Gauntlet

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So just how big a crater will it make if we blow up 660 tons of Semtex?” Richard Lawrence asked Sergeant Jason McMurray.

“No clue,” replied the taciturn McMurray, scratching his chin. “There’s no precedent for something like this. It’s an unconfined explosion, and it’s gonna be a damned dangerous one. But if I can’t handle it, no one can.” McMurray was from the Army’s 184th Ordnance Battalion stationed in Fort Gilles, Georgia. He’d had more than 15 years of training in the disposal of conventional, chemical/biological, and nuclear weapons. He had defused or disposed of bombs, warheads, mortar shells, and land mines, and had a pronounced scar on his left cheek as a daily reminder of the danger of his vocation. He was the best of the best. And he was already planning a 30-day leave after he’d wrapped up this particular circus. Cold beer, family, and golf.

Now he looked around the place once again, this time with annoyance. What had started as a solid, common-sense idea had turned into a carnival. The Islamic Republic of Libya had fallen apart into a series of warring factions, all vying for the throne. Europe and the USA had finally convinced the remnants of the Libyan Army that, if it wished aid and assistance from the west, it had to give up its enormous stockpile of the Czechoslovakian plastic explosive known as Semtex. The question had quickly become how the United States would dispose of the explosive once it was surrendered. Then some bright executive in the Pentagon had come up with the perfect solution. Cart the explosive to the middle of the Sahara Desert and blow it up, where it wouldn’t hurt anyone.

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