seems like a lot. What’s the density of that? And with the ammonium nitrate, can I fit 10 kilos . . .
After a few moments, he looked up at Jasper, then Mountie, and said, “I don’t know for sure, but maybe. It’ll be close.”
“There’s the spare underneath. Can we do it with two?” Jasper asked.
“That’s not the issue. This is one of those cases where two-plus-two doesn’t equal four. We need to get the 10 kg in one container to create a big enough shock wave.”
He looked up at Mountie and asked, “Well, sir? Do we try?”
“Nothing to lose, so of course, we try.”
Jasper released two clamps and started to pick up the cylinder, but JJ pushed him out of the way and picked it up.
That’s why he wanted to drive the tractor closer! This thing weighs a ton!
It really wasn’t terribly heavy, but without a handle, the round cylinder was difficult to grasp. JJ managed to carry it out of the field, but not without crushing flat more than a few of the crops.
“So how do we open this?” he asked.
“We have to vent it, first. It’s under a lot of pressure.”
Jasper brought the small screen on the side of the fuel tank to life, then punched in some commands. JJ couldn’t hear anything, but a sickly-sweet aroma filled the air, and he could see the pressure numbers fall. When they equalized, Jasper flipped a recessed lever in the top of the cylinder, tilted the bottom up, and started pouring out a thick, syrupy liquid.
“It’s OK to dump it on here on the grass?” Mountie asked.
“It’s been processed and manipulated to increase the power output, but basically, it’s still just plant sugars,” he said, sticking a finger in the flow and then bringing it up to his mouth where he took a lick. “I wouldn’t do this too much—it’s no longer pure. But just a taste won’t hurt you.”
He tipped the cylinder to JJ, but he refused, seeing no benefit in taking any sort of chances. The Marines used fuel cells, biodiesel, magcells, and a host of other power sources, but none of them were safe to eat.
“Mountie, can you look in the chemshed and get a blue glass container of dichloromethane? It should be about a liter-sized, with a roaring lion on the front,” he asked as he tipped the cylinder higher.
The flow of the glucose fuel slowed and finally stopped. Jasper looked inside, then reached in, twisted, and pulled out a small black rectangle.
“The FASS,” he told JJ as he wiped it on his trousers and slipped it into a pocket. You won’t need it.”
Mountie came back, gingerly holding a blue glass bottle that he handed to Jasper.
“Step back,” Jasper said as he carefully poured some of the solvent into it, holding his head back out of the way of any fumes. He twirled the tank around, then tipped it over away from the other two. As soon as it was empty, he dragged the cylinder back a couple of meters, away from the smoking mess on the ground.
“OK, JJ, here you go. How’s this?”
JJ cautiously approached, his eyes glancing back to the hissing mess that Jasper had poured out.
“Is it safe?”
“Just don’t stick your nose in and take a sniff right now. But in a few moments, it will all have evaporated.”
JJ touched the outside of the cylinder, expecting it to feel hot. To his surprise, it wasn’t. Tipping it to look at the open top, he could see that the walls of the cylinder were much thicker than he had assumed them to be.
Shit!
“What’s the max pressure these can hold?”
“I’m not sure. Typically, they’re pressurized to 0.2 kilobars, but with a safety cushion? I don’t know. I’ve never heard
of one bursting. That’s good, right?”
“No, not at all,” JJ said. “We can detonate the ammonium nitrate, and I’m sure it’ll burst the tank, but probably in one spot,” he said, putting a fist on one side of the tank, then whipping it away as he opened it, fingers splayed.
“A directional charge,” Mountie said, nodding.
“That’ll turn the cylinder into a rocket, shooting it who knows where. We need the container essentially to fall apart, all at once, so the blast wave propagates outwards in a nice, even sphere.
“Sorry, Jasper. It was a good idea, but this probably won’t work.”
Jasper took back the cylinder, turning it over, his brows furrowed in thought.
Finally, he looked up at JJ and asked, “What if we score it? Run several lines from top to bottom?”
He ran a finger along the cylinder, top to bottom, to trace what he meant.
“Well, yeah, that might work. But we’re not going to be able to do much with our knives, now, will we? That’s plastisteel, and as you said, there’s no machine shop here.”
A smile broke out on Jasper’s face as he said, “Wait one.”
He hurried over to the burnt barn as JJ looked to Mountie and said, “What’s he doing now?”
“No idea, but let’s see what he can come up with.”
Jasper rooted around in the burnt ruin, kicking at debris and bending down to look at whatever he’d uncovered. It took him a couple of minutes before he shouted, then held up a disk of some sort in triumph.
He ran back to them, saying, “I’ve got it.”
“OK, a circular blade, cerro-tungsten. That’ll score the cylinder, but I don’t see a saw to spin it.”
“Oh, ye of little faith,” he said, a broad smile on his face. “Follow me—with that,” he added, pointing to the cylinder.
With a sigh, JJ picked it up. It was much, much lighter now, but he felt lost, not knowing what was going on. Every time he brought up a problem Jasper seemed to have some sort of answer. And if JJ wasn’t mistaken, the militiaman was enjoying the moment.
Jasper ran back to the Walker, beating the other two, and pulled out the spare fuel cylinder, horsing it into the cradle. As JJ and Mountie approached, he held out a hand to stop them, then opened the engine compartment and pulled out a small lifting arm, the kind used to lift bundles.
Behind Enemy Lines: A United Federation Marine Corps Novel Page 15