Raid on Afghanistan by Eric Meyer

Author:Eric Meyer
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: thriller, adventure, action, navy seals, afghanistan, special forces, seal team
Publisher: Swordworks Books

* * *

The platoon was sheltering in the cave, and they watched the beginning of the explosion as smoke and flames flew up into the air, followed by the massive blast.

“Everyone, down, close your eyes!” Talley shouted.

They threw themselves flat as the enormous quantity of explosives in the basement store went up, sending out a monstrous pressure wave that destroyed all before it. Chunks of masonry were hurled hundreds of feet into the air, and a huge cloud of smoke and dust completely enveloped the town in a dark and sinister fog. They gave it several minutes to allow the worst of the effects to die down. When they looked again, the town resembled Berlin after the bombing during World War Two. Some buildings still stood, but only just. Everything was smashed and broken, and no one was in any doubt it would be a long time before Adasabad could be made habitable. Talley made way for Agnetha to look out at the destruction. She’d shelved her earlier objection about unnecessary loss of life.

“Good!” she murmured quietly. “I hated that place. Because I am white, they treated me like a slave, every single one of them. The only product they ever manufactured was death.”

“It sure came back to them in spades,” Talley grinned. “We’ve no way of knowing if those reinforcements had arrived when it went up, but I’m betting they had. There’s no way we can go down and do a body count because of the radiation.”

She nodded. “I wouldn’t advise it. The uranium was an unknown quantity. It could have a lengthy half life.”

“How long? I thought that a nuclear explosion would devastate a wide area, at least downwind.”

“Lieutenant, you have confused this with a nuclear detonation, which it most certainly is not. Radioactive materials escape from an atomic bomb when it explodes, and they are basically the broken particles of the uranium atoms. They have become new radioactive materials, called fission products, which are created by the splitting of uranium atoms. There are hundreds of them with different chemical and biological properties. You see, most of them did not exist in nature before the advent of nuclear technology, and their effects can be very bad, terrible. That is what the Taliban wanted me to produce for them, a fission weapon. This, however, is not a result of nuclear fission. I guess it is what is known more as a ‘dirty bomb’. It is a radiological weapon that combines radioactive material with conventional explosives. The purpose of such weapons is to contaminate the area around the explosion with radioactive material, hence the attribute ‘dirty’. Although that was not your intent, that effect is exactly what happened. The ground will be sewn with particles of uranium that will dissipate over quite a short period of time. Several months would be my best guess. It depends on a number of factors, rainfall, winds, and suchlike.”

He nodded. “Okay, I’ll make contact with our people and advise them of all that. I would guess they could probably use the existing telemetry on the drones to monitor the radiation.

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