Satori - Don Winslow [46]
“I’ll come to Hong Kong to work out the details.” He didn’t want Benton fucking this up and he didn’t have much time to finalize a plan and get it to Hel.
33
THE WEAPON LOOKED as ugly as it was lethal.
There is no honor and hence no beauty in it, Nicholai thought. A sword is beautiful for the care and craft that goes into its creation, and honorable for the courage it takes to wield in personal combat.
But a “rocket launcher”?
It is ugly in proportion to its destructive power. Anonymously produced by soulless drones on an assembly line in some American factory, it brings no distinction to its owner, just the ability to kill and destroy from a distance.
Still, Nicholai had to admit as Yu recited the weapon’s particulars, its power was impressive.
The M20 rocket launcher—a.k.a. the “Super Bazooka” — weighed a mere fifteen pounds and was a little over sixty inches long, half of that being barrel. It fired an eight-pound HEAT rocket that, at a velocity of 340 feet per second, could penetrate eleven inches of armor plating at an effective range of a hundred yards. It could take out a heavy tank, an armored personnel carrier, a half-track, or a fortified pillbox.
The weapon, basically a tube with an electric firing device and a reflecting sight attached, could be broken down into two pieces for easy carrying by two men. It could be fired from a standing, sitting, or — critically for its intended purpose — prone position. That is, a man could lie in a rice paddy or stand of elephant grass and get off an accurate shot. A well-trained team of two men could fire six rounds inside of a minute, while an elite team could fire as many as sixteen shots in the same period of time.
“Could one man operate it if he had to?” Nicholai asked.
“Once it’s on its tripod.”
“And they are included?”
“Of course, Comrade Guibert.”
Nicholai made him open each of the fifty cases and inspected each rocket launcher. He was no expert on these weapons, but a failure to do so would have aroused Yu’s suspicions. No serious arms dealer — as Guibert certainly was — would have gambled on buying five cases of rocket launchers and forty-five cases of mud bricks.
The weapons were packed in a thin layer of grease to prevent fungus damage to the gunsights.
“You provide the solvent to clean them?” Nicholai asked.
“Of course.”
Fifty of these weapons, Nicholai contemplated, each of them capable of taking out a French tank, half-track, or pillbox, could make an enormous difference to the Viet Minh.
Perhaps a decisive difference.
The Viet Minh had prematurely launched a conventional offensive against the French troops on the Day River. Gunned down en masse by superior French firepower and armor, the Viet Minh lost eleven thousand men in just twenty-six days of fighting. Even so, they had almost prevailed and might have done so, had the Americans not intervened with yet another new weapon.
They called it “napalm,” liquid fire dropped from airplanes, and the Viet Minh were incinerated where they stood.
Does the American genius for mass destruction know no bounds? Nicholai wondered, recalling the firebombing of Tokyo, and of course the atomic weapons that annihilated Hiroshima and Nagasaki.
“I’ll take them,” he said, “depending, of course, on the price.”
Not that he really needed to drive a bargain — Haverford had supplied him with more than enough money — but, again, what kind of arms merchant wouldn’t try to drive the price down?
Not Michel Guibert.
“I am authorized to negotiate for the Defense Ministry,” Yu said. “Perhaps over lunch?”
They repaired to an enclosed pavilion overlooking Longtan Lake.
The food was quite good. A whole boiled fish in a sweet brown sauce, followed by greens in garlic and then zha jiang ma, thick wheat noodles with ground pork in yellow soybean sauce.
Nicholai asked, “So what is your price?”
“What is your offer?” Yu asked, refusing to take the bait of making the first bid.
Nicholai stated a ridiculously low figure.
“Perhaps you misunderstand,” Yu replied. “You are not